"Mosca! Manni! Wake up! I think it's morning, I can hear noises from upstairs…" said Mila as she eyed the dark corners of the basement fearfully.
"Wha…what?" said Mosca as he gaped around, disoriented.
"Wake up! We should go upstairs before we land ourselves in more trouble…" Mila insisted.
"I had the worst nightmare," said Manni, "I dreamt that I was eating oatmeal in a giant pot, and it was dirty and smelly and had flies on it and stuff…and then suddenly this humongous rat peeked in… and it saw me and was trying to poke its head in the pot and then…and then it was trying to swallow me whole!"
"Oh, is that why you were thrashing about in your sleep? You poked me in the ribs…it still hurts…" said Mosca as he gingerly touched his chest, "I was dreaming too though, I thought maybe it was a hunter poking me with his gun…only, in the dream I was a goose…how strange…"
"Would you two stop babbling and hurry up?" Mila scolded as she gathered up the bed sheets and tried to fold them as best as she could.
"Alright, alright…ouch! My whole body is sore…oh dear, I believe we have to clean out the toilets today…"
"And those cobwebs in the store room…"
"We also have to sweep the yard…how are we going to get everything done? If we leave anything out, well, I hate to think what Miz J would do to us…do you think she'll cane us?"
With these gloomy thoughts haunting them, the three managed to fold all the bed sheets. Hefting the mattresses over their skinny shoulders, they slowly made their way up the stairs and dumped everything in the closet. Just as they were closing the closet door, they saw Rhea flouncing along towards them. She was wearing a bright green dress with red polka dots and yellow nail paint which combined with her frizzy brown hair and red boots made her resemble an exotic parrot that may have escaped from a tropical rain forest.
When Rhea saw the three sniggering at her appearance as she swaggered up to them, her lips thinned. Something seemed to have occurred to her suddenly, because an evil grin suddenly lit up her pasty face.
Rhea said, "That's right, laugh all you want now, you won't be laughing long…you're to drag your sorry little selves up to the kitchen after you've cleaned up…Wheezy needs help with the dishes and there are piles of them…and oh yes, the toilets are absolutely filthy…let's see how happy you look as you scrub them…I'll just bet all your little friends are laughing at you right now…not so brave now are we? Ha!"
As the three stared up at Rhea with looks of mingled hate and disgust, she tossed her head up haughtily and strode out down the hallway.
"One of these days, she's gonna get it…ooh is she gonna get it…" snarled Mila.
Mosca sighed, "Well, I suppose we should go now…get to work, won't help if we dawdled…"
Like the previous day, they threw themselves into the gruelling routine once again, and scrubbed and cleaned and swept and dusted. They eventually realised that Rhea was right, the toilets really were filthy. But with thoughts of Rhea in a pool filled with crocodiles, Rhea being roasted over a spitfire and a grand piano falling from the sky on Rhea's head respectively, Mosca, Mila and Manni gamely tackled all their responsibilities until the toilets were sparkling clean. Even they had to step back a moment and admire their handiwork. The rest of the day involved more back breaking labour and little rest. By bedtime, they were so tired that they didn't even bother keeping a lookout for the nocturnal predators in the basement, and fell into deep slumber.
This continued for three more days, and they saw little of Miss Jensen, mostly because they avoided her as skilfully as they could.
Then on a fateful Saturday, an event took place that would change the entire course of their lives as they knew it.
The rest of the children had gone out on a picnic with Rhea and Wheezy accompanying them while Miss Jensen stayed behind to finish up on some paperwork, or so she said. Our poor little trio, on the other hand was stuck at the orphanage, still toiling and infinitely miserable. They were sweeping the corridors in the early evening. Under normal circumstances, they would probably be debating grave matters like whether or not chocolate chips tasted good in strawberry ice cream, while they slurped down their milk and crunched on ginger biscuits at that moment.
"I am sooo lonely…I can't think of my life without you…oh! Please come home to me…" crooned Manni.
"For the love of all that is good and holy, would you please shut up man?" said Mosca
"You call that singing!" demanded Mila, "It sounds more like the croak of a dying frog!"
"How can I expect boors like you to understand music?" asked Manni, "You wouldn't recognise true genius even if it stared you in the face!"
"You're…what's that word? Delusional! That's it! You're delusional…and you're also tone deaf!" claimed Mila
Before Manni could sulk any more, Mosca suddenly brought his hand up to silence them.
"Do you hear that?" he asked, "It's coming from Miz J's office…"
As they strained their ears, they faintly heard some music drifting from the direction of Miss Jensen's office.
Unable to contain their curiosity, they shuffled across the hall and tiptoed to Miss Jensen's door, which was slightly ajar. What they saw inside left them numb with shock.
As they gaped with their mouths open, Miss Jensen danced to the music, oblivious to three pairs of prying eyes. She seemed to be doing something that was a cross between a foxtrot and a salsa, all by herself. She was jerking her body into sudden, spastic movements in rhythm with the music. If it weren't for the music, the three would have thought that she was having an epileptic fit. As she twisted and gyrated, the many tires of fat around her waist flopped up and down until it was growing painful to watch any longer. They continued to watch in horror, unable to tear their eyes away from the sight they were witnessing.
As Mosca craned his neck to get a better look, Mila pushed at him because he was obscuring her vision, resulting in a small and silent scuffle. Manni was desperately trying to mediate between them while he watched Miss Jensen execute a not very graceful pirouette causing her to nearly stumble with the effort. As they pushed and tugged at each other, Manni accidentally fell forward towards the door which flew open and hit the delicately carved table which was standing against the wall. As the tiny little table wobbled, a beautiful Ming vase that was resting on it, tottered for a bit before it fell crashing to the floor and broke into pieces. All this happened within a matter of seconds. As Mila and Mosca tumbled in behind Manni, Miss Jensen who was in the middle of a highly complicated dance step, froze right where she was and stared. Her eyes simply stared, alternating between the remnants of her shattered vase and the kids.
The children stared right back at her, too scared and stunned to do anything else. Slowly, it dawned on Miss Jensen that the shattered bits of china on her floor were once a beautiful and very expensive vase. Then another thought occurred to her. Those three children, the very children who had helped a hateful little mongrel escape less than a week ago, had just broken her precious vase. And if that wasn't bad enough, they had just caught her in the middle of one of her most private moments, while she was dancing. And from the way they were looking at her, with expressions of shock and fear and horror…she realised that some of that horror writ on their faces came from watching her attempts at dancing.
As she was engulfed with rage and humiliation, her face slowly and ominously grew red. She looked so terrifying that even the stout hearted would have quailed before her intimidating form. Her puffy face was twisted with hate, her eyes were narrowed and she breathed in short, sharp gasps.
She stomped up towards the three who were piled on top of each other. Miss Jensen roughly grabbed Manni by the collar and lifted him up in the air. She hissed as she flung him to the floor and with a shrill cry, she picked up Mila by her hair. Mila cried out and was about to protest but it was drowned out by the hard, resounding slap that Miss Jensen delivered across Mila's face. Mila's head whipped back as she flew nearly two feet across the room. As she sat there, stunned by the blow, a thin stream of blood trickled down her nose while her flaming cheek grew puffy, displaying the imprint of Miss Jensen's hand. Before she could make her next move, Mosca furiously leapt up onto Miss Jensen's back and pummelled her head with his little fist while Manni tried to bite her calf. With a frustrated grunt, she grabbed them both with one hand each and threw them to the floor.
She would have roughed them up some more but Miss Jensen was forced to restrain herself when Wheezy and Rhea suddenly burst in to the room, tired from the picnic. Rhea, who had a basket in her hand, dropped it in surprise as her hand flew to her mouth. Wheezy uttered a surprised grunt and took in the whole situation. As they saw the shattered vase and the three children on the floor, realisation slowly dawned on them.
Before they could say something, Miss Jensen strode up to them. Wheezy cowered behind Rhea who tried to edge back as much as she could.
Miss Jensen said with barely concealed frustration at the interruption, "I see you're back. I expect the children behaved themselves. Well, I suppose you have duties to attend to now, things to do…before you go, Wheezy, I want you to take these brats with you, put them to work, I don't care if they cry or scream or complain…I want you to make them work so hard, that they collapse with the effort…God knows its all they deserve to do…that's all they're good enough for, scrubbing floors and washing dishes, expecting them to do more would be asking for a miracle…"
Mila, who was still stunned, was huddled in the corner of the room while Mosca and Manni tried to wipe the blood off her face.
"Mila, are you alright?"
"Does it hurt a lot? The pain will go away, hey don't be sad…"
"Don't worry, it'll be alright, we're here aren't we?"
"Shut your blabbering you brats," Wheezy said gleefully.
They were too stunned to protest when Rhea and Wheezy roughly raised them to their feet and dragged them off to do their duties.
The children half walked and half stumbled along the corridors, their minds almost blank. They couldn't believe what had just happened to them. They were for the moment too stunned to react. No one had ever raised a hand to them their whole lives, no one had dared. Everything seemed to move so slowly.
They were now in the kitchen. Mila was still bleeding from her nose and her bruised cheek had grown bluish.
"Well, you can't say that wasn't coming your way, if I was in Miss Jensen's place I wouldn't a waited that long to beat you black and blue, she's too easy on you anyway…" rasped Wheezy. He seemed to be very delighted.
"Ooh, I've never seen Miss Jensen that angry before! Did you see her face? She looked ready to burst! Oh you brats have done it this time. I wouldn't be surprised if she gave you another whipping soon…" Rhea nodded sagely.
"Ha! I could help her out with that too…now listen to me you low lives…I'm going out now, I need to get away from all you brats…when I get back, I want the whole kitchen cleaned out…and stack those provisions properly…and sweep the storeroom…well, what are you staring at you worthless fools? Get to work!" Wheezy said and walked out through the back door.
