°??───??2??───??°

  The school day in which the magic was let in and the pickle jar gains a use

  °??───???───??°

  A plethora of monochrome throbbed. A thin film of water diluted the vision in her right eye. Kally groaned. She rolled onto her side to avoid the sunlight that peeked through her half-drawn curtains. The grey walls reflected the light. It was too much for her. A dull ache of pressure presented itself between her eyes, reminding her of the excesses of the night before. A pint of water! She sighed.

  Karin would be disappointed.

  She sat up and curled forward, almost forming a ball, and her head felt heavy and thick. She groaned again. Kally stretched out her legs and edged off the bed, fumbling towards her kitchen. There she found the pint of water she had prepared with good prior thought the evening before. Shame she had not remembered it last night, or was it earlier this morning? She took fast short gulps of the now stale and lukewarm water.

  Her left foot was causing her issues already. Usually, it was fine until the evenings but not this morning. It hurt as she applied even the smallest amount of pressure. Reluctantly, she assessed the problem. Sure enough, there was a problem. It was bleeding rather profusely, the white sock almost dip-dyed with red hues.

  Bloody thing, she muttered.

  She lifted her foot onto the counter-top, right by the sink, and peeled off the sock. A gory sight indeed. Oozing. Kally dipped her toe into a stream of cold tap water to numb it. When it was sufficiently numb she picked away the clumpy dried blood, careful not to further aggravate the wound. This was not what she needed today. She dabbed at the toe to clean it - softly, softly - to not awaken it from its slumber.

  Her sleepy toe stopped seeping and even went back into her sock without a peep of a song or even a whistle. Small mercies.

  Relieved, Kally embarked on her journey to work. She soon passed Karin’s bar from the night before. Proximity to the bar - always an important factor when selecting housing - made it less hazardous stumbling back at night, after all.

  She weaved through the thin walkways, making sure to duck into the many nooks as she walked by. As mentioned previously, the architecture and general design of the town had practicality in mind. Exposed to the elements, the smog of magic often snuck upon them. As such, eventual ingenuity of design had resulted in makeshift narrow interconnecting walkways with small cavities, of which pedestrians were able to dive into for a chance of escaping from the magic unscathed. Each nook had a sliding door to trap the individual within and hopefully keep the magic out.

  Kally’s head had started to clear, and her eyes were less bleary. Her toe, unfortunately, was worse for wear, but she was glad it was still quiet. She limped on, up the stone steps to the entrance of the school.

  ???

  The children had arrived already. Kally was late. This being nothing unusual, the children, all three of them, were remarkably patient and seated at their desks. One girl started to fidget slightly and hum to herself.

  “Margie, shush. You can’t even sing,” the girl next to her whispered in a whine. She folded her glove in front of her and smiled, smug.

  Margie, still humming to herself, lowered the volume until it sounded more like a whimper. Her ears quivered flat against her face.

  The only boy, Michael, had a sock puppet holding a bludgeon concealed from view. He peeked down at his lap from time to time. His secret. No doubt he would be distracted today. He looked up, alert, as he had heard footsteps echoing down the corridor.

  “Miss Kally...” Michael whispered breathlessly as he stuffed Punch into his desk drawer for safe keeping. He whistled innocuously.

  “Marrow… sit down!” Kally’s voice boomed as she entered the room. It seemed that Marrow, after spending too much time enduring Margie’s humming, had stood on her desk and was stomping her foot. And to think they were so well behaved earlier. Children are more unpredictable than magic sometimes.

  Marrow turned to beetroot. They scooped her up and kept her a while in a pickle jar. Why does magic come at the most inopportune times? Kally thought. When Marrow comes back around, she will be in no state for school. Kally sighed. She shut the window.

  “Who left this open? You let the magic in.”

  It may as well have been rhetorical. She sighed again. Should have gone back to bed this morning. Kally shuddered and waited for Marrow, dejected. She will have to spend half the lesson consoling a child who was a vegetable and most likely did not like it. Most of the time, they do not like it.

  Most of the time, they really do not like it.

  Kally shuddered. It is even more bothersome when they do like it though. She had heard of children who come back from a vegetative state and bawl their eyes out. When you ask them why, they cannot answer. Please, don’t let that happen today, Kally thought. She remembered reading a paper on it, a few years ago now.

  What was it now? She strained to remember.

  Deoxymagileic acid levels.

  Something about the child’s DMA combining with the magical trip causes them to forget themselves and only remember being a vegetable. Kally scoffed. You can come up with scientific terms all you want, but what use is it if you cannot fix the issue—

  Kally’s head throbbed again. She could not stomach the idea of this happening to Marrow. She glanced at the pickle jar at her desk, stroking the side of the glass softly. Oh Marrow. When will you come back to us?

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  ???

  Luckily for Kally, it only took twenty-three minutes for the magic to wear off, body part by body part. If it wasn’t so grotesque looking, it would be comical - a beetroot attached to a raw looking leg. Oh, there seems to be an eyeball in your beetroot. Oh, is that one tooth or two? That globular mass of organ has a beetroot in it. I could go on.

  The process was a painful one for all involved. Michael and Margie were still waiting for their lesson to start. Granted, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Michael was still focused on his sock puppet world but Margie had finished humming all the tunes she knew. She was becoming mildly impatient, resorting to strumming her fingers on the desk.

  Once Marrow was fully formed and in a change of clothes, the lesson could begin. She was surprisingly well adjusted, considering.

  “Well, girls and boy, where were we?”

  “Last week, you explained to us that we are accidents,” chimed Margie.

  “Yes. Though, like I said before, your parents still love you.”

  “Yes, yes, miss,” Michael rushed out. “We know all this.” He was considerably unamused by this. Every week, the same sort of lesson - the same message. If what Miss Kally said was true, where was his father?

  “Still, Michael, we all go through this at some point.”

  He sniffed defiantly. “Don’t matter to me none, miss.”

  “Are you sure?” Kally enquired with sad eyes. Most only have to endure the self esteem classes when they are a child. It is only the teachers that cannot escape them in adulthood.

  Kally took a breath and grounded herself. She knew this lesson was crucial to their development, and as a teacher it was her responsibility to look out for the crisis of the self. Still, it was hard to sit through every week. At least there were only three of them in this class, she often thought.

  It had been this way a long time. Even her parents had gone through this process. More rudimentary, perhaps, but ever since the Great Self-loathing Maladjustment, everyone was required to be monitored. She did not really know the science behind this one, just the impact. If self-loathing was allowed to build up, and, if left to simmer, the child’s soul would become maladjusted. It was believed that maladjusted souls were more susceptible to magic, though this has never been proven by science.

  ???

  A shrill moan, muffled by cotton and shoe, worked its way out of Kally’s toe. She shuffled uncomfortably, not wanting to bring attention to it. The children, it seemed, had not noticed. They were too preoccupied with their art project of the day based on the concept of ‘Unconditional parental love’. Kally had taken respite from them, whilst they were drawing. It allowed her to rest her aching head, which she was doing, against the table. The cold wood soothed her. It had a strange calming effect. The shrill ringing in her ears, that constant brain chatter, was making her feel nauseous, along with the dull ache in the pit of her stomach. The night before was a bit extreme, a bit overdone. There was no mistaking that. As such, she had made a last minute change to the lesson plan today. The freedom of an art project was so therapeutic for the children, after all. She lifted her head slowly to check on them. Her vision was less blurry but affected by a brain fog.

  “Michael, what are you doing?” Kally sighed.

  A perturbed Michael, mischievous by nature but currently abashed, rushed to store something under the desk. His arms bolted straight to his chair, between his legs, and his eyes popped wide. He sat up tall, and gulped.

  “Nothing, miss.”

  This barefaced lie, common amongst young children when caught out, usually would have softened Kally and have been enough to make her laugh.

  Today, she was unmoved.

  “Now Michael, I don’t think that’s quite the truth.” She stared intently at him. “Is it?”

  His bottom lip started to waver, a wobble. “No, miss,” he managed to stammer out.

  “Aw, bob ah, Michael’s getting in trouble,” Marrow half sang in glee.

  “Marrow, this does not concern you. Carry on with your picture, please,” Kally instructed. She was regretting looking up at that moment. She could still be there with her head on the cool wood of the desk.

  She sighed. ”Michael, can you show me what you’ve got there, under your desk? Oh, and I want to see the progress of your picture.”

  Michael, fit to burst with emotion, did as he was instructed with as little noise as possible. He shuffled to the front and sat quietly at Kally’s desk.

  “Miss Kally, it’s just a sock puppet.”

  Kally looked at the homemade sock puppet and smiled; her first of the day. It was well loved, made from a well worn sock. It looked to have been darned a few times before it became its current form. It had two black buttons for eyes and a smaller sock, perhaps one of Michael’s baby socks, red, was attached to form a nose. It was stuffed which gave it a bulging effect, soft and bulbous.

  “My Granddad made it. Please, Miss Kally, I won’t look at it again if you give it me back.”

  “Oh, Michael. I’m not taking it from you, permanently. Just until you have finished your picture. I don’t want you to be distracted.”

  “Oh, then, Miss,” he rasped. “Can I have it back now?”

  He thrust his finished art project at Kally.

  She scoured the drawing for people. The three figures looked happy: an old man with no legs, a mother and a child. Kally sighed. It was a good sign that Michael realised that his Granddad should be included in this picture. However, she bit her lip; the stick figure of the man in the background, scribbled out, must represent his absent father. She would need to pay attention to Michael in this lesson, to guide him away from despair, and, of course, she would be informing the boy’s doctor about this. They needed to be thorough. For now though, she would let this whole thing pass.

  “Very good, Michael. You can have your sock puppet back until the others finish their pictures.”

  He clasped his hands together, clearly delighted at this, and almost snatched Punch out of Kally’s hands.

  “How did you manage to draw this picture so quickly?” Kally asked, surprised at the amount that had been drawn in such a short period of time.

  Michael, though slightly sheepish, still had a mischievous look back in his eyes. “You’ve been at your desk sleeping for nearly an hour.”

  He, clearly enjoying this, looked slyly at Kally out of the corner of his eyes, gauging her reaction. She blinked in surprise but collected herself almost immediately.

  “Oh, is that so? Well, Miss has not been feeling very well today.” Kally paused. “I’m guessing that means it is about time for class to end.”

  Michael laughed and said, in that way that only children can, “Your toe was making funny noises whilst you slept, you know.”

  Kally sighed. I bet it was, she thought. She was looking forward to the end of the day so she could head to Karin’s bar. Though she needed to be careful not to overdo it again.

  She did not want a repeat of today tomorrow.

  °??───? Author’s Note ?───??°

  Thank you for continuing to join Kally in the magical absurdity of Chapter 2, where we saw Kally’s morning routine and struggle teaching children within the purple haze.

  This chapter focuses on the mundane yet surreal aspects of her life, with a mix of dark humour and introspection. I wanted to explore the tension between Kally's external responsibilities and the constant internal struggles she faces, especially with her cursed toe.

  I also wanted the children to bring a sense of chaotic normalcy to her life, highlighting the odd balance Kally strikes between care-giving, magical complications, and her own personal issues.

  Expect more weirdness, more discomfort, and as always, a touch of dark humour in future chapters. Stick around - the rabbit hole’s about to get deeper.

  Let me know what made you laugh, cringe, or wonder if you’ve been cursed yourself.

  (≧?≦)

  ? Coming up - Chapter 3 title ?

  °??───??The night in which the pursuit of oblivion is interrupted by a visitor ??───??°

  ~ SK Payde

  ? ? ?