This is not the first world,what is it?

Complaint Form

Convention against Torture

Detail, in chronological order, the facts and circumstances of the alleged violations. Include all matters which may be relevant to the assessment and consideration of the particular case. Please explain how you consider that the facts and circumstances described violate your rights.
-I have been persecuted, tortured and surveilled consistently for as long as i can recall since i was a teenager by unknown individuals run by a woman known only to me as Atilla. It has become apparent throughout the course of my life that this person runs a criminal militia who often pose as British security services.
It has been suggested to me that Atilla is persecuting me simply to demonstrate her dislike of my mother and or to get me into her employment as my mother it has been suggested once was.
No one has ever approached me in any official capacity to legitimately ask me to work for or with them.
My human rights have always been violated. Every aspect of my life has been subject to intense attempt at total control. Leading to my being isolated from family friends, barred from further education and work. Everyone i have ever known, associated with or simply had repeated dealings with has been approached and used to control me in some way.
As a teenager I was told i should be someone else. The people around me were used to try and suggest me into actions i was then harassed because i choose not to take. Whilst attending West Leeds Girls High School it was suggested repeatedly to me that i should have sex with a teacher. A suggestion i suspected to be an attempt to set me up.
 I was told that I would remain a virgin until I had sex with the people i was told to have sex with and that same sex attraction was not allowed [and my mother and myself would be killed for it]unless it was again with who I was told to. As a teenager I found all this extremely distressing  and much too much to deal with.
At one point the teachers  called my mother in for a meeting and sat us in front of a Spanish inquisition style panel of teachers, half of whom I had never encountered before. It became clear that the intention was purely to intimidate and level abuse at us both. The premise for the meeting was my failing attendance I think, but the process was so unnecessarily aggressive that my mother simply suggested that I should stop attending.
Pressure, bullying, cajoling and threatening was put on school friends to make me the person they wanted to me to be [ was too quiet I was told] and when this failed I was left estranged and isolated. It was never really explained to me what was happening just that I should do as I was told. All bar one of the teachers at my High School were compliant with this narrative, a single english teacher did not appear to be.
 A bid was made to get me to sign something which sounded like an Official secrets act.All the girls in my year were required to sign this but rebelled at not being able to read it before signing. Getting together and putting together what they had managed to read one girl broke off and phoned her mother who was a lawyer and was told if she felt she was being given no choice to get out of the building.Several girls came up holding me by the shoulders and speaking firmly into my face “DO NOT SIGN SARAH” they said.
It is something i have remembered all my life because the day after the headmistress called me into her office and had me sign something she said was simply a formality, nothing really, just a requirement of the upcoming examinations or something and then she laughed evilly as i left..Eventually in their frustration i was barred from eating at mealtimes and not allowed into the dining hall and when i was diagnosed at 16 with non Hodgkins lymphoma they initially thought it was anorexia because i weighed 7 stone.
People told me at the time that there was “something your mother isn’t telling you Sarah” but Molly would just say that i was better off not knowing.;” Don’t be daft” was all she would ever say when i questioned her or asked why someone was watching us, looking through our windows or who would steal food from our freezer or allotment which someone appeared to be doing for awhile;
”Don't be daft. There's enough daft buggers`s  about already.”


As a result of the Lymphoma I was unable to sit any of the GCSE examinations I had studied for and predicted to do well in recent mock exams. After a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy  I went to Park Lane College in Leeds  were I was only able to sit 5 of the GCSEs I had studied for. Its has been indicated to me that the results of these exams were lowered.I then took 2 A-levels and went to a local art school to sit a BTEC in fine arts.
I was the target of a very blatant witch hunt at Leeds College of Art and Design[they have since changed their name]A teacher called Elspeth deliberately isolated me from other students referring to me as evil constantly and requiring them to be recruited into her hate campaign against me or face the same isolation and abuse.I had barely met and hardly knew this woman at the time.She continued encouraging this verbal abuse throughout the course whipping up the hatred amongst the students into a fever pitch of over excited hatred. My work was dismantled slandered ,small darts thrown at me.It felt to me like a witch hunt and I was the innocent witch and could be dragged out into the street and hung from the nearest lamppost at some point.
Elspeth barred me from the fine arts study of my choice and physically exiled me to the farthest corner of the crafts room to study applied arts. Elspeth recruited every  other student in my year into her hate campaign which was very unsettling and stressful since I had done nothing to provoke it. My work and attendance suffered greatly as a result. It was never suggested that this behavior was meant to have any particular impact on me other than to prevent my entrance into higher education.Which it did not. Although I was told repeatedly that I would not be allowed to complete a degree I was young enough still not to believe in this  and considered it to be ridiculous nonsense.Who is allowed to tell some one what they can and cannot do in this way?   
I was not allowed to continue onto the second year the Applied Arts degree course at Derby University. I was told that i had not accrued enough credits.This was due in part to one of my essays”disappearing” although i had completed it, handed it in and been told it was ‘brilliant” by a teacher in passing.I even still had the a4 yellow receipt from handing it in.I also had not accrued enough credits as i had never been given a full timetable of lessons and lectures as was indicated on more than one occasion by other students on the course.Who let me know i was missing lectures and lessons but never went so far as to tell me where or when. My course tutor denied everything I put to her and assured me that I was simply not coping very well and she had seen it many times before.
It was after having contact with Elspeth and my time at University that I realized a great many of my creative ideas were being stolen.At art school Elspeth had photocopied many pages of my sketchbooks letting me know forthright that she could use these ideas to make money and that there would be nothing I could do about it. My former art teacher on my A-level course also stole a variety of art works spilling wine on my sketchbook and claiming them “lost”
My ideas continued to be mined at University and not a year has passed by in the interviewing years when i have not seen one of my designs used in some shop or other.When i left education my ideas continued to be stolen.Most notably my union jack strawberries and cream design  which i still see everywhere quite often.My smarties themed jewelry and little rainbow spots necklaces.The ideas i have had stolen are too numerous to mention and stretch to short stories, doodles, thoughts in diaries, scrapbook drawings, musings and daydreams.
Moving back to Leeds to live with my mother we continued to be subjected to a campaign of 24/7 noise from the neighbors in the semi next door which was attached to ours.There was a space in the loft in between our roofs which my father had blocked up and they unblocked, allowing them access to our roof crawlspaces. Inevitably they began to come into our house causing disturbances and trouble.They also let there youngest child obsesss over our pond throwing things in it constantly catching goldfish and eventually piercing the pond lining.
We moved to Keighley in 1999, into 55 Grafton Road and enjoyed two years of delightful peace and quiet before the family owning the Shimla spice restart aunts moved into the large house next door.The patriarch of this family is rumored to be a poisoner for Atilla and it was at this time that i experienced IBS and a great many different digestive discomforts which may or may not have been related but i never had such problems before they moved in.
I long felt that someone had given them some means of access to our house as i often heard footsteps down our laminate hallway but never caught anyone.I know it was not my mother  as she was so often at work and did once put talcum powder down and caught an odd pointy toed mans footprint..I also saw a disembodied hand punching numbers into our alarm system on serveral occasions when my mother was in bed.Food disappeared from our freezer that only i ate and my mother didn’t even like.
We also had intense noises from the house at the other side.On a jobcentre course at college one year I was subjected to constant hammering so that I was not able to sleep and found it difficult to attend.
I often heard the children out tormenting my mother as she gardened, telling her ;”get rid of her Molly’” meaning she had to get rid of me. My mother ignored them.
The noise was largely children screaming and gone wild without parental control.They ran amok around our house pulling out grouting from between brick walls and pulling off trellis hold plants up.Climbing on walls till they became loose and constantly throwing things in the garden.
I appealed to environmental health Bradford council for help and have several noise diaries from this time.A noise machine was briefly installed but they seemed to know this and kept it down whilst it was recording.The police claimed it was none of their concern. Lawyers were out of our reach as they, the Shimla family threatened that they were able to spend more money on them than us.The law itself seemed out of reach.
We struggled for years to move and endured many hours of viewings from people who were bringing their children to engage in petty theft.We lost money bidding on a house in Barnsley when our almost buyer pulled out when they couldn’t get a mortgage. It seemed like a set up.
It was during this time that my computer was hacked and it became clear to me that I was being watched through it. I was questioned online for several years by James Fallon and the answers to these questions have clearly been used to torture me ever since. He said he had been paid $40,000 for this.He also told me  about a lot of things that were going to happen in the upcoming years and those things have more often than not happened.
I was told that if I ever visited the NBC building in need of help and the words “we sell aerosoles”[arseoles] were on the front of the building help would not be forthcoming which it was and help was indeed not forthcoming.
It was during these years-at least two years-2009/2010 when my computer was being hacked that I believe my cat Mona was murdered.Either through the poisoning of her flea treatments or by the Shimla family next door. I was allowed to buy Mona as a kitten from a local petshop when I was 16 years old.Two years after my father died and two years after I got her I first had cancer.She was great comfort to me and we effectively grew up together, knowing each others moods and quirks like family.I believe she was killed because of our close bond. Mona's loss to me is something I never recovered form.


My mother worked as a care worker throughout these years and aged visibly about 20 years in appearance.She worked untold hours week at one point just being driven from job to job and not returning for three days.She was however consistently never allowed to make much more than two hundred pounds a week she often complained.
Due to the constant screaming wild youth most of the residents of Grafton Road put there houses up and moved out in the 2002 to 2014 period.We were the only people left unable to move.
In 2014 my mother had a life changing health condition and nearly died in the back of an ambulance at the bottom of our garden.The Shimla`s youth ran around it laughing, screaming and shouting at her not to come back but the ambulance could not even take off because her blood pressure was so unstable.She was in Bradford Royal intensive care unit for 2 weeks and i had cancer of the parotid glands at the time.I started radiotherapy just after she came home. The harassment did not cease.
I was even harassed by an utterly shameless woman in the back of the transport car which takes you to and from St James hospital in Leeds. She seemed to feel that I aught to be a source of entertainment for the other passengers and registered her disapproval at some volume.
It was during this time I visited a Vision Express Optician`s in Trinity Leeds and was given an eyedrops in my  eyes on the premise I had very dry eyes.The liquid came out of my left eye, running down my cheek. On my way home i experienced a paralysis in the right eye and was unable to see for several minutes, which had never happened before.Vision express later claimed the drops were harmless and any after effects extremely unlikely.
Whenever I have attempted to have my sight tested or my spectacles updated I have been sold lenses that all staff swear are entirely appropriate but which I cannot properly see through, giving me eye spasms, headaches and difficulty with spatial awareness.
I also visited a dentist this year and was fitted with an oversized filling, which I was fortunately able to remedy by visiting a private but somewhat expensive dentist.
It was not long after this that my mother began to act strangely and i was never sure if it was acting or real dementia.I could get no help from doctors or dementia charities who kept telling me that it was “up to my mother” whether she sought help or not.My mother insisted she was fine and would not budge but was brought back from Leeds by the police one day after going to the coast for a day out and returning home to the wrong house.She had gone back to the house we had lived in Leeds.
My mother Molly was given a great deal of medication  which she did not appear to trust.She continued to drink the tap water and had constant diarrhea and cystitis. She did not appear to trust any food that I would buy her would only keep milk in the fridge, didn’t often use it and lost great deal of weight.
A social worker from Bradford council turned up one day with a female co worker.The man was called John Mcdermott.They stayed one hour and then took her to a care home .I overheard  my mother asking the woman “they wont kill her will they” and was told;
’we wont kill  her Molly”
Molly was robbed of one thousand pounds in the care home in Bingley. A crime I could never get to the bottom of and was told  quite aggressively  that it was none of my business.
It was after her stay in Bingley that she went to stay with her”friend” Anne in Haworth[whom i have since overheard confessing she did not know that my mother would never be allowed back.] It was one night during her stay in Haworth that i heard the familiar sound of her coming up the street but then the sound of car doors slamming and her telling someone she was just “going home for a bit” and the sound of male voices telling her she wasn’t and then driving off .I waited for the familiar sounds of the garden gate opening and the front door slamming which having heard her voice was what should have followed but it never happened. It was too unbelievable to me at that time that someone would stop her entering her own house.Who could or would even do that to my mother ? and why?
Shortly after this I was served a court order and asked to move out of the house which I did.Leaving half my possessions as I was unable to move them at that time and did not have the space. I was not informed who would be looking after my mother but Mcdermott assured me he would keep an eye on her. In front of a judge who asked;
 “Can we do this to someone?”
Referring to me. John mcdermott appeared to be in control, confirming that he could get further paperwork should it be required. Mcdermott appeared to be in control of my mother.Leading her away when she wanted to speak to me.Telling her that it was not a good idea to talk to me. I had been falsely accused of being violent toward her and interviewed by the police.
I moved into a flat on North Street in Keighley in June 2014 and was unable to drink the tap water after the third day.It gives you diarrhea. For a while it seemed as though my mother was living in one of the flats on my street I kept hearing her voice or someone was mimicking her very well.

I heard my mothers voice on numerous occasions for several weeks, although I did not see her. After a while I heard sobbing at the other side of the bedroom wall and her asking if she could see me or talk to me and I was so upset I was in tears too. If it was her she was not allowed to see or speak to me and was sent away. I did not hear her voice or whoever was mimicking her after this.
Some months after moving into this flat on North Street it became apparent that I was no longer able to keep food in the kitchen cupboards or fridge as it was being poisoned whilst I was out or asleep and everything made to give me diarhhea. I was buying bottled water from local supermarkets for a while until that too became poisoned.I travelled further and further away to buy unpoisoned water. Traveling to Wakefield, Harrogate, Ilkley and all around West Yorkshire simply to get fresh water and then I had to tape it into a sealed box at night and sleep on top of it so it was not tampered with.
It became clear to me slowly over time that there are entrances and exits into the flat that are concealed.The main one was most apparently a crack in the plaster in the shape of a door and the landlord admitted it still was a door into flat 1 that he had simply plaster-boarded over. At other times passageways have clearly been just opened or closed as the other occupants are smokers and the air is still fowled from the carparks and ashtrays smell.I am neither a driver or smoker. Cracks constantly appear in walls where I have filled them.
The kitchen appears to be the most used entrance into my flat as coming in through it involves loosening the hot tap which is now so loose I have to hold it to turn it on. Other indicators are the constant smell of male urine in my buckets, flies in a sealed windowless room and a layer of dirt on the floor even though it is now the least visited or even opened room in the flat.
I had no money and was only able to get seventy pounds a week from the DWP[Department For Work and Pensions] whom  I visited once a fortnight. I was applying for sometimes hundreds of jobs a day at a local library and only rarely receiving feed back or interviews.Which when I turned up to them it was obvious they had been forwarded about providing me employment and the grief they would be met with were they to do so.     Consequently i had one cleaning job for one week and one charity chugger job for barely 24 hours
I also had to sleep in increasing awkward places in order to not be poisoned by something which appeared to be a kind of dart gun which shot poison into my nose so breathed it in and became ill and struggled to breath.At one point sleeping with my head almost out of the window and having to move a massive double mattress everyday. i was diagnosed as iron deficient anaemic at this time and later vitamin d deficient. I have suffered constant ear and chest infections since living in this flat which i never had much problem with before.
It was a year after moving into the flat at North Street two days before Christmas Day 2015 that two police officers informed me that my mother had died of a heart attack.I was grief stricken despite people too numerous to mention telling me from this point on that Molly is not dead and is alive and well and living in Australia.
Arriving back in the Grafton Road house after a year i could see that Mcdermott had not kept an eye on my mother at all and was deeply moved by the state i found the place in.It smelt of human and cat urine.The front room was filthy, the back garden full of rubbish, very little food in cupboards or fridge.Her bedroom looked like a crime scene with everything in disarray and signs of a bloody struggle all over  bedside drawers and a pool of blood on the floor.
There was nothing written on her calendar suggesting she had nothing to do no, one to see and no where to go.It was harrowing.It was as if someone else had been living there instead of her.Which at the time didn’t enter my thought but in retrospect is quite possible.
It was a great emotional and physical strain at that time to clean and sort out her things with constant pain starting in my left hip which turned out to be quite likely the recurring non Hodgkins lymphoma
    The house needed expensive  building work as the bathroom toilet was beginning to fall through the floor into the cellar and were rot had dissolved several timber beams in the cellar. Simply entering the house and not finding my mother sat in her familiar seat next to the fire is something I have still not recovered from.
 I had been told more times that I can recall for many years starting around 2009 that I would be safer if I went to New York and that I would be able to get my mother back. In 2015 I got probate on the house and had to sell it to cover the 35,000 equity loan on it that my mother had previously released.
I had been told to my relief  by then that i would not be allowed back into Britain but a few weeks before leaving i was assaulted in my sleep and something injected into my left leg which began to swell from then on.I `briefly overheard a male voice saying;
”She`ll have to come back now” before awaking.
Being separated from my mother for this long is deeply upsetting and not knowing really whether she is dead or alive not even able to speak to is something I struggle to cope with on a daily basis Often I cannot deal with it at all.I have a burial plot and  a headstone with her details on. I held  funeral and invited her sisters and friends. Still people tell me she is alive but I cannot see her or speak to her because Atilla is against it for some reason. I can never stop expecting to find her somewhere particulary in and around here in West Yorkshire where we lived for so long and have so many memories of those times.
I visited America with the hope of finding my mother which I did not and claiming asylum which I was not able to do when I could not find a lawyer to represent me. Although I did overhear the lawyer I had found and asked to represent me arguing volubly with someone who was evidently telling him he was not allowed to help me.
A large number of Atilla`s foot soldiers had followed me to America and the following morning on arrival I was not able to eat at the breakfast buffet at the hotel as I was informed it was poisoned.They followed me all around Manhattan a mix of American and english foot soldiers or security services.Some of them were vocally expressing their support and helping me which was great relief I could not have done without. Although another type towards the end of my stay began to drop me which was the first time I became aware of this happening and believe I was given  cancer through this method.
Dropping is a means they have of rendering you unconscious and then conscious again without you being aware of it or what they did to you whilst you were out. This is not always the case as you can usually taste or feel the poison or have the effects when you later when you get diarrhea.The most frequent indicators you were just dropped at the moment are the men discussing what they did as they leave. Time is missing your memory cant account for  or your train of thought is suddenly lost.A passerby who knows nothing of what is going on looks alarmed or peoples children are upset. Someone has moved and my possessions have often been tampered with.There is occasionally alarmed talk of rape which having no evidence of I choose to ignore.
The process of my constant harassment has been monetized.Only a few days ago I overheard a woman on her phone reporting my whereabouts and reading out her bank details.Everyone who gets on public transport that I am on  gets paid twenty pounds. Recently dropping me was receiving a six hundred pound payment although I am not sure this is still the case as I have been dropped so frequently I suspect the price has come down.
I was also told I had a blood clot in Chelsea,New York at the Mount Sinai there by a Dr Chuey and that I would need treatment for this or I would be at risk of heart failure on the plane home. I believe that the injections I was prescribed were meant to give me the cancer but they didn’t at so I was dropped by some strand of the American security services  or Atilla`s arm of American foot soldiers and the cancer administered into my person manually as once my leg began to swell much worse from  that time onwards. I do not believe I had a blood clot.
It was made clear to me that I would have to leave America and would not be seeing my mother.A  fact which I found to difficult to accept and stayed on until the day before  the visa ran out in the hope she was there and I might see her at great emotional and financial expense to myself.

On returning to the Uk,Keighley I had a massively swollen left leg which before treatment began I could barely bend and was put on Chemotherapy over Christmas of 2016/2017.
Prior to this I did attempt not to return to the North Street flat staying  in Liverpool unsuccessfully looking for a small house to purchase then Hartlepool where I put a bid on a small semi and briefly Burnley where the estate agents had been clearly forewarned to  be unhelpful. It was several months before I was told the house I had bid on had been bought by someone else. I again visited Hartlepool and put a bid on the semi at the other side which was accepted and I engaged a solicitor. Only to be told shortly afterwards that the sellers East Durham Homes had suddenly taken the whole street off the market and it was simply no longer for sale.
Other bids to rent flats in Leeds have also been blocked as have my many bids on social housing in the Leeds and Burnley areas.
I was harassed by a bully of a nurse whilst staying in hospital up to the Christmas period of 2017. She was fortunately dealt with by other staff at the hospital.
I was also subjected to an intrusive and aggressive campaign of noise from the foot soldiers in staying in the flat upstairs. Very clearly obviously and audibly surveilling my every movement the noise in the form of crashing and banging followed me around the flat from room to room and stayed above me wherever  I was.
I was also aware that the chemotherapy was not having greatly adverse affect on my body until I returned to the flat whereupon I would require constant anti sickness pill and antacid pills.I was gassed by noxious invisible fumes, everywhere in the flat.I was given constant diarrhea or constipation and still not able to keep food, drink or medication in the flat.
When becoming exhausted from the effects of the chemotherapy the foot soldiers took this as an opportunity to push me about in the local shopping centers and supermarkets to crash into me physically with trolleys and baskets and attempt to push me over by pretending I was invisible.
Any food that they know I like is poisoned and left on supermarket shelves .I am often made aware that this catches other shopper unawares in overheard talk of complaints about heart palpitations and digestive disorders.I was given diarrhea for most of 2014 through poisoned water and recently had several intestinal polyps removed.
Later that year i was assaulted whilst asleep in my bed in the flat at North St and woken up in the early hours with the feeling of something weighing on my chest, i overheard; ’fucking hell lets get out of here” or words to that affect on waking and from that time until my heart operation found breathing very very difficult.It was shortly after this incident that i began to sleep in increasingly complicated bed set up in a bid to protect myself  whilst asleep. Eventually deciding to sleep inside a tent locked from the inside which I continue up to this day with only moderate success.
It was at this time that I was gassed with something that caused my heart to race uncontrollably I phoned the hospital who immediately called an ambulance and I was taken to the observation ward where I felt I would be ok as I was no longer in my flat.
I was sent to the LGI-Leeds General Hospital and told I had a defect on my heart that I must have been born with and that the chemotherapy must have effected it and made it too narrow for the blood to flow through.
I was given a very painful angiogram by a man I did not and still do not believe to be medically trained.My complaints of pain encouraged him to further cause pain. He did not listen to me and would not look me in the eye.There were people in the room laughing.My experience in the LGI was so concerning that i did not feel at all safe there and was not able to eat the food as it gave me diarrhea and there was one nurse on night who kept up noise all night making sure no one really slept which was directed at me i felt but also affected the entire ward.
The T.A.V.I surgery itself was undertaken without sufficient anesthetic which was only administered after I began to protest loudly at the surgeon who would not listen or look me in the eye began to cut away complaining he could not locate the veins he was looking for.I could feel every slice of his blade and I would not respond to being told to “shut up.”
Post the T.A.V.I operation I was kept in hospital for recuperation and continued to be gassed with something that affected my heart. Hooked up to  a heart monitor both myself and the nurses witnessed my heart rhythms remain normal whilst I was fanning the air away from my face  and become disturbed and abnormal when I was not fanning.
My repeated treatments of chemotherapy, over the course of six months in 2017 were administered by different nurses each time and I was never certain I was being given the correct treatment.There is a red colored injection called vincristine or rituximab and this was often missing. I was often harassed whilst sat in the chair hooked up to the chemotherapy delivering machine which you are attached to via a needle in your arm and therefore not free to escape. Atilla`s foot soldiers were always identifiable by the  socially unacceptable volume they carried on conversations with. Sometimes nurses would patiently attempt to point out that the aggressive tone was inappropriate but they know no shame and get paid for stunts like that.
To get to the hospital i have to travel on a short bus journey and Atilla`s foot soldiers continue to  cram themselves onto this until they can get no one else on board, causing Stress and discomfort to myself and other patients traveling to the hospital.This also often happens on the trains.There is also a toilet in the hospital that i have been repeatedly “dropped’ in that i now have to avoid. and an entire wing that has a food hall that it is no longer safe to visit;  ’don`t eat here today” someone said to me and i was watched very intensely every move i made on the last day i was ever in there.
It was after the end of the chemotherapy that I decided to enroll on a Health Sciences course at Keighley College with the hope of studying nursing.Someone in America had told me that nurses find it easy to emigrate because everywhere needs there skills.I felt that as a qualified nurse I would easily be able to emigrate to Australia with the hope of finding my mother Molly.
I had been told in High School that I should become a nurse and that I had no option should I want to get away from “them.”I had no understanding at the time and explanations were not forthcoming. A school friend also attempted to get me enrolled on a nursing course after cancer treatment and she was on it herself but again explanations were lacking at that time.
It was clear form the first few days at Keighley College that most of the other students on the course were Atilla`s. I overheard the most unpleasant one of them discussing how she would be able to pay her mortgage off with the fee of twenty-thousand pounds she would be receiving for getting me off the course. They isolated me form the beginning and I was dosed with repeated infections, although I was never absent I was informed by the course tutors after three months that I was too unwell to continue. Unofficially I learnt that I was not able to submit the first part of the coursework that I had completed as it was likely to pass with distinction and that this was upsetting Atilla.
It was during this time at Keighley College that it became obvious a great number of students had been recruited.The food in the school cafeteria poisoned and a large influx of newcomers had arrived in Keighley to make life difficult for me in order that i could not complete the course.It appeared to be an attempt at repeating what they had done to me at Art school in Leeds although the staff at Keighley college were nowhere near  as crazy as Elspeth. This was being made up for by the sheer numbers of students going into fever pitch mode.
These extra foot soldiers are still in Keighley to this day all hovering around seeking to do something to me for monetary gain. There has been talk again of rape which I choose to ignore due to the alarming nature of it and the lack of evidence.I was told recently that the chemotherapy I had to undergo has likely triggered the menopause. On being dropped in the kitchen recently i yelled at the flat next door [as to do this they have to block the wifi on my camera which means they are nearby]
“Do you ever get near ANYBODY conscious?”
I shouted and a male voice replied
“don`t have to.”
I am currently being intensely stalked everywhere I am by foot soldiers alarmed and aware I am writing to the UN. I suspect an attempt was made on my life crossing a road in Leeds on 6th August when I was almost hit by a bus.
The maths teachers at Keighley College were particularIy not allowed to teach me maths and pretty much said as much, as they had done in my youth. The other students in the maths lessons were on accession particularly abusive and unpleasant and so loud as to command all the teachers attention and not let me get a word in edgeways.As ever it was never made clearly to me what the purpose of all this unnecessary excitement was.
Shortly after leaving the course I was assaulted by a group of eastern europeans; dropped and given cancer which appeared a few days later in the form of a golf ball sized lump on the side of my head.This was confirmed to be another dose of the Marginal zone lymphoma which is also in my shoulder, liver, spleen and other areas of my body as i was also poisoned by the clopidogrel medicatIion blood thinner i was told to take for the heart valve transplant.
It has become clear to me that I will be dosed with the cancer until it is no longer treatable and it kills me or some complication from treatment is induced and I die from it and it has been suggested as much.
It was in aroundMay of 2018 that vast numbers of Atilla`s foot soldiers began to drop me and poison any food, water or medication I had on my person.I kept food, water and medication on my person as it is unsafe in the flat.
It has now become unsafe to walk around the local area, to or from buses or train stations or to wait in queues in shops. It is absolutely unsafe to sit in or attempt to eat in any local takeaways or restaurants as I have attempted this over several months and now been poisoned or dropped and poisoned almost everywhere. I travel daily out of town just to eat and drink and have had to forewarn my doctors that I will be unable to complete any course of medication that would require me to keep it on my person.
The surrounding area around north street and the fast food takeaway downstairs are inhabited by Atilla`s foot soldiers who audibly just sit around watching and waiting for the opportunity to drop me in my flat. I am constantly aware of being under surveillance as they shout out to each other up and down the street whatever it is I am doing. I have recurrent pain down my left side particularly in my left hips and right shoulder from the cancer inducing poisons I am recurrently dosed with.
For some reason none of this behavior is considered crime.My mother called the police repeatedly over harassment over the course of our lives but got nowhere and i was recently dropped at a busy Leeds train-station turnstile in front of two police officers who when questioned by staff responded that it was “none of our business’
I feel that my life has become an economy for a criminal underclass as i was told on the train only the other day whilst trying to avoid being dropped my a man telling his small child;
”we need to get some money you bitch”
They are a people who for whatever reason are unwilling to make an honest living or live with any dignity or decency. Occasionally it appears they are not allowed to drop me in certain places or that someone watching my security camera which I currently wear to use the bathroom are arresting people they see.Such rumors barely deter them or last very long.
Wherever I currently go is subject to abuse and harassment or bribery till they allow my dropping and or poisoning. I over hear queues of people behind me all asking the staff in shops if they can “drop her in here?” and sometimes staff getting abuse when I do not drink or consume the poison that has been served. Often I am aware that someone is simply viewing me as pound signs and I am being poisoned to make them money.
Currently there is a high price to be made for anyone who can poison any food drink or medication I have on me that I then consume as I am frequently dropped throughout the day  by people looking through my things. Even when I have evidently not been out or are just moving from one room to another, going to bed or using the bathroom.They are still searching my things for anything they could poison.
Everyone in Keighley, the town I live in who owns or works in a food shop, takewaway, restraunt or newsagents is under orders to poison me or allow my being dropped so that I might be poisoned.I do not often attempt to shop in this town.
I am aware that wherever I have eaten has been visited by Atiila`s foot soldiers demonstrating their main skill of socially unacceptable behaviour, uncommon loudnesss, abusive and aggressive tone and language. They often stand outside my windows indulging in this kind of behaviors, to what end is never declared. Most recently the male workers in the fast food place downstairs took to screaming and bawling outside my window around midnight.Hurling abuse when I requested they be quieter. I  contacted Bradford Council Environmental health Department who  requested they keep the noise and down and told me to contact the police should they become abusive again.
They are also causing the vision in my right eye to become increasingly blurred.It feels like I am being dropped and someone is cutting into my cornea. Any mistakes found here are likely due to my reduced eyesight.
I am submitting this account of my life in the hope that someone will help me get out of here.I am not well at this time and have, I believe forgotten a lot of things and omitted some from the sheer repetition of it; there are always smokers waiting to blow smoke at me as I do not like the smell, always people being aggressive and overloud. Always people wanting to get in front of me in a bid to  delay me.They follow me around to engage in such behavior. They never leave me alone.
Things that happened when I was a child are very vague in my memory and only my mother could confirm these things but I believe my parents had to move when I was 8 years old so that I would be attending one of the worst performing schools in West Yorkshire at that time; Thornhill Middle School [since demolished]. I was taught very little and almost no mathematics.
Maybe someone someday can find out why I was not allowed to live a life and why all this had to happen.The point of it all escapes me.The cost has reputedly run into millions but why?

Symptoms Like I Am Getting Cancer...

I write this in the hope someone with the medical knowledge can tell me how this is happening and hopefully how do i stop it proceeding to the previously suffered conclusion…

Last year i was diagnosed with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma of the parotid glands. My face swelled up either side and mumps was diagnosed which i got over in a week but the swelling remained.
I had a Lymhpnode removed at Bradford Royal Infirmary, tested, diagnosed and successfully treated with a course of Radiotherapy at St James in Leeds.

Freaking me out right now is all the symptoms that i suffered in the run up to the diagnoses have begun again. It really is groundhogs day. The only differences so far are that my acid stomach is being medicated and i don’t have mumps yet.

The Symptoms;

-Itching

-The water tastes like it has lemon juice in it. Yorkshire Water have tested it and found the water at first to have Cryptospiridium in it but say that it is now clear. Bottled water is ok.

-When i drink the tap water the skin around my mouth dries out,turns white and flaky.Even if i just brush my teeth in it i get a sore throat.I choke if i drink it.

-Numbness up my spine between my shoulder and down my limbs

-Headaches

-Sick in my stomach feeling like i have eaten something bad

-tiredness and exhaustion


Future Symptoms I am Expecting;

-A viral infection[ mumps again?}

-A lump somewhere in a lymph node

-A horrible body odour like ammonia but sweatier

-Permanent exhaustion,loss of appetite,getting no energy from food.

-Severe stabbing pain in my joints.Pain in my joints moving and walking

The Inexplicable;

-Every item of food and drink i buy is perfectly ok in taste and smell On The Day I Buy It. The day after it becomes lemony in flavour, particularly the milk.

-My mother Molly whom i live with can taste nothing in anything. Although she has a long standing prescription for the same antacid i was recently prescribed.

-I was once informed the security services would be doing this to me for reasons never fully explained or believed.I have never committed a criminal act or been interested in such things. Not even religious. Surely this would cost money? And achieve what end?

BlackFoot Castle;Mircea`s Story

Mircea stood quivering on top of the high stool too afraid to move.The riotous villagers surrounded her. So silent now she hoped if she closed her eyes tight enough she might imagine them not there. Someone rustled, moving and cursing under there breath. Mircea almost toppled over, fixing rigidly in terror as she realised to fall would only mean to be nearer the flames they would soon light.

It was a dark day, not just for Mircea. It had looked like heavy rain all day, an almost night time sky hung low and stifling in the muggy air. The stench of death seeped into everything, the closeness of it driving people insane.

Mircea had only tried to help but there had been too much death,grief and pain in the village. When panic broke out whatever was left of reason vanished and people sought  a target. So there she was, tied to the stake. Her curly black hair fell down her shoulders messily as if pointing to her enviably curvaceous shape, which did nothing for her cause amongst the women.

Mircea was not found guilty of anything. She was never accused. No one even need to know the envy that had started it. Fear held them all in it`s grasp. When the single white bolt of blistering hot lightning struck the ground behind her they stood mutely.

Rain poured over the village like the sky was tipping an ocean on them. Mircea sought to see through the water saw, each time the crowd was smaller and smaller. Struggling even to breath in the downpour she sobbed just once finally daring to look down. She was perched over fast flooding stream.

She heard a wooden door bang to her left. Still blinking away the rain she saw an elderly lady shuffle out of her small house carrying a stool .Putting the stool down beside her she climbed up and untied Mircea, shouting

"Its`God`s will"

At the remaining villagers. She led Mircea inside her small home,gave her food and told her urgently to "Go."

"Go and keep going and don`t stop till you get to a place where the people have got more sense."

Mircea fled. Hearing heavy hammering on the door of the house as she ran.

They say all the doctors she has seen agree it must have been the smoke from the flames that caused her illness but she cannot remember smelling any smoke or being burnt by any flames.

If there was any one moment when i knew i would like Vladimir Edessimun it was  when i heard Mircea`s story.On his was back from England he found her. Having noticed a group of noisy children throwing things into bushes and poking it with sticks Vladimir went to look, suspecting an injured animal. He found Mircea. The villagers there thought her a simpleton and were trying to move her on. From the moment she spoke  he knew it was not the case. She was someone who had been running so long she had become lost to herself.It did not occur to Vladimir that he couldn`t save her.So he did.

Short Horror Story Keep Walking By Part Two

  I try not to think back to what I saw the next morning but when I do I remember it as a bad dream. One of those waking nightmare type things or food poisoning. I certainly do not like to think it came out of my imagination.

It was such a bright warm day I woke up to. The sun shone on all the pretty peach and pink colours I had painted my room with a white light that ought to have been stark were the colours not all so sweet.

It happened so fast it was like my mind split in half instantly to deal with it.A sense of dread fear intruded upon me, even whilst my head was still on the pillow my whole body was overcome with the cold clamminess of it.I knew there was something horrific in the room. Something dreadfull.I found myself hoping it was a huge black spider on my wall next to the door at the end of my bed and I do not like spiders.

I sensed  where it was and was trying to force myself, still half awake to look.I had to look or I could be frozen with the fear of it.I felt it was something I couldn’t deal with.Something I had no hope of dealing with and it was going to paralyze me with terror .It was with a sense of hopelessness that I peered slowly over the edge of the duvet.It took my breath just to look at it and it appeared to be peering directly back. Only it`s eyes and the top of its head visible at the end of my bed.

It was a vision so horrible as to be almost unbelievable. All I recall thinking was “Why?” “Why me?Why here?”It was simply the most unnatural thing I hope I never really saw and yet I knew I was not imagining it,just because I could not have.

It was only a vaguely human shaped thing.The spiked hair and wrong eyes vaguely Craig.My brain was scrambling to explain the inexplicable. It was blacker that soot in a way that defied nature.It was a blackness that was more like a void than a colour.The light could not hit,it seemed  to absorb light.The eyes were bigger than human eyes are able to be,there seemed to be constant movement in the deep blackness within them.

Anything natural and human as in the previous Craig had utterly gone.What was left was this unspeakably gruesome thing that made no sound and had no recognisable expression.It appeared to be moving a little as if in a breeze of it`s own but with the only window right next to my head I knew there was no breeze and the door behind it was shut.I hid my head under the duvet repeatedly but it was still there when I looked again.It was too horrible a thing to know of it`s existence let alone acknowledge it`s appearance at the end of my bed.I kept on hiding and looking and eventually I looked and it had gone.


        The odd things that began happening around the house after that just seemed amusing at first.I would be in the Kitchen and putting  the lid on the sugar jar only to find it taken off again a second later.Lids,forks knives kept being moved.Milk I had put in the fridge moved to a cupboard.Things from cupboards moved to the fridge.It was just like we had an invisible idiot living with us and it didn`t especially bother us. My mother would shout “What on earth are you up to!” at me but I would be shouting it back just as often.

     At school Tracey and I ignored each other cautiously.I didn`t want to be the first one to say anything and I suppose neither did she.I had no evidence to accuse her with and it all seemed too silly at that point.
The annoyance grew however,moving all over the house until one day I came home from school to find my mother sat on the sofa,she was shaken up.She refused to explain what had happened but it was obvious something had. After that I could hear her from my bedroom shouting at something angrily ”Get lost!” was the most commonly heard part.When I went to find out who it was, there would be no one there. After a few days I noticed she was shouting at something all over the place but it turned to laughter on my approach.Ginger George caught some of the blame but he was  asleep so often he escaped most of it. George himself had developed a wary swagger when approaching the kitchen.

The nonsense of it all gradually became more destructive. The invisible idiot not remotely amusing. Missing things were broken when you found them. A lightbulb exploded over my head.I had bare feet and could not move until I realised there was a way of sliding myself onto the bannister and along it away from all the broken glass. The house was darker than it had ever been and it was not far enough into winter for that. Even on bright days the sun did not seem to come in through the windows as it used to. I found myself shouting at the dark shadows, telling whole empty rooms to “Go Away.” And laughing at my own insanity.


My Mother brought in a vicar who said blessings and prayers over things. I sat on the floor of my room listening to the murmured sounds below. A moment or two after the vicar had departed a barely noticeable tremor began to run through the house. It was just a silent vibration and I thought it would pass. It did not. It grew and grew, gradually and quite slowly till it seemed like a train was passing by the front door and the nearest railways lines at least three miles away

“What are you doing!”

My mother  shreiked at me

“It`s the house!”

I shrieked back .Ginger George looking at me as if I was mad

“It`s an earthquake !” I yelled.I don`t think either of us believed it.

As the tremors slowly began to subside for a brief moment they did a different thing. They juddered instead and the whole house throbbed with it. It felt for just a moment the house had laughed. A dark disturbing cynical laugh. It all faded silently away. A deep unnerving uneasiness refused to leave after that. It was as if the thing that was watching,hounding and pestering us had found a voice and all it had chosen to do with it was laugh.

My mother  did not believe it was Tracey “She hasn`t got the brains”She argued. She had been questioning all the neighbours for awhile and it was at this point that someone from across the street sent over “the family priest.” I came home from school to find him exiting the front door as I was about to enter.

I had really been hoping that it would all turn out to be some dumb trick Tracey was pulling and that maybe the neighbours were in on it. As much as I preferred to live in denial and not know what was happening even I had realised someone would have to be living very nearby to do the things they were doing. I wanted it all to turn out to be smoke and mirrors. For Tracey to have found someone who was very clever but with too much time on there hands and no common sense…
Facing this priest really pulled all my thoughts apart and I couldn`t look away…

As I stood in  the drive  listening whilst my mother thanked the Priest for coming I found myself transfixed to the light brown painted fence at the back garden end of the driveway. A shadow fell across the right side of it nearest to the house. It was as tall as the fence at around five foot. The unnaturalness of it grew in my mind very slowly and entirely unwillingly from the first suspicion that there was nothing at all casting the shadow and yet there was the shadow. As I continued to watch, it moved along and behind the fence with no natural light hitting or directing it. It moved behind the fence as slowly and deliberately as it had moved along the front.

The smiley priest laughed confidently informing her “It can`t get back in the house” as he slid still smiling back into his car…

When I looked back at the fence the shadow was still encircling the fence but had sped up its strange manouvers and was beginning to spin angrily around and around as if trying to consume it.
The thought occurred to me that Traceys hairbrained illusionist might be a genius but he was dangerously out of his mind too.He was going to menace the garden as he had menaced the house. Maybe Tracey was possessed now too or just crazy.To do all this and for what?! All the accusations I wanted to throw at her were drowned out that night.

A violent storm shook the whole house all night long without let up. Countless times the rain roared down on us with outrageous loudness shaking the house with the force of it`s blows. Trees that were not there whipped and tapped windows and walls all night long. Thunder hammered,lightning shook us. The manic wind  seemed set on a furious revenge that it could not find a way inside. Windows and doors all rattled, the house was shaken as if a box. It was all a bit biblical.

Answering the phone my mother found  the concerned neighbours from across the street on the crackly line. Our house looked like it had disappeared they said

“What do you mean ?”She asked;

“ what is it doing?”

 Adding “Your house looks under sea”

She attempted to lighten the moment shouting up the stairs to me

“Are we still here?”

“Yes”I replied.



     It was with a heavy sense of relief that I stepped out onto the dry grey driveway the next morning, not least just to find it still there.I decide to tell Tracey whatever she wanted to know.Not finding her I left a message with one of her friends.Whatever was going on had to end. I couldn`t stand to have any part in the darkness of it any longer. The unnaturalness of it repelled me.

    Tracey turned up at my house later that evening.Sat on the carpet she explained Ann Marie`s absence “She`s not having it anymore.” I couldn`t blame her.Before I could say anything Tracey sprang into a defence of Craig`s mother;

“She just wanted you to tell her everything”

“How are the family ?”I asked suprising myself by giving them grounds in reality.Tracey shrugged

“They are all acting strange anyway…grief maybe.The father not talking to the mother. The other three children think that their mother has lost the plot...”

Tracey sounded a bit bored with it all

“She just wanted to know what happened to her son though.That much always made sense didn`t it?”

“She knew what happened. Wasn`t it her that told us?The car crash?” I argued

“She knows that wasn`t all though Karen..what you saw...

I cut her off  “What I saw was not anyone Tracey. Was not anyone human anyway”

I tested her.

“What you saw was him and wasn`t him.His mother said he never smiled like that unless he was scared. His sister said he never smiled like that unless he was scared or about to screw somebody over. They faught over that. He was never scruffy, dirty and would not have known the first thing about plastering. They faught about that. His jacket would never have been battered. He never wore that jacket.They faught about that.They thought he was trying to return,some thought he should and some that he should not…

“Fight?” I asked.Tracey nodded,rolling her eyes

“Well if he was a bit of a trouble causer in life he certainly did not let up in death.”

I was going all in.Getting it over with one way or another. Tracey looked at me expectantly.I continued;

“The first time I saw him his eyes looked wrong,too dark to be real somehow.With an extra coloured ring around the brown.Tracey didn`t understand and gave me her `your`e talking greek` look

“Just a bit demonic”

“Oh god” She groaned breathlessly in reply

“I saw him staring at me as I was on the bus home. His eyes looked even worse. Dead. I thought it was a wind up. Please tell me it was a wind up...

Tracey was shaking her head slowly.I had been hoping to see a smile  a sneer a snicker.There was nothing.She looked down still shaking her head,surprised and trying to take it all in.It appeared she might be finally sensing the danger rather than just the opportunity for drama

“You should have told me!” Tracey spat out.Her mood spinning on a hairpin into anger

“I got bored with all that wind up stuff years ago and have not done it since.Oh God !You should have told me” She repeated shaking her head

“It`s been more of an evil entity than anyone`s son Tracey” I admonished

“It`s still flitting around out there in the garden.Waiting to scare the crap out of someone and the driveway is not safe either”

Tracey looked surprised. Asking if it was dangerous

“YES!” I almost shouted

A glimmer of what I hoped was guilt passed across her  face .But I didn’t care anymore.I would never forgive her for the way she so blindly dragged me into it all.I didn`t think I would or could really believe she had not been up to something. I think she meant it when she said she had given up pranking people but I often wonder if it was then that she gave it up.

  Several days later i had arrived home from school and was still in the hallway when i saw a young looking middle aged blonde lady in the centre of our dining room. I could hear my mother talking to her from the kitchen, saying how nice it was to have met her in a tone that suggested it was not at all nice, it was unnerving to have met such a crazy person.
There was nothing at all right looking about the blonde lady. I stood and watched her, knowing somehow that she couldn`t see me, although i was only around four feet from her and had pushed the door halfway open to look in. She had not looked at me at all,she stood staring forwards. It was a scene of overwhelming oddness and i had enough with oddness. Something snapped in me and i fled up to my room.

   The thing seemed to be over. Seemed really to have gone. Ginger George always took a swipe at the fence whenever he passed it. Otherwise the house became peaceful,lighter,calm.
My mother said the next day that the odd lady had been Craig`s mother but i did not want to hear anymore about it at that time and when i finally felt like asking she denied there had ever been any odd blonde lady.

Valeria Short Horror Story Shortened

 I`ve posted this story before but this is the shortest version of it at 5,151 words,left the bunnies out and assorted bits and bobs.Now can`t decide whether or not i prefer it shorter...



It was a toy box styled school but built by someone who only really knew how to build in Victorian gothic.An odd out of place building, not fit for purpose with it's scary staircase, dark interiors and playground that could turn to sheet ice in winter.

Surrounded by a high wall and built out of red and black brick there were two square buildings at either end full of classrooms, it was a spanner shaped building.

It Consisted of two school buildings on two levels with a similar styled primary school on the upper level, this school held the smallest children and the kitchens. The high narrow stone staircase that was the only way to the upper level felt like a high wire act, often reducing small children to tears. The black painted safety railing was no comfort at all, alarming just to get near it as you could see straight through,to the sheer drop beneath.

My friendship with Clemency was based on her easy laughter and my agreeing to go everywhere with her.Clem had a fear  of the school bathroom, which I found it hard to disagree with although I chose to ignore it myself. There was nothing to like about the bathroom. A dark, grey damp concrete box with all the Victorian built green painted wooden cubicle doors looking so out of place now as to be shed like. Teachers insisted it had been tiled,it was hard to believe and no one could get tiles to stick anymore.

 The school`s high tall windows made sense at least. By the time you were almost tall enough to see out you were big enough to be leaving.A consequence of the high windows was the unnecessary darkness. The dark green painted hallways were the darkest, the small of fresh paint ever present. The flickering lights ought to have added a creepy air but no one noticed the bad electrics after a while.

The dark wooden central hall with its ever-present smell of boiled cabbage had the largest windows, yet that too was dark.


Life seemed to be moving very fast age eight. I was always
 trying to take everything in but much of it didn`t mean anything to me yet anyway,i was so used to the unfamiliar. Life itself is unfamiliar.All the things you don`t know are coming up at you fast. Adults forget that. Only other children your own age know how easily it is to drop the ball. They understand but they are no less forgiving. No one gets a pass on dropping the ball

 "Do you all want to be equally stupid or equally clever?
A teacher might ask and add;

"It`s a hard world out there"

They remind you;
"You won`t have any time to catch up later on if you fall behind now"

Added to this the adult world does not always like to let you entirely trust your own thoughts;
Why does it always smell like cabbage?"
 we often asked and

"It`s your imagination "
was the reply.

 We could be our own worst enemies when it came to imagination. When you get too used to not knowing things the temptation is always there to fill it in, to make it up.

Imagination is what myself and Clemency most held out against when we first met new girl Valeria. Clem`s reaction to her was so strong  I worried about her imagination taking over.

"Sam!"
She shouted in hushed tones

"Sam, whose she?"

 I did not catch the urgency of it till I saw her myself. Valeria was odd looking. Much odder than anyone me or Clem knew.

I tried to ignore the fuss her presence had created and carried on gluing tissue paper petals to the gaudy flower in front of me. We always seemed to be gluing things. I made a joke about it but Clemency was not listening. There was something she could not get her head around about the new girl. She was not the only one.

I thought it would soon come to light why Valeria seemed different. Coming in during term time as she had  it was  likely I thought, someone would come along to introduce her and explain. “Best just wait" I said. So we kept waiting .In the meantime Valeria accounted for herself well enough chatting, laughing and making friends with everyone around her table.

Everyday Clemency and myself and  our entire table came up with explanations of how she was just different and difference is what you are supposed to expect from those who are different "There is something to like about everyone, even if it`s just one thing" Clemency`s mother had said and we all agreed.

"We`ll find it" I said to Clem.We knew we had to. Sooner or later our class would be mixed up as it often was for some activity involving groups or pairs or both "To get you away from the people you are comfortable with to make sure you can mix and get along with everybody “
My mother explained.

Valeria did not help. She had sensed our concerns and took it for unfriendliness and hostility she sat at the far side of her table staring hatefully at anybody on our table who caught her eye. Clemency seemed to catch the worst of these and was sometimes quite shaken up.

There was no point appealing to MS Halisted, the most disinterested teacher I ever remember. Everybody loved her of course. You could get away with so much so long as you were never too loud. Having learnt we  liked crafts it was all we really did anymore. MS Halisted sat behind her desk pretending to be busy, she was just daydreaming in action.

I tried to speak to Valeria at first. I approached her in my friendliest most convivial manner and was simply brushed past and ignored. Clemency was incensed. MS Halisted could never even find Valeria`s name when calling out  the register and after several weeks had still not added it.
Both Valeria`s set of friends and Clem`s and mine were soon edgy with each other. Uneasy and unsure how to end this thing that had not`t really started yet.

Valeria became quite comfortable at her table.Sometimes when we forgot ourselves she forget herself too. The more comfortable she became with the sound of her own voice and the odder and stranger that voice became.
Words she knew how to pronounce ordinarily became wrong. Mrs. Halisted seemed most taken with Valeria in these moments. It was always obvious she favoured her.

We wondered what they were not telling us about Valeria, was it for our own benefit and how? Was it a condition? Often Valeria`s only real struggle seemed to be within herself. Sometimes she wanted to scare us, her black looks lingered too long, then at other times her better side won out.
"But she shouldn`t be able to scare us so much..."Argued Clem
"But...But..."

When the inevitable group activities occurred it felt like a dark dreary day of doom had fallen on me. Separated from Clem who had been kicked in the back of the leg on several occasions. Although she never saw Valeria, she knew it was her. Clemency was ready for a showdown but I was still torn between thinking Valeria something horrible and hoping it was our imagination.

Everyone was tense. Group activities could really bring out the worst in people, they seemed to be meant to induce high drama although I did not know it back then I just knew to expect tears,tantrums,unfairness and drama.  I found myself being sat down next to Valeria. Well she will have to speak to me now I thought. Which of course she didn't.

 We have to get on! We have to mix! I told myself and took it upon myself to make it happen. It did not happen until Valeria was absolutely assured of my politeness and civility and when she was her sense of frustration only grew and grew. She knew I still did not like her and wanted to call me out as a liar for being so polite.

Valeria mocked something slight Clemency had done wrong in her group at the far side side of the classroom.Clem looked enraged but kept silent on my behalf.
I was never going to stoop so low as to fall for a bit of goading but Valeria seemed as fixated on impressing her followers with my humiliation as they were on seeing her succeed.

I still hoped to find that one thing I could like about her.

As we took a tally of the eye colour of everyone sat around our table I noticed none of Valeria`s group had been split up. I had one friend sat to the left of me, a girl called Paula

"Her eyes are black"
I said to be noted down on the tally

"Your eyes are black too"
I said to Valeria as cheerfully as I could. Valeria fixed me a delighted look;

 "People`s eyes are either blue, green or brown"
 she said and waited for everyone to laugh at me but no one was yet sure who was right. Valeria stared at them expectantly. I looked over to Paula and she rolled her eyes. Valeria was still trying to sound in the right so I cut her off saying
"Her eyes are as black a dark brown as human eyes are supposed to get"

     The tension cracked like a body following a foot through a frozen lake. Valeria refused to look at or acknowledge me but she also did not know where to take the argument. She appeared to be appealing to her followers. Someone shouted

"She is human!"

 It was a humiliating defence. I heard her sigh and her friends then all jumped up with the two arms to legs, eyes and nose argument. Valeria looked sad. I realised then that I liked her for her sadness. Everyone wanting her to be something on her behalf.It might have opened up a new way forward but at that point MS Halisted`s presence made a rare appearance and was felt. It was home time.

We packed up in silence. Clemency`s table had been packed up and ready to leave the whole time attention was on us.Clemency flew from the room with the parting shot

"You`re dead and you better get used to it!"

In the awkward silence that followed Valeria made a quiet comment to her friends about it not being a very nice thing to say but the mass crush was on to get out.There was much shouting about Valeria as everyone piled down the long hallway toward the doors;
"Whose she?"

" What`s it all about?"
and the occasional

"WHO!?"
There was a lot of explaining in general and defence specifically from her friends. As we jostled and shoved closer to the doors someone yelled

"What about them she friends with?"
 amidst all the confusion I knew what this meant and shouted back

"They think she`s foreign!"
 To some laughter. Her friends tried to get in a defence but it was too late the doors swung open and the bright winter light freed us.
We peeled out and the tone changed, arguments past and some awful thought almost lost just caught me.Every voice but hers. Could it be she was not leaving? No one was there waiting for her?

I did not really want to believe it.I imagined she trotted off smugly with a mother or brother later.I wanted to turn up tomorrow and have everything explained.
My feelings about Valeria were forever mixed after that, coloured by sadness. Though I still found i never wanted to be alone with her.

The most immediate reaction to our fall out was from the boys whose en mass response was to goad us incessantly into more arguing. It amused Valeria and me brief that the response to that from us both was identical silent stonewalling. It didn`t amuse Clem one bit.

MS Halisted was watching Clem,myself and everyone on our table closely so we tried to use this sudden alertness to find out more about Valeria. It didn`t work. She really was not even on the register.

The next day however MS Halisted expressed great surprise at not finding Valeria on the register and made a great noise of going off to find out why. It seemed like a set up for a showdown that was not coming. It didn`t. When she returned she seemed in very good humour,apologising to Valeria over some or other Mix up. She was of course on  the register, adding slightly accusingly

"Why wouldn`t she be?"
 It struck me through with horror.
On the way up to dinner that day I felt someone kick  me in the back of the shin but I didn`t say anything. For all her cleverness there was something not very new about Valeria. Clemency spotted me rolling my eyes ,she came over and commiserated

"You can`t get into a fight with a ghost"

 We looked around for Valeria knowing she was not there. That was the first time we said what we thought in seriousness. We didn`t really know if we believed it ourselves though.If we were wrong we would be wrong together at least, failure of too much imagination or not.

 After our moment of matching silence at the boys I had noticed Valeria seemed to be looking at me occasionally with less intense furious hatred and it occurred to me  she might even be going to talk to me,it was a scary thought I tried to dismiss. Not least due to the sheer height a girl like Valeria would presume to be talking down to you from.

It was just when Clem`s fear of the dungeon like bathroom had begun to rub off on me and I decide I didn`t want to go alone that Valeria decided to confront me in it.A face to face with Valeria was always going to be a high noon moment. She simply stood there in front of a grey concrete wall waiting for me to go and stand in front of her. The first thing she said

"Why do you hate me?"

"I don`t"
 I began not thinking she would believe me.The fact that I only said it once appeared to confirm to her that it was a lie. She didn`t want to believe it.Thinking that a lost cause I went on

"I don`t think you like me or Clem.You don`t even like your`e own,your friends."

She shot me a venomous look
"They aren`t my own!"

They appeared to like her quite a lot but I didn`t know what to say. Didn`t really want to say anything. I just wanted to get away but she was still talking

'You are all so stupid. I picked the best at being stupid at least'

I thought I saw someone behind her then. Valeria was studying me for a reaction. I was waiting for her to explain what was going on. The fear and the cold froze me and what actually happened then is all a bit of a blur due to the passage of time the confusion of the moment and the blow to the back of my head. I have thought most often that I received the blow on the way out but given what I think I saw I`m not so sure. Maybe Valeria knew more about the power of suggestion than she ever let on. The other children behind her appeared to be fading in and out of view. Seven or eight of them. It was dimly lit single bare bulb bathroom but the bulb was never known to move at least. The children seemed to be fading in and out of view as if under a bulb swinging back and forth. Someone was beside me too.

After Valeria had laughed awhile at my paralysed state she became sad and sorry for herself, I managed to unfreeze enough to make a dash for the door and that was when  something hit the back of my head

"you are so stupid"

 I just heard her say quietly, sadly.

I was so dizzy and light headed leaving the bathroom i knew i was fainting. The whole world kept sliding sideways and shutting down. I only made it back to my classroom with the help of Paula who saw me as she was coming down from the cloakroom. She held me up and steered me.I could feel and hear but not see for a while.

Back in my chair my vision returning i saw the children from the bathroom,clearer and more solid looking now,were amongst us. Everything was extremely wrong. I shut my eyes and hoped not to see them again. It was vision of hell.

The children peeled off their own flesh, burnt, bloody and black, they threw it at each other. A child walked backwards unwinding the intestines of another. Others were wrapping themselves in intestine like christmas tinsel. I buried my head in my arm it was too much to look at. It felt like the end of the world.

Amongst my own classmates there was at first blissful ignorance.Clem couldn`t see. Not at first and then eventually everybody could.

Across the room from me a blonde boy with a neat bowl haircut was one of the only all right looking of the other children. He was stood quietly so I looked at him instead of everything else until he came into sharper focus. The blackened burnt looking girl stood next to him was blowing gently in his ear with a straw clasped in blackened fingers. Out of the blonde boys other ear oozed dark blood and brain. The blonde boy widened his eyes in mock horror at the boy in front of him, only meaning to complain she was not blowing hard enough. The laughing boy was shaking and shrieking with laughter and at blonde boys insistence took over the straw. Steadying his laughter for one huge blow laughing boy then caused an explosion of blood and brain matter to burst all over the wall. Blonde boys eyeball popped out of its socket onto his cheek. Laughing boy and the girl double up in hysterics .It was now the most gruesome scene in the room .There was no escape.

I don`t remember the rest of that day. Someone shrieking at me to tell them what was going on, a teacher… I couldn`t speak. The school was closed for a week after that day. Due to an outbreak of a nasty bug according to my mother. She said the nightmares were a symptom and everybody was having them. She insisted I had it because I had the nightmares but after all week convincing her I was fine she I finally wore her down to
"well you had a bit of it."
 I couldn`t get hold of Clemency, her parents said she was not`t well enough to come to the phone which seemed impossible. My mother was so calm and laid back about it, sure it would soon clear up.

The first day back was unusually terrifying for different reasons. My mother walked me up to the school doors as usual and then to my horror kept on walking with me through the doors and up the hallway!
That dark winters day the school was a shock for my mother. The hallways looked like midnight. My mother commented she didn`t know how we put up with it to my bewilderment. The lights began flickering as always and the end of the corridor disappeared in black gloom. she fussed nervously with a piece of  paper

”This should be her”

 It was Mrs. Goldgren the head mistress`s office. She looked stricken to meet us but said the opposite. I wondered if it wasn`t just being found at all realising now Mrs. Goldgren made a point of telling everybody in the upper school her office was in the lower and everybody in the lower that it was in the upper.

My mother sat down on a dark grey plastic office chair in front of Mrs. Goldgren`s desk me beside her. Mrs. Goldgren proceeded to rattle off a long apology that sounded well-rehearsed.She looked in a position she didn`t want to be in, alarmed to see us.I noticed Valeria sat crossed legged the other side of my mother watching Mrs. Goldgren  carefully. In the dark gloom under a small high window a group of Valeria`s friends milled about.Seemingly in a light of their own turning slowly off and on.Mrs Goldgren and my mother saw nothing.

"Mrs. Halisted had been removed from her position"
 I suddenly heard

 "Following complaints from parents"

"I should think so"

Replied my mother.I looked over at Valeria wondering if she had any explanation,she turned her face to me, the whole right side of her face was black. The longer I stared at her the more her burnt skin shrank back till her eyeball bulged and her teeth grinned horribly. The face might have been devastatingly gruesome had I not detected the briefest flash of a mischievous smirk across the still ok side of her face. I had to look away.

When I could I looked over at the group under the window to see what they were doing. Their flesh boiled and blistered red like lava and then blackened like charcoal. I stuck my head to my mother`s shoulder, catching a glimpse of disbelieving sneer from Mrs. Goldgren

"Can you see them Samantha?"
She asked me somewhat sarcastically

"What are they doing?"

Mrs.Golgren stiffened herself and sat upright,putting on her friendly face she addressed me in the manner of someone dealing with someone deranged

"we have the plaque up for the lost children now Samantha.We know this is what they wished.Or what you all believed they wished.All the children who caught the bug had the same nightmares you see?Take a look"

She waved an arm in the direction of a bronze plaque on a wall next to a filing cabinet in a humouring a lunatic style
I gasped;

"How many names?"

Mrs Goldgren surprised to hear me speak replied instantly "Eighty six"

She then comforted herself with some more formal apologising on behalf on the school this time to Clemency and myself whom she felt had been particularly affected by the "outbreak" which was somehow connected to the "hysteria" My head buried in my mother`s shoulder she said to her
"You have my sincerest apologies"

"But is it over?"

Asked my mother. I looked up to catch Mrs. Goldgren shrugging in the direction of the plaque and then looking at me as if to indicate I was involved.My mother and i looked at each other questioningly. I Felt sure she was about to mention the bang in the back of the head I had received but the next sound we heard was the sound of the plaque on the wall being dropped to the floor. It very obviously did not fall.The disturbing sound we heard was of it moving through the air at an unnatural speed, thrown to the ground.Swoosh.Clank.

Mrs. Goldgren span round her chair to stare at it mystified she turned again to eye me suspiciously.My mother cutting her off with an accusatory

"Maybe the screws were loose"

 The lights were flickering. The door burst open and a woman stopped herself in her tracks realising she had not knocked

"Yes Heather?"

 asked Mrs. Goldgren

"The stage curtains are all down again."She informed her.

 Heather noticed the plaque on the floor and in a confused state went straight over to it.As she picked it up all the other pictures on the walls made a similarly speedy descent to the ground.Heather looked at me accusingly

"The screws are all missing"

Seeing my mother had just about had enough Mrs. Goldgren stepped in saying

"It was not Samantha Heather"
Mrs Goldgren tried to gather herself  to smooth things over sensing all her time spent apologising was about to be lost. As we looked to her all the things on her desk began to slide slowly forward and onto the floor. No one could ignore that.

"They don`t think it`s enough!"

I squeaked nervously.Thinking it obvious. Heather who had been frozen to the spot suddenly moved again, we all thought she was about to accuse me again but she became distracted by something in the air. There had been something of a mist, dismissed as the steam that you get when you come into a warm room from cold wet weather, but it was not wet out and this mist was becoming blacker, more like smoke. Looking around we saw the walls seemed blacker too. The tension was too much for anyone to stand .I thought we all had the same idea at that point to Get Out Now .Mrs. Goldgren did not, laying out her hands in a sudden display of unearthly calm Mrs. Goldgren stopped us.She told Heather to sit down.

Speaking slowly and quietly it became clear Mrs. Goldgren`s  greater fear was to lose control of her school "
If we make two more plaques one for one entrance and one for the hall, will that be enough"? She was addressing me for some reason. I looked up at my mother for help. Then I saw Valeria was sat on the floor again and looked to her, she shrugged. I was scared I would become too frightened to move and just wanted to get out, I clung to my mother urging her toward the door. Valeria was stood under the window now with the others

"We want to be remembered" They murmured deep in unison. It was terrifying sonorous sound the like of which i had not heard before or since.Everyone else had a reaction too although they appeared not to have actually heard what was said
"They want to be remembered?"

Shouted Mrs. Goldgren trying to remain calm I nodded

"WHAT did they say!?"

But I could not speak.A sound like the rest of the school roof caving in was heard.it was almost a relief just to hear external sound the tension in the room was so thick. Then the thought came to me, the remembered dream that may as well have been what I heard.

The eighty six children were all in the hall when the fire started. Sat together in front of the stage taking a boring lecture on a play that they were to stage, they were disinterested but well behaved. The smoke that first started appearing through the stage curtains was not much at first, it was being held back by all the damp material. They had substances they took for granted that were unknown to them very dangerous.When the fire took hold in the storeroom at the back of the stage it was with a an unnatural ferocity.

The children were told to sit  and wait when the teacher first saw the smoke, she walked away  unawares of the impending disaster. The children were soon overcome by the smoke. Valeria was the last to be overcome.She made it to a window.

Why didn`t you go for the door Valeria!? I wanted to know desperately.I dare not ask.Mrs. Goldgren was still appealing for answers. The room was turning blacker. The crashing sound came again. I couldn`t speak and there was no negotiating with Valeria and i could not have explained that! Heather shot up and was desperately rattling the big brass door handle by the time we were all behind her. She let go only when Mrs. Goldgren attempted  it briefly. Then went back to panicked rattling.Mrs Goldgren reappeared as suddenly has she had disappeared with a fire hydrant which without wasting a second she put straight through the doors glass pane. We were out.

I thought I had better recount as much detail as I possibly could in order to help you better deal with your current situation. I have no idea what will be helpful and what will not so I am just including everything!

After that meeting in Mrs. Goldgren office things did quiet down at the school.The school inside seemed ever darker all over.Blacker. In need of repainting. Clemency made a completely startling about turn. Her parents seemed to have brainwashed her.She would not be budged from the  belief that it had all been her imagination. It was all very odd. Luckily with we were all familiar with odd by then.

We were told repeatedly we had a very nasty infection, a contagious fever, causing terrible nightmares and an out of control imagination. That was the strangest bug I ever heard of let alone caught! I have certainly never heard of anything like it since. Malaria maybe? In West Leeds?

I remember after everything realising we only had few months left before we moved to a bigger modern middle school further down the road.I walked the distance everyday wondering nervously if it was far enough away.
Walking past the weird old primary every day I still sort of remembered it as a scary place but had forgotten why in the intervening years.I must have had a recurrence of it whatever it was because I recall seeing Valeria one last time when I left the middle school for high school.

We stood under the trees that edged the middles school playing fields at the end of the driveway saying goodbyes.

 When almost everyone had gone I felt someone kick me in the back of the shin. I span round ,knowing I would see someone I knew but not who and there she was about three feet beneath me. I knew her instantly . The height difference now shook us both so much we staggered back. Valeria`s face filled with a raging inferno of hatred .She could not even stand to look up at me, she simply turned her rage away and disappeared in fury back to her school. She couldn`t let me forget but facing me was like facing what she had lost all over again. If she had opened the door instead of going to the window she would have survived.

A Short Horror Story,Keep Walking by,Part One

I was in my early teens at the time that late summer. I remember feeling ten tons lighter for not being in my all girls High School during that holiday. I was roaming around Leeds City Centre still enjoying my freedom. I had just passed a street sign ;”Swinegate” and recalled that school and all its  hateful teachers were fast rearing back into view.
The bright sun had streams of little clouds rushing across as if frantically trying to block tithe effect was dizzying, like driving past a row of trees fast with the sunlight coming through.
Leeds was not that busy a place back then. There were quite a lot of people passing me by as I made my way up New Market Street. I was about to pass the entrance to the Victoria Quarter but I don`t recall anyone in particular and I would certainly have forgot him.

My bus stop was at the lower end of the Headrow,which always struck me as aptly named, it being head of all the rows of streets. A landmarked sized longboat of a road, all the streets full of shops it`s oars. It goes from one side of Leeds to the other. Slowly mind you.

I was a shy but not immature teen. Living with my mother only a mile outside the city centre. I minded my own business and kept my head bowed when anyone passed unless there was some reason to look.

There was in the first instance I saw him more reasons than I wanted to know about to look at him. Something was not right about him I was not in any doubt even though I didn`t immediately spot what it was. His age group alone as a scruffy young man inclined me toward distrust. Yet he didn`t quite disturb me in the loud loutish way that type of ruffian disturbs everyone. Something about his eyes was actually wrong though I smiled and nodded politely at his odd grin i was relieved when he had passed.

“KAAAAAREN!”
“KAAAAAAAAAAAaarRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEENN!”
“KkkkkKKKKAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!”

It was Loud Tracey from school. She was stood outside the entrance to Kirkgate Market being absurdly loud and disregarding of innocent passers by
“KKKAAAAAAAAARRREEEEEEEEEEENNNNN!”
Loud burst of teenage girl shouting moanilly loud. Then angry and short
“KAREN!”
Then drawn out and loud again
“KKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEN!”
I did giggle a bit at first. Everyone facing going back to our oppressive School with it`s barely sane teachers would be looking for something to take their mind off it but I didn`t want to  be Loud Tracey`s diversion. I hoped there was another Karen about who would soon answer. I couldn`t look in her direction anyway, without being blinded by the sunlight.
Loud Tracey, frustrated with shrieking rushed across the road with her friend Ann Marie, both still shouting and breathlessly yelling

“There was no one there Karen!”
“KAREN!”Hollered Ann Marie right in my ear
“There was no one there!”
They kept repeating
“You just said Hello to no one Karen “Insisted Tracey
“I never said Hello to anyone “I confirmed
YOU GREETED SOMEONE”
“You know what I mean. No one was there “Ann Marie said
I was a bit confused
“He looked there to me”
“He was obviously there or I wouldn`t have seen him “They shook their heads at me and recovered their breath.
“You didn`t see him, you mean? “I argued to deaf ears
“He was there but you couldn`t see him”
Tracey went looking for back up and tried to get a couple of disinterested looking men stood outside a pub drinking beer in the sun involved. Starting to sense a wind up was underway I began to walk away.
Loud Tracey lept in front of me insisting I describe who I saw. The man I now suspected she was pulling the prank with.
I played along taking a credulous tone to get the thing over with. Describing the man I had seen;
“He was in his late teens probably early twenties. Messy light brown and blonde spiky hair. He had dark ringed brown eyes. Toothy smile.Scruffy.Washed out pale blue t-shirt,battered light brown or tan leather jacket. Light blue or grey trousers. He was covered in some kind of white ish dust or powder. Maybe he was  a plasterer. His workmanlike boots were the sort that are usually black but his looked light grey I think”
Tracey listened carefully considered this and announced
“I don`t know him”
Ann Marie nodded her head ,then shook it in agreement. Tracey disappeared back into the pub.Ann Marie followed me as I made off for my bus stop again,asking
“are you sure you saw him?”
“What are you winding me up for?” I didn‘t  really have to ask it was just something to do.
As I reached the corner onto the Headrow Tracey reappeared
“It‘s CRAIG!”She announced.Suprised at her own triumph
“That’s exactly what he wore and this is where he drank.It`s` him. They knew him”She took a breath;
“He`s dead.Died a few weeks back in a stock car racing accident. He wasn`t a plasterer  he was an economics student at University. They said if his mother believes you saw him she will want to speak to you Karen.”
Tracey said my name with admonishing seriousness. It was weird  set up for a fall
“He didn’t look dead to me so it can`t have been him” I argued. I would do almost anything to avoid thinking about school but this didn`t look like fun.
“THERE WAS NO ONE THERE!”
Screamed Ann Marie at me in frustration.
“THERE WAS !My BUS is due!” I fled. Leaving them both shouting “THERE WASN`T! “ at my back

Sat upstairs alone at the front of the bus was the best seat for some of my favourite sites of Leeds. I was as relieved to be going home as I was happy at the sunny sights before me.As the bus lumbered slowly up the Headrow there would be rows and rows of streets full of busy shoppers to watch. I loved people watching and to be sailing above it all in full view was never dull.
No sooner had we set off than the bus stalled at a crossing, a welcome pause between New Market Street on the left and Vicar Lane on the right. My attention was drawn into a crowd stood in front of an orange and black signposted newsagents, as people waited to cross the road a sensation of unease began to overcome me.I felt  a cold dread even before I saw him. He was stood in the centre of the crowd. Not just still ,somehow immobile. Looking as real as anybody in a 3d sense but neither light nor wind seemed to be hitting him. His eyes were so wrong now I could barely look at them and he stared right at me unmovingly fixed on me.The blackness of his eyes was a different kind of black,a flat empty void of no feeling .The pupils and irises were much larger than was possible and there was no sign of light or life in them. If he had blinked  it might not have been so horrifying but nothing about him moved at all he was not even perceptibly breathing.
I was so fixed in a moment of fear I did not notice the people around him moving away. When I did I took that moment to snap my head in the other direction,swearing at myself
“Oh my god.I mustn’t fall for this crap!”
I looked searchingly up Vicar Lane to see if I could spot where Tracey and AnnMarie were hiding.I would have laughed out loud with the relief if I had seen Tracey and Ann Marie bent double with hysterics.I didn`t see them.
Looking away the realisation of just how unnatural and unpleasant a s sight he was sank deeper and deeper within me.I found I could no longer look left.I felt physically frozen. The thought he might still not have moved threatened to fill me up with a horrifying terror
Where on earth did she find him!?And WHY? I asked myself.it was an awful nightmare of a joke I thought to myself bitterly.
The bus eventually lurched forward. I was nervous to look anywhere. The further away from where he had been the more anxious I was not to see him again. I thought I saw what may have been  him several times from the side in the crowd and from the back but I felt happier passing it off as temporary insanity and looked away immediately so as not to confirm anything. He couldn`t run that fast could he? I asked myself ,as the bus rolled pass the Town Hall suspecting he probably could. Ann Marie and Tracey wouldn`t want to though so there was no point I reassured myself.

High School was an ever increasingly grotty and dilapidated oppressive 1950s building with bright classrooms and dark warrens of corridors. It was painted a grim shade of green inside and out. The teachers were a bizarre vindictively inclined set of characters whose behaviour never veered toward normal or even  explicable. I tried to pass the incident off as one of Loud Tracey’s wind up’s. Her friends insisted it wasn`t but that was to be expected.
Tracey had a long history of trouble making, a vast and wide variety of trouble  over many years, which she was forever just running into.
Ann Marie I remembered from primary school as a sort of limpet of a girl who trouble never stuck to. Her ever present thin blonde bob was now made fashionable by one single accessory at a time. It felt like she was finding life so easy she had decided to seek out difficulty just to see what it was like in teaming up with Tracey.
Tracey`s wild barely controlled brown hair was as often as wilfully out of place as her. She had always been as tuned up as Ann Marie was tuned down. Tracey could look animated and loud just sat thinking. She had a cruel streak too.

If Tracey was trying out some new line in annoying pranks then Ann Marie, who could look, like butter wouldn`t melt when she wanted to was the perfect ally.

The teachers at my High School For some reason never divulged really had it in for me.I hoped that the story Craig had been at University might bring out the snob in them and keep them out of it.If they were going to accuse anyone of insanity it would be me, regardless of what the story was. I tried to head off any future grief by accusing anyone talking to me about it of going crazy
I knew I had to make the thing go away as fast as possible so I just dismissed it.Began to treat it as if it was already over.Tracey and Ann Marie were persistent.Tracey insisting I was going to become a medium.I laughed and said not if I could help it
“Who wanted to see his like again?”
I asked,hoping this might upset his ego enough to get her to back off.Ann Marie was telling anyone who would listen;”Karen saw someone no one else could see. She described Craig exactly”
Almost inevitably someone turned out to have known Craig. I was shrieked at from a classroom further down the hallway one day that Craig was a great bloke and I was a bitch if I didn`t help his mother. I hung anxiously in the doorway of my classroom listening intently for laughter, Tracey or Ann Marie`s voice ,any evidence of the hoax but it was inconclusive.

I didn`t really need this drama at all. A few years earlier my father had died suddenly. The little house my mother and I shared though light and sunny still had an emptiness to it.

“BUT WAS HE HAPPY KAREN!?”
Loud Tracey kept asking me

“HOW DID HE SEEM IN HIMSELF?”
Always a frustrating question

“SHE WANTS TO KNOW KAREN.SHE.IS.HIS.MOTHER!”
I was in a rush packing up pens and books from the lesson just ended. Trying not to be late for the next one
A frustrated Tracey had cornered me exactly at that moment to see if I would crack under pressure. I might get something not much short of a death sentence passed on me by the teachers for lateness. It was her prank I felt she knew very well what I had seen. Were both frustrated at this point

“No he didn`t look happy Tracey!”
I snapped at her. Most of my own class had gone now and  the new one was starting to come in

“You can`t tell her that though can you “I stated
 “That would be really horrible of you. Really mean Tracey”
Tracey looked shocked by the suggestion that she could do any wrong
“His mother is grieving …”I explained. Even if I didn`t believe in them I could still do right by these fictionally suffering fictional  people “…she is in mourning for her son and he aught o be R.I.P”
“WHAT!?” Tracey cut me off mid sentence
“…He ought to be RESTING IN PEACE.Not wandering about Leeds appearing to schoolgirls.It`s not what the grief stricken mother need hear about her son is it?” I inquired quite honestly .Tracey began speaking to someone else about something else as I rushed off down the corridor.
     Later that evening,sat on the carpet in my bedroom at home long shadows were starting to fall across the ceiling.The cold was creeping bitterly up my shoulders but I persisted in pestering my little kitten Ginger George. Whenever I looked away I could see out of the corner of my eye one large sharp green eye pop open to see what I was doing. Snapping shut when I turned back.
He pretended to sleep curled up on his furry matt and I dangled a little feather on elastic around his whiskers and paws .His eyes were just open the slightest bit. Someone knocked on our front door .I heard my mother Harmony let someone in, shut the door and shriek “TRACEY!” up the stairs, she didn`t know AnnMarie,Footsteps came thundering up,they burst into my room.I switched on a lamp as they sat on the floor backs to my wardrobe  on the floor opposite where I sat back against my bed. It appeared it was all deadly serious now.
“The whole  family are UP IN ARMS Now Karen.”
Tracey announced the moment she was sat. In a tone that informed me it was all my fault.
“Craig`s father has gone to stay with his brother”
Said Tracey to confirm her accusation, cut off by Ann Marie backing her up but not backing her up with
“but he wasn`t getting on with his wife anyway…”
“They haven`t got on in years”
Confirmed Tracey seeming more in the know briefly. Continuing with the accusational tone;
“Craig`s two sisters and brother HATE YOUR GUTS NOW KAREN”Tracey just carried on not aware that might have any impact  “His mother wants to meet you. She wants you to tell her everything “She paused for breath
“YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY GOT TO TELL HER EVERYTHING!”
It was a serious sounding loud statement as possible. Tracey rolled her eyes at me, looking toward Ann Marie for help
“Every Single Detail. Even if you don`t think it is anything “added Ann Marie
“YOU HAVE GOT TO TELL HER EVERYTHING “Loud Tracey confirmed
“EVERY SINGLE DETAIL”
She added especially loudly. Repeating it twice with Ann Marie saying it simultaneously the second time around. Both nodding;
“She won’t` be happy and she won`t even try to get over it till you do”
Ginger George had risen and was now stood with his back to my pale pink bedroom door. His tail totally upright and all the fur along his spine on end. He made no sound and was staring unmoving toward the window
“What`s wrong with him?”
I was startled. Ginger George seemed to me to be asleep as a rule. Tracey outright yelled at me
“YOU HAVE GOT TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!”
Before I could ask why Ann Marie added
“Look at what you’ve done to this family Karen!”
They both tutted exasperated. What I had done was be entirely straight with everyone and anyone fictional or otherwise. I rolled my eyes at them. I was committed to helping  Craig`s possibly real mother by letting her get on with the grieving process and not letting whatever I had seen get in the way.
There were still no traces of laughter on Ann Marie or Tracey. Not a smirk. I understood grief better though and felt you didn`t need all this drama and nonsense from strangers
“Just tell us everything and we will tell her”
Began Ann Marie reasonably as she twisted her arm to open the wardrobe behind her and tugged on a cardigan questioningly. I nodded and she pulled it down and slipped it on. Tracey and I stared at each other fixedly whilst Ann Marie had the wardrobe door open there was too deep a black void in there to look. We didn`t acknowledge it.It was an unnatural darkness that had a presence of its own you just did not want to know about.
The uneasiness turned quickly into a cold hard glaringly unpleasant atmosphere. It seemed like someone else was in the room. I opened the door to let Ginger George out and to see if there was someone in the hallway. There wasn`t and George wouldn`t   move. I  wondered if they had brought someone with them and left him downstairs, Craig maybe. They said it was just the two of them.
Sitting back down I saw Annemarie shudder. There was an urgency in Tracey`s mood too. I felt a sudden pain in my chest, like someone had just punched all the air out of media gasped at them they looked back questioningly.
I knew I could get away with saying nothing now. Ann Marie and Tracey clearly wanted to leave. I just had to wait them out. The room seemed darker and oprressive,shrinking somehow.I started to explain that I felt it was wrong to offer false hope to the family,to interfere with the grieving process.I had to keep looking around the room it had changed so much. They were both fixedly struggling not to look at the window. Ann Marie could barely look away from the door.
I couldn`t escape the feeling someone else was watching me and almost jumped out of my skin when I thought I felt someone tap me on the shoulder
“The grieving father…” I continued. Ann Marie and Tracey looked glued together at the shoulder as they stared wide in horror at George. He started to hiss, trembling all over. I called my mother who came halfway up the stairs stopping  halfway to complain about the cold.Taking a towel from the bathroom  I covered George up completely and plucked him off the carpet passing him to my mother explaining something had spooked him.
Back in my room the fear was really getting to Ann Marie and Tracey. AnnMarie looked like she had just announced she was leaving got up and been pulled down and talked out of it by Tracey. I darted over to the window to tear the curtains shut.It looked so pitch black outside it appeared more like the window  had been painted black.I shuddered and sat down shakily everything so dark my spot on the carpet obscured.
“The grieving siblings…”I carried on. Ann Marie`s head shot forward with such force she almost hit the floor with her forehead. It looked like she had been punched square in the back. She just got up and bolted. Flung my cardigan over the bannister and ran down the stairs and out without a word.
The atmosphere was beyond weird now ,claustrophobic,dark.The cold almost immobilizing but to my surprise and dismay Tracey spoke with  a sense she was in control
“Karen..”She began solemnly. It was odd to see her so quite. She knew it was and didn`t like to show it
“Craig`s brothers and sisters have been a bit odd about it really. They could just  be upset though…”She was becoming distracted
“Is your room always like this?”
I Felt what she ought to be doing was freaking out and the fact that she wasn`t freaked me out. What did she know? This whole joke was so far removed from anything vaguely comic. Was she trying to set herself up as some kind of prankster mastermind…
I had enough and explained curtly that I didn`t want to believe I had seen someone dead. Didn`t want to believe it, know it, accept it or think about it. She left telling me I ought to think about his mother.