Ex Chapter 9 - Daniel tells his head teacher that his father is trying to kill him

It was not the slap on the arse from the midwife that made baby Caldwell Bynes scream but the realization that life had been inflicted upon him without his consent and could only, at its very best, be endured.

An execrable childhood which he traversed as gracelessly as a one legged turkey on a treadmill, left Caldwell ill prepared for the lonely travails of adult life. Below the palisades which barely contained his virulent self loathing lay the verdant fields in which he cultivated the true focus of his contempt for the human race - children. They were the flag bearers for the void in his life that he could never fill and as such, they had become the enemy. How unfortunate it was then for all concerned, that Caldwell should arrive at the end of a road of diverse career paths, which included bovine proctology, cat de-clawing and chemical deforestation as head teacher of the largest and almost certainly the worst comprehensive school in North London. The D’oily Cart Academy (or The Cart as it was known locally) scored so badly in the league table created by the Department for Education to measure academic achievement that they had to re-define the concept of failure. The only reason it was not closed after Caldwell’s first Ofsted assessment was the fear for the unsuspecting national education system, were the massed hordes of the unwashed within to be unleashed. It became thereafter, the scholastic equivalent of Hadrian’s wall

Caldwell stared at his desk, an unloved carbuncle, encrusted with the offal of a thousand microwaved lunches and then at his at his hands, which lay before him like dead weights. His fingers, long and slender but inelegant crawled outwards like giant elongated maggots.

A red light was flashing on what remained of his telephone. Having been smashed into submission with it’s handset repeatedly, it was functional only as a reflection of Caldwell’s own state of decrepitude and to indicate that his secretary, Bennett, who like the telephone, maintained a dogged unwillingness to die, wanted to communicate with him.

Bennett surfaced from her office that had once been a toilet cubicle, opened the door to the head teacher’s study imperceptibly, in anticipation of a barrage of abuse and searched for the least provocative way to deliver what would be, monumentally unwelcome news.

“Head teacher you have a child to see you.”

Caldwell retreated briefly from his vale of tears and formed his mouth into a single syllable.

“M?”

“Yes head teacher.”

So it was M again.

In the endless minutes of silence that followed, Bennett ushered Daniel, life vest and all, into the study. There was an empty chair opposite the headmaster’s desk, but it it was clearly not intended for sitting, so Daniel stood, legs all but buckling under the weight that lay upon his tiny shoulders.

“My father is planning to kill me this weekend head teacher.”

“Again?”

“Yes head teacher, again.”

“And yet you appear to be persistently alive M.” he pronounced Daniel’s surname as if exhaling a cough sweet that had been lodged deep in his esophagus.

“Aren’t you supposed to do something about this sort of thing? What happens if one day he actually succeeds in killing me?”

“Do let me know if that happens.”

Daniel searched the Head teacher’s mucous laden eyes for a sign that empathy might once at least have passed them by. He emerged empty handed.

“Dorsal Grellman is trying to decapitate me.”

“I should hope so, its his job.”

“His job?”

“I am sorry, no, perhaps not his job, that is somewhat simplistic - it is his role.”

“His role is to try to decapitate me?”

“His role is to build your character, yours is to have your character built - if he actually manages to decapitate you in the process then that is unfortunate, but I am sure that you would agree it is a necessary part of growing up.”

Daniel had only one more card to play. His lips wavered, it certainly could not be characterized as an ace.

“My grandmother killed batman.”

Caldwell stared at Daniel and then beyond him, far far beyond him, into a future glutted with nothing but pain.

“Have your parents ever explained to you what you are?”

That question again.

“You are a rabbit in the crosshairs M, an atrocity in waiting, you are every victim and everything that is not you is your predator. So you had better learn to run and you had better learn to hide and now you had better learn to leave.”

Daniel wanted to ask his head teacher, if not to advise, then at least to expand, but Caldwell was once again engrossed with his hands, each line a furrow ploughed with barren seed, at each intersection a poisoned well. The conversation, if that is what it had been, was clearly at an end.