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yourdeepestfathoms · 4 years

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Born a Rat, Burn a Rat

[2002]

Word count: 4561

Prompt: You need to stop making her laugh! You’re ruining her makeup!

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“You need to stop making her laugh! You’re ruining her makeup!”

All the laughter that had once been rebounding through the locker room stopped abruptly. Everyone turned their heads slowly to face Carrie White, who was blinking innocently at them from her locker. She looked absolutely clueless, as she always did when she wasn’t dead-eyed or spazzing out. She didn’t seem to understand why she was being stared at.

“What did you just say?” Tina said.

“H-her makeup,” Carrie stammered, suddenly very uncomfortable under their gazes. “Chris’s. It’s--going to run. If she keeps laughing. I’m trying to save it.”

“Oh, so you think I’m ugly without any makeup on, huh? Is that it?” Chris strode up to her, eyes flashing like a hungry puma’s, and Carrie backed up against the lockers, blinking dumbly.

“What? No!” Carrie said. She gripped her fingers in the locker air holes tightly in some sort of scrabble for grounding.

“You hesitated,” Fern put in helpfully.

“I didn’t!” Carrie cried, eyes wide.

“Maybe I should try out some new makeup,” Chris mused. “Your blood will be a nice shade!” A second later, she raised her fist and sent it flying at Carrie’s face.

Carrie barely had time to react. She ducked and dove left, stumbling awkwardly through a pair of girls. There was a loud clang of metal from behind, followed by a shout of pain and a few gasps and snickers, and she spun around on her heels to see Chris rubbing her reddened knuckles tentatively with a look of murder on her face.

“You goddamn bitch.” She seethed.

Carrie tried to stutter out an apology, she really did, but then the entire left side of her face exploded into bright, colorful bursts of pain as a fist that seemed to be the size and solidity of a small boulder came smashing upwards and her whole body popped backwards in a fashion that was almost cartoonish. A near-perfect arc, like those old animated shorts she’d been deprived of as a little girl where Daffy Duck or Wile E. Coyote were getting nailed in the face with spring-loaded punching gloves left and right.

However, there was a very significant difference between those cartoons and real life, and the difference was that in real life, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

The punch had such force that Carrie thought for one petrified instant that she might do a full flip—but then her back met the floor with an unforgiving THUNK.

She barely had time to clap a hand to the smarting flesh on the side of her face, which she could already feel starting to get puffy, before she heard sneakers squeaking against tile and looked up to see that she was surrounded by all her gym classmates in various stages of dressed. She swallowed down a mouthful of blood thickly and awkwardly scooted backwards, only to have Chris reach down with alarming swiftness and wrap her perfectly manicured fingers into her shirt-collar, gathering a crimson-knuckled fistful of fabric and sending cuts scattered across the girl’s back alight with pain once more as they were exposed to the cool air when her lightweight body was effortlessly jerked to its feet.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your miserable little life, pig.” Chris spat.

“Chris,” Sue hissed cautiously. She cast an uneasy glance towards the front of the locker room, expecting Miss Desjardin to suddenly materialize inside and blow her ear-piercingly loud whistle before raining hellfire on them all.

“What?” Chris snapped. “She DESERVES this! If you’re that worried, then keep watch or lock the door or something!”

“Chris!” Sue said again, but this time as a much more alarmed warning. Because Carrie is tugging backwards and snapping at Chris’s hands around her collar like a contagious rat in the midst of the Black Plague.

“What the fuck!?” Chris yelled, startled.

Carrie’s hands shot up and they’re like the skeletal fingers of death around Chris’s wrists. She had exactly zero muscles in her arms, so it was pretty impressive that she was able to pry the grip off of her pale yellow sweater’s collar and totter backwards into safety.

And then there’s a hissing sound, like the warning of a rattlesnake.

Something splatters against Carrie’s face and neck and open mouth, and she flinched in surprise. She raised a hand to wipe her eyes, but it only got halfway up before it suddenly felt like she got a red hot fire poker jammed into her sockets.

Then, she screamed.

------

Rita Desjardin has heard screaming before. In her senior year of high school, she vividly remembers watching a school football game and one of the players from the other team, she believed they were the Pumas if her memory was correct, broke his arm so savagely it almost looked like it was on backwards. He had dropped to the ground in a blur of black and maroon, bellowing in agony, and at the time Rita had thought that it was the worst sound she would ever hear in her entire life.

And then she heard the ricochet of a cry rattle from the girl’s locker room, so loud that she could hear it from outside in the gym, and the first place spot for “Worst Noise She’s Ever Heard” was quickly snatched away from the football player.

He had screamed. But not like this.

This scream was piercing, bloodcurdling, and memory-haunting, and it only got worse when Rita charged into the locker room, leaving a gaggle of wide-eyed students already dressed out behind in startled shock.

Opening the door and passing through the doorway was like coming out of water in the midst of a war- the scream suddenly became ten times louder and much more ear-splitting. She actually had to clamp her hands over her ears and stop her forward stride to shudder in pain at the intensity of the noise that made her feel like she was going deaf. What could very possibly be 140 to 150 decibels of volume jammed its way directly into her eardrums, stabbing over and over and over again until a ringing was sent jangling through her skull like the aftermath of an explosion.

To be in the same room as such an outburst of agony, so close to the cause of deafening distress, was so much more bone-chilling than listening to it from stadium bleachers.

Rita staggered forward, pulling her hands away from her ears and crossing the corridor threshold into the open space of lockers. There, her current class was huddled in a group of abstract horror around one row, eyes so wide they were nearly popping out of sockets and shaking in abject pant-pissing fear. Rita wasn’t quite sure who looked more terrified: them, Helen Shyres holding a can of pepper spray, or Carrie White frenzying around with her hands over her face, screeching.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?” Rita roared over the commotion, and everyone except Carrie whirled around to face her with ogling bug eyes. They apparently hadn’t heard her come in over the noise. Carrie keened again, a loud, drawn-out sound like the cry of a crow being gutted alive.

“Sh-she--” One girl tried to say, but the words got stuck in her throat when she glanced back at Carrie writhing, slamming into the lockers, and scratching desperately at her face.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” Rita demanded.

“I--got startled.” Helen choked out.

“Is that PEPPER SPRAY?!” Rita shouted.

Helen looked down at the canister in her hand as if it were an active bomb and suddenly appeared very sick. She doesn’t answer- she can’t. She’s shocked into silence.

“WHY do you even HAVE IT at SCHOOL?!” Rita bellowed. Her eyes are wide now, too, as she put the pieces together.

“I’m sorry!” Helen said.

Carrie wailed tumultuously. She dropped to the ground, screaming helplessly at the ceiling and squirming like she was trying to wriggle out of her own skin. Her hands are still fervently clawing at her eyes as if she were trying to scoop them out of their sockets, and there’s spots of red mixed in with the translucent sheen of pepper spray spattered across her pale face. Rita quickly pushed Helen aside, practically throwing the other girls out of the way to get to the panicking student rolling on the floor.

“Carrie! Carrie!” Rita called over the screaming. Carrie doesn’t appear to hear her- she just continued to caterwaul and claw like a burning black cat. “Carietta White!” Not even that got through to her, and if it did, it only made her even more distressed. “Carrie!!”

Rita finally grabbed the girl by the wrists and yanked her hands away. Without the spindly fingers itching incessantly, she could see her reddened face, gashed skin, and eyes filled with blood.

“Oh my god,” Someone from behind, Sue Snell, maybe, muttered.

“IT HURTS!!” Carrie’s screams have finally morphed into words, and Rita isn’t sure which was worse because the screams may have been nightmare-inducing, but the words were like a punch to the stomach with a spiked iron gauntlet. They come out hoarse and high pitched, vowels stretched out in whines and keens of pain, and Rita’s heart clenched tightly in her chest when they reach her ears. “IT HURTS!! IT BURNS!!!!”

Carrie writhed beneath Rita, flailing her arms in the grip that holds them. Her dark eyes are upturned in their puckered sockets, saturating in blood, and the whites weren’t even white anymore, rather an awful crimson color with throbbing scarlet veins lacing through them like smoldering snakes. The shredded, bloody eyelids soon slam shut and remain shut, swelling so badly that Carrie was temporarily blinded, and that makes her panic even harder.

“It burns! It burns! IT BURNS!!!” Carrie screeched. Her voice became garbled after her final cry and she dissolved into body-breaking coughs that manage to rock Rita’s own frame from where she’s crouched over her.

“What do we do?!” Another girl, Frieda Jason, yawped. She flinched backwards in fright into the arm-locked duo of Mary and Donna Thibodeau when Rita whipped her head around to her, icy blue eyes flashing like jagged glaciers in the arctic sunlight.

“NOW you care?” Rita snarled, loading her voice with as much venom as possible. “Now you care about her? When she’s been fucking pepper sprayed?”

All the girls flinch this time. It’s obvious that they’ve never been cussed at by a teacher before, and it gives Rita just a tiny swell of pleasure. But then Carrie sobs audibly again and it’s replaced with seething rage.

“It- it was an accident!” Ruth Gogan tried to defend. “R-really! Helen didn’t know!”

“Oh really?” Rita said. “I’m sure spraying a kid with fucking pepper spray, which shouldn’t even be brought to school, by the way, is really easy to do om accident!” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chris Hargensen clench her jaw and she rounded on her. “Do you have something you want to say, Hargensen?”

Chris opened her mouth as if to snark, took one look at Carrie’s bloody, burned face, and realized this was not something her father could fix with his lawyer status. Even if she told him that Carrie had snapped at her, he would have to agree that being pepper sprayed for it was much, much worse. She grit her teeth and looked away.

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” Carrie wept. Rita looked back down at her and felt a sharp stab of guilt when she realized how much time she had wasted scolding the other girls when she should have been treating Carrie.

“It’s okay, Carrie,” She told her softly, smoothing down the barbs and thorns in her voice until it’s more like warm honey or silken velvet. “It’s okay… You’re going to be okay.”

Carrie’s lolling head froze in its process of sweeping back and forth across the scuffed locker room tile. Her brow twitched and her eyelids flutter like she was trying to open them but can’t, and only bloody tears are able to squeeze their way out of the scrunched up sockets. She ‘looked’ in the direction of Rita’s voice, lips quivering.

“M-Miss Desjardin?” She whispered hoarsely.

“Yes, it’s me, Carrie. It’s just me.” Rita moved to hold both wrists in one hand and used the other to brush Carrie’s cheek tenderly--which was instantly the wrong thing to do because she grazed over a spatter of pepper spray and tiny burning teeth latched onto her fingers and began eating away at her flesh. She bit back a hiss of discomfort to avoid stressing out Carrie even more. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“It hurts,” Carrie sobbed. Her eyes screwed shut even tighter, like she thought that it may help block out the pain. “I-it hurts, Miss Desjardin. M-make it stop!”

“I will, Carrie, don’t worry,” Rita assured her. “Just take deep breaths for me. Can you do that? Deep breaths, sweetheart.” She swiveled her head around to the group of quavering onlookers. Helen backed up behind Tina Blake and Norma Watson when her glaring eyes skim by, still white-knuckling the canister of pepper spray. “Sue.”

Sue jolted, but raised her head in an obedient, listening way.

“Make yourself useful and get a bottle of water and a rag from the showers. Wet it.” Rita ordered.

Sue nodded, but didn’t dare speak up. She scurried off, clipping her shoulder on one of the lockers and tottering sideways for a moment before regaining her balance and continuing with her task. Rita can hear her tinker with the padlock of her locker in another row, open the door, pull something out, and then hurry into the bathroom area without fully closing the door. She stopped listening after hearing the running water of a sink to glower at the rest of the girls.

“Get to class.” She said coldly.

The girls exchanged glances. They seem surprised that they hadn’t been struck dead or something (although Rita really, REALLY wanted to do so). Then, they disperse without another warning, with Helen hightailing it out the door first. Sue returns shortly after with a folded, pulpy paper towel that drips water on the floor and a water bottle. She looked down at Carrie as she passed them over and Rita saw that she was genuinely worried.

“Is she...going to be okay?” She asked.

Rita was conflicted- she wanted to say yes to make them all feel better, but she really didn’t know. Carrie had rubbed her eyes viciously enough to smear the pepper spray further into her sockets and the open cuts she carved into her skin was probably exposed to any lingering residue, too, which would only deepen her anguish. But she didn’t want to say no either because that would just induce panic, so instead she just said, “I’ll take care of her.”

Sue seemed to catch her avoidance of the question by the pinch at her brow and frown on her lips, but she just nodded instead of pointing it out, much to Rita’s relief.

“Okay,” She said. She cast one more glance at Carrie, who appeared to be trying to figure out where she was, then turned around, gathered her belongings, and walked out.

“Okay, Carrie,” Rita looked down at her student. “I’m going to pour some water over your eyes, okay? Just keep breathing for me. You’re doing so good.”

Carrie whimpered. She jolted when the contents of the water bottle were poured over her face, crying out in shock and pain, and a light bulb overhead shattered in millions of burgeoning pieces. Rita jumped and looked up at it, then back down at Carrie, who was now panting and wheezing heavily.

“H-hurts to b-b--reathe,” She uttered.

“Oh, Carrie…” Rita murmured. She carefully wiped away the pepper spray residue on Carrie’s face with the paper towel, finding that the girl’s skin was suddenly very cold. Her breathing wasn’t normal anymore. She can feel her heartbeat thump heavily beneath her flesh; it’s too fast for even someone in the midst of a panic attack.

Something was sizzling in Carrie White’s skin, and it wasn’t just the pepper spray.

There’s a clamor from the front of the locker room- Rita’s next period class started to bustle inside to change out before their minimal time limit was up. Rita jumped up, causing Carrie to whimper in distress at the loss of her presence, and stormed to the entrance corridor. The girls inside stopped, easily picking up that she was on edge, and took a small step back in near-perfect synchronization.

“You don’t have to change out today.” Rita said hurriedly. “Or do anything. Just sit in the gym and do whatever. As long as you don’t kill each other or set something on fire, I really don’t care what you do.”

The girls blink and exchange looks.

“Everything okay?” One asked.

“Fine.” Rita said, squaring her shoulders and straightening her shoulders. Her posture nearly faltered and crumbled when she heard Carrie whimper again. “Go on. Out!”

The girls obey, quickly exiting in a flurry of binders and backpacks. Once they’re all gone, Rita hurried back to Carrie, who was trying to get up. She yelped and flinched so badly she knocked herself back over when Rita touched her shoulder, and another light in the first aisle of lockers popped and fizzed out.

“It’s just me, Carrie.” Rita said. “It’s Miss Desjardin.”

“Miss Desjardin,” Carrie repeated to herself in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“That’s right,” Rita nodded, although she knew Carrie couldn’t see it. “Carrie, I’m going to help you stand up and we’re going to walk over to the showers, okay? The water bottle isn’t working as well as I had hoped. Running water will help flush out your eyes better.” She gently touched Carrie’s face and she ‘looked’ up at her. “It’ll make it hurt less.”

Carrie nodded. She grit her teeth as she’s helped to her feet, staggering, but staying upright. A jewel of blood welled up from a scratch dividing her left eyebrow in two and lazily made its way down her face. She twitched when it tickled her skin and she reached up to swipe it away, but Rita snatched her hand before she could make contact. Carrie jumped and instantly tried to jerk away.

“Don’t touch your face.” Rita scolded lightly. “It’ll only make the burning worse.”

Carrie swallowed thickly, but didn’t say anything. She just nodded silently and obeyed.

The short walk to the bathroom and shower area was much clumsier than it should have been, with Carrie stumbling over her ankles and hitting every outcrop of lockers, even with Rita guiding her. Lack of sight was numbing her senses and making it hard to listen. Rita didn’t ever get mad at her, though; blindness, even temporary blindness, would make her a complete nervous, bumbling wreck, too.

“M-Miss Desjardin?” Carrie croaked as Rita cranked the nozzle to a middle-row shower. She turned her head in the direction of the sound of spraying water.

“Yes?” Rita gently touched her shoulder to let her know she was there. “I’m right here, honey.”

“I’m sorry,” Carrie whispered.

Rita’s heart sunk into her stomach. Oh, Carrie, please please don’t--

“I-I didn’t mean to.”

A wave of guilt slammed into Rita, alongside a rumbling riptide of pure rage that roiled through her insides like a storm at sea. She clenched her teeth until she thought they may shatter and wished that she had exacted punishment on all those girls, especially Helen, instead of sending them to their next class to deal with them later.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said again, this time much more choked up. Her skin was frigid cold. “M-Miss Desjardin?” She reached up a blind hand and lightly touched Rita’s, which she must have forgotten was on her shoulder. She grabbed it in a way that sent shockwaves of desperation up Rita’s arm. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize, Carrie.” Rita said firmly. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“Okay,” Carrie said, but Rita knew she didn’t believe it. She lowered her voice and rasped out, “It really, really hurts…”

“Come on,” Miss Desjardin lowered Carrie to her knees and tilted her into the warm rain of water shooting from the showerhead. She lifted her chin so the spray would directly hit her face. “There we go... Good girl.”

Carrie took a deep breath, spitting out water. Streams ran red when they touched her numerous cuts and the blood oozing from her tightly shut eyes turned into puffing clouds of crimson along her cheeks, but at least everything was getting flushed out.

Rita risked getting wet when she reached over and began to rub soothing circles against Carrie’s back. She swore the girl arched her spine into her touch, exhaling a soft sigh of relief--or maybe contentment. She wasn’t quite sure, but at least it wasn’t a sad or angry sigh, although Carrie had every reason to be sad and/or angry.

“It felt like a hot knife.”

Carrie’s rough, husky voice jarred Rita out of her thoughts. Silence had descended upon the two of them for about five minutes, the only sound being the hiss of the overhead faucet and the low creak of pipes. Rita blinked a haze of black spots out of her vision; her hand was still on Carrie’s back, no longer rubbing, but the fingers were still grazing up and down tenderly, with the thumb gliding in soothing strokes.

“Or a fire poker. Like the ones you use for fireplaces.”

“What?” Rita said.

Carrie craned her neck to look at her, and her eyes were open. They were reddish-brown jewels in a nest full of restless red snakes. Trails of water cascading over her face cause the dozens of cuts around the sockets to glow in hues of neon pink and burning scarlet. She tilted her head at Rita.

“When I got sprayed,” She specified. “And you know what I thought when it happened?”

“What?” Rita said again, this time with dread pooled in the pit of her stomach like a dark oil spill.

“‘Thank God,’” Carrie said. A small, weak smile twitched at the corner of her lips and she looked down at her hands, where bits of her flesh still clung beneath her nails. “I wasn’t angry. Or upset. It did hurt, though. Really badly. But after everything--after everything I’ve been through--” Her arms dropped limply to her sides and she turned her head back to Rita. “It felt good to not have to see.”

Rita was silent. Her breath is caught in her throat in horror.

How could a child think like that? How could they be treated so poorly that they have to think like that?

“I’ve never been blinded before,” Carrie went on, musing her words like she didn’t realize how traumatic they were. She lifted a hand and gently touched one eye, as if she were reminding herself that it was still there. “It was--scary. Really scary. I’m--used to darkness, but--that was different. It wasn’t black, but really, really bright. So bright my head started to hurt--still hurts--and there were these flashes of color and it all mixed together into this big mess. But still-” She shifted on her knees, sloshing water around her. “I thought that not seeing anymore would make things better. Somehow. Maybe then I would be pathetic enough for people to leave me alone.” Her eyes gleam; Carrie is crying. “But it wouldn’t end up being like that, would it? I’m never granted such mercy.” She flicked the water around her bitterly, then had to scrunch her eyes shut again when the pain registered again.

“Were you--” Carrie cocked her head in the direction of Rita’s head to let her know that she was listening. Rita’s hand on her back clenched a fistful of soggy pale yellow sweater. “Are you happy?”

“Now?”

“Ever.”

Carrie ‘looked’ up at the ceiling like she was deep in thought, and Rita already had her answer.

Fury bubbled in Rita’s stomach, while pity and grief squeezed her heart to the point of nearly bursting apart. It wasn’t fair. It was so unfair for a child to have to live like this.

Carrie had tipped her head down and apparently stopped thinking by the time Rita was finished stewing in anger and conflict. And that’s when Rita realized that Carrie didn’t look even a little angry or conflicted. Or upset or sorrowful or anguished or vengeful.

She just looked tired.

Not just tried, though- Jaded.

“How are your eyes?” Rita asked.

Carrie gently touched one. “They still burn. Badly. But not as bad as before.”

“Yeah, they’re probably going to hurt for awhile.” Rita frowned. She cupped Carrie’s cheeks, which felt so hollow and sunken beneath her fingers, and she cradled her head. “Can you open your eyes, honey? So I can see them?”

Carrie struggled, but managed to pry open her eyelids and keep them open for Rita to inspect. They were bloodshot and definitely looked like they were hurting, but at least they weren’t bleeding anymore. Rita gently stroked her thumb across her cheekbone.

“Maybe I’m not happy,” Carrie blurted.

Rita frowned at her. Carrie flicked her gaze to examine a cracked piece of tile flooring. She clenched her hands in the hem of her sweater.

“I don’t--blame you.” Rita said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Carrie just nodded silently. She’s crying again. Hot tears seep through Rita’s fingers.

“I’m sorry.” Rita said. “For everything you’ve been through. You don’t deserve any of that.” Carrie’s eyes went wide at that and she blinked at Rita in shock.

“You don’t...you don’t think I’m a freak? Or a pig? Or the devil’s child?”

“Oh no, honey, no.” Rita said. “Not at all. You’re a smart, wonderful girl.”

Carrie’s eyes are hungry, now. Rita has never seen that look before, but she instantly knows what it means: “Do you love me?”

Rita pulled Carrie against her and the girl began to openly weep into her chest. She rocked her back and forth in the shower stall, whispering sweet things in her ear and stroking her messy hair (which really needed to be brushed). And Carrie clung to her in return, blubbering and sniffling and whimpering until she’s exhausted and can only hiccup weakly. Rita smoothed down a stubborn cowlick on the top of her head.

“You’re going to be okay, sweetheart,” Rita cooed to the girl in her arms. “I’ve got you.”

Carrie nuzzled closer, curling her knees in until she was a soggy ball in Rita’s lap. She breathed out a sigh, and this time Rita knows it’s of contentment.

“Don’t let me go,” She whispered. “Please.”

“I won’t.” Rita promised.

But she did.

To move Carrie into her office, where she signed a pass for her to skip her remaining classes for ‘mandatory physical health workout’ and spent the rest of the school day brushing out her hair and letting her relax. It’s the first time she thinks she’s seen Carrie really smile, like she thought this was the most delightful thing in the entire world, and Rita’s heart melted.

“Thank you,” Carrie whispered. The tune of smooth jazz is playing from the small speaker on Rita’s desk. A dark purple brush glided through her long hair and she gave a soft coo of bliss at the sensation. “You’re--more of a mom than mine ever is.”

#carrie #carrie 2002 #carrie fanfiction #carrie white #rita desjardin #sue snell #chris hargensen #helen shyres #tina jason #norma watson #my writing #born a rat burn a rat #slasher #stephen king

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