Aura Asunder | Volume One | Chapter Three
the first volume of Aura Asunder
Aura Asunder | Volume One
Chapter Three
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning
Days passed in the haze of expectation leading to that fated morn, so spoken of in Janet’s letter. She’d packed her bags after awakening to read it, sharing such unexpected enthusiasm with Mother those days ahead. She hadn’t told them the truth. They wouldn’t understand. Especially for why going away from home would prove less than the punishment they’d imagined.
Janet felt as if she’d be set free to go.
Her mother would no-doubt be feeling some need to watch after, as she had for so long, wishing to know everything about Janet’s dysfunction by projection.
Crossing her daughter that deeply, had violence feeling expected within Mother Dearest, some natural consequence of Mother’s actions begged for response, and went unwitnessed within their body. To not understand how her daughter would take to the station prescribed, proved of great weight, and a very justified one at that.
Their daughter wasn’t being honest about how angry she was.
Mother would suffer for what was felt in her future. Janet could return anytime. She knew where they lived. She’d taken it upon herself to prepare, learning to drive over the summer, strikings of fortuitous instinct, stowing that cash she might need for the journey from selling trinkets.
Maple Leaf, a nearby town, had provided a one-time getaway for Janet and her friends, having gone to visit a record-store which proved closed, searching for an old favorite album she’d wanted nothing more than to hear one last time.
Some kindest people allowed Janet to practice freewheeling their buggy in the township’s reservoir. While that time passed quickly, there would be some chance again, and of no-doubt, for grabbing the wheel to such a machine, and driving it onto a road. Skids of rubber-flesh upon asphalt were a dream to Janet.
Returning home, driving a stake into her mother’s heart, by means yet unrealized, to see theme bled from their blackest heart, felt the chance worth preparing for. Even Janet would admit the earnest possibility quite appealing. She could not know how things would truly go in the end. No one ever did.
Life was always a surprise.
Collections were being made — reparations taken — messages sent — honor restored — truth shared.
An eighth grade English teacher, known sweetheart, and Janet’s sworn nemeses, would awaken unknowing the gift so left for their finding. They’d elicited sighs upon their slumber’s end. Coffee had been struck. Her shower was pleasant, and a sight, no doubt. Those streaks of splitting threads caressing the many crevasses in her supple, elegant formations, cascading over tipping points, falling so, and down those ever-perkiest breasts. Once dressed, formally adorned with stockings pulled high, ready for taking her place kneeling at church, honoring father’s priesthood every Sunday, Ms. Wright would be surprised to find her foot squishing into the freshest pile of human feces she’d ever come to face.
Others too would know those stains. Yet none so boldly, or that steaming.
Janet’s timelines of the woman, previously scouted in depth, had been off. Something was different that day. They’d been up early, and dressed, ready to get out the door before she expected. She’d heard keys pulled from their hook, with only just enough time to make the bushes over that woman’s porch railing.
Regret would strike Janet’s chest with anxiety while in that sidelong pose, suspended and forced towards stillness, for not creating awareness towards her by means of continued rustling. Also, and most unfortunately, she’d left something unplanned for.
That lack of wiping, such swift movement to follow, and the pulling up of her pants, all in quickest successions of hasteful fright, had created a situation.
Emerging from her front door, humming some tune, that woman had her earbuds strung from a Blackberry, quite luckily. Janet’s sight, through those many branches which had proven pricklier than imagined, with much blood to be cleaned up all about, reminded Janet of how badly she wanted one of those.
Her parents wouldn’t let her have a phone that nice. She’d only an I-Pod and a flip phone — always having to manage them both. Purses were an outright-refused notion for Janet. She’d deign for pockets, and many, all about her extra-large clothing choices, which also hid her form from the overwhelming majority of psycho-sexually abusive adults surrounding.
Ms. Wright looked disappointed.
She’d teared up, and that wasn’t what Janet wanted to see at all.
Rena Wright seemed to know the source, inexplicably, perceived by that frown Janet understood uniquely for them. She didn’t appear angry, only hurt, and its vision would shred Janet’s heart for times to come. They hated that woman. To realize something beneath it only then, right at the very end, would have Janet feeling hungry and bored.
Her neck was sore as she headed home.
Sunlight that morning had proven as they’d said. After much cleaning, reflections passed were only of gratitude within Janet. God seemed shining through the treetops themself, throughout her way home from Ms. Wright’s place.
To finally see it coming, that ride so fiercely strange, with her driver’s gruffest demeanor, hair they sported quite unkempt, would cause much hesitation in Janet’s displayed demeanor. The slovenly man inside had been frightening at first sight.
He’d barely been able to remove himself from the Dodge Dart, rims caked in dirt, some worst choice having been made to purchase the car in chrome. The smile though — it was all heart.
Garret would prove his name.
He'd both hands on his belly as he called out from the sidewalk, towards Janet standing frozen, fingers still twirling the lollipop she’d been working down slowly, training the deadest eyes a one had ever seen upon the fellow.
Finally, he’d shouted, “Ms. Janet Meadows, I presume!”
She’d lifted her bag and proceeded towards the trunk. No eye contact was made, dragging her feet the whole way, letting her lips curl and body shirk into a responsive step-backward the moment he’d again moved. Eventually, she approached the trunk, to drop her suitcase and backpack inside. He’d been gently coaxing her with a smile understood, though not met, while holding that open for some greatest time.
When she’d looked back to her home, they were both there. Her favorite hummingbirds had come to feed at the perfect time.
That goodbye with her parents, sitting for breakfast as they still were, had been laced with a contempt Janet didn’t understand.
Loudly — shockingly — causing Janet to jump — also intentionally — Garret slammed the trunk closed. He hadn’t noticed her reaction, seeming pleased that she was choosing to join him after all. Opening his passenger door to catch its corner quite brutally on the sidewalk, he’d ignored it, and waited for her pensiveness to bear again the blessing of a glance.
“After you Ms. Meadows.”
Highways were a purchased gift of escape, bought by their darting steed with such spirited drivetrain. It was an old machine, like that man beside Janet.
She’d been warming up to Garret while listening to his music. Some of it was even good. The heart within was pure, and much better than her mother’s. Insignificant portions of time were spent driving before his monologue began, and he seemed not to mind her drifting in and out.
That alone had been the sight which began Janet’s warming. She could tell from a smile shared her way, upon glancing over, that he knew. It was rare to find a person who’d respect her phasing of everyone out.
“I just feel like these people in charge have their heads so far up their asses—ya know?”
Janet’s attention was caught by that question of such synchronicity to her witch’s spirit. She realized herself heading to a truest home. Finally, after nearly an hour, having last spoken to her family’s dog on the way out their front door, she’d screamed.
“Watch the fuck out-dude!”
Garret jerked the wheel hard-left, the Dart’s left nose dipping to scrape as they immediately penetrated the far lane — slipping just passed the rear-left-bumper of that Ford F-Series which broke abruptly before them — he’d wrenched the wheel back-right near instantaneously. Their darted diagonal-return, around that dreadful gas-guzzling ego machine, avoided both the median and another car further ahead in the left lane, by some jutted jumps of fate, to land as if having been in air, settling to a skid in the middle lane again, and only just ahead of the F-Series. Garett whipped the wheel back past center, some slightest overcorrection, as the Dart’s rear end slid out behind, making the strangest music, its rear wheels catching three road warts marking-edge of the far-right lane.
A few more bobs of the wheel, some backs and forths, with ever lessening overcorrections necessary, had them speeding forward again in no time.
Janet was holding onto everything.
“Holy shit!” Garret yelled.
“What was that asshole doing!”
After a brief recollecting of thoughts, wits, and squinched-to-prevention bladder protrusions, there had been a breath taken by Janet Meadows.
“Anyways—I just don’t get it. These people everywhere are blind. They don’t know what’s really going on at all. These regular people don’t know what we’re do for them. They don’t believe in magic at all. They don’t know the threats about. Bunch of squirrels if you ask me.”
Janet wouldn’t believe it, but wondered still, if Garret could have meant what he’d said that same way she had when bestowing the name upon her friend, who’d been known to all others as Craig. She wouldn’t think it possible. There was simply no way that kindest-looking man, with such ineptitude for genuine foresight, yet apparently Godlike corrective instincts, could ever mean it that way, at least not in Janet’s mind.
Until he’d said it. Until Garret stole her heart and became Janet’s friend forever.
“They’re just gobblin’ our nuts.”
Her laugh had been some greatest joy to Garret. He’d been pleased his slip of the tongue was so well received. There hadn’t been many through his life, holding an earnest conversational space with Garret, who’d not feel put off by his crassly authentic nature.
Garret just said what he’d feel, when people he trusted were around.
For that to prove some connective tissue would be seen by both, even if Janet had a way to go in that regard.
“You’re gonna fucking hate Underwerth’s—little dude.”
Highways turned into backroads. Janet felt as if they’d passed through some portal. Everything was different. Coldest air and the overcast sky cast a mood of quiet over everything. Chill winds were striking her cheeks, blowing Janet’s hair gently, when stepping out of the Dart.
Garret said his salutations before she’d gotten out, telling of where she might find him when needed. He worked as a driver first, and handler for students who came from neighboring states, while also overseeing the school’s maintenance and groundskeeping employees. He’d been the brother of that woman stilling such silence from the man.
She’d been standing alone, wearing a pleated scarlet dress beneath her stitched black cardigan. Her hair was pinned-up tightly, and something spoke to Janet immediately upon seeing that woman. It was her face.
Mother mustn’t have known. They seemed not a woman at all to Janet. They’d something of an apple in their throat, and too tall, jaw cut strongly in a way which spoke to Janet in whispers. They were clearly born much different than presented. Yet that didn’t seem to matter, they’d been standing so proudly, resilience was grafted into their very nature.
Feelings were confused in Janet. They were beautiful, such a woman, but intimidating in how they’d been staring her down with no worry for frightening the girl — something tightly held in their jaw — some lie — gripping in-hand what could only be understood as the tasseled dowel of threat it was.
“Janet Meadows.” They said in a tone, confirmingly low, authoritative, carrying an absurd sense of womanhood regardless.
“Welcome to Underwerth. You’re late.”
That woman’s glare would shoot to her brother, already tearing away so quickly, spitting gravel, speeding out from the sprawling mansion. So-like a castle, its cobblestone architecture of peaks and valleys, the sculpted lion; centerpiece of an inoperative fountain out front, its epic roundabout and paths of tributary, Underwerth had proven littered with fallen leaves.
When Janet’s eyes wandered to land upon that fountain, the woman had snapped their fingers before her face.
“Ms. Meadows. You will focus when I speak to you.”
Janet hadn’t a single thought of how she’d actualize the demand, let alone by a woman of that make, and from someone with authority no less. Yet she’d wanted to, and that didn’t feel usual. It sent her gut twisting with how to rightly respond.
“You will refer to me as Ms. Underwerth—or headmistress.”
Those grounds were stunning, that forest around had long overgrown, nature was left to flourish about, every part of Underwerth’s felt some part of the land itself. It was an old but well-kept place, of stonework most grand, some mansion, but clearly beyond that ever meant for a single family.
How it was someone like Ms. Underwerth would claim controlling lineage, grasping hold over such an institution, even with bearing that surname herself, was completely unknown to Janet.
Pathways led around from the mansion’s front entrance, revealing a secondary fortress more attuned to Janet’s expectations.
That elder building towered, glowering, just as the woman leading her way, in waiting, as if expecting a response which Janet had not the will to give.
Ms. Underwerth was beautiful up close. Her breasts were real and full, hands quite large but thin. She was growing old. The way her hips swayed upon their walk towards the dorms had broken a levee of holding inside Janet.
What it was she’d said then, snapping Janet out of the fantasy brewing their mind, wanting so badly to hold Ms. Underwerth, to let her kiss their head, would crack the stones of worry over Janet’s excitement being some mistake.
Garret had been wrong to say she would hate it there.
Ms. Underwerth’s words changed the tune of Janet’s heart entirely.
“You can call me Daphne when it’s just us.”
