Blankets with the vertebrae still on

previous part here: https://jordynsaelor.com/2025/07/31/rin-run-run-rin-rat-run/

all parts here: https://jordynsaelor.com/cant-catch-me-now/

***

I went to classes

the next day

and nothing changed,

I got seven snot wads

on my dress

and borrowed six pencils from the library

that all broke

and someone’s wings

landed a bruise on my head

during mindreading class

that thankfully

kept anyone from reading my thoughts

(…I think)

but it still hurt.

Except maybe it knocked something

around in my brain

since at lunch it occurred to me

that a) maybe the cafeteria was usually so empty

because no one else even ate lunch

except the few spiky-clawed goblins

in the corner–

a.1) why’d it take me so long to realize lunchtime

made no sense

when I’d known since classes on day two or three

that demons didn’t eat?

a.1!) And why did they have a huge cafeteria

if no one even ate?

But maybe

the answer to that

was that

Coach Purturbelly lied

about them being meal breaks

instead of homework breaks,

and lied about this even being

a cafeteria,

but I hadn’t wanted her

to be a liar

so I’d spent a long time

ignoring how it hadn’t made sense

but now

I couldn’t ignore it

and knowing it

made me more annoyed than it should’ve

and a.2) the goblins in the corner

mostly acted scared of me

but today

even they

threw crumbs at me

until I left

and no rats stopped them

so b) the gremlin rats

could’ve been lying

about everything.

Yet

that made me oddly determined

to learn a spell

to make them tell me the truth,

so for the next several days

I skipped all my classes

and sat in my room

trying to glean meaning

from my crumpled, ripped assignments.

And my blankets said,

“Are you struggling?”

So I looked up from the floor

at the orange-brown quilts

with vertebrae down the middle,

and said, “Yes, I need to learn to read this

so I can speak a truth spell.”

Then I went,

“Wait, have you been able to speak this whole time?”

And the blankets laughed at that,

all three of them,

their fleshy edges moving like four mouths each

and the largest quilt said from one mouth, “You don’t need to read

demon scrawl

to do magic. You just have to learn to say the right words

in the right way.

Which for you,

might require shapeshifting bits of your mouth to make the proper sounds

and unfortunately

you’re probably years off from learning how to do that.”

So I just looked at the papers on the floor

and the blankets on the bed

and said,

“Why don’t I carry you

to the door

and make you speak a spell

to ask if the gremlin rats are really cursed or not?”

And the second blanket laughed, “The rats are really cursed.”

“Then why,” I said, “did they say

they’d deal with the bullies, who are all still bothering me?”

I threw the papers at the vines in the corner but air resistance beat them to the ground,

not that I cared,

but let them stand there

as a monument

to lying rats

and dumb demon bullies.

“We don’t know,” the blankets all said.

So I hauled them off the bed

and we went searching for the exit

the rats guarded

to make them tell the truth.

***

find my published book at this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DHWH9JSR?tag=books2read02-20