A Dirge for Derrick Cork: Investigations & Miscellania

[Twitchcraft]

A Coda

Alexandra Harte hated the Westbrook Academy.

On her first day there, she'd been merely bored. By the second, she'd grown annoyed -- by the silly uniforms, the dull classes, the stifling routine.

After the third day, she'd begun to plot her escape.

She'd pulled various stunts, hoping to get herself tossed out. When you had the strength of twenty men and skin as tough as a rhino, you could definitely get people's attention, she'd found.

Cannonballing into the pool from ceiling height had earned her a lecture and a month's worth of work cleaning the filtration system. Uprooting one of the dumb trees near the campus gates had saddled her with groundskeeping duties and extra coursework in Ecology. Her attempt to leap the admin building in a single bound had gotten her a meeting with Mr. Herrera -- at last! -- after she'd crashed right through his window.

But none of it had seen her expelled. Instead she'd been ushered off to endless counseling sessions, where Ms. Wilson told her that "acting out in a new environment was perfectly understandable." The psychobabble made Alexandra want to scream.

Eventually, though, the lectures and the counseling began to take their toll. They wore her down. She found herself on the verge of giving up. On the verge of actually conforming. God help her, on the verge of joining cheer squad.

Then the note arrived, and everything changed.

It was waiting for her when she returned to her dorm room from her squad try-out. Heavy paper. Expensive. Her name written in an elegant, flowing script the color of blood.

With a single, simple message:

Offer fealty to Heracles.