Sorrow and Joy: Gallows Hill Academy: Year One by D.R. Perry

Author:D.R. Perry [Perry, D.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2021-06-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The moment I stepped through the portal into Messing Academy, I understood why Ed hated it there. I almost turned and went back, just because of its aesthetics.

Bright lights with the type of fluorescence that hummed and flickered at frequencies that disturbed pretty much everyone filled the entire place. The interior matched that brutal architecture exterior perfectly. All the rooms, halls, doorways, windowsills, and all, were boxy, blocky, and utilitarian.

There was no color, only a bleached-out whitewashed monochrome nightmare, the proverbial white rabbit in a snowstorm. The students themselves stood out dark and somehow dull in their royal blue uniforms against all of that. At least it was easy to know whether you were alone or not as far as anybody corporeal went, anyway.

The ghosts were another story entirely. Most ghosts were translucent. Their appearances varied in terms of color, with pastel ruling everything. Most of the ones at Messing had those same blue uniforms but pastelized. They blended somewhere between that awful lighting and the stark paint.

Ghosts with warmer colors appeared just fine. I spotted Horace easily, in his brown suit. And Rob, with his colonial red coat. Although I sensed ghostly presences, looking at them wasn’t easy. No wonder Ed couldn’t focus on his surroundings during his first day.

"Welcome to Mediumship, Miss Merlini."

There at the head of the classroom stood the last person I expected. Old Grandpa Ambersmith. I’d expected a medium from out of town, perhaps. But a magus who could hear a medium’s ghost wasn’t a bad alternative.

"Have a seat."

It was easier said than done. Although the seating and table arrangements we had at Gallows Hill seemed rigid while I had been there, Messing's were another matter entirely. Like the walls, ceilings, and floors, the desks and chairs were also white.

Some of them bore dings and dents, scars from students past. But they didn't differ much in color. The desks and chairs were stuck to each other and also the floor, which didn't allow flexibility for people of diverse sizes and shapes.

That wasn't as big of a deal at Messing as it was in Gallows Hill. Shifters needed room to breathe and move around if we got cagey. Psychics couldn't be shifters and resembled mundanes more closely than any other extrahumans.

So I fit in like a sore thumb. It wasn't rocket surgery to figure out that the seating wouldn’t easily accommodate me.

I wasn’t significantly bigger than them. We all had arms, legs, curves, and planes. However, the one-piece desks boxed me in, without a way to get out quickly or easily. My constant worry was my wings popping out in front of the entire class of psychics. And that somehow I'd hit the student behind me and get in trouble.

It wasn’t only the furniture, either. Their positioning appeared to be a certain ideal measure, the spaces between them done with specific proportions in mind. It was almost like someone had done a mathematical equation to figure out the average size of a teenage psychic, then welded the desks in rows the ideal length and width of that hypothetical person.

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