Work Text:
The air in the classroom is heavy and cold, smelling of stale chalk and damp wool. Outside, the sky is the color of old cement, and a persistent November rain streaks against the grimy windows. At the front of the room, Cole Sear stands before Miss Honey, his small frame hunched. His eyes, dark and haunted, are fixed on the floor. He holds a large, illustrated dictionary, but he isn’t reading from it. Instead, he recites a story he made up, a story about spelling the vocabulary word ‘difficult’.
“Mrs. D,” he says in a flat, monotone voice, “gets locked in a room and has to eat her own fingers to get out. Mrs. I runs and hides under a bed because she’s scared of Mrs. F.” He turns a page, though he doesn’t need to. “The other Mrs. F gets trapped in a wall, but her little girl, Mrs. I, finds her. Mrs. C crawls up the drainpipe and tries to pull Mrs. U up with her, but Mrs. U is too heavy.” One of the other children gasps, but Cole continues, his voice devoid of emotion: “Mrs. L gets stuck in a tree and starts to cry. Then Mrs. T arrives and shows her the way down.”
Silence hangs in the room until the school’s main door bursts open and Agatha Trunchbull stomps in, her shadow swallowing Cole whole. “Married?! What on earth is this nonsense?” she bellows, her cheeks quivering with rage. “Why are all these women married?!”
She slams her massive fists on Miss Honey’s desk, the dictionary skittering to the floor. The newt Lavender has just carefully slipped into the glass of water on Trunchbull's desk, wriggling unseen.
Trunchbull’s furious tirade continues, her voice a deep, gravelly bark. “Unmarried women are perfectly capable of being frightening and miserable without a husband! Take me, for instance!”
She throws her head back and laughs, a sound like a graveyard cough. In the back of the room, Matilda Wormwood stares at the jug of water. She knows the newt is there. She knows what is about to happen. Trunchbull’s rage peaks as she turns her glare on the jug. She sees the amphibian. Her eyes widen, her face contorting into a mask of pure horror.
“The foulest creature on Earth!” she screeches, her voice now a high-pitched shriek. She scans the room, her eyes landing on the one child who is not cowering in fear. “Wormwood! You did this, didn’t you? You and your filthy mind!”
Matilda’s heart pounds with a righteous fury. The injustice of the accusation is a physical weight in her chest. Her anger, a hot spark in the center of her mind, ignites. She feels the subtle pull inside her, the familiar surge of energy. Her eyes narrow just slightly. Without touching it, she tips the glass. Water splashes over the desk and onto Trunchbull’s tweed skirt. The feeling is a powerful, cathartic release.
Trunchbull stands frozen for a moment, the silence amplifying the rhythmic drip of water from her clothing. Then, a low growl begins deep in her throat, rising until it is a feral roar. She rips off her belt and begins to swing it wildly, knocking over books and chairs. The children scream and try to get out of her way.
Amid the chaos, Cole, still standing at the front of the room, looks toward the corner. Standing there, soaked and shivering, is the ghost of a small boy, perhaps eight years old. The ghost boy’s eyes are wide, his spectral gaze fixed on the water now soaking Trunchbull.
The ghost whispers, his voice like the rustling of dry leaves, “Did you see that?”
Cole, his face pale with shock and a glimmer of understanding, simply nods.