William Brookes School Blog

At its meeting on 20 June 2008, Shropshire County Council agreed the Terms of Reference of the Independent Policy Commission.  Since then a wide range of stakeholders have been contacted and invited to submit their views (in written format) to the Independent Policy Commission.

Parents are also invited to share their views by submitting them to policy.commission@shropshire.gov.uk by the deadline of 12 September 2008.”

Last week the creative writing club produced some poetry and stories based on two exercises: one in which they had to describe the hands of someone they know and what they were doing with their hands, then ask them a question which they don’t answer properly, for the second exercise they had to think of several first lines to a story or poem, then several finishing lines, after they had done this they had to choose one of each and write a story or poem to go inbetween.

Here are some examples of what was produced:

It’s over. We won the war he shouted as we look upon the spectacular sight of one million fireworks bursting in the air and stand watching.

Hands exercise:

His hands are old, his hands are able.

He goes fishing, stuck to his chair like a label.         

She has big, fat fingers, like sausages.

She’s writing with them, as well as trying to eat.

Her palm is round like an orange.  

Thumping out the music.

What are you doing with your hand? I ask.

She says.  Yes of course I have a hand.

He tilted his head a little, his eyes practically burning two holes in my face.  I shot a sly glance at him, looking away as if meeting his eyes would kill me.  We have had theatre groups in before, but not ones who look at you like they’d love to stick you in the oven with some potatoes and stuffing.  I shuddered.  His long trousers got caught on something and lifted up to show an almost fleshless leg.  His cheeks were shallow, like somebody had been digging lumps of flesh from his face, until there was not a scrap of it left.

The performance ended and a deathly silence hung over everybody like a heavy black cloud.  The teachers started clapping enthusiastically, giving every single child in the hall the evils.  We all knew what that meant in teacher-speak: clap or you’re in for it.  Everybody clapped as loud as they could, somebody even went as far as whistling!  When the school bell went, everybody tried to leave through the single door that lead from the hall.  Because of this, we all got called back for a mouthful off the teachers.  Filing out and speaking at the top of our voices about Mr. Bones, as people now called him, and how creepy he was.  Little did I know that I hadn’t seen the last of Bones.

The following Saturday, Mum and Dad went out to have ‘a small get-together with some old friends’.  Whatever.  I went to my room to play some music.  As I did, I glanced out of the window and squinted at the shadowy figure standing by the lake, his feet apart and his arms parallel to his legs.  I shook my head and carried on selecting a CD and plugging in my stereo.  I walked back to the window, all the time keeping my eye on the stereo because it has an annoying tendency to jump.  I turned my attention to the window, peeling my eyes away from the whizzing disk.  I screamed.  Its nose was squashed flat against the cold glass.  Its chest was heaving as if it had just run a long distance, but there wasn’t any steam on the window where it was breathing.  He smiled sickeningly, showing two chipped rows of acid-yellow teeth.  The bony man from the performance was right up against the window.  He was here in my house and I was sure it wasn’t to perform.

I ran as fast as I could out of my bedroom, then ran back to the bedroom to close the door, leaped down the stairs, four at a time, and bumped into Mum in the hallway.  “What on Earth happened to you!?  I hear you screaming as well!  Are you okay?”  “Oh Mum! Thank God you’re back!  There’s a monster in my bedroom!”  I pointed up the stairs “I don’t kn…ARRGGGHHHH!!!!”  I screamed as Mum’s face suddenly morphed into the bony man, ripping at every facial feature I knew and loved, until he stood in front of me.  Rushing to the living room, I turned the TV on and turned it up full blast.  I know it sounds totally whack, but at the time it seemed like the only way to block the picture and sound of him out of my head.  The lights flickered.  So did the TV.  A small picture appeared and grew bigger and bigger until it filled the whole screen…it was him.  With perfect synchronisation, the windows and door slammed shut, locking themselves from the outside.  All the plant froze, one by one, the glass of water on the table turned to ice.  There was only one problem with the cold.  I couldn’t feel it.  A sudden dust storm swirled round me, choking me half to death and then reforming in front of me from the feet upwards.  Mr. Bones had come to play.

I looked round.  I was standing in…a desert.  I tried to run away but I got ten feet and fell flat on the ground.  A double-headed cobra slid from behind me and wound itself around my neck, tighter and tighter.  I tried to pull it away but my arms were in some sort of invisible straightjacket.  The cobra was restricting my windpipe.  I could feel the airway closing up like the moving walls you see on action films.  The hero always escaped.  I figured I was the hero’s helper who gave up his life to save someone else.  I didn’t know who I was saving but I knew I wasn’t going to come out of this alive.  I felt myself slipping in and out of consciousness.  I was awake and it was going to stay that was.  I was determined.

The scene shifted out of focus and I was in a room that looked a lot like a Dungeon.  Mr Bones was standing in front of me, only then did I realise I was surrounded by buckets and buckets of water.  Duplicates of Bones were each holding one bucket.  I didn’t know what was going to happen so I tried shouting at them but no words came out.  I screamed.  Nothing.  They lined up neatly, one behind the other.  The first one stepped forwards and put a huge peg on my nose.  I had to breathe through my mouth.  He held the bucket of water high.  Water came splashing down into my mouth.  They were trying to drown me.  I tried to pull away but I’d been bound tightly to a chair.  There wasn’t any break in the water crashing down to my mouth, so it was hard to breathe.  My lungs filled with water as I took a sharp breath in, I could feel myself trying to cough it up but it was no use.  The water kept on streaming down my mouth, drowning me over and over with each breath I took.  I kept on breathing the water in, I knew I was going to die so I wanted it over and done with.  It was working.  I could feel my lungs getting taut and a lot heavier…

…I was breathing air again.  I filled my lungs with the cold air that surrounded me.  The room ripped down middle so I was sitting in total darkness.  I suspected it was another change of scene.  I was right.  I felt myself being untied from the chair and I was being laid down on a very cold, very hard bed.  My wrists and ankles were held down by metal cuffs.  I could feel my breathing getting shallower by the second.  I didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t want to find out.  A single light came on and the brightness blinded me for a second or two before my eyes adjusted to it.  The bulb was swinging from left to right, left to right like those police interrogation programmes on UK Drama channel.  I could see the whole room.  Well, it was more like a shelter with a ground strewn with straw.  Bones had his back to me.  Something that he was holding was glowing a bright white colour.  He turned round.  I looked at his hands—he was holding a knife that was glowing a hot orange now.  I could see a roaring fire behind him, but I couldn’t hear it.  It didn’t take a genius to work out where the knife had just come from.  He came close towards me and tilted the bed so that I was suspended in mid-air by the metal cuffs.  He then tied a gag around my mouth.  He raised the knife in the air.  For one moment the breath was taken away as I realised what was going to happen.  I was about to enter a world of pain.  He slashed me across my stomach.  I writhed with agony as he brought it across my face.  My cheek was burning as if someone had pressed an iron to my face.  Then it went ice cold with the extreme heat, I could feel the actual wound closing up as if to protect itself from the intense heat.  It went on.  And on.  And on.  It seemed that the more my poor skin got severed, the more immune I became to the pain which it caused.

The burning stopped.  My hands were free. I used this precious time to check my skin for severe bleeding and deep wounds.  All I came across was raised purple and blue scars from where he cut me up , again and again and again. 

 My hands were strapped behind my back.  A wooden pole was blocking any contact my hands had with the rest of my body.  I heard a strange glugging noise, like someone was pouring water from a bottle.  They came round to the front of me and I saw that they were pouring oil onto a huge pile of logs beneath me.  Mr Bones came out with a small box of matches.  He struck one and threw it onto the fire.  It immediately set fire to the whole pile of logs and the flames were licking at my legs and hands, burning them…They got more ferocious and licked at my back, my stomach, my shoulder, my face.  It felt as though I was being eaten alive by a  fiery tongue.  My lungs filled with the poisonous gas.  Smoke was wrapping itself around my lungs, squeezing them until they would surely explode everywhere, leaving just a sad empty body tied to a mast.  If I got out of this torture alive, I decided that I was never going to be cremated.  Too painful.  The flames had completely burned my body until there was nothing left. 

He hung on the wooden post, charred and scalded all over. 

Dead.

William Brookes School will be open all next week (14 – 18 July) including Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 July when there is industrial action taking place nationally. However the Leisure Centre will not be open to the community in the evenings on Wednesday and Thursday.