I'm aware some of you may have read this story, in a form, posted by the user 'CastlesInTheSky' I'm afraid that was plagiarized from this story. Link to prove it. http://www.bebo.com/The-beetles-game <-- It clearly pre-dates that users post. With that out of the way, lets march onwards!
Little Jimmy Beetle.
Come out, come out and play....
Jacque was highly aware of the burgundy haired girl sitting beside her, she was aware of her eyes studying every detail in their vision. Though Jacque had that odd feeling you get when you suspect that people are less looking at you than looking through you, as if you’ve suddenly lost all mass and all they can see is the bright yellow wall that’s situated behind you. Of course Jacque hadn’t lost mass, Rue was simply seeing something else, as she always did.
“Sometimes there are no words.” Rue leant forward and whispered softly into Jacque’s ear.
“What d’you mean?” Jacque questioned, her lightly tanned brow furled in confusion.
“Sometimes there are only colours and pictures, Jacqueline.” The smaller, paler girl smiled playfully. Jacque felt a shiver run down her spine when Rue flashed that smile, something about it seemed to be concealing hidden menace.
“What d’you mean Rue?”
Rue chuckled as if it were the most ridiculous question ever put forward to her, much like if someone asked what two plus two equals.
“Oh Jacqueline, so far to go.” She paused for a moment, her chocolate brown eyes locking onto Jacque’s grey tinted blue orbs. The eerie smile still dancing on Rue’s lips. “I will show you one day.” Rue dropped the smile signalling the end of the conversation; Rue chuckled softly to herself then went to sit on the black leather three-seater sofa opposite the two seater that Jacque was perched upon.
Jacque watched in confusion as Rue sat across from her poking her big toe then giggling manically and repeating the process over and over. Fifteen-year-old Rue really was quite a mystery to Jacque, as she was to everyone else, but they had all simply written it off as her being either insane or mentally handicapped. Jacque had no doubt that Rue was most probably insane, but she felt something deeper than that, something hidden under her mechanical speech and her peculiar sense of humour. There was something there, Jacque could sense it.
“Hey look! it’s the space cadet and the psycho bitch!” a deep voice sneered. The voice belonged to a boy in his mid teens dressed in an over-large pale blue t-shirt, dark blue tracksuit trousers, a pair of worn out grey Nike's that were originally white and to complete his ensemble a burgundy baseball cap.
“Just fuck off, Jimmy.” Jacque grumbled. Rue was still occupied with poking her toes and she was evidently still finding it just as amusing.
“Make me,” he scoffed at his foster sister, his remarkably smaller, weaker foster sister. He felt the urge to smash something heavy into her perfectly formed face. Not that Jimmy was one to make a habit of attacking poor defenceless little girls… That was a slight lie, he was one to make a habit of attacking smaller defenseless girls as well as the occasional small dog or unfortunate cat. Jacque just shook her head and called to Rue for them to vacate the living in favour of a more Jimmy lacking environment. Their room perhaps, though Rue didn’t like it much in there for some reason. There were very few places that Rue would simply sit and be quite in, those being the living room, the kitchen and the basement. Rue liked the basement best, the dark soothed her. Jacque lead Rue into the kitchen hoping either Jimmy would drop it or Sue and Michael would be home with the shopping. Or one of the older boys. Anyone that was bigger and stronger than Jimmy. Jacque looked around the mustard yellow kitchen, she found herself wondering not for the first time what the Taylors' obsession with yellow was all about, not that she had anything against yellow, she just didn’t understand why anyone would want to drench their whole house in the colour.
Evidently lamb was their Sunday meat of choice, not the most pleasing, there was always a fight when they Taylors' cooked lamb. The fight being that no one besides the Taylors' real son and the adults themselves liked the meat.
Well, Rue may have liked it if she tried it, but Rue always ate the same thing, everyday, two packets of chicken noodles and drank only three glasses of chocolate milk. One packet when she awoke in the morning with one glass, one glass at lunch, and for dinner the same as breakfast. Rue hadn’t in the five months Jacque had known her even sampled any other substances. Jacque thought for a moment that Jimmy had given up and left them to torture some other defenceless creature her perceived as lower than him.
That was until she saw him grinning at her in the doorway. He inched his way toward her, she bit her bottom lip and searched for a viable escape route. Finding none she sighed and folded her arms across her chest and stared slightly to the left of Jimmy, not quite into his eyes, but in his general direction. “What’s a matter, don’t wanna hangout with Jimbo anymore?”
Jacque cast a glance over to Rue, who was gleefully playing with the sugar bowl, taking a spoonful then pouring it back into the bowl with a giggle. “Oi spacker, ‘mere!” Jimmy demanded, Rue ignored.
“Her names Rue, not spacker, and if anyone in this house is retarded it’s you.” Jacque snarled, her vision fixed once again slightly to the left of him. Rue’s head snapped round so her eyes could glance at them upon hearing her name.
“Yeah right Jack, she’s not all there, she’s not even ‘alf there, you two suit then I guess” He chuckled slightly, he made a funny… “Oi, Rue, ‘mere.” Rue tilted her head at him, studied his face a moment, she had that look on her face that small children sometimes get when they find a new and interesting beetle. She thought for a moment whether to go play with the beetle or resume her amusing activities with the sugar bowl. Because beetles of course are far more intriguing than sugar bowls she shuffled cautiously towards Jimmy-beetle.
When she reached him he gave her a quick hard slap around the face. Rue was slightly confused for a moment, but she quickly remembered the game the beetle was playing with her and swiftly drifted over to where the leg of lamb was defrosting, picked it up and smiled at Jimmy-beetle.
He looked confused; ‘he doesn’t appear to know the rules of the game’ Rue thought to herself. She brought the leg above her head and then down onto Jimmy-beetles head.
Jacque screamed.
Rue hit him again, and again, until he fell to the floor, and then carried on until she felt happy she had won the game. Jacque was sobbing and whimpering on the floor, half in the doorway, half in the sunflower yellow hallway. Rue smiled gently at her.
“I won the game, Jacqueline, silly Jimmy-beetle didn’t know the rules.” Rue had that same playful smile on her face as she placed the now blood coated leg of lamb back on the kitchen counter. Jacque crawled on her knees towards the still Jimmy. She tenderly touched the area from where the most blood was now seeping. She retracted her hand almost immediately as she felt the warm claret liquid ooze onto her fingers. She shrieked.
Rue turned to look at her. Jacque raised her now bloodied hand in the air for Rue to see, her mouth hanging open as if ready to say something, but she stayed silent. “Red means I win.” Rue stated matter of factly. Jacque curled up into a ball and started sobbing. Rue strode towards her and observed her for a moment before opening her mouth. “Why are you sad Jacqueline? You didn’t like him. He wasn’t your friend, I don’t understand.” Jacque glanced up at her, she was still sobbing and her eyes glassy.
“I’m crying for you stupid.” She managed to choke out.
“For Me? But I won. Why does that make you sad? I don’t understand.” She tilted her head slightly to the right, then extended her left hand and placed it on Jacques head, which happened to be covered in dirty blonde hair. That was Rue’s idea of comforting someone.
“Because dipshit, you just fuckin’ killed him and now you’re gonna go to prison, do you understand that!?” She snapped, she stressed the word understand. Rue dragged her upper lip downwards with her teeth then let it snap upwards again, she repeated this several times before answering.
“People don’t go to prison for playing games Jacque.” She thought for a moment, Jacque was probably right; Jacque understood the beetles more than she did. She sighed, she guessed she’d need Jacques help if she were to avoid the beetles wrath. “How do I not go to prison?” Jacque raised her head, not quite to face Rue; her eyes caught her belt buckle. She stopped sobbing and thought for a moment. She hiccupped every now and then.
“We need to get rid of him.” She said coldly. Rue wasn’t aware of this part of the game. But Jacque knew the beetles better than her, and after all it was the beetles game, but Jacque was no beetle. Neither was she an innocent like Rue herself, nor an angel or a devil, or anything that Rue had encountered before. Despite her unfamiliarity Rue knew exactly which player Jacque was in this game.
Jacque was the wicked witch.
They spent the next few hours scrubbing what had become a crime scene, after dumping Jimmy, who was wrapped in several bed sheets, his rucksack filled with his clothes and prized possessions and weighed down with bricks of course, into the near by river. Rue had giggled as they carried him out the back garden to the adjacent river, Jacque had snapped at her to shut up. Rue had giggled as they scrubbed the lament wooden flooring with Sue Taylors' industrial strength bleach, Rue found this new game quite exciting.
Sue and Michael Taylor returned home at three forty-five, exactly four hours and twenty-three minuets after Rue had won her game with Jimmy Beetle. The girls where quickly ordered to put the weeks food shopping away as Sue began cooking the Sunday roast. Jacque asked if she could have sausages instead of lamb, Sue said no, she’d eat what everyone else ate. Jacque brought up the fact that Rue didn’t have to eat what everyone else ate, to which Sue replied “Yes, but Rue’s different.” Jacque chuckled to herself as she heard this, she had found out just how ‘different’ Rue truly was just a few hours before. She had to admit to herself, she had found it oddly exciting. The rush, the knowing that what she was doing was wrong, completely wrong, and Rue’s complete trust in her, that simpletons trust was really quite intoxicating.
That night’s dinner exponentially increased Jacques hate for roast lamb, and the whole Sunday roast affair in general. She snarled at everyone during dinner, while in contrast Rue ate her noodles in her usual fashion, cutting every piece up as small as she could make them then scooping them up in her spoon, which always had to be a tea spoon, never any other kind. She drank her chocolate milk through her usual red straw. After dinner Rue departed to sit in the basement whispering things to the spiders and beetles that called it their home. Jacque watched TV with the Taylors' other foster children, Martian who like Jacque was sixteen and Jake who was a rather muscular seventeen. The Taylors' own son, Gabriel, was nineteen, he spent that evening in his garage bedroom lifting weights. Michael and Sue’s mood shifted from annoyed that Jimmy had skipped dinner and gone out with asking, to worrying for his safety when it turned half eleven and he’d still yet to return home or contact them, they checked the room that he and Martian shared only to find that half his stuff had miraculously sprouted legs and walked away, of course the more likely scenario that the owner of said items had removed them himself then vacated the property came to mind. Michael soon set about informing the various authorities of Jimmy’s disappearance, it really came as no great shock to anyone, he’d always been a bit of a rogue, and a fare spot of trouble as well as a bully, needless to say The neighbourhood wouldn’t miss Jimmy all that much.
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Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Oh and I'm aware I suck at dialogue, I'm working on it. xD
The only way we can know our mistakes is if someone catches them. Ask an English teacher or another writer (YWS member) or anyone else! The grammar will be caught if you ask specifically. ^_^