The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3375 by Angharad Copyright© 2023 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I awoke tired the next day, trying to decide whether or not to destroy the person who submitted the photo to the echo. One thought I had was to hire some paparazzo to get a juicy photograph of them in their underwear or something similar, and to get Trish to post it on every social media site they knew. I don't know if it would teach them something or if they would just be aware of the embarrassment I suffered as a consequence of their selfish action. My action had possibly saved Dawn's life as the knife blade was found to contain a poison that would have led to her very painful death.

It was mid-morning when the police arrived and I know they were only doing their job but they were surprised when both Dawn and I took their questioning personally, we had done nothing wrong and yet we felt like some suspect in a mass murder investigation. I know Danni and Trish are always complaining about feeling like criminals just for being different, but this really did feel like we were under caution, which we weren't. I know because I asked twice because it felt so invasive.

The police were seeing how many disappearance or murder cases they could hang on George. I nearly said poor George but he was neither poor nor did I feel sorry for him. I felt more sympathy for a rat in a trap because it has no desire to be malicious, just survive the best way it knows, whereas George, was a monster and when I saw Danni lying unconscious on the lounge floor, my first response apart from tending to her, would have been to neutralise the threat and dying at my hands would have been slower and more painful than his daughter blowing his brains out, which would have been as instantaneous as it gets. I really did feel an angry hatred of Davidson and was thankful that someone other than Danni had done the deed. As I have said previously, I was very grateful to Francesca for saving my daughter.

The police were with us until late afternoon, David even provided them with sandwiches for their lunch, after they left although he had cooked us a roast dinner, which would have been delicious, Dawn, Francesca and me went to bed for a rest. Amazingly, no one ate our dinners and I came back down at about eight and ate. I learned later that Simon had warned the others off and if anyone was going to eat them, he was. When I came down he was fast asleep on the sofa and Daddy was similarly ensconced in an easy chair. They had cracked a bottle to celebrate the verdict and Francesca's release from custody, although she had only ever been in mine.

Once sleeping beauty and Daddy were with us again as we munched our way through enough dinner for a group of marines, we discussed the future and what we proposed to do if George's friends appeared again. Francesca even joked we'd be alright if it looked like they were trying to kill us, then we could do the same. After my experiences in Scotland, where the images came flooding back to me, I didn't find it very funny and then Simon, the idiot I married, asked what about the gunman I had shot at Toby's, and they all wanted chapter and verse on that, which I declined to share and left it to him to describe in true schoolboy luridness.

It appears that it's best to kill someone with no witnesses and hope the forensics and a good barrister will get you off. Unless they are impeccable witnesses and don't mention it again. Better still, don't kill anyone.

As the week progressed I read about the little trans girl who had been viciously assaulted and left to die horribly. It seems the two charged with her murder were a year younger and may have been bullying her for some time. If so, I hope they are convicted of a hate crime and the judge adds another two hundred years to the sentence, just for good measure. Emotion makes me want to punish them just because if they were bullying her, they need to suffer a long time and see how it feels, then when they come out every one they know and complete strangers can pester them because they're convicted murderers and people like to confront them. It's a bit like confronting young women because they're trans and slightly different.

It seems at times I can be quite nasty in seeking retribution, but we as trans women and girls, until we become part of the furniture, are bothered by people who feel they have a right to invade our privacy and private space, asking cruel and personal questions they wouldn't dare ask of a biological female and, here it gets even more ironic, or is it moronic? Biological women suggest we haven't suffered abuse like them so we shouldn't be allowed into woman-only spaces. Okay, Ms. Rowling, I haven't suffered period pains but I have ten times as much experience of suffering for my gender than you have, plus I have to cope with sexist gropes and insults the same as you do, and then because some multiple rapist decides they are trans, they get sent to a female prison. Can't you get through that thick head, I can be raped as well and the damage it does to me could be worse than it does to you. I don't wish you ill, I just want you to think before you spout out such hurtful nonsense. Use some of that imagination that produced such fiction to think about reality, or don't you do that?

The same applies to any of the TERFs, who are so bigoted they can't see further than the view from their arses, because they talk and see through them. I could add right-wing Tories and micro-brained Republicans, but a lot of that is purely rabble-rousing political nonsense, but they never suffer as a consequence of their selfish nastiness. It seems the Devil looks after his own, but they accuse us of the devilry as a distraction. They are evil people and deserve all they get.

So after condemning a significant element of the public to all sorts of torments I was forced to walk among them again in my role of professor of the faculty of science. My only hope was that these young people pursuing degrees of various levels, were becoming more understanding of differences in fellow humans, and then when I said this to Diane, she reminded me that the two who killed that young trans woman last week, were only fifteen. I felt a cold shudder flash through me.

Tea, my panacea for most things short of being dead, helped to bring me back to my usual buoyant, crabby self. Wondering who I could sack before lunch to give me an appetite, when I expressed such thoughts, Diane took me to task saying that I walk the extra mile and then some and come back to being my usual compassionate self. I almost felt some tears pricking my eye when she said that and I even jokingly asked what she was after, and she replied quite simply, "More kindness, I think we've seen enough of the inhumanity stuff," and then she left my office quietly, closing my door and me very close to tears. Why is she always bloody right?

As a punishment when Daddy ordered me to accompany him to lunch, I made her come too. We actually had a good time until she said she saw where my kindness had come from and he was sitting across the table. Of course, he just glowed a wonderful crimson and I was able to announce I had never seen him until I was twenty-two. Not only did that make him blush even more so but he was actually tongue-tied as well. I enjoyed my lunch.

Oh tomorrow, we get a new typist for Diane to lord it over. You remember Nikki, the girl with the coordination problems, well, she has been receiving treatment ever since she broke her arm and most of my crockery and machinery and they have provided her with a special placement to do what the therapy is prescribed to do and she has left us. She came to thank me with her mum, and we had some cakes sent over from the refectory to have with a cuppa to celebrate. I wish her well and hope they're insured where she goes.

Consequently tomorrow, we have a new young woman coming to help us called Amanda. When Diane told me this, I asked if she was sent by Philip of Spain. "No, you idiot that was the Armada."

"Well, I was close, did you say her pet name was Manky?"

"What has got into you today? Just because you got one over on the VC, you seem unmanageable. you didn't was your brain when you were in the shower this morning, did you because that might explain some of it. Her name is Mandy, not Manky, so don't let me hear you calling her that or you'll regret it."

"How can you threaten that?"

"I'm the office manager, so Mandy is working for me not you, teaching staff and technicians are answerable to you, and I'll force you to make your own tea for the rest of the term." I whimpered a response and she said, "Right, I suppose you want another cup?" I nodded half expecting her to tell me to make my own, when she disappeared and I heard the kettle boiling a couple of minutes later.

"Here," she said adding, "You are the best boss I have ever had and I have quite a few, please don't ever change and try to be nice to this new girl tomorrow."

"Do you honestly think I'd be any different?"

"No but I wasn't sure if it was a full moon tonight." She turned away and left my office with me trying not to laugh because I needed to wee. She is a one off and I am very fond of her but she'll only accept some of my nonsense, which is probably a good thing. I complain about Simon's schoolboy stuff but some of mine can be equally puerile or should that be puellile? I checked with the dictionary, puer means a child, when I did Latin ( I know it was still the official language) Puer meant a boy and puella meant a daughter, I wonder if it is a bit like the term girl, which until the Victorian era meant a young child, it didn't distinguish between boys and girls, so I suppose young females were addressed by their name or some other term long forgotten. As children at about ten years old were treated as young adults, perhaps it just didn't apply until we decided they needed a childhood and an education and that has changed quite a bit since the war, when boys and girl could leave school at fourteen and be employed. The war changed all that thank goodness, now they have to stay until eighteen unless they have an apprenticeship or go for training in a tertiary college.

The education system like the health service is in a dire state, unless you go private. Remember that most of the government went to private schools and then to university and many of them became MPs as a first job. It explains why they are so clueless at dealing with life, except their own, when that means squirreling enough money away to live well as long as they live. Politicians, thank goodness, my encounters with them are quite rare unless I am trying to get money for research students.

As I was leaving, I dropped a load of correspondence on Diane's desk, just to show I wasn't just drinking tea all afternoon, and I said, " Tomorrow, I'll take you and Manky for lunch, to show goodwill," and dashed out the door before she could throw something at me.

"It'll cost you," she called as I slipped down the stairs and I wondered if it would or not, we'll see.