Flat as a Board
by Czolgolz
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Struggling to keep the tears inside, I rushed down the empty industrial arts hall of my high school and into the girl’s bathroom.  Once I was sure I was alone I began sobbing.  I couldn’t help myself.  At age seventeen I should have been more immune to insults, but the things Anne would say about me…

The most recent episode ran through my mind.  It had happened as I was preparing to go to wood shop.  I knew it was odd for a girl like me to be taking an industrial arts class, but I needed a practical art to graduate and since I already knew how to type that left me with either wood shop or (ugh) home ec.

I was getting my things out of my locker when Anne said to one of her friends in a voice loud enough for me to hear “Do you know why they love Liz in wood shop?  Cuz she’s flat as a board and never been nailed!”  The laughter was still ringing in my ears when I ran off, humiliated.

I looked at my reflection.  Anne was right, I was flat chested and I had never been with a boy.  My stringy black hair and pallid complexion didn’t enhance my appearance.  But so what?  Anne was a gorgeous blonde cheerleader with a big chest and a pretty face.  So why had she made it her mission to humiliate me?  It seemed that every time she saw me she’d cut loose with insults about my appearance, or my clothes, or my loner lifestyle.  I had never insulted her, so why did she take such joy in hurting me?

After washing my face, I walked into the shop.  “You’re late,” barked Sgt. O’Connor, our ex-Marine instructor.  “You…” then he stopped, when he saw my face.  He must have realized I had been crying.  “Just don’t let it happen again,” he growled, tearing up the tardy slip he had been writing.  

I couldn’t blame him for his flustered attitude.  He had been teaching shop since after Vietnam, and I was the only female student he had ever had.  I walked over to my workbench to join my partner, Hugo.

Hugo was staring trance-like at a hammer on the table in front of him, as if trying to contemplate the mysteries of the universe.  I grinned at my massive shop partner.  He was a football player, and he fit the stereotype: large, awkward, and none-too-swift.  Out of everyone at my school, I was probably closest to him.  Not that we had a lot in common, I just kind of felt sorry for him, like you would a big, clumsy dog.  I felt bad about the way he had to struggle through all his classes.  I began tutoring him after school and we developed something of a friendship.  

Eventually the bell rang that signified the end of the school day.  I lingered behind in the lab.  I couldn’t stop thinking about Anne.  And the more I thought about her the madder I got.  And eventually I made myself so mad that I decided that it was time I took revenge.  The revenge I had sworn to myself never to use: witchcraft.

I had first undertaken the study of white magic as a harmless joke, not realizing the true power that existed.  Since that time I had never done more than a few harmless spells to amuse myself.  Well, today would be different.  Anne had overstepped the line; I would use any means necessary to even the score.

The next day I had everything I needed.  I waited until the end of the school day, then I walked into the weight room behind the gymnasium.  I found Anne there, alone.  Good.  She was lifting dumbbells.  I grew angry at the sight of her taught, muscular frame in her skimpy leotard and athletic bra.  She was so sexy, she had so much.  And yet she still felt the need to mock me.

“Anne, we need to talk.”  I said.  Despite my burning desire for revenge, I still felt bound to try and make peace one more time.

“Oh, if it isn’t the Goth queen.  Fashion tip dear: there are colors other than black.”

I ignored the barb.  “I want to knock this off.  I want you to leave me alone, I’m sick of your insults.”

“Ooooh,” she said, mockingly.  “What are you going to do, toad-girl?  Send your friends after me?  Oh, I forgot.  You don’t have any!”

That did it.  “You’ll be sorry.”  Anne laughed and lay down on an inclined bench.  She began doing bench presses with a barbell.  I leaned over her and touched it.

“Hope that’s not too heavy for you.”  I said with a smile.

“Listen you scrawny runt, I could press ten times this…this…” she stopped smiling.  The barbell, which she had lifted halfway up, was slowly beginning to descend.

“Problem Anne?  Does it feel a lot heavier all of a sudden?”

Anne looked terrified.  “I can’t hold it!  Liz, help me!  I’m going to drop it on myself!  Spot me!  Spot me!”

I giggled.  “Sorry Anne, I’m just too darn scrawny.”

Anne shrieked as she lost control of the weight.  It landed on the top of the bench, just above her head.  Then it began to roll down the incline.

The weight, in its normal state, probably weighed about fifty pounds.  After I had cast my spell it probably weighed about a five hundred.  If normal physics were in action the bar should have smashed painfully into her skull as it rolled down the ramp.  But normal physics did not apply at the moment.

The weight simply rolled over the top of her head, over her body, down her legs, and onto the floor.  But it didn’t leave her unharmed.

I grinned at what now lay on the bench.  It looked line Anne: her gorgeous body, her frightened face, her arms still held over he head trying to control the barbell…but she now had even less depth than she did before.  In fact, she had no depth: she was two-dimensional.  

I held her up.  She had the feeling of a large, very thin slice of metal, like a sheet of copper: hard and rigid, with just a little flexibility.  Leaning her against the wall I looked at my handiwork: there stood Anne, still in her skimpy looking workout clothes, flat as a pancake and stiff as a board.  I ran my hand down her front:  it was like touching a picture: no features stood out, she was uniform in her flatness.  I laughed.

“Well Anne,” I laughed, “I have to say you were wrong.  I may be only a B cup, but I’d say you are definitely flatter.  Why you’re the flattest board that’s ever been nailed!”

Anne said nothing, she couldn’t.  But I knew she could still hear and see me.  “And you said I was scrawny, but look at yourself!”  I held her in front of a mirror so she could get a good look.  “Why you must only weigh five pounds!”  I could have stood there looking at her all day: he eyes wide as saucers, her hands impotently over her head, leaning slanted against the wall.  But I had work to do.  Anne’s transformation was not over, not by a long shot.  When I had finished with her she wouldn’t recognize herself.  Neither would anyone else, ever again.  

I wrapped her in a sheet I had brought along and carried her and her bag through the almost deserted school.  We arrived at the shop, which had been locked for the night.  I tossed Anne on the floor and slid her under the door with my foot.

A chain held the doors securely closed, but with a touch of my hand the doors opened.  Being careful to step on Anne I walked in and shut the doors behind me.  I flipped the breaker and the shop was filled with the expectant hum of power machinery ready to whirl into life.

I had never felt so alive as I dashed around the room looking for the tools I’d need.  I could only imagine how Anne was feeling, I bet she was wishing she had accepted my overtures of peace.  “I dunno Anne,” I said, tossing off my jacket and standing there in my T-shirt and jeans.  “I happen to think I am rather good looking.  And, unlike some people, I can actually move!”

I leaned Anne against Sgt. O’Conner’s desk.  Making sure she could see what I was doing, I placed my tools on the worktable in front of her: A hammer.  A box of nails.  Some wood screws.  A screwdriver.  A couple of spare pieces of wood.  Some wire.  Some hinges.  A wood plane.  And a saw.  Some of those things were there for effect, but I’d be using most of them.

“Now Anne, as I recall last week, you called me a bull-dyke lesbian for taking shop class.  Well, I’m not a lesbian, Anne.  I just like working with tools.  And I’m quite good at it.”  I toyed with the hammer.

“Now for our final project, O’Conner wants us to build some sort of decoration for the homecoming float.  No further instruction, other than it has to be rather large.”  I took out a tape measure and measured her height.  “And I think that my project will be exactly…5’5” high, 18” wide, and .25” deep.”  I smiled.  Anne didn’t.

“Now Anne,” I said, with mock gravity.  “I want you to know how grateful I am that you volunteered to be my shop project.  Not many people would agree to be flattened and, well, I might as well say it, dismantled, for someone else’s grade.  You’re a true buddy.  And just a little while ago, someone said I didn’t have any friends.

“I want you to know, you don’t have to go through with this.  Remember, once I start, there’ll be no way of putting you back together again.  If you are having any doubts, now’s the time to voice them.”  Anne, predictably, said nothing.

“Well,” I said, “since you don’t appear to object, shall we get started?”  I picked up an electric drill and pointed it at her bare midriff.  “You’re going to be the hit of the parade.”  

Firstly, I removed her clothes.  Not that I especially wanted to see her naked, I just didn’t want anyone to identify what was left of her by what she was wearing.  Her paper-like garments barely had any substance to them; when I crumbled them up they crinkled.  I wadded them up in a piece of notebook paper and tossed them in the wastepaper basket.

I ran my hand over Anne’s naked frame.  Closing my eyes, the only thing that made me realize I was not running my hand over a smooth board was slight warmth coming from her body.  Other than that, she might as well have been a sanded piece of wood: smooth and featureless.  All her previous mounds and valleys had flattened into a uniform plane.  With my eyes closed her navel felt the same as her collarbone; her nose felt that same as her chest.
I lay Anne flat on a workbench and surveyed my tools.  What to use first?  I could saw her into little pieces, paint her, and build a doghouse out of her.  Or I could use the jigsaw and turn her into the world’s biggest puzzle.  Or simply use the wood plane on her until nothing was left of her but shavings.
But no, why not kill two birds with one stone?  I decided to do what I had threatened originally: make her into my final project.
I picked up my handsaw.  It was a long number, nearly a foot and a half.  I moved Anne to the edge of the table so that her head and raised arms were extended over the side.  I lay the blade at the side of her neck.  “Ready?”  I asked her.  ”Now just relax; decapitation isn’t as bad as you might think.”

The blade groaned as it made the first cut through her neck.  Up and down, up and down.  Her flesh yielded easily to the saw; soon I was halfway through.  Anne stayed motionless; I wondered what she was thinking.  Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t about making fun of me.

A small pile of pinkish powder began to accumulate on the floor.  I grinned.  Anne-dust.  The saw passed through the last bit of neck still connected to her head.  With a clatter, Anne’s head fell to the floor.

I picked up her flattened and severed head and smiled.  I kind of wished she still had the ability to talk; I would have liked to hear what she would have said.  

On the side of the table there was a vice.  I positioned her chin inside and tightened it until her head stood upright, facing the rest of her naked body on the table.  Next, I quickly removed her arms at the elbows.  I laid them next to her legs.  I fought off a wicked urge to keep sawing.  It would have been funny to reduce her to nothing but a pile of flesh-colored wood chips, but that wouldn’t have been as artistic as what I had planned.  I began the next phase of my project.

Earlier in the day I had prepared a small base to mount Anne on.  It was a black wooden disk with a small block of wood in the center.  I lifted Anne’s headless, handless body and positioned it.  “You know Anne, you really do have a lovely body.  And all this time I thought the hockey team was just telling tales.  Well, it seems a shame that there are still fifteen or twenty guys at this school who haven’t seen your body, so maybe I’ll just give them a treat at the parade.”

I stood her body upright, with the backs of her feet aligned with the block of wood on the base.  Then I took out my electric drill.  It had an attachment that enabled me to drive wood screws.  Positioning the tip at her ankle I drove a screw into her right foot, then her left.  Stepping back, I could tell that her body was now firmly braced upright on the base.  I knew she had enough support to stay that way during the parade, but I drove in an extra bolt into each foot, just to be safe.  

I knew all this crushing, drilling, and sawing wouldn’t cause Anne any physical pain, but after being flattened, decapitated, dismembered, and drilled, she must have been going through hell.  Which was exactly what I had been hoping for.  Hey, it wasn’t me who started the feud.  It would me be who finished it, however.

I changed the blade on my drill for a simple bit.  I bored a hole at the end of each of her biceps, then one in the end of both of her forearms.  I then connected both halves of her arms with an industrial spring.  Her arms once again stretched over her head, but now they were mobile.  When I gave her hand a flick, her forearm bounced around on the end of the spring.  Her arms looked like one of those obnoxious waving hands things that people used to stick in their rear windshields.

I was almost finished.  I drilled another hole at the base of her neck, and a last one just under her chin on her severed head.  I connected her head with another spring.  

Standing back, I admired my work.  A naked and terrified Anne stood rigid in front of me, her arms and head bobbling in a humorous manner in the breeze from the AC.  There she was, my tormenter.  The girl who had made my life hell for so long, now nothing more than an amusing novelty.  But I wouldn’t get my true revenge until I had displayed her to the school during the parade.

Of course, I had to alter a couple of things before I could do that.  First of all, they’d never let me display a naked woman, even if (in their eyes) she wasn’t real.  I fished through Anne’s bag and found her cheerleader’s uniform.  I slipped the sweater on over her head.  Very loose now of course, but at least it kept her breasts covered.  Her skirt, on the other hand, wouldn’t stay up.  I finally solved the problem by attaching it to her legs with a staple gun.  There was just one more thing to do.

I knew that tomorrow everyone would be wondering where Anne had disappeared to and by the end of the week she’d be an official missing person.  I knew I couldn’t display her in the parade without casting suspicions on myself.  True, no one would ever suspect that my shop project really was Anne, but it would look bad if I turned up with a terrified ‘photo’ of a missing girl.

I pulled the last part of my project.  It was a picture of a bulldog’s head (that was our school’s mascot, the Bulldogs).  It was the size of a human head and its eyes had been cut out.  With one last look at Anne’s horrified face, I glued the dog over her open-mouthed, terrified visage.  

When I looked at the completed project, I laughed.  Anne looked so ridiculous, what with her 3D clothes, dog face, and ludicrously bobbing arms.  As an after-thought I nailed a pair of pom-poms in her hands.  I was finished.  She’d be the hit of the parade and would probably earn me an A to boot.  And she’d never bother me again.  After I was finished with her I could just toss her in a closet somewhere and dismiss her like a bad memory.  As I tossed her bag in the dumpster out back, I fantasized myself as an old woman, going through some old boxes and coming across Anne.  She’d still be young looking, of course, but after spending 50 years flattened in storage, she’d probably be envying me.

I was interrupted from my dreams by the sound of someone walking into the shop.  I panicked, then relaxed.  No one would recognize Anne now, I was safe.  I turned to see Hugo, my shop partner, limping through the door.  He was holding his back and looked to be in considerable pain.  Forgetting about Anne for a moment, I hurried over to the behemoth footballer.  

“Hugo, what’s wrong?”

“God, my back’s killing me!”  he groaned.  “I was in the weight room and saw this barbell laying on the floor.  It looked like it only weighed forty pounds, but when I tried to pick it up to put it away, it was like trying to lift a Chevy.  I think I slipped a disk.”

Whoops.  I had to remember to undo the spell I put on the weight before someone else got hurt.

“Anyway,” continued Hugo, “I saw the light on in here.  Do you have any aspirin?”

“Take off your shirt and lay down here,” I told me, motioning to the table that I had dissected Anne on.  He painfully mounted it.  I began rubbing his back.  I knew a spell that would relieve his pain, but it would take a couple of minutes.

“Mmmm,” groaned Hugo, “that feels good.”

Yes, it does, I thought to myself.  I had never noticed before, but Hugo was kind of cute, in a meathead sort of way.  Muscular, tall, and rugged.  And it wasn’t unpleasant, rubbing his bare back like this.

“Listen, Liz, I heard about what Anne said yesterday.”

“Oh, don’t worry about what Anne says.  I don’t let her bother me any more.”  I glanced at the dog-headed sculpture in the corner.

“Good for you.  I don’t see where Anne gets off saying crap like that.”

“Well, I’m not exactly the prettiest girl in school.”

Hugo snorted.  “Maybe not, but you’ve got your share of admirers.  Truth be known, I think Anne may be a bit jealous.”

“Give me a break, Hugo.  There’s not a guy at this school who would choose me over Anne.”

Hugo half turned to look at me.  “Don’t be too sure.  Just the other day in the locker room, a bunch of guys were talking about you.  Rick said he’d love to get you in the sack, so did Sam.  Tim said you were a bit flat, but had a nice rear and sexy legs.”

I was so shocked I stopped rubbing Hugo’s back.  Guys, football players, making sexist comments about me?  It couldn’t have been a lie; Hugo lacked the mental capacity.  I was insulted, but the same time, elated.  Could it be that Anne was wrong?  That she really was the only one who thought I was ugly?  That maybe I really was pretty?

Hugo was still talking.  “Anyway, I was wondering….ARRGH!  Dear God, what the hell did you do to my back?  Jesus, it’s like new!”

“Just a little massage.  What were you saying?”

“Huh?  Oh, uh, I was wondering if you were going to go to the homecoming game.  I’m gonna be playing.”  Big revelation, he played every game.

“Probably not.  Why?”

“Well, uh, I was thinking that maybe if you went, we could get something to eat afterwards.”

Why was he acting so weird?  We had lunch together all the time.  Then it hit me.

“Hugo, are you asking me out?”

“No!  Well, uh, maybe.  Yes.  Yes I am.”

“I’d love to.”

Hugo smiled his dopey smile.  Then he caught a glimpse of Anne out of the corner of his eye.  “What the heck it that thing?”

“It’s my shop project.”  

Hugo gave Anne’s canine looking head a swat.  “Nice doggy!”  he laughed.

*
About a week later I lay naked on my bed.  It was after one in the morning, but I was still wired.  I had been right; Anne turned out to be the hit of the parade.  Everyone had laughed at my dog-headed cheerleader.  The game had been exciting (we won), but my date with Hugo had been even better.  In fact, I was still talking about it.

“And then, afterwards, he drove me home.  And then he kissed me!  I’d never been kissed before.  I know that might seem odd to a popular girl like you, but it’s the truth.  Anyway, sorry I had to leave you in my trunk all that time, but you know what they say: three’s a crowd.  Or I guess in your case, two and a half!”  I laughed.  “Who would have thought I’d have a homecoming date and you wouldn’t?”

My companion didn’t say a word.  She hadn’t said a word in over a week, since I had crushed her.  She just stood there in the corner of my room, jiggling softly in the moonlight.  I had removed the dog head and her clothes as well as her base.  She now leaned against my wall, still looking terrified.

“Well, Anne, I guess it’s time to turn in.  Oh, the police are really stepping up their search for you.  I’m not going to be able to keep you out in the open anymore.”

I wrapped her in my sheet and slid her under my bed.  She’s been there for almost a month now.  I know now that I can’t keep her there forever.  I’ll probably get around to restoring her next week; she’ll keep her mouth shut about where she’s been if she knows what’s good for her.

Then again, the restoration spell is a lot of work.  And with my new boyfriend Hugo and my spot as an alternate on the cheerleading squad, I just don’t have a lot of free time.  Winter break is only a couple  months away; maybe I’ll find time then.