2016 School Magazine

THE INFORMANT CONT’D

NIGHT Back in her room, the amniotic night seeped through the open window — dark, warm and sticky. Stripping off her red dress, soiled by the Commander’s fawning, she curled up on the floor. Hearing nothing but the echo of her own heart beating, Offred began to relax; the braided rug beneath her felt soothing, placental. Mollified, her mind drifted back to the days when she and Luke had first met. Recalling that his marriage had been all but over because his wife was crazy, remorsefully Offred realised that she had never bothered to question why. Crazy, she realised now, was the way some women became when they desperately wanted a child but could not conceive; crazed from the cyclical shedding of their hope and sanity. Crazy, like the desperate woman in the supermarket, who had tried to steal her daughter. Chastising herself for having given so little thought to Luke’s wife, she realised that Moira had been right all along. She had poached Luke’s love. Luke, trapped in a broken marriage and desperate for children, had been easy pickings. Luke’s misplaced concern had cost them everything. Turning over in her mind everything the Commander had revealed, she realised that his plan all along had been to make Luke look bad, to win her intimacy. Dragging herself to her feet she pried opened the cupboard door. Searching through the tears and darkness, her fingers found the braille, scratched into the floor; “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” she whispered helplessly. Regaining her composure, Offred vowed that the nondescript folder would not be the prevailing transcript of her life.

EMILY RAINBIRD (12G)

References: Atwood, M. (1986). The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 82). Great Britain: Random House Mearns, W. (1899). Antigonish . Harvard

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