The Unwanted: A Novella

By Michael Winn

The Unwanted: A Novella is literary horror fiction in the tradition of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Richard Matheson. This harrowing psychological thriller chronicles the happenings within a remote adolescent reformatory. Its unpredictable story line will unnerve and frighten even the most avid readers. This horror story is for a mature readership. Not for teens or the squeamish. You have been forewarned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Winn
• Release date: Jun 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984026937

Michael Winn

Michael Winn is a writer who lives in Long Island, NY with his wife and two children.

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The Unwanted: A Novella

Copyright © 2018 Michael Winn

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published by Michael Winn.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from Michael Winn.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design and layout by Michael Winn.

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The Unwanted: A Novella

October 14, 2003

1.

Walk, Little Girl.  Move your scrawny rear end, the shorter officer said. 

The young girl stood in the doorway of the small office, escorted by two unfamiliar deputy sheriffs, with hands cuffed behind her back.  Nothing unusual about that.  When she didn’t comply with his instructions, the officer pushed her elbow upward, lifting, causing her to walk on her toes like a reluctant dancer in an ugly ballet.  Unfortunately, there was nothing unusual about that either.  Seeing a young person handcuffed and manhandled by the cops wasn’t what momentarily took Nancy’s breath and placed what felt like a furry caterpillar in her stomach.  Many of the new Intakes were brought to the Pine Grove School in the custody of the Sheriff’s department.  But this one was different.  Nancy walked with one palm on the edge of her desk as she made her way around it. 

The shock wasn’t because the new girl was smaller than the majority of fourteen and fifteen year-olds, she was, but Nancy had long ago ceased to recoil when baby faces were brought in for placement.  It wasn’t even that her beautiful, almond eyes were set so far apart they might have been a lizard’s in a past life. Or that the irises were the darkest, coolest cobalt Nancy Callahan had ever seen.  It was her lips.  Or more precisely her lack of lips that was unsettling, distressing.  Traumatic.  The girl’s mousy brown hair was cropped and cut around the ears, a tomboy look except for the long bangs on her forehead, partially obscuring her exotic, reptilian eyes. There was a faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose…but no lips.  Earlier that afternoon, upon being faxed the girl’s case history, Nancy read the medical disclosure form.  Her abusive father had burned the poor child’s face.  Nancy was aware of this.  She tried to mentally prepare herself by conjuring up the worst visual picture in her mind, but failed miserably.  It wasn’t her fault.  For the benign words of a case history couldn’t prepare even a seasoned professional to see, firsthand, the hideous disfigurement Jessica Ronan had inflicted upon her.  No flesh survived to cover her teeth and gums. The young girl’s clear, ivory, lovely, pubescent face was now transformed into a permanent snarl.  A face without lips but instead two hideous laces of black scar tissue with sporadic, pure white cross-hatchings of taut skin courtesy of some emergency room intern’s sloppy suture job.  A big, flat, pink tongue inside a naked mouth.  The kid was a living scarecrow.  A grotesque mock-up of a Jim Henson Muppet.

 Evening… Ms. Callahan?  We spoke on the phone… Whew, thought we were never going to get here, the big officer said in a pleasant baritone.  "Jesus, you are in the boonies…and I’m a country boy,"

Well, you found us.  No easy feat, especially at night, Nancy said.

She tried to remain light and casual, placing one butt cheek on the front corner of her desk, half-sitting, half-standing, laying her hands in her lap.  She would’ve preferred to remain seated behind the desk but decorum dictated that she walk in front and greet the officers.  Ironically, perhaps selfishly, it wasn’t only the new girl’s freakish appearance making her uneasy, awkward, about meeting the two cops, or any strangers for that matter, but her own carnival sideshow look.  Nancy had been subconscious of her height since early adolescence.  (From about the time her dad first began calling her a beanpole.) So much that she developed a permanent hunch in her back and a minor downward bend in her neck that made her appear not unlike a large bird, an emu perhaps, jutting its head over the rail at a petting zoo.  Feeling particularly oversized this evening, she moved her nameplate aside and inched her butt further onto the desk.  (Even positioned in this awkward crouch, Nancy was as tall as the shorter cop.)  She offered a flaccid hand each deputy shook in turn.  The new girl only stared.  Her aura was like an unexpected morning frost.  Nancy half-expected to see her breath crystallize as she spoke.

Please, Jessica, have a seat.  I have to go over a few things with the deputies and sign some documents.  It’ll be a minute before we can get acquainted.

She tried to look at the girl without seeing the scar tissue.  Tried to focus on her eyes, hair, ears… But the line of ravaged, bumpy skin beckoned her attention. Screamed for morbid voyeurism in the way true crime shows about autopsies do.

The girl stared.

            She said take a seat, you little witch, the larger of the officers said.  His belly hung over his duty belt.  His hair was salt and pepper. His chin had a cleft. His elbow rested on the butt of his holstered gun.  Forty or fifty pounds ago he was probably quite handsome.

            Officer, I don’t think name calling is particul—

            There’s no name calling going on.  That’s what the little darling calls herself…  Right?

            Jessica stood silent, defiant.

We told you to sit.

  His meaty hand came down on her shoulder.  Hard.  She dropped onto the loveseat, momentum throwing her back, her feet leaving the floor, her head banging the paneled wall. The hung, framed diplomas above her rattled.

            Nancy expected the girl, like most new Intakes, to cry out or curse a blue streak in a teary-eyed show of bravado.  But Jessica merely leered with those unnaturally blue eyes with a penetrating, bone-deep hatred.  The child stared though strands of hair, a big cat looking through African grass stalking her prey.

            Better do what you’re told, Broom Hilda, the shorter cop said.  He wore his black hair slicked back to match his personality. We don’t want any more lip out of you.

            The two officers exchanged cruel smirks.

            That’s enough, Nancy said with measured admonishment. You can release her. I’ll sign the transfer, thank you.

            The case file stated the girl’s lips had been burned beyond the possibility of cosmetic correction. She might have been cute or even pretty someday.  But without lips she may as well grow up to be a Komodo dragon.

            You sure about that? the big cop asked.  Court order says that if you refuse to intake she goes to Worthington.  In my opinion, that’s where she belongs.  Twenty-four hour lock-up.  Don’t let the cutesy, little tomboy face fool you.  It took four officers to subdue her. One is at Central General right now having his earlobe stitched back together.

            The glare he cast upon his charge was laced with anthrax.

            I reviewed her folder and spoke to her therapist, Nancy said.  She’s an appropriate referral.  Take the cuffs off.

            Her stepfather molested her for years. When she was old enough to fight back and threatened to tell, he pummeled her with balled fists.  Held a knife to the terrorized girl’s throat and…made her… It was too horrendous to think about.

            I really think Worthington is—

            Please… Remove the handcuffs.

            Miss, I hope you keep a muzzle handy, the small cop added.

            That’s quite enough, Nancy said.

            The deputies looked at each other.  The big one shook his head in an exasperated, lethargic, almost indiscernible manner. 

            She’d been forced to kiss a hot clothes iron.

2.

            There were, of course, no muzzles at the Pine Grove School, but a multitude of other draconian devices at the staff’s disposal.  They had wrist straps, bed straps, straitjackets and padded time-out rooms, but mostly they’d use the services of the compounds Duty Nurse to medicate a resident that became unruly.  Each resident had not only their daily, potent, prescription of lithium, Ritalin, Prozac, Haladol, or Thorazine, on hand, but also an emergency syringe of a dedicated, stronger psychotropic in the locked cabinet inside the House Parent’s office.  Pine Grove was a minimum-security juvenile detention facility.  The developmental disabled and the mentally ill went to Mooreland before being placed in small, residential group homes.  Addicts and alcoholics went to the Wilbur Lane rehabilitation center.  Violent kids went to Worthington.  But truants, petty thieves, chronic runaways, and all other antisocial types were sent by either the Family Court or District Court to Pine Grove as Wards of the State – a legalese term, as far as Nancy was concerned, for The Unwanted.

            After the two Deputy Sheriffs had unshackled the girl and left the office, Nancy