After Dudley’s first creative writing task was failed by his teacher, he had to attempt once again to write something passable for his looming gcse examinations. His language analysis was atrocious and he wasn’t doing too well in English literature either, after all he didn’t care much for poetry or Shakespeare. But what he detested most of all was creative writing. Too bad it made up the majority of the marks in his first paper. God couldn’t those teachers just leave him alone, he was fine at maths after all, a B student usually, wasn’t that enough? At least he wasn’t like his weird cousin, studying ‘magic’ instead of the normal subjects. Yeah right, and where’s that going to help anybody?
“So, how was it?” asks Dudley, with a creased eyebrow looking down at the sheet of paper opposite him on the desk, his teacher. Miss Cromley glances up to him from her thick black rimmed glasses with a worryingly despairing look. The amount of red pen surrounding the text only confirms it further: this is going to be bad news.
“Dudley, I must say I’m very impressed by your ability to recall the plot of an entire film but that’s unfortunately not what this question is about,” she rotates the paper and pushes it towards him, a big bold letter ‘D’ marks the top.
“Miss, I didn’t-“ he began, before being rudely interrupted.
“Dudley don’t even start, its clear that this is just a badly summarised regurgitation of the film 'the exorcist', its not what they want, the examiners, you don’t have to have some amazing plot it’s about your grasp of grammar, structure and spelling, frankly, you have demonstrated none of that here.”
Dudley sighed, he hadn’t accounted for the fact that his teacher might have been a horror movie enthusiast. What was that bitch on about with that grammar nonsense anyway? He had used capital letters, a few commas and full stops, what else was there? The boy was impatient to leave, it was three sixteen after all. School was finished, he should be out with his mates by now getting sweets at the local corner shop or smoking stolen cigarettes at the park.
“Who cares? Who bloody cares about English, “he begins to say, waving his hands dramatically before going towards the classroom door.
“You don’t, do you do Dudley, but remember, your father wants you to get into university and with the grades you’re getting now-“
He turned back around at the mention of his parent. Who did she think she was? Dudley thought about how she should start acting her salary, after all, everyone knew teachers were paid pennies.
“I don’t care about university!”
“No Dudley, you will do,” she asserted. “What do you want to do when you're older?”
He shrugged, most of the time he tried not to think about that, surely his parents would support him whatever stupid grades he ended up with.
“Well I’ll tell you one thing, without university you won’t get a good, respectable job. 'You want to be a caretaker? 'You want to end up wiping the floors of this school? You go to one of the best secondary schools in the country, do you understand how much money your parents pay for you to come here? You can’t fail your GCSE’s.”
Dudley sighed, he supposed she was right, he didn’t want to end up jobless in the future or in some kind of apprenticeship god forbid.
“What do you want me to write?” he sighed.
“It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece Dudley, just something to get you a B, that’s all I’m asking.”
*a few months later*
Dudley is sat in his exam, his hand is aching from the amount of writing he’s already done, he’s finished all the other questions, but he’s saved the worse till last. He opens the page onto the creative writing section and reads the prompt. ‘Write a story about a character entering a new world’. He thought about the bullshit story he’d made with his teacher, something about a child visiting his parent at the hospital, bloody classic. Sure he could make up something about how the child was entering the ‘strange new world of hospitals’ or some crap, but another idea dwelled on his mind. Although he usually tried not to thing about his pathetic cousin, it sort of came in his head and he couldn’t get it out.
And suddenly, the words flow onto the page, as he starts to write about a boy with a strange looking scar.
(umm he still gets a C lol)