D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

“Well I’ve already told things from my perspective, so now it’s your turn. I didn’t even talk about our first few dates, where we got married, our honeymoon. Even if you’ve got nothing unique to say, which I very much doubt dear husband, there is still plenty of things you can touch on,” said Roxy with a haughty tone.

“Fine if it matters so much to you all,” Bruce said with a resigned sigh. He didn’t pay much attention to the emphatic nods from all sides. He was surrounded and that was that. “I guess I’ll start at the beginning as well. For as long as I could remember I also hated Roxy. I don’t know why either, and I was around for most of the silly stories our parents would tell to try and explain it well…

“But as I grew older and spent less time around Roxy my hatred faded to apathy. It’s not like I could remember why we didn’t like each other, and when we got into primary school Roxy and I spent barely any time with each other. Just a few meetups where we pretended to get along for our parents, though we know now they were laughing at how proper we pretended to be in front of them. Perfectly aware of our distaste for each other.

“I still didn’t think much of Roxy until we started to get into high school. We just ignored each other… but Roxy started to get bullied pretty frequently. Now, I didn’t like her, and I wasn’t going to go out of my way to defend her. I was no paragon of justice, and in fact for a while I started to feel somewhat vindicated. That other people also noticed Roxy wasn’t a great person, that she was annoying and proud. Her nose always in the air, looking down on the rest of the class for being dumber then her.

“Which was not the case… and eventually I started to notice what they were really SAYING about Roxy. See… I probably wouldn’t have thought twice if they were talking about her being stuck up, or about her being a bit frigid towards people. The fact that she looked at everyone like they needed to be scraped off her boots didn’t help matters at all,”

“I wasn’t THAT bad Bruce,” retorted Roxy.

Bruce just rolled his eyes, indicating what he thought of that statement. “Regardless of how deserving Roxy was of that treatment… when I started to her people talking shit about her for being poor, for smelling horrible, for being the daughter of a peasant. All these things that she couldn’t control. Well, then I started to take a bit more notice. Still didn’t like Roxy… and she’d hit me for saying this back then… but I pitied her a bit,”

Roxy, deciding to make a point, stood up and slapped Bruce hard in the back of the head, “Indeed. I would’ve hit you. Probably in the nuts. Aren’t you glad I’ve mellowed out and only gave you a light tap to the skull?” Roxy said with a fanged smile.

.....

Bruce just shrugged it off and continued, “Yes, see. Point made. She was a bit violent when pressed, but it took more than nasty words to get her to that point so you didn’t see it often. I think the first time I saw it escalate to that point was when someone threw mud at Roxanne’s back during lunch one day,” Bruce couldn’t help but laugh and Roxy raised a hand a second time. Bruce just held her gaze for a few seconds before continuing, “She found the person who did it, picked the poor boy up and threw him down into the mud pile he’d just used. Stomped down on his back and asked why he did it.

“Poor boy ratted out one of the queen bees of the school. What was her name? Chelsea Learnin?” Bruce looked up to Roxanne who just shrugged, “Eh, we can go with that I guess. Roxy then went to hunt her down. She was in class at the time. The teachers just watched as Roxy burst into class, grabbed Chelsea by the back of her uniform, and dragged the girl outside. Didn’t even try to stop her,”

Bruce was chuckling and even Roxanne had a smile remembering this particularly moment. “What she did was dragged Chelsea over to the mud pit that the boy was still in… think his name was… I wanna say Steve?” Roxanne shrugged again, “He wasn’t too bothered until Roxanne threw Chelsea down into it with him and said ‘now you’re down and dirty together, you can fuck each other instead of trying to screw me,’ hilarious I tell you.

“Roxanne did get detention for it. The vice principal watched the whole thing… but she also watched the whole thing. She happened to be walking around the grounds at the time, and just… let it happen before informing Roxanne that she had a week’s worth of detention,”

“Mrs Oldton was AWESOME,” interjected Roxy, “She had me in detention with her and we just spent the week watching movies in one of the classrooms. I just had to promise not to tell anyone what I was actually doing other then ‘detention’. She said it was ‘to let their imaginations run wild’ and the longer I refused to answer, the stranger the rumours got. It was SO worth it,”

Lily looked scandalised at this, “What?! You basically got away with just dragging someone out of class?”

Roxy nodded, “Yeah pretty much. As I said, Mrs Oldton was really cool and took no shit from anyone. If I had to guess, she watched the whole thing starting with Steve throwing mud on me. She gave them detention as well, but they had morning detentions instead. I heard them complaining about how much cleaning she made them do so… yeah. Oldton probably watched the whole thing, including me just going into the class and grabbing Chelsea.”

Lily tried not to laugh, but the image was just too funny. “I can’t see anyone getting away with that sort of thing these days…”

Roxy nodded, “Yeah, much stricter regulations on teachers these days. Teachers can still have favourites… but going to quite that extreme… well that’d be a risk. It’d either end up on facebook, or maybe the courts if they thought they could bring a teacher up on some charges for something.”

410

Bruce decided to pick the story back up there, “Indeed. Not something to do these days… but it was the moment I decided Roxanne was… well…” Bruce paused to glance at his wife, “please bear in mind I was a teenager at the time… but I thought she was ‘super hot’ at the time. I don’t know why, don’t ask me. I didn’t have a proper crush on Roxanne because I still didn’t like her personally, but it was the day I sort of… woke up to realise she wasn’t that annoying little girl my parents forced me to spend time with anymore. She was a woman that could kick ass. Boy did it give me some awkward feelings for years to come…”

“You still have those feelings!” returned Roxy.

“Ah, but they aren’t quite so awkward anymore,” shot back Bruce.

Roxy just shrugged and gesture for Bruce to continue. He did so without complaint, “That was about the gist of it for the rest of school. It didn’t really know what to think of Roxanne after that. I certainly didn’t hate her, and she was very nice looking, in fact, she was the best looking girl in school… but I still wasn’t fond of her personality. So I dated a little bit as I finished my schooling, then I started to work in real estate after school and that had me travelling around a bit.

“The girl I was dating at the time, who happened to be called Tiffany like my mother, wasn’t all that fond of the fact I never seemed to have time with her. She essentially saw me having all this ‘fun’ by myself even though I was doing my job. Not well if you ask Roxanne, but I was helping people find good places at good prices and I felt good about myself. Well, this meant that I didn’t think Tiffany was ‘important enough’ which was silly. I still lived with my parents, and so did she.

“I spent pretty much all of my free time with her that I could, but I worked whenever I needed to taking days off in the middle of the week. She got an apprenticeship under the local tailor and was busy every day except weekends. So we just didn’t have the chance to really talk. Anyway, eventually there was a bit of a blow-up over it…

“And we split. I didn’t fight all that hard to keep in touch with Tiffany because truth be told… without the constant proximity school forced on us… I just didn’t care to keep that spark alive you know? I still tried to spend time with her… but it always felt like an obligation. Well, doesn’t matter. She’s happily married now and so am I, so it worked out…”