LAUGHTER

She screamed and screamed as they put their cigarettes out on her writhing body, immediately lighting up more. Eventually, after what seemed an age, she fainted and her form hung limp from the ceiling. Laughing, chatting and smoking, they waited for her to regain consciousness before continuing - after all, they wouldn't want her to miss the fun.

It took days for anyone to even realise she was missing. The school at which she taught was accustomed to her occasional, unexplained absences. She was not the most reliable of people, nor the most mature. No one really spared her a thought.

Her wrists were chafed and bleeding from hanging and struggling against the leather straps. She begged them to remove them, pleading, promising everything she could think of. The relief overwhelmed her when they did take her down : she fainted again, but only briefly. It seemed to them as if she would never stop screaming when she awoke to find herself suspended by her thumbs, this time with metal clamps. At first they merely chuckled, but soon waves of laughter were lashing her aching mind.

It took a week after her eventual, slow death before her body was found, twisting in the wind. The police investigation yielded very little - they had covered their tracks well. Clutching at straws, somewhat desperate to have some lead, especially with so gruesome a murder and torture case, they questioned not only the teachers, but some of the pupils too.

They all said approximately the same thing.

"Was she well-liked?"

"Well...um. OK, put it this way. People here don't like unfairness very much. Teachers aren't meant to bully the kids - we're meant to all be treated the same way. That's why most people didn't like her."

One of the young sergeants had the indiscretion to enquire of the detective as to whether he suspected anyone from the school.

"Of course not! The pupils just disliked her a little. Anyway, they're only children. They could never do something this horrific."

The case was never solved. The teachers returned to their classes, the police to their patrols. The detective crept around until the case was put a little to the back of people's minds. And them? Well, quite simply, they still laughed.