Chapter Text
The truth was that Helen didn’t know what to do with them.
She’d been concerned when those hellbeasts had started streaming out of the mountain. But she’d handled it like any rational person would, by locking the doors and windows, shutting the blinds, and keeping Landon home from school until events settled down. Her son had complained, but there wasn’t much to lose keeping him home for a few days. Helen would know, since she was the head of the PTA.
She’d worked long and hard to get the position, and now it was her everything. All the volunteering hours handing out snacks at charity runs, organizing the guest lists at the biannual picnic, and making sure that the bake sale was utterly gluten-free so as not to jeopardize her poor sweet Landon had paid off. She was the one who called the shots on after-school policy now. Even with the existence of hellbeasts, Helen was sure that nothing would change in her private garden of weekly meetings.
At first, she wasn’t wrong.
The school remained the same for the first few weeks. But the rest of the world seemed to accept the devil incarnations overnight, almost like…magic. Helen hated that word, and had to hold her cross necklace and say a prayer every time she thought of it, lest she be damned. But acceptance wasn’t the part that she had a problem with. Oh no. It was acceptance at her school that she had a problem tolerating.
After a few months had passed, the malformed demons were actually permitted through the gates! Despite her stern words to the principal and vice principal about how her husband and his donation money would not be happy to hear this when he called to check in on things from his third business trip this year to the Bahamas, they went ahead and let the monsters in anyway, citing some anti-discrimination law.
Helen hated laws that she didn’t make.
When her husband did call, he suggested putting Landon in a different school. And give up her position after she’d worked so hard? Hah!
But there were still things that she could do. She warned Landon against talking with any of them, and moved him out of classes where he had one as a classmate or, heaven forbid, his teacher—just what were the district hiring practices these days?—to ensure that her perfect boy would not be corrupted. And through the PTA, well. She made sure that they got the message loud and clear.
A lot of them showed up at first, but they were not offered handouts of the schedule agenda nor lemon squares from the snack table. When issues regarding school policy were brought to a vote, Helen jumped over them as if they were not there. At one meeting, she enlisted the help of some of the low attendance parents in helping her set up “special seating” for the monster families, putting the worst of the folding chairs towards the back of the room with a sign reading “Monsters Welcome!”
Most of them stopped coming after that. A few stuck it out a bit longer, but lack of numbers meant that their defenses fell faster. The last was a strange armless creature that looked like a dinosaur. Gloria had been the one to drive her out; when the monster had asked about volunteer signups for the silent auction fundraiser, Gloria pointed out that all of the jobs required functioning arms. The abomination had left in tears, and Helen gave Gloria a well-deserved nod of the head when she turned her expectant face in her direction.
Gloria made for a wonderful second-in-command. She was eager to please and had a barbed tongue that could even rival Helen’s when she put her mind to it. Gloria was also tipsy more often than not and had little ambition in school politics outside of maintaining her current ranking. However, all that meant to Helen was that she didn’t need to fear an uprising from her. They could focus on the attacks from the outside and keep the school they way it was meant to be.
But the next day the principal contacted her.
He said that they were receiving complaints. The PTA was no longer representative of the diverse school community, and that needed to change. Unless Helen wanted to lose her position, the principal warned, she needed to make fast changes.
So now she was here, trying to make amends by personally inviting every hellbeast parent to the next PTA meeting. For nearly every call, she was hung up on. Helen sipped her mimosa in her armchair with a smile. This was one of the few times she didn’t mind being ignored. If they didn’t come, then the principal couldn’t claim that she didn’t try, and by that logic her hold on the PTA was safe. She just had to get through a few more phone calls.
Helen peered at the next number in the book. The name next to it read: “Frisk Dreemur.” Her eyes narrowed. That sounded vaguely familiar, but Helen couldn’t place it. She shrugged and took another sip of her drink as the number dialed.
The phone only rang twice before someone picked up.
“Greetings. May I ask who is calling?”
Helen perked up at the sound of the voice on the other side of the phone. This one sounded like her favorite kind of parent, malleable and open to suggestions. Not a threat, but an important pack mule to offload the more tedious tasks onto, all in the name of helping their children and their school.
“Yes, hello!” Helen put down the mimosa and smiled even though the hellbeast couldn’t see her. “I’m calling to inform you that there is a PTA meeting this upcoming Tuesday, and we are currently looking to expand our reach to new parents at Overridge Elementary. Will you be joining us?”
“Oh my!” She seemed genuinely surprised. Perfect. “I would love to attend, but I am one of the new teachers at the school, and attending to the students and my child have put quite the strain on my schedule—”
Helen’s lip curled. That must have been where she’d heard the name. She was one of those monster quota hires to make the school more ‘diverse’ and little else. Helen tried to keep the disdain out of her voice. “I thought that the contact name sounded familiar!” she crooned, picking up the mimosa again. “No need to concern yourself, Mrs. Dreemur, the students’ education comes first—”
“Please do not call me that.”
Helen almost dropped her glass. Even through the telephone, that cold wall behind the warm tone made Helen feel like she’d made the wrong judgement on this monster’s behavior. “I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered out before she could recover, and then felt like she was going to be ill. Helen never said that to anyone, let alone monsters.
There was a slight gasp on the other side of the line. “Oh no, please do not apologize! You could not have known,” the monster said, sounding sorry herself.
“No, it was my mistake,” Helen said, her manners getting the better of her as she composed herself. “And I am genuinely sorry to hear that you cannot attend.” Holding the phone in place with her shoulder, Helen picked up her red pen and struck a line through Frisk Dreemur’s contact information.
“Would it be acceptable if another member of the household attended in my place?” the monster asked.
Helen froze, the hand holding the pen stopping in midair. Her first instinct was to tell the hellbeast that PARENTS were preferred at these meetings—it was in the name—but the chill she’d felt earlier was still settling around Helen’s spine. This wasn’t a monster that would be put off so easily. At the same time, looking at the long list of names with red lines made the principal’s words echo in her head. Maybe her rejection plan wasn’t so foolproof after all. If no one came—
Wouldn’t they just replace her?
Helen shivered. That scared her the most of all.
“That would be lovely,” Helen replied. “Anyone who wants to participate in the child’s education is welcome.”
“How splendid!” the voice on the other end said. “I have just the right person in mind—”
Helen’s lower lip twitched. That was one of the things she liked the least about the monsters. They kept referring to themselves as “people.”
“The meeting will be next Tuesday at four,” Helen said, maintaining her friendly tone. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for him or her!”
It took several rounds of “thank you”s before Helen could hang up the phone. She sighed, tilting her head back into her chair as another thought occurred to her. If Dreemur wasn’t the hellbeast’s name, then where had she heard it before?
Helen held her phone above her, opening up the web browser and typing the name into Google just for kicks. She’d gotten some interesting dirt on some of the other parents this way. People in her district had no concept of how things appeared on the Internet.
Helen dropped the phone on her face when the results came up. She sat up, her hands scrambling to catch it before it fell into her lap. She looked at the picture on the touchscreen again. A plain child with a neutral expression stared back at her through the photo. The caption read: “Human Ambassador for Monsterkind.” Helen blinked. They was nothing about the child that was memorable—and yet, somehow Helen remembered passing them a few times through the school entrance.
She covered her mouth with her hand in thought. Helen followed the news. She knew how important the ambassador was. But she cared about PTA affairs far more, and somehow she hadn’t noticed that the child attended her school. No wonder the school was pushing so hard to be “inclusive.”
Helen looked back down at the picture and smiled. Maybe, just maybe, this would work out in her favor after all. It hinged on a few things, but this might be the key to getting the monsters away from her PTA once and for all.
She tossed the list of numbers across the room and picked up the mimosa again. Next Tuesday would be very interesting.