|—————————————————————> 4 <—————————————————————|

There was complete silence.

“Hiya, class!” The old hag said again.
The voice of some prat lost in the sea of kids piped up.
“Your head looks like a sultana!”

A wave of sniggering crashed over the room.
The old lady scowled and began waving her stick above her head like the rotors of a helicopter.

“Any more shenanigans and i’ll whoop all your butts with my stick! Sit down, you impish knaves!”

She shuffled over to the whiteboard and began scratching and muttering to herself.
The fat kid put his hand up.
“I have a stick too.” He said.

“What’s an impish knave?” Whispered Kate to James.
“I have no idea. Anyway, I find it suspicious that the old fart looks exactly like the thing we saw.”
Kate scratched her head. “What did we see again? I can’t remember what it looked like.”

Suddenly, the old woman’s head snapped at Kate.
“SHHhHHHHhHHhhhHH!!” She hissed, spittle flying everywhere.

“So, um, as you all probably don’t know, my sis…I mean, Jennifer, your usual host, had to go away on a…um…” .
She looked at the back of her hand.
“The coal in the cave can be cooked in a cauldron? What?!” She muttered, frowning.
The whole class was deadly silent (except for James, who was desperately fumbling with his camera in hopes of catching more odd moments on recording) as she checked her other hand.
“Ah…right. She’s away on an urgent business trip very far away from here. She should be back by the competition. Which reminds me, she also left me a list of stuff you needed to do…where is it?” She muttered.

A piece of yellowed paper that was slightly ripped on the edges slipped out of her sleeve.
“Ah. Here it is. Task one: Finish perfecting your muffins and win the baking competition. Task two: Get the stains of the walls.”

And with that, she plonked herself down onto a sofa and began reading a magazine that seemed like it was being held together with sticky tape.
James could swear that some of the pictures were moving.

“I’m going to go up there and question her. She seems suspicious. She might be that monster we saw, or even a ghost!” He whispered to Kate, bubbling with excitement.

He stood up, untangled himself from the table and awkwardly walked across the room.
He went right up to the old hag and opened his mouth to say something.
All that came out was a pitiful, almost silent squeak.
The old woman looked up from her magazine, saw what he was doing, and copied him.

He was struck back by her horrible breath.

Coughing like a cow with asthma, he stumbled back to his seat.
Kate chortled at him and told him he looked like a stale avocado.
“Her breath…it was…terrible…” He wheezed.

“Oh, come on.” She snorted as she strode confidently towards the old woman.
“Nice magazine.” She said.
The old hag jumped, threw her magazine out the window, pointed a bony finger at the girl and began chanting:
“Hadzuska, Gourndara, maka- - oh, it’s you. What do you want?” She grunted as a gust of wind suddenly blew the magazine back into the room.
Noticing but ignoring this, Kate kept her cool.
“I’m sorry, miss…?”
The old hag stared at her for a moment, her eyes blinking independently of eachother.
“My name is Ursahara.”
Kate paused.
“Well…Ursahara…Jennifer usually helps us make our muffins.” She said slowly.
“Next up on Human Child States the Obvious…” She muttered.
“What?!”
“Nothing! Fine, sure, i’ll help you.”
She and Kate shuffled over to her desk.

“I’ve been working on a really good muffin mixture, and I was just wondering if I could have some feedback on it.”

“Gimme the ingredients list.”

Kate passed a perfectly crisp piece of paper filled with writing and floral doodles.
Ursahara stared at it for a while.
Suddenly, she turned bright red and gripped the paper like it had just told the woman that her mama was fat.

“Twenty grams of sugar?! TWENTY GRAMS OF SUGAR?!?!” She screeched.
Kate recoiled.
“Is…is that too much?”
“TOO MUCH?! TOO MUCH!?!?!?” Screamed Ursahara.
She shoved her face right next to Kate’s and said one word.

“More.”

Kate scooped up a teaspoon of sugar and mixed it in with the rest of the ingredients.

“MORE!!!” Yelled Ursahara.

“But Jennifer never usually lets us put more than 20 grams of sugar in our pastries!” Said Kate.

“To the underworld with Jennifer! MOOOORE SUUUUUGAR!!”
“I like this woman.” Muttered Kate to James, who was trying to record the entire scene on his camera.

She dipped a crooked finger in and sampled some.
“Now that’s what I call SWEET!!” She roared.
Kate tried some.
He eyes widened and he pupils dilated.
“Woah.” She whispered, starting to jiggle around.
Giggling incessantly and scooping big handfuls out to eat more and more, she shovelled the mixture into some moulds and shoved them in the oven.
Ursahara shuffled back to her chair.
“I don’t think Ursahara is entirely…normal, do you?” Whispered James to Kate when she sat back down.
“Brklnerscant!” Cried Kate.
“Yesyesyes, I like her a loooooot!”
“Only because she let you have an absurd amount of sugar in your muffins.”
“So?”
James sighed.
“Honestly, Katie, i’ve heard about these sort of things loads of times and i’ve come to suspect that this woman…”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“A whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatWHAAAAAAT?” Groaned Kate, who had also heard about these sorts of things enough times to be almost completely fed up with it.

“IS AN ALIEN!!!” He yelled, jumping up on his chair.
All throughout the classroom, heads turned away from their cupcakes and to him.
James went red and laughed nervously.
Suddenly, one of the legs of the chair he was standing on snapped, sending him tumbling down into an enormous bowl of muffin batter.
Huge peals of laughter erupted all over the classroom.
“Still think she’s an alien?” Quipped Kate.
“Shut up.” Grumbled James.
“You shut up.”

|—————————————————————> 5 <—————————————————————|

Several minutes later, the whole room was covered in baking mix and sticky ingredients, and everyone’s voices were sore.
This was due to a humongous food fight which started when James retaliated to his sister’s teasings by shoving a glob of muffin mix in her face.
Naturally, she screamed and scooped up some of her own and lobbed it at James.
James ducked, and it hit Zoe instead.
This angered Zoe, who screamed and hurled a blob at Kate, who screamed and lunged out of the way, crashing into James (who screamed) causing the glob of batter to fly through the air into somebody else. (Who screamed)

And so on.

But what really turned the room to a gloopy, sticky hell was when Ursahara, who had finished reading her magazine, finally bothered to look up to see what the kids where doing.

She thought it looked like fun.
The old hag had a surprisingly strong and precise throwing arm, and an exceptionally fast reload.
And a very, very shrill, grating voice.

Soon, the walls, the desks, the floor and the people were covered in the sticky stuff.
James jumped up from behind an upturned desk and nailed Ursahara in the head.
As she furiously brushed it out of her hair, James could have sworn he head seen…
There!
The old woman seemed to have very long, thin ears.
“Katie, look! Ursahara has pointed ears!”
“What, like an elf?”
“Yes! I’m telling you, she isn’t what she seems.”
“‘What she seems’ is a point of view. If she isn’t what she seems according to you, she’s a completely innocent old woman who likes magazines and food fights.” Kate chirped as she lobbed another fistful of mix.

Eventually, the apple timer on the bench began ringing like a nuclear siren, signalling that the class was over.
Everyone was laughing and chatting with eachother, making mini, wheezing squeals, telling awesome fibs of how they never got hit once and managed to hit everyone else.
Kate and James, however, were the only ones who were not happy.
“Guys? I know that food fight was a lot of fun, but we really need to practice our baking skills for the competition! Not to mention scrubbing all the stains off the walls, plus the ones we just made!” Cried Kate, her sugar rush wearing off, the sense flooding back into her.
“I made the walls dirty!” Cheered the fat kid.
“Katie…come on. We’re good enough to tackle the other contestants. We never usually get to goof off like that! And the walls…it’ll be easy! We just team up and clean it all on the last day! Or even use some of the money we won from the baking competition to hire somebody to clean it for us!” Said Zoe.

“I’m irresponsible!” Cheered the fat kid.

James leapt in, waving his journal around like it was on fire and clicking his pen like crazy.
“And don’t forget to consider the possibility that she is an elf! I’ve seen her pointy ears, and she sort of has that magic-y vibe to her, like a kind of-“

“James, Zoe is telling you this for your good and our’s- shut up.” Groaned Zoe.
“No seriously! I-i-i-i swear! I saw her pointed ears! There’s nothing on this planet that could possibly account for tha-“
Zoe typed something up on her phone and shoved it in James’s face.
“Stahl’s ear? What…?”

—————————————————————
Stahl's ear is caused by misshapen cartilage. It is characterised by an extra horizontal fold of cartilage (crus). Normally, there are two: superior and inferior. In Stahl's ear, there is a third horizontal crus. The helix (or upper portion of the ear) may uncurl, giving the ear a pointed shape.
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“Oh, come on!”
The group began to shake their heads and walk away.
Suddenly, James thought of something.
“Wait! W-wait! What about how weird she is? Like, she’s always saying weird stuff! She always acts, like, so suspicious!”
Zoe rubbed her temples.
“James, your idea of suspicious is vastly different from what actually IS suspicious. Besides, that can easily be explained by the fact that Ursahara is old, and she’s getting senile.”

“What?”

Zoe shoved her phone in his face once again.

—————————————————————————
adjective: senile
(of a person) having or showing the weaknesses or diseases of old age, especially a loss of mental faculties.
—————————————————————————

James stared at it.
“Life’s not fair.” He grumbled as the group dispersed, leaving James feeling crushed.

“C’mon James. Seriously, think about it. What you’re betting on is kind of absurd. I mean, sure, if we were in some crazy fantasy story, your suspicions would be totally warranted. But this is real life. There’s nothing paranormal about that.”
James sighed.
“I guess you’re right.”

The sky rumbled as the clouds, heavy with water, began to dump their load.
“Uh oh.” Said Kate.
She pulled out her umbrella, making a big show of twirling it around and making sure James got an eyeful of the “unicorn in a tutu eating a cupcake” design on it, and ran off to join Zoe.

James splayed himself out on the ground as the rain fell around him.
Maybe his sister was right about his craziness.
Ursahara was probably just an old, senile lady with Stan’s ear or whatever the condition was called.

Suddenly, James heard a series of loud thumps coming from back inside the little cottage.
He jumped up, ran over to the other side of the house and peered through the window.

————————————————————————————
verb
gerund or present participle: spying

1. Gathering information by secretly observing somebody from a distance without them knowing.
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