PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I’ve always admired political satire, for its strange bends and its enigmatic depths. I remember, throughout my days, reading such books as The Giver, 1984, and Brave New World, and absolutely idolizing the piece. I remember hoping, someday, to write my own satire, to create a twist upon a flaw of humanity, or a political indent in the seamless hierarchy of the government. In this story, I bring up the question, “what is reality?” I answer it, too, with, “Reality is within the mind. It’s a perpetual change, constantly in complete metamorphosis.”

I created Gertrude from myself, taking my own polygon of a personality and warping it, into this ladies’ man, this school rebel, this intense philosopher. I must admit, too, these factors do reside in myself, in a milder sense. On the other hand, I do, tend to be a real philosopher. The other characters were all people from my own life, warped into a mere few. Becca represents, not one particular person, but all girls in general, who I’ve had a sort of connection to, on many levels, though remain as a superficial figure. Clark represents a merge of two of my friends from school. No, Ms. Mudd is not a representation of Mr. Mudd, the English teacher at SHS. “Mudd” was just a name taken from him, and has no real meaning beyond the story. She, as a character, represents an abstract companion, a personal answer to the questions of my life, a positive ion to even out my negativity…

But, enough from me…



































“Mercy Me”                                                                                                                                      

By Matt Gallant



Chapter One



My name is Gertrude. I don’t know where in hell my parents came up with such a horrid name, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I am here to tell you a story, which I assume you are expecting, seeing as you decided to open my book. I live here in the wretched town of Thorosberg, the deadest pits of suburbia. I am not, what you would call, a conformist. I am a very dark person, as you will learn later on. A lot of times, I feel like undeveloped film in a black-room, shriveling up as someone opens the door, exposing me to the piercing light. I am a junior now, here at Thorosberg High, and I yearn very much to be done with all of this, the suffocating school, the insensitive people,  ignorant atmosphere, which I absolutely despise.



I sat there, alone and scared in the stall, hoping, praying that Judd and his band of unrelenting bullies would be dumb enough not to come in here. It was the Monday after Christmas vacation, and as much as I had comforted myself into thinking they’d all forget me, it started strong as it had been before. My bottom lip trembled in worry. I was cutting study hall again, something I always did 6th period. Detentions just never bothered me, or ever broke my spirits like they were intended.



A few minutes passed, and I came to the conclusion that they had either forgotten about me, or lost interest. My heartbeat became milder, and I opened the stall, slowly revealing the empty, disgusting school bathroom. The mirror was adjacent to the stall I had stowed myself in, and I stepped up to it to examine myself. Yes, it was safe to say that acne had invaded and conquered this sixteen-year-old face. As I stood, shaking my head in shame, I thought about the situation that had put me in this stall, and I thought maybe I had asked for it. Just 10 minutes ago, I was standing in the third floor stairwell, looking out the wall fully made of glass, watching the snow fall idly. Precipitation always caught my eye, snow in particular. To me, it was one of the most mesmerizing things to view in the world. The stairwell was a much better place for doing so, than the cramped study hall classroom with a bitchy old teacher and a window the size of an air conditioner. I would often sit and watch, just for the sake of watching, in a dull, early afternoon such as this. Anyway, back to my story, I was watching the snow, as I saw Judd, Paul, and Mike a few of his buddies, walk up from outside and start throwing snowballs like stupid apes who had taken too many queludes. Then, Mr. Zanithcus , one of the two vice principals here, walked out and yelled at them, I could not help but laugh when I heard him suspend the three of them. Then, suddenly, Judd looked up and saw me. I gave them all the finger and took off, as they headed inside after me.



I splashed a bit of water on my face to calm myself down. Just as I did so, a friend of mine, by the name of Clark came into the room. Clark was a very talented kid I knew from art class. His biggest aspiration was to be a photographer. Now, I have seen his work, and he is not a very good photographer. The focus is all wrong, no composition, his photos all suck. But, when I said talented, I mean in ceramics. He can come up with the most astounding, incredible sculptures you’d ever see.  As much as he admired photography, and even idolized the art, everyone knew, maybe even he knew, he had no business behind the camera.



“Gertrude, how’s it going. Whoa what happened? Are you ok? You look all shaken up,” he said, followed by a concerned sort of stare.



I shook my head in disgust, telling him not to go there. It’s nothing, really,” I replied quickly. Bullies were a topic we both toiled with in those four years of roaming the halls of Thorosberg High, but it was the one thing that was just left unsaid. Maybe it was a sense of shame, letting another male push you around that prevented us from discussing it. Maybe it was just a sensitive topic for the both of us, but whatever the reason, it was left unsaid.



“Well, you better watch it. Ms. Langer knows you’re cutting. She called a security guard to look for you, just so ya know.” I didn’t care much, but it was nice to know.

“By the way, I like your shirt, where’d you acquire such a garment?” I asked with a mock English eloquence to my voice. It was a Velvet Acid Christ T-shirt, from their new recording. They play very electronic music, a style most people in this area are not familiar with. Clark and I were pretty much the only two people I knew listened to such a selection. For me, it was a sweet escape, to a world that only seemed to exist in the imagination. Clark was a very industrial-sort of person. He loved the industrial culture-the music, the style, the German background. He loved it so much that it took him into his own fascination with war. He planned to join the Marines after high school. He had a very built stature, one that he had very recently grown into. His personality seemed to flourish almost from being a pathetic little nerd obsessed with war novels and video games, to this big, intellectual young man.



“Oh, I bought this online. Here, ya want the website?” I wrote it on the back of my hand, a habit I always seemed to keep.



“Why are you out of class? Are you skippin too?” I asked with a slight tint of playful suspicion.



“Nah, I’m just emptying the gas tank ya know?” he said as he stepped up to the middle urinal and assumed the position.



“Well, I’ll see ya later,” I said, my good bye, finalizing the conversation and the encounter. The rancid stench of cigarette smoke and feces was starting to hurt my head. I left the bathroom and took a right down the hall. I strolled aimlessly, eavesdropping momentarily on each class that was going on, teachers droning on in Spanish or French. I was on the third floor, in the language department. I walked by Mrs. Caneski’s classroom and waved. She ignored me, for she was busy trying to calm down her rowdy class. She was my teacher in 9th grade, the year I received the nickname, “Gizmo,” a name I’ve given up trying to smother. It came from the gremlin named Gizmo from the old “Gremlins” movies from the 80s. The people who made it up used it as an insult, saying I look like the character. As the name grew more well-known, people used it loosely, not as an insult, but just as a name. Most people do not even know the origins of my nickname anyway. It’s funny to me how a heavy dosage of exposure can pathetically form a neutral basis on which society views things, in this case people seeing me as Gizmo, rather than as Gertrude.



I entered the nearest stairwell and descended to the first floor, to visit the art classrooms. These stuffy rooms filled with art supplies were my sanctum, rooms I’ve grown to use and love. A class was in session, but art students like myself were allowed to work quietly on art projects. I ritualistically went to the cubby shelves and selected a drawing I had been working on for the past few weeks, and sat down to work.



Mrs. Gladstone looked at me in a way as if to be interrupted, and told me that if I were to work, I had to keep my voice down. I nodded quickly. I noticed a seat over by Becca, a sophomore whom I always had a thing for. She was a beautiful girl with long, wavy hair that draped like curtains over her shoulders. Her protruding breasts seemed to bloom like sweet fruit on the tips of frail tree branches, ripe enough for picking. She was 5’1”, with huge brown eyes that matched the many shades of blonde and dark brown that all merged to make up the colors of her hair. We loved to share stories of our day, along with philosophical ideas and poetry we had recently written.



“Gertrude, are you skipping again?” she asked, absent-mindedly placing her pencil on her moist tongue, analyzing my dark, intense appearance. I couldn’t help but blush, and I gave her a guilty look.



“Ah, well. Listen, would you happen to have a smoke I could bum?” she was a huge mooch when it came to cigarettes, but I didn’t mind bumming her one.



“Yeah, sure.” I reached into the dark cavity of my pocket, and slipped her a Camel out of my pack. I handed it to her under the table covertly, and continued drawing.



“Thanks. So, how are you, hun? Did I tell you what I overheard?” I replied no. “Well, in field ecology, I was dozed off as I always am, but Mr. Armheart woke me up, for the first time in I dunno how long.”

“Yeah, and…?” I could see this story was going nowhere, but I sat there in a puddle of boredom, trying to be patient. If I had heard this story just 5 days later, my sarcastic nature would never have been present.

“I’m getting to it. Relax! Well, I heard Chris McGraw and Phil Chattam talking about the teachers. They were talking about how Phil was told some rumor about the teachers taking over the football team, and how the system was planning on changing tradition, in which the teachers play football, instead of the students. I dunno, Gertrude… I’ve always noticed a sort of severe emotional distancing between the faculty and the student body, especially when it comes to organized sports.”

I sat there, somewhat dumbfounded. I played the odds in my head. It was one thing I never thought that our faculty was against the student body. I did remember a small teachers’ strike in our school about 5 years ago. I was in middle school, but it was all over the news. Apparently, since it is illegal for teachers to hold strikes, many arrests, resignations, and firings took place. I remember hearing the reasons for their strike included unfair wages, too many hours, and too much involvement with students. In a way, I could almost see where this blooming conspiracy could have originated. I was not easily drawn into such idiocy without decent facts, especially if Becca had heard it from Chris and Bill, the biggest meat heads you will ever meet.

“So, whadaya think? What should we do?” Becca cut my thought stream short, and looked deep into my eyes with stone seriousness I’ve never seen on her before.

“I think you should know better to believe people like that,” was my only reply. We didn’t say another word to each other for the rest of the period. I was too engulfed in my own drawing. It was a portrait of Marilyn Manson, a man whose always fascinated me, to this very day. His complete absorbsion in his own self amazed me. Oh, what an artist he was, what a crazy, genius man. I was never one to heed to the pop culture and cripple my own sense of judgement, and replace my freewill with whatever my TV tells me, so I was not taken in by all the rumors of him. On some level, the rumors seemed to intensify his bleak appeal.

In the drawing, he was posing for a photograph, with a dull yellow tint, sort of symbolizing the stale of glam, in my own views. He had his usual black make-up and accessories. I started out with charcoal, and now was creating more of a composition with watercolors.

The bell rang, notifying its pathetic flock of students that it was time for the last period of the day. I tediously lifted my weigh of my slim, muscular body out of the seat, and as I did, I approached Becca, as if greeting her after a long parting. I whispered the words into her unsuspecting ear, “Wherever this tide of rumors tilts, I will always love you,” and I tickled her ear with her tongue momentarily. She shoved her ear down to her shoulder, playfully avoiding me. She turned her face toward mine in a suttle desire, and grasped me to her perfect body. I rubbed my arm up and down her back in a steady rhythm, kissed her cheek quickly and left.



Chapter Two



“…Our school, to me, is just another example of how this entire species called humans depend on basis, a set time. They need that pathetic, ritualistic life in order to be happy. Bells must all ring precisely on time, lunch must always come. To me, it is a waste of precious life. It’s always seemed awkward to me to call ourselves, “human.” This gives us a set name, that we are, were, and always shall be, which I’ll never believe is accurate. All of existence is relative. We’ll never ever comprehend its entirity, partially because of this. We are never the same, ever. You, reader, before picking up this book, were different, in that you had no yet read my book, but right now, you are aware of what happenings I have just told you about. My point is, ever moment, life shifts its gears like a bicycle, all of reality as we know it has changed, and the larger amounts of time in which change has occurred, the more obvious it is to us. That is how scientists recognize evolution of living things…”

I sat there in English class, draining myself of thoughts in to an old journal, which was almost full. I knew it was soon to buy another one. My serene thoughts were scratched out suddenly when Chris McGraw entered the room with his usual abnoxous nature.

“Fuck dude, I’ll slit her throat! I swear that fuckin gypsy is up to somethin!” Chris said with his surfaced idiocy and racist self. His nostrils flared like an exhaust pipe on a hot rod. I rolled my eyes lazily and buried my head in my arms like an ostrich, intent on pretending not to exist for the time being. Chris kept going on about how our English teacher, Ms. Mudd. She was a young, intelligent, beautiful woman who was a bit on the bohemian side, a style which was appealing to me.

The rest of the class arrived momentarily, as did Ms. Mudd. She walked in with a slightly heightened speed, and an uneasy, almost limpid quality about her mood. She addressed the class, revealing to me the reasons planted beneath her.

“Ok, guys. Before we start, I think we should talk about what most of you probably have already heard. It’s true… I’m a Wiccan…” She bowed her head, and raised it, as if responding to a random noise. “This does not make me a bad person, or a bad teacher, or a dangerous one either. We live in a free country, and are free to religious practice of our choosing. Now, are there any questions before I move on?”

Chris jumped at this opportunity. “Yeah, I was wondering if you could turn this asshole into a toad, cuzz he owes me 10 bucks.” He threw his thumb clumsily in the direction of some faceless jock. The class laughed, all except for a few students, myself included. Ms. Mudd stood there with a hurt look, trying to hold back tears.

“And…others?” she said between the lump in her throat.

“Yes, I have a question.” It was Kitty James, a shy girl whom no one ever really talks to. “Are Wiccans able to tell the future?” A low moan of chuckles stirred within the room, but Kitty’s face was serious.

“Well, there are ways to, yes, Kitty---“ was her response.

“What do you think of this day?” I asked suddenly with a numb sounding voice. The class was silent. Ms. Mudd stared blankly into space, as if creased at the centerfold of her attention. There was a 15 second pause, and she responded.

“I-I…see me after class, Mr. Forrester,” she turned her back to me in a final sleek glance, sort of trying to sink the spade deeper into my layers, and assure me that she meant well. “Are there any other questions?” was her ending line of the topic.

Class dragged on. We were reading, in class, 1984 by George Orwell, a novel noe of them could be able to grasp. 1984, in its entirity, was a phenomenon of such incredible proportions. We discussed the obvious elements of the work. We discussed Orwell’s stunning prediction of the world being broken into three separate superpowers, the manipulation and everlasting dominance of the Brotherhood, etc, etc. But, the thing I always loved and noticed about this novel, was the underlying moral, which we never touched in class. It was that we, as a society, are losing all the elements that make us human beings, through exposure to propaganda and government control. This was evident in the book when people’s actual ability to think is erased. If you are familiar with this book, you probably know what I am referring to. But, the underlying philosophy I drew from this is that humanity is on a gradual downfall.

I realized this entire downward spiral started in the formation of communication. When we started to speak, we expressed our emotions and thoughts into concrete understanding. But, our feelings are so intense, and so complex, that we could never express them into mere words. Words are just empty symbols there to settle confusion. Little-by-little, language has sunk into our thought patterns, and although language has served as an actual direction to our thoughts, it cripples them to mold to the, oh, so limited amount of words, sounds, and expressions a language includes. I think to myself, often, how incredible our species could be, if that basis did not exist, how unimaginably brilliant.

Class soon ended, and I reached down to pick up my bag, which I had covered with an assortment of materials and patches. School was out, so I was in no hurry to get my talk with Ms. Mudd over with. I walked up the aisle and stood in front of her.

“You wanted to talk?” I asked almost in a withdrawn shyness to my voice.

“Sit down, Gertrude,” was her reply. I did so in the nearest desk. She sat down in her oversized teachers’ desk as well.

“What do you think of them? This, freshly grown crop of rumors spread about the school, Gertrude? I’m sure you’ve heard much of them.”

“Well…I really don’t know what to think. I’ve never been one to listen or take part in the whole rendition of spreading rumors. But that’s all they are, right? Plain old conspiracies?” I looked up into her big brown eyes.

“In a way, Gertrude, they are never just conspiracies. Would you agree?” I gave her a perplexed look. “Okay. Think of it this way. Living things as they evolve, adapt to fit their surroundings. Cactuses evolved to survive with little water because they live in the desert. Fish have grown with fins and gills because they live in water. Following?” In nodded with an intrigued eye. “Well, humans are the exact same way. Live, existence, the moment, is such a relative idea, that it is so obvious man has always been troubled by the meaning behind it. But, we become accustomed to things, and standards are set, including conspiracies. It is my belief, Gertrude that 99% of reality is within our separate minds. For example, we believe, as a mass, that the sky is blue, grass is green. It’s a known fact, right?” I nodded understandingly. “Well, if we all started saying the sky was green and the grass is blue, so it would be. Humans see and hear what they want to. If they want to believe rumors, those rumors become a truth, almost…”

“Not exactly a truth, but an acceptance of a truth. There is no specific truth, I think. Because truth is something that is defined as specific reality, would you agree, Ms Mudd?” I was inspired to spill my thoughts.

“Yes, go on,” she replied.

“Well, you believe in reincarnation. That’s what Wiccans believe right?”

“More or less.”

“Well, someone else, say a Christian, will say we go to heaven or hell when we die. What makes your explanations more significant than theirs? Or vice-versa? Our opinions, explanations, even our thoughts are so insignificant in the scheme of things, that there is no telling if there is a truth, or not, or a single truth. Whatever we belive, we still die just the same, so it doesn’t really matter much.

“You may be right, Gertrude.” She sat there with her head resting in her porcelainesque head, like a planet resting comfortably in the hands of time, cradled, twirling like a basketball on the fingertip. My mind was drifting on her image.

“All I’m saying…is that truth is relative…” were the words I seemed to come up with, for I was mesmerized by her beauty. She leaned forward then and placed her dainty hands on my cheeks, holding my head gently as she had her own.

“You are an amazing person, Gertrude,” she whispered in my ear. The she cocked her head to the side, and pressed her lips to mine and kissed me, thirsting, begging for my own reply, as I slid my fingers slowly up the back of her neck affectionately.

She suddenly stopped, removing my hand from her neck.

“I’m sorry, Gertrude. You’re my student, even though we have but three years age difference.” She lowered her head shamefully.

“My love…” I reached for her.

“No, Gertrude…No…”



Chapter Three



“…Why, Journal? Is it me who drove her away?… We’ve been somewhat flirtatious all school year, a vague, hard-to-get flirtation. Why now, right when it has ripened to its peak, must it stale? Can’t it not plateau, prolong? Why, Journal? Is it me who drove her away…?”

I sat in my large, overly soft Papasan chair in my dark, dense room, writing about the afternoon. Dinner was over, and my family had gone to bed I looked up slowly from my work, draining of words to write. I looked around my ambient room. I could feel it, become it. The Beethoven symphony in the background mixed me well, blended me in, vagued the obvious, the incense burned, smoke thickening the brooding, drowsy atmosphere. The dim light, smoothing out the corners of every certainty. I saw all the artwork on my four walls, strange surreal images I had created all myself. I thought to myself, “What a mind, to conceive such a crop of work, what a strange, creepy, incredible mind I had.”

I was a night owl, and I loved it. I was like a vampire of every enchantment, when the sun went to sleep, my coffin door slowly lifted, to reveal my real self. I tried to put Ms. Mudd’s face out of my mind, to look at her superficially. She was right. That line between teacher and student mustn’t be bent or snapped, or faded…

I thought about the day, the real matter that I knew should be of higher priority. The rumors. I had talked to a friend of mine online, Justin Grange. He was Wiccan, like Ms. Mudd, and a genius with computers. They were two traits you’d never think to see within the same person. He was a very intelligent and intense character.

Anyway, Justin had heard much of the same rumors that the teachers were up to something. He had some interesting stories, such as the lunch ladies supposedly putting ex-lax in the food, strangely no one was hitting the toilets after lunch though. The janitors, also, supposedly stole clothes out of school lockers late last night. It seemed to me, that this whole warped conspiracy had become a dull, familiar dogma. It had started when Mr. Ferris, a grumpy old music teacher of 65 years, yelled at some students for smoking outside his house.

Justin and I shared many interesting ideas about the whole thing. Normally, it was never an interest to us to think of such idiotic cliché high school rumors. But, we did not focus our thoughts upon the rumors, rather the people believing them. I mentioned to him that an organized society relies upon basis, ant these rumors shall soon become a basis. People will just come to believe and know as a fact that the faculty is the student body’s perpetual opponent. It will become a neutral basis that people will simply believe as truth. Racism was the same way. We cannot have order without racism, because then there is no comfort within a single environment. Racism is a very unnatural, synthetic concept, which is why I also declared to him that we, as a species of nature, are bred into chaos. Order never works, nor is it natural.

He mentioned then, that chaos means ignorance, as well. But, in my own opinion, chaos is not ignorance, chaos is confusion, which is already an overwhelming ambience to the human mind. We will always be within chaos about existence and reality, or lack of. Ignorance is vacancy. Chaos can never be vacant, for chaos requires knowledge in order to be chaotic.

All of these thoughts swarmed my mind like bees to a hive. I lit a cigarette and dragged on it deeply. I got up from the nest-like chair and turned on the tube, slowly revealing a Seinfeld rerun. I quickly turned it off and sat on my bed. I read my book and smoked my cigarette and went to bed.

As the fatigue soon drugged me, I was soon asleep, and descended deep into the same immortal plot. I was dreaming. Fear drenched my salivating mind as I saw the man, no neither bigger nor older than I did, in an SS uniform. I was soon to find out he was Adolph Hitler, and I was the Jew. I was abused, battered, almost killed until the Russians came and freed me. He was a monster, a merciless monster suddenly parted from his tight fist of control.

It was modern-day, and yet we both had not aged a moment. Hitler was beaten, battered, abused his entire life, and on the verge of death as two 700-pound wrestlers pounded him mercilessly with large objects. The crowd was unbelievably intense, jeering the dictator and cheering on the beating. His entire life up until now had been like this, and in one sick, morbid moment, I may have felt mercy, for him.



Chapter 4



I woke up in utter perplexity, drenched in sweat. I could feel the dream, still moist within my mouth. I could feel it slowly fade, slip away into the oblivion of forgotten memories. I had a huge cramp in the back of my neck, as if my spine had turned to wood, refusing to move without rasping out in pain.

The time. What was it?

It was still dark out, and the clock said four o’clock. The squeezing fuzz of fatigue gripped me hard, as I smiled with sweet relief. I turned over, soaking in the thick comfort of my bed. My mind slipped slowly back into a thrust of flowing statements, making absolutely no sense, and the piercing wail of surreal forms in my head. They were the things that willed me: nonsense and surreality.



**********************************



It was nothing. The radio was burst wide open with the voice of Howard Stern. My ventures had passed. I got up and got in the shower, lazily rubbing the shrunken bar of soap into my skin. The kink in my neck still dwelled, recovering the memories of the nightmare. Had I actually felt MERCY for the one person in all of history I loathed the most? It was the most unorthodox feeling I had ever felt.

“Obviously, Hitler committed suicide, making the dream historically inaccurate, and Hitler would never have been at a concentration camp. But these factors are irrelevant, really.” I mumbled these words without voice to myself.

It was as if I was the one, single insane person upon this earth, alone upon my plateau of pure unreason. I was the negative ion, suffocated by the positive ions, outnumbered. I felt like Alice, on the opposite end of the looking glass, peering back, as everyone enjoyed, lived, breathed the only true reality.

Maybe that was how it was between myself and the student body at school. It made perfect sense, I was the negative space, the undeveloped film exposed to the light. It was all clear. The mercy I felt, last night, was a representation of myself, the living irony, black within a sea of white.

On the bus, indulged with the sweet milk of music in my head set, I spoke briefly with Clark, who rode the same bus route.

“Did you hear about the teachers? They’re all against us. It’s us and them, Gertrude.” I felt the clammy superficiality of our friendship slowly unwind and disappear, a very awkward feeling.

“You actually believe that? I mean, it seems a bit irrational, don’t you think?”

“Have two thousand people every been wrong?” I didn’t even touch that question.

At school, I seemed to be the only skeptic. How had such an idiotic rumor been spread so abundantly, and at such an amazing rate? It was absolutely baffling. Now, I must go on with my story, but I must warn you, it does get very intense and quite gory.

I made my way to the cafeteria, for it was lunchtime. The thick, hot fog of the crowd swallowed me up, drowning me. There seemed to be an unusual, impending unfriendliness, more than before, like a dominant cold shoulder, cutting me off, distantly suspending me, transforming me into nothing. It was as if they could read my mind. I was a simple void in the raw matter of the pervading rumors, which had spread amongst them all like poisonous gas. We entered the café, one by one, two by two. I sat down by myself at a vacant table and ate the sandwich I had made myself the night before.

The chaotic storm of conversation flooded the room, as the hundreds of students mingled about this and that. I focused my eavesdropping thoughts upon the table closest to mine. Phil Chattam sat, ignoring a crude plate of cheap nachos he had purchased. He was focusing his anger and rage upon a girl by the name of Vicky Robinson. She was a girl of 16, the same age as me. She was pretty, tall, and somewhat popular. One thing I always liked about her was her unrelenting logic and free thought. She was in my geometry class last year, and my algebra class this year. We never really talked, but I seemed to take notice of her every once in a while.

“You’re actually taking their side, Vick!?” Phil plunged his question upon her.

“What makes you think these idiotic rumors are true, anyway?! If you ask me, I feel sorry for them. You know how horrible it is, dealing with rumors?” she retaliated fearlessly.

Then Phil answered her with the most shocking thing to her, the most unpredictable answer I ever would have expected. When he said these words, I could see that they were now all the same, completely slave to the idea of the faculty here being an enemy to the student body. At that moment, it had all made sense to me now.

“Have two thousand people ever been wrong?!” he answered. They were the same words I had heard from Clark, concluding everything for me, answering every unbalanced question. Vicky stood up and slapped him across the face. She had lost her temper, and he had, too. He stood up and lunged at her in the form of a football player, a linebacker. It had drawn nearly the entire cafeteria’s attention, now, as Phil sat on her helpless body. He punched her square in the jaw. The crunch of bone breaking sizzled through my head like electricity through a carcass. He grabbed a plastic fork from upon the table as the crowd cheered him on, and sank it into her left eye. She cried in dizzying pain, flailing her arms at him desperately. He got up and kicked her in the side one last time.

Mr. Zanithcus came running, as two security guards grabbed Phil by both arms. He struggled, fighting their grasp. Mr. Zanithcus knelt down in an extremely concerned fashion aside Vicky’s defeated body. He got up slowly, took off his sports jacket, and placed it over her face, solemnly. The crowd gasped suddenly as he began telling them off.



Chapter 5





I fled. I realized if she had been killed, I was sure to be next, eliminated, exterminated like a cock-roach infesting a clean home. I exited the café out the far door, leading outside, and ran across the parking lot. I saw a car in the distance heading out, toward my direction. I tried to ignore it. Where was I to go? The startling cold of winter forced me into shivers, making my side cramp up. The car drew nearer as I kept running. I was half way across the parking lot, as the car pulled up, a 1995 Ford Taurus. Ms. Mudd sat behind the wheel, and waved her hand for me to enter the car. I opened the door and joined her. The smooth heat of the car stifled my shivers, as I sighed calmly. “We have to get out of here,” she said with an overly-serious attitude, “I saw the episode, and knew the rumors had taken over this town. You knew too…didn’t you…?” I nodded slowly. “We have to get out of here!”

“Where shall we go?” I asked, for her actions made very little sense to me. A nervous flush paled my senses. My future, my life was here. It’s as if I’m erasing everything I’ve built for myself.

“As far from here as possible…you and I…Trust me, Gertrude. They will kill us, too, eventually.” I knew she was right. These rumors were not like any other. They were an epidemic, slowly consuming everything. My life, up until now, had been dull, sheltered. Now I was sitting safe between the strong jaws of the Taurus, on our way to nowhere fast.

She turned on the cassette player and turned up the volume. I recognized the soft, melancholy sound of The Cure.

“You have wonderful taste, Ms. Mudd.” I looked up from my knees to her eyes.

“It’s Bianca, and thanks.”

“You’re welcome…Bianca…” The name dwelled thick on the sweetest tips of my taste buds. Bianca. The line between teacher and pupil was blurred, I felt.

She spoke, “I once wrote a story, Gertrude, about a man who hung himself on his 100th birthday. He reminded me so much of you, in my own mind…Not that I think you’d kill yourself…but, the man was in such despair, lost in deep insanity, engulfed in philosophical thought…I hope, one day, Gertrude, I see the day when I turn a hundred…”