|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:51 am
The clock burns its numbers into his eyes, ever black number clearly visible even when he closes his eyes. He stares at the second hands with the intensity of a maelstrom, urging them to go faster. For the day to be over. For today to be the next day. For tomorrow to be next week. Time does not go fast enough for the ones that had no desire to live in the present. 2:47:33, 2:47:34, 2:47:35.
But the clock is steadfast, and doesn't pass any faster. Very little in this world bends for the will of one. Still, Leslie counts them, every time the second hand ticks.
He tastes freedom on his tongue, and doesn't think about the fact that the bell ringing is trading one prison for another. Leslie is young and wild and ferocious: and he is dumb and ignorant and vicious. There is a great deal he does not know, and his desire to hear this fact is nil to zero.
A buzz in the air means that his worthless teacher is talking, again, and it might even be at him. Leslie lets the words wash over him, roll past his mind, and he tunes them out entirely. He's failing, so what does it ******** matter? Nothing she has to say is important: history is for the people to afraid to live, cowering in the shadows of the past, remorseful and guilty of sins that they chose to make their own.
Besides. If that fat b***h knew anything at all, then she wouldn't be a teacher in this shithole now, would she? With his head against the table and his hood drawn over his head, Leslie's eyes doggedly stare at the clock. They're tired eyes, red rimmed from exhaustion and the holdover from his last high. The pleasant dregs have slipped away, now. 2:48:33, 2:48:34, 2:48:35.
Before the bell rings, students pack up en masse, like a herd of buffalo ready to begin the stampede. It's an accurate descrption. Cellphones, shitty or stolen or maybe both, are shoved back into pockets and backpacks. Notebooks and pencils are stashed, the half-hearted notes filed away. The homework on the board, read pages 30 through 66 in Chapter 10: Europe in the Middle Ages, is ignored. There are probably some students that give a s**t, but they are few and far between.
2:49:57, 2:49:58, 2:50:00. The bell rings.
Leslie shoulders the strap of his backpack, weaving between his classmates, shoving into them if he has to. He's picked a fight over less. He's lost over less, too, but he fights all the time. It's enough to get them moving. His mothers words ring in his ear, all the way out the door.
That school is where success goes to die.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:05 am
"That school of yours is where success goes to die, Leslie," his mother says. (Her hair is still in curlers, and she's perpetually in a bedraggled bath robe. She is falling apart at the seams and trying to pretend that she isn't. They pretend, too, for her sake.) "You're going to live up to that, if you keep this up. Maybe if you hadn't been expelled from Summerfield you wouldn't be in this situation, and here you are, getting suspended. Again."
Again. Again. Suspended again, as if appending just one word could explain everything about him and nothing at all in a single utterance. He tunes her out, sprawled out in the dining room on a chair that doesn't have a matching partner. He taps his fingers against the bare wood of the table.
His mother is a dumb b***h that doesn't know anything, because the real world is too grim for her to bear. She wraps herself up in her ideas, and when they collide with reality, it gets ugly, because she gets so sad.
"You're going to drive your father to drink, Leslie, and you're making me sick from all the stress, have you thought of that?"
He hadn't, and they all know his father does a lot more than just drink. But they pretend, because his mother will drag herself from room to room in tears, wandering like a lost spectre until he apologises and takes it all back. Again, again. There's that word again.
"Your father, you know, he tries so hard to provide for you and your brother." He doesn't. "You disrespect us both, no, you know what, you disrespect the entire family by not even trying. Do you even care, Leslie?"
They don't talk about his brother, either, who abandoned ship two years ago. They both know what he's doing, and what the tattoos across his wrists mean, but he's free and Leslie needs that so much. His wings haven't been clipped, because he has none at all.
"You're never going to do anything if you don't change, Leslie," she says and her tone is high and reedy. The tears begin. "You're better than this," his mother pleads, dabbing at her eyes daintily with the sides of her pinkies, "please. Leslie."
She has begged him time and time again, and nothing has changed. It's all Leslie can do is tap his fingers like he's unaffected, because if he stops, the spring coiled tight around his heart will burst into motion. Sometimes Leslie dreams of just burning up in this chair, from the inside out, leaving nothing behind but ash.
If he reacts, it will be the kind of thing that breaks the things they cannot afford to replace. The kind that goes on for long, agonizing minutes that cannot be controlled. The kind that gets him cuffed in the head because he doesn't snap out of it, his brother smashing his face into the table and muttering for him to calm his f*****t a** down.
He taps his fingers against the table, and saves the resentment in his heart for school, for shoplifting, for petty theft, for anything but this.
This is his home, and it is rough edges and shattered glass that gouge into him. This is his home, and it is broken enough without his help.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:19 am
He remembers that his home is broken, and that its inhabitants don't need his help destroying it any further.
"Yeah," he says, "of course I'm ******** sure." It is a lie, but god knows Leslie can fake it till he makes it, so he sneers at the guy in a wheelchair who had only come because he thought Leslie was a girl.
Offer power to the hopeless and they do not know to take it. Offer power to the weak and they do not know how to wield it. Offer power to the powerless and they are so afraid that you might just take it back.
Leslie is all three, but they tell him that he never has to come back, and his heart swells. The man, he realises, is offering him a new lease on life. A one in a million chance to start over, like the start of some movie. It's as if this beat up life of his still has the tag, and he has the receipt, and it's all ready to be returned.
No. No, it's better than that. It's like a warranty, because he's being given the chance to destroy this life, to nuke it from ******** orbit, and never come back. Because he'll get a new one. For free.
"I'm not some wishy washy c**t, all right? I'm in. I'm ******** in. Tell me what I gotta do."
Well bargained and done: a deal signed for the promise of a sacrifice in blood. That is what it means, to be a hunter, a fact he does not grasp and likely never will.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
