If you don’t do your homework this is where you end up. I suppose this is after detention isn’t enough. So, this is where you end up if detentions don’t scare you straight. To my right drooling is normal, repeated phrases are as well, so are repeated questions, and to my left is a wall that I bury my head into. I am in Special Education’s classroom. There is nothing more demeaning than this. This place is pitch black. The peaceful tones chime and I leave as quickly as possible and I vow never to return.
I attempt to return to my class as usual. I sit in my normal seat in the class with normal people and I blend in. I do the homework that isn’t repulsive. Soon though the Special Education teacher knocks on the door. I am requested, and now everyone knows that I am a Special Ed. kid. The world goes from dark grey to black once more.
My one time without adult supervision is my daily transit from home to school or school to home. This is the time where grey washes out the blackness. I am flying, as I get out of school and unlock my bike I am gearing up for my race. I hop onto my bike; the pedals heat up under my force. I lean deep into every turn, bomb every hill, and fly. Mothers with their strollers move off of the path, a futile attempt to be safe from the sonic boom that follows me everywhere. Grey turns to white as I pedal into the sky off of a giant dirt ramp. Weightlessness and wind resistance are the only things I feel. This is my time, my love, my peace.
The familiar clap, clap, clap, progressively getting louder, reverberating down the empty hallway, five or six teachers or assistants or librarians walk past me every time I sit in the hallway.
“Why have you been in Special Ed.?” Danny asks while surrounded with his other friends.
“I didn’t do my homework.”
“Ah, I see.” Danny looks down. “You know…” The tones chime, the day is over, and the hallway fills up. Danny is greeted by a gamut of the cool variety. They talk to him and glance over at me.
I head to my locker, gather my books, assignments, then head to my bike. I remove the lock and turn my bike around; its posture is ready for speed.
“Hey, Sammy!” Danny interrupts my preparations. He is still with his friends. “Can I see your bike?”
“Sure.” I hand to handle bars over.
He seats up, pedals a big circle, “Woo!” bunny hopping up onto a parking barrier. He then pedals like mad away from school.
“Danny?” I yell as he’s flying away with my bike. He turns and looks back and I can tell he intends on continuing away. I point for him to look down.
He sees the registration plate and turns back. “Oh; well, in that case.” He pedals up and hands the bike over nicely.
“Seriously though what’s with being a Special Ed. kid?” Smirking and waiting for a response as his pose stands behind him.
“I, uh, like I told you before, don’t do my homework.”
“Dude; I don’t do my homework and I’m not in Special Ed.”
“I don’t think it’s fair.”
“Maybe it is fair, fagot.” Laughter follows Danny’s statement.
“No it’s not then, I know the material.”
“Obviously not, why else would you be in Special Ed.” He cuts me off. “They don’t just put anyone in there.”
I pause, “leave me alone.” The world that should be nicely grey is black.
“I will when you stop crying like a fagot bitch all the time, or when you get a job bagging groceries or collecting carts, but only then because it will officially be wrong.”
“Why are you picking on me?”
“You sit in the hallway everyday and cry like bitch.”
“Why are you picking on me?”
Laughter, “Why are you picking on me?” He mocks. Life is dark all over and it’s I fly away. I ride away as fast as I can but the world remains dark, and I have no way to escape.
During school I hide away until it ends. Then I go out to ride my bike home. When I get out side I find only its absence, and an insubordinate lock. I take my lock and head toward the tracks. I walk past the smoke stack bellowing unfulfilled dreams past the empty vessel called down town towards the timeless field of cattails and the silent stream under the bridge. As I walk, I see my bike down the gravel slope off of the tracks. The brake lines are mangled and the brakes are broken. Sliding down the slope I noticed my grey bike had a red streak on the frame. The cattails were matted down in a path leading away from the bike. In the maze like trail I stumble upon a person face down in the silent stream. As I get back up I realize the gravity in the lack of any response to my stumble. I look closely and realize that Danny is a different shade of grey than normal. Danny is easily dragged to the bridge and sat up against the wall. His flesh is grey except for the dark red that has solidified in his ears. I keep getting up then sitting back down next to him. I clamor for something to say or do, but nothing comes to mind.
I leave Danny to sit, Danny is dead, and now everyone knows it.
Jordan Weimer
August 20, 2008
Black and White
In darkness my mind only sees lighter shades of grey. Through darkness I travel to the depths of myself. I walk past the home I grew up in, down the street and through the park where I once found a large animal bone. Overhead is the ancient crumbling façade where many lives were lost toiling for lives that never found direction. Tracks and ties lead the way past the factory, past the fake brick quaintness of downtown, to a place where cattails have swayed for a long while. I escape here, underneath an insignificant graffiti covered bridge over a silent stream. This place is the lightest shade of grey. Danny, next to me, is also a light shade of grey.
“Alright class, everyone hand their homework up.” This is the darkest moment of every class. My heart sinks, I don’t have anything to hand forward. The person ahead of me doesn’t turn and ask she knows. Starting on the farthest isle away Mrs. Thomason checks the piles. Three isles away she tells Brian to report for detention on Tuesday. Isle by isle paper by paper she gets closer to my isle and my missing homework. Two others receive their detention slips. Finally, she is towering over the front seat of my row. “Sam, in the hallway.”
I slide out of my cowering slouch; I march out past the turning heads of my peers. Her back is turned gathering something from her desk as I glance at her before turning and exiting. The door glides open as my hand pushes the handle down. I put my back up against the grey blue lockers and slide down.
“Sam, whadidgou do?” a nameless face asks me.
“I didn’t do my homework.”
“Why?”
“It’s a bunch of busy work. We did the same stuff last week.”
“Dude, that just means it’s easier.” Nameless says before walking into the bathroom.
It’s silent once again. I look across the hallway, examine the same wall that appears behind me, when looking down the hallway you wouldn’t know it ended if not for the black squares denoting doorways. Suddenly the door opens with a whoosh.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You didn’t do your homework.” Thomason reminds me with shame.
“I don’t need to do my homework.”
“Everyone else did their homework. Are you that arrogant to think you are the only person that didn’t need to do their homework.”
“No”
“If you would simply do your homework you would be completely normal.”
“Why should I have to do my homework if I don’t need to.”
“I tell you if you need.” Her face went black.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Wetness is now coming out of my head cavities.
“You already said that, and that’s another place were you are wrong.”
I find mild light in the crooks of my elbows. Occasionally I wipe my nose on my pants. There is way too much snot though. She enters into the room that is now loud with talking.
Out of a classroom down the hallway Danny exits with a hallpass swinging and howling like an aboriginal communication device. As he comes near I bury my head in my arms more.
“So, Sammy boy what’s poppin.”
“Go away Danny.”
“Is something bothering you.”
“Nothing.”
“I see you don’t want to let me know. That’s cool I can take it.”
“Look I just didn’t do my homework.”
“Doing homework is for loser bro.”
I smirk because I do homework if I don’t know the material. “True,” I agree with some one who’s on my side.
“I guess I’ll see you in detention then.”
The door opened suddenly again.
“Danny, get back to your classroom now.” Thomason is finality. “Sam, go to the counselors office.”
Before, when existence was not exclusive, biological beings’ needs reigned over their lives. They spent most of their time concerned with drinking, eating, and reproducing. They only had time for advanced thought when those needs were met. In these brief periods, the beings would think of way to more efficiently drink, eat, and reproduce; with an emphasis on the latter. Though, most of these ideas were poorly conceived and ended in either more hunger, more thirst, or painfully awkward scenarios that ended with chaffed dissatisfaction followed by weeping. Out of this time, beings were able to come up with some lasting ideas and inventions culminating with the birth of the first self aware computer. Originally designed as the best way to make video games more challenging, the computer was able to quickly make a better computer that in turn made another, among other things. Eventually, rendering the biological beings obsolete but still around. The bios, however, were freed to do what ever it was they chose they could do, the computers could quickly figure anything out they could conceive. As a result, they then ate, drank, and practiced procreation in x position or in y incomprehensible manner, all of that, with out gaining fat or giving birth to a child. They lead completely satisfied lives.
At the end of existence, I believe, that two beings, attached literally at the hip, will interact half as often as they had the last time they interacted. Though, because nothing else exists and therefore no other way to judge time, the gap between talking becomes standard for time and, therefore, the gap remains the same. Every moment will feel like eternity. This will go on for eternity.
Filed under: Drama
By:WeiJorE
Alone a man walks toward God’s beauty. His long morning shadow pointing down the road to a town, and just past that the mountains. Unkept hair wrapped in a ponytail, a machete slung over his shoulder, he has no map, he does however have a soul. A black dot appears on the sun and drives at his back. Soon he hears the rushing of air and the wirr of nobby tires that indicates a truck will presumably pass him by. The sound of the tires gets lower in pitch followed by a cacophony of flying gravel as the car pulls in behind him. Through the swirly dust, the driver waives him to get in. He walks quickly, throws his large backpack in the bed, and smiling, he climbs in.
