Monsieur Desarde’s chalk skritchy skratched across the blackboard, carving new and pointless order out of the ancient and
pointless void,(In the beginning was the word, and the word was “Repeat”.) 18 pens traced the squiggly patterns with automaton reverence, heads hung gormlessly downwards, like puppets left unsupported, (An i for a y and the world is soon blind and without taste. Dear force of order, hear you our prayers this day, as each day before. Let the former go not undotted, the latter be left not without it’s slant. If words be the building stuff of thought, and letters then of words, let no further reduction take place, lest reality should be laid bare.) Ellis felt his own hand begin to jerk out the familiar symbols, squinted down at the page in his ring binder (Pinioned, prone. Prisoner of pronged, pricking metal. Pig’s iron, piggish iron. Half blooded metal. Poisoned, polluted. Dirty) and tried to decipher the ink stains recently stabbed out. He watched his fingers dance efficiently about it, entirely of their own volition, forming sluggish trails of glistening black as permanent as those of falling stars are brief. His blood ran cold, and he couldn’t help but wonder why? (And lead us not into confusion, but deliver us from nightmare. For thine is the greyness, the dust and the apathy, forever and ever and ever(recurring) , extended without need or purpose to cover all of artificially created eternity. An infinite dilution of passion already 12 parts water to no parts life giving disease.) With subhuman effort Ellis forced his hand to stop moving. The Earth continued to turn, the charred corpses of birds still fell, as before, and the chorus of impacting stationary went on uninterrupted, he just wasn’t a part of it anymore, his
classmates and teacher suddenly as far away as the boy waiting at the other side of the mirror.
“So the average is?” Desarde gestured to an empty cell in the roughly lined prison sketched upon the board, Ellis longed to turn it into a tic-tac-toe battle arena. The response came from a dusty blonde haired boy sitting by the door.
“5 foot 8
monsieur,”
Desarde nodded appreciatively
“Merci Luc, so the draught’s potency should be?”
He lovingly skritchied this new information into the already overflowing penitentiary, Ellis started.
“Non!” He exclaimed, his scrunched up, puzzled face a reflection of his teacher’s
“Ellis?” The older one fumbled
(Though only estranged from consensual reality’s inhabitants for a mere matter of minutes, I already felt that it would be foolish to reveal to them my new state. All effort would have to be made to ensure that I was presented as nothing more than plain, standard, mundane and infuriatingly ordinary.)
“Monsieur, that is too tall. The correct height is 5 foot 7,”
Desarde surveyed the rest of the class, all loudly petitioning for the previous figure’s retention, the thoughts of their calculators’ in agreement so perfect as can only be achieved by something mechanical, yet Ellis knew that he was correct.
“I’m sorry Ellis, but I think Luc’s answer was right,” Desarde replied to him, not without sympathy, but completely without understanding.
“But I’m 5 foot 7,” Ellis explained, his voice calm and volatile, the last of his speech was cut off by an explosive burst of laughter from Fontaine, a large boy with whom Ellis had enjoyed a particularly long and productive antipathy. In a flash he was besides his old foe, prodding 6” of malevolent rosewood into his thickly sinewed neck.
“SHUT UP! YOU’RE TOO GODDAMNED BIG!” He screamed, “And you as well,” He continued, gesturing to Avery, who had sniggered along with him, he stomped on their feet and pushed their heads down. He then marched imperiously round the classroom, pushing his classmates down or standing them up on stools and desktops, as he deemed appropriate. He got away with this for all of 3 seconds, before being overwhelmed and absorbed into the scrum of grabbing hands.
(Shut up now, open your eyees and condemn your hidden mind to a lifetime’s decay. Forget how to shine and fly, forget you ever knew. To have spirit is to be a falling star, living requires the Earth to be touched. There is no need to be alone, screaming endless streams of curses into the empty night, singing only to your own accompaniment and feeling out of tune even with that. Join the choir of billions, let your voice enhance and borrow from their glorious, silent harmony, as perfect as the dead are still. This is the paradise that awaits the unborn, a paralysis much to be desired.)
They didn’t see the world as Ellis saw it, they probably never would.