Dream / Two.
The setting is blue in the morning like when the sun first starts to come up.
The school I am attending does not look very recognizable as any I've attended before, which worries me, because even the people here are strangers, and my stomach is feeling weak. There is a large walkway towering above another just below; a construction similar in device to overlapping highway systems, but the flow of traffic is nothing like it because there isn't any respect for direction where the students are concerned. The lower walkway borders a shimmering, stone laden creek, rushing as it is, louder than the chatter of the kids pushing past each other below or beside me. It doesn't seem financially safe to have a body of water so close to high school students without a fence of some kind raised between them. Shouldn't that alarm insurance providers?
I am leaning against the banister of the upper walkway, pushed up against my arms, surveying a wide view of odd motions before me. The backpack I am wearing is heavy with a timed bomb I did not construct. It's shape is not unlike a textbook, so it rests flat against my back, and but for the weight is not really all that uncomfortable. All morning I've been feeling kind of worried about when the bomb might be set to explode, wondering what I should do with it, and if it can be traced back to me should the devastion be deemed criminally punishable. Watching the water from the creek glinting with marvelous sunlight (it's so beautiful here in the morning), I wonder if the bomb is liquid-sensitive, and if I can avoid it being set off if the whole thing is thoroughly submersed in and clogged with water. My skin is crawling with worry, and there's nobody around who I feel safe to correspond with about it.
Some girl brushes past me. Her eyes have this really bright hazel thing that is disturbingly pretty, and I perceive that having a bomb in my backpack makes it definite that I'm not likely to have a chance with her. I actually picture her rolling her eyes if I told her about it. But she smiles at me as she passes and I'm just thinking, "She doesn't look familiar to me at all."
Two students near the creek are engaged in a heated conversation, and before I really notice it they've begun flailing their fists at one another. They are very young, possibly sixteen or seventeen; I don't know who they are. Their fists become entangled and before much can be done to thwart the awesome forces of bastard gravity, they are both crashing against the stones in the creek, which is only half of a foot deep next to where they were standing on the walkway. I think I can hear somebody crying out. Those stones probably hurt a lot more than hands do.
The boy with blonde hair is the first to rise, and once he has a sure enough foothold against the slippery stones, he puts one of his sneakers into the other one's soft wet side, and for sure this time I hear a scream. The boy still face down in the water, who is now buckling up from the agony of such a hard kick, pulls his face from the waves and tries to lift himself up.
But he never gets so much as another decent of anything, because while he was struggling the blonde boy quickly lifted a large piece of shattered rock (about the size of his own head plus another half of the skull), bringing it down hard on the other's back. It rolls off him more than it bounces, with a very soft thud, and then the boy lying down is completely silent, his face slipping back into the cold prettiness of the creek. He doesn't move.
Of the few kids left watching the sudden battle, only one of them has pulled himself out of shock enough to jump into the creek to break this fight up. He pushes the blonde out of the way with what looks like the heroic gusto of a Hollywood actor, kneeling down on his delicately scripted haunches beside the kid who just had his back smashed in. By the pained look on the young hero-too-late's face, the outlook is grim. I can't see too much of what is happening though, because a small silent crowd is gathering around the three, and when the interloper jumps up again to turn to the blonde to speak I can't hear a single word of what is said.
But there isn't much time for conversation anyway, as the blonde has yet another impossibly large stone in his hand, this one even bigger than the first, and he hurls it straight at the kid's face with strength a boy of his size should not have possessed. The hero's hands go straight to his forehead, covering his eyes and nose and mouth from my view, and falls, straight as a plankboard, backward into the water, hitting his head against more stones jutting out from the softly rising waves. There's an orchestra on the other side of the creek, in the brush where the forest begins, and they stop playing once the creek begins to stream a bright red where it meets with that boy. The blonde is still standing there, his clothes soaked, staring up at the mountains near the skyline when the bell rings for class.
The delivery of those strikes against his peers had a very malicious drive to them. His hair was messy even before the scuffle; his clothes the same. I wonder if he was just a bad seed since birth or if that fight really had some kind of merit. Sometimes I think destiny plagues some very important people.
The school I am attending does not look very recognizable as any I've attended before, which worries me, because even the people here are strangers, and my stomach is feeling weak. There is a large walkway towering above another just below; a construction similar in device to overlapping highway systems, but the flow of traffic is nothing like it because there isn't any respect for direction where the students are concerned. The lower walkway borders a shimmering, stone laden creek, rushing as it is, louder than the chatter of the kids pushing past each other below or beside me. It doesn't seem financially safe to have a body of water so close to high school students without a fence of some kind raised between them. Shouldn't that alarm insurance providers?
I am leaning against the banister of the upper walkway, pushed up against my arms, surveying a wide view of odd motions before me. The backpack I am wearing is heavy with a timed bomb I did not construct. It's shape is not unlike a textbook, so it rests flat against my back, and but for the weight is not really all that uncomfortable. All morning I've been feeling kind of worried about when the bomb might be set to explode, wondering what I should do with it, and if it can be traced back to me should the devastion be deemed criminally punishable. Watching the water from the creek glinting with marvelous sunlight (it's so beautiful here in the morning), I wonder if the bomb is liquid-sensitive, and if I can avoid it being set off if the whole thing is thoroughly submersed in and clogged with water. My skin is crawling with worry, and there's nobody around who I feel safe to correspond with about it.
Some girl brushes past me. Her eyes have this really bright hazel thing that is disturbingly pretty, and I perceive that having a bomb in my backpack makes it definite that I'm not likely to have a chance with her. I actually picture her rolling her eyes if I told her about it. But she smiles at me as she passes and I'm just thinking, "She doesn't look familiar to me at all."
Two students near the creek are engaged in a heated conversation, and before I really notice it they've begun flailing their fists at one another. They are very young, possibly sixteen or seventeen; I don't know who they are. Their fists become entangled and before much can be done to thwart the awesome forces of bastard gravity, they are both crashing against the stones in the creek, which is only half of a foot deep next to where they were standing on the walkway. I think I can hear somebody crying out. Those stones probably hurt a lot more than hands do.
The boy with blonde hair is the first to rise, and once he has a sure enough foothold against the slippery stones, he puts one of his sneakers into the other one's soft wet side, and for sure this time I hear a scream. The boy still face down in the water, who is now buckling up from the agony of such a hard kick, pulls his face from the waves and tries to lift himself up.
But he never gets so much as another decent of anything, because while he was struggling the blonde boy quickly lifted a large piece of shattered rock (about the size of his own head plus another half of the skull), bringing it down hard on the other's back. It rolls off him more than it bounces, with a very soft thud, and then the boy lying down is completely silent, his face slipping back into the cold prettiness of the creek. He doesn't move.
Of the few kids left watching the sudden battle, only one of them has pulled himself out of shock enough to jump into the creek to break this fight up. He pushes the blonde out of the way with what looks like the heroic gusto of a Hollywood actor, kneeling down on his delicately scripted haunches beside the kid who just had his back smashed in. By the pained look on the young hero-too-late's face, the outlook is grim. I can't see too much of what is happening though, because a small silent crowd is gathering around the three, and when the interloper jumps up again to turn to the blonde to speak I can't hear a single word of what is said.
But there isn't much time for conversation anyway, as the blonde has yet another impossibly large stone in his hand, this one even bigger than the first, and he hurls it straight at the kid's face with strength a boy of his size should not have possessed. The hero's hands go straight to his forehead, covering his eyes and nose and mouth from my view, and falls, straight as a plankboard, backward into the water, hitting his head against more stones jutting out from the softly rising waves. There's an orchestra on the other side of the creek, in the brush where the forest begins, and they stop playing once the creek begins to stream a bright red where it meets with that boy. The blonde is still standing there, his clothes soaked, staring up at the mountains near the skyline when the bell rings for class.
The delivery of those strikes against his peers had a very malicious drive to them. His hair was messy even before the scuffle; his clothes the same. I wonder if he was just a bad seed since birth or if that fight really had some kind of merit. Sometimes I think destiny plagues some very important people.