Controlled Scribbling


Hall

His eyes were dark in the brightly lit hallway. A look of disgust took his face and played on it grimly. A short smiling-faced girl bounced out of a classroom and caught him in her vision. Then she bounced over to where he was dragging his tired, reluctant body. She glowed a bit and then chirped, "What's the matter, your puppy die? - let's eat I'm starving - where you going?" "What? - oh yeah, okay," he responded from a couple thousand miles away as they walked off towards the cafeteria. His eyes seemed to sink deeper into his head as if they were searching for the thoughts that raced still deeper. She wore a constant ear-to-ear smile. She never needed a reason to wear it, just the fact that it fit on her face and was nice to look at. "What's up, why you so glum?" After a deep, dry sigh he began slowly and even more dryly, "It's this class; the teacher seems to hate me for some reason. She takes offense at everything I say and gets all over me. She asks for opinions all the time, she insists upon them, says she wants honest input, says it's an open forum. What she doesn't say is the opinions better damn well coincide with hers or your gonna get nailed to a fuckin' cross. She's a bitch." "Don't let it bother you. I wonder what the soup is today." His eyes returned to his face and lit up just long enough to register a glimpse of her. He stored the image of her smiling face in a corner of his mind, a corner that would save it faithfully until he needed to return to it. "It's not the fact that the teacher and I don't agree that bothers me. I wouldn't mind arguing and hearing her out and maybe changing my view. She just attacks and I'm wrong. If I try to explain or elaborate, she is quick to explain that I'm wasting the class's time, as well as hers, and while doing so I'm being unacceptably rude. She is a bitch. She cuts me off and sneers at me. Ugly, disgusting sneers out of her fat, pale, pitted face. She loves to go on and on, telling the class how and why I'm wrong. It is so stupid - I just want to bash her head." "Stupid, I'll tell you what's stupid - this line is stupid. I can't believe it's moving so slow. What's wrong with these people?" she inserted while he took in air. He was lost in his own dialogue and continued without noticing the line between them and the counter or the line she spoke between his rambling sentences. He continued his rantings with a growing passion. His voice was no longer slow and dry but animated and quickened. He continued, "Worse even, half the time she takes what I say out of context and changes what I'm trying to say or she will just go off on a tangent and criticize things I never even said." He began to flail about like one of those well-dressed, powerful TV lawyers. He accented key syllables of words and gestured to a jury that did not exist. She looked at him with a wider smile than she usually wore and agreed with what he was saying. She looked down through the dirty, slanted glass, "Oh that looks good, maybe I'll get that instead of the soup." He glanced down at what she was considering and he saw a pan of what he would describe as a pile of giant, heated, insect larva lubricated in phlegm. Part of his mind went off in a soft lecture to itself about how disgusting Thai food is while the part of his mind that controls his vocal chords continued on about the class he was on break from. He took in still more air "...half the class just sits around brain-dead. There is only a few people who ever say anything and it is always the same three. One is always right on the mark. He thinks just like the teacher. He's a spineless worm and probably a cum-guzzling fagot. The other two are close. She, being the supreme being she is, has to correct them and tell them what they really meant. They obviously said something a bit different but they always spinelessly agree with her warping of their sentences. She salivates in her meaningless, brown-nosed glory. I hate brown-nosing slugs. Even worse, I can't stand when people tell me, 'oh I think what you mean is...' God that pisses me off. If I meant to say something else I would have said something else." He gleamed as he reeled out words at an increasing rate. He tended to get very involved in what he was talking about while he let other parts of his mind wander and conjure up other things to reel about. His eyes came back to the front of his face and glazed themselves over a couple of times. He spoke fast now and took in air only when it was necessary. She had no idea what he was going on about but she was happy to see him in better spirits. Whatever was bothering him seemed to be making him feel better, and she always found that to be a strange reoccurring part of his personality. She enjoyed going to lunch with him. He spoke well, she thought. He had an animated voice that was nice to listen to. She rarely concerned herself with the contents of what people said to her, instead she thought more of their overall presentation. When it came to the spoken word she had a small, if not tiny, attention span. Colorful patterns danced in her head as she watched him deliver his monologue.