The Darkness Within

by Josephine McKenzie

A young girl broken by the harshness of her world both in mind and in spirit is one night attacked outside the back of her favorite refuge by a masked and black cloaked individual. Upon waking up in the apartment of one of her stripper acquaintences she f

"An 'F' !"You know when the last day of school falls on your birthday you begin to wonder how the day could possibly not go your way. And when I say the last day of school I don't mean the last day of grade school, or even a year of high school, but of high school completely. However as great of an accomplishment as it is and as well as the day should have been going it was headed in the completely wrong direction. .

First I walked into the top half of my locker being stuffed with single edge razor blades and eventhough non one in the school likes me everyone wanted to be the first down the hall to turn me into the dean, the counselor, the principal whoever they find first just for the sake of kudos points. As soon as the first blade his the floor with it's metallic ping I herd the pitter patter of feet taking off down the hall to do their civic duty. Funny thing is that I didn't even try to stop the kids from running down the hall or the blades falling to the floor, I mean what was the point? With my reputation if I told the dean or the counselor or whoever would be sprinting down the hall in the next few seconds, that what about 20 or so witnesses saw and confessed to wasn't true not only would I have to explain the blades but I would probably also have to see the school shrink one more time for good measure for lying. At that moment in time, watching as the brown nosers scurried off down the hall. There was only one think that I could do. I brushed out the few blades that were left in my locker onto the floor, luckily the idots who had put them in had left the cardboard guards on, got my stuff and set off to get through my last day of school.

The last day of school has always been a joke to me. Find out how you did on your finals, turn in your books, and for most people sign years books making sure to get them back to whomever they belong to and leave by eleven thirty. I mean come on now this all could have been combined into the last day and At that point I could have been home sleeping. Oh well, we all must do things that we don't like I suppose and hold true to this the first stop of the day was my history class.

My history teacher is or was as the case may be, a complete and total bitch. This was the year when American history was the main focus and at the beginning of the year she said that the main focus of the class was to show us how the country developed from what it was into the nation that it was today a very admirable and pratical goal in my opinion. However, when it came to the 1980's with the gay revolution when America came out of the closet so to speak with the movements and the Stonewall riot she wouldn't touch the section with a ten foot pole. Needless to say that I was pissed, not only was I pissed that she had planned on skipping over that extremely course altering portion of American history but she lost even more of my respect when she stood at her podium and said straight faced to a bunch of conforming seniors, who would pretty much adopt any opinion that you threw out to them, that Gays, Lesbians, Pan-sexuals, Transgender folk as well, were simply choosing a life style that went against society in order to create shock within the nation and also to make themselves stand out as anarchists. So in my opinion upon hearing this I found myself shoved by her words into a group who got excessive piercings, wore all black and constantly died their hair. After that she and I never really did see eye to eye. We all sat down about thirty of us in all, assigned seats and although I have no proof of it I swear my dean and counselor had her place me at the front so if I was doing something such as picking my finger nails excessively or was using the spiral notebook to carve gashes in my arm neither of which I have actually done, she could send me to the school shrink. The funny thing is that I always have a greater desire to hurt myself after I have seen him then I have ever had before I had take the long and lonely walk down to his office no matter how bad of a day I was having.

So I take my assigned seat near the front of the room and begin to envy those in the back rows as our teacher begins to drove on and on about how proud she was and how so many of us showed such a true passion for history that she hoped many of us would continue on with it in college. College, yeah right. The best I could hope for now was a full time job with a decent wage and the ability to get my own apartment. Besides if I was going to college I wouldn't be studying history. Actually come to think of it I don't know too many individuals who would. Studding history it seems to me is for people who are good at it in grade school and high school and when it comes time to choose a major in college with no practicality of the future decide to use history as their fall back. For many majors I have asked what can't you do with them but for this one I have often asked what can you do with it. So, there I sat with a woman talking to us with such hope in her heart that some of us would follow her into her profession and love of history picturing the field of history to make great advances because of all the hard work and dedication that she put into her students, into us. She could see this so clearly and was filled with such hope because of it that I almost felt sorry for her.

Eventually she came down off her soap box and began handing out late assignments and giving us our grades for the class. I really wasn't all that interested in my grade I hadd been pulling A's in this woman's class all year. Hell I probably could have taught the class if the old bat would have let me. At least if nothing else I could have made it a hell of a lot more interesting. I mean this was a woman who could make the Valentine's Day massacre sound like the wonderful experience of watching paint dry. So even though my grade was of little or no concern to me what I really wanted to see way my final exam. Of course the first thing I wanted was the last thing that she handed out. I heard people all around me who have already received all their papers calculating what they needed on the final in order to get this grade or that, some even trying to figure out what they needed to pass the class to graduate. As she goes farther down the row I begin to think of my own graduation celebration. I had been pulling a few extra hours at the book store that's by my house and after having up a thousand dollars I was gong to go out and throw myself the best graduation celebration ever. I have already notified the school that I will not be attending the ceremony and to take my name off the call list and to mail the diploma to the house. Nobody would be there to see me anyway so why bother getting all dressed up especially at an all girl school graduation. I mean granted I'm a lesbian so let me reword because at first you would like that there was a possibility to picking up someone and really celebrating tonight however. I suppose it would be more accurate to say why bother getting all dressed up at an all girl school graduation where everyone hates you and those that don't hate you are scared and those that don't hate you or are scared of you pity you and to be honest I think the last one is the worst of the three.

Lost in my thoughts I barely noticed that the teacher had dropped my final exam on my desk. I flipped through it and noticed that the multiple choice and the true and false as well as the first page of the essay portion are completely red ink free, except for a spot that was notifying me that there should have been a comma in its place. Personally I think it was put there out of spite rather then a correction. Then I turned to the crowning jewel of the whole test, the part that I had been most anxious to see, the final page and the final essay question.