PROLOUGE
The class groaned in protest as Mrs. Monaco began to read yet another Puritan poem. Words of complete nonsense poured out of her mouth: words like pelf and religion; God and Hell. Faces stared but did not comprehend, eyes rolled and heads drooped far below the point of no return and somewhere a distant cricket could be heard chirping.
Brett sat in the far left corner of the musty room, his hand sitting squarely on his left cheek, prepared to catch him if he dozed too far into a dream world. For the moment however, he was awake and staring quite intently at a rather large mole on Nick's right arm. And in return, it stared blankly back at him; as it had, or appeared to have, no face. Here was the perfect example of boredom to its extreme. When one becomes so immensely bored that they can stare at someone's mole for at least 30 minutes without blinking, this tells a person just how horribly tiring and monotonous the class must be. This point holds it place quite well in this case where a small sophomore class is enduring an entire first period of English III Honors with a robotically monotone teacher.
'Ring, ring, ring, ring' The bell sounded through the room into the empty heads of the students. "Finally" was the one thought sure to be going through everyone's mind at that precise moment. Brett's hand dropped limply to his side upon hearing this shrill noise and he shook the sleepy feeling by jumping quickly out of his chair. He grabbed his book bag, slung it over one shoulder and slogged out of the room muttering something about 'that darn stinkin' bell is so loud". Meanwhile, Dan had calmly ambled over to Mrs. Monaco's desk with as question that was bound to be full of intelligent and important ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Monaco turned away from her stacks of unruly paperwork and flashed an oddly creepy smile at Dan.
"How my I help you Dan?" she questioned dryly. Dan pointed to the picture he had drawn for the previous night's homework.
"I don't understand why I missed points on this. The perception of Hell and God are my decision and imagination not your beliefs. This is not the Puritan society Mrs. Monaco." Mrs. Monaco choked out an arid laugh.
"Good for you for paying attention. No it is not a Puritan society, Dan." she said, saying his name with a little more sharpness to it than the rest of her speech, "This is a classroom and my views will be what matters. Besides that is not what Hell looks like. It is much darker." She sneered and dismissed him on that final note.
Dan looking bewildered, scurried back to his books and bags and upon collecting them, exited the room as quickly as he could. As for Mrs. Monaco, she sat back in her chair crooning over a large jar of purple liquid. Every-so-often she would pull a black stringy object and pop it into her mouth. And if you ever got the chance to look really close at the jar you would see that it was full of tadpoles.
TO BE CONTINUED… p.s. the statements describing the people in this story are fictitious and are completely created by the imagination of the author. They are not the real thoughts of the author.