My schedule went like this every day of every week of every month: Chem (boring), Gym (no challenge), Algebra (dull), Art (lame), Lunch (food sucks), History (snore), English (sleeper class), and Home Economics (so stupid). My day was altogether pretty pathetic so don't blame me for not wanting to get out of bed in the morning.

All I had to look foreward to was after school when I could chill out with my bros and go on patrol with Batman. But, with Batman out of the equation, it was starting out a pretty crummy day already.

I sat down in Chem with my hand on my cheek. Everyone was still talking about rifles and I was totally fed up. "What's up with all these crummy rifles?" I said loudly and rather rudely actually, "They're just pieces of metal that expel other pieces of metal by way of a chemical reaction." Ten pairs of eyes turned on me.

"Well Greyson", a big beefy guy named Paul sneered, "I suppose someone who didn't have a rifle would feel that way. I guess your parents don't really love you. Ohh, that's right, you don't have any." I rolled my eyes.

"That taunt is like what, three years old? We all know they're dead, can we move on to more intelligent insults? Hey, I've got one. You're probably such a bad shot, you can't even hit your fat ass friends for target practice." Paul turned several shades of red and then leapt at me. It was then I knew he had just been looking for an excuse to pick a fight in the first place.

We knocked over several desks as we rolled around on the ground, throwing punches. I held back as much as I could, but it was hard not to try and destroy the guy. After all, he had been harassing me for well over a year and a half now and it was really starting to get on my nerves. He was always comparing me to himself and his rich boy friends.

It wasn't too hard to take Paul down. Eventually, I ended up on top of him, fists flying into his faces. When, I felt like he had had enough, I got up off of him and pumped my fist into the air. "What now, I just beat your ass, yes I did." I probably could have stopped right there, but I decided to add insult to injury. "And, I'll bet I'm at least three times bigger than you are."

For emphasis, I thrust my hips at him and then backed up another step. It was then that I hit something hard and turned around to find my Chem teacher, a Mr. Chemo, glowering at me. "Heh, heh, heh", I nervously laughed, "I was just showing Paul how to calculate the force of a fist using his face." I smiled my most adorable smile, the one that always got me off the hook with Bruce, but Mr. Chemo's face remained stony.

"Go", he said sternly, pointing to the door. I hung my head and walked out. "Damn", I thought to myself, "Bruce is gona really give it to me now." Bruce never, ever hit me. He clipped my wings and grounded me, but he never did anything even remotely physical. He rarely even manhandled me, aside from the occasional shove towards the door when I was irritating him.

But, when he got really mad at me, he would start to flex his muscles in the way he always did before he hit a bad guy so I could always tell when he was really fighting to keep his cool. I figured I would see such a display today, as this was the third school fight I had gotten into this month. Then, as I was trekking my way to the principal's office, an idea came to me. If I played my cards right, I could probably get out of this fairly easily.

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"And then", I sobbed pathetically, "I saw their dead faces in his eyes and so I had to hit him." I lowered my head, trying to hide my frantic snickering as the counselor, Mr. Pringles, eyed me sympathetically, all the while scribbling notes into his little red spiral dubbed the Dick Book by him, as the entire thing was devoted to his studies of me. When I had heard that one, I could barely hold back my laughter.

"I think", I said dramatically, raising my head once I had regained my composure, "it was the influence of…" I paused for theatrical effect at this point and muttered in a hoarse whisper "…the deathapotomus."

Now, lets pause for a second while I explain the deathapotomus. The counselor, back when I first came to this school as a freshman, decided I was to be his little pet project as he considered me a tortured soul with deeply rooted psychological problems.

I had been dragged into my third boring session that week was totally fed up. You see, he had been unable, so far at least, to find anything really psychologically wrong with me. There just wasn't anything and he was determined to dig up some dirt. So, I decided to give him what he wanted a made up a "deathapotomus".

The name came from my combination of death (which seemed pretty dramatic at the time) and a hippo, because the dude had a giant stuffed head of one on his wall, which stared at me while I talked to him.

I said the deathapotomus was the manifestation of all of my fears of people I loved dying, due to my parents' deaths of course, that haunted me everywhere I went. It was a creature with one eye, one ear, one horn on top of its head and one short, stumpy leg.

I drew pictures of it for him and spoke animatedly of how it taunted me and swirled around in my head, keeping me up with the worst nightmares at night. From that, he came up with all these weird conclusions and remedies to help me get rid of my "little problem" but I never tried any of them so I guess he figured they never worked.

Anyway, he got his "once in a lifetime" psychological case and I got a free ticket out of trouble. All I had to do was mention the deathapotomus and I was pretty much set. Bruce didn't know about these weekly sessions I had with the counselor, that I was trying, yet failing, to get rid of, and I thought it better he stayed in the dark, as I wasn't sure what he would think.

I also wasn't quite sure how my parents would feel about helping me get out of class, but I figured they wouldn't mind too much.

"So", I whispered, "I thought more and more about death as I walked to your room and decided to just kill myself."

"No, no, Dick", Mr. Pringle yelped frantically, "Suicide is never the answer. That is just letting the Deathapotomus win and you simply can't."

"Well", I sighed pathetically, "Maybe its better. You know, I wrote a poem about the deathapotomus, would you like to hear it?"

"Ohh yes Dick", Mr. Pringle said eagerly, "I would." I then proceeded to read him a nine-page narrative Allan and I had thrown together a few weeks back for fun. I figured if I wasted enough time, the bell would ring and I wouldn't have to go back to Chemistry. Finally, I finished and just as the bell was about to go off too. I quietly smiled to myself. 'Hah', I thought, 'and Allen said I wouldn't pull it off.'

"Well", Mr. Pringles murmured gravely, "I think it's about time you progressed to…the next step." I nodded my head as if I knew what that was and the bell rang. Now, Mr. Pringle would never let me out just for the bell, and especially not after that suicidal poem I had written, but I wasn't going to spend one more minute in the creepy place.

I leapt out of my chair and pointed to the wall. "The deathapotomus", I shrieked, "It's here, in the room! I'd better go, I have to get away."

"Run Dick", the counselor called after me, "You can outrun your fears, I know you can." I bounded out of the room, giggling violently, and pranced to gym.