Marcos stood outside The Woman’s classroom unsure of what to do next. He listened as the children sang along and could hear the sound of his partner’s hands clapping to the rhythm. He couldn’t knock on the door. The class had to be liberated of fear and it was with fear that he stood there, frozen.
He wanted so much to hold The Woman in his arms, but he couldn’t bear to touch her. Instead, he stood listening to the sound of her voice as she called The Children into a circle. How easy it all sounded to her.
What a liar!
Marcos scratched at the door lightly as he pulled his hands down and away from the door taking with it, his drawn head and his primal worry.
He pulled his hand to his side and parted into the flux of people moving through the corridor. He walked back along the halls, his head feeling light and his stomach still burdened probably by something rotten.
People passed him in a motion blur as he pulled his hands up to cover his eyes. The sound of their feet shuffling filled his ears like barbed concrete, weighing down his thoughts, cutting into his calm, severing his focus and sending him in back step from whence he came, pushing people aside with his swinging arms as he gravitated towards what his sub conscious would recognise as a safe place to disarm.
He tried to think of the Forever New Dawn, trying to conjure and imagine a hazy orange hue but instead everything was grey one moment and flashing bright the next; no colour just intense flashing light that held in the dark long after it stopped pulsating; blinding his vision and making him feel queasy, both shortening and accelerating his breath.
He tried to move but fell back against The Woman’s classroom door sliding down to his feet. He felt hands on his shoulders brushing against him, some pushing back and forth rocking him into further inebriation.
Then came the voices that seemed to melt in and out of recognisable form, it could have been any language from any time, but it was nothing that made relative in his ears.
He shut his eyes fast and firm, squeezing his eyelids and extending his self into that point trying to regain some control over his growing fever and wandering mind. He clouded his mind with white; breathing slow and deep.
When the storm subsided he lifted his head to laughter; cruel deafening laughter. The sound was still a muddle but his sight cleared and he fixed his eyes on the front of the room where two girls stood with untroubled looks in their eyes. They held their hands outwards and they were unflinching as that fat bastard came crashing down on them with all of his postulated truths.
“You should feel this, you should feel that, you should be here, you should not think that.”
His mouth said ‘how dare you’ but his eyes said ‘take that little girl’ and each crack of the wood against their skin brought The Fat Bastard further from their conditioning, but all of that didn’t really matter because he hated her.
The Fat Bastard hated her because she made him feel. He hated her because he felt and he hated her more because she felt nothing. He would stop after each swing and after each crack to set his swollen fat eyes across the room finding the fear of other children and swimming in it.
He held out her arm to ensure she wouldn’t flinch, but he didn’t have to, this was part of her game; she wanted the red sting and more so she wanted to consume the full force of his frustration; the violence in him that screamed like an infant child; “I am not in any way, a happy, desirable, important or affecting man.”
Marcos smiled as The Woman focused on him. She was beautiful and maybe he had seen her every day of his life but right now was the first moment he had really seen her and a giddiness washed over him as her eyes teased him and invited him and the smile that etched on her face; in part to spite the fat bastard’s play of power, so mirrored the smile he wore looking back.
The Woman sat down at the front of the class completely unfazed by the event having just unfolded whereas Marcos was beaten into emotional disarray. He sat looking at the nape of her neck, how the fine hairs seemed to sway to and fro like the reeds in the river on an old farm he once imagined himself owning that under a light breeze, their gentle movement would calm him into distraction where he abandoned his sense of ill-belonging in the world for but a moment; but for what felt like enough for him to grace another day of pretending.
At the moment that he stared at the fines hairs swimming on the nape of her neck, the ill feelings that surmounted deep in his being all flushed away and he laid his head in his arms and his arms across his desk feeling light; feeling at one.
He hadn’t the courage to ask her name. He thought about kissing her and holding her hand and as he did, his own filled with sweat. He thought about taking her down to the river where they could just sit and stare into the horizon and watch as the sky falls orange when the evening set in.
He thought about her smiling at him like she had just done except her arms were around his neck and her feet balanced on his own. He held his hands on her demure waist; wanting to, but scared to, press firmly. He thought about how she knew this and played to his naivety with a soft kiss.
She said ‘I love you’ and he said it too, but all the children heard and outside of his daydream at his desk, he fell embarrassed as scores of fingers pointed and chanted making him wish he could sink into the black of his mind.
The Woman didn’t turn. Instead, as Marcos braved his sight from the safety of his arms back to the room he noticed that the hairs on the nape of her neck still shimmered under the light, contrasted against her midnight black cropped hair with delicate lines of lilac running past her soft white skin. Again, his pain withdrew and the other children became invisible.
He longed so much for her to love him.
The Fat Bastard was yelling at the other children, pulling on his slipping reigns. They were still pointing and laughing but now their attention shifted to the obese man struggling to pull his fat arse from the chair to grasp his favoured wooden stick and commence a tour of table beatings, smacking the end of the stick against the corners of every table hoping the sound alone would will the children like scared cats into submission.
But these were children and children loved to upset adults; just because. And the fat bastard screamed louder and louder until he was hoarse and pig, coughing and squealing, smacking and stomping his way around the classroom.
In the middle of the chaos, The Woman turned from the front and caught Marcos dreaming of her. She stood up and walked down to the back of the class and just as The Fat Bastard was about to come crashing down on Marcos’ desk with his wooden stick, she put her arm forward and her hand over his.
The Fat Bastard came crashing down and cracked the stick against her hand, splitting it into hundreds of tiny shards, then fell forward under the weight of his own surprise crashing to the floor. The Woman kept her hand on Marcos’ and looked him long in the eyes. He felt weak and vulnerable. He said, “my name is…”
“Marcos. Marcos. Marcos. Marcos are you ok? Marcos look at me, are you ok?” said The Woman kneeling down and holding his hand tightly trying to squeeze life back into him.
Her hair was longer and strawish. It was more dirty black than in his delusion. She was the same woman, but this one brought him no calm.
“Marcos, focus. Marcos everything is one” she said desperately trying to use his own logic to will him to focus.
Marcos imagined his thought as a sink and the plug as zero being pulled away. Everything flowed downwards and the colour returned to his thoughts, clarity returned to his mind. He could see The Woman looking long into him with as much concern as she could feign.
“Marcos, what happened? I heard a thud and I found you here on the floor. What happened? Can I do something? What can I do?” she asked repeatedly and desperately.
“Just shut up. Leave me alone, fuck!” he screamed to himself.