Chapter Three
It was shock that had The Teacher drop his jaw like a heavy suitcase, but it was sheer exultant fright that had him scamper on his hands and knees across the living room, almost looking comical as his body skidded about and thudded repeatedly on the heavily waxed floors.
Eunice looked on through a slit in her blindfold, seeing the young man fighting ineptly to tie his hands under his feet and lift himself without slipping on the mirror like floors and she remembered for a second, how when The Teacher was just a young boy, no older than the gagged and unconscious child whose head was bloodied in her lap, she remembered how The Teacher would slip and slide around the apartment all day long in his daddy’s socks, pulling them right up to his knees so he could grip their ends like stirrups and see how far he could get along the shiny floor before he fell onto his bottom again.
When he was a boy, The Teacher could slide across nearly half of the living room. Of course it should be noted that their living room was size of a well to do man’s backyard acreage, so this was no marginal feat. But now it seemed, and looking through the slit in her blindfold, Eunice could painfully see that this young man, as he had grown, had shaped himself on his rebellion and though he may have found a place that constantly kindled his ever quenching fire, it just looked as though he grew without ever finding his feet, entirely that is.
And now, as sad as it was to admit, the young man she had loved to watch gallivanting across her newly polished floors was now as painful to watch as were the cable ties pinching the skin one her wrists. The young boy, she thought, would have managed to save them. Or at least, he would have been able to skid himself out the door to freedom and there would be some legacy to this, this that was sure to become so outrageous that it had to make the evening news.
Still, she thought, watching The Teacher fall onto his face over and over, only a well waxed floor would make a man look and act like some typical cartoon projection. And she smiled to herself because she was proud of the work she did, even if it was just expected of her, it was all she longed to ever do.
The Teacher fought desperate to get to his bedroom, the only pace he could think of that was safe. He could hear the mumbled screaming of his mother and his father and he could hear thumping too, like the bumping and scratching of vinyl, before the coming of trepidatious harmony of choking screams and blunt force trauma.
“What do you want?” he shouted.
It was amazing he could even manage the words. He had had dreams like this when he was a boy, most people had, at least once in their life. And in those dreams, of which he suffered quite a few, he could never manage to string together the words like he had just done.
Behind him, he could see the swarm of black, like the evening blanket, casing itself around the twilight sky. They encircled his family, some of them grasping their hands choking around wriggling necks and shaking bodies, like heavy dusted blankets, rigorously back and forth, while others took to urinating, from great heights, onto the bound and huddling captives.
All he could think of was his room, his bed, his lock and his phone.
He found his feet and he slid, as if he were a reveling young boy, across the last third of the enormous living room, making his way into the maze of twists and turns of twisting and turning corridors that lead to the many guest bathrooms and washrooms, the rumpus rooms and library, the theatre room, and TV room, The Mother and Father’s sex and heroin dungeon, and to the bedrooms, where his was the last, a straight run down the corridor.
He leapt and bound with every beat of his heart as if survival alone were the drummer at the bow of his dragon boat. He had never run like this before in his life. It felt as if he were flying with the bounds so great that his feet barely touched the ground. And it was only one or two beats of his thunderous heart before his hands were turning the handle of his door and shushing the chaos outside, slamming it shut behind him and turning the small pinned lock, his back heavy against the door, his knees bent to resist the attack that was sure to come and his throat, feeling like it was on fire as a wave of bile rose up from his adrenalized belly and spat out of his quivering lips.
“The police,” he thought.
He ran to his writing desk and quickly swept his arm across like some skeletal and oddly angular window wiper, knocking all of his texts and assessments to the floor and all of the grading too, that he had to finish and hand in, at the next day of class. They all slid onto the floor, along with his bridged copy of Das Kommunistische Manifest, that which made a thunderous applause as it hit the ground.
He grabbed at the receiver, not even pulling it to his ear, just holding it in his hands like a steaming coffee, taking a second for freedom to chill his fingers and slow down his rapid breath before he pressed the three numbers of salvation as he crept underneath the writing desk with his knees pulled right up to his chin, staring at the bedroom door and curling the long winding telephone cable around his nervous fingers.
There was no sound.
He reset the phone and dialed again, but there was no sound once more, only the echo in the distance of his father pleading for his own life as the masked intruders, at the bellowing of a young boy, apparently took the life of one of his brothers.
The Teacher tried again, desperately pressing and then holding the button on the receiver, closing his eyes and each time hoping that the God he didn’t believe in, or the universe, or Allah, or YHVH, or the Indian one with all the arms, or the god of yoga and Pilates or even L Ron Hubbard or Allan Kardec or even Charlie Manson, if any of them were really captains of coincidence and intervention, to do what was right, to make the fucking phone work.
There was no sound.
It was dead.
The phone line was cut.
In the background, he could hear what sounded like a troop of monkeys, shrieking wildly as they smashed everything in the apartment. And they were chanting, amidst their inhumane shrieking, the word ‘Anarchy’.
“Please,” said The Teacher, pleading now with the universe as he held the phone.
But it was no use. He may as well have been talking to the bottom of his shoe. And as he dropped the receiver in accepted default, his near closing eyes glimpsed the window and then he remembered, the protest where he had escaped and the lines of truncheon carrying police who were lining the streets below. And his heart lifted as if it had lungs and remembered that it could indeed take its own breath. And he ran towards the window, his room still enshrouded in dark, desperate to wrench it open before the maniacal screaming outside his door, made its way into the security of his room.
He ripped open the window; just like, as a boy, how he would rip open the delicate packaging of his birthday presents, his heart accelerating with joy and escapism. And when the window gave him just an inch of space, he shoved his head outside out from the 72nd floor where thin lines of frost and fog laid like a transparent blanket underneath his window, almost whiting out the tiny specks of movement on the street below as what looked like large and darkly colored specks, ushered smaller and scattering fractured dark specks all across the main avenue.
“Help us” he screamed. “Police! Help me. There’s killers in my house. Please help me. Help me.”
He shouted over and over and he screamed and contorted his voice in ways he had never thought imaginable. But each word went unheard. He was so far up that his pleading voice, it skated along the thin line of fog, fluffing it up lightly, but it wasn’t strong enough to break through. It only moved the fog a bit so that looking through, he could see that on the avenue below, nobody could hear his screams, nobody was looking up, and nobody was going to come to his rescue.
“I thought the police were brutes,” said a girl’s voice on the bed.
The Teacher turned, almost falling out the window at first, but he turned and slid, with his back against the wall, onto the floor beneath the window frame.
“Anarchy means no police, does it not? Those that only serve to bully and quench the exuberant fire of youth
. That’s what you said, yes? What was it we sang in class? Pushing little children, with their fully automatics…. The first rule of anarchy, no police, no thugs, no bullies, no iron fist.”
“What do you want?” pleaded The Teacher.
“We want what you want, what you taught us to want. At least, that’s what they want. Me, I want a good grade. And I’m only doing what you asked.”
“Who are you?”
“You never saw me, in class that is. My ideas were not as versed as yours. I was an invisible thread. Now, though, that I am stretched inside of your cloth, with your idea wound around my fingers, all of a sudden you can see me, and you are interested in whom I am. Well if this is your idea, then I am you. We are all you.”
“Suha?”
“Why do you teach what you teach? Why do you promote such hate and disregard?”
“They’re just ideas for fuck’s sake. It’s socialism. It’s not hate. It’s about community. It’s about togetherness, about fairness.”
“Do you really think Anarchy is fair? Out there on the streets, do you think inciting fear and rampage is fair?”
“They deserve it. You know that. The banks, they profit of other people’s misfortune and misery. They keep people entrenched in debt.”
“You don’t think those people can’t think for themselves? You really think it’s McDonalds’ fault that some fat kid can’t stomach a salad and fucking exercise? Really? Where the fuck is his parents? Where the fuck is his own accountability? You think Anarchy will change government? Really?”
The Teacher nodded, but he said nothing, his hands over his sobbing mouth.
“A tree is known by its fruit, Teacher, you told us that. You cut off the head, don’t you think the same poisoned fruit is gonna grow right back?”
“No, the government is corrupt. You get rid of the government, all of them, and the corporations too… A clean slate” he said.
“And they grow right back,” said Suha. “If you want to change the color of a fruit, you need not cut away at the plant, but instead, dig at the roots. You don’t think everyone in government was once a spoiled little boy or girl, just like you? You anger yourself because the government spends lavish on sport and recreation, clotting the truth of their deficit. And what about in every home, with every mother and father, taking their kids to Disney Land when they should be paying off their piece of shit car? How is that any different? It’s all the same. Huh? Look at your world. How many maids work here? Who the fuck is raising the children? How the hell are you supposed to learn responsibility and accountability if there is always someone poorer and less privileged than yourself, to pick up your scraps, to wash your soiled linen, to puff up your pillow and to wipe away your every fucking disgrace? You, we, everyone, we all learned in our homes that we are not accountable. I have a maid too. She cleans our dishes, she makes our food, she washes my clothes and she sparkles my floors. Sometimes, when there is no work for her to do, my mother and father, they will tip over a pot plant or spill a cup of coffee, just so she isn’t sitting around, and getting lazy with her job. You don’t think this transcends, outside of the home and into society? We throw our rubbish out the window because we know some poor disparaged black person is going to scoop it up and squash it down and after scouring the whole city, take their bag of rotting paper and twisted aluminum to trade for enough pennies to stave off starvation and death for another day. So if we learn in our homes, that no matter what mess we create, we can always pay a helpless black person to take the fall, to clean our plates and to be accountable for our mistakes, what then can be said of our government which is the fruit of each and every family, for every corrupt politician was schooled in academia yes, but they were educated in their homes, copying their mothers and fathers. The roots of their corruption is seeded in the rich soil of their ancestry. If you want to change the government Teacher, you don’t cut off its head, you start to re-educate the family and plant and nurture, a more elegant seed.”
The Teacher looked around the room for something sharp. Worse than being killed at any moment was this torture of having to hear such asininity and having no wooden stick of his own, no platform to tell her that she was wrong and no authority to remove her from his class.
“We learn as children through negative, to look for what we cannot do and to know, only what we do not want. We know where we are by marking out where we are not. And we know who we are by defining ourselves as who we most certainly are not. Our mothers and fathers left us on our fours, crawling around their precious space and they only played a part of our curiosity, the moment we bridged on something that was dangerous or something that was dear to them. And they shouted “No” and “Get away” and “Don’t do that.” And never did they crawl on all fours with us, and help us, with our curiosity, to see what was good, what was safe, what was allowed and what was fun. Our curiosity led to danger. And danger we learned was everywhere. We knew what we could do, not by seeing and being shown was grand and delightful, but by knowing all of the things that we could not do. Once enough stickers and alarms had been raised, we as children knew our limits and stayed within them. We learned through ‘No’. You ask any person, what they love, what they adore. They will freeze and they will stumble through a poor response. But if you ask them what they despise, what they hate and abhor, they will list one after the other with an impassioned response. They remember everything they do not want, just as a child remembers everything they cannot do and everywhere they cannot go, just a person of faith will remember every commandment that they cannot break. How then, are we supposed to construct a new path if we are dubious of our own curiosity if we learned since puppies that our curiosity killed the cat, that the feeling of walking towards the unknown is what lead to every shouting ear and every smacked bottom? How are we supposed to build something new after you eradicate it all? How are we supposed to create a new world and a new government if we are experts in all that apparently causes us harm? You taught us wrong. We shouldn’t be looking for the fault in our leaders. If we want to change the world like you say, we should be looking at the inch of goodness in them, in all of them, and we should inflate their egos on that and, as adversaries, we should provoke them, not on their failures, but on their successes and we should dare them to be better. Look at you; you are an inspirer of youth, those that are still willing to dig their fingers into the soil. That which you do so well. You could use your gift, your passion and the fire in your heart, to change the world. Rebel not against the government. Rebel against yourself, and how you were educated, be it for or against, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Without corruption, you would have no voice; you would be ordinary and impassioned. You oppression defines you and as long as you define it, you define yourself and as long as you continue to define yourself on your ideals, you continue to expound the importance of your adversary” said Suha, with the same delicacy of a mother, explaining her child’s wrongs, before releasing them from their timed castigation.
“Your beliefs do not define you,” she said. “They direct you. But without action, they ironize you. You are not what you believe, you are what you do. Your beliefs are the thoughts that are buried so far in your subconscious that you have no idea what they are and how they got there. I believe that you can change the world. I believe that we all can. But first, we must change the way we have been raised. And it is too late for us. What we can do though is to teach our children to see a dimension to us that is fallible and invisible. When our children are on the floor, we must be with them and guide them through their curiosity to find what is right and what is true and to not define themselves and their happiness and joy and sense of identity, by what is wrong and forbidden. We must teach them that sitting quiet and still in the center of the room is not kind and mannerly, it is not fit for acclaim and it is not a state of which they should aspire, fearful of running into any of their doubts or fears or the dangers and wrongs that their mothers and fathers gritted and screamed into their ea
rs and lashed upon their red and sore buttocks. The new world will not come from violence or fear. It will not be built upon the remains of smoldering rubble. It will not come from vicious and rebelling hands. It will come from a new seed as new things are born. When our children can see what they love and carry that with them; when what they hate or despise is much like something of which they bore and care not for, something they cannot name and of which plays not at the strings of their passion and reason, that they are only defined by what is good and what is right and that curiosity did not kill the cat, that curiosity had it find another bed of the sun in which to bathe.”
The Teacher wiped his eyes. In the background, he could still hear the violent thrashings of sharp and heavy objects being thrust upon his bound and huddled family. And he knew they weren’t dead yet, by the sound of their muffled groans.
“I understand,” said The Teacher. “Will you let me go now?”
“No,” said Suha.
“But if Anarchy cannot change anything, as you said, only a new seed can bring about change, then you have to let me go. You have to, or your speech, it means nothing. If you continue with this, with this chaos, then you prove my teaching correct, that only through threat and through chaos, will come a new order. Like nature, setting fire to a forest, ending hundreds if not thousands of years of growth to enrich the soil and start again. If you kill me, if you continue this torment and this torture, you prove yourself wrong. And this idea” he said, “it is brilliant. It is. And you’re right. We cannot have two sides opposing, only if there is a neutral government in the middle, being bettered by both sides, like the two engines on a jet liner, keeping the left and right wings afloat, but with their contrary force, helping to keep the main government, the plane and its pilot in the air. You’re right. Everything you said was right. And I know” said The Teacher, gaining his confidence and his mystique back, “that you will change the world and you will, like you said, plant a better seed and educate children in a new way. And you will here, I know. You need to, to have some lesson to show to your children, that, to prove everything you said. You are magnificent” he said, now standing and walking towards Suha with his usual swagger, that which swooned many a student throughout his reign.
He pressed his hand against her masked face, running his fingers down the line of her fine jaw, himself trembling with sexual energy, close to orgasm as his index finger coursed down the line of her neck and then onto her left breast and circling her nipple before it continued its course down her body, sending him into a shiver as it pressed in and out of her belly button and then caught on the cusp of her waist.
“I want you,” he said, feeling his power swelling in his pants.
Suha smiled, though it could not be seen under her black hood. She pressed forwards with the one sharp object in the room, stabbing The Teacher in his erect penis only once, long and deep. And when he gasped in silent agony, Suha twisted the knife as if she were crushing a hundred limes in a bowl of sugar. Then she tore out the knife, leaving The Teacher to fall to the floor, gripping his bleeding crotch.
“Yes,” she said. “In some way, you were right. If I am to kill you now, everything I have said will mean nothing. I will not prove myself in any way. To be the better person, I must find the goodness in you and accelerate it and change you into something you already are, to make your corruption and your rebellious insolence a bore, something ignorable, like a worthless talent. It is true. But I am not here as a Messiah. I am here as a student, looking for my final grade. And so, you asked us to dress in black. You asked us, for our final grade, to go out tonight and to bring Anarchy. And so, for my final grade, here I am.”
“No” screamed The Teacher. “I’ll give you an ‘A’. Just stop. I’ll give everyone passing grades.”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “How different would be in your ideal of the government, taking a bribe?”
“Fuck,” he said, blood flowing like a monsoon flood from between his legs. “I’ll give you money. We have so much. I’ll give you a thousand dollars” he said. “Each.”
“Ha” mocked Suha.
“I’ll give you money. I won’t tell the others. You’re in control, I can see. You’re the boss here.”
“This is Anarchy,” she said. “There is no boss. There is no government. There is no one to negotiate with. There is no one conducting this chaos. There is no one in charge.”
“I’ll give you a million. Just you. Two million. I’ll give you five million, my savings. I’ll give it all to you. If you let me go. Sneak me out of here. You can do what you want to my family. Just let me go. I’ll give you all the money I have.”
“This is Anarchy,” said Suha. “Money is worthless.”
The Teacher’s legs were starting to tingle as if a hundred thousand pins were being jabbed in odd succession from his waist down to his toes and his feet, at the ball and the arch, were starting to numb.
He could hear cackled laughter out in the living room as what he now knew as his masked students, had taken to throwing his father and his mother off the balcony, struggling with each one, but laughing hysterically as they disappeared through the now thick lining of fog that lay like a heavenly carpet, below the line of their apartment, 72 stories into the sky.
Suha took the papers that were on the floor and held each one before The Teacher, forcing him to mark a final grade beside every student’s name. His blood soaked hands marked an ‘A’ next to every name, each page soaking red as it was taken from his grasp and neatly piled back on his writing desk, weighed by his copy of Das Kommunistische Manifest.
“Now what?” asked The Teacher.
Suha opened the bedroom door and walked slowly out into the main foyer, stepping over an orgy of half clothed men and women with their faces still masked as outside in the living room, a large fire roared with furniture and curtains all glowing an orangey red. Chaos had indeed ensued. Anarchy was apparent all around. And as the front door burst down with the fire brigade and police storming into the building, wielding their truncheons and firearms and shooting wildly, The Teacher smiled to himself, knowing that he had done this, that he had inspired his students, these fresh minds that were like children to him, he had inspired them to change.
He had done this.
And that was more than his father had said that he would ever do.
And that was magnificent.
husband, father, son, brother, philosopher, story teller, recluse
Also by C. Sean McGee:
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Utopian Circus (CITY b00k 011)
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Coffee and Sugar
Christine
Rock Book Volume I: The Boy from the County Hell
Rock Book Volume II: Dark Side of the Moon
Alex and The Gruff (a tale of horror)
The Terror{blist}
Happy People Live Here
The Time Traveler’s Wife
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