During the lunch hour, we used the husk of this pen to smoke weed somebody managed to squeeze somewhere out of Missouri. Now, it holds a spitball, saturated brown with resin and dripping chew spit.
Waiting.
We’ve got just a moment here to get to know the target. By nature, none of us are vicious. Please remember that. Having burned up lunch, we are all just young. And hungry.
Michael Milner stands at the front of the classroom, holding a VHS tape. Behind him, the TV burns that abyss of blue, silhouetting him in the sinful brilliance of prerecorded possibility.
He’s substituting today, and we have all gathered here in the science room to find physics, together. This VHS will do that, we are told by Michael Milner, who we spotted at lunchtime in here alone, listening to talk radio and eating a pomegranate, skin and all.
These suspenders are everyday wear, stretching with the years, stretching before our eyes. We have prayed before for a snap, one big break, in other classrooms, in front of other VHS tapes, all informative. So far: unanswered. What else should we know? Oh, yeah. Milner’s apron has read “CHIEF SPATULA” at the annual Road Kill Banquet to benefit the after prom committee since we can remember. Most commend his “Skunk Stew.” The recipe? A family secret.
Milner gets the tape in there with a plastic crash which becomes motion, moving us towards knowledge. The FBI warns against reproductions. We are quiet, expectant pupils.
As one, we’ve decided that now, at this time, the spitball will fly. As it leaves the pen, a wonton mist trailing, moving over our swiveling heads. We watch in glee-horror as it hits Milner at the base of his neck, right where what we call the “wolf hair” grounds itself out.
We brace. We are all in this together now.
Now he’s turning and we see Milner’s face, but it’s not right. His mustache bucks, the cubes of his eyes mimic uncaged mercury. His hand not holding the tape sleeve retrieves the object, formerly a gum wrapper. It’s left a russet stain on his skin, like a mole. He thumbs it, raises it up.
Milner gathers one word, delivering it with a mist of his own: “Who?”
We all feign roadkill.
“All motion is relative,” the TV behind him says. Serene images, a bouncing ball.
This looks like it's gonna be a good one.
He deploys the volume button to capacity. A physics lesson corrals our cries as he begins to flip our desks sideways, trapping us beneath. Now, Michael Milner has his boots at eye level. We finally learn something at exactly the same time: Milner never learned to tie his shoes properly, bunny ears and all.
On screen, a lab coat is dropping things, swinging things, demonstrating velocity, reviewing gravity. It reeks of future test material. We aren’t watching. We are looking up at Michael Milner while the skins of pomegranate seeds pepper our foreheads, chased closely by sweet spit in varying shades: purple, plum, teetering dangerously towards venison territory.
Avery Gregurich is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River, and has never strayed too far from it.