A.D.D. and Opening Lines

So, we all have a big fat flaming case of A.D.D. If it isn't the chemicals in the air or water, or the polar vortexes (I hate that that's a term now.) it might just be this: we have more demands on us at work and more entertainment options away from work than ever before. As comedian Patton Oswald pointed out, we've become a race of Roman Emperors, declaring, "You Tube, I want to see something fall or poop! Bring it to me!"

This presents issues for authors.

The days of methodical building seem pretty much over. The days of the Russian novel that spends the first 300 pages detailing the awfulness of Russia are over. Now, we grip the reader by the face with our first sentence, or we don't grip them at all.

Working under that premise, I've decided to present some opening lines of my own and of others that I think work well in this regard. Check them out and feel free to comment.

"All this happened, more or less." Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Announcing an unreliable narrator from the get-go was a gutsy move. As a reader, it put me on edge. I analyzed everything to try and guess if I was being lied to. That (and a hilarious and poignant story) kept my attention all the way through.

"It was a pleasure to burn." Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

I love an opener that creates questions. The mind loves a puzzle, and hates a cliffhanger. Why was it a pleasure to burn? What is he burning? Why is he burning it? My attention never wanders because I'm curious right from the start.

"When I think of my wife, I think of her head." Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

It's so easy to be jealous of Gillian Flynn's skill. All the love-hate dynamic of the marriage her novel explores is right here in the first sentence. Is he thinking of her severed head? (Is he hoping to make it severed soon, or is it sitting in his lap as he writes?) Or is it still attached? Does he want to kiss it? Or kick it in? Or both? Again, questions create curiosity.

"Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art; their children called it mischeif." The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson

I cheated a little with the semicolon. Though Wilson's opener is technically two sentences, it's still amazing. The central debate of the book is presented right away. We learn quickly about the Fang parents' strange performance art and how they drag their children into it with little regard for their well-being, or even their desire to participate. As one of the children states later in the book, "Just because you think something is beautiful, that doesn't mean you should do it."

Here are my latest attempts to measure up:

"Like all my nervous breakdowns, this one started with a boy." (Collector)

"Jack didn't believe in flaws; a thing is either whole or broken." (Voodoo John)

"The ad for the experiment was clear: you test our product, we save your marriage." (Bottles of Sara and Ben)

"The boy is a narcoleptic kleptomaniac; this presents problems." (Narco-Klepto)

Like the others, I hope these lines will create curiosity, and also, grip you by the face until you're done reading. Then you can go Youtube the latest video of a cat falling while pooping.

The link to my stories for sale: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

Stay tuned for news about my next published piece!

Comments welcome!
-James Russell
 

New Year, New Story

I love that moment when I fall in love with a story. My newest, tentatively titled "Narco-Klepto" is hitting that point.

Crazy people falling in love is nothing new, so I wanted the disorder to be original. As far as I know, there isn't any link between kleptomania (addiction to stealing) and narcolepsy (falling asleep in random places). What's more, I didn't care. Part of the fun of fiction is telling reality to fuck off.

Here's the beginning. A link to my 99-cent short stories follows. Happy new year to all.

Narco-Klepto

                The boy is a narcoleptic kleptomaniac. This presents problems. He studies a store’s security infrastructure. He finds answers to many self-generated questions. Guards or no guards? Beeping machines by the exits? If so, do they bother to change the batteries? Or, like so much of his country, is it merely security theater?

                He goes to all this trouble to steal. The object is not the objective: it is often something as trivial as a pack of gum. Sometimes he steals tic-tacs because they make noise and it’s a challenge.

The thrill of crossing a perceived line: that is the kleptomaniac’s objective.

                This is where the narcolepsy becomes an issue. Sometimes the thrill of stealing is too much. Sometimes his mind will shut his body down. The boy will fall asleep standing up in aisle five, and when a guard or clerk checks to see if he’s alive, he’s busted. Sometimes they pat him or poke at him, discovering his ill-gotten gains. Other times, he wakes, forgetting the merchandise in his pocket. He walks rather than runs through the machine and beep-beep-beep! He’s caught.

                So, at fifteen, the boy has a record.

                You wouldn’t know it to look at him. His hair is long and heavy metal dark, but he maintains it well – he shampoos and conditions daily. He wears jeans, but none with holes. He does not scribble band names on their legs or allow others to do so. He wears button down shirts, exclusively. Though he will not tuck them in, they are always ironed, impeccably so.

                This is how he looks when he meets the girl.

                She dresses like a mall mannequin. Jeans and t-shirt. Tasteful makeup. A redhead but not head-on-fire. Not goth. Not prissy. No band shirts. Simple lines. Sometimes dots. Color but nothing nuclear green or orange. Nothing overdone. He guesses she isn’t shallow, just planned. This is a costume. She’s built to blend. It’s all by design.

                The first time he sees her, she’s reading US Weekly on aisle four in the local Walgreens. Her other hand pockets a stick of men’s deodorant. Her eyes never leave the page. The boy stands there, watching, in awe of her technique. It takes him a while to realize her eyes are closed. He hears her lightly snoring.

                He falls in love.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

What I'm Writing Now

First off, thanks for 3,000+ pageviews! Celebutants may fart those numbers with minimal effort, but as a humble educator from New Jersey, I thank you.

I continue to wait on JESSE RULES and my short story collection MEN IN STRANGE ARRANGEMENTS is in multiple contests, but in the meantime, here's what I'm writing.

Voodoo John - Jack is a trust fund queen on permanent holiday in the French Quarter. He enjoys three strange men a day: one per meal. All is right in Jack's world until he's visited by a Chibaku: an ancient Egyptian spirit vessel used to steal intangible treasures. The first one flies off with his wealth, and two more are on the way. But the real horror comes when Jack realizes who sent them, and why.

Bottles of Sara and Ben - The prototype is designed to heal. You shout the things you can't say into the receiver, and all that hostility is bottled. A married couple with a tendency to repress seem like the perfect test subjects, until the researchers realize how unstable emotion can be.

Visionaries - Telekinesis and telepathy are the new normal, but they've also instituted a new arms race. Each nation hopes to be the first to acheive the Singularity: the first time a young telekinetic person can literally change a small part of the world to make it the way they picture. Like most power, it can be used to construct, and it can be used to destroy.

Delilah feels like she belongs at one of the U.S. telepath camps, but her boyfriend Chance isn't so sure. If the government can't control this new power, they're likely to try to dispose of it. Chance notes, "There's nothing more dangerous than a dreamer."

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I hope each of you is chasing a dream and enjoying the hunt as I am. Here is the link to my Amazon page, where amazing stories await for a mere 99 cents: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

-James Russell 

Horror Stories Worth Your Time

Halloween is polarizing. Some people hate it. I don't know why. It's easily one of my favorites.

This is the magical day where everyone gets to be as big of a skank as they want and nobody cares. Gay boys take their first baby steps out of the closet with ironic (?) drag. Schools set off massive A.D.D. bombs (we play costumed volleyball, even in the bullshit testing era). Sugar binging is encouraged. We shed our inhibitions. I think it's great.

One of my favorite parts is classic horror movies coming back on on-demand. I thought I'd recommend some from the last twenty years or so that might've flown under your radar.

Cabin Fever - Bunch of kids go up in the woods. I know, but stay with it. They turn away a stranger with a juicy case of flesh-eating bacteria, accidentally setting him on fire in the process. Their plan is to leave as soon as they can without telling anyone what happened, until they start to come down with symptoms. It plays masterfully on blue state fears of redneck America, and man's inhumanity to man is always scarier than sci-fi.

Moment of Satanic Zen: A boy with a crush has to euthanize the girl he's loved for years, with a shovel.

The Descent - A group of thrill-seeking female friends go on a spelunking adventure in a remote cave system. They're attempting to heal emotionally one year after an accident killed one woman's child and husband. Another member of the group was cheating with the husband as well. I haven't been more scared for a group of people BEFORE they entered the kill zone since the Torrence family took that long ride up to the Overlook Hotel.

Moment of Satanic Zen: When the jilted widow gets her revenge in a way you might not expect.

Sharp Objects - Moving to books for a second, it doesn't get better than Jillian Flynn if you want insight into female evil. The subtle abuse the women and girls in this book inflict on one another is more frightening than anything Jason Vorhees ever did to a camper in the eighties. When self-mutilation becomes a form of revenge, gentlemen, we can only recognize we're out of our league and back away slowly.

Moment of Satanic Zen: Flynn reveals a killer like no one else.

28 Days Later - The latest return of the living dead started here. One of the best aspects of a good horror movie is fuzzy picture quality, giving the impression of some dude with a camera who happened to stumble in while awful shit went down. (Best example: the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre) This movie has the snuff film quality, plus sprinting zombies. The Infected are hacking, guttural track stars. Their lack of immoratlity makes them more frightening. They launch themselves through windows with no regard for pain or self-preservation, simply because they absolutely can't wait to get you sick.

Moment of Satanic Zen: When Cillian Murphy's character has to become just as infected as the infected to save Naomi Harris (and that iconic theme music starts).

Event Horizon - Sci-Fi Horror can go from scary to silly without careful direction. Event Horizon stays scary. The titular ship is designed to tear a hole in space time, allowing for inter-galactic travel. Unfortunately, it disappears. When it reappears, a rescue team is sent to investigate, and they slowly realize the ship literally went to hell and came back alive. Laurence Fishburn's overacting is scary for the wrong reasons, but Sam Neill more than makes up for it as the ship's demented Dr. Frankenstein.

Moment of Satanic Zen: While begging forgiveness from the ghost of his neglected, suicidal wife, Sam Neill tears his own eyes out. Later, after setting a timer to send the ship back to hell, he informs Fishburn, "Where we're going, you won't need eyes to see at all." I would've pooped my trousers and sobbed like a little girl who dropped her lolly.

So everyone enjoy a good scare. And check out my previous post for the link to my short stories on Amazon. A few of my stories deal with more tangible horrors: self-inflicted emotional evil, religious evil, and corporate evil. Sleep tight!

The Grey Hero

This week, I’m hoping we share an enthusiasm. I love a grey hero – one of those wonderful characters caught somewhere between good intentions and bad deeds. It’s one of my favorite facets of the Game of Thrones books: no one is 100% right.

Eagle Eye is the titular grey hero of my latest 99-cent story. He’s a sniper, and therefore a killer, but there’s little doubt the people he kills deserve it. (At least, at the beginning.) He wrestles with a troubling question: can we kill our way to safety? And if we can, who should be in charge of determining which people have to die? Who do we trust with that kind of power? (Should we trust any person or group with that kind of power?)

Eagle Eye trusts the system in the beginning. After all, he and his partner J.J. personally collect the intelligence they need. As he says, they observe a target for weeks before a trigger gets pulled. Eagle Eye trusts what he sees in his binoculars and down his scope.

When he comes home, P.T.S.D. affects his judgment. The system he fought to defend refuses to treat him. A new question comes to him: Do domestic war profiteers deserve to die just as much as foreign terrorists?

As we ponder yet another war, I hope the story both entertains you and makes you think of these questions, and others. Is every bad guy in the world an American problem? Will this be yet another war that serves bomb and bullet makers and media moguls? Will this be yet another excuse to not pay working people and not fund public schools and other public institutions? Is it possible to build an economy on creation, rather than destruction?

There are no easy answers in a grey world.

 

Here's the link to purchase "Eagle Eye":

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

 

Using What I Fear

Fear changes with age. When I was a kid, I remember this red bull monster (an actual crimson beast; not the crack-in-a-can energy drink) from this movie “The Last Unicorn” being utterly terrifying. The night I saw Halloween 5 in middle school, I saw Michael Myers’ vacuous white mask in every shadow.

The special effects haven’t aged well. That stuff looks silly now.

As an adult, or at least an older human, I fear different things. I fear failure and mediocrity. I fear bills and debt. I fear disappointing people I love. You can’t slap a white mask on any of that abstract shit, but that only makes it scarier.

Another abstract fright is fascism – that insidious merger of corporate and government interests. We came very close to it in the post-9/11 years. Our institutions are still too powerful, compared to the individuals whose needs they’re supposed to serve.

Fascism in schools is the topic of my latest 99 cent story, “Equality Chair”. The speaker is Charles Vance Cohen, a “Corporate-national school inspector” (also, a prick), and he’s documenting the test run of a device meant to ensure students receive equal access to the teacher. Of course, being designed with the bottom line in mind, little thought was given to how it would affect the humans it was allegedly built to serve.

Just on time for back to school, here’s a preview of “Equality Chair”. Click the link after to purchase the full story.

Equality Chair

 

Today was revelation. It occurred in the least likely setting for epiphany – a school. Not even an enclave school, one of those red brick monstrosities in the outlands.

My young wife worries when my duties take me beyond the Enclaves. It isn’t her fault. To her it’s just a rational opinion based on limited world experience. We go to Jamaica and we’re behind the walls – beige with meandering tropical ivy. We go home to Pleasant Edge and we’re behind the walls – nude tombstone granite. My wife, like so many of my old mates from Central Academy, she’s traveled pocket-to-pocket, never really seeing the world.

In my duties, I must venture out to the other America. As I tried to explain that night she was hurling emotional artillery – our polished ceramic souvenirs, a man’s work sometimes supersedes his safety.

Besides that, I’ve always felt the outlands held a certain primal charm. There’s something about knowing I’m out there, exposed, where a Miserable with a sophisticated enough improvised explosive device could rip my armored limo in half. It makes me feel so vital, so present and alive from moment to moment.

Miserables – that’s the right name for them – those sorry souls who’ve given up on bettering their own lives and seek only to ruin ours.

I should stop. My feelings are immaterial. This document is for the schools.

The Jennie Oakes School – that was the setting. Their front gates are a black iron psychological baby blanket – security theater. The grounds are kept trim and green by standard keepers, rewarded with a life of safety, or, at the very least, a life free of starvation, a life behind gates.

All of that was pedestrian, tedious.

It was the sign that first piqued my interest: an old world rectangle light bulb with black trim and letters. I read aloud, “The Jennie Oakes School: Every Child Special as the Next.” I laughed.

Old Jim, my usual driver, he actually asked me if I was feeling alright, sir. I stopped laughing.

“Park here,” I said.

The building itself was nothing remarkable – the same baked brick that contains all the outborn children looking to earn the label “lettered outborn.” Their atrium, a bland square where two hallways ended, featured a mural of “character models.”

There they were, immortalized in oil: Rockefeller, Trump, Reagan, all the heroes of history I’d approved for the atriums of the 37 outborn schools in my zone. The first sight any student entering the building would behold: titans of business; men of near-limitless vision and ambition.

I heard the clopping of freshly-soled shoes.

The principal, Dolores Harpe, appeared from the hallway on my right. My administrative psych course at Central taught me how to judge someone: it’s all in the shoes and neck. The fresh soles on her second-rate flats revealed a woman trying to hammer class onto her peasantry. The smeared gleam of imitation pearls on her neck confirmed my initial suspicions.

Shoes and neck. That’s all you need.

She wrapped her pudgy hand around mine and squeezed lightly. “I’m so glad to have another administrator in the building today,” she said. I smiled. I wondered how much make up it took to coat her bloated face.

Another administrator, she said. 

Like so many of the other lettered outborn, she reminded me of a cow placed in charge of chickens. Being in lower management, she thought she was no longer livestock, perhaps even a farmer. She saw me as a peer. I didn’t know whether to laugh or smack a half-pound of concealer off of her meaty cheek.

“I’m honored to be here today,” I said. A Corporate-national school inspector must be cordial, though there was one piece of fun I couldn’t let alone. “Tell me about your sign,” I said. “The one out front. Is it serious or was it intended as some private joke?”

She frowned. “Well, no, that’s our school philosophy.” The poor woman didn’t understand.

I explained to her, “My dear,” I said, “if every child was special then no child would be special.” She blinked like a micro-fiber of shrapnel was burrowing through her cornea. I proceeded. “To be special means to be unique, apart from average, distinct. If there were no average children, no normal children, there would be no standard with which to judge excellence, to judge who was, in real terms, ‘special.’” 

Her response: “Every child at the Jennie Oakes School is as special as the next.”

A man in my position is often prone to this kind of error. Miss Harpe was a product of her institution, as much as my wife and I are products of Enclave parents and Enclave schools. She would respond to criticism of her institutional platitude by repeating it verbatim, as if to do so was to verify its philosophical foundation. I could point to the mud on which such a sentiment rested, and tell her, “This is mud” and she would blink stupidly. I could shove her wide face into it, until I pulled her up, muck-faced and sputtering, and she would just look at me like I was some powerful sorcerer, capable of changing the density of substances at will.

It would never occur to her the structure of her beliefs had always been wobbling precariously, on a bedrock of pure shit. 

Then again, look at the institution that molded her. Her happiest memories were probably sitting in a desk in this very building, pleasing the impossibly tall figure at the front of the room with a raised arm, a predictable insight, a sugary grin. She was always going to come back here. I ought to disregard her. Our society is built with a hundred thousand Dolores Harpes, pledging passionate allegiance to some platitude on a light bulb sign. 

I apologized and told her it was a wonderful slogan. Every child was indeed special and we merely needed to unlock their potential. She smiled a prescribed smile and led me to the left, down the main hall.

She boasted the triumph of their architecture first. 

As we walked, she explained:  “At the turn of the century, the curriculum determined what had to be taught at each grade level and at each subject. It also determined the degree of depth, whether a student was to be exposed to a concept, should be extending their use of a concept, or achieving mastery of it.”

“Fascinating,” I offered. I didn’t remind her that the past needn’t concern her. I didn’t scold her that she should focus on the present, where what is taught, when it is taught, to what degree and for how long it is taught, comes directly from Central, directly through me. I allowed her to rant and ramble. The capacity to self-delude is what keeps women like this from baking cakes instead of bombs.

“There was also a device called an I.E.P. This stood for Individualized Education Plan…”

I endured her speaking to me like a child, reminding myself again to whom, and what, I was speaking. In her mind, she was now the impossibly tall figure at the front of the room, and I was the adoring little girl in the desk. She never guessed she was being indulged. This is my gift.

“…so why not eliminate the curriculum and give everyone an I.E.P? Why not treat everyone as special as the next?” She beamed at me.

“A revelation,” I offered. We continued walking.

“A Corporate-national University study found that one of the key portions of the I.E.P. was that a student with special needs be given preferential seating. The more a student’s attention was likely to wander, the closer they should be to the front of the room, where the teacher is likely to be. We are the first school in the nation to take this idea and work it into the very structure of the building.” We arrived at the first classroom Dolores wanted to present me. She unlocked a plain oak door.

It wasn’t a classroom as I understand the term. It was another hallway, running sideways. Students scribbled right down the line. Dolores’ wide frame blocked the instructor. 

(End of free preview)

Link to view 99 cent purchase option:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

Putting the Past Away

What an emo week. I had a lost wedding ring scare and some quality fights with the people I love the most. Then there was the online high school reunion.

I don’t know why I finally got around to updating my Facebook photo. Just did. Time to join the herd and all. And then all these people found me. Some of them were people I had deep friendships with once. Some of them were just people I was glad to be reminded of. One of them was the first person I ever fell in love with (and never told).

Guess what I was writing this week before any of this happened? A series of letters to everyone I’ve ever been in love with. Sometimes fate just fucks with you.

You may be wondering, “Who recreationally decides to write a series of letters to everyone they’ve ever been in love with?” I know I’m weird. I’ve known since I’ve known what “weird” meant.

Truth is, I was trying to put the past away. And then the past found me on Facebook.

But it was a good thing.

I was surprised at the support a lot of the guys showed, once I’d friended them and they had access to my little gay wedding photos. Talking to some of them made me realize I wasn’t the only one who had a terribly hard time in high school and the years after. I wasn’t the only one who felt beaten to shit by the guilt-ridden, hostile-to-sex environment at my school. I wasn’t the only one who broke down from it.

In that spirit, I’m sharing a new story on my Amazon author page. Writing it helped me recover. My new old friends will definitely recognize the religion class the story is set in. “Period Three Damnation” is my fourth 99 cent story that I’m selling.

This week marks a milestone for me as a writer as well – I’ve finally been paid for my work. It’s only a handful of dollars so far, but it represents a future I’ve been working toward.

Here is the first half of “Period Three Damnation”. The rest is available for the price of an assembly line cheeseburger.

Period Three Damnation

I don’t hate Miss Minor anymore. After years of therapy, I can say that and mean it.

I’m still trying to forgive. I hate myself for ever taking her seriously. Because the truth is Miss Minor said all these things and, in my head, I should’ve said the same thing most of my friends must’ve said. I should’ve left her room with just one certitude: this bitch is nuts.

My friends, the ones who were smart enough to ignore her, were Kevin Woods, Tom Evans, Jake Hurtado, and Carlos Gonzales. Tom looked like Jim Carrey. Jake looked like a Puerto Rican Kermit the Frog. But they were nice guys, affable and all.

Except maybe Carlos. He was only really a friend-of-a-friend type, though I’m not sure which, if any of my friends, would’ve claimed to be close to Carlos. For an honors student, he never struck any of us as bright. It was impossible not to notice, in the locker room, the skid marks on his tighty-whities. There was this zit right on the edge of his nose that never really flattened out. He always smelled like a mix of French Onion Soup and hot garbage.

Plus, he was one of those kids who never knew what class it was. He rotated asking, after every single class, what we had next. Since the honors classes were tracked at Holy Cross, we never met half of our grade, and we knew each other far too well. Carlos rotated between asking me, Tom, and Jake, rather than just checking his fucking schedule like we did.

He usually knew better than to ask our other friend, my best friend, Kevin. I loved Kevin like a brother and I think he felt the same, but even I didn’t annoy him with bullshit inquiries. You just didn’t do that with Kevin. Even as a friend.

           “Yo, what class we got next?” Carlos said. That’s another thing: everyone was ‘yo’ to Carlos. The day of the big meltdown, October of Junior year, the day it happened, I didn’t have the strength to answer. Thankfully, Tom did. 

“Day C, period 3, bitch,” Tom said. “You know what that means.”

“Damnation, always a fun class,” I mumbled. “Kev’s out today too.  No entertainment.”

“Aw, Chrissy misses his girlfwiend,” Tom pinched me on the cheek. I punched Tom in the arm. I remember thinking maybe I’d been too close to Kevin, maybe we were starting to look a little gay. But he was the only kid I knew from before Catholic school.

Twelve years before, at a local park, our mothers got to know one another, they had a casual conversation on a little red bench while Kevin and I shoveled a moat in the sandbox. I can only guess their conversation. I love your purse. I love your shoes. Wouldn’t it be cute to send our boys to Catholic school together? And Kevin and I shoveled away, working on the moat that we were certain would protect us from any threat, on the sandbox island.

We had no idea our fates had been decided. But even then, I remember thinking at least if I have to go, I’ll know somebody. I’m not going to the big brick school alone. I’m going with Kevin, a sandbox friend. You don’t get many, and the ones you have are very hard to keep.

By the time we got to high school, one of my favorite things about Kevin was how he never took any of Miss Minor’s shit. Like I said, our religion teacher was the Pope’s bitch puppet.

“Look what I did, last time we had her,” Jake said in monotone. He opened his normally immaculate notebook to the section set aside for Religion class. At the top of the page, in his neatest print it read, “Reasons I’m going to HELL.” Jake had even taken the time to set the capital H-E-L-L on fire, complete with pencil-sketch smoke rising into the page’s upper margin.

“Yo-oo, that’s hard,” Carlos complimented.

“I’m going for jacking off too much,” Tom said. “So I can be a prick about everything else, I figure, since I’m going anyways.”

“I’m going for what I do with your mom,” Carlos humped the air in case the nuance of his point had been lost on Tom. Tom spun and thrust-kicked Carlos right in the ass.

“Yo, chill!” Carlos said.

“We should get to class,” I said. We had this habit of loitering by the statue of the Virgin Mary just outside the Algebra room on days when we had Miss Minor’s Religion class, like we were waiting for Jesus’ mom to write us a “Please excuse” letter.

I was the one to move us along. Somehow, I was the grown-up of our crew. Even when we did “group work” in class, they always wanted me to take the lead. On our previous group assignment in Religion, we had to rank the seven deadly sins 1-7, in terms of which were most prevalent in today’s world, and explain our choices. I put pride first, explaining that any person who presumes to know the divine was capable of great evil, in “God’s” name.

Judging from our excellent grade, Miss Minor didn’t care to know I was talking about her.

I wondered what she had planned for us as we wound our way up the steps of the old brick building. We passed the brown, hissing radiators and landed on the third floor. We shuffled into Miss Minor’s room, a poorly-insulated brick chamber that blazed in September, May, and June, and froze the rest of the year.

She stood just inside the entranceway. She was small at 5’’ 6’, but she had a big presence, aided by the monolithic height of her spiritual certitude and, to a lesser degree, her poofy red hair.

We shuffled past her. We sat and were still.

When the last student entered, Miss Minor spoke to the back wall. “Papers in the basket, let’s not make a production out of it. No stories, no excuses, just drop them in.” She passed a wicker basket around to collect her papers. It had been used to collect money in a local church before that, so our assignments always felt like offerings to some insatiable deity. “Your assignment was to find examples of the Ten Commandments’ influence in modern American law. I would like to start today by discussing what you came up with.”

No hands. 

“C’mon gentlemen, I want to have an adult discussion here, the type you’re going to have to get used to for your college classes.”

No hands.

“Dudes, might I remind you that class participation is a quarter of the grade in this course? And that you have to see my smiling face for two more years?” That’s another thing, we were ‘dudes’ when she wanted to seem human.

Thankfully she got her one hand – Jake’s. I was so glad Jake was in my classes. He was great about smothering the grenades. No one discussed because she wasn’t interested in discussion. Echoes and affirmations of approved dogma – that was her game. Any time you tried to actually express an original thought, it only ended in submission or detention. Collectively and without conspiring, we had chosen a spiteful silence.

“Mr. Hurtado, thank you so much. Where did you find an example…” she stopped because Kevin was sulking in, longish auburn hair in a bedhead tangle and a yellow pass in his extended hand. Kevin’s wrinkled dress shirt seemed confused to be on his torso. Even his freckles looked lost. “Good morning, Kevin.” The class shifted from casual-attentive to upright-attentive. I remember thinking this was late, even for Kev.

“Morning,” Kevin confirmed.

“Do you have your paper on the Ten Commandments in modern law?” she pointed to the wicker collection basket full of our contributions. 

“Can I talk to you later about that?”

“Do you have it or not?”

He lowered his voice. “Please? Later?” She took the pass, tossed it in her garbage and thumbed him towards his seat. He shuffled to the back and unpacked as delicately as he could. Right away my alarms were sounding. This wasn’t the Kevin I knew. That Kevin strutted in, late and proud. This Kevin was a zoo lion behind fogged Plexi-glass, licking his great paw where the claws had been surgically removed. When Kevin melted into his seat, much of the class settled back as well.

No show today.

“Jake. Continue, please.”

“Oh, uh, the Seventh Commandment seems to be represented in the laws of many cultures. People not stealing is important for the economy. I thought it was really important for the powerful not to steal, if you look at how our economy’s been. A lot of our problems relate to greed. So you could say Securities laws are based on the Seventh Commandment.”

“Great, Jake! Let’s not forget how that relates back to the First Commandment also. Not having other Gods refers not just to polytheism, but also not allowing personal ambition to twist one’s priorities. It’s important to follow these rules, always, exactly as they are written. Who else?”

No hands. Once again, certitude rendered discussion pointless.

“How about you Chris?” I always wished for better camouflage on days we had Miss Minor. I had this one dress shirt that was almost a brick hue, but it never helped me blend. “Chris, which commandment did you relate to modern law?”

“Third.”

“Interesting. That’s by far the least selected commandment for this project.” I sat there with my notebook page blank, silently praying she would move on. “How did you relate that commandment to modern law?” Show time. It seemed like such a good idea last night. I was always so brave, typing in my bedroom the night before.

“Well, as you know, the Third Commandment is about not taking the Lord’s name in vain. I related it to politicians, or anyone in power really, using God’s name to do evil things. Like when people use religion to judge others harshly or to justify sinful, self-serving behavior, I think that breaks the Third Commandment.”

“How does that relate to modern law?” Here we go.

“Well, a lot of the people in government who claim to be the most devout, the laws they pass victimize the poor, or start unnecessary wars for profit, and a lot of those people use God’s name to justify it, so they’re missing the point.” I sat up a little taller. “But it doesn’t have to just be politicians. It could be any person with any power or authority.” This was, by far, the most ballsy I’d ever been in Damnation.

“Like police?” Miss Minor asked.

Or teachers, I thought.

“Like police, politicians, or whoever has power…or influence,” I said, looking right in her eyes.

“Hmmm…interesting thought. I think you may be overreaching, Chris. Sometimes the Commandments are very literal. The Third Commandment is ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.’ That means having respect for authority, the final authority – our Lord God the Father. Maybe I should give you your paper back. I’d hate for my class to be the only one keeping you off honor roll this quarter.”

My reply caught in my throat. She always knew where to hit me. Junior year is college audition year. In English or any other class, I always found I got the best grades when I told the truth in my papers. I liked telling the truth, even more so in Miss Minor’s room, where dogma radiated, thick as the hissing heat.

She walked over to the wire basket and flipped through for my paper. She walked up the aisle and plopped it unceremoniously on my desk. I looked at my handsomely-formatted rejection and sulked.

I liked telling the truth, but I liked maintaining my grade point average a little bit more.

“Okay dudes, does anyone else have a…”

Kevin’s hand shot up. He had a wonderfully combative little smirk. My attention was no longer on my returned paper.

 

Check out the rest here: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DV8K5FS

-James