Marsbert
12-06-04, 09:28PM
This was our first fiction assignment that I just revamped and I think it's a lot better now....
The Banana
Mrs. Tamutus was stuck in the 50’s. Her hair had been lacquered into a permanent poof on top of her head that would never fade, let alone move. The rainbow of jewels on her sausage fingers probably used to sparkle in the sun, but now they were all covered in a filmy grey residue that would be there for the rest of eternity. She was a round little woman no more than four feet high, who wore stiff, bloated sweaters with winter landscapes on them, no matter what season it was.
There were 3 categories of students as far as Mrs. Tamutus was concerned; 1) those lucky girls that she liked for no reason other than the fact that they were female. Then there were 2) those boys that for reason unknown to any existing friends – tried harder at impressing Mrs. Tamutus than they did at living. Lastly, there were 3) the boys and girls who didn’t give a steaming pile of shit if Mrs. Tamutus enjoyed their company or not. These were “hoodlums” in Mrs. Tamutus’ eyes and the scum of the High School floor.
I was in the last category. I’d been placed there in the 9th grade when I sentenced a Tamutus-doodle to death via firing squad. Sure enough, I turned over my masterpiece and our in-class assignment had magically appeared on the back of it. After reluctantly handing that in, my life in her classes became the equivalent of having my eyelids slowly pulled away from my eyes with red-hot pincers.
Nowadays, when we had Tamutus, my head became the weight of a brick and it was a battle just to keep my forehead from hitting the desktop. If I ever once let my head droop even a fraction of a centimeter, I would be murdered. I was sure of it. In a brief outburst of brilliance, I came up with the excellent idea of bringing some of my lunch to class in order to battle the enemy known as sleepy boredom. I had grabbed a banana and cookie from my lunch bag and had stuffed them into the pockets of my oversized sweatshirt before class. Now I sat in the middle of the classroom, figuring she wouldn’t be able to single me out just by glancing into the sea of faces. When I started to peel the yellow petals from my creamy soft banana, I had a vision of my downfall. The smell of the banana was going to give me away. I thought maybe if I put the peels back on, as if the banana had never been stripped, that it would make the smell disappear, but Mrs. Tamutus had already paused her chalk and was slowly turning towards us. It was reminiscent of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, targeting his prey and going in for the kill. She made her way down my aisle faster than I thought those tiny stumpy legs of hers could have moved, and when my eyes finally caught up to her, hovering over me, she had a jeweled sausage finger pointing at the forbidden fruit in my lap. Before I could even begin to form audible words to explain my way out of this sticky predicament, Mrs. Tamutus had taken my banana out of my lap and completely stripped off the four carefully-divided peels. For a split second I wondered what she might want with the peels, or if maybe she was hungry too and was going to eat it herself. But when the cold white goodness was squashed into my burning eyelids, I realized Mrs. Tamutus was in fact, not hungry, nor was she going to continue teaching at our High School.
The Banana
Mrs. Tamutus was stuck in the 50’s. Her hair had been lacquered into a permanent poof on top of her head that would never fade, let alone move. The rainbow of jewels on her sausage fingers probably used to sparkle in the sun, but now they were all covered in a filmy grey residue that would be there for the rest of eternity. She was a round little woman no more than four feet high, who wore stiff, bloated sweaters with winter landscapes on them, no matter what season it was.
There were 3 categories of students as far as Mrs. Tamutus was concerned; 1) those lucky girls that she liked for no reason other than the fact that they were female. Then there were 2) those boys that for reason unknown to any existing friends – tried harder at impressing Mrs. Tamutus than they did at living. Lastly, there were 3) the boys and girls who didn’t give a steaming pile of shit if Mrs. Tamutus enjoyed their company or not. These were “hoodlums” in Mrs. Tamutus’ eyes and the scum of the High School floor.
I was in the last category. I’d been placed there in the 9th grade when I sentenced a Tamutus-doodle to death via firing squad. Sure enough, I turned over my masterpiece and our in-class assignment had magically appeared on the back of it. After reluctantly handing that in, my life in her classes became the equivalent of having my eyelids slowly pulled away from my eyes with red-hot pincers.
Nowadays, when we had Tamutus, my head became the weight of a brick and it was a battle just to keep my forehead from hitting the desktop. If I ever once let my head droop even a fraction of a centimeter, I would be murdered. I was sure of it. In a brief outburst of brilliance, I came up with the excellent idea of bringing some of my lunch to class in order to battle the enemy known as sleepy boredom. I had grabbed a banana and cookie from my lunch bag and had stuffed them into the pockets of my oversized sweatshirt before class. Now I sat in the middle of the classroom, figuring she wouldn’t be able to single me out just by glancing into the sea of faces. When I started to peel the yellow petals from my creamy soft banana, I had a vision of my downfall. The smell of the banana was going to give me away. I thought maybe if I put the peels back on, as if the banana had never been stripped, that it would make the smell disappear, but Mrs. Tamutus had already paused her chalk and was slowly turning towards us. It was reminiscent of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, targeting his prey and going in for the kill. She made her way down my aisle faster than I thought those tiny stumpy legs of hers could have moved, and when my eyes finally caught up to her, hovering over me, she had a jeweled sausage finger pointing at the forbidden fruit in my lap. Before I could even begin to form audible words to explain my way out of this sticky predicament, Mrs. Tamutus had taken my banana out of my lap and completely stripped off the four carefully-divided peels. For a split second I wondered what she might want with the peels, or if maybe she was hungry too and was going to eat it herself. But when the cold white goodness was squashed into my burning eyelids, I realized Mrs. Tamutus was in fact, not hungry, nor was she going to continue teaching at our High School.