Best of tubular's Flashfics

by tubular

SERENITY (Prologue)

“The night... was... humid.”

No, that wasn’t quite right.

“The night was... moist.”

Gah. This isn’t working.

“The night... was... was... It was... humid?”

Shit.

“You know, this is a pretty lame exercise. Like, it’s ungodly how unfair this is right now. I can’t think of anything to write about for these goddamn prompts of yours. They’re too vague, and every time I get an idea for them, it’s either horrible, not fitting, or something that I can’t word right.”

The teacher looks up from his desk, beady eyes poking into your soul as he slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose. To probe your brain for conformity, a thought springs up.

“Vague? Too vague for you? Would you prefer for me to come up to the board and tell you to write about ‘VERY LARGE PHALLIC OBJECTS THAT YOU LIKE TO HAVE IN AND AROUND YOUR MOUTH’?” he suddenly bursts out, as though possessed.

A student at the back of the class pipes up, “Why, that’s oddly specific. Any particular reason for that choice in subject matter?”

The teacher blushes—How in the hell does a wrinkly prune like him even blush, you think to yourself—rubs at a nonexistent stain on his green checkered sweater-vest, and looks back to the papers on his ever-cluttered desk.

The boy who spoken, a rather large African-Amercian teenager dressed in a basketball-themed hoodie, black gym shorts, and admittedly pretty damn stylish running shoes, snickers quietly, changes position a little in his slightly-too-small desk-chair hybrid, and begins to twirl his pencil absently as he looks up to the far corner of the room. Likely fantasizing about shooting some hoops and punching his black friends in the shoulder as they exchange random joking insults, you think.

Why do I always think of everything but writing at times like this, your brain quickly responds, and you grumble audibly. You choose to emulate the psuedo-gangster three rows down, and you let your eyes wander about the aging walls of the classroom.

“The night was... wet?”

“Fuck,” you think. Or, rather, inadvertently think aloud.

The scrawny green prune looks up at you again, this time with an air of condescension. “There’s no need for this sort of colourful language,” he says, sounding as though he should be wagging a finger at you while wearing a stern expression. You couldn’t care less, as it were, and just stared at your paper. “Maybe you should try and apply some of that language to your empty page,” he quickly adds.

Without looking up, or even missing a beat, you reply, “Maybe if there was some concept to apply it to, some shred of an idea that I could work with, instead of these stupid prompts.”

“The whole point of this writing thing is not to produce a story, but to work with your creative urges, and find a sense of calming peace as you write,” a soft voice proclaims from somewhere behind you. You turn around in your seat, to see that it’s the fourth person in the room, the quiet, shy girl who always hangs out with herself and wears dark clothing. “It’s not to produce a work of literature, really; it’s more to produce a sense of self.”

And what would you know, you’ve got too little self-esteem to even have any friends, anyway, you think, but say nothing.

“For example, look here: I’m writing about ponies. They make me feel good inside, so I write about them.”

[2011-06-15]