The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [126]
In no time, one of the other boys raised his hand and demanded that he wasn’t feeling well, that he wished to go home. Another boy proceeded to rock back and forth in his seat, unnoticeably at first, then dramatically faster.
The scene evolved into unorthodox chaos when one of the boys bolted upwards from his seat to revamp hypnotically the Father Abraham song. That was when the shit hit the fan and splattered across the norm of Sunday morning Children’s Study completely.
That was also when Malmey suspected something was not quite right altogether and not just with herself, not quite right as if she’d been slipped something, as if everyone had been slipped something, and she turned to the class glossy-eyed and said something....
When she said it, her eyes were affixed upon Simon, cruelly, vindictively, as though somehow she knew he was to blame....
“I feel sick. Does anyone else feel sick? Oh my God....”
***
The acid-spiked punch was good shit, apparently, and when the effects kicked in, they came on with all the spectacle of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as seen through a kaleidoscope of stills from a Stanley Kubrick production. Simon contained himself upon the corner metal chair, quietly amused at the mayhem he created, and how it far surpassed the mayhem he’d witnessed of the teachers’ attempts to mellow out all the feisty children before.
Their efforts didn’t amount to much.
The tallest of the boys leaned over his hardbound King James and vomited. The girls’ teacher, a bushy-eyebrowed and thick-haired young man with an oversized yellow tie, stormed into the room and ordered Malmey to call for an ambulance, as if he couldn’t do it himself. Malmey was way too busy occupying herself with reaching for a firm grip of the podium to lift herself from her crouch against the wall. More than one of the boys was sobbing.
Simon could have eventually begun to feel a sort of remorse over all this, feeling himself inclined to brood over the heartfelt distress and panic surrounding him, inclined to give in to regret, if it weren’t for the distraction of the apparition which began to materialize in the middle of it all.
No one seemed to notice to it; either the others within the room weren’t able to see it, or they were all witnessing so many diverse oddities at once which didn’t really exist that the apparition sort of blended into their individual trips.
But Simon certainly saw it, and it acquired his full attention. Rather than the vision upsetting him, he felt himself strangely at ease. This isn’t to say he wasn’t frightened, but the numbness of distance he experienced in relation to his surroundings had somehow prepared him for this.
For this...for the promised encounter with the little black boy’s ‘Beloved One.’
Her presence was as familiar to him as a mother’s to her child. He knew this apparition, somehow, and he knew that seeing her there had nothing to do with the effects of the punch, for he was sure the punch had nothing to do with this. Sure, for the greater part. Almost absolutely. This had to be real.
The being appeared at the head of the class and before the chalkboard. What existed below her waist was a mild torrent of air. Above this was a woman of silvery metallic skin whose long black hair covered both her breasts and her backside. Her hands were outstretched as though to exclaim, “Here I am,” her fingers crowned in twisting tar-black fingernails. Her facial features were a roadmap of ancient woes superimposed by an unblemished youthfulness and demanding sobriety. Apart from this, she carried in her actions and speech the definition of black humor, as if she couldn’t possibly take the entire situation she placed herself in seriously.
As if.
Then, upon fully achieving visibility and Simon’s attention, she folded her arms to get down to business