Juncture 2.1

Thirteen.

That was how many times I had to sit through that same math class. That was how many times I got kicked out for being rude to Simon. Thirteen.

That was how many times I met with Principal Saunders. That was how many times I was sentenced to detention. Thirteen.

That was how many times I was hit by the car at the end of the day. That was how many times I felt the metal chassis hit me, how many times I felt my skull hit the wet pavement, how many times my vision went dark.

That was how many times I died. In all honesty, I was getting bored. My pain tolerance started going up around the fourth or fifth time through – even though everything was getting reset, anything that took place within the realm of my mind kept and built upon itself. I remembered every pass through the day.

It sucked, let me tell you. After around six times, I began to try and notice differences between each experience. Mr. Fetter, for instance. He showed up four or five times out of the thirteen, and after the first time he showed up, the next few times I felt the same sensation as I had felt during the rest of the day. I was stuck with the actions I had done, and I couldn’t change them.

Aside from Mr. Fetter’s appearance, there were some minute differences between each of the days. Sometimes when Barbara ended her phone call as I was sitting in the office fiddling with the Rubik’s cube, she would hang up in a huff.

In Chemistry, sometimes I would notice a fly buzzing around the lights. One time it was a bee instead, and Jock had to get up and crush it. The rest of the times the fly was left to its own devices until it flew out of an open window and into the gray outdoors.

Right now I was sitting in detention again. There were about three minutes left until Barbara’s alarm would go off and she would let me out of the musty room. About seven minutes until I was outside in the rain. Around nine minutes until I got hit by the car again.

I sat patiently, waiting for the inevitable.

Barbara’s alarm went off.

“Alright Marc, thanks for behaving yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Barbara turned off the alarm, closed her laptop, put her phone in her purse, and rose from the desk.

“Alright Marc, thanks for behaving yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and walked out of the room.

I grabbed my stuff and left shortly after

…

I was in the rain around four minutes later, having just left the dry warmth of the school building. Within seconds, my clothes had been soaked thoroughly, and I was shivering.

This is going to suck.

I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of this groundhog-day scenario, but if I did I would be able to take any pain easily.

I walked on, my teeth chattering and my lips turning blue.

I heard a soft honk before me.

Here it comes.

Something glinted in the rain next to me and I turned my head to look. I saw a huge, hulking figure charging at me, and before I could do anything, I was knocked backward, hard. My feet even came off of the ground for several seconds as I hurtled through the air for an unnatural amount of time.

When I fell to the ground, I landed hard. First on my arm, flipped over onto my stomach, then flipped again, my head solidly connecting to the wet tar. I swear I felt my brain rattling inside my skull.

I laid there, face-up in the rain. Water flowed freely into my eyes and mouth as I tried and failed to roll over. My entire body was screaming at me from the sheer intensity of the pain I was experiencing.

Turns out my pain tolerance wasn’t as good as I’d thought.

I took several deep, rattling breaths as I tried to recover my wits about me. It was excruciating. After several seconds I coughed out most of the water that had gotten in my mouth, and tried to turn over. I made it about half an inch off of my back before I was lifted off the ground by something I couldn’t see. I tried to struggle against the contact, but I couldn’t move enough to cause any meaningful distraction to whomever or whatever was picking me up.

I squinted, trying to get a clear view of what was carrying me. My vision was blurry, changing my surroundings into a moving watercolor painting. All I could see were lights and shapes. It didn’t help that the rain was still falling.

I tried talking.

“Who are you and what the hell are you doing?”
At least, that’s what I tried to ask. I think it came out more like “…who...hellyou…do”.

I felt a baritone rumble from the thing carrying me. So it was a person. I couldn’t make out specific words at all, just the general concept of speech.

We were moving. I didn’t know where we were going, but I could tell that we were moving, because every step my captor took caused pain in my head and arm.

My thoughts were beginning to disconnect from each other, separate points on a graph. My eyes closed for a second, and when I opened them, I was in a different place. It was brighter. The light hurt my head. There wasn’t any rain. I closed my eyes again.

They opened and I was in a different place. There was something over my mouth. The light was bright. There were short noises: a staccato murmur, then a response. I felt a pain in my head. My arm hurt. I felt something cut into my arm, but I couldn’t move. I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. My head was on fire.



I closed my eyes.