February 15, 2018



She walks into the class, full of gray, uenthusiastic students while she displayed the complete opposite, stopping to admire every little thing in the room. First she comes across the shelves upon shelves of typewriters, enough to supply a 1950's publishing company. She knows she'll get annoyed glances from her fellow students if she decides to use the loud, clicky writing tools, but it's not like she has much in common with them to begin with. Besides, she didn't exactly join the class for the students, the only thing they supplied her was that beutiful clickity clack of their creative processes at work. She finds a seat without a computer, wanting to at least have an excuse for using the ancient technology other than that she just wanted to. Sitting in the chair she cringes, knowing the chairs were probably older than her, maybe they even housed a now dead person or two. She pulls out her pocket notebook and begins to write down the idea of this phantom sitter, always finding such ideas more comforting when they can be ripped off and thrown away. She finishes the description, whom turned out to be an aspiring soldier who simply took the class because he had to, but turned out loving it, using as a way to cope during the war. She had been planning on throwing away the idea of the phantom sitter as a form of self-therapy, but now she feels honored to sit where this war veteran once did, the warmth of the seat now feeling like encouragement from a past soul. She looked around from the phantom seat, her thoughts of a dead soldier becoming more and more realistic in her mind as she inspected the numerous examples of aging, the water damage, the yellowed walls, and of course the phantoms chair.


She decides this phantom sitter needs a face to connect with, wouldn't be such a demanding order of character design, simply a young aspiring military officer. First a strong, yet soft face, given he knows of war but not in grim detail. A stron-


The door of the classroom slams shut, in front of it now standing the teacher.


She inspects her mentor for the next six months, noting how militant he looks himself, much like the soldier he wrote of. Then again, her teacher only lgave that impression clothing wise, his hair giving the opposite impression, being wild and unkempt. He walked over to his podium and stood high over her and the rest of the students, giving full view of a coffee stain on the center of his shirt.


"Before you say it, yeah I got coffee on my shirt" He said "It's bound to happen when you're a writer, lot of coffee"


She shaking her head in eager agreement, having had this exact experience time and time again. He takes notice to the little outburst with a chuckle, she buries herself back in her seat in mild embarrassment. He didn't take notice to that, instead went straight into his teaching routine, a lot more fluid and improvised than she was used to.


"My name's Mr. Greene, but you may, though I doubt, know me as R.W.W. Greene" He said, sending schockwaves through the girl. He continued to speak, but the words no longer got to her, she mindlessly fishes through her bag in utter fear. She pulls a weathered book from her bag, worn from mulitple reads, but despite that the front still housed a legible "R.W.W. Greene". She froze up, was she supposed to happy to have her favorite writer as her teacher? Whatever she was supposed to feel, she knew she plain felt anything but. It sure didn't help when he called out her name.


"Abigail Curtis?" He said, forcing Abigails heart skip a beat. She attempted to hide the book as fast as possible.


"You alright? I'm not gonna crucify you for reading or anything, but maybe do this not during a lesson? And from the looks of it you've gone through it enough to recite it" He said, not entirely being wrong.

"Oh, of course, sorry" She said, quickly stuffing the book back inside.

"Oh it's fine, what is it you're reading anyway?" He said. She froze once again, almost having put the book away. Sh looks back up to meet his eyes, while thier was no intensity in them or the question, she couldn't help but feel intimidated.



1 comment:

  1. really good job, who is the author? there's no name.

    ReplyDelete