12. Suffer The Children
After about half an hour of pretending to listen to whatever Dr Doe was saying, Giovanni was finally dismissed, and headed out to the kitchen by himself. He walked absentmindedly, going down the stairs and down the hallway without taking two consecutive turns anywhere, all the time with jumbled images in his head about everything that had happened to him during the last two days.
Mostly, it was images of all that had happened in the classrooms, mixed with everything Benoni had said. But, the most disturbing and disconcerting part about it is that, at random moments, Circe's face would flash in his thoughts. Why the hell should he be thinking about the little girl? Even worse, why should he feel good thinking of her?
Meanwhile, in the background of all his thoughts, he could still hear Dr Doe's words. She had been talking about being virtuous, and to approach everything in a rational manner. Supposedly, the way towards the dark magic was easy to follow, since it often involved abandoning yourself to vanity, fear, greed, and affliction. It was easy to fall prey to those negative attitudes because they stemmed from the most basic emotions and feelings, from the more "animal" side of a human. And, although it was impossible to avoid feelings and emotions, it was the duty of all thinking beings to control them and channel them into the proper attitudes. Every person could be wise, prudent, courageous, and just, if they put their mind to it. This was especially important for all those who had the Gift of Magick, said Dr Doe, because they could project their reactions to their feelings into the world in a way that other humans couldn't.
Luckily, by the time Dr Doe was getting into full swing with her rant, a chime dinged somewhere in the room, and she said it was dinner time, and that they would speak again soon. "Go ahead, I will be along in a few minutes."
Giovanni shook his head and pulled away from his daydream. He looked up to see that he was a few yards away from one of the kitchen's many entrances, and suddenly he heard Benoni speak up right behind him. He gave a little yelp and swung around fast. "Shit! Erm… I mean, professor, sorry, I didn't hear you coming up behind me."
"Yes, you seemed to be… woolgatherin', as your dear mamá would say? You know, I meant to ask you and your classmates a while ago to ponder upon the appearance of Magick amongst mankind. If Magick is indeed a genetic predisposition, wouldn't humans also have developed the genetic predisposition to negate Magick by now? It has been a good three or four million years of human evolution, apparently, you know? Anyway… Carry on! Dinner time!" And Benoni walked past Giovanni into the kitchen.
"That guy is such a weirdo!" Giovanni said as a preamble to telling Circe all about the last two times he had seen Benoni.
After getting his dinner plate, he had found Circe sitting down already. This time, she was sharing a table with Bryan and Robert Platt, another fourteen year old from their own pod. Giovanni joined them, barely sparing a moment to say "whazzup, guys" to the other kids, before launching into his story about being in one room with Benoni first, and then being in a completely different room with Doe right after.
"But the weirdest thing is, if mister Wozniak saw me going into the room, but doctor Doe didn't see me or the Benoni guy in there, where were we, then? And why couldn't they find us with their monitoring system when we were all with him? And then he tells me all these crazy things, and they… those things just keep circling around in my head…"
"Well, teachers know a lot of advanced Magick, you know?" Little Bryan piped up.
"Yeah, didn't you see how mister Wozniak extinguished the fire in the classroom? He used a Magick weapon!" Robert said, with shining eyes.
"What weapon? What are you talking about?" Circe and Giovanni asked together.
"The pendant he wears! It's a weapon! My dad has an amulet he keeps in his pocket all the time, and that he uses to do Magick, and he told me this summer, before I started school, that when I graduate he'll teach me how to make one for myself!"
"Yeah? How do they work?" Giovanni wanted to know, and Circe just nodded in agreement.
"Well," Bryan spoke up, of course, he of the big brain, "They are supposed to be really hard to make, because they are all-purpose circle-and-triangle substitutes. All that stuff we do by drawing the symbols and saying the words? That's all contained in a weapon. But I don't know how anyone could make one…" Bryan sounded more disappointed because he didn't know than because he didn't have his own weapon.
"Ahhh! I see! So that's why the Thompsons had those sticks!" Circe said while nodding.
"What sticks? Ah, right, the ones mister Wozniak took away! I remember now… Why did he take them away?" Giovanni's face went into a frown again.
"You really don't know, do you?" Circe said, and Giovanni could see that Bryan and Robert were very curious to find out, but they seemed somewhat afraid. "The first night you were here the Thompsons attacked you with their weapons. I have been asking around, and some kids had heard that the Thompson family is very powerful with the Magick, but the sons are a bit spoiled. And Staci said that her cousin has seen them use bodily harm spells against people, and it's not pretty… People end up in the hospital with boils and rash all over their body."
"You know? I talked to my mom last night," Bryan interrupted. "She tells me that people can dodge the attacks if they see them coming, or if they know the right Magick they can deflect the attacks, but she says that the Thompsons probably don't know how to do the hex correctly, because no one can withstand those kinds of spells…"
"Yeah, but you did!" Robert said excitedly. "How'd you do it?"
"Look, guys, I don't know what you're all going on about, but all I felt were a couple of hot pokers touching my back, and that's all." Giovanni said with a shrug.
"Well, I know what I saw, and those Thompson kids are all famous for doing Magick since they were little, and that looked like a real hex… Maybe you were just lucky their spells fizzled, right?" Robert said as he got up from the table. "Anyway, I'm done. See you all later."
The conversation started drifting away from weird teachers and strange happenings, and soon enough Giovanni was busy again trying to catch up with his pile of homework, even while he finished eating his dinner.
No one noticed that, at the teacher's table, Professor Benoni pushed his food around his plate and kept looking at Giovanni and Circe, with a small smile on his lips.
***
When Giovanni and Circe walked into the Cerulean pod, Bryan, Staci, Traci, and Robert came up to them and looked very distressed. Traci spoke for all of them. "Look, Giovanni, don't freak out, okay? Just be cool, okay? We're gonna go and find mister Wozniak, but don't wig out, okay?"
"What the heck are you talking ab…?" Giovanni wasn't able to finish his question, because at that moment a loud round of guffaws interrupted him, and Traci turned around, letting Giovanni look past her towards his own bunk. Sitting on Circe's bed, the Thompson twins and Garret Feldman were tossing at each other Giovanni's beannie hat, while all of Giovanni's stuff was strewn over the bed and around the floor, and all the dresser's drawers and his footlocker were overturned and piled on top of everything else.
But what had caused the Thompsons and Garret to laugh was that they were taking turns at spinning a picture frame on their fingertips, and every time one of them dropped it on the floor, they all would laugh.
"That's my mom's picture! Put it down!" Circe yelled and then ran at them, trying to take the photograph away from them. The kids just started tossing it back and forth, making Circe run around in circles, while they cat-called and called her names. After a few seconds, Circe, with tears streaming down her face, got tired of chasing the picture frame and she ran at Garret and pushed him on the chest as hard as she could. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, so he went down hard, head over heels, landing with a loud "oof!"
He got up immediately, and like some sort of ridiculous gunslinger showdown, the three mini-bullies stood shoulder to shoulder and pulled identical slender sticks from their jeans' back pockets, pointing them at Circe.
Several things happened at once:
At this point the rest of the pod's children had come in and they all stood at the entrance, surrounding Giovanni, who was pale and had his nose flaring, standing there with his fists making small popping sounds as he squeezed them hard in preparation.
Circe sobbed once and looked at Giovanni with wide eyes, shaking her head "no," asking him silently not to get in trouble.
The smaller children started crying, and Staci said, "No, please!"
The Thompson twins and Garret Feldman flicked their sticks at Circe and yelled "Seizures!"
All the other children cried out in fright.
And Giovanni roared, "No!" with a hand stretched out in Circe's direction.
Everything was still and quiet for a few seconds, and when everyone started to realize that nothing at all had happened, it was too late already. Giovanni had walked deliberately and without rushing up to the Thompsons and Garret, and was proceeding methodically to punch their faces in. All the children were aghast at seeing the three smaller kids pummeled relentlessly and unable to escape, spouting blood from noses and mouths and ears. But mostly, they were terrified to see the cold eyes and pale, unemotional face of Giovanni as he delivered blow after blow of his heavy hands.
This had gone on for just a few seconds when the door to the pod was ripped away by a grave looking Wozniak. The children were pushed aside unceremoniously, and Wozniak pulled Giovanni off his victims with one hand, holding him up in the air by the back of his shirt. As swiftly as he had come in, he went out, holding out in front of him an unresisting Giovanni. As soon as they exited, the three Furies swept into the room, and helped the beaten children get up. Without a word, they guided the bloody and sobbing children out of the pod, in order to give them first aid. The last one out, Adelaide, suddenly turned around and said, "Circe and Traci, come to my office, now. The rest of you, it's homework time. Mister Johannsen will be outside the door if you need anything. I will return in an hour and talk to all of you. Let's go." And she exited, holding up a puffy-eyed Garret, with Circe and Traci walking behind her, still sniffling.
The moment they left, all the children erupted in gossip.
***
Back in his basement, Benoni closed his mind and sighed. "Finally!" he said, after having waited for whatever he had been waiting, longer than anyone could ever possibly imagine.
After about half an hour of pretending to listen to whatever Dr Doe was saying, Giovanni was finally dismissed, and headed out to the kitchen by himself. He walked absentmindedly, going down the stairs and down the hallway without taking two consecutive turns anywhere, all the time with jumbled images in his head about everything that had happened to him during the last two days.
Mostly, it was images of all that had happened in the classrooms, mixed with everything Benoni had said. But, the most disturbing and disconcerting part about it is that, at random moments, Circe's face would flash in his thoughts. Why the hell should he be thinking about the little girl? Even worse, why should he feel good thinking of her?
Meanwhile, in the background of all his thoughts, he could still hear Dr Doe's words. She had been talking about being virtuous, and to approach everything in a rational manner. Supposedly, the way towards the dark magic was easy to follow, since it often involved abandoning yourself to vanity, fear, greed, and affliction. It was easy to fall prey to those negative attitudes because they stemmed from the most basic emotions and feelings, from the more "animal" side of a human. And, although it was impossible to avoid feelings and emotions, it was the duty of all thinking beings to control them and channel them into the proper attitudes. Every person could be wise, prudent, courageous, and just, if they put their mind to it. This was especially important for all those who had the Gift of Magick, said Dr Doe, because they could project their reactions to their feelings into the world in a way that other humans couldn't.
Luckily, by the time Dr Doe was getting into full swing with her rant, a chime dinged somewhere in the room, and she said it was dinner time, and that they would speak again soon. "Go ahead, I will be along in a few minutes."
Giovanni shook his head and pulled away from his daydream. He looked up to see that he was a few yards away from one of the kitchen's many entrances, and suddenly he heard Benoni speak up right behind him. He gave a little yelp and swung around fast. "Shit! Erm… I mean, professor, sorry, I didn't hear you coming up behind me."
"Yes, you seemed to be… woolgatherin', as your dear mamá would say? You know, I meant to ask you and your classmates a while ago to ponder upon the appearance of Magick amongst mankind. If Magick is indeed a genetic predisposition, wouldn't humans also have developed the genetic predisposition to negate Magick by now? It has been a good three or four million years of human evolution, apparently, you know? Anyway… Carry on! Dinner time!" And Benoni walked past Giovanni into the kitchen.
"That guy is such a weirdo!" Giovanni said as a preamble to telling Circe all about the last two times he had seen Benoni.
After getting his dinner plate, he had found Circe sitting down already. This time, she was sharing a table with Bryan and Robert Platt, another fourteen year old from their own pod. Giovanni joined them, barely sparing a moment to say "whazzup, guys" to the other kids, before launching into his story about being in one room with Benoni first, and then being in a completely different room with Doe right after.
"But the weirdest thing is, if mister Wozniak saw me going into the room, but doctor Doe didn't see me or the Benoni guy in there, where were we, then? And why couldn't they find us with their monitoring system when we were all with him? And then he tells me all these crazy things, and they… those things just keep circling around in my head…"
"Well, teachers know a lot of advanced Magick, you know?" Little Bryan piped up.
"Yeah, didn't you see how mister Wozniak extinguished the fire in the classroom? He used a Magick weapon!" Robert said, with shining eyes.
"What weapon? What are you talking about?" Circe and Giovanni asked together.
"The pendant he wears! It's a weapon! My dad has an amulet he keeps in his pocket all the time, and that he uses to do Magick, and he told me this summer, before I started school, that when I graduate he'll teach me how to make one for myself!"
"Yeah? How do they work?" Giovanni wanted to know, and Circe just nodded in agreement.
"Well," Bryan spoke up, of course, he of the big brain, "They are supposed to be really hard to make, because they are all-purpose circle-and-triangle substitutes. All that stuff we do by drawing the symbols and saying the words? That's all contained in a weapon. But I don't know how anyone could make one…" Bryan sounded more disappointed because he didn't know than because he didn't have his own weapon.
"Ahhh! I see! So that's why the Thompsons had those sticks!" Circe said while nodding.
"What sticks? Ah, right, the ones mister Wozniak took away! I remember now… Why did he take them away?" Giovanni's face went into a frown again.
"You really don't know, do you?" Circe said, and Giovanni could see that Bryan and Robert were very curious to find out, but they seemed somewhat afraid. "The first night you were here the Thompsons attacked you with their weapons. I have been asking around, and some kids had heard that the Thompson family is very powerful with the Magick, but the sons are a bit spoiled. And Staci said that her cousin has seen them use bodily harm spells against people, and it's not pretty… People end up in the hospital with boils and rash all over their body."
"You know? I talked to my mom last night," Bryan interrupted. "She tells me that people can dodge the attacks if they see them coming, or if they know the right Magick they can deflect the attacks, but she says that the Thompsons probably don't know how to do the hex correctly, because no one can withstand those kinds of spells…"
"Yeah, but you did!" Robert said excitedly. "How'd you do it?"
"Look, guys, I don't know what you're all going on about, but all I felt were a couple of hot pokers touching my back, and that's all." Giovanni said with a shrug.
"Well, I know what I saw, and those Thompson kids are all famous for doing Magick since they were little, and that looked like a real hex… Maybe you were just lucky their spells fizzled, right?" Robert said as he got up from the table. "Anyway, I'm done. See you all later."
The conversation started drifting away from weird teachers and strange happenings, and soon enough Giovanni was busy again trying to catch up with his pile of homework, even while he finished eating his dinner.
No one noticed that, at the teacher's table, Professor Benoni pushed his food around his plate and kept looking at Giovanni and Circe, with a small smile on his lips.
***
When Giovanni and Circe walked into the Cerulean pod, Bryan, Staci, Traci, and Robert came up to them and looked very distressed. Traci spoke for all of them. "Look, Giovanni, don't freak out, okay? Just be cool, okay? We're gonna go and find mister Wozniak, but don't wig out, okay?"
"What the heck are you talking ab…?" Giovanni wasn't able to finish his question, because at that moment a loud round of guffaws interrupted him, and Traci turned around, letting Giovanni look past her towards his own bunk. Sitting on Circe's bed, the Thompson twins and Garret Feldman were tossing at each other Giovanni's beannie hat, while all of Giovanni's stuff was strewn over the bed and around the floor, and all the dresser's drawers and his footlocker were overturned and piled on top of everything else.
But what had caused the Thompsons and Garret to laugh was that they were taking turns at spinning a picture frame on their fingertips, and every time one of them dropped it on the floor, they all would laugh.
"That's my mom's picture! Put it down!" Circe yelled and then ran at them, trying to take the photograph away from them. The kids just started tossing it back and forth, making Circe run around in circles, while they cat-called and called her names. After a few seconds, Circe, with tears streaming down her face, got tired of chasing the picture frame and she ran at Garret and pushed him on the chest as hard as she could. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, so he went down hard, head over heels, landing with a loud "oof!"
He got up immediately, and like some sort of ridiculous gunslinger showdown, the three mini-bullies stood shoulder to shoulder and pulled identical slender sticks from their jeans' back pockets, pointing them at Circe.
Several things happened at once:
At this point the rest of the pod's children had come in and they all stood at the entrance, surrounding Giovanni, who was pale and had his nose flaring, standing there with his fists making small popping sounds as he squeezed them hard in preparation.
Circe sobbed once and looked at Giovanni with wide eyes, shaking her head "no," asking him silently not to get in trouble.
The smaller children started crying, and Staci said, "No, please!"
The Thompson twins and Garret Feldman flicked their sticks at Circe and yelled "Seizures!"
All the other children cried out in fright.
And Giovanni roared, "No!" with a hand stretched out in Circe's direction.
Everything was still and quiet for a few seconds, and when everyone started to realize that nothing at all had happened, it was too late already. Giovanni had walked deliberately and without rushing up to the Thompsons and Garret, and was proceeding methodically to punch their faces in. All the children were aghast at seeing the three smaller kids pummeled relentlessly and unable to escape, spouting blood from noses and mouths and ears. But mostly, they were terrified to see the cold eyes and pale, unemotional face of Giovanni as he delivered blow after blow of his heavy hands.
This had gone on for just a few seconds when the door to the pod was ripped away by a grave looking Wozniak. The children were pushed aside unceremoniously, and Wozniak pulled Giovanni off his victims with one hand, holding him up in the air by the back of his shirt. As swiftly as he had come in, he went out, holding out in front of him an unresisting Giovanni. As soon as they exited, the three Furies swept into the room, and helped the beaten children get up. Without a word, they guided the bloody and sobbing children out of the pod, in order to give them first aid. The last one out, Adelaide, suddenly turned around and said, "Circe and Traci, come to my office, now. The rest of you, it's homework time. Mister Johannsen will be outside the door if you need anything. I will return in an hour and talk to all of you. Let's go." And she exited, holding up a puffy-eyed Garret, with Circe and Traci walking behind her, still sniffling.
The moment they left, all the children erupted in gossip.
***
Back in his basement, Benoni closed his mind and sighed. "Finally!" he said, after having waited for whatever he had been waiting, longer than anyone could ever possibly imagine.
To Be Continued…
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment