Stories: Intercom

“Turner Nealey, please come to the principal’s office. Turner Nealey, please come to the principal’s office.” It rambled through his head endlessly. The passing hours only made things worse. He needed to tell somebody, somewhere. Get it out in the open. He thought of his younger sister, wanted to protect her from this kind of thing for as long as he could. Knew that it was going to spread though and that pretty soon, there’d be no way of protecting anyone against it. The bottles of coke had been lined up on the fence and he pulled his BB gun out, knocked each one down. Kathunk. Pump. Reload. Kathunk. The breaking of glass, the sound of the empty bottles hitting the sand below was cathartic. He imagined each bottle with its face on them, screamed out its name as he hit each one. Remembered how nonchalant that call was over the intercom: “…please come to the principal’s office.” That day had been passing like frozen molasses and he couldn’t stand the thought of another hour. He had picked up his books and dropped them one by one onto the wooden floor below. With every bang of a book, the teacher would look up from her desk, give the class the evil eye and continue reading her People magazine: “Madonna adopts another child from Africa”. He had started kicking the chair in front of him, pulling Rhonda’s hair from the back. When Rhonda screamed, turned around and slapped him, the teacher got up, walked slowly over and asked what the problem was. Soon after, he heard the call over the intercom. That lime-green hallway had never seemed so long. It seemed to expand out in front of him like that unreachable horizon, that point in the distance that no matter how far you reach for it, it slips away, continues to taunt you. He saw the door: “Principal”. He had never entered there but knew that when people went in, they always came out different. He pushed through the door and it scraped against the floor like a block of concrete. The secretary, long blond wig and pointed glasses with a beaded orange chain around her neck. The ceiling, covered in fly paper and the long-dead bodies of flies, mosquitoes, and a whole bunch he couldn’t name. Row upon row of filing cabinets lining the walls behind the secretary and a fervent, dusty fan bellowing from the wall its years of duress. The principal’s office, fogged, white windows covered in criss-crossing black bars, a door of steel and a sliding metal window on the front. He sat nervously on the foamy brown chairs, awaiting his turn and must have dozed off because he was awoken by the frantic shaking of the secretary, her false right eyelash dangling, her wig coming undone one strand at a time. “Turner, the principal will see you now.” She had stood up tall, pulled her dress down tight, fixed her hair and reattached her eyelash. The door had already been cracked and he had headed in, door slamming behind him. He remembers the next few moments vividly but the rest becomes blurry. The low light had caused his eyes to take a few minutes to adjust. Once they did, he saw it. Short, scaly, five-fingered arms hold a file, its little sharp nails twittering on the manilla folder. The long fat tail that wraps around its desk and taps upon the floor, the long sprawling hind legs that reach out in front of him under the desk and wrap themselves around the chair in front of him. It smiles and the saw-like teeth glimmer in the dim light. It throws its head crest back and lets loose a bellowing laughter. The walls shake, Turner’s body quakes, the scales on its body ripple like miniature tidal waves. It stops, turns its head upwards and to the right, its left eye scanning the area intensely, taking Turner in. Its left claw reaches up to a chain hanging above, it umphs and yanks it down and water starts pouring in from slats all over the ceiling. He remembers the beast squirming in the cool water, licking his eyeballs, scratching himself slowly with those razor-sharp claws. “Turner, take a seat,” it hisses and he had sat down warily, perspiring and couldn’t wait to be gone from that place. “You know you’ve been bad, yes?” The “s” rolls off his tongue endlessly. “We will just need to teach you a lesson, pure and simple. And then, before you know it, we’ll be done.” He sees it move closer, hears the slicing of air, sees out of the corner of his eye a long, slender shape moving towards his head. He tries to duck but the object hits him clear across the face. He remembers falling, remembers the scurry of feet, the scraping of claws, remembers the secretary asking if she should lock the door. And that’s it. From then on, it’s a blur but he wakes up with a searing headache on the couch of the nurse’s office, a huge welt across his face shaped like the tip of the tail, a new shirt and knows something is wrong. Kathunk. Kathunk. Two more bottles down and the thoughts have quieted for now. He imagines how others will think he’s crazy, how there’s no one he can tell because they are all probably in on it. He knocks another bottle down, this one shattering and the glass goes flying in every direction. He reaches down to pick up the pieces and a tiny shard edges itself into his skin and sits quietly, patiently, in an almost imperceptible way. The pain is small but creeping and he looks at it, tries to get it out but it won’t budge. He leaves it there pulsating, bleeding slowly and the pain won’t go away. Slowly, he becomes used to it, begins to depend on it, loses the sense of what it would be like without it, and continues to knock the bottles down, one by one.