Necropolis

My eyes met with her rich coffee colored eyes. She had looked up from a piece of paper, pencil still in hand. She sat at a table alone with six empty green chairs surrounding her. She held the pencil tightly in her small fist, almost as if there was subtle anger raging in her innocent body. Her eyes didn’t shout though. They said something entirely different. An immense sadness swallowed them as I stood there paralyzed. She didn’t say a word. She appeared frightened to speak, frightened to look at something other than the paper, frightened to look at another human.

Breaking the paralysis, I walked towards her and kneeled down. We were eye to eye now and I could see the restrained tears in hers. I asked her what was wrong and why she was outside the classroom away from everyone else. She pointed to the paper slowly. Scrawled across it were a couple sentences composed of misspelled words. I read it carefully:

 

Dear Mom and Dad, I’m in orange. I’m sorry I cut the eraser off my pencil.

 

I looked back to her. Her eyes were now cast down, ashamed. Indeed the pencil she held in her hand was without an eraser. Confused by the orange statement, I inquired about it. “It means I’m in trouble,” she murmured.

The mixed message in her body language was clear now. She was not angry at her teacher who had boldly outcast her, rather she was waging war with the frustration of not knowing any better and it collided with sadness when reprimanded.

Dismay struck me hard at that moment. Time between the child and I had stopped while the rest of the world flew by. She was seven, first grade, a young child in a pool of innocence. And here she had unknowingly sinned under one of her instructor’s hidden commandments and was shunned from her society; stoned with cold words. Seven years old! She didn’t know it was wrong. Wrong? Was it wrong? Sure it wasn’t proper, but wrong and punishable? It was her eraser on her pencil. She didn’t snatch another student’s pencil, break it in half, and then throw it. She had merely cut the eraser off and for this she was exiled.

After consoling her, I turned to leave. A cold emptiness still lingered in the air and I could feel the presence of her eyes still watching me. And then turning the corner, they fell from me. Upon hearing the shatter, I knew it wasn’t the only thing that fell. But I walked on, ignoring the sharp glass that pricked my chest. 

Author's Note

Necropolis - City of the Dead (literal translation)

Reviews

[Markymark]

Dearest Alice,

Something new for you? I enjoyed this piece. Third person flash fiction, and yet it holds a message, and reads like poetry in places. Who speaks louder the dead or the dying? Oh, how I have missed thee. It does mine heart good to look upon thy words.

[Jibey]

Sad but moving writing

[Alicante lullaby]

so sensitive.i'm in awe,Alice...