"Manners, Please"

[kristen999]

Halloween Short Fic



I hate rudeness, and I love the night.

Oh dear. That makes me sound like one of those Mrs. McGillicuddy riddles.

Mrs. McGillicuddy likes pizzas, but not pasta. Halloween, but not Christmas. Except that I don't like pizzas and I'm not a Mrs. - just Miss, please. Although I've often thought that English teachers should have their own honorific. Perhaps Eng. Hello, I'm Eng So-and-so. We're not a gender, exactly, but we are rather married to our calling.

Well, I ramble. Not a trait I would have applauded when I had a classroom.

I do hate rudeness, though. Loud talkers, arrogant clerks, soup slurpers, toe stompers, the pushy, the inconsiderate, the overperfumed, the underwashed. I could go on, and I will admit that I have done so on occasion. The noisy person disturbing me tonight would certainly belong on that list, because what I love most about the wee hours is the quiet they afford. Just not to be bothered by cell phones and car horns and blaring radios and idiots in general - that's bliss. Though the dark is nice for its own sake. Have you ever been blinded by the glare of midday sunlight blasting like a laser beam off the metal skin of an automobile? You may keep the day.

I don't know why this particular idiot is sharing the cemetery with me tonight. But that undoubtedly raises a question in your mind, gentle reader. Why am I here? You must admit that a graveyard after midnight is perhaps the quietest, darkest, most solitary place in town. Oh, there are a few spots where the restive may wander in peace - under those towering elms on North Campus, for instance, or beside the pond which graces the Ecology Building. And one can hide away after dark in the stadium, which has some delightful nooks and crannies - or do I mean crooks and nannies?

I flatter myself that my drollery was much appreciated by my students.

As I was saying, I don't know why this particular idiot, who is raucous enough to wake the dead, is here tonight. Two facts, however, are clear: he is a drunken lout and my presence escapes him. He has stumbled over every twisted tree root and crumbled tombstone on these hills. He is sweating (see list of rude behaviors above), and the light of the full moon reveals a bead of sweat sliding down his well-muscled throat that I find unaccountably irritating.

He thinks he is singing. There is a noise coming out of that dark hole above his chin - more like the caterwauling of a demented baboon than it is like the food of love, but let that be. We are not all musically gifted, a sad fact which I have often had to share with the would-be crooners of this world. His noisy aria is frequently interrupted by a bottle, which he lifts to his mouth with only passing accuracy. From my vantage point behind the oldest oak tree on the premises, I can observe his passage across the graves. Tragically, he is headed in my direction.

I look up at the black branches clicking against one another in the wind as I ponder what to do. Perhaps I will do nothing and he will do nothing, so that I will remain undiscovered. (Now, class: which country is undiscovered?) Would that I could slip away unnoticed! Or I could accost him. What a bumptious idea! Slipping from behind the tree I could place my cool hand on his thick shoulder and simply spin him about, the drunken fool. That should write the coda to his little musical, and teach him a lesson in the bargain.

Actually, I have found that hardly anyone is ever "taught a lesson." This is an unhappy truth that all teachers must face.

He is coming closer, so I must decide soon. I smell something, perhaps the sewage plant that festers just over the river that borders the graveyard. Perhaps it is he. Or perhaps it is… No! That is unthinkable.

Here he is now, stepping around the trunk of the oak with unsteady feet and a goatish leer on his lips. He hasn't seen me yet.

For some reason I recall an absurd little man, an instructor from the history department, I believe, who once had the effrontery to wink at me in the elevator between the fifth and sixth floors of the library. I wonder if his toes still bear the imprint of my heel?

Now the besotted fool leans desperately against the tree and starts to belch another chorus, but I have had enough.

With a grunt and a moan, I force a hand through the dirt and clasp his ankle. He tries to jerk his leg away, perhaps still thinking that tree roots are the most danger he faces, but I have him now and I push the other hand into the warm night air to grab his free ankle. He falls like a cement Icarus to the ground, and my face is out of the grave now and close to his own. His breath stinks but mine does, too, as I laugh in his oafish fish-pale face and stick one bony finger straight into his ear until I feel his brain jiggle. His eyes pop out and he makes the last sound he ever will make, a sound like a hyena falling on a church steeple.

There now. He won't learn the lesson, of course. It's a bit late for that, wouldn't you say? I look up at the perfectly round, perfectly silent moon sailing loose among the stars, and I sigh with satisfaction.

I hate rude people, and I love the night.

Comments

[vicxntric.livejournal.com]

I kind of had my suspicions about the school teacher from almost the beginning, because its Hallowe'en and that's just the way my mind is working right now. But this was such a fun (well, the beginning was fun) and creepy and perfect for Hallowe'en story. I think my favorite thing about it is that she sounds like and English teacher in her speech patterns.

But isn't the poor woman now going to have to put up with that noisy drunk for eternity? *g*

[kristen999.livejournal.com]

The problem with Halloween Stories are they all tend to be predictable.....but I wrote it for a buddy, and I wanted fun. Thanks, it was a way to write in 1st POV, which I don't ever do.

Kristen