The Detention Chronicles
Omnipresent; Flake; Cocaine; Reflection
The scalding heat outside poured into the confined room in the library and my thoughts raced back and forth frantically as beads of sweat began to form on my forehead. The detention supervisor stared at me quizzically, but I refused to get out of my hoodie. I presumed I’d be much better off if I collapsed during detention and got to sue the pants off our principal. I eyed the broken air conditioner on the wall opposite of me and counted the ticks and the tocks of the old clock, contemplating the contents of the book I held in my hands. Its fat, unappealing body rested on my skin, its dusty covers basking in my moist touch.
Fifty more minutes to go, fucking fuck.
I flipped through the pages aimlessly, browsing through the columns of words listed for me to reflect on. Every word bolded, its meaning left in plain text and context meaning italicized. Yes, only the word mattered, who cares what stands behind it when one says it out loud? As long as it’s longer than three syllables and has origins in French or Latin or in whichever fancy language you care to pretend you know.
My eyes zeroed in on a single word, last on its page, stained with what seemed to be ketchup. My vision cleared and blurred out my surroundings, leaving only me, my racing thoughts and that word in the room, swaying to the beat of the clock which leapt from one second to the next in a tortoise-pace.
omnipresent \om-nuh-PREZ-uhnt\, adjective: present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous.
Omnipresent is from Medieval Latin omnipresens, from Latin omni-, "all" + praesens, present participle of praeesse, "to be before, to be present," from prae-, "before" + esse, "to be."
It was rather that myth was omnipresent; the whole people thought in this way and were long confirmed in their belief.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization
Yes, I guess I could say this fucking heat was omnipresent as well. It was all over the place. In the teach’s exasperated huffs, in the condensation on his glasses, in the beads of sweat soaking his bleached and ironed shirt. It was under my clothes, on my palms, inside my veins and inside my skull, pounding against its inner walls with the intention to drive me insane. Its omnipresence stretched over the bounds of this claustrophobic room and reached farther away, over the playfields and soccer players, webbing through their restrained bodies, drawing them out of breath, and farther, into offices and houses causing unease and argument as it hovered in the stale air and shrieked with tension, pulling at my nerves.
I slammed the dictionary shut and glanced at the clock. It stopped. I was willing to bet my money it was because the batteries melted down. Orange light protruded through the disgusting green shades and reflected off the grains of dust which flaked through the silent atmosphere gingerly.
Ah, to flake, an interesting word. I looked it up.
flake [fleyk], noun, verb, flaked, flak•ing.
1. A small, flat, thin piece, esp. one that has been or become detached from a larger piece or mass: flakes of old paint.
2. Slang. an eccentric person; screwball.
3. Slang. COCAINE.
My fingers moved by themselves, eyes darting over hair-thin, fine pages rapidly, neglecting the curious glances cast my way. Dictionaries are fun in sizzling summer days. Better than snow-cones? Hardly.
co•caine [kō-kān', kō'kān']
n. A colorless or white crystalline alkaloid, C17H21NO4, extracted from coca leaves, sometimes used in medicine as a local anesthetic especially for the eyes, nose, or throat and widely used as an illicit drug for its euphoric and stimulating effects.
[French cocaïne, from coca, coca, from Spanish; see coca.]
Euphoric and stimulating effect, eh? Nothing can help the poor flake before me. The teach stared at his paper, trying hard to concentrate on the tiny print with his own sweat condensing in front of his eyes. It steamed off him and spread through the air, infesting my nostrils. He wasn’t a bad man, nor was he dull and boring like I had tried so hard to portray him in my mind – I always thought creative people could never end up like teachers. I always felt like they, we, were meant for something bigger, greater and less mundane than that. It never occurred to me that someone had to teach us how to become destined for big things.
Gutter mind. Cocaine, cocaine…
Voices grew loud on the other side of the door and the librarian’s shrill ‘ssh’ cut them off strictly. A dose of euphoria – she could use it. I wonder if that would make her let down her blonde hair and take off the thick rimmed glasses. Mrs. Downey was a beautiful woman under those nun-like clothes and mary-janes.
I imagined our librarian being all sexy on cocaine, dancing around the book-latter with wild blonde locks bouncing off her nude shoulders. The room grew hot and sizzling once again. The omnipresence was present again.
Does omnipresence have an antonym?
The obvious choice was nowhere.
I don’t like it.
Somewhere in between my gutter mind’s ramblings, the bell rang and I was ushered out of the small room with fresh air splashing against my face. The scent of old books nested in my nostrils and followed me all the way home to my air-conditioned living room where the omnipresence of the heat dispersed and grew into nowhere as the cold, blown air chilled through the tiny hairs on the back of my neck, freezing the sweat drops on my skin, turning them into small salt stains.
I washed them off with a hot shower, breathing in the scent of cocoa and cashmere embedded into the newly-created omnipresence’s condensation, stuck to dark blue tiles and dimly lit mirrors. A blur of a face stared back at me cynically.
re•flec•tion [ri-flek-shuh n] noun: an image; representation; counterpart.
Fifty more minutes to go, fucking fuck.
I flipped through the pages aimlessly, browsing through the columns of words listed for me to reflect on. Every word bolded, its meaning left in plain text and context meaning italicized. Yes, only the word mattered, who cares what stands behind it when one says it out loud? As long as it’s longer than three syllables and has origins in French or Latin or in whichever fancy language you care to pretend you know.
My eyes zeroed in on a single word, last on its page, stained with what seemed to be ketchup. My vision cleared and blurred out my surroundings, leaving only me, my racing thoughts and that word in the room, swaying to the beat of the clock which leapt from one second to the next in a tortoise-pace.
omnipresent \om-nuh-PREZ-uhnt\, adjective: present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous.
Omnipresent is from Medieval Latin omnipresens, from Latin omni-, "all" + praesens, present participle of praeesse, "to be before, to be present," from prae-, "before" + esse, "to be."
It was rather that myth was omnipresent; the whole people thought in this way and were long confirmed in their belief.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization
Yes, I guess I could say this fucking heat was omnipresent as well. It was all over the place. In the teach’s exasperated huffs, in the condensation on his glasses, in the beads of sweat soaking his bleached and ironed shirt. It was under my clothes, on my palms, inside my veins and inside my skull, pounding against its inner walls with the intention to drive me insane. Its omnipresence stretched over the bounds of this claustrophobic room and reached farther away, over the playfields and soccer players, webbing through their restrained bodies, drawing them out of breath, and farther, into offices and houses causing unease and argument as it hovered in the stale air and shrieked with tension, pulling at my nerves.
I slammed the dictionary shut and glanced at the clock. It stopped. I was willing to bet my money it was because the batteries melted down. Orange light protruded through the disgusting green shades and reflected off the grains of dust which flaked through the silent atmosphere gingerly.
Ah, to flake, an interesting word. I looked it up.
flake [fleyk], noun, verb, flaked, flak•ing.
1. A small, flat, thin piece, esp. one that has been or become detached from a larger piece or mass: flakes of old paint.
2. Slang. an eccentric person; screwball.
3. Slang. COCAINE.
My fingers moved by themselves, eyes darting over hair-thin, fine pages rapidly, neglecting the curious glances cast my way. Dictionaries are fun in sizzling summer days. Better than snow-cones? Hardly.
co•caine [kō-kān', kō'kān']
n. A colorless or white crystalline alkaloid, C17H21NO4, extracted from coca leaves, sometimes used in medicine as a local anesthetic especially for the eyes, nose, or throat and widely used as an illicit drug for its euphoric and stimulating effects.
[French cocaïne, from coca, coca, from Spanish; see coca.]
Euphoric and stimulating effect, eh? Nothing can help the poor flake before me. The teach stared at his paper, trying hard to concentrate on the tiny print with his own sweat condensing in front of his eyes. It steamed off him and spread through the air, infesting my nostrils. He wasn’t a bad man, nor was he dull and boring like I had tried so hard to portray him in my mind – I always thought creative people could never end up like teachers. I always felt like they, we, were meant for something bigger, greater and less mundane than that. It never occurred to me that someone had to teach us how to become destined for big things.
Gutter mind. Cocaine, cocaine…
Voices grew loud on the other side of the door and the librarian’s shrill ‘ssh’ cut them off strictly. A dose of euphoria – she could use it. I wonder if that would make her let down her blonde hair and take off the thick rimmed glasses. Mrs. Downey was a beautiful woman under those nun-like clothes and mary-janes.
I imagined our librarian being all sexy on cocaine, dancing around the book-latter with wild blonde locks bouncing off her nude shoulders. The room grew hot and sizzling once again. The omnipresence was present again.
Does omnipresence have an antonym?
The obvious choice was nowhere.
I don’t like it.
Somewhere in between my gutter mind’s ramblings, the bell rang and I was ushered out of the small room with fresh air splashing against my face. The scent of old books nested in my nostrils and followed me all the way home to my air-conditioned living room where the omnipresence of the heat dispersed and grew into nowhere as the cold, blown air chilled through the tiny hairs on the back of my neck, freezing the sweat drops on my skin, turning them into small salt stains.
I washed them off with a hot shower, breathing in the scent of cocoa and cashmere embedded into the newly-created omnipresence’s condensation, stuck to dark blue tiles and dimly lit mirrors. A blur of a face stared back at me cynically.
re•flec•tion [ri-flek-shuh n] noun: an image; representation; counterpart.