Friday! Even when I know I’ll probably end up working over the weekend I love the feeling Friday brings me each week. This week is no different. Although, yeah, there will be work over the weekend. The year is slipping away fast. Eight weeks left in the calendar year, and then 2021 will be a memory. Probably a very blurry one actually. So much changed this year that I think my brain has been spinning inside my skull for months. But still we press on. Are you ready for the last prompt of the week? Good. Then let’s get started and maybe, just maybe, we can take the weekend off.
Again I think I like the character rather than the scene. Midway I think I started to put him somewhere eles, then I decided I actually liked this one , just in a different way from how I thought in the beginning. Yeah, I know, it it hadn’t been a timed exercise there would have been much editing. And to be fair, I might actually do a little editing before I add this to the file, just so I can get my thoughts down in case I come back to use this later.
Friday, October 29th: He rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head.
He rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head. Someone hit him from behind. He had never been bashed in the head before and honestly thought it was something that only occurred in movies. He could picture the scene. Someone sneaking up behind a mild mannered investigative reporter and knocking him out while items were cleared out of the building and his story slipped away.
‘Or maybe it is the police officer who gets bashed,’ Hank thought. His mental image switched to a fresh faced beat cop with a hot tip he thought could make his career. Hank was certain he’d seen that one in several movies before. But as he was neither a police officer nor a reporter and no one would really define him as fresh faced, he was rather surprised to find himself snuck up upon and bashed in the back of the head.
He felt slightly cheated by the fact that he missed it.
‘Although I suppose it would be a bad criminal who couldn’t sneak up on me.’
Hank was a chemistry teacher. He specialized in teaching high schoolers the building blocks of chemistry and in pretending to himself that it actually mattered. He knew that ninety percent of them would forget about ninety-five percent of what he told them the moment they turned in their final exams. The most interest he got in class was the inevitable point in the year where the stoners asked about making illegal drugs.
It happed at the same time each semester and it was general the only ten minutes in the entire term where he was guaranteed the full attentio0n of the class. He liked the people he worked with and counted many of the other teachers as close friends. The students he found harder and harder to distinguish. They fell into the same categories each year and names and faces swirled together. He had never been overly fond of children which is why when he fell into teaching he tried for older ones thinking they might be at least closer to adulthood and at least on the cusp of becoming full-fledged people.
Over all he couldn’t complain. The work was routine but not overly difficult, and in his department things weren’t that bad. He didn’t have to justify himself each year an many of the others did. The arts and theater based classes all struggled for survival while he coasted through the middle knowing that most administrators viewed his subject as one of the basic essentials. He always sided with the arts against the athletics, lending his support where he could, but essentially he was safe.
However now he was thinking of leaving safe for something a little less safe, a little less predictable. An offer came to him through older connections and he was seriously considering it. He had gone for a walk tonight in an effort to determine if the change was worth taking.
‘Well that’s not entirely true,’ he admitted as he rubbed his still sore head. He knew he was going to take the position. He just needed to plan his exit strategy. He was mentally walking through his meeting with the headmaster when someone jumped him from behind.
Ten til Midnight 