Idiocy Unflinching

a nonsense by Fahd

Class
--------------

I sat in my chair at my desk. They must have thought it somewhat odd. But I sat a bit apart. Off to one side.

My professor called me over. He had the confidence of a man beloved. Every week he charmed a few million people and then occasionally he taught, probably out of boredom, albeit with the same permanent amusement and ever-ready quip. He had been talking, lecturing, for a bit, or perhaps he hadn't. I wasn't much listening. He called my name, however, and I snapped out of whatever state of mind I was in. He had been talking about the deadlines and nuances of requirements. I had only a vague idea that some work was needed. Had I missed some of these deadlines? Perhaps. But he called me by name, and so I walked over and he handed me my last project. He mentioned a few other words in calm and quiet. I suppose I nodded to them, but those did not register either. I took my work back to my desk, and looked at it again, although certainly I had been looking at it all the while. I had not done well.

At least my mind was somewhat focused now, however. I looked through the pages and there were quite a few of those and that was surprising. Front and back, there were printed full images of women in sublime and impossible elegance - with some product, some concept being glorified by the presence of their pretty. A treatise on beauty, but it was not well received. On the front were a few marks, a few bits of text crossed out, but there were no clarifications.

Only at the very end was there a brief comment about the whole thing being vague. I thumbed back through the striking and lovely women.

I heard my name again and this time there was a definite request. I heard all the words, but I did not know what assignment they referred to. I walked back to his desk and he stood up. He mentioned again some work and added pleasantly that he had given me access to a database with the files required. If I said anything, I don't remember. He handed me some more paperwork, and as we walked back in the direction of my desk, it occurred to me that he was taller than me. Not very many people were. He was attempting a quip, but had to finish his story awkwardly as I sat down at my desk, indifferently. How could I care when someone in the world was taller than me. He went into his small open office then and I turned around back towards my computer. Sure enough, here were files and a message from IT saying I had been given access to something. Shortly afterwards, he poked his head back out of the office and addressed the class - we would all have a bit more time for the assignment for our projects, it seemed. Mostly, I ignored this, but did notice papers with unfilled sections on my desk. I now vaguely remembered some of the crossed out text on my poorly received project and how they were just snippets of broken thoughts, accidentally appearing in the middle of the serious work.

Where was my mind? Was I supposed to be discussing the project with the professor now? Had I just ignored him until he gave the whole class more time? It occurred to me that I had shown almost no reaction to the poor grade I had received. And that there was more work expected of me, which had also failed to garner my attention. I needed to walk.

I stood up, adjusted my suit, and walked casually out past the professor's empty desk, and then past the many students, through some occasional chatter, but mostly just heads buried intently in their work.

I walked out with no mind in particular to head off in any specific direction. The restroom was near, and seemed as apt a destination as any other. Someone was in one of the stalls, however and my imagined solitude was interrupted. From their panicked reaction and activity, it became obvious they had suffered some sort of accident and rather than introduce myself to their problem, I left them to it, and wandered off to another unknown and unimportant destination.

I had no intention of heading back to the room at any point, was wandering out of desperation, and the sprawling campus had a great many directions. I came upon some doors to a hallway and noticed a woman, a girl, rather, walking beside me. I held the door open and nodded politely to let her pass and I noticed her eyes. Rather, I noticed her eyes noticing me. She was looking at me with that wide-eyed look of infatuation. That trick the body plays on the innocent, making their eyes radiant and their lives momentarily brighter. She smiled with all the happiness in the world as she passed through, and then waited as if I were her escort all along.

"Thanks," with beaming lips and a subtle adjustment of her gait to match my pace.

"Sure," I said and I looked ahead with the help of a polite blink elongated precisely to break a gaze and nothing else.

"Anybody ever tell you that you have really beautiful eyes?" She offered with a forwardness a younger me might have found enticing. There was nothing evidently striking about her until she made that comment.

"Yes, actually, most women do." It was a standard response now, delivering with somber wit through practiced lips, the subtle plea that I surely appreciate the sentiment, but just don't give a damn.

She hesitated.

I saw a stairway and made for it. I wondered where it went, still continued on resolutely. Why not?

She didn't follow me upstairs. I'd never seen this part of the building before in my previous escapes from nothing whatsoever, so I continued on down the hall, soon passing the next stairway where of course, she was coming up.

Oh well.

Then the hallway ended, and there was a sign on the last room that read:

Meeting
--------------

Below it was some description and some time and some duration. All doors were locked and this was the only possible destination for this path. I walked up to the door and looked in. It was a gathering of ten girls and reaching it was undeniably the reason my new friend had shared with me our brief precious moments together. The girls were sitting in a large makeshift cluster. Regarding my presence, then, they weren't alarmed, they just were. My bold former admirer now came up to the entrance where I stood and in full view of everybody, asked me, with equal bits accusation, hurt, and annoyance: "So you just wanted to get away from me?"

And with that, a perfectly cinematic hush, and all attention shifted to me now.

And I said yes.

I had been caught, I suppose, and I damn sure wasn't going to hide it. So I went into the room, pulled up one of the educational chairs, faced it towards the group and sat down. I sat down, leaned forward, put my chin on my thumb, with my loose fist covering half my lips, the great thinker mocked by flesh. And then I looked at them. My posture suggested exasperation, but my face remained calm - a well honed non-admission of guilt, I suppose. Because even if I was, so what?

Only a few seconds of silence before the bold one explained. "I told him he had nice eyes, and he walked away from me. He said all girls think so."

And there it was, the gavel had sounded, the charges declared, and I was inescapably guilty.

One of the girls spoke up, "Why would you do that?"

I looked at her and moved no other muscles. Another one spoke, "What if someone did that to you?"

More silence. But this time I moved my eyes as if tracing an invisible Z before I looked at her. That induced some more voices. One loud, "What a rude thing to do," one a whisper, "jerk."

Still silence. I looked at the sources for the voices, shifting my head slightly, blinking not quite slowly, but as if I were taking longer than normal exposures. Still I said nothing.

And now there was a brief silence. A protracted eternity, but finally, a new voice. "It's not like you're that attractive, you know"

"Yeah!" a quick agreement from somewhere followed by a few more acknowledgements too faint to decipher individually.

So I looked at this new voice. I looked her in the eyes, but the only thing I said was in this unfettered minimalist language of imponderably slow blinks that I was inventing.

"Like I look at you, and I don't see anything special at all," another one chimed.

"Me neither," parroted by the girl next to her.

"Well, he's not bad," from across the room. And for the first time, my eyes darted, to find the dissent.

"Well no, he's not ugly or anything."

"Yeah, like ok, so maybe he might be attractive, but he still shouldn't have done that."

"Nope, he doesn't do anything for me."

"I mean, he does kinda have pretty eyes"

And I ceased to be. No more than a painting of a memory of a wish, they discussed my finer points and weaker failings, until abruptly, one of the girls returned to me. "Personally, I just don't find you that attractive."

I smirked, almost. Ever so slightly the left corner of my lips stretched and held - like the very last vestige of a doubt erased. I looked her in the eyes, and blinked a slow blink - the passion filled sonnet of my verbose eyelash'd language, I suppose. Her eyes locked with mine and as my smile grew, she recanted, "Well, you know."

A voice in the back with a nervous laugh after an intense second, "Yeah, he is definitely attractive."

"Ok, yeah"

"I think so too," another round of discussion began, indifferent to my face finally showing expression, no one noticing it change quickly from bemused to melancholic.

I rose up and looked again into the recanting girl's eyes, and sure enough there was that light seductive whisper in her gaze, that no man who can translate it should ever walk away from.

So I walked to the door, scanning the faces of my impromptu jury, saving my last glance for the recanting seductress. I nodded perceptibly in an imperceptibly practiced manner, and with the help of a polite blink elongated precisely to break a gaze and nothing else, I walked resolutely out the door. In no particular rush to be late for the nothing much in particular.

This ebook is published by YBF publishing, but the story text is available for free to anybody that wants it per the author's wishes.

Feel free to alter and share the text in whichever way you would like, but just attribute the original story to Fahd.

Cover art by Mervat Clark

© 2014 YBF Publishing

What a shit!
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Hey! That's my line!
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