Mirage

Distraction and temptation

       “Alright Franklin, what was it?” The professor called from the front of the lecture room and the faceless heads in front of him spun towards him and into their faces. Their eyes fell onto him with no effort of seeking like it had to be Franklin the professor was speaking to. “I see your paper is not in the stack so whats up? Whats the deal, the excuse?”    
        “Um, No excuse.” Franklin moved his a*s in his seat, an itch poked outward from his core and spread like internal ticks. “I just didn’t do it.”    
       “S**t Franklin. You’re paying for this class are you not? You’re paying to fail Franklin. And frankly Franklin, you are going to pay. So whats your deal?”   
       “My deal?I guess, its a woman.” The faces smiled and looked back to the professor to absorb the reaction. “But I don’t think she is real, I know she isn’t. She is too pretty to be real and she when I see her she is in my bed and I know a pretty woman like that wouldn’t be in my bed.”  
       The smiles became a nervous laughter and the faces turned towards one another and took the same expression like they all belonged to the same judgmental, collected conscience. 
      “I try to do the papers, I do. I sit down at my desk, I open my computer and I do the typing for a while, but I can hear her breathing to my side. She doesn’t want me to do the work. She does all she can to take my mind from the work, clothes, she takes them off. She only wears the bra to make a show of stripping it away, I know it and she’s so real, but I know she isn’t.”   
     “Al-alright Franklin, We can talk about this in my office hours, come to my office hours.” The professor said, defeated, he held his whiteboard marker with no thought of what he would do with it. “Thats it class, go home, study, test next week.”

***

     Later in the day Franklin sat in the north quad of the school among the grass and the people and the buildings and the trees. He waited for the office hours of his professor to become of the day, he wanted to speak about the papers he failed to write, and the hallucinations he failed to ignore. He looked up from the pages of the book in his lap, and in the grass of the quad, illuminated in fleshy pink by the glow of the sun was a woman beautiful and blonde and interested in his direction.  
     She walked away. She knew her legs would follow. Franklin closed his book and crossed the quad into the grass.

Reviews

[MoriartyMesa]

Nice but short, I hoped for more 411

[Chadvonswan]

This was Interesting....A ghost perhaps? of the old asylum? Assuming the setting is the Channel Islands University haha...This reminded me of your other short story about the library