Hammer on the Anvil

 

The school library here sucks. It always has, and it always will, but our teachers still deem it necessary every year to give us a tour and set us to researching in its poorly-stocked rows of shelves. Papers were nothing new to us, but we dreaded them nonetheless. High School teachers must have a book somewhere full of crappy essay and report topics to hand out to students as a form of torture. Mine (the least snooze-inducing of the list we were allowed to choose from) was LSD. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, as is its non-shorthand name, is the patron drug of the nineteen-seventies, and one of the most intense hallucinogens known to man. I fully intended to change the topic from a boring descriptive report to something about its historical significance. I did not, however, intend to begin work on it in that library on that particular day. Instead, I sat before one of the few ancient computers in the place, surfing the web for anything slightly amusing and morbid.

Skull sat atop a stool next to me, pretending to be absorbed in an Encyclopedia. We whispered quietly about things off-topic. We had reached the peak of our loudness with shared giggles, and an old man walked by slowly, glaring at us with suspicious and accusing eyes. He looked at me. “You know these computers are for research.” I suddenly noticed that there was hair growing out of his ears, and meanness in his voice.

I nodded, wondering what kind of valid research he actually expected us to get done in this literary reject bin. When I was no longer in his line of sight, I rolled my eyes, and Skull stifled another giggle. I continued slacking, knowing all the while that the perfect books awaited me at the city library and that I would travel there sometime over the weekend.

Little more than a minute later, the cranky man walked past us again, more slowly, and eying me like a hawk watches its prey. I’d pulled up a page of academic-looking writing, and pretended to study it. He turned a one-eighty and walked past a third time, apparently thinking that we were young and dumb enough to either not notice, or to be scared into doing quiet, perfect research.

Like a hammer on an anvil, my heart pounded with annoyance, and my urge hit me again and again. No one watches me like a hawk. I am the hawk. You are the prey, and you have made a terrible mistake! I grimaced, bit my lip, and waited for him to leave.

My thoughts shifted. “Jesus.” I muttered.

Skull grinned. “Cranky old man.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Who is he, anyway?”

She shrugged “I dunno. Must be new.”

“He’s a prick. Did you see the way he looked at us? Like we were holding a bomb and dressed up like the KKK or something.”

She giggled again, and I couldn’t help but join her.

Honestly, though! We weren’t even being very loud. There was a group of guys at the other end of the library talking really loud, and there was a group of preppy girls sitting behind the other row of computers, where giggles were exploding from every few minutes, along with bits of sentences like ‘Oh my God!’, ‘So cute’ and ‘No way!’. Out of all these people, though, the cranky man had chosen us to pick on.

My mind was made up the moment after I turned around to look for him and found him staring at us again. The cranky man was going to be victim number four.

Reviews

[Marth47]

I hope she doesn't make a careless decision later on about who to kill. That would suck.

[Brie]

Haha! I'm lovin the cranky old man! I hate it when the do that too! They just STARE. Very creepy.
-Brie