Classroom X

day thirteen: judgement day

Siward should have been pulling weeds in the courtyard of the detention centre, but he had gone and made such a huge racket about it, he had been so adamant that he would not do it even if he were flayed alive and grilled on a spit over a slow fire that the wardens had no choice but to let him go. He said it was a fruitless activity and only served to waste his precious time. He told the wardens that he was certain that the weeds in the courtyard was a part of their conspiracy and that they replanted all the weeds once the boys had finished plucking them. He said he wouldn't fall for their tricks no matter what; if they wanted to torture him over it then be his guest.

The wardens just rolled their eyes in exasperation and put him inside a solitary cell so he could reflect on his misdeeds. They said he could skip his dinner for the night as well, because they'd heard rumours about a grand conspiracy which involved poisoning the food for juvenile delinquents.

Now, staring listlessly at the painfully white walls hemming him in, he wished he had behaved. He was used to constant activity: something was always happening in his life; so cooped up like this in an empty room was killing his soul inch by inch.

Maybe he should have restrained himself from dropping that garden lizard he found down the shirt-front of one of the other boys. Maybe the warden would have gone easier on him then. Siward sprung up from his bed and started pacing his tiny room, creating his own motion, and when this didn't seem to be doing anything to mitigate his boredom, he flung himself back onto his bed.

He considered his options for entertainment. He could ask his warden for a book to read, but he suspected he wouldn't be allowed to have one after he turned the last book they let him borrow into paper planes and origami. It was their own fault though. What made them think someone like him would enjoy reading about banana cloning and herbiculture?

It was a pity that they confiscated his knife, or he would have used it to cut up his bedsheets and made a noose out of it for fun. Or maybe he could have used it to scrape the paint off the wall, fashion an entire larger-than-life graffiti, or to cut himself and write a blood letter. It was driving him bonkers, how he had nothing at all to entertain himself with.

Should he try singing? But he was such an abysmal singer that singing would only be fun if there was someone around him who he could annoy with it.

Defeated, Siward flopped his head back onto his pillow. He felt aggravated beyond words.

But this is better than what could have happened, he thought, fiddling with the grey cover of his pillow, pulling at its stitches. This is better than going to actaul prison.

He stared at the old water stains on the ceiling and thought he shouldn't be relaxing. No, he wasn't in prison yet, that didn't mean he'd never be sent there for what he did. If his luck was bad enough someone might dig up the body he interred two weeks ago. He had done a hasty job that night because Dom Adams insisted he needed to attend their night class no matter what. And now he couldn't do anything about it because he was already locked up.

Maybe being locked up wasn't such a bad thing, he thought suddenly. If someone did unearth the body of the man he killed and somehow decided he was murdered a few days later than he actually was, Siward could avoid being a suspect. He'd spent every day after that night under supervision, first at Dom Adams and now in the detention facility.

His thoughts wandered to that night, to the murder he committed in moonlight. It was the first life he ever took, perhaps the only one if he could forgo the consequences of his actions at Dom Adams. It had never been his intention to kill the man, he believed he wasn't depraved enough, but now that the act had already been executed, he did not regret it.