the alive

Patricia

Patricia rocks her twenty-six year old head right and left like a one marble brunette hair bun pendulum. Breaks eye contact with the arrogant asshole teenager in front of her. Anger shadows her like a sweaty dark cloud. Grabs the boy by his scalp and slams his bum chin into her swiftly raising spandex knee cap. Not too hard but not too soft. His face flings back from the loud crack and the possibility that cause and effect isn't just a theory. The boy falls to his knees. Holds his wobbly flow. A crimson curdle waterfall contortion of a snotty nose. Patricia sighs like an impatient elementary school teacher who's about to lose her shit and quit. She won't. Instead chuckles and smirks at the stupidity of the boy and at his new experience in epistemology.

"I'm sorry. Geoff, is it? We don't call our instructors "a cunt" if we know what's good for us. Next time, I'll hurt you."

The boy staggers. Stumbles back into the group of belligerent sour face sixteen somethings. One girl with unicorn glittery gel rainbow hair smiles at the exhibition of swift Homeric brutality.

They're all wearing standard patchwork blackout attire with distracting and almost un-functional hair styles, such as disconnected mushroom cut mullets and upswept mohawks and pastel pigtail braids. All have similar looks of revelation upon their youthful countenances. Decorations of vermilion and smoky eye shadow with blackening greyscale to scarlet swirling white permanent lipstick. Don't call the new instructor a cunt.

"Go to the infirmary, Geoff. Let them know why you're there, please. And Lara! Go with him. I see you staring an axe into my face with your asshole hump buddy eyes. Go plot against me like a good little girlfriend. Get it out of your system. But just remember that I'm the big bad wolf and your house isn't even built of straw."

Lara and Geoff leave the group with a trail of red blotches dripping upon the sable rubber flooring. Patricia watches their backsides as Lara turns her icy face around. Looks at her instructor like corpse in a coffin, dead in the eye. Curls a small devious smile. Oh, she's not really mad. Maybe she was pretending to be furious just to get the opportunity to spend time with her wounded fuck buddy. Clever.

"Ok, anyone else have a problem with me? No? Good. Five hundred pushups in reps of fifty. Everyone on the ground. I want to see how badly your last instructor ruined your conditioning. Then we're going to climb some ropes."

A lot of mumbling and squints of malediction shout into Patricia's knowledge. But everyone drops into position to begin their first set of pushups.

"Get it in on baby Ghosts."

One boy grunts and sweats and stops and starts. A blue banged red freckled girl collapses after twenty. Everyone  has issues on the very first fifty. All except the rainbow hair girl. She kicks ass.

Patricia rolls her eyes and knows she has a lot of work to do breaking the rest of them. Must be the bad guy until she can be the good guy when it's time to build them all back up. They need conditioning and consistency before she can really begin teaching them.

"Hey, rainbow. What's your name?"

The girl who just did fifty pushups without breaking a sweat looks up at Patricia. Curls a purple lipstick half smile at her.

"I'm Glare."

"Were you moved down to this group or something?"

"Yeah. I'm being punished. I told my instructor, who's a temporary placement, that he doesn't know what he's doing. He just stands around and watches us and says nothing. It's fucking creepy. He's too dumb or disinterested in us to give feedback. He told me to come here. But we're supposed to be getting someone new in a few days whose apparently bad ass. Or so I've been informed. I'm supposed to stay in this group until then."