Faceless

Period 9: English literature and language

Something that always annoyed me about English teachers is that they always felt the need to scrutinise the work to the point you could hardly see it for what it really was. You're always looking at the little details and never the bigger picture. I feel like that many things were ruined for me because I can't help but notice completely ridiculous things that obviously mean nothing that would be good for an exam.

I also always felt like that the few times you did the writing instead of the reading, the words that you wrote were too limited in order to really be your words. Too many limitations made a creative subject always feel robotic, like there was only a few ways of doing everything and they had all been discovered, and we must copy those before us instead of making something new to entertain new people and unlock greater places deep within our minds.

English left me craving something new, something never done before. A story where the villain wins, a murder mystery where none of the suspects did it, or all of them did it together, a story where the writer talks directly to the reader like a conversation, talking to themselves and addressing the reader as though they were directly in front of them...

Anyway, for half a day I was asked to teach English, the higher ups liked the way I taught for some reason. Perhaps I'm better at some things than I thought.

But it's not like it mattered. I would never be able to use those skills outside of this place.

"In today's lesson we will be analysing the poem 'Earthly Chains' by anonymous and trying to decipher the overall meaning and message that the author was trying to give'" what a load of bullshit. Not each word held that much meaning, only the way they were strung together. Not all poems and books had to have a meaning, just feelings.

I looked at the page in the desk I was standing at and looked closely at the words, I had not been given any kind of power points or script, so everything had to be spontanious. I wasn't worried, I hated English, but I was good at it. That helped me walk with confidence in my original entrance exams, but now I really wish I chickened out of it.

"I'll be tied up with earthly chains,

Chains in my mouth choking me and ripping apart my face,

Each limb ripped off and blood splashing everywhere,

My neck being snapped and my body rotting away, wear and tear,

Eyes, teeth and nails falling out,

My decomposing corpse smelling like trout,

My flesh falling off my bones and my arteries exploding from pressure,

The earthly chains around my neck can not be severed"

Umm... holy crap this was a dark poem. And what even was it about, it only appeared to be disturbing. Perhaps it was about intrusive thoughts...?

"Ok, so who has any ideas about earthly chains? How can the chains be earthly? Any ideas? Anyone?".

...

"Thank you everyone, you may leave" As soon as the bell went for lunch, I was completely done. I wasn't going to force these poor divines to stay in that awful class a single second longer than needed, the bell dismisses you, not me.

But while the divines were allowed to have a break, I couldn't. After taking just a second, I was off to work again in a different classroom to prepare for period 5.

On my way, another slave bumped into me.

"Sorry! I'm not used to being able to see yet!"

"Huh? What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, I was partially blind before I came here, but somehow after being turned into a slave they recovered my sight, goodbye!"

And just like that a rather interesting and important conversation was over. This place had discovered a cure to blindness? Why did they cure that girl? Was it simply part of the procedure to give the slave 20/20 vision?

If they had discovered a crazy cure to reverse a thing like that, then perhaps the science to reverse my face removal was possible?