Street Sweeper

The Test

  His heart was beating so hard in his ears that Thomas couldn't hear the first question and the voice had to repeat himself. "Like I said," the voice began, clearly agitated despite the modifications "I'm going to start easy on you so you can get the hang of everything." followed by that skin crawling laugh again. "When you coached football, what was your favorite play called?" Normally this question would have been simple, the flea flicker, because no one ever saw it coming in middle of high school. With all the blood in his ears and the noise of the wood chipper under his dangling head, he couldn't think of a single football play. "Come on coach, it's your favorite play." the voice chastised. When he finally thought of it he opened his mouth and stopped. "The Street Sweeper!" he shouted. "Ding ding ding! You got it right!" the voice seemed almost comical in its response. "To everyone else it was a flea flicker, but you called it The Street Sweeper because 'It cleans up the competition' even though I don't remember it ever working." Thomas was now sure whoever this was used to have kids he coached, his teams were never really that good and some parents held a grudge when he kept their kid on the bench. "Listen, if you're doing this because your son was a bench rider on my team then this seems a bit much" Thomas wheezed, it was getting really hard to breathe. There was a long pause, so long he thought he was going to pass out, before the voice came back. "Bench rider? That's an interesting way to put it" the voice seemed thoughtful "let's make this a bit quicker what do you say? 2 more questions and we'll be done." the sudden shift in tone was jarring. Thomas must have rattled whoever was giving this test, and he wasn't sure that was such a good thing. "Next question, why are you here?" as if answering an unanswered question in his mind Thomas now knew he had no chance of making it out alive.