The Neurocranial Exploits
(a short story by Dniwara Redman)
Crack one, crack two.
There is now a visible tear in the flesh. The once wavy brown hair of Professor Emery is now tainted crimson with the blood from the open wound on his scalp. The smell of his apple-scented shampoo is still present in the thick air. The fresh and hot blood has caused tufts of his wavy brown hair to stick together- as if forming a fictional nuclear family that says grace every night before dinner and once a week visits Grandpa in a derelict nursing home. The scalp appears thin from afar but once you give it a few poundings, you will realize that the scalp is one tough layer of the human anatomy.
Crack three, four, five, six
The Johnston Journal of Neuroscience, oh how handy of a book. How well placed on the top shelf of Professor Emery's bookcase. How well-crafted as to be hardbound and almost thick as a wall. How ironic as to be the cause of Professor Emery's own mangling and destruction. How convenient for Peter Jenkins to just creep into the professor's quarters and find it there dimly lit on the shelf. Have you ever tried hammering a nail with the tough side of a thick book? If you haven't already observed, the book can also be a hammer. A blunt object with the potential to cause serious trauma to the human skull is the demented half-brother of your everyday reading material the book.
Peter Jenkins is an underachieving no-good, no-worth, factory-churn-out, quality-pass student of the barely-average-human generator that is Spielman-Lincoln High School. His grades are in no way spectacular. He is a member of the school's Origami Club, fucking pussy twat he is, but he is what this tale is all about. He can fold you a paper crane, paper roses, paper candelabras, and paper fucking anything. Great fucking credits to his parents for raising a 15 year old whose only known contribution to the society is his fucking pointless origami.
Minutes earlier before the two strikes that caused the debauchery of Professor Emery's scalp, Peter Jenkins was just casually strolling down the hallway of Spielman-Lincoln High School. A thick scent hung round the atmosphere as if the sense of a tragedy was about to be set into motion. The school had been built in the early 1900s and still carries its old-timey feel that geezers would nod in favor for. The walls were newly repainted beige but cracks of the previous red layer still show. Peter Jenkins did not find such an upheaval comfortable-being the little sensitive flit he is.
Peter took the stairs that led to the second floor of the school. It was a shit set of stairs. The steps were all creaking and vandalized. A huge dick was carved on one of the steps. The school was probably too busy painting their walls beige to even clean up the vandalism that maybe little girls would see and ask their parents about. Beige is the color of pretense, of trying to be elegant when the fanciest possessions you'll ever have are an automatic lawnmower and a Starbucks planner, a color of desperation and it fits the mood of Spielman-Lincoln High.
The time was seven-fifteen in the evening and most of the teachers had finished grading the recent tests and reports. On the second floor of the school stood the quarters of one very unfortunate Professor Emery. Peter had just arrived on that said floor.
The memory was still fresh in Peter's head of how he had been embarrassed by Professor Rudolph Emery in Biology class a week ago for not knowing the basic parts of the brain. Peter still remembers how the entire class laughed at him for not knowing the difference between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Everything was going through his head in slow motion. Professor Emery was a tall demon and he laughed and laughed with the whole class. Professor Emery laughed deeply and slowly as a demon would. In slow motion. Like a scene from a film. He still remembers how on that day, that exact moment when everything was a slow haze when the class was pointing and laughing at his stupidity, he remembers how something inside of him snapped. How Peter Jenkins vowed to exact revenge on the very man that had shamed him in front of his peers. How he stormed out of the room, cursed Professor Emery and screamed at the sky. Oh how the clouds had gone darker that day.
