Darkness Falls

Character: Antagonist (DF) "2nd Grade Teacher, Karen Tumech"

"WHAT DO YOU CALL THIS, RALLY?" Mrs. Tumech stormed.

Head hanging, Rally managed, "This is my painting of our family's home with part of the farm in the background. I've looked around. I think mine is the most detailed picture in the classroom. Don't you like it, Mrs. Tumech?"

"Is that how you're going to live your life, Rally, comparing your work to the efforts of others? You have such potential! Yes! Everybody else's pictures are rubbish compared to yours, but you still haven't done your best!"

"How could I do any better? Please. I'd like to know?" Rally whimpered, eyes filling, overflowing.

"The organization of your painting is all wrong!" Tumech railed, "Your house is in the dead center of the picture. There's no 'look room.' You need to follow the Rule of Thirds. Carve up your picture into three sections from top to bottom, and then from left to right. Imagine the intersection of those two sets of thirds as the four ideal placement points for any subject, directing the eyes through the rest of the picture. NEVER CENTER ANY SUBJECT! The only exception to that rule is the picture of a close-up, that fills most of the canvas, being used."

"Thank you, Mrs. Tumech," Rally moused. "I didn't know that. I will always try to remember. I want my paintings to be the best they can be."

"I believe that, Rally," she softened. "You've got talent. Every other student in this classroom has no talent compared to you. DO YOU HEAR ME?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Rally trembled with his arms holding himself tight.

"I'm hard on you, Rally," she whispered. "I've never seen anyone with as much talent as you have. I'm putting pressure on you like I would put pressure on a lump of clay on a potter's wheel as I make a ceramic bowl for the kiln. The bowl has to be able to take the heat of the kiln and not break under the pressure. Learn the lessons I am teaching you now, and years later you will thank me later in your career as a world-class artist of some sort."

"Thank you, Mrs.," boring a hole in the floor. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes, but I can see you need a moment. Sit down, take five, and eat a snack," she almost smiled. "We'll take this up later."

Rally's second-grade teacher, Mrs. Karen Tumech, suffered much in her own youth, being cut from the same cloth as Mozart. Their parents seemed to have their children's best interest at heart, or possibly saw the potential for monetary gain from their progeny, but whatever the reason, these children, Mrs. Tumech and Mozart, really did not have the personality for teaching. Did Mozart try teach? History shows that he did, but did he cause as much trauma as Mrs. Tumech? Possibly.

Second-grade stayed with Rally for most of his life because Mrs. Karen Tumech traumatized him in the process of teaching him some invaluable principles of visual art. Her voice drove him to produce greater and greater levels of art, until he went blind.

When darkness finally fell, the voice of the tyrant fell silent.