Magnesium Ribbons

The time passed slowly by as I sat at the black topped desk. Time as an object dripped off the sharp hands of the clock like molasses onto the tile floor. It made the sound of the steady tick-tock-tick-tock-tick.

There was a beaker of foul smelling acetone, another of vinegar, and a strip of magnesium ribbon on the desk. The Bunsen burner was lit with a strong flame, ready for the chemical reactions that were part of the assignment.

The teacher stepped out of the room for the minute, so that everything had gone into a kind of whispered hush as we read the instructions en mass. I thought about pushing my paper, just slightly, ever so slightly, to put it in the vicinity of the blaze. The paper would catch fire, the printed words would become nothing but ash, and the uproar would be stupendous.

I smiled just thinking about the fun of burning up this piece of trash, the one we were all supposed to spend an hour going over on the teachers return. Like anyone with half a cerebral cortex needed that much time to read common sense directives about holding things over fire, or mixing them together.

It was boring, so goddamn boring.

When I look around the room I see the other students, some doodling, some reading a book, staring into open space, and others actually reading the sheet. My heart rate was starting to sink with the drops of thick molasses.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

I turn around in surprise, I didn’t recognize that strongly accented voice. My eyes meet those of a man in a typical cowboy hat, solid black with a silver and turquoise pendant in the center, in the shape of an eye. It even had a little silver iris and pupil in the very center. His outfit was similarly odd, since he was dressed in a black dress shirt, and black washed skinny jeans. Well, I liked him already.

“Uh...Yes?” I responded after I gathered my wits at seeing someone so bizarre in the middle of AP Chem.

“Y’all know the way outer here? I been lost since early on in the morning.”

His face was handsome and young, with the slight hint of blonde stubble dusting the bottom of his jaw. Dark eyes to match the rest of the outfit, a belt buckle with the same odd symbol that adorned his ridiculous head ware.

I balked at the man, and glanced around the room to see that no one else had given him the time of day. They were too busy in whatever they had happened to be doing to have even noticed the crazy figure who had walked right on in. Well, someone had to help the poor guy, so it might as well be me.

“Yeah, no problem. Just walk out of here, take a left down this hallway, then take the stairs down to-”

“Now ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’m pretty bad with directions. You mind showing me yourself?”

My eyes narrowed in suspicion - but then again, it was easy enough to get lost in this behemoth building. There were three whole floors, five different wings denoted by number, and multiple outbuildings for special classes like agriculture and auto shop. As a freshman I had the problem of getting lost on the way to all of my classes, over and over again for weeks.

There was an awful screeching noise as I got up out of my chair. The unknown western styled man gave a charming smile before holding out an open palmed hand. I noticed there were callouses and scars all over the mottled canvas of his tan skin.

I took it in my own, accepting his outdated gesture of helping a woman up from her chair.

“Yeah, don’t worry. They won’t miss me here.” I said as we walked out the door to the hallway, after he insisted on holding it open for me.

“Ways I see it, your a lady, I’m a gentleman. It’s only right.” Hell, whatever floats your boat man, I thought with a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

The halls were empty as an old cemetery, with the gray colored lockers serving as makeshift tombstones, in their precise little rows. The man’s working boots clacked along the tile as we went to the stairs, while my combat boots made no sound at all from their rubber soles.

“So...what brings you to Poplar Fewer High?”

Someone had to break this eerie silence, as though we were walking through a nightmare version of the school I had attended for the last three years. It was like a slightly off reproduction of a famous painting - there were some small details incorrect. But how could they ever be identified? There were too many variables, too many tiny little things, for me to recognize any real differences. Leaving only this vague sense that something had been changed.

“Nothing really, guess I just wanted to take a trip down memory lane. I graduated here when I was just eighteen, bout’ seven years ago.”

“Hmm. You’re lucky to have gotten out. I still have another year until I can leave.”

“Well, since you’ve been so kind to me, let me give you some advice, ma’am. The truth of the matter is that there is no escape. That would be too easy. Instead we all just have to chase our tails in the middle of the maze. They know we won’t ever escape it, but the point is to run anyway.”

I thought about this as we went down a second set of stairs, so that we were finally on the ground floor. To be honest, I didn’t understand - obviously one could get out of High School. He had, although he had chosen to come back, but of his own free will. Take a trip down memory lane. I wonder who even let this guy in, since security had gotten tighter in the last few years.

Eventually I gave a slight nod when his bright eyes wondered into my direction. He imitated the gesture down to the centimeter while his boots continued to click away on the fresh waxed floors.

I had never seen the school this empty before. Probably because I had never had any occasion to leave class before the bells signaled us all to move on. Funny thing, I realize that I have followed the rules of the teachers to the letter since the day I entered this place for the first time.

There were no bathroom breaks or otherwise during class periods, so I took none. There was no leaving a room without a pass in the first place so I always had one. I pissed at home in the mornings and then once more during lunch in the public restrooms next to the cafeteria. Never had I walked out in one of the times that had been “forbidden” until today.

We came to where the main mall of the school, so that now I could see the front office with its many pieces of paper and cubicle-esque office spaces. I suppose if one wanted a tiny office on the first day of work, they could become a school office worker. Things worked differently in this closed place. The rest of the world - like one being just released from prison - operated on a different time scale.

“Here we are. Where did you park?” I ask the stranger in the ten gallon hat.

He keeps his sight locked on the front glass doors as he replies “near the band hall.”

I eyed him with ever growing unease. Why hadn’t he mentioned that we would need to go to the complete other end of this place sooner? If he had really been a student here he should know that...but then again, people can forget. God knows I’m ready to forget I ever wasted a single admission of CO2 here.

“Right- this way then.”

Going past the cafeteria, I neither heard nor saw any evidence of the lunch ladies heating up today’s unpalatable selection. I think it was Taco Tuesday, or some other alliteration. Did they think if it sounded better, it would taste better? Theory disproved, then.

Today there was no smell either. Not of the sludge they called meat being cooked in mounds of sodium filled grease, not of corn or soggy pizza.

“They teach y’all bout’ the observer effect?”

“Nah, never heard of it.” A weird topic to make conversation about, while we walked past stories high windows letting in the gray of the outside sky.

“Works like this: See they know electrons behave one way when no body’s watching them. But as soon as one of those confused men in lab coats take a look - it changes. Just like that. It changes because they noticed it.”

Now that he mentioned, I had heard of that bizarre phenomena from somewhere. Maybe it was something last year’s physics teacher mentioned when I was half asleep through a monotonous lecture. It did ring a bell, if not just because of the strangeness of the concept.

“That’s amazing” I said, and meant it.

“Keep that in mind, might come in handy someday.”

His voice is emotionless and for a moment, it seemed that the accent had gone out of it. No, no, it must have been my imagination. His whole persona, one so convoluted, could not be just a ruse. He was the real deal.

Finally, we took the turn down the old hallway that led to the back entrance/ exit. The space was only big enough for three people to walk in a horizontal line. I felt as though the man were intentionally getting closer as we neared the way out. Pass the vending machine that never works, pass the choir room, the dance room, and-

“I swear this was the right...”

I hear myself say in a whisper. The man continues to face ahead.

It is only a blank expanse of white painted wall.

No doors. No exits. No signs.

Nothing.

“I swear there were a set of doors here!” I don’t know why but my heart starts to beat at a quicker pace. The blood is rushing itself through my veins faster and faster to feed my adrenaline laced body. I have been at this school for four years. How could I have gotten lost?

I look all around, but yes! Here is the band hall, the doors to the choir and dance rooms just behind us. I have seen people leave this way time and time again when the day is done. I know there is a small student parking lot just on the other side of this hunk of solid wall.

“Are you sure?” The cowboy says, staring at the space in front of us with a hard mask.

“Yes! Yes, positive! I know it sounds insane, but I have come down this hallway a hundred times before! There are - were - doors here!”

I start tapping the white painted cinder block wall with both hands. It is solid, with crooked little groves and tiny bubbles where the paint dried different. I slam my right fist against the thing, and feel the pain that only comes from reality.

Then, something occurs to me.

“Hey! Isn’t this where-”

My voice dies before it can ever breathe out those final words. The cowboy is gone.

There is no sign of him for the rest of the stretch down the hall. I would have heard him opening a door. Where could he have gone so quickly?

My whole body is breaking out in a cold sweat. None of this makes any sense. There should be a door there. There should have been a man behind me.

I fling myself onto the closed door of the choir room in the deafening silence. I struggle with the handle but it will not budge. My knocking reverberates through the space until they sound as loud as gunshots. Why won’t they answer?

The next door then. The next one, the dance room, I know Mrs. Teresa has class this period.

The handle puts up a fight against my moist palms, but I finally thrust open the windowless door. I search the whole room with the same eagerness as one looking for a lost lion. I see the special floor made of linoleum, the full wall mirror on the left, the lockers with their simple gray combination locks. Someone has left a single black jazz shoe in the middle of the main floor.

Stepping inside, I confirm that I am still alone. My shaking fingers grasp the single shoe as though it were my mother’s hand on a stormy night.          

Every door is the same. If not empty, then locked. They are made of sturdy wood, and I cannot break any of their locks.

I run to the main mall while my head dances with vertigo. There is the last refuge of normality, of sense! I have to get back there. I have to get back to the office with its stupid pink drivers ed forms and intercoms.

My combat boots weigh down the feet inside, but nothing will stop me now. Now they make a sound: a solid thump thump thump. It mimics the pace of my heaving chest.

I rush through to where the first flight of stairs goes up and up for the next two floors. Thank god, thank god! I stop to catch my breath in the middle of the main mall to see that the main office is exactly as it has always been.

But it is empty of people.

My eyes wander over to where the main entrance is. I don’t want to look, but it is out of my control now.

I feel something within in me break, even hear it being snipped by a singular pair of scissors.

There is only one great, long, white wall of cinder blocks.