Back To School (Second Year Coursework)

(Another piece of recent coursework. Warning: Miserable adult content implied ahead. This is something that I put a great deal of work into and am pretty happy with the resulting outcome. Inspired by my love of Urban Exploration and abandoned buildings with a slight twist in its tail: a touchy subject matter that I didn't originally intend to deal with, however in the end, I felt worked with what I was trying to say. Enjoy.)

You decide to take a look around. After all, who knows how long it’ll be left standing before the builders come in and reduce the place to a pile of smouldering bricks and asbestos dust. The wall isn’t easy for you to scale, but somehow you manage it, scuffing up your converse high-tops against the bricks. Once you’re over, you’re surprised to find that the drop isn’t as far as it seemed on this side, and it isn’t long before you’re picking your way through the scratchy weeds that have taken root in the once beautifully pruned field and towards the building. It rises out of the overgrown greenery as a beacon of lost memories. The midday sun beats down onto your face. You wonder what you’re doing here again. 

You find a broken window with splinters of glass contorting it into a jagged mouth and decide that this probably isn’t the best way in. Not if you want to leave with your clothing intact. You keep walking, treading an increasingly familiar route that skirts the edge of the building. The next door you come to - a little further around the back - has been broken open by the repeated impact of some kind of large heavy object, and you manage to pull it open and squeeze through. You wonder briefly if the culprit is still inside. 

The sudden lack of background noise around you makes you stop for a moment. It’s not dark, but the shadows that linger in places that they shouldn’t give the room a desolate feel, as if you’re walking away from hope itself. Which is funny, because for six years, you treaded through these rooms every day. But with the shadows and the trashed furniture replacing the memories of comfort and order, you begin to feel a little uneasy at the thought of venturing any further. You decide that this is the best time to pull out your mobile phone. Just in case.

No signal.

Low battery.

Typical.

You choose to press on nonetheless. 

The room you’ve entered is a vaguely familiar classroom, so it’s not a difficult task to locate a door in the dim light that leads out into the sprawling mass of corridors. The one you’re in stretches off in both directions like a network of veins within a living, breathing organism. The thought of this makes you shudder. You concentrate instead on how your surroundings have changed since you last graced them. The paint on the walls is only beginning to peel here, and you reach your hand out to feel it against your skin: a cold concrete under layer covered thinly by a flaky papery paint that comes off in your fingers and feels as fragile as a sheet of tissue paper.

You remember the school as it was when you’d last been there. Twelve years ago, you had your last class in one of the rooms a little further down the hallway. You had your first kiss –it was for a triple-double-doggie-dare – just outside these doors on the left that led off into the playground. 

You haven’t realised that your feet are taking you somewhere. They trace familiar paths down the hallway and off through a winding maze of rooms. The school itself had always been easy to navigate, but the path you’re taking snakes in and out of classrooms and hallways in a nonsensical order. You double back on yourself. Visit the same room twice then walk off. After a while, you pass by some of the school’s more memorable landmarks: the empty trophy cupboard - trophies gone, now a splintered mess on the corridor floor - and a noticeboard which had once housed the faces of previous teaching staff. Some of their pictures are still there. The one you remember the most isn’t. 

Before you can realise where your feet are taking you, they turn right and stop you as you hit a dead end. A dead end that is, with only a large wooden door to confront your eyes.

The door ahead gives you goose bumps just like it always did before. The sticker that proclaims ‘FIRE DOOR KEEP SHUT’ just above the handle has been scratched off so that it now vaguely resembles a skull. You almost laugh at the sick significance of this. 

You remember this door. You remember walking past it every time you had sports lessons. You remember how, for most of your time here, it was just a plain old boring sports equipment storeroom. You also remember exactly what it felt like on your tiny hands as they scrabbled against the thick wood trying to reach the lock to free yourself from its confines. Back then you never understood why there would be a lock on the inside of a storeroom door. You were too young and too innocent. Not to mention too short to reach. You don’t want to remember this. 

You’re curious.  Unlike the rest of the building, it doesn’t show signs of decay. It’s simply there, just as clear and unavoidable as it always was. And no matter how hard you’ve wished to be able to repress it, it’s still there. 

Unlocked. Of course it’s unlocked. The lock is on the inside, deliberately high up, out of the reach of children. You can reach it now, you realise. You wonder to yourself how different things would have been able to reach those extra few inches back then. 

Just like any other plain old boring equipment storeroom, it’s small and dingy and a bare bulb is the only source of light inside. Stark and white against the heavy breeze block walls. It seems unfinished. Unfriendly. 

You remember that day. You remember the exact words he said to you. You wish that you didn’t, but you can’t help it.

“There’s nothing in here that can hurt you. 

This is just a plain old boring equipment storeroom.”

The door swings shut behind you. You haven’t realised that you’d brought yourself here until the noise of solid hard wood smacking against more solid hard wood brings you back to your senses. You don’t want to be here. In fact, you don’t want here to be here.

It’s dark. Your hands remember where the light pull is. At least you’d been tall enough to reach that back then. The unemotional white of the bulb throws the room into a sharp relief. Your eyes catch on some of the objects that litter the floor of the tiny windowless room. A pair of old gym socks. A half-deflated basketball. A bright orange sports vest with the number 13 on the back. A moulding cardboard box filled with odd shoes, spare running shorts and discarded school jumpers. A cigarette lighter.

A cigarette lighter? You reach down to pick it up. You don’t smoke and never have, but something about this tiny plastic object fascinates you. What would a lighter be doing in the storeroom of an abandoned primary school that has been closed for over ten years? You turn it over in your hands, flicking it until finally a flame erupts between the sparks. Old, but still in service. The flame dances around at the tip of your fingers, and you stare at it, willing it to cleanse you of all the memories that returning to this building, this very pocket of this very building has brought back to the surface. With the shadows in the corner of the tiny room suddenly given motion, you no longer feel alone in your boxy confinement. Almost like he is back in there with you. And you don’t ever want to remember what that felt like. 

You put two together. You make up your mind.

No, you think. There’s no way you could do that. You have more morals than that. But then you remember how this place ruined you. How everything that you’ve become today has been somehow stemmed from this one room. Every tiny insecurity. Every little insignificance that has ever held you back from trusting someone completely.

The combination of the cardboard and the fabric takes to the flames straight away, and the resulting feeling of satisfaction that ripples through you gives you a surge of adrenaline. The fire begins as a tiny orange body, moving slowly over the polyester vest top, and spreading over towards the cardboard of the box that holds it. Before you allow the flames to grow too big, you open the door, and drag the now smoldering box in to place and act as a doorstop, wedging it open. You’re careful not to trap yourself inside the room behind it – you know only too well what that feels like. You watch and wait in a quiet anticipation as the flames get bigger. They’re licking the door now, caressing it with their flickering orange fingertips. 

An idea enters your head. You want to feed what you have created. You retreat down the corridor to the mess that you remember seeing earlier. A lonely abandoned old trophy cabinet, long vacated of the school’s most prized possessions, now a small pile of meaningless wood on the corridor floor. You pick up as much as you can carry in one go and return to the fire. At this point, you don’t quite know what’s possessing you, what’s driving you forward. Nothing other than the vague lust of revenge. Vandalism and damage of someone else’s property wasn’t ever something that was high up on your to-do list. You return for the rest of the cabinet, picking up a discarded wooden classroom chair for good measure.  By now, the flames are taking to the heavy wood of the door. Smoke billows around the origin of the fire, and you cover my mouth with your sweater as you feed the flames with the memories of your time here.

After you feel as though you’ve done enough – two more chairs and several stacks of moulding old printer paper you found in the school office later – you decide to stop. You don’t linger to see what happens next. You walk away slowly without so much of a backwards glance towards what you’ve done. Nobody will ever even know you were here; you left nothing behind to even point the finger of blame anywhere near its culprit. You retrace the path back down the corridor, out of the classroom door and back over the wall for one last time, a grim feeling of satisfaction building in your stomach.

You’re not a vandal, you’re an exorcist.

As you drop yourself back over the wall, you take one final clichéd look back at the building you had frequented for so long. The memories, you hope, will fade and collapse alongside the bricks and mortar that housed them. And with that final thought, you turn away and begin home, the faint smell of smoke haunting the building behind you. 

She (Second Year Short Story Coursework)

(I haven't really posted on here for a while, but this was something I wrote pretty recently as a piece of coursework based upon an idea I had well over a year ago. I'm actually quite proud of how it turned out in the end; if I was ever to find myself in a situation like this, I think I'd be pretty happy. Enjoy.)

When I next saw her, she said it again: she was bored, she needed out. She knew that I could take her mind off things. I was her escape.

I didn’t like the thought of being used. I wanted to feel that she liked me for who I was, and not just because I made her forget herself.

“I do like you for who you are, you know,” she said, almost reading my mind.

“Huh, could’ve fooled me,” I replied, not wanting to sound as if it bothered me too much. Nonchalant. Noncommittal. In the silence that followed, the final track on the album came to an end and the needle slipped, drenching us in the beautiful scratching that signified the end of the B-side of the record.

We sat facing each other on the floor, legs crossed. She hugged one of the cushions from my parents’ wicker sofa to her chest.

“Well that’s the newest one. It’d just come out when I bought it. Three pounds ninety eight. What do you think?”

“I like it. Not as much as the first one though. The Pink Floyd one. I liked that. Put it on again?”

I stood up and lifted the needle from the delicate flimsy disk of vinyl, expertly flipping it off the turntable. This always impressed her, the way I could switch between two different vinyl records in a matter of seconds. Dark Side Of The Moon landed and I flicked the needle back down to set the revolutions going again. I re-joined her on the floor. In the absent-mindedness of wanting to impress her, I realised that I’d mixed the two sides up, and instead of the opening movie sound effects of ‘Speak To Me’ we were stuck with the cash register chime that signalled the start of ‘Money.’ I stood up again with a sigh to change it. A hand on my arm stopped me. I followed her delicate fair skin up from fingertips to facial features with my eyes. Questioning.

“We don’t have to listen to it in order. In fact, I’d prefer it now if we didn’t.”

“You don’t do anything normally, do you?” I looked for the answer in her face. She smiled and said nothing. Porcelain skin still rested on my arm.

“Have you honestly never considered buying one of these yourself then?” I said to her, bridging the silence that always verged on awkwardness but never felt uncomfortable. At least, not to me.

“I like yours.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have one of your own?” I wondered aloud.

“I like being able to come here though.”

I didn’t reply.

When the vinyl reached its end, I decided to change the tune a bit. I knew for a fact that this record was one of her favourites. Her entire face lit up as soon as the first strains of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run crackled through the speakers. Of my entire vinyl collection, this record was my most frequently played. It reminded me of her when she wasn’t there.

“You know me too well,” she smiled. I smiled back, and made use of the empty house – turning the volume of the crackling speakers up even further.

“Oh, do I?”

“Better than anyone.”

“I’ll bet there’s things I don’t know though.”

“Go on then, twenty questions.”

I smiled at her suggestion. Most of the things I’d be asking her, I probably already knew.

“Okay… Favourite colour?”

“Sky blue.”

“Favourite flavour ice cream?”
“Mint chocolate chip.”

“Favourite place?” I mentally crossed my fingers, praying that whatever answer she gave would be in my favour.

“The beach in Penzance. Where Harry used to always take me on his weekends off.”

Silence. She’d mentioned his name again.

“It’s getting late. You should probably be going soon,” I said after an age, regretting the words as soon as they’d left my mouth. My attempt to fill the silent void between us that had been created by the mention of his name was a pathetic one.

Neither of us moved. Maybe neither of us wanted to. Maybe she’d realised her mistake: surely she should have guessed by now that even the sound of his name made me silently fume inside. To think that somebody could treat someone so delicate and beautiful the way he’d treated her. Maybe she wanted to say something, but didn’t have the confidence to. The air was thick and heavy with the uncertainty of maybes.

“I know,” she finally murmured.

And then out of nowhere she started talking about her ‘type’ again. Tall, strong, muscular, with that just-perfect cropped haircut. I thought about my own messy long hair. Would it be too noticeable if I had it cut and started doing weights, I wondered. Each and every trait that belonged to her so-called ‘perfect man’ bored another nail deep into my skull.

Everything was laced with negativity all of a sudden. How she’d been scared into never fully trusting anyone again.  How every guy she’d ever been attracted to had screwed her over in some way or another. The name from earlier that she didn’t repeat, yet was visibly thinking of cropped up over and over again: her ex-boyfriend that had given up a diamond for a dull everyday pebble.

            “I’ve never been able to trust anyone properly since him, you know?”

“So I’m not good enough for you, am I?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. 

“You know what I mean, silly. You help me so much because you know not to shout at me when I start going off on one.”

I couldn’t quite decide how to take this. On one hand, it was one of the deepest soul-crushing blows that she could ever execute – pushing me further and further away from her and into the dreaded zone of being that signalled we were ‘just-friends’. The other hand caressed the compliment like it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

And so it went on like that. I wasn’t hers, and I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t ever be. But there was some kind of comfort in knowing that she could confide in me, and I wanted to be the one the she turned to when it all went to shit. Broken she’d called herself once. From the very bottom of her tiny feet, to the ends of her thick milky-coffee coloured hair, I wanted to fix her.

“Guess I’ll have to be going then.”

Our eyes met for a moment. I tried to telepathically send her everything I felt towards her in those few seconds. The way I wanted to lie down on my living room floor with her and listen to records all day: our fingertips barely touching, our lips finding one another on their own accord. The way her eyelashes fluttered before she broke our mutual gaze mirrored the fluttering I felt in my heart every time I so much as thought about her.

A brief goodbye, barely even a whispered pleasantry followed. Nothing more than a simple “I’ll see you later”. Of course I would see her later, there was no doubt about that. As the old cliché goes, her face haunted my dreams every night without fail. Of course, I would see her in person again: no doubt that boredom would overcome her once more and she’d turn up on my doorstep in her battered yellow Beetle seeking refuge from the world.

She climbed gracefully into her car as I wished that our goodbye could prolong itself somehow, that something would happen. It didn’t and she gave me a final smile, a shrug of the shoulders and a wave as she turned the key in the ignition. I smiled back and then turned: watching her drive off was something I never fully liked to witness. Instead, I turned back into my empty house, the last strains of Springsteen floating through the open living room door into the hallway. With almost perfect timing, the track came to an end and silence ensued.

I closed the door on the Beetle, and looked back again through the frosted glass as she rolled off down the street. My infatuation always got the better of me. When she’d gone, I lingered just for a moment in the hope that she’d return: that maybe the realisation of the way she really felt towards me had finally hit her. But the car was gone and didn’t come back.

Finally, I retreated back into my living room.

I hadn’t noticed the note that she’d left for me beneath the needle, tucked delicately away at some point over the last few minutes that I must have missed. Placed carefully enough so that the record could still play without the paper getting caught. I plucked it out as gently as I could and unfolded the tiny scrap of paper in my palm: a butterfly resting for a moment atop a cold and weathered rock. 

“Thanks for today. I really enjoyed it.”

It meant nothing to me, and everything at the same time.