The Psychopomp

[DarkledMind]

@DulcetFlux


Some people just seem to have this air about them that is impenetrable by other worldly entities. But 'other worldly' to them is a manifestation of what seems normal. Their stance, the way they move, and even simple things like the way they hold their cup of coffee may seem, to an outsider, as unnatural, bizarre. But why is it that we as humans are so attracted to these out of types people? What do they hold for us that is so enticing and intriguing that we must either accept them into our lives unconditionally, or reject them wholly?


In any case, Bruce Rosenfelt, teacher at Lincoln High School was one of these people. He held a certain fascination for students and teachers a like. He was captivating in all of his odd natures. He was the only teacher who could get away with some things. In a world of frivolous lawsuits, there are strict rules in the world of primary education. But somehow, Bruce, as he preferred to be called (one of the things very few teachers can pull off,) could do almost anything, it seemed. He had no strings attached to him in this world of marionettes.


For example, his teaching, while being primarily focused on the natural sciences (Biology, environmental science) also spans into multiple subjects. Yes, he also taught a course on Eastern Civilization, seeing as he spent ten good years across the world, but his science classes also teach philosophy, history, and mathematics. It was quite possible, because of how he integrated these other subjects, that students could pass tests in other classes they never attended.


On this bright Monday morning, the light shone in through the large windows of his ornately decorated classroom. Unlike other classes in the school, his was always warm, both to the eyes and on the skin. All of his paintings and statuettes gave the large room a very comfortable feeling, and a feeling of stepping into another world. It was a major culture shock for some students to see pictures and statues of Hindi gods and Buddha everywhere. But it was a calming environment with music playing in the back ground, and the sound of water from the Finding Nemo themed fish tank burbling away. And the axolotl's tank. And there was always a nice, calming buzzing noise from the king snake's terrarium. And then there was Dixie, a long-haired guinea pig who was very talkative and sometimes bantered with Bruce more than the students did.


With the sun to light the pages of his book, Bruce sat in the front of the classroom behind his desk. He was still wearing his woolen trench coat despite the sun that warmed him. The black fabric flowed around him like a billowing cape for the modern anti-hero. Giant curls of black and grey-peppered hair fell onto his forehead, brushing against his long eyelashes. His brow was furrowed and one hand was held to his mouth, playing with his plump cupid's bow lips. It was obvious he was lost, slumped over his worn copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works, with his feet up on the worn-looking desk. In the background played the call to prayer, the Arabic chants weaving through the morning air, cutting edges into the sleepy atmosphere. He was most definitely not what most people would consider normal.

 

[DulcetFlux]

Driving to school in pretty, black Benz, living in a three floor mansion with only three other people, including house staff, having a closet stocked with designer clothes--those things were the elusive yet most-dreamt of things that any other student at Lincoln High School would have. Every single one of them just wanted to break out of their completely ordinary, monotonous lives to live lives of prestige and luxury and all that. But then, they didn't see how much more monotony there would be behind those gilt metal gates of artisan-crafted gates. Almost none of them understood aside from Willow Eugenia Jensen--Willa, as everyone knew her.


This morning, just like every other morning since her mother's suitor started piling a gold mine all over them, she was forced to take that shiny black Benz to school instead of riding the school bus, which she would've preferred. anyway, she had the option of getting dropped off one street away from school to walk and try to look as if she wasn't a pampered little brat. She was nothing like that, anyway as everyone knew. or did they even know? Willa was a resident enigma--a fleeting image of a girl who only spoke when she was crossed and spoke with a barbed tongue at that too. But aside from the fact that she seemed to be a sleeping dragon, no one ever knew anything about her.


It was not that she never went to where everyone was--because as a matter of fact, she always was at parties, getting drunk and silent, still and she had probably slept with most of the boys in her year. Everyone had experienced her, encountered her in one way or another but she was still a lock that no one ever had the key to. And because of that, she was regarded as some kind of taboo topic to all her peers--always wondered about, never spoken of. And that was exactly how she liked it.


First day of school always seemed to be a drag for Willa, especially after having had three of them in the past in the very same school, with the very same people wearing new clothes and squealing when they saw their friends as if they hadn't spent the entire summer together. It was a waste of what would've been a much better day spent outside of school. Everyone still sort of had summer hangovers and still seemed either too enthusiastic or too lethargic to be in school.


Willa trudged from class to class, her hands usual buried into the battered old jacket that she always wore. Every class seemed the same, only teaching different subject matter. It was there again, the one thing she always tried to avoid--monotony. But as she entered the classroom they were assigned in for Advanced Biology, she felt a glint of hope when she saw and felt a different aura exuding from the room. A wave of murmurs washed over her classmates who tried to study the new additions to the room. Some of them looked fascinated, others disgusted, others weirded out to the point of them looking like they didn't plan on sitting down. But Willa made herself at home in the second to the last row, as she always did and what looked like a backbone of a smile played on her lips just momentarily before she rummaged through her bag for a notebook.

 

[DarkledMind]

A small little squeak came from Bruce as the pressure behind his lip was released from his subconscious sucking. He was in another world, another time, and didn't even notice as students began pouring in from the hallway. He became more engrossed in the book, mumbling and letting his dark brown eyes flash back and forth across the pages even faster than before. The only thing that stopped him was the call to prayer playing in the background ending.


He looked up, raising an eyebrow. He laughed and closed the book with a solid thump. "Shit. I hope I didn't make too much of a fool of myself." Everything he did (like throw the book on his desk) was with a haphazard, lazy nature that held a certain agility behind those tense and toned muscles that his Levi-jeans and slim-fitting grey shirt accented. A few of the girls swooned but almost everyone was silent when he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, exposing long, white scars that coated his forearms. He looked like he had shoved his arms down a garbage disposal and somehow managed to piece himself back together with a spool of thread.


Bruce took his shaking hands and lifted the piece of chalk to the board. After a few seconds of observing, any one could see that his shaking was not a result of nervousness, but because of something else. The way Bruce held himself was confident and strong, but his hands shook like he was in the middle of an earthquake. He didn't seem to notice the awkward silence in the classroom, and scrawled the name of the class on the board. It was an endearing scrawl, handsome and legible, but having personality behind it.


He began by clearing his throat, and then boomed to the rest of the class in a very loud and confident voice. "Now! I know it is nearing the end of the day, and this class is mainly compromised of Juniors and Seniors." He clasped his hands behind his back and looked around with a critical eye. "So it will seem particularly, erm, weird..." He cleared his throat again and relaxed, leaning up against the board. Bruce shook his head dismissively. "You know what? Whatever. This is going to be a relaxed class. Show up and talk science, even if it is total bull, and you will pass. Maybe not with flying colors, but you'll pass."


He hummed lightly as he reached for a ball that was on his desk. "You may know each other fairly well, but I don't. So. We are going to play a game." He held the ball up in the air, then tossed it back and forth between his hands as he spoke. "I'm going to toss the ball into the throbbing crowd. Heh. Whoever catches it has to give their name, why they took this class, and one thing about themself. They then ask me a question and toss the ball back to me. Wash, rinse, repeat. Got it?" Lazily, he tossed the ball.

 

[DulcetFlux]

Willa sat and directed her eyes to the board as she usually would in her most typical posture. Her back was slumped and her elbow propped up on the desk. Her cheek rested on her hand as her eyes maintained the usually unreadable, bordering to bored look in them. She listened to everyone else file into the room and look for a seat. Aside from the rustle of a few notebooks and clothes, there was nothing else to hear. She focused on the new teacher in front of them instead.


She heard girls beside her, whispering and giggling. She rolled her eyes, knowing that they were the type of girls who'd come to the first day of class wondering if a teacher would be attractive or not. That usually defined how long their residency period in a class would last. It would usually be directly proportional to where along their scale of 1-10 in attractiveness a certain teacher was.


Being like them or even just acting that way was an odd concept to Willa but then again, she couldn't help but be drawn to the intrigue of having a new teacher who had seemed to take up a lot of his time simply redecorating their classroom. Adding to the intrigue was his posture, the way he wrote and more intriguingly, the marks along his arms. But she brushed the thought aside, knowing that each man was to his own and she was in no business of knowing why he had such things.


It just made her so drawn to him, even making her smile a little as he heard his completely nonchalant way of speaking. It was seldom that a teacher in a high school didn't seem to either be cowering away from students or trying to prove that they were so much better that she was relieved to hear someone just speak to them like a human being for once.


She was beginning to enjoy this teacher until, of course, he suggested the cheesy little getting-to-know-you game. She didn't think it was interesting but then again, it was his class. What choice did she even have? So she joined in grudgingly, enduring round after round of giggly girls, trying to ask him subliminally personal questions about relationships and the like or boys and some other girls, just trying to get this over with, using completely cliche questions.


Then, someone passed the ball to her, she caught it with an awkward gait, trying to keep the ball from falling out of her hands as she stopped it in its path midair. Her lips pressed into a line for a moment before saying, "Well, my name Willow Eugenia Jensen. But no one calls me that. I'm Willa. And Willow Eugenia will never be taken lightly," she said, her lips curving up at the sides just a bit. "I took this class, hm, well, maybe just for the sheer pursuit of learning about life and how it continues to still not cease even after ages and ages of well... hm, monotony?" she shrugged off her answer as if it was something that just came out from the top of her head. "One thing about me is that, well, I probably come from a long line of species that adapts well because I don't like settling in to monotony.... which probably leads to extinction.... And the question I'd like to ask is um... if you've ever seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show," she said, tossing the ball back and forth between her hands.


A few snickers came from the group. She'd been known to have been obsessed with Rocky Horror since the dawn of time and although that was a known fact, it was something odd, even for a girl like Willa to be the first question she'd ask her Biology teacher.


"Oh, and if you have, what do you think about it?" she smiled a little and tossed the ball back to the teacher.

 

[DarkledMind]

Bruce had been answering questions jovially, teasing, and, in regard to the questions about his personal life, simply rolling his eyes and adding a sarcastic quip that was so ridiculous that it had no way of being true. He had played this game before with other students and had gotten those types of questions on numerous occasions. It was almost excessive but really, he didn't care. A smart student would notice how he skirted around those questions and could likely pin point what the answer was. Besides, smart students were the only students with whom he would care to share that information with.


And then the student with the keen eyes that had glazed over with boredom and annoyance caught the ball awkwardly. She stood out a bit: eccentric but in a confident way and attentive but with an air of disregard for her situation. In high school, to see a student who seemed comfortable in their own skin was rare. He smiled brightly, folding his arms and leaning against the chalkboard. Then that word monotony continued to slip out of her mouth. Willa's answers to the questions were oddly phrased, like someone lost from time, or like they read too many books. Bruce's mouth quirked upward a bit more, and the shine in his eyes seemed more sincere than before.


His grin was huge when he caught the ball. "Rocky Horror fan, eh? Glad I know someone else who enjoys it. You'll have to tell me if one of the theaters play it on the weekends. I'd like to see if I can actually get my old position as Riff-Raff or Doctor Scott back." He clenched the foamy ball in one hand and held the other to his jaw. "I love the movie, but really I like it for more than just the absurdity of Tim Curry in drag. It is a tale of awakening, ripping loose from the bonds of society and being yourself." Bruce chuckled a little and shook his head. The hand that had been rubbing his jaw went to knead his brow as he looked down at his shoes. "But I think that's what the '70's were about anyway, huh?"


With a lingering glance on Willa, and a smile that could pierce through fog, he threw the ball back into the student body.

 

[DulcetFlux]

To see a teacher smile, and respond with a legitimate answer to her Rocky Horror question was like finding a unicorn in Minnesota, in Willa's opinion. She reckoned that even just the mere mention of the cult classic would make teachers accuse her of blasphemy of some sort (although she also had the thoughts that they'd be misusing the word blasphemy if they did.). But this teacher was pretty special, she felt. The way he tossed answers around so cleverly, especially regarding the questions that didn't seem to be hitting the right places. His answers reflected what they were to expect of him, and Willa could see that he was definitely not the average High School professor.


"But everyone's main reason for liking it is basically because of Tim Curry in drag. It's the magnetizing absurdity of it that makes Rocky Horror special. That and all the innuendos," she said, as if she were stating a completely well-founded fact. Her lips curled up into a bit bigger smile as she shrugged before adding, "But I guess the whole individuality thing in it is pretty cool too." Her understating of that idea sounded ironic enough to make her actual opinion about the film come through well enough without her explicitly saying that she agreed with him.


She answered as the ball was midair, even stealing some of the time from the kid who actually caught the ball, but she was satisfied enough to sit back in her chair and sit through the surge of either generic, flirtatious or borderline privacy-violating questions that her classmates continued to push with. She rolled her eyes occasionally but most of the time, she was just watching, repeating her favorite un-favorite word all over again in her mind--monotony.