I couldn’t sleep all night and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and a savage, frightening dream.
I was at school with a knife and I was using it liberally. The floors, the walls, even the ceiling were soaked in blood. Slashed bodies slumped over desks.
It was definitely me in the dream. I looked exactly as I had at school. Neat black blazer, grey trousers, white shirt, striped tie. This was the 1970s so I had long unkempt hair. The images in my dream were so clear I could see the spots on my cheeks and the prefect badge on my lapel.
The slasher was me, but the school was not mine. I’d gone to an inner-city school made of concrete and glass. My nightmare school was like something out of a story we read as kids; it was wooden panels and mullioned windows and quadrangles.
My own schooldays were uneventful, not like some. There was no religious fundamentalism, no floggings with sticks and straps, no bullying. It was a steady kind of place and it churned out steady kinds of people. I got exams, I went to college, got a degree, went into Insurance and made a career in it. I retired last year on a good pension.
I never married; I couldn’t see the point when I was younger because we were all about sex without commitment and as I got older I couldn’t be bothered. I like my solitude. I got used to it I suppose.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 