"Jonas Vale."
Someone calling my name snapped me back to here and now.
I was in the classroom. Last row, window seat. The man at the front was Mr. Varessa, the history teacher.
Glasses - bad eyes. Balding - unattractive. Smoker - bad lungs.
But he had a good twenty years of life left in him.
My classmates looked at me. I must have been spacing out again, distracted by Chris running in circles around a large tree that stood next to the school playground, his guts dragging behind like an overly long tail.
This happens sometimes when I am tired.
'Go back,' I ordered the little child, and he dematerialized instantly.
"Yes, sir." I rose from my seat.
"What happened in Nagasaki, 1945?"
"Nagasaki Kunchi Festival scheduled for October was canceled, for obvious reasons."
"What the heck is a Kunchi Festival?" Ahmet, a bulky boy who sat in front of me, turned and asked.
"It's an annual festival held at Suwa Shrine between October 7th and 9th, famous for the Jaodori Dragon Dance," I explained. I can be kind, after all.
That triggered Mr. Varessa.
"Jonas, history is more than just a collection of trivia facts. You know very well what we are talking about here."
"Right. If you are talking about what happened on August 9th, that would be atomic bombing, yet another trivia fact, I'm afraid."
"It is not a trivia fact when forty thousand people died," the teacher's said sternly.
Trying to teach me a lesson?
"It was 39,432 people, to be exact," I corrected.
The kids in the classroom giggled. They must have thought this was just another 'oddly specific' joke.
I can't help it when people refuse to ignore the truth.
If I had the chance, perhaps I could show Varessa the scenes from Nagasaki on that day.
The teacher glared at me for a while, let out a sigh, then gestured for me to sit down again.
Katie, a bespectacled girl in the front row, turned to steal a quick glance at me, but averted her gaze instantly as our eyes met and hastily turned back to face the front.
I knew for a while she was interested in me, but I had soft spots for her after finding out that she was getting bullied by three other girls in the class - Jacie, Vicky, and Mel. The poor squirrel was harmless, yet her life was tormented by inferior beings who would nevertheless go on to live better lives, while she - with her admirable intelligence and work ethic - was most likely to end up with a noose around her neck on her twenty-seventh birthday - alone.
Before I sat down, I looked over at the empty desk on the other side of the classroom.
Mary hadn't come to school for months now.
I had long forgotten her face, but her words still lingered in my head.
'Jonas.'
The whisper, again. I could no longer tell whether she was reaching out to me or I was only hearing what I wanted to hear.
Then it happened.
With a sudden piercing pang in the air, I sensed a thread fly across the room and wrap around Katie's neck. The air trembled as my heart stilled. I merely watched as the girl was incapacitated by a simple pull from the end of the thread - a thread that stretched far beyond my sight.
The head of the squirrel slid down from its neck, landed on the desk with a thud, rolled, and fell to the floor with a louder thud. Blood spurted from the severed neck like a fountain. Varessa, standing in front and drenched in the thick red, continued to talk about "the greatest human crime in modern history." Jacie, Vicky and Mel pointed at the headless squirrel and laughed.
It was a vision.
I blinked and Katie's head was back on her neck, properly placed and facing forward like the good girl she was. I looked out of the window and saw a mushroom cloud rise and vanish, thousands of kilometers away in the past,
A string wrapped around my wrist pulled my hand up.
"Yes, Jonas?"
Mr. Varessa asked, his voice still dripping with grudge.
"May I go to the bathroom?"
He just waved me away. I nodded in gratitude and left the classroom.
I could hardly breathe. My head was spinning. I paced down the hallway and pushed open the wooden door.
The smell of piss and bleach.
Humans were vile trash.
I washed my face with cold water and looked into the mirror. My left eye was burning red. I couldn't go back to the class like this. I closed my eyes and pressed my palm against my eyelid. When I opened them again, I found myself in a room that smelled of an old man.
The wrinkled lump of breathing meat lay on the bed, snoring.
His time had come.
I walked over to where the life pulsed. I could see that the old man was having a beautiful dream. He was probably seeing his grandchildren.
Yes, they will live. I assure you, old man.
But I need to take you for now.
I placed my hand on his throat and started to squeeze, gently increasing the pressure by each second in linear acceleration. Just as his eyes flared open and he choked, staring at the death in its eyes, I released my grip momentarily and asked him,
"What is your name?"
Frightened, he answered.
"Thomas."
It was funny how people didn't stutter when they said their name, even at the peak of their anxiety.
"Full name."
"Thomas Franklin."
I squeezed him again as soon as I got what I wanted, but this time with a force that could crush any living body.
The process didn't last long.
The bedroom walls wailed and swirled; the flower-patterned wallpaper fluttered in a windless breeze - probably chosen by his late wife.
I closed my eyes for a second and opened them again.
I was back in the boy's room at school. The mirror on the wall showed that my left eye was back to normal.
I washed the scent of the man off my hands and left the white-tiled cube.
'Chris, you have a grandpa now.'
I offered the boy on the other side a consolation.