I am waiting for the chrysalis.
“Then the chrysalis will allow the caterpillar to turn into what?” Mrs. Dupont speaks from the front of the classroom. Somewhere near the front of the space and toward the right side of the room there is a boy, six years old.
He has yellow hair, blue eyes and a hand still stinging from the substitute teacher, who this morning insisted that the hand that he wrote with was all wrong and that he was disrespecting the American flag. This is what you get for explaining that the Pledge of Allegiance is said with the "hand you write with."
The little boy is left-handed. This is of little consequence when things like National Pride are on the line.
A decade later actions like this on the part of the teacher would land her in jail, this however is 1980 and you can still hit the children so long as it does not leave a mark. Mrs. Dupont has returned from her “appointment” and the substitute has thankfully left.
“A buttery fly.” Melissa answers, unleashing a torrent of giggles. She and the other girls always refer to them as buttery flies, some sort of joke the punch line to which I am as usual not privy. Deep and wide is the chasm between the sexes at Fredrick Elementary.
“Melissa, your mouth runs a mile a minute I do wish your brain could keep up.”
“What the fuck is this?” The cylinder is green in color. It has an arrow on one end and stern directions concerning the use of the contents.
“Atropine.” He says this in a tone of voice that you would expect someone to use when they were talking about the sort of car that they drove. As if Atropine is a goddamned car or something, power windows springing up and down like Thompson’s electrified frogs.
“And this shit here?”
“Two pam chloride.” Again, the same style vocalization. Apparently the Two Pam Chloride’s are possessed of leather upholstery and a 45 player that I can listen to my records on whilst parked at the Astro-Plex Drive-In while being fellated by a series of well-developed women bearing questionable intentions.
“So I punch this junk in here?” The man makes a stabbing motion toward the outer flank of his leg. This is repeated with sound effects for little other reason than it sounds like murder.
“Yeah,” and will that be the extra warranty or the thousand in instant rebates sir? “Don’t forget the cay-nah either."
“Right. Three of these, the first is self-administered, the other two can only be given by someone else. Cay-nah goes in last.” Cay-nah is actually CANA, which is actually Diazepam, which is actually Valium which is actually an anti-depressant and anti-convulsion med mixed together.
This way if you’re all hyped up after getting a face full of Sarin and fading fast, you can spend your last moments on Earth flitting amidst the fluffy clouds, bouncing through the green grass, chasing the butterflies.
The buttery flies.
May God Have Mercy on Our Souls.