Don't Laugh

"Don't Laugh"

Flash Fiction, (c) 2012 by C. N. Nevets


They told me it was the laughing.  That's what got me thrown in here.  That's what made me a lunatic.

It wasn't that I threw a box of staples at my teacher's head.  It was that when she went down the floor and the box fell to the table, I burst out laughing.

It wasn't that I kneed my principal where it counts over and over again until he couldn't breathe and his eyes watered.  It was that I capped it off with an open-mouth laugh.

It wasn't that I beat a kid's head against the bathtub until he fell unconscious under the water.  It was that I snickered and giggled when the bubbles stopped surfacing.

It wasn't that I punched another kid in the nose so many times that his nose splintered into his brain.  It was that I laughed until my face was red.

So I learned my lesson.

If I don't laugh after I'm done beating the crap out of this guy, can I leave?

Day and Night

"Day and Night"

flash fiction by C. N. Nevets, (c) 2012


By day they shove us into rooms and sit us is in chairs and arrange us in circles and say, "Talk to one another," and "Listen to one another," and "Support one another."  By day, we make friendships around the sterile plastic tables and in the ceramic tiled bathrooms and on the stain resistant chairs around the big screen TV.  By day, we bond and share and open up as we play ping pong and go fish and mad libs.

By day we realize that not only are we not alone but maybe we never really were.

All that, they say, is too stimulating.

We must calm down, cool off, wind down, take our edge off.

By night, they shove us into a room and sit us against the wall and tell us to cross our arms and legs and they turn off the lights and they say say, "Be quiet," and they say, "Don't talk," and they say, "Close your eyes," and they play Pink Floyd's The Wall.  By night, we think about the people back home who love us or hate us or maybe don't know how they feel about us but wish they did and so they sent us here to get better.  By night, they tell us to meditate and breathe deeply and reflect.

By night

we

remember

just

how

lonely

we

are

and

must be.