Click

Click-Click

Rush by, rush by. Chilled by a ticking second hand. The minutes are a fast sort of sluggish. Tap goes the pencils clicking the lead, over and over.

It's them or its you. Fifty minutes, six, seven times. Each time is relaxed by a five minute lie-in and there's a thirty second (minute) break in between. And it rushes by with the voices of the friend and the foe and the smell of bad food.

Four more days after one passes. And then the weekends, hours upon hours of work that you may not need because you already know.

Sometimes it's a big project, one with many pages and hours and not enough sleep. Sometimes it's a theory.

All year, it's a test.

A test of your brains and your endurance and how well you can cope with these people and their inability to let you think. It's the test and you panic and you worry and it hurts very, very bad.

It should end when you get to walk on that line. Walk on it rain or shine to shake the hands of old men you don't even remember ever meeting. Old men and women who decided how your life was supposed to be tested before you even existed. Who were these people and why did you care? Everything was over.

It was supposed to be over.

Maybe for a couple people it was.

But if you were smart or scared, it never ended.

More time in a building, spaced out, the second hand ticking longer, later. Homework piles even higher, never sure you were doing it right, never sure this was what the teacher wanted. That was what you were taught to look for.

It wasn't necessary to think. Everyone says it is but you and I know it's not.

By the time you get that pretty little job, the thinking's gone, the rote is back. And everyone gets mad because people don't know how to think and expect to not have to teach them, but if there was no place to ever learn then what do you expect?

What do you expect from a zombie you asked to make?