She arrived precisely on time—heels tapping out composure across the polished stone floors, her suit the soft grey of storm clouds before a downpour. Mid-century elegance wrapped around her like armor: precise, expensive, and quietly defiant.
The lobby was too clean. The kind of clean that made her want to smear fingerprints on the glass just to prove she existed. Two women, tight-lipped and silk-bloused, came to collect her.
“They’re ready,” one said.
Were they? She wasn’t.
A shadow walked beside her,
the person who came with her. She didn’t know who they were, only that they stayed close, like grief or memory. Silent support or silent judgment, she couldn’t tell.
They led her to a small set. Lights glaring. A camera already rolling, red light blinking like a quiet warning.
She hadn’t been called in yet. No cue, no action.
And yet she began.
Mimicry first, exaggerating the teacher’s clipped tones, the theatrical hand gestures, the superior tilt of her chin. A cruel little puppet show. Their mouths fell open, their perfectly painted lips trembling with silent protest.
Then came the collapse.
Tears without warning. She folded like paper, knees to floor, sobbing, “I just want to go home,” her voice cracked with a grief so real it painted streaks of black down her face. Her makeup wept with her.
Before the sympathy could settle, she erupted.
“I HATE THEM ALL WITH THEIR SLOBBERING GREEDY MOUTHS AND THEIR RANCID SOULS!” She flung her arm toward the teacher and assistant like Moses parting a sea of rot, as if she could ward them off or curse them with a gesture.
A breath. A drop in pitch.
“But I can’t kill myself,” she whispered, trembling. “I’m too much a coward.”
Then came the grin.
“Or maybe I will,” she continued, eyes gleaming through tears. “And they’ll find my bloated corpse crawling with flies and bursting with maggots. And my spirit—” she paused, smiling wider “—my spirit will be hovering nearby, just waiting to give one of them a swift kick in the ass so they fall headfirst into my putrefaction!”
The teacher gasped.
The assistant covered her mouth.
She ran straight to the camera, flipping both middle fingers, screaming with laughter:
“FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCKERS!”
Then she stopped. Composed herself. Straightened her collar.
Turned to the teacher and asked politely, “So, did I pass?”
The silence buzzed.
The teacher’s voice trembled: “I don’t know whether to pass you, have you committed, or give you a job.”
She looked dead into the lens and smiled like it was a punchline.
“I’ll take one and three. I’ve already done two.”
