Three long, pulsating chimes

Three long, pulsating chimes sound all around, to announce the end.   It seems the whole world responds in between heartbeats, out of rhythm, out of time.   I watch some run screaming, possessed by demons of freedom, preparing for the vacation away from their hell.   As the possessed run past, others stop to engage each other in wars of the tongue, with no victor, and the battle just ends in long, sorrowful farewells.   I, by myself, walk alone solemnly, as if entranced by the life in a place soon to be turned to the land of the dead.   Everything seems to be a blur as the flashbacks come to life in front of me, remembering everything from the past nine months, remembering everything I’ll miss for the next three.   I get to the doors that are just pieces of glass in metal frames, so easy to open, and yet so very difficult, seeming to be the greatest strain of the whole year.   Everything I’ve learned comes flowing through my head like a tidal wave of information crashing into me, and I break through the barrier to the outside world, the world I must now live in for the time of freedom.   The light of the close sun, the sun that will remain for long days, and be gone for short and bitter nights, blinds me.   I feel my body starting to sweat, feeling the heat of the world around me, trying to squeeze me with the pressures of the world’s pain, trying to make me feel like I should just go ahead and give up and die.   People are milling around, acting like they are so happy to be leaving, but deep down they all know that they are going to be lonely and secluded while they are away.   I start the long and perilous journey to my car, so I can drive away from all the pain and tortures of the place.   I look back at the place of education, and I get in my car, and begin the long, thirteen-mile journey home, and the journey that would begin even more pain and torture for me, the journey I would despise for the rest of my life.

Thomas Bryant