InsaneJournal

Short Story: Rock, Paper, Scissors
Title Rock, Paper, Scissors
Date December 2007
Word Count 2,993
Summary "I used to carry weapons to school. I never used them, though."



I used to carry weapons to school. I never used them, though. It was just to feel like I had some kind of power. I guess. That's at least what I like to say, now, after the fact, because I doubt any person actually thinks in those conscious terms when doing crazy shit like that.

At first, I didn't actually have any real weapons. You know, I just realized that anything could be used as one after making fun of my school's ban on scissors, nail clippers, and carrying plastic sporks. Yeah, real dangerous stuff there, geniuses. I mean, the pens and pencils we use to do our busywork can, at the very least, put someone's eye out - maybe even both eyes, if you move fast enough – but I haven't seen anyone trying to put a ban on writing implements.

So that's what I did at first, I used to keep a freshly sharpened pencil around, just in case that bitch Joanna wore on my nerves a little too much one day, and – bam! - I could give her a wound that would show her how much she irritated me on a daily basis. I never did it, of course, but I came pretty close, one day. She asked me if I was going to some dance, again, like we were friends or something.

“No. Why would I do that?” I told her. Every time I talked to her, I tried to make it as plain as day that I did not like her or give a damn about what she had to say; I'm not into the “let's pretend to be friends although we secretly hate each other” thing that most girls are.

“Dances are fun!” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like I was the stupid one here.

“Yeah, sure.” I rolled my eyes, hoping that would be the end of that painful conversation. But, of course, that's a bit too much to ask for. Joanna, like every other asshole in that school, never knew when to shut up.

“That's your problem, Hillary.” Oh god. I braced myself for the inevitable sanctimonious rant and picked up my pencil, tapping the eraser lightly against the desk. Fantasies of ramming the recently sharpened end through her stupid, self-righteous throat started filling my mind. “You'd have more friends if you just socialized. Then maybe you'd be happier.”

“Oh, like you?” I gave her saccharine smile, but the sarcasm was lost on a moron like her. Even the barely-there potheads knew Joanna went to the bathroom everyday after lunch to puke her guts out and not to pee. Yeah, she's the person I should be taking advice from.

“What do you do outside of school, anyway?”

My grip on the pencil tightened. “Stuff that isn't boring.”

“I never see you.”

I imagined the Ticonderoga pencil sticking out of her eye, just for the ironic effect. “Exactly.”

Again, the point flew over her head. I wonder if all that vomiting made her that way, or did she just inherit stupid genes from her parents? “Well, you should come to the dance.” She plastered on another one of her smiles, and I thought I was finally out in the clear.

Then she patted my shoulder. I fucking hate it when people do that, like they own me. I reflexively raised the pencil, ready to pounce, but she walked away, oblivious to what I had been prepared about to do. Most days, I kind of wish I had gone through with it. Maybe she'd have gotten the point then. (See that, I made another joke. Point. Pencil. Get it?)



Now, get this: we had to write a short story for English. I'm not really into that, but whatever. I went right for the cheese factor, and wrote about a girl who commits suicide, and as she's bleeding to death, she realizes she didn't want to die after all. Teachers love crap like that, so I figured Mrs. Forbes would eat it up. Easy A, at least a B.

Turned out the joke was on me – the dumb bitch somehow managed to become an English teacher without learning the difference between fiction and reality. I mean, I suck at writing, but I'm pretty sure it was clearly a made up story. So the next thing I knew, I was called down to talk to Mrs. Whitley, the guidance counselor. And my parents were there, too.

Seriously. You can't make up this kind of stupidity.

Fortunately, my parents, who actually know me, told the school to stop acting nuts and wasting their time, because some people have work that they actually do. My parents rock like that. (Shock. I like my parents, unlike the ungrateful brats I go to school with.)

Of course, that didn't stop Whitley from pulling me out of class constantly for the next three months to “talk about my feelings.” That was about the time I realized that those two-ton textbooks we're forced to lug around could be used as a blunt object to beat her over the head with, crack her skull, maybe.

Just knowing it could be that easy to shut her up made the stupid talks easier to endure.



Funny how you can't say anything derogatory about people based on their race, height, weight, disability, sexual orientation, or hair color. One slip, and everyone will jump on your ass. Say something about women? Perfectly okay.

Mr. Wooten was one such jerkwad. “I need three strong boys to carry these desks for me.” Seriously, what the fuck? I know the average guy has more upper-body strength than the average chick, but...desks? The desks that I exert almost no effort to lift? And I have, like, no muscle mass to speak of.

Yeah, Mr. Wooten. You weren't implying females are weak or anything. Bastard.

I had his pompous face in mind when I bought a pair of scissors. For school. Which is technically true. I wasn't worried at all about someone finding them, because it's not like I waved them around willy-nilly in front of everyone's faces. Like I said, I'm not stupid. I kept the scissors in an obscure compartment of my backpack that was still easy to reach; I always liked to check they were still there, still sharp, before going to Wooten's class.

“You should smile more,” he always liked to say. To the girls only of course, because we're supposed to be pretty or some shit. No wonder he's still single.

He also enjoyed saying, “I still believe in chivalry.” I tried to call him on that, once, because I was so sick of people talking about a medieval code that was intended for knights! And that's why I never paid attention in his class; if he was so willing to parrot the same old bullshit like that, he certainly was unqualified to teach history.

One day we had some ridiculous assignment that involved cutting and gluing. Wooten passed around a classroom set of scissors, and I took the opportunity to take out the pair I bought. No one noticed, of course. I remember inwardly smiling, because everyone else was stuck with crappy safety scissors while I had a pair that was sharp. Dangerous.

Wooten, the lazy bastard, was running his mouth about something rather than grading our tests from two weeks ago. I tried to focus on the soothing snip snip of the scissors, but his grating voice was always hard to ignore. “Women are at a disadvantage because of evolution. They needed men to hunt for food and take care of them while they stayed with their offspring.”

Last time I checked, it was the 21st century. “Fuck you,” I whispered to myself.

Apparently, I hadn't been quiet enough, since Wooten looked over at me with that stupid smirk. “What was that, Hillary?”

I cleared my throat and, in the most sickeningly sweet voice, said, “I'm afraid I have to politely disagree, Mr. Wooten.” The entire class looked at me; I kept cutting. Snip snip snip. “Our ancestors survived mostly on vegetation, so women were actually the breadwinners.”

“Looks like we have a feminist in the class,” he said, like believing in equality was something to laugh about, and conveniently ignored my (entirely correct) point. I know it was because he didn't want to lose an argument to a girl.

I glared at him, mentally daring him to come by my desk so my hand could slip and plant the scissors squarely into his crotch. I'd be doing the world a favor if I kept Wooten from reproducing.



After a while, the rush I got from carrying the scissors around died down; in fact, I forgot I even had them most of the time. I guess it's like drugs – you eventually build up a tolerance and either take more or move onto something harder.

That's probably why I got the hammer. I was in the basement, doing laundry, when I idly thought about it, sitting in the toolbox. I took it out, swung it around. It was heavy; it could cause damage as much as it could repair. I brought it upstairs to my room with it casually slung over a shoulder.

I looked in the mirror; everyone would think twice about what they said and did if they saw me now. I played the fantasy further, placing it in my backpack before settling down to do some homework.

I had forgotten about it by the morning, and it wasn't until I picked up my backpack, about to leave, and noticed it was unusually heavy. I didn't have much time to consider what to do, since I was already running late and didn't want to miss the bus. That's probably a lie, actually. Long story short, I brought the hammer along with me to school – for the next month. I guess I got a bigger rush from it since it was harder to conceal because of it's size and weight. But I got away with it.

But people are shockingly stupid; I actually didn't need to work so hard to keep the hammer hidden. Not from my idiot classmates, at least. Joanna, of course, was the one who saw it, and all she did was give me a look. You know, the look people give you when they think you're a freak or crazy or something, but are too lazy or cowardly to actually say anything. That look.

I wonder if she knew how much I wanted to hit her with it. Probably not, since she never told any teachers – just her equally vapid friends. Her nickname for me for a while was just “that freak with the hammer.” Yeah, she's so creative, it hurts.



I traded up the hammer for a knife pretty quickly. Just a regular steak knife from the kitchen. It guaranteed me a thrill, since no one could possibly be so stupid as to not recognize it as the weapon it was. If anyone found it, of course.

I'll admit, after a while, I didn't try so hard to hide the knife. I guess I wanted to know what would happen if it was found – if the depth of stupidity and apathy went deeper than I thought. And as long as I was hiding it, that pretty much guaranteed no one could find it. So I started carrying it on myself at all times, tucked into my bra strap, obscured by my usual two layers of loose shirts and a hoodie.

The first to find it was Seth; we were at lunch. Apparently, I bent over a bit too far, and the little pervert noticed. “Is that a knife?”

“No, it's a spoon,” I told him. Believe it or not, some people would leave it at that. And then they wonder how terrorists wind up on airplanes or trains or whatever with weapons.

But Seth was either smart or just too damn curious. “Why do you have a knife? Someone piss you off?”

“A little louder,” I said. He dropped the issue; I guess he wasn't that curious, after all. I ate my lunch in peace.

When I got to Spanish, my last class of the day, the guy who sat next to me – Rich, I think his name was – leaned over and asked me about the knife. Apparently someone had told him about it. Most likely Seth. And you wouldn't believe it – this loser had the nerve to look excited about the idea, rather than scared shitless. Seriously, what the hell? Did any of those people have a survival instinct? I mean, he should have, at the very least, looked worried. Cautious. Something. No, he looked like he was ready to wet himself from the excitement of it all.

Well, I couldn't have that. I told him that, yes, I had a knife with me at that very moment, and not to tell anyone. Insinuating, of course, that'd I use it on him if that were the case.

Looking back now, I think that was my mistake right there.

By the time I came into school the next day, everyone was watching me, I swear. And I wasn't being paranoid, because I wound up getting called down to Whitley's office again – and I knew it wasn't about my non-existent planned suicide, because she hadn't bothered me about that for months. She stopped around the time some other girl actually killed herself. The irony.

“What do you want from me now?” I asked her; I stopped feigning politeness towards her a long time ago. Got the same results either way.

“One of your classmates came forward and said you've been bringing a knife to school.”

“Did they see this 'knife'?” I said, complete with air quotes and my best “are you stupid?” expression.

“Yes,” Whitely said. “You're locker's being searched.” Of course! Because that's where I kept it, the first place they'd look. My school could have used some more creative thinkers on the job.

“Better be gentle with my shit.” I offered her my backpack. “Here, want to check here, too, for my non-existent weapon?” Unless they were going to strip-search me – which they couldn't and wouldn't – the knife was never going to be found. In the meantime, fucking with Whitley's empty, arrogant head was all kinds of fun.

Eventually I was allowed to go back to class after nothing suspicious was found in my locker; no one bothered taking me up on the offer to search my backpack. Great work, guys. Whitley apologized reluctantly. I smirked at her, because there was nothing she could do about it.

I'd missed my first period class, which was a bonus; I hated math. So I went straight to English, where I was again greeted by stares. And I began to try to figure out who ratted me out – because they were going to pay.



I never held a gun, much less fired one, when I started carrying one with me. It wasn't for lack of access, though – there was one at home, somewhere I wasn't supposed to know about. “Supposed to” being the key words, there. But parents are never as clever as they think they are. Kind of like when they spell out words when you're little, not realizing you learned to spell “cookie” from context.

Now, I never held the gun, but I had touched it before, time to time, when my parents weren't in the house, just because I could. Isn't that the American way? Get it because it's there, do it because you can. Eventually I started taking it out and held it gently, like it was fragile or something, and gradually became bolder in my handling of it. But I had always put it away when I was done screwing around. Back where they had left it, as if I had never been there.

About a month or so passed that I didn't carry a weapon before I started with the gun. Wouldn't have been smart. I heard some kid got busted for bringing a knife. A student tipped them off. He claimed it wasn't his, that he had no idea how it got into his backpack. His ass got expelled.

He got what he deserved. I think his name was something like...Rick.

Bringing the gun with me was the ultimate experiment – that's what this had all become, an experiment. An experiment in seeing how unsafe we really were. I would have been really fucking scared from what I'd learned if I hadn't already had a weapon to protect myself with.

So, at this point, you're probably waiting for the big climax of the story, right? Maybe I wound up shooting something, someone? Or a self-control-challenged classmate used it? Hey, maybe I just got reckless and finally got in trouble like I deserved?

You might want to stop reading now to keep from being disappointed.

Ready?

Well, this is what happened: I got bored.

That's it. Not terribly exciting, I know. Maybe I would have moved onto building bombs or something if I had the patience, spare time, or interest, but after the gun, I was finished. It was too easy – easier than the knife, easier than the hammer. Besides, after the high ended, there was never any reason to continue; even when classmates knew I had a weapon, I somehow still managed not to command an ounce of respect.

I guess the idiots are destined to rule the world. How depressing.

I know, you never would have guessed I had this experience just by looking at me. But, you see, that's exactly the thing that keeps me up some nights, makes me antsy in crowds sometimes. Only sometimes, though, because nothing about the world had actually changed. And that's probably the scariest conclusion possible from this experiment.