Hal

Whenver I write these posts I have to close my eyes and just let my fingers move over the keyboard. I don’t bother to correct even the typos until I’m done. I think I do this because with my eyes open I always want to go forward, into the next minute, time keeps moving forward and all that rot. But when I close my eyes I can take myself back so clearly that I can still smell the place.

I was pretty subdued after my Thanksgiving restraint. I didn’t want anyone to look at me, or talk to me which is just as well since no one was allowed. Every couple of days I told a staff member to fuck off just so that I couldn’t move up in a level. Lori tried to get me to stop but I was too angry at the world.

I didn’t want friends. I didn’t want people who look to me for anything, not even a conversation. If the other kids avoided me before, it was twice as bad now. I didn’t care.

There was a boy thought I probably shouldn’t call him a boy. Hal was seventeen when I met him and he is, even to this day, one of the biggest guys I’d ever met. Maybe my mind has just forever placed him as the biggest, but at the time he definitely was.

He had short white blonde hair and huge hulking arms. The man held them out slightly as he walked because they just didn’t fit all the way up against his body.

If Krista was a white witch, Hal was the opposite. The man loved anything and everything to do with Satanism. He was currently in the middle of a great debate with Western Academy as to weather or not Satanism was a religion and weather or not they had the right to keep him from it.

He always wore ripped up jeans and shredded metal band shirts. They took away his studded leather bracelets so in defiance he wore plain black leather bracelets. Steel toed black combat boots.

I don’t know what he was in for, I never got close enough emotionally to him to ask. I was a little bit afraid of him.

He was like the silent soldier fighting against government and authority. Sometimes I wished I could be him just because he never took any shit off of anyone. He told them like it was and didn’t care if they dragged him off into the time out room.

I think that he stands out in my mind because he was not one of my tormenters. I knew this almost instinctively. He was to mature for such petty nonsense.

Not to long after Thanksgiving I got my first real glimpse into the man as we sat around the breakfast table. By this time we had assigned seating and he sat across and three people over from me.

I sat picking at my cold eggs, trying to draw out the time at breakfast so that I would have less time to spend in the classroom. At the quiet murmer of those around me my attention was drawn to him and he sat as still as a statue, staring straight ahead. In his hand he clutched his glass of milk. The glasses were those small hard plastic things that they used to use in schools, kind of a brown, yet see through color.

My attention was drawn to the look on his face and it was pulled tight with fury and I wanted to run from him. A slow trickle of blood ran out of his nose and I wondered why he didn’t reach up and wipe it off. Before I could blink there was a loud shattering sound and milk flew all over the place. I nearly jumped out of my skin and a soft whimper escaped me. His dark brown eyes shifted towards me and I cringed at the look in them. The man was full of rage and hatred and I could feel it boring out of him and into my soul. I flinched and he almost smiled Instead he looked down to his hand, which was now bleeding and he stared at it for a minute before he used that hand to wipe the blood from his face.

The staff converged on us and he told them that he was fine, that it was an accident and I felt a chill go through me as he looked at me again before standing up to go have his hand looked out.

Mind you, we had no doctor or nurse on staff and there was nothing more then a first aid kid. Anything that required more attention than that resulted into a trip to the hospital in the nearest town.

I saw him later, with a piece of cloth wrapped around his hand. He was leaning against the wall watching me and I furrowed my eyebrows at him. I was startled when he started to laugh. It made me angry and I took a breath to steel my nerves so that I could move past him, muttering a half hearted “Fuck you” as I went past.

His hand shot out and like a vice his hand wrapped around my upper arm and he jerked me in close to him. I could smell him and it was a clean smell. Remined me of being outside in the crisp air just as the sun is setting. “Is that what you want?” His lewd smile made me jerk at my arm, a full blown scowl on my face as I found it impossible to move. “I can arrange it for you.” Sadly I felt a tremor shoot through me and I cursed myself for being afraid of him.

“Let go of her Hal” came Lori’s voice from the darkened hallway that lead into the bathroom.

He grinned at me again and jerked me up against his body and I didn’t even have time to catch my breath, let alone protest before his mouth came crushing down on mine. My eyes went up to his and he was watching me as his tongue invaded my mouth. I was frozen to the spot. I couldn’t withdraw. I couldn’t protest. All I could do was stand there. His gaze lifted up and his eyes watched Lori and it was then that I tried to pull away. He wrapped a second arm around me and crushed me to him. I felt like I couldn’t breath.

Lori moved as quick as lightning when he shifting his gaze back to me. It’s the only way I can see it happening, because had he known what was coming, I’m pretty sure he would have backed off. But he didn’t and when he looked down at me, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye and suddenly I was free and he was stumbling backwards holding onto the side of his head.

Lori grabbed my hand and we ran into the classroom. I was shaking so hard that I could barely stand up. Lori muttered something about female issues and pushed me down into my regular chair.

I avoided Hal like the plague after this. However, there was one more incident later that would turn everything I had thought upside down.