Pebbles walked past Jane’s office, then the boy’s toilet a few doors up. There was in fact a goddamn cucumber on the door, and two broken eggs for the damsels. Where the doors ended on the left side there was a stairwell. He walked up the stairwell until he reached a rickety old metal door. He whipped out a key, opened the door and walked out. It was a nice day.
He took out a smoke and hit it. A while later Jane appeared behind him.
“You can’t keep coming out after I do. They’ll notice the pattern,” he said.
“Huh? Those guys? Please," she chuckled, "they're too busy to pay attention..." She was creeping up to him with folded arms. "Looking at their phones, or gossiping, or talking about which girl they'd fondle..." Now they were abreast. "Of course, they will talk about it more than do it... Living life has never occured to them.”
"It's true."
She looked at him, saw him smoking. “Didn’t you say you quit an hour ago?”
“I talk about it more than do it.”
“You’re the worst.”
“Second to you.”
He handed her a smoke. He flicked the lighter on, and she put her palms around the fire, placing her hands on his. She was there longer than necessary. He knew, and didn’t say anything. She kept her palms there until it got too hot.
"But we all need something, right? They have their gossip, we have this. And if we didn't have this, we'd have something else."
"Jeez, I can't tell them that."
The school bent into an L shape, and Jane and Pebbles were on top of the shorter, horizontal section. Jane walked over to the ledge left of the bulkhead when you came out the door, which gave her a good view of the schoolyard and the classrooms on the South side. The ledge rose to about her thighs when standing, but now she was ducking, surveying her classroom.
When you were not incognito, you could easily climb the ledge, stand up there, piss down, eat soft serve, dream about penguins in the sun. You like the cold when it’s hot, after all.
“J-jane…”
“Yeah?” She didn’t move.
“Please tell me Halloween came early,” he squeaked.
“Heh?” She crouched away from the ledge, and hurried back to him. “What the hell are you on about, dumbass?”
He pointed into the clear sky, and she traced his arm all the way up until she saw it too: There was something huge in the sky, covered in monitors that streamed video and pictures... Something in the shape of two plates on top of each other, with the top one upside down. They squinted: goddamn sun got in the way. A saucer? … Yeah, A saucer! But GARGANTUAN, like a stadium! And it emitted a low rumbling sound, like trumpets—many, many trumpets. They stared at the big thing for a while, mouths liable to birdshit. Their cigarettes succumbed to the floor, one after the other.
“Oh, fuck,” said Jane, finally.
They ran away behind the power generator that was by the ledge Jane had just slid away from. She pulled out her phone, stuffed her earphones in, and turned on something. Pebbles wasn’t watching. With shaky arms he forced out another Iron Lung and lit it.
On Jane’s screen there was a lower third and a red-blue logo in the bottom left corner: Perfect City TV. There was also suspenseful music with flashing images over the lower third: something about the King and the Prince, a man walking in a street and slapping the side of his stomach with a t-shirt pulled over his face, workers in vests and hardhats probably demanding higher wages, and finally there was stock footage of the city, swanky, like Tokyo or Seoul. Then a young blonde woman appeared behind a desk—if it was even a real desk. Maybe it was CGI. Maybe all she had was a stool and she was green-screened in there from a slum in China. Anyway, she was wearing a pink pantsuit over a white top.
“Good afternoon, I’m Kate Pilates, and joining me today, Professor Smallshaft, director of the Delinquency Research Unit of the ADM, senior lecturer, and advisor to the King. Mr. Smallshaft, welcome.”
“So happy to be with you,” replied a tubby old man in a raspy voice, a lineup of bookshelves behind him. A headset mounted his white hair, and he was talking into its microphone. The prof and the anchor lady were now split in two rectangles on the screen.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Well, as I’m sure you can all tell by now, the guest chair over there is still unoccupied,” she sighed, “and that is due to what some people have called,” she looked down at her paper, “suffocating pandemic measures imposed by the King, and enforced, by his cronies…” She shook her head, scoffed, smirked. “What are we to make of this, Prof?”
“Yes,” he sighed, “I think we’d all like to share company,” he raised one eyebrow, “especially with such a pretty young lady like yourself, he he he.”
“Oh, Prof, yooou!” she wagged her finger at him, then put the other hand over her mouth and giggled. Anyone who had eaten recently was coming to a crisis.
“He he.” He paused. “But we mustn’t forget that old adage from the nation’s esteemed poet: e-ehm, deviance does break a dam, was it?”
“Hhhmm, I don’t know... It’s been a while since I went to school.”
“Heh. Doesn't look like it.”
“Stooop it, he he.” She covered her mouth again with one hand, and waved with the other. The prof giggled too. They looked like they were going on a date after this. It was awful.
Suddenly, the screen went all noisy, and the sound snagged...
A family was idly watching on their TV. “Heh?” went the father on the couch. “What the hell is this?”
“Maybe you didn’t pay the bill, daddy,” said the mother.
“Oh, Jesus! They have dough coming out their ears, and they want me to pay?" He started pumping his fist. "Just wait till I get my hands on one of these executives! I'll shove that bill so deep up his ass, it will come out on each side of his nose!"
“Daddy! Language”
“Erm, sorry.”
“It’s back!” yelled one of the little ones.
“Hmm?” He looked, it was working. “Hah! See, I scared ‘em so bad they gave the channel back!”
“Like doo-doo you did,” said the mother.
“He he he… wait! Who the hell is that?”
“Well, hello there.” A young man, about college age, popped up on the screen. He had a slight double chin and brown bangs that hung to his eyebrows, and he looked like an insomniac. He also looked like a sci-fi nerd and a sexist (don’t ask). He was in a dark room fitted with red neon lights that ran in tubes.
People all over the city were glued to their screens by now. “Who are you?” half-shouted the prof.
“My name … is Jonas,” he spoke like a stage actor, with the finger movements and everything, “and I hacked into this Boom room to make an announce—” The anchor lady and the prof began snickering.
“W-what are you laughing about, huh?”
“H-he…” the prof let out a solitary giggle, raised his fist over his mouth, “he said … BOOM ROOM!” With that, the anchor lady and the prof burst out laughing. The family with the bill were in stitches too, especailly the dad. Hell, half the city might've been in stitches.
“S-shut up!” He blinked a while. “Wha-what’s wrong with saying Boom room? We are using Boom to talk!”
“Nobody says Boom room,” said the anchor lady, chuckling. “Yeah, it sounds weird,” added the prof, also chuckling.
He was stunned again for a bit. “Alright, alright, I get it! Jeez, so immature!” He took a deep breath. “Anyway," he sounded pissed, "like I was saying ... I hacked into this Boom—” He swallowed his next word, lips frozen on “Boom" and eyes dilated.
“Say it!” egged on the prof. The family watched on. Everybody watched on. Will he say it?
He looked like he was thinking hard about something. Finally, he said, “Room!”
“HAHAHAHA!”
“SSSHUT UP!”
"HAH! HAHAHA!"
"HEHEHEHE!"
“SHUT UP!”
After the laughter died down a bit, and he foamed at the mouth like a rabid koala (he was more koala than dog), he pulled up what seemed like CCTV tape on the screen. It was in color, and HD. It showed a dimly-lit bedroom, and the side profile of a king-sized canopy bed. It looked suave, the kind of place a rich motherfucker would go to relax after buying a convertible, you know the type. Then, a tubby old man with white hair walked into shot, then did a young, petite black girl in blue jean shorts and a hoody. She had a blooming black afro tied into a ponytail.
“Since you like laughing so much, why don’t you go ahead and laugh at this? Heh? How about it, Mr. Smallshaft?”
“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about… What is this?”
“Oh, this? It’s just you with a prostitute, in a Gentlemen’s Agreement suite … downtown, the fancy quarter.” He zoomed in. The faces were identical. Clearly, it was Smallshaft, with his big nose and pervy smile. He wore the same white shirt, too, only in the tape he would take it off to expose a wife-beater, a staple of old men everywhere. “I have your data. I have everybody’s data. I know it was you. I scraped your texts with the girl, and tracked your GPS. Here, look.”
So are we on at 9, sweet-thing?
Yeah. At Gentlemen’s.
All right, you rascal. You be good till then. Then I’ll come bitin. And then you’ll be bad, too.
“Then, voila, from 9 to 10, you’re at Gentlemen's!" He pulled up a virtual map. It showed a flag over the hotel suite, and a timeframe: 21:05 to 22:10. "And if all that wasn't enough, here we have you with your little lover caught on tape." A devious smile came to his face. "Now tell me, Prof, are those beds really as comfy as they look, or is it all just a ... big show?” He gave off a stiffled laugh.
The prof looked dead for a while. “O-okay, fine ... It’s me … and? P-p-prostitution is legal in this country!” He wobbled his head around, mumbled something, swallowed, his tone grew desperate. “I … I mean … can’t a guy get his rocks off anymore?”
“Sure he can! If your, khm, business associate, is of legal age… But this girl, Samantha Beanpresser, is 16! People gasped behind their screens. “16! Mr. Smallshaft, 16!” Smallshaft had broken out in a sweat, and now he saw waves; he was slipping out of himself. 16! 16! 16! Is this true, Prof? Mr. Smallshaft! He heard people jeering against the noise of static, and there was a shrieking, beaming sound; and it all grew louder, and louder, and LOUDER. And his heart was nearly out of his chest, and the sweat made everything damp…
THE DISGRACED PROFESSOR.