Not a Prisoner, Yet
By James
Monk Klutter, king wherever he strolls, is bested by nobody. At least, that's
what he tells himself while pounding loudly from the inside of Priscilla
Roseberry’s locker door. Not that he would actually have much problem
getting out, of course. If he didn’t manage to pummel the locker enough to
open a big enough hole to escape from, the janitors would come in an hour or
two, and unless they had extreme auditory issues, would surely hear Monk’s
loud rattling of Priscilla’s locker. If somehow neither of those works,
Monk’s henchmen, the Kobras, would come back at night for their routine
scouring of the school for anything deemed valuable and would check
Priscilla’s locker for Monk. That is, if their memory serves them well
enough to remember the events during school. (With the Kobras, you never
could be sure.) With all that for insurance, Monk figured he had loads of
time to kill, and so only halfheartedly kicked at the obstacle to his
rightful path to freedom, the surprisingly strong locker door.
A few hours passed with no outside intervention, and Monk had thoroughly
scrimmaged though Priscilla’s locker to find a few juice containers.
Glugging them down, he angrily wondered why nobody had figured out someone
was behind the cacophony of noise in the hallways. Punching at the locker
with renewed vigor, Monk yelled out a few choice words which we, as the
narrators, refuse to repeat. The vocabulary, however, certainly did get Monk
his wanted release.
“Okay, boy, you’ve had enough punishment today. Out you go!” cried a
strident old lady, whose face sorely reminded Monk of a wrinkled prune. “
And if I ever have to clean up one of those messes you and your shadows
leave in the mess hall, I’ll show you how well I can use this mop!” For
emphasis, she held up her cleaning tool menacingly, and Monk admitted to
himself that it did look as though it could cause much damage.
“Okay, okay, lady. Sheesh, there’s no need to get all in my hair about it.”
Rubbing at his rather sore backside, Monk waved off the hag’s incessant
nattering and stumbled out of the school.
Outside, the sky showed how long Monk had actually been held inside during
his unofficial detention. Already the clouds were a light shade of orange,
and the sky was more purple than blue. Monk silently muttered a few swears
and spent the rest of his walk home thinking up excuses for his prolonged
absence. It seems every child is always scared of their parent, one way or
the other.
“Well, that leaves ‘a friend held me up with homework’ or ‘we had
afterschool activities’. Which one sounds better?” Monk mused, stopping in
front of his home to press the dusty doorbell that, really, nobody had ever
used before. Out stomped a monster, clear and simple. Hair frizzled, eyes
glistening with emotions Monk would rather not think about, his apparent
biological mother (though Monk wasn’t completely sure if she was possessed
or not) prowled out of the house, hands clenched hard enough Monk could see
her knuckles white against her pale skin.
“Where were you, sweetheart?” his mother asked saccharinely, voice
positively dripping with menace. And although Monk would deny it until the
day he died, deep inside he knew this was one of the times he, Monk Klutter,
was ever truly afraid for his life. Out, out, brief candle!
“Um, we had afterschool activities today. Soccer and stuff, you know.”
Monk shrugged, in a desperate effort to hide his shivers from hearing his
mom’s dreadful tone. He then raced towards the stairs in a mad rush to his
room.
Connection attempt failed. Please try again. “Where, exactly, do you think
you are going, young man?” Monk’s mother called, stomping right up the
stairs along with Monk and holding his shirt collar tight enough to make him
choke slightly. “I’ll have a word with you about respect too now, you
hear? You and your father both…” She hissed, dragging him down the
staircase into the kitchen.
If Monk’s intellect had been slightly higher, or if he had paid the
slightest bit of attention to his English classes, he probably would have
thought of the old proverb: “Out of the fire, into the frying pan.” And
indeed, he probably would have been right.
A few phrases are highlighted in the above short story and explained below:
Blue highlights: metaphors, listed below in dashes
-“king wherever he strolls” is a metaphor (and perhaps hyperbole) of what
Monk believes himself to be.
-‘you and your shadows’ is the term the cleaning lady uses for Monk and
his henchmen.
-“voice positively dripping with menace” is a metaphor, as there is no way
a voice can actually drip with anything, much less menace.
-‘Out of the fire, into the frying pan.’ is both an ancient moral from
Aesop’s Fables and metaphorical, as most idioms can be.
Yellow highlights: hyperboles, listed below in dashes
-“cacophony of noise” is what I believe to be a hyperbole, as it’s highly
unlikely the muffled sound of flesh on metal could be loud to an extreme
degree.
Pink highlights: allusions, listed below in dashes
-“Out, out, brief candle!” is a quote from the Shakespearean play Macbeth,
and is also a metaphor for how brief life is.
-“Connection attempt failed. Please try again.” is a rather common error
online when attempting to reach a source or some other server.
