3.1 Bullet with Butterfly Wings
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—”
—EMILY DICKINSON (“340”)
// Pre-entry Tag
function inscribeAnnotation003 (codex){
/* "A poem describing psychological implosion, an internal funeral for reason itself, as mourners tread through the fragile architecture of a crumbling mind."
"Ode to a poet’s internal funeral. Some tragedies whisper, while others set the world on fire just to hear an echo of an explosion. Rage doesn't always stay buried, but it digs its way out, screaming. Call it catharsis. Or just narrative pressure looking for a weak seam to tear its way through." */
codex.updateEntry(When Thinking Dies | When the mind crumbles, mourners tread softly through its ruins, carrying reason's ashes in silence.");
}
“Wait! What?”
There are certain moments in a man’s life when he knows he’s truly fucked up. Sure, there are degrees of mistakes, like the relatively minor time Remi borrowed the librarian’s “Reading is for You” travel mug. Promising to return it pristinely clean after class that day. It went into the nether void of his trunk, rediscovered a month later, its contents now a jelly of fermented milk. “Growing more culture than he supposedly had,” at least according to the librarian, when he tried to sneak it back onto her desk. It was still unclean.
Or the small snafu he committed five minutes before the morning bell. He’d tried to clear the staffroom photocopier of a jam too aggressively, resulting in a confetti-cornucopia of quizzes stuck inside the machine. He’d slid the tray shut, whispering, “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” condemning the next teacher to a toner-smeared punishment of Sisyphus.
Nor was it like the more substantial lapses in judgement, like when Remi wrote a glowing application for an honours student to an elite out-of-province school. He’d been sure the student had wanted out—out of town, out of her tiny life, out of whatever box she’d been shoved into. He was so confident that he hadn’t even asked before filling out the application form on her behalf. But to his surprise, she didn’t want to escape, and so she stayed, and she smiled at him like before, but she never quite met his eyes again.
Or like how he often would get excited about the literary value of a text, and once high on his knowledge of foreshadowing, had blurted out the twist ending for The Sixth Sense before opening weekend. He’d thought they would be impressed, and extol how “he knew it!” But they were mainly just sad that he’d robbed them of the reveal. Again.
It was one of those category-defining mistakes, the type that doesn't go wrong, but seems to retcon the whole situation. A full-scale narrative malfunction. Not a slip, not even a stumble. Rather, a full-on faceplant into his blind spot.
Take his niece Bea, eight or nine at the time, when they'd gone to see an animated dragon training movie. The egregious error happened mid-credits, as he noticed her crying. Trying his best to be comforting, he leaned over and asked what was wrong. She looked up at him, voice warbling, and queried, “Why did the dad have to die?” Without thinking, Remi had answered, “Well, in a typical hero's quest, the mentor always dies. It is necessary for the protagonist’s growth.”
What he failed to notice was that his niece had finally been confronted with the thought of her own father’s death. Of his brother’s death. She wasn’t asking about narrative theory. She wanted him to tell her that everything was going to be OK. That her father would not leave her. He didn’t realize his error until he saw the look in the same father’s eyes as he punched Remi in the arm, calling him an idiot.
At this moment, with everyone in the staffroom staring at him, Remi knew this had just joined the same pantheon of grand screwups. It is funny how time can seem to slow down, and where seconds before he’d been unaware of his surroundings, now the exact opposite was true. He could sense everything suddenly.
The low buzz of the data projector seemed to echo through the room. The tap of a pen. The absence of any noise but slow and laboured breathing. Simon and Garfunkle knew the truth of it, as the sound of silence is a real thing. Although the room was so quiet, it was screaming. A cacophony of stillness as the room collectively held its breath. An uncomfortable cough, both sharp and piercing.
Remi could smell the acrid stench of burnt coffee swirling with the bitterness of sweat. Whose sweat he was unsure of, but the room reeked of fear and self-loathing, and was definitely in need of some air spray.
He was hyperaware of how uncomfortable his clothes now felt, tight in the wrong places, around his neck, gripping his arms. His mouth was parched everywhere but at the corners. There were gummy webs between his lips, and he felt they must be visible. Closing the lid slowly, his computer felt cold; looking up, he quickly saw the slide now saying:
Let’s talk about engagement!
What wakes you up inside?
The slide was half exclamation, half existential threat. Punctuated too erroneously and too rhetorically for 9:30 on a Monday. But that didn’t matter right now. Reluctantly, knowing what was going to be there, he looked over and into the eyes of a furious Frank.
Remi had derailed the flow of his perfectly planned day, and Frank was desperate not to let the room know his true feelings behind that plastered grin. The clenched jaw. A tightness in his posture. The stiffness in his neck. He had a lion’s stillness, as if contemplating whether to pounce. It all reeked of a different story.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Frank shifted his face into something tight and condescending. A look that was both flustered and performative. He drew out the moment for his captive audience. Micro-aggressive tie adjustment included. “As all of us have been sharing, Remington. What wakes you up inside?” He paused just long enough to let his veiled hostility sink into Remi and leave room for its snide rebuttal. “Or if that question is too difficult. Then what other song lyric best describes you?”
Remi’s rage was a flash flood, sudden and unexpected. First, Eastly knew that wasn’t his name. He’d told him politely during their first meeting. Frank had commented on how names mattered, and they'd commiserated about how people often assumed too much. Remi had thought it was a bonding moment, but it had been ammunition for this moment, for when he stepped out of line.
Maybe it was the giggles from the tittering staff, or the bully surrounded by cronies dynamic that seemed to ooze out of this moment, that finally pushed him over the edge. Maybe it’s that even now, Eastly was choosing cruelty over grace. Striving to use this opportunity to humble him.
Remi hated bullies. Sure, he was in the wrong. He knew that. Everyone here knew that. Frank could have just left it there. But it’s in moments when people are low that the quality of a person’s character really shows. Principal Eastly could have chosen compassion, but he just didn’t want to. So neither did Remi.
“Franklin,” Remi said, cool and clipped. “I’d sing it, but apparently I’m not the only one that’s tone deaf. But let’s just say it involves my impotent rage.” It was his turn to weaponise silence. He took a single beat for effect. “And being trapped like a caged rat.”
The quip was immediately effective; he let it hang there. It had the intended effect. The giggles stopped. A few gasps were heard. And the room turned from Remi, shifting its collective eye energy to the now crumbling Principal. What choice did he have now, really? He could escalate and lose the room, or relent in the vain hope of keeping his agenda moving. Eastly’s mask twitched, at the edges, before it returned.
He picked the latter. “Okay, everyone. That was hilarious, Remi.” His attempt to laugh it off was almost perfect, except for the slight tremor in his hand holding the presentation clicker. The blue remote wobbled. He advanced the slide to draw everyone back to the agenda.
/*Stage 4 - BARGAINING*/
Remi did not want to push it. He knew he was on thin ice right now, so rather than open his laptop up again, like he longed to, he opted for participation. He opened his professional journal. Mostly a collection of word doodles, jokes, and puns inspired by comments at staff meetings. As he flipped, Remi thought he spied his own pencil phallus. He continued to a new page and decided he’d tackle these one at a time.
“Write something…” Remi wrote it at the top of the page and then sat there for a few seconds. If he were honest with himself, he didn’t do that anymore. When asked, he made excuses about time, about how he had too much marking, that he just couldn’t. The truth was, he’d written once, but it ended abruptly. He’d thought it would be great. It wasn’t, and thinking about it was just too raw. So instead, he just skipped the prompt. Scrawling NO THANK YOU in the centre of the page, with a firm box around it. He ruthlessly flipped the page.
Engagement lost, Remi looked at the first suggestion. Tell the story you’ve been too tired to tell. Ok. Sure. His pen sliced into the paper, his response more a catharsis of all this day had been rather than a genuine attempt to fulfil the task.
Remi stared at his entry. Man, am I grumpy. Okay, if I do the rest of these and actually commit to the bit, I can justify going back to the conversation with Archie.
Who are you in your classroom—and who are you pretending to be?
Not that Remi could blame him. The new school had offered him everything he could have wanted: his choice in schedule, a budget far bigger than was possible here, and the chance to advance. Who could say no to an IB school in Switzerland? Some places had important eyes on them. Where he was going was one of them. Where Remi was–not so much. Remi just wished Wallace hadn’t been so smug when he told him; it had made him want to punch him in the face.
He shook his head. Focus, Remi, focus. He continued.
Remi sighed. Even when he tried, he couldn’t seem to escape the morose funk he found himself in. If this were a story, he would be stuck somewhere, with the environment mirroring his internal stagnation. A swamp. Better yet, a bog. The metaphorical hero struggling in futility against an omnipresent nothingness he couldn’t dream of escaping. But this was Earth, and he was at PD. Same futility, same inability to escape, drier, and a lot less interesting.
Moving on. One more to go: reflect on a “meaningful teaching moment. Describe when you made a difference. Describe why.”
What emo-ballad best defines your life?
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