Again, the teacher is moving his lips. Squidboy’s paper is blank, still unadulterated by the constructs of language. The children shuffle to the front of the room and turn in what they have done. Squidboy cannot move his legs, they are melted like a crayon into the dirty carpet of the floor.
The teacher is approaching Squidboy, he looks upset. He says Squidboy is lazy, he says Squidboy lacks the intrinsic motivation and drive of the other kids. He says, “Look, do you see? Do you see how they… and when they… Why is… when you could be… Can’t you understand that… How can you just… Don’t you want… Why are you like this?” Squidboy isn’t sure how long the man has been talking, they are jaded.
They don’t know what to think about this.
Now the children are holding glasses full of milk, this is their ambrosia to celebrate the work they’ve put into preparing for their test. It coats their mouths in its warm film and fills the shapes of their stomachs- this is what the children think love feels like. Squidboy is having trouble keeping up. Their tentacles do not wrap around the crystalline cylinder of the glass very well. They will have to fake the intoxicating euphoria.
Squidboy’s tentacles are too long- they whip the glass off the table. As gravity’s inevitable acceleration propels it to its final resting place, time is moving in slow motion. The luminescence of the fluorescent light travels into the glass and then out through trillions of infinitesimally small radii, each one containing its own universe, its own sapience. Its beauty transcends apotheosis, the world has not existed until this moment.
Shattering. Life is thrown back into entropy. Squidboy’s vision cuts to black, they are infatuated with an ebony skyline and the noises of metal grinding against a concrete pavement. The smell of sulfur is ubiquitous in the air, they cannot escape it.
When Squidboy returns to consciousness they are in a field of wheat. They are completely alone, the only inhabitant of their planet. Looking down at their body something seems blatantly not right, not okay. Squidboy’s limbs are no longer attached to their body. Their flesh has inverted itself exposing the fleshy pink sinews of their muscular back to the sun. Things are looking good for Squidboy, they’re finally starting to fit in.