Theoryism

Drew was late for class once again. It was becoming a habit. But it was hard for him to care whether or not he was on time; it was only theory class after all.

He walked into class as quietly as possible so he wouldn’t disturb whatever the undoubtedly ridiculous conversation on the topic du jour happened to be. But no one noticed him. They were too wrapped up in their conversation. That was their word for what they were doing. Drew thought of it more as a competition to see who could use the biggest word in the context of their irrelevant explanation on something that didn’t really matter outside of the classroom.

He sat down and tried to pick up on the topic. There were a slew of -isms thrown around and he realized his classmates were on their A-games today. He dropped his head onto his folded arms, hating the professor for making attendance necessary.

It was impossible for him to block out the all the babble but he did his best to put his thoughts elsewhere. No luck. The words attacked his brain like needles. Feminism, naturalism, realism, modernism – all spoken by people who were just trying to sound like they knew what they were talking about but were really just trying to impress the professor with their knowledge of the glossary.

It felt like there were firecrackers going off inside his skull. More unnecessary words poured in through his ears and the pain increased. He had to fight not to scream out in pain.

There was a warm liquid on his ear. He tried to move his hand to see what it was but he couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. The last word he heard was fatalism, and then everything went black.