PHINALI

Chapter One: Flying

"A long time ago, a man named Sigmund Freud studied the human psyche. He claimed that one-third of our behavior pattern detrives from thoughts of the id, the desire portion of our mind. The id, though it seems like a rather nasty and unpleasant series of primal urges, is also the survival-oriented piece of the cortex, and is a very necessary evil.

"Converse to the id is one's superego. It collects all the norms and taboos that accumulate in the mind and compacts them into a control freak, obsessed with obeying every single rule conceived. They pay no heed to the needs of a dying body.

"Both of these are bested by the friendly 'ego' of life, the balancing lobe, maintaining peace between duty and desire. It is what could be considered the personality of a person, their most vital aspect. This demonstrates the importance of balance. 'A time to laugh, a time to cry' and such."

The droning of Kei's psychology professor went on and on. For the last day of school, this wasn't a very enjoyable day. After finals, the professor still gave a lecture. Kei was starting to regret his bothering to come that day. None of the classes were any more enjoyable.

His first mistake was physical education, a class in which comprehending the title was an overqualification. The coach (you know the old saying, those who can't teach, teach gym) was a rather sadistic Hitler-like being, overflowing with the hatred of intelligence, as evidenced by his response to Kei's health concern regarding the recreational game 'dodgerock' ("Only a pansy would care. Ten minutes punishment time in the target square. now go stand n the square and get hit by rocks, pansy.")

The only salvation was his friend, Ebizo, being in the same class. Of course, Ebizo had an advantage when playing sports games involving projectile rocks: skill. Apart from being a bit smarter than Kei, he was probably the smartest and fastest of the two, leading to Kei occasionally feeling really inferior. But he was nice, so the period was fun.

Second period was trigonometry. The professor there was decent, he let them talk as much as they wanted. This was a double blessing, because along with most of his friends joining him there, his girlfriend Toma was there, too. Kei waved from across the room, but she was busy, helping the teacher take down posters advertising Disney movies and math.

"Wow, it's amazing how bad corporate advertising has gotten!" Kei's friend Matthew walked over, commenting on the situation.

"I know, it's everywhere," Kei agreed, opening a can of Mellow Yellow.

Kei's relation to Matt ws an interesting one. Neither of them were certain (nor, to be quite frank, did they care) why, but half the time they were the best of friends. The other they were at each other's jugulars, by which I mean burning with hatred, as opposed to lovingly embracing.

The class itself was practically enjoyable, but didn't even come within miles of making up for his next class, creative writing.

Kei liked to write, so the class should have been enjoyable, save one small snag: It wasn't.

In essence, the class was just sitting around typing on a word processor and writing, what Kei considered himself a master of. He was, sadly, stationed between his two arch-nemesese, Sigmund and Renaldo, a pair of painfully arrogant fools with pompous names, although the most fitting title for them wold be Satan's Drinking Buddies.

Kei couldn't even write what he wanted (a sci-fi about a city in a cave and characters named for an emotion), because...

"Ha! Hey look, Sig! This story is so gay!" Renaldo pointed to Kei's screen.

In one sense, the asessment was true. Kei had all the writing skill of a man with no writing skill. Nevertheless, it was the principle of the matter that annoyed Kei.

"You're a moron!" Sigmund yelled, "You're really gay!"

They weren't exactly the most creative (nor, to be honest, open-minded) students, but their methods worked. Everyone was used to them behaving like fools. It's what they do. They could scream and remove their pants in the midle of class, nobody would bat an eyelid.

If Kei, however, said anything in response, he'd be doomed to punishment for disruptive actions. He was tempted to mutter 'Life's not fair' whenever he was harassed by them, but then he would remember that he was strictly against self-pity, and entirely anti-goth.

So he'd just grin and bear it. It wasn't anything new for them to do, at any rate.

Fourth (as well as fifth and sixth) period was a study hall. Kei had given up his study halls and his homeroom periods and taken every class he could for the past few years, so now the only classses he took were mandatories and whichever took his fancy.

He sat in fourth period for approximately an hour writing down ideas for his story in his traditional chicken-scratch. "Monkeys- Secretly allied with flying rodents?"

Kei thought about what he could use that idea for, then finally scratched it out and wrote in its place "Cyborg monkeys-secretly allied with flying rodents?"

It went on like that until approximately halfway into the second study hall, when he decided to see what theother people were doing. Omitting himself, and the "instructor" who was sitting in a chair at the front stuffing her fat gob with bon-bons the size and texture of basketballs, only more rubbery, there were a sum total of two others in the room.

First, and most importantly to Kei, was his neighbor and childhood friend Jowy. Jowy's desk was covered wth encyclopedias and dictionaries. Jowy was studying to be a translator, as he'd been doing for the past four years. He'd alreafdy mastered Spanish and German, as well as, obviously, English, and was working on learning Japanese. They didn't share any classes besides study hall, apparently.

The final occupant of the oddly empty amphitheater was a boy Kei did not know. This was mostly due to the fact that he had just recently moved to the district and was attending the final day of school in order to see what it was like, but Kei didn't know that.

He had a black-haired buzz cut, glasses, and was dressed in all black. Another poseur. His desk was strewn with books, two of them open, and he seemed to be fondling a model TIE Fighter. He twisted the two ends and pulled it apart. There was a glowing blue column where it split. It released a small quantity of gas, then pulled back together, as if saying "Bored now."

The kid-whose name Kei discovered, thanks to a quick check in one of the books, was Zecheriah- waited tensely, then collapsed to the desk.

Kei, having already seen and been bored by the self-pity in the kids journal, looked in the other book, then got bored again. It was filled with words he didn't understand, like "contrafrabulatory" and "big".

Kei returned to writing after that, and so went his day. He supposed it was better to be bored than beaten up.

"Mister Kei?" A voice jolted him from his thoughts. He opened his eyes and found himself staring straight at the psychologoy professor. "The period just ended, Mister Kei. Are you alright?" He asked, smiling.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Kei gave a slight bow, and ran out of the room.

A few minutes was all Kei needed to grab his important files from his locker (just his notebok and a sandwich he didn't eat due to staying in study hall) and run out of the school. Maybe his friends wouldn't already be gone.

He was in relative luck. Toma was carrying a huge stack of at least fifteen college-level textbooks. She was in mostly top-level classes, compared to Kei's idyllic barely-above-average schedule. She was, in fact, the only person Kei knew who volunteered for classes in the summer.

Whenever he mentioned it, she would lecture him on the importance of time management and organization, neither of which had a place in Kei's twelve page mental dictionary. While she spoke, Kei would look alert and nod occsionally, while really focusing on anything that caught his fancy-cracks on walls, bugs on floors, bulges on chests (the latter saved only for when he had some form of eyewear, for personal protection)-just anything to pass the time.

Kei ran over to Toma and grabbed a few books from the armload. "Here, let me help you," he said, blushing.

Of the information that I have spoon-fed you thus far, dear reader, very much of it true, and little was an exxageration. Almost everything, in fact, save one claim that was so ersatz even Richard Nixon would classify it as "a frigging great lie." This was my claim that Toma nad Kei were, officially, any closer than friends. Kei openly wished it could be more, but he knew wouldn't be comfortable with a close relationships until her more definite affairs (i.e. school) were clear and out of the way. She was just that sort of person.

"Oh, hi Kei," she greeted, smiling at the monumental effort he was making to carry the books with his pathetically girly frame, "Didn't see you much at school today."

"Heh, I was going to say hi in trig, but you seemed kinda busy helping what's-his-name..." Kei started struggling to walk alongside Toma (who, it should be noted, was now handling her load with ease even though she had more books to carry than Kei).

"You aren't calling me a brownnose, are ya?" Toma joked

"O-of course not," Kei stammered, hoping she wasn't angry (he wasn't the best at reading people's emotions), "I-I didn't mean.."

"Never mind, never mind..." Toma trailed off. She knew and accepted that Kei wasn't the most perceptive in amongst a gang of retarded squirells with their eyes gouged out.

"Uhm, this is your house,' Kei pointed out, well deserving the title Captain Obvious, 'So, uh..."

He leaned over to give Toma the books (a superhuman task). While he did so, there was a brief pause. In Toma's case, she stopped to look at Kei.

Kei (master of human relations), however, hesitated due to the fact that less than 25 feet down the road were Siggy and Ren. For the sake of driving home the fear that Kei was struck with by this sight, They will henceforth be called by their proper names: Sigmund and Renaldo.

Kei, I should point out, did not like any form of confrontation. He lived in fear of it becoming something that broke the school rules and going on his permanant record.

"We're sorry you won the presidency by 83% majority vote over the Baby Eating Senseless Violence Party candidate George Rogers and running mate Clark, Mr. Kei, but it says here on your permanent record that in the second grade you stepped on a beetle. Quite frankly, Mr. Kei, The nation needs someone a bit more peaceful," Is what he thought they would say to him.

Anyway, back to the story. Kei's presence, he knew, would anger both Sigmund and Renaldo, especially considering ther house was just a bit further down the block.

Kei weighed his options. He could annoy them now and get beaten up in front of Toma and die, or run away from them and get beaten up in an alley, die, and get eaten by maggots.

Maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe they would leave him alone.

Maybe Toma had a rifle.

Maybe he could run home, find that his parents aren't off on yet another business trip, and they could run the two over in their car.

Maybe people will realize that the liberals were right all along. Fat chance.

"I'm sorry," Kei said, returning to being aware of Toma still staring at him and finally giving her the books, "My bobcat has been set alight," he gave his trdemark slight bow of farewell and sprinted off.

It's an interesting thing, self-preservation. Kei ran in fear of being brutaly murdered, but he had no idea if they were actually mad. He jut ran.

In spite of this self-preservation business, Kei noticed neither the hanging mailbox he was about to run into nor the dark, foreboding clouds gathering around the skies.

The clouds began to swirl and crackle, and Kei ran into the heavy metal mailbox. As he fell to the ground, knocked out cold, he obviously didn't notice the enormous vortex of light surrounding him. A moment passed, then he-and the light-disappeared in an instant.

A wonderful start to his summer.

FINI PHINALI ONE