Neither Dickens nor Wordsworth could be comprehended in the racket raging around the room. The young man closed his eyes slowly, pleading with his brain to switch off his ears, so he can fall head first into the abyss of literature.

It didn't work; all he could hear was taboo, all he could smell was a vanilla redolence and all he could see was a collage of bulky, smiling faces. Their mouths moved to speak, but the only thing that could be heard was "Blah blah blah blah."

The young adult shuddered, compressed his eyebrows once more in the hope that his teacher would arrive any second. Of course, it didn't help that the teacher's office was on the other side of the school, sheltered in a sound-proof tranquillity, and adorned by the oak desk with its single drawer containing a bottle of Islay whisky.

The worn, middle-aged teacher stumbled in, his tie slack and jacket elbows patched. In his state of slight exhaustion, he looked neither content nor restless. A student slobbered as he lobbed a paper snowball across the room.

"All right, all right, settle down please.", asked the teacher. Some students on the other side of the room snorted quietly. The young man in his wobbly plastic seat reluctantly put his gripping read (albeit, unreadable in the classroom) away and sat up. "Get your texts out please guys.", commanded the teacher, in an emotionally-scarred fashion. The young man already had his text out, but there was still a conundrum of rustling bags, paper and texts.

"Let's start were we left off last time."

"What about the register sir?", interrupted the boy on the back row. The young man saw a look of "I don't do it like that" on the teacher's face, as he ignored the boy with a sigh.

"Anyway…", continued the teacher, "Lucentio, I believe it was your line."

Lucentio sighed and looked randomly through his text until Grumio nudged him and whispered the page number. Lucentio cleared his throat.

"Sir, give him head…", and the class gremlins erupted into laughter.

"Yes, quite.", muttered the kind-hearted, but pushed teacher.

Fifteen minutes and half a page later, the teacher decided to take a break from reading to discuss the first act.

"So, from that first act, what can you tell me about men's attitudes to women in the sixteenth century?" The silence that followed was deafening and unsettling to the young adult on he front row. He stretched his legs weakly and slowly so no noise would be made by him. He even struggled to keep a cough from exploding out of his throat.

"Well, what does it get across?", rephrased the teacher, "What are they saying? What are they doing?" The young man stretched his hand into the air. He got a few looks across at him, of curiosity or of a mocking nature. The teacher gave a slight frown, trying to ignore the stretched arm in the corner of his eye. "Erm, Danni?", called out the teacher. Danni, at the back, was slightly startled, and her chemical fragrance momentarily disappeared.

"wel i fink,", she started, "dat dere ryt sxist."

"Explain.", encouraged the teacher, with a look of hope on his face for the first time of the day.

"dere sellin wimmin 4 mny n shit." Several gremlins hyperventilated with unheard laughter.

"Yes, marriage was seen as a business back then.", explained the teacher, with that shining hopeful look gone. The young man had now lowered his hand and wondered how long it would take for a prostitution joke to spring up (or a joke about things "springing up", he wondered).

The teacher's speech had begun to echo in the young adult's ears, and it began to drone like a vacuum on its lowest setting. Hand gestures and language tips began to fade away into the back of his mind. Everyone else around had monolithic eyes, gawking at the teacher and his mind-bending phrases. The young man's eyes were almost closed and everything in reality went out of focus. He moved his right arm to his blazer pocket, pulled out his gun, and popped himself in the head. The fillings of his cake head leaked onto the floor and walls like jam as the teacher continued to lecture, and the kids continued to gape at the teacher uninterestedly. The young man's remains were still on the floor, waiting for the BBC to arrive.

The young man made his way back to reality in such an instant, it was unfortunate for him.

"So tomorrow we'll, stop fidgeting Alex, tomorrow we'll move onto the next scene."

As Alex, the young adult, sat motionless in his chair, staring into space, tamed.