Episode 2: Tomorrow's Assignment
"Teachers' Asylum" episode 2
Read and decide what happens next; Poll closes 3 days after sending…
Here’s Episode 1: Welcome Home if you missed it.
When Dr Kyrios comes in, you never know what to expect—after his usual standard greeting:
“How are you today?” he asks.
“Just wish these kids’d stop giggling!”
Dr Kyrios stares for a moment, blinking. Dark bushy eyebrows moving over his face like those caterpillars that presage winter. Then he says, “Tell me more about that.”
But how could he understand? He’s never been a teacher. Never stood before a classroom of children day after week after year. Never bore the weight of little voices falling through the ceiling cracks at night.
That’s the thing about a teachers’ asylum…the halls echo with a ghostly chorus of not just your own students, but also everyone else’s. Various bells ringing at odd hours, children of all ages bustling between rooms shouting things you can’t understand. Endless hushed giggles behind your back, no matter how fast you turn around, still always behind you.
The good doctor tries hard and he means well, but Kyrios’s inability to hear them at all raises serious questions about his credibility, as far as offering advice on how to deal with the noise.
“Nothing really. Nevermind. Just a weird nap dream I was having when you knocked.”
Dr Kyrios nods his salt & pepper curls like this means something, and jots down a note. “Care to say more?”
“About my dream? Classroom full of kids being silly and I was frozen in place. You know dreams...”
“Do you have this dream often?” asks Dr Kyrios.
“Only when my spidey sense knows that you’re about to walk in and ask questions.”
“Say more about that,” Kyrios answers unfazed.
“I’m just kidding. It was only a dream.”
“These giggles,” asks Dr Kyrios. “Do you hear them outside of your dreams? In waking life?”
The ventilation murmurs. The radiator whispers. Somewhere in the building deeps, a huge boiler growls…whether caretaker concern or countdown to catastrophe, it’s hard to say.
“Are you hearing them now?” Kyrios prods. “The giggles?”
Oak leaves chuckle in the breeze, unfelt and unheard outside the sealed window. Squirrels titter in the branches. Geese honk somewhere unseen.
“If I say yes, will you let me go free?”
“You’re saying like, end our session and I leave you alone?”
“I mean like, let me leave the asylum. The giggles are here, Doc. How can I explain?”
Dr Kyrios smiles patiently. “Why do you choose that word?”
“What word, Here? Because I never heard so many echoes until—”
“Asylum. Why that word?”
“Well Doc, I guess because I understand that Nuthouse is considered derogatory these days.”
“As you know, the word Asylum is also considered passé. But more importantly,”
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