Star by Eliza Witte - HTML preview

21

XII

Mr. Mnatsakan was an old, bald man with glasses and an obviously ‘sore’ character.

He taught a course with the funny title ‘Perspectives and light’ but he was the least enlightened from the all professors’ body. They kept him at the College just because in spite of all his pretensions, for having been a loyal employee for years, the truth was that he was so boring that anyone just preferred the status quo of having him around instead of creating the fuss to make him go. He monotonously kept his lecture now, ‘And then the perspective changes its parameters. The angle from the left increases by 10 degrees and the opposite one diminishes…’

Everyone in the class ‘slept’. For those who were the toughest and the bravest, you could say seeing their young bodies bent under the weight of the mental imprisonment and their faces marked by sheer suffering, that the only thought in their mind would be how they would stand 4 more years under this tyranny. Monotonously, Mr. Mnatsakan kept on further and further and there was NO END OF IT!

‘Who is going to tell me what happens with the light reflected by the object when the perspective changes?’ he looked at his notebook before he decided upon the victim of the day, ‘I haven’t seen… Anna for quite some time! Anna?’

‘She’s sick!’ Jessie shot out.

‘Oh, is she? Is she getting sick just for my classes?’

Mr. Mnatsakan loved to hassle his students. He felt some sort of fulfillment in making them miserable and felt a tremendous pleasure when it worked. However, Jessie didn’t give up, ‘No,’ she continued, ‘Annie’s really sick. Throwing up and all that. Honestly, I…

well, I spent most of the night with her so I know.’

Mr. Mnatsakan didn’t really buy it but in spite of that the lecture went on… and on…

and ON… and ON!

XIII

Annie was kneeling in the chapel. She didn’t feel as good as in the morning and she had strong suspicions that one of the million universal laws – be it the law for purity of material, be it the law of the earth gravity or just any law she might be even unaware of –

had been chasing her at the heels. In other words, she felt guilty.