umikochannart

Towards the middle of the semester, Mrs. B. devised an assignment where we had to act out a soliloquy from any Shakespeare play. I chose Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from Julius Caesar. As we had to be in costume for extra credit, I brought a flat sheet to school to fashion into a toga of sorts. There was a supply closet in the front of the room where people could change. Boys would pretend to peek in the closet when girls were changing. There wasn’t much to see for the most part, as girls might throw a long night gown over their clothes to play Juliet. The door locked on the outside when closed completely, so the few kids with major changes could do so with some privacy.

Noah had already made progress in slowing the flow of his mana and his bodily functions, and the headband was helping. His heart dropped to one beat a minute, and he all but stopped breathing. Typically, such a state would be fatal, but the more he slowed down his mana, the more he could forestall damage. Without mana flowing, his cells would stop processing nourishment and oxygen, but they wouldn’t wither and die, for the molecular processes of cell death were also halted. Caught in a near-perfect state of suspended animation, his physical senses operated at the lowest possible level, and he became more attuned to the flow of mana around him, sharpening his spirit senses.

He gave the man a hard poke in the chest while smoke wafted from the cigarette between his fingers, then leaned in with bloodlust radiating from every word hissed with his icy voice. “Notice that I haven’t asked your name yet, even though I gave you mine? It’s because you don’t have a name to me. To me, you’re just ‘Bitch’, the sniveling little Bitch who decided to come in here and ruin my evening, talking awfully big game for someone in skull-fucking range. That’s what’ll be engraved on your tombstone: ‘Here lies Bitch. Cause of death: got skull-fucked until his brains leaked out of his ears.’ Shit, I’ll carve the engraving myself. Now I suggest you get the fuck out before I use your eye sockets like a whore’s ass!”