Smelly Elliot

A short piece of fiction from earlier this year. Where it was going is a mystery to me now :-) I could see the neurons firing in his spiky head and I knew nothing good would come of it. For months he’d slugged at the back of the class, refusing to listen to the teacher or do any work, mocking those of us made the effort. He was a constant irritation in my peripheral vision and I knew he was a ticking time bomb. He couldn’t last a year without going completely off the rails. He knew it, the teacher knew it, we all did. It started with the deodorant can. He’d started spraying it on his crotch one day in class, his primitive caveman brain highly amused by the fizzing jet of spray and the sudden cloying lack of oxygen in his vicinity. God knows why he started doing it but as soon as the jeers of people sitting nearby and the stern voice of the teacher zeroed in on him there was no way he was going to stop. I was sitting by a window and I could barely breathe, not helped by the fact that the security bolts on the windows – clunky steel contraptions installed by a zealous caretaker – meant that the windows wouldn’t open more than a few centimeters. Eventually he was kicked out of the room, trailing a cloud of man-spray behind him. Of course he started spraying again as soon as he was out in the corridor and we all had to endure the remainder of the lesson sans the luxury of breathing normally...