Happiness Can’t Come From Assignments

Link to article: Happiness Can’t Come From Assignments.


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[[include component:preview
text= What makes a good teacher? What makes a good father? What makes a good child, all bound by duty?]]
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**This work contains CWs for:** mentions of suicide and implications of child abuse/neglect.

Happiness Can’t Come From Assignments by [[*user xexnoncores]]
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**Two People In Love**
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[[div style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: black; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 2px"]] 
By Chrysophilius Marshall
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I’d like for you to choke me
With ruby clocks and golden heels
I’d like for you to kill me
With purses heavy enough to bleed

I’d like for you to cut me
So you can say “it’s always been like this”
I’d like for you to shoot me
Because I know the hatred in your heart

I know the hatred in your heart
The living room is always filled with it
I feel the hatred in your heart
My own pounds when you feign a smile to me

I see the hatred in your heart
There’s no good reason for me to be like this
I cause the hatred in your heart
Because the worst husband alive is me

The worst husband alive is me
Even on weekends you won’t catch my voice
The worst person alive is me
Nothing says like nothing does to a housewife

The worst artist alive is me
When will the sun go down on my sins?
The worst believer alive is me
I wish we had gotten divorced instead.
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November 1st, 2013
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“Chrysophilius Marshall?”

She hates doing this. Temperance hates doing this, no matter who it is. Twenty years as a teacher and she’s still not able to tolerate this uneasiness. It never refuses to not tie knots in her stomach like she’s tasting coal grit in the air.

Without a word, a small boy packs up his things and follows her out into the empty hall. He looks like a child perfectly built by this school, with his smooth blonde hair, peachy skin, and dark brown eyes. His black uniform suit fits him perfectly.

“Yes ma’am?” he asks in an accent that is almost old-fashioned. There was posh English, and then there was talking like you were the Queen in the 1940s posh English. “What do you need? I’m trying to study.”

“I’ll ask for you to be granted some extra study time tonight before lights out,” she replies calmly. As she always does, as she always has to. Her face drops a bit with worry, but she’s never seen a kid catch what that means.

“I’m here to ask about—” 

She shuffles through a beige duffle bag and quickly pulls out a piece of paper. Her mind spins with dozens of possibilities, all separated and extrapolated from her own sense of control.

“A piece of poetry you submitted for a homework assignment.”

He cocks his head to the side until she hands it to him and his face blanks white.

“What’s wr-wrong with this?” he asks with a frazzled tone. Almost a smidge too loud.

//Damnit, I gotta calm him down,// Temperance thinks. “There’s nothing wrong with any form of creative expression, Mr. Marshall. I am simply here to ask you why you turned in a piece of work talking about…”

She never knew how to feel about the billionaire kids. Most of them were brats through and through—they learned well, but mouthed down to whoever they thought they could get away with as discreetly as was considered proper. Nobody at this school really liked that it was manners and schedules being the only thing that kept them at bay so much of the time.

Although she had never heard this about Chrysophilius, not while she was teaching here anyway. He was quieter than most boys his age at fourteen. And apparently a little bugger when he was younger, according to the whispers of the other chatty teachers.

“…Um, a husband wanting to…kill his wife.”

She hoped she got that right. This felt like more than that, like some kid’s plea for their parents to kill each other, for them to kill themselves, for them to all take each other out in a murder-suicide. 

Chrysophilius is silent.

He looks at the paper, turning it over a few times. His eyes seem to scan a universe that Temperance did not find, because he folds it up neatly after a minute and stands up straight to address her.

“…That’s a pretty generous reading of this,” he finally says after what feels like hours.

“What is it then?” Temperance’s voice is very plain. As plain as a bleeding heart could be, anyway.

“…The assignment was to write about something we never experienced before in the style of Gertrude Stein,” he says back. “That American poet who lived in France.”

He speaks so curtly, as if he’s practiced this. As if he knows what she’s here for. When Chrysophilius gets passionate, his voice shakes. When asked about his dislikes, his cadence runs achingly flat.

“Correct,” Temperance responds without missing a beat. “My question is—why is this so vivid? The imagery here makes me feel like you’ve seen this before. Are your parents okay?”

She looks around to see if anyone is within earshot. These marble floors betray little when it comes to secrets, yet hide everything except the reflections of what one hated the most. When mawed by tall, oak ceilings that yawned with modernity and yet still required a king’s toll to rest under, it was hard to imagine despair. It was difficult to visualize heartsickness in anyone situated among them.

“…Do I look like I’m married?”

She blinks.

“What?”

Chrysophilius sighs and shakes his head. “I did exactly as the assignment told me. I wrote about something I’ve never experienced personally. I’m not married, am I?”

“I would hope not,” Temperance replies stolidly. “Still, I just wanted to ask why—”

“Why does it matter?”

“Don’t talk back to me, young man.”

Chrysophilius bites his lip in a way few other boys would at a female teacher. This was the other oddity her colleagues spoke about—if you wanted him to behave, you sent a woman after him. Girls occasionally raised their voices at him to get an easy reaction, but they all stopped after a while because one of them went missing. Nobody ever found her body, and her parents had trouble remembering she even existed.

“…I’m sorry,” Temperance sputters quickly, putting all of that out of her mind. (That wasn’t real. She had to have imagined that whole debacle.) She has to help him. “I’m just worried about if you’ve seen this before with someone else. This kind of thing disturbs me.”

Nothing. Chrysophilius stands stock-still, looking at her, but there is nothing behind his eyes.

“…Can I go back to studying, please?” His words curls like an acetone aroma. “I need to focus on preparing for my GSCEs. I got good feedback on that assignment, so I don’t understand why you’re here.”

His voice is like glass, but reinforced ever so slightly as the edges. Obviously some of that was growing pains—voice cracks from where his adult self was trying to break into his child’s body, but Temperance feels like that had already happened in too many ways already.

What else could she do here? She thought he would be cooperative. She thought he would say something to her, and she’d get to give him over to the counselor. The light at the end of the tunnel is that the parents would obviously come over and talk it out, look at what their son was writing, and fix themselves accordingly. Change themselves promptly, in time for their child’s maturity. To undo some of the damage before it was too late.

This was easier back in America. Back in Florida where tabs were kept on kids without reservation. It was easy to tell the parents about something concerning then, be it their child flashing gang signs, drawing genitalia in their notebooks, biting others when they weren’t getting their way. A lot of them didn’t listen, but a lot of them //did//, and that was what mattered the most. The kid could be put on the right path after a talking to. 

All someone needed to do was notice and care.

Temperance bites her lip. She’s painfully aware of her own Tampa accent now as compared to his, painfully aware now of the fact his family members controlled some of the most important banks and museums in London. Hardly anyone at the school had seen his father or mother, but their donations were joked to fund half the budget sometimes, their relatives three quarters.

…Actually, was it just his father who donated? She didn’t remember the mother ever showing up here…

 “…Alright, well,” she says kindly and with her teacher face on, “if you need anything, I’m always here. The counselors are too. Please make sure to visit them regularly if you’re experiencing any difficulties, okay?”

Chrysophilius rolls his eyes. Hard. Temperance winces, knowing it’s best not to snap at him, but she still can’t help but want to tell him again to stop. She worked her ass off to be here, to get out of that hellhole state she lived in, and she wasn’t going to spend her working years taking lip from brats with silver spoons up their behinds.

…Oh, what is she doing? Fuck, he’s just a kid, isn’t he? Why get so mad? You’re the adult here, not him. Be understanding, Temperance. Be understanding of how he’s not as mature as you are, not had the life experiences you’ve had, not had the chance to make the same mistakes as—

Ah. He’s gone back into the study hall.

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One call. 

Two calls.

Three, four, five, six.

Chrysophilius sits in his bed after his twenty minutes of extra allotted study time with his spare phone in hand. They ask everyone to put theirs in bins outside their doors before they sleep, which gets checked promptly before a symphony of //*clicks*// echo throughout the hallways.

This extra phone is for special purposes.

Another call. Seven. The lucky number fails him.

Quietly, he steps out of bed and rummages around with small hands. He’s looking for a silver box with a foxhound insignia on it. A box carved by fairies, he was told, over a hundred years ago.

Got it. He was told to hide this from everyone. Don’t let anyone else see this. 

He has to push books about accounting and the principles of stock exchange out of the way, but that’s fine. He finds those books boring except when the numbers get really, really big. 

Inside the box is a menagerie of sparkling items. A wand that makes wind into a hurricane, a potion to turn someone into a wyvern, a smoke bomb to summon kelpies. 

What he wants is an ivory dragon scale. A large, flat teardrop shape the size of his hand that is harder than diamond and cooler than morning dew. 

He drags it out of soft velvet and holds it to his chest. This is a naughty deed, a nuisance desire, but that teacher hasn’t gotten out of his head the entire day. Her words have been burrowing at his head like a worm, like he’s done something wrong. Touched a stove he shouldn’t have.

The scale glows faintly and his phone finally rings.

“Hi Dad,” he says softly. 

Amos sputters on the other end of the line. “Chr-Chrysophilius—! What happened, are you okay?!”

“…Yes,” he lies. It’s only a lie in the sense he is never mentally well. But he is always physically fine. Should he be able to tell others that his heart hurts?

“Then why on earth did you call me using the—?! That’s only for emergencies! I’ve told you this before!”

“I got homesick again,” he squeaks. 

There is a pause. Chrysophilius can hear the clamor of a party dripping through the white screen held up to his ear, bubbly like a soda water with citrus in it. Even then though, Amos’s sigh is louder.

“…Chrysophilius, could this not have waited until later…?”

“It’s lights out time,” he replies shakily. The longer this goes on, the heavier his chest becomes. 

“Right—your sleep is important—um…”

Chrysophilius shoves the box back underneath his bed, but not without pulling out a small statue of a dog. He rolls it over in his hands, marveling at how it seems to faintly glow despite the dark.

Amos gave this to him last year for his birthday.

“Did…anything cause this?” That voice shivers uncertainly. “Do you need me to come over? I can’t do this weekend, it will have to be next—//maybe//, I don’t know, Percival set up four different auctions for me to host, so I’m nearly besides myself on time—”

“I want to attend an auction…!” Chrysophilius’s  eyes light up thinking about all of the possibilities there. He covers his mouth quickly, realizing he’ll be caught if he’s any louder than this. “…I-I want to attend an auction. Iris gets to go all the t-time.”

Amos sighs. “Iris is…special. She has to go. Besides, she’s older than you, so she can take care of herself—”

“Please…”

He turns the dog over in his hands. It used to float in an hourglass, but a moon-shaped rock and a girl from a painting turned that inside out and made it metal instead. What a magical time, what a magical moment…

There’s more like that waiting for him, isn’t there? 

Iris always talked about it…she was practically made of it. That wonder, that mystery. Chrysophilius kept getting told he needed to take it slow, that he had to keep reading about it, but he wanted it now! He wanted it now!

He wanted it now…

//I want Dad to show me stuff like Iris’s father does with her…//

He mentioned that once to Amos, and at such a notion, he went very pale. Said nothing with a frown as he hugged him close and pulled him onto his lap, taking out a little silicon ball from his pocket that he pressed a button to turn into a butterfly. A butterfly with golden wings and platinum joints, with little flecks of blue fire following its mechanical movements around. It hissed steam when it had to be put back into its original form.

Cool technology too…it was kind of like the new models of phones they were making now. The ones with touch screens, as opposed to the landlines with handles he saw when he was younger. Or those big clunky boxes he saw in old movies.

“…I don’t want you to get hurt,” Amos says again. Sternly, with a tone Chrysophilius hates, because it’s the only time he sounds like he’s really trying to be a dad.

He wants to cry, but he can’t. Boys don’t cry. He’ll be improper for doing so. His dad doesn’t cry, yeah—so he shouldn’t do that over wanting to see him. He’s just…stupid, right?

Stupid enough to let all of that show to the teacher…Chrysophilius didn’t think anyone would care about his family situation. Writing that poem felt like he was threading something he shouldn’t have, talking about something he could get away with like a child eating too many cookies from the jar. It was fun until someone notice, fun until now when he was realizing his school didn’t care enough to make Amos call him more.

“…Please,” he says again, and that’s all he can manage with his meager hope. It’s all he can do as he clutches that dog in his hands through a blanket. His voice breaks, but he fights back tears valiantly.

He can only think about that poem in his head. He can only think about how he wrote it in between watching anime from a special USB Iris had made for him. Forget just stuff from this universe—what about anime from the fifth dimension?

(He couldn’t understand what was happening besides there being hot starfish people.)

Nothing is said as Chrysophilius yawns and his heart sinks. It fizzes and sputters, like a tablet to the bottom of a champagne glass. The chatter of the party buzzes in his ears in the background of the call.

“…Next break,” Amos says. “That will give me enough time—though it may not be an auction. I don’t know my schedule. That’s what, two weeks?”

“Fall break starts on Monday,” Chrysophilius whispers flatly.

Amos hisses under his breath.

“Goddamnit, goddamnit—”

//He forgot my schedule again,// Chrysophilius thinks to himself. 

“//Goddamnit—//”

His voice strains weakly, waxily and as sand is washed away by the waves. Chrysophilius deflates until that tenor voice perks back up again, full of annoyance.

“Fuck, okay, be ready by Monday. //Please//.”

Full of annoyance, but so full of promise. Lucky for him, Amos kept the few promises he made. (But why?)

“I need you to be //ready// as soon as I pick you up. We will be flying out to Johannesburg on our private jet, understand? Don’t worry about getting breakfast from school, you can have something on the plane. Sorbet for breakfast, as a treat.”

//Sorbet for breakfast, as a treat.// Chrysophilius smiles wide, nodding like Amos can hear him. Somehow, he gets the memo.

“Splendid. I have to go now—”

A woman’s voice chatters over the phone. She sounds properly peeved, as if she’s been waiting on something. Chrysophilius hangs up as soon as he hears breathy kissing, a shudder running down his spine. 

Ew. Gross.

…But also he wouldn’t mind a girl doing that to him. Does he have to wait until marriage for that?

Was that why Amos was so busy? He was keeping that lady waiting?

…Well, as long as she was nice. Chrysophilius never minded the other women in Amos’s life so long as they smiled at him when they saw him. Derry, his favorite, even sent him Christmas cards.

That couldn’t be said for his mother…

But there was no need to think about her tonight. Not before bed, anyway. Best not to dwell on bad omens.

Chrysophilius shuts his phone off and puts the dog statue underneath his pillow. The dragon scale he used slowly dissipates as the world turns, as the night crawls on and those beady little silver eyes glow.

He doesn’t know what it is, but smiles as he thinks he’ll ask Iris about it. She’ll be so nice in telling him; she’s going to give that big fanged smile she always does. In that snappy black suit of hers as well, a suit he’ll get to wear soon! When he’s eighteen, he’ll get one too! Everything’s going to change when he becomes a grownup, everything’s going to get better, he’ll stop being sad, surely. Having a job seemed to keep all the adults around him so busy—

And he’d get to see his dad more too! No more school to get in the way.

No more school to get in the way…

He sighs and closes his eyes. Sleep is important, but he wants to be happy.
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Happiness Can’t Come From Assignments

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