The Thrill of the Hunt

“All I can say is that fifty per­cent of what­ever a girl says is a lie” said John as he took a bite of his PBandJ sandwich.

“I mean seri­ously if she says that she likes a guy but can’t go out with him because she doesn’t have enough time, you know that she’s noth­ing but a damned liar” he con­tin­ued his mouth still full with sandwich.

“I think you’re just tak­ing the wrong approach with girls. You’ve had like what? Five this year, and it’s not even win­ter break yet. Maybe there’s a rea­son for why girls lie to you or con­stantly break up with you” retorted Fran­cis as he sipped the last vapors from his cup of soda. John swal­lowed, and looked Fran­cis eye to eye, seri­ous­ness plas­tered all over his face.

“Maybe my quan­tity this year is due solely in part to a sig­nif­i­cant lack of qual­ity on the female side. I know you out of all peo­ple don’t have any expe­ri­ence with girls, but from an unbi­ased per­spec­tive you have to admit that I’m mak­ing all the right moves, it’s just that the ladies aren’t respond­ing” declared John as he went back to chomp­ing on his PBandJ.

Fran­cis laughed sar­cas­ti­cally. What John was say­ing was true. He was a Junior in High­school, sev­en­teen years old, had a car, a job, played foot­ball, and gui­tar. Yet despite all of this he had never had con­tact with a girl before. John on the other hand could ver­ily muster up money for lunch, played no sports, had no extracur­ric­u­lars, yet he was with plenty of girls. To be quite hon­est he DID make all the right moves with girls, but for what­ever rea­son they never responded prop­erly. It was all very dis­cour­ag­ing for John, espe­cially after this lat­est defeat.

“Look man, if I can tell you one thing and one thing only about girls. It’s that the best part about get­ting a girl is the thrill of the hunt.” said John as he stood to throw out his trash.

“The what?” ques­tioned Fran­cis as he fol­lowed John to the trashcan.

“You know, the hunt. The part before you and the girl actu­ally get together. It’s when you have no real com­mit­ment to each other, but you know somebody’s out there who likes you. It’s the point in which your act­ing your best to try to impress her, while she’s doing the same to try to get you. It’s really quite fun.” answered John as he looked around the bustling cafe­te­ria room.

“To be hon­est John, I think it’s a bit weird that you keep talk­ing to me about about girls like this. Don’t get me wrong man, it’s all good advice to hear. But it’s just so com­pul­sive and fix­ated on girls, I mean there’s more to life then females.” stated Fran­cis as he began to lose inter­est in the subject.

“Right… well one day you’ll run into a girl and you’ll feel exactly the same way as I do. Then you’ll come to me every­day at lunch and tell me how you feel about this girl. Once you break up with her you’ll tell me how much you hated her, and how much she’s lied to you. Then you will go off spew­ing your advice to kids that have never had a girl. Now these kids they don’t really care about what you have to say because they’re vir­gins, and are still igno­rant in the world. But you know what? You won’t care because you’re a ladies man and you won’t stop until your rag­ing desires are ful­filled. Trust me on this, it’ll hap­pen your time just hasn’t come yet” pro­claimed John as the bell rang.

The cafe­te­ria room soon exploded with sound as stu­dents seemed to simul­ta­ne­ously stand up and file out of the room. In the chaos of such a wave of peo­ple, John and Fran­cis parted ways as their classes were in sep­a­rate wings of the school. Fran­cis made his way to Alge­bra 2, a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult sub­ject as he wasn’t gifted in math. Despite this, his teacher was as enter­tain­ing and inter­est­ing as you could get with math, and gen­er­ally he found the class enjoy­able. He passed the thresh­old into the room with a slew of other stu­dents return­ing from lunch. Fran­cis took his place unas­sum­ingly in the back of the room, and the class began.

“This week class, we’re going to try to do some­thing a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent from what you usu­ally find in a math class. If you look around, you’re going to notice that we have thirty four kids in this room. Con­ve­niently enough, we’re split evenly boys between girls. What we’re going to do is com­pare the dif­fer­ences between the female mind, and the male mind when it comes to math.” started the teacher.

The class­room soon became rest­less, stu­dents were shoot­ing glances at each other, nod­ding, sig­nal­ing, mouthing words, all in the attempt to silently express their thoughts on the mat­ter. Fran­cis him­self felt a bit uneasy with the project, but on the other hand he found it as an intrigu­ing endeavor, and def­i­nitely a needed escape from stan­dard­ized Alge­bra II.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. I will ran­domly assign a pair to work as part­ners. Through­out this entire week you’re going to work in class doing math assign­ments with each other. I want you to note the dif­fer­ences in approach and cal­cu­la­tion between you and your part­ner when it comes to doing these assign­ments. Out­side of class, you and your part­ner have to spend lunch together. I don’t care if you do it with friends, by your­selves, or what­ever, I just want you two to note the dif­fer­ences in social inter­ac­tion between each other. Finally, after school you and your part­ner are required to talk to each other for at least a half an hour. You can talk to each other about any­thing and you can do it over the inter­net, by tele­phone, heck you can even write telegrams to each other. I just want you to notice the dif­fer­ences between the way the male and female think.” con­tin­ued the teacher as he rec­og­nized the class’ unrest in regards to the assignment.

“So let’s get started shall we?” final­ized the teacher as he began to pair up students.

Mass chaos spread through­out the class­room as cou­ples were paired up. Some stu­dents who absolutely hated each other found them­selves as part­ners for the week, while boys who would never have a chance with a girl found them­selves with some of the pret­ti­est pieces of human­ity ever devised. Regard­less of the pair­ings, every­one had a com­ment to make, and each new pair seemed to evoke an uproar from the mem­bers of the class. After each pair was announced the two part­ners made their way towards each other, pre­sent­ing them­selves as a spec­ta­cle to the onlook­ers. The teacher made his way to Francis.

“Last, but not least, we have our final pair of Fran­cis, and Emme­line.” pro­claimed the teacher as the class responded to the newly estab­lished partnership.

Fran­cis stood up plainly, his hands on his sides, but his pos­ture nat­u­rally con­fi­dent. He was tall, at about six feet, thin, but toned from the weight train­ing of foot­ball. His brown hair was buzzed, a side effect of foot­ball. His wide blue eyes stood as a main dis­tin­guish­ing fig­ure in his oth­er­wise ordi­nary face. He glanced over at the only unpaired girl, who had just learned was Emme­line. She rose from her seat slowly and cau­tious as if not to make too much of a state­ment. She was a fair height of about five feet eight inches, thin but her body obvi­ously that of an athlete’s. Square, and thickly black rimmed glasses clearly sup­ple­mented her nat­ural com­plex­ion by giv­ing her a look of intel­li­gence as well as curios­ity. Silky black hair, which fell just past her shoul­ders com­pli­mented her darkly rimmed glasses. Her skin was of a mod­est and nat­ural tan, obvi­ously one from being in the sun often. Her wom­anly fea­tures and curves were desir­able, but not too extrav­a­gant as to give her­self imme­di­ately to the eyes of males.

Fran­cis’ foot­ball friends roared encour­age­ment at him, while the girls in the class incited a quiet but con­fi­dent Eme­line. As the two made their way towards each other they couldn’t help but smile at the sus­pense which had been brought by their pair­ing. Sex­ual ten­sion raged through­out the room, as hor­mones and youth pumped vibrantly through­out the veins of the young stu­dents. The unre­strained energy which seemed to sub­con­sciously gush from the hearts of the stu­dents was one which could not be ignored. For the fools love was in the air, but the wise knew that it was all a lie.

The teacher continued.

“Okay, now that everyone’s part­nered up I want you and your part­ner to find a spot and intro­duce your­selves to each other. I want both of you to keep a jour­nal detail­ing your obser­va­tions in regards to your part­ner. You will turn this jour­nal in at the end of the week to be graded.”

Like a crack of thun­der going off in the dead of night, the room blis­tered with noise as the cou­ples began to intro­duce each other. Fran­cis turned to Emme­line and smiled.

“So where do you want to go?” he asked in a calm but cor­dial voice.

Emme­line smiled in return and responded “Right here’s fine”

“Sounds good.” replied Fran­cis as he stretched his arms behind his head to make him­self comfortable.

Emme­line smiled once again, her pos­ture was that of relaxed, con­trol. Her body lan­guage was unas­sum­ing but beneath it one could feel signs of a great indi­vid­u­al­ity wait­ing to be unleashed.

“So I’ve never had you in any of my other classes, your name is Fran­cis right?” started Emme­line jovially.

Fran­cis gave out a cheer­ful laugh at her observation.

“Yeah, and I guess your name is Emme­line?” he retorted playfully.

Emme­line gave out a light laugh more out of response to Fran­cis’ play­ful nature as opposed to his words.

“ That’s right… to be hon­est, I feel kind of bad that I didn’t know your name until now. It makes this whole thing all really awk­ward” said Emme­line as she grew com­fort­able with Fran­cis’ personality.

Fran­cis laughed again, this time out of response to Emmeline’s hon­esty in con­junc­tion with another truth­ful observation.

“Don’t worry about it, that’s what I get for sit­ting in the back and not say­ing a word all year. To be hon­est though, I don’t know anyone’s name in this class aside from a few of the guys on the foot­ball team. So I guess we’re on the same boat here.” con­tin­ued Fran­cis sincerely.

Emme­line let out a greater laugh and continued.

“That’s the prob­lem with math classes these days. There’s just not enough social inter­ac­tion, you don’t get to know any­one and you can hardly make any new friends.”

Fran­cis smiled at the great irony in Emmeline’s statement.

“On the con­trary, I have a feel­ing we’ll be get­ting to know each quite well in this class” responded Fran­cis, a wry smile of humor still on his face as a result of what Emme­line had just said.

Emme­line also smiled as she real­ized the irony in her statement.

“I guess you’re right.” she replied let­ting out yet another laugh.

As the class con­tin­ued Fran­cis and Emme­line delved lightly into their per­sonal lives. For the most part, their con­ver­sa­tion con­sisted of ice breaker top­ics. Fam­ily size, teach­ers, sports, extracur­ric­u­lars, favorite sub­ject, favorite T.V. show, food, and place of res­i­dence. From what Fran­cis had gath­ered Emme­line came from a rather large fam­ily. She was the third out of four chil­dren with two older broth­ers, one twenty, the other nine­teen, and one younger brother who was twelve. She was on the swim team, but due to her brother’s influ­ence she loved foot­ball and other con­tact sports. She played piano, and greatly enjoyed clas­si­cal music, how­ever her ears were also accus­tomed to the heavy metal and rap which her broth­ers pre­ferred. Her favorite sub­ject was Eng­lish as she planned to be a fic­tion writer. Like Fran­cis, Eme­line also found math dif­fi­cult and did rather poorly in the class. Eme­line had a vast love for a series of girl dra­mas on T.V. all of which Fran­ics had never heard of before. Emme­line had no par­tic­u­lar pref­er­ence for food say­ing that she liked vir­tu­ally any­thing. Her rea­son­ing being that in a fam­ily with all boys, a girl couldn’t afford to be picky about what she ate. Finally, Emme­line lived in a nice neigh­bor­hood only a few blocks away from his own house.

The bell rang, and the clamor which over­whelmed the room esca­lated slightly as stu­dents rushed to leave the class­room. As stu­dents were mak­ing the way out, the teacher screamed at the top of his voice.

“DON’T FORGET TO TALK TO YOUR PARTNER TONIGHT!”

At this reminder, Emme­line turned towards Fran­cis as they were both stand­ing up to leave.

“Here’s my phone num­ber” she said warm­heart­edly as her soft hands gen­tly reached for Fran­cis’ hand.

Upon first touch, Fran­cis felt the warmth and smooth­ness of Emmeline’s skin spread through­out him as his chest filled with excite­ment. Her pen was as nim­ble and as grace­ful as he had ever felt. Not pierc­ingly painful, but strong enough to make a mark on his rough, white hands. As Emme­line fin­ished writ­ing the dig­its to her phone num­ber, she politely let go of his hand and smiled up at him.

“There you go, I really have to get to class soon, so can you call me tonight?” asked Emme­line with a smile which invig­o­rated Fran­cis’ heart.

“You got it.” he replied with a wide grin.

“Cool, talk to you tonight” final­ized Emme­line as she turned towards the door and left.

Fran­cis paraded hap­pily to his final class of the day, Chem­istry. As he made his way to the lab­o­ra­tory his heart and mind were full of incom­pre­hen­si­ble thoughts, if you could call them that. An odd seem­ingly end­less pos­i­tive force pul­sated through­out him. His mind felt uncan­nily sat­is­fied, his heart as pure as it had ever been, his body lighter then ever. His ears echoed with the words and voice of Emme­line. While behind his eyes stood the image of her beau­ti­ful smile des­tined to be inscribed in his mind for all of eter­nity. He ques­tioned the newly found phe­nom­ena, try­ing to log­i­cally deduce and ana­lyze such an expe­ri­ence. Yet logic is pow­er­less when con­fronted with love, and inside Fran­cis new that for the first time in his entire exis­tence his whole being stood united in yearn­ing for one thing.

John was wait­ing for Fran­cis out­side the lab, he couldn’t help but notice the wide smile which lus­tered from Fran­cis’ face.

“What hap­pened to you? It looks like you just won the lot­tery.” began John as he delighted in Fran­cis’ pos­i­tive attitude.

“I think I just did” replied Fran­cis as he showed John the seven dig­its inscribed on his hand.

“And so the hunt begins…”

Sins

“2:30″ reported the clock as he stared at it blankly. He resided in his desk, a small prison, within a class­room which was a silent void of human inter­ac­tion. His class­mates mind­lessly crunched num­bers try­ing to race through the last few prob­lems of their assign­ment, while the teacher was busy at her desk answer­ing emails regard­ing kids who were too lazy or too stu­pid to care about school. As he counted each tick of the clock he couldn’t help but chuckle at the futil­ity of all those in the room.

The very prin­ci­ple of school itself was pathetic. Trap a bunch of kids in a room, force feed them use­less facts, and have them regur­gi­tate what they learned through tests. The ones that are par­tic­u­larly good at vom­it­ing go on to Col­lege where they learn to puke big­ger piles of spew, while the ones that aren’t suc­cess­ful get to leave the vom­i­to­rium early. That’s all there is to school, eat­ing crap until your are told to throw it back up again, and look­ing around the room he could eas­ily iden­tify who would and wouldn’t be suc­cess­ful at the game.

An eter­nity passed before the clock reported “2:31″ as he remained perched in his cage. His assign­ment paper was still empty, he didn’t even asso­ciate his name with the crap they were try­ing to feed him. The best of the drones com­pleted the frenzy first as they brought the assign­ment to the front of the room. Each one of them pre­tend­ing to be hum­ble, but in their humil­ity, their arro­gance became all too appar­ent. One of them passed by him glanc­ing at the thin sheet of white and black which lay on his desk with­out even being touched. A look of shock­ing dis­ap­proval was shot at him, but he absorbed it just as sponge soaks up water.

The frenzy was at its cli­max as the clock declared “2:34″. The weak­est of the drones strug­gled des­per­ately to stuff them­selves as they unknow­ingly com­mit­ted the sec­ond of the Seven Deadly Sins. Like sheep they orga­nized them­selves into a sin­gle filed line as one by one they sub­mit­ted their assign­ment to the front of the room. The sound of books clos­ing, bags zip­ping, and papers rustling broke the seal of silence which had so strongly held the room. Their eyes like a pack of starved Wolves now focused on only one thing, the clock, as it ticked its final seconds.

Using the hyp­no­sis of hunger to his advan­tage, he freed him­self from his self imposed Quar­an­tine as he made his way to the front of the room. The drones, all fix­ated with the sec­onds lead­ing to free­dom, had hardly noticed him han­dling the pile of waste which laid piti­fully at the front of the room. Free­dom was just sec­onds away , their thirst, hunger, and glut­tony at the peak, boast­ing that noth­ing could rup­ture the bub­ble of lust which had encap­su­lated them. A thun­der­ous roar echoed through­out the room as the sounds of torn paper refracted off the walls and into the the ears of the drones. Their bub­bles frac­tur­ing at the inter­pre­ta­tion of such an exclu­sive sound.

“2:35″ pro­claimed the bell as the clock sup­ple­mented this claim visu­ally, but the drones they did not move. The prod­uct of their lust, glut­tony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride stood before them shred­ded into mean­ing­less, irrepara­ble strands of white. One of them dared to ask “What are you doing?” and he responded “Starv­ing you”.