When I left the dorm that day I wasn’t sure how the night was going to end. I had a loaded revolver stuffed under my shirt as I left the room I called home. The very halls and even the derelict stairwell seemed to hold the truth. I walked outside and could smell the sweet air. The sky was a pale blue with only the faint wisps of clouds in the air. The cold unchanging brick of the dormitory made an impenetrable façade, hiding the wealth of knowledge and hope contained within it’s walls. I walked out away from the building across the neatly cut grass, trimmed hedges and pruned trees. Great care was taken in this place. A place for everything and everything in it’s place. The countless faceless people that had passed through the halls of this monument to higher learning carried from it the knowledge and power to create and destroy. They had taken the confining borders of the brick and mortar walls, and forced them outward to the world. The school was no longer limited to the campus. It had grown and it now spanned the globe and connected us all.
I took my revolver and pushed it further into my belt as I part ran, part hopped, and part walked across the dive and down the parking lot to my car. I pulled my gun out and set it on the passenger seat. Then I sat down with a heavy thud and pulled the door closed behind me. I was no longer part of this cycle of learning. I was disconnected. Now I was going to start my own party. Sure I could stay at the school and party in the dorms with everyone else, and they were great parties, but I was up for something else. Better, worse, different.
I put my key in the ignition and started the engine. I let it warm up a little because I need the get in the practice. It would be getting colder soon, and my car didn’t run well unless it had a chance to get warm. I took my revolver and hid it a little under my leg. I didn’t want anyone to see it sitting in the seat next to me. I put in Evil Empire. The music started to play as I backed my car out and headed for the highway.
I pulled my car out of the lot and onto the street. From there I took the scenic route out of town. Up a large hill with lichen covered rocks that towered over the sides of the road and formed a gateway to the world outside of the calm and orderly town below. As soon as I crested the hills I could see the dark clouds forming on the horizon. I turned off the road and on to the highway and started to head south. The music played on and I could feel myself losing strength. I moved the revolver into my lap and gripped the wheel with both hands. I drove away from the school. As soon as I was clear of the town I pressed the gas pedal down harder. My car speed up to sixty-five. As soon as I pressed the pedal the clouds formed together and blanked the whole area around me in a thick dark veil. The rain drops started to fall on my windshield. I always kept my school books in my car on the weekends so I reached back into the backseat with one hand and pulled the back into the front with me. Using one hand I opened the zipper and reached in for my notebooks. My notebooks contained all the information I had been given during my time at the college now I rolled down my window and through them out to the wind. The storm had picked up now and the notebooks were torn apart as they bounced down the road. The rain came in the window as I forced my car up to eighty-five. Next I reached in and pulled out all my pencils, pens, highlighters and all the other crap they said I needed. I sacrificed them to the storm as well and I felt the rain beating hard against my hand. The car sped to ninety and I cranked up the bass. The bass gave a resounding rumble in response and it became hard to tell the thunder from the bass. The rain pounded down on my car now as I grabbed my backpack with all my books in it. I stuffed them out the window and with them went all the knowledge collected by others and passed on to me. I was now fully ignorant and had no way to return to the school. The rain coming in the window was so strong I was almost blind. I looked down as the speedometer infringed on the one-hundred mark. I picked the revolver up out of my lap and held it to my head. I was nearing the cross roads ahead. The turn to the left would lead down through some small towns and eventually back into the town the held my dormitory. The right path would take me back to my home town and back to the rest of the world. The sky was so pitch black now that not even my headlights could penetrate the darkness. I pulled the trigger and my car, my body and all that was with it continued straight through the intersection and crashed into the ditch.
I feel this story needs a short explanation so I put these few sentences here, to show the point that some may be missing. If we turn away from our schools and education, this force that binds us, knowledge. Then we open ourselves up to corruptions that will eventually destroy us.