The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
‘Invasion Response 101’ by Alejandro Bastidas
Most days I don’t know why I even bother with the institute. My eye darts from the miserable professor and the metal thermos he grips with religious devotion — certain that it has bourbon instead of coffee inside — to the miserable kids around me making their greatest efforts to excel in their class. It’s not as if any of them are going anywhere except the inside of a lab to be dissected for testing. The principal has the audacity to enforce a class called “Invasion Response” in which we learn what to do in case of an attack by the Conquistador Federation, knowing damn well that a Government Bomb falling from the sky will level the city before the first snob in this classroom gets the chance to react.
Every time I tell Sister Rosalía that I should be doing something significant (like threatening witnesses that might expose our war crimes like our ancestors did in the 21st century) she beats her list of arguments into the core of my brain with her baton. I attend the classroom to avoid future concussions. And also to sell enhanced Violet Harlequin to the rich kids of the institute who finance my luxurious tastes. Ever since the old governor who bought me shoes and felines in exchange for sexual favors got assassinated, I was forced to find a new and more stable source of income. And I say stable because drug-addiction and a failed State go hand in hand, always. The demand remains sky-high.
The professor is convinced that I’m paying attention to his lecture of “Identifying Conquistadors in Hiding” when in truth I’m updating my spreadsheet to figure out who still owes me Silvers and needs to get their metacarpals smashed with a hammer. This month it’s only one of the freshmen who figured he could fool the one-eyed foreigner in the institute. Little does he know that I’m watching him this very second. I start poking him with my pencil to initiate the threats but I stop as the veins on his forehead bulge like worms and his skull bursts like cheap piñata. The lifeless body collapses upon the desk as an infinite gush of blood soaks the classroom floor. A few drops land on my forehead and the girl besides me shrieks in terror. I assess the scene with odd fascination, not concerned about the murder of an innocent kid, but rather the timing of the event.
I never got the memo saying that the invasion would begin today.
My real professors used to preach that the war to end all wars would begin among the clouds with metallic bringers of death, and never in their wildest dreams had they theorized that it would begin with a junkie’s head exploding during a useless lecture. Sister Rosalía forgot to mention that part before assigning me to this mission.
Now, the entire country will succumb to a cataclysm and the little bugs in here will not live to see another sunrise. But this humble servant with his single eyeball will prevail. Perks of being born in the Federation. My superiors wanted me to study how the enemy would prepare for an invasion but didn’t have the decency to wait until my final report reached HQ. Of course not. Warmongers are impatient. The reckless bastards chose to go ahead and send their micro-soldiers to attack unarmed civilians. It wasn’t the first time and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
So be it. If we’re at war now, it means I don’t have to sit through another minute of this lecture. A pity to know all these students got themselves hooked to insane debts just to access this incomplete education that will do them more harm and good in the end. I am their final test. If anything I’m doing them a favor by sparing them from the horrors of a full-scale occupation by foreign invaders. I smile at the panic spreading among my classmates and jam my pencil into the neck of the nameless idiot sitting behind me.
