Post by Nakki on Sept 30, 2009 18:05:38 GMT -5
OKAY, I have had this thing in my head for like... A MILLION YEARS holyshit. I'm gonna go wild with it and write it out for the hell of it cuz I'm bored. XD Enjoy whatever ensues!
---------------------------------------------------------------
"...And that, class, is how animals' bodies adapt to air pressure in the atmosphere of Earth, and what these adaptations do to their body shapes. Start packing up now, everyone!" the science teacher, Ms. Whetter, said proudly to her class of sixth graders. At the words, 'packing up,' they suddenly erupted into a small wave of sound, and she supervised their work as they shoved pencils and papers back into binders, chattering to themselves. "Remember, everyone," she said over the din; "Two classes from now, we're having dissection day! Write it in your planners so you remember to bring old shirts and such to protect your clothes."
The children were silent for a second, and then suddenly burst into sound.
"Dissection day?"
"What does that mean again?"
"We're cutting open dead animals then!"
"Eeeewwww!"
These and other exclamations chorused around the room.
"What are we dissecting, again?" a voice piped up, and the crowd of children went quiet again. All eyes were turned to the voice's owner. He was a lanky child, tall for a sixth grader, and a little unsettling. His eyes, one poison green and the other bright red, gazed at the teacher with an air of discomforting curiousity, and shone out like boat lights from his icy blue-skinned face. He pushed a little of his messy, cropped black hair out of his face and said, "I want to be fully prepared for the class, Ms. Whetter," with a smile, displaying his sharp teeth.
In a feat of unnatural courage for the young teacher, Ms. Whetter said calmly, "Oh- we're dissecting frogs, Cali. Bullfrogs, to be exact."
"Ohhh. Neat!" the boy replied, his grin growing wide to the point of near absurdity, and he finally began to store his papers away with the same vigor as the other children, who quietly resumed their talking and soon were back to normal level.
There was something about Caligosto Loboto that put them on edge; something about the way he was made it clear that you shouldn't talk over him. Sure, he was nice enough; people who didn't know him well or only knew him at a distance often found him rather charming. It was when you were in close quarters with him that you noticed how odd he was. It wasn't an exceptional oddness; just a small hinting, every now and then, that you shouldn't underestimate this intelligent, strange sixth grader.
We shall delve deeper into the unsettling weirdness that is Caligosto Loboto as we follow him home from school...
The lanky boy stepped lithely off the bus, which pulled away in a small cloud of dust, and fairly skipped up the steps of the old house where he'd been dropped off. It was a Friday, meaning he would be spending the entire weekend with his mother. Caligosto quite liked his mother- not to say that he didn't like his father. He loved both of them equally, but his father- a soft spoken, kind, and bookish man working as a well-respected orderly at a nearby sanatorium- just wasn't as interesting as his mother, really.
"Mooooo-ooooom! Where aaaaare youuuu?" Cali called through the house, dropping his backpack by the front door and walking down the hall. He suddenly heard a clang and a crash from somewhere downstairs. "Ahhhh," he said to himself, and carefully opened the basement door. His mother was in her lab again.
He stepped down the stairs softly, careful to not cause any excessive noise. His mother was particular about the noise level down there. Many of the instruments down here were very sensitive to just about everything- at the moment he stepped cautiously over a few thick wires. "Mooom?"
"Ah, Caligosto, you're home!" he heard his mother's high, witchlike voice call; his head swung towards the source of the voice, and he noted with some happiness that his mother was behind the opaque shower curtain that served as the separating mark between her dissection room and the rest of the lab. Now she shoved the curtain aside and and pulled her facemask and hairnet off, letting her wavy black hair down and showing her sharp teeth- twice as sharp as Cali's.
Marissa Loboto's red eyes sparked at her son, her skin the same shade as his, as she walked over to him and gave him a half hug. "Excuse how messy I am; this subject kept on struggling," she said nonchalantly, and Cali nodded in agreement, noting the bloodied smock she was wearing. "How was school?"
"School was good, nothing much to talk about. Which subject are you doing?" he asked, attempting to peek behind his mother and into the dissection room. She blocked his view, though.
"Ah-ah-ah-aaah," she trilled playfully, ruffling the boy's hair, "no lookiiiing! You'll see him when he's done. If you're really wondering, it's the beaver." At the mention of this, Cali's eyes suddenly widened.
"OH! Mom! I just remembered!" he said suddenly as his mother turned to finish her dissection.
"Yes?"
"My science teacher is holding a dissection class two classes from today! She said we were doing bullfrogs!"
"Bullfrogs! How lovely! I remember when I was your age, catching frogs and fish and snipping them open with my mother's sewing shears..."
"Mom, I was wondering... could you help me find a bullfrog?"
Marissa paused, looking at her son with her head cocked to one side. "What for?"
"I wanna bring one in," Cali said, his eyes shining. "If you give permission, I'll get to do it, right?"
Inwardly, Marissa felt like grinning, which might have scared the boy if he wasn't her son and therefore wasn't used to it. "Of course, dear," she said sweetly, walking back over to him and ruffling his hair again. "I'll write you a note and you can give it to your teacher whenever."
"Thanks, mommy," Caligosto said with an almost sickeningly sweet tone in his voice, hugging his mother happily.
"Now, for the specimen: are we talking live or dead?"
--------------
Ms. Whetter's class was abuzz with excitement and dread, that Thursday afternoon; it was finally Dissection Day. Almost all were wearing old shirts, some torn, some paint stained; a few girls were bawling because they'd forgotten their shirts and would now have to risk getting their pretty little sweaters and dress shirts covered in frog guts. Caligosto had a shoebox in his lap. He fidgeted and grinned absently, thinking to himself of the fun that would be had.
Finally, their teacher strode in, wearing plastic gloves and carrying several things- a box of hair nets, a box of plastic gloves, a cardboard box full of dissection plates, a safe container full of pins and scalpels, and a large plastic tub, presumably full of amphibian cadavers to be cut into tiny bits. "Alright, class!" she said brightly, setting these things down. "Everybody line up with your partners and get your materials!"
Soon the class was settling in, getting everything ready for the step-by-step dissection. Caligosto's partner, one of the girls who'd forgotten her shirt, wrinkled her nose when she smelled the putrid odor coming from the open tub of frogs. "Uuuugh! What is that smell?" she whined, covering her nose with her hands.
"Formaldehyde, Ann," Cali said smartly, giving her a quick grin as he went off to get their materials. He carried his cardboard box with him, and quickly came back with their materials. The girl, Ann, grudgingly pulled on her gloves and hairnet, and Cali did so with great enthusiasm; then the two waited for further commands from their teacher.
"This is gonna be great," Cali murmured to himself.
"This is gonna be disgusting," Ann grumbled. "I am not touching that thing, okay?" she said to Cali, who gave a curt nod. Satisfied, the girl leaned in her chair to voice her complaints to her best friend, another who'd forgotten her shirt.
"Alright class! Take out the packets we handed out last class," Ms. Whetter called, and the children did so. "The first incision- that means 'cut', as you know- will be from the base of the neck, down to the bottom of the belly. Look at the picture in your packet to see what I mean if you don't get it. Go fast and clean, guys, but be careful with the scalpels," she called over the class as the boys set to work. Just about none of the girls wanted to touch those horrible, smelly-
Suddenly, Ann screamed. "Our frog just moved!"
"Don't be silly, Ann, it's not moving," Cali chided her, and began to aim for his cut again.
"It's looking at me!" she squealed, shrinking back in her chair.
"Totally illogical. I would know if it was."
"It's wiggling its' feet!"
"It is not! Stop lying." Cali was getting annoyed with this Ann girl, when suddenly...
"Croak??"
The entire class fell silent as a graveyard. Ann and all the other girls were pale as ghosts, riveted to their seats with their eyes locked on Caligosto and his frog; the boys' faces were frozen, turned towards the odd boy as well. Even Ms. Whetter was white as a sheet, frozen pointing to the board where pictures of all the diagrams in the packet were posted.
Caligosto looked up sheepishly, his hands still poised to slice the live frog's belly open. "Uh... oops?"
All at once, the class burst into sounds; all of them were loud, and all of them were screams. Girls jumped up and ran to the far corner of the room; boys shouted in surprise and leaned forward trying to see Cali's frog, while still reluctant to get any closer to this odd boy who had a live frog. Ms. Whetter blanched even moreso, screamed, and ran to Cali's desk.
"C- Cali!! Why is your frog alive?!"
"I brought it from home!... My mom said I could!" Cali explained as his teacher looked at him, horror in her expression.
"Come with me. Now."
--------------
Caligosto's father, Adam Smithe-Loboto, sighed as he walked out towards his car, brushing his blonde hair out of his pale face and pinching the bridge of his nose to help ease his oncoming headache. Then he pushed his glasses back up onto his face and climbed into the car, glancing his son in the backseat. Cali looked incredibly dejected, his hands between his knees and his eyes cast towards the floor of the car.
"I'm sorry, dad," he said in a tiny voice.
"You don't have to be, Cali," Adam said a little tiredly, turning to face the boy. "I guess you didn't really know any better, what with your mother's... hobbies..."
"How long am I suspended for?"
"Two weeks. Not too bad, right?"
"Yeah..." Cali looked out the window sadly, feeling too ashamed to look at his father. Adam hesitated, then placed a soft hand on his son's shoulder. Cali's eyes met his father's soft light green ones.
"Hang in there, Cal. You'll be alright. It was just another innocent mistake." His father smiled at him with his trademark sincerity, and Cali's mouth upturned minutely. Mr. Smithe-Loboto started the car, and they pulled out of the school parking lot.
"Haha... Mom's gonna kill me..." Cali remarked with a quiet chuckle. "They made me let the frog free, you know. She's not gonna be happy that I had to let it go..."
"She can find other frogs, Cali," Adam said firmly, glancing at his son in the rear-view mirror. "You don't have to replace it."
"Mmm," Caligosto said, and fell silent, looking out the window. Adam regarded his son, a little sadness in his gaze. Adam and Marissa's divorce had been hard for him, and only about a year and a half ago; and yet Cali was still so distant. A small part of Adam's mind worried that it was that exposure to his mother that was making him so closed towards him; that Marissa may be turning him against him, making him so... odd... but no, Cali was still perfectly loving towards him. He just wasn't talking much.
And bringing live, probably mutated frogs to school for dissection classes.
Adam sighed inwardly, and quietly glanced at his son again. Things will get better, he vowed to himself, and it was somewhat a promise to Caligosto. Things will get better for you, Cali.
-------------------------------
DE EEEEEEND!
---------------------------------------------------------------
"...And that, class, is how animals' bodies adapt to air pressure in the atmosphere of Earth, and what these adaptations do to their body shapes. Start packing up now, everyone!" the science teacher, Ms. Whetter, said proudly to her class of sixth graders. At the words, 'packing up,' they suddenly erupted into a small wave of sound, and she supervised their work as they shoved pencils and papers back into binders, chattering to themselves. "Remember, everyone," she said over the din; "Two classes from now, we're having dissection day! Write it in your planners so you remember to bring old shirts and such to protect your clothes."
The children were silent for a second, and then suddenly burst into sound.
"Dissection day?"
"What does that mean again?"
"We're cutting open dead animals then!"
"Eeeewwww!"
These and other exclamations chorused around the room.
"What are we dissecting, again?" a voice piped up, and the crowd of children went quiet again. All eyes were turned to the voice's owner. He was a lanky child, tall for a sixth grader, and a little unsettling. His eyes, one poison green and the other bright red, gazed at the teacher with an air of discomforting curiousity, and shone out like boat lights from his icy blue-skinned face. He pushed a little of his messy, cropped black hair out of his face and said, "I want to be fully prepared for the class, Ms. Whetter," with a smile, displaying his sharp teeth.
In a feat of unnatural courage for the young teacher, Ms. Whetter said calmly, "Oh- we're dissecting frogs, Cali. Bullfrogs, to be exact."
"Ohhh. Neat!" the boy replied, his grin growing wide to the point of near absurdity, and he finally began to store his papers away with the same vigor as the other children, who quietly resumed their talking and soon were back to normal level.
There was something about Caligosto Loboto that put them on edge; something about the way he was made it clear that you shouldn't talk over him. Sure, he was nice enough; people who didn't know him well or only knew him at a distance often found him rather charming. It was when you were in close quarters with him that you noticed how odd he was. It wasn't an exceptional oddness; just a small hinting, every now and then, that you shouldn't underestimate this intelligent, strange sixth grader.
We shall delve deeper into the unsettling weirdness that is Caligosto Loboto as we follow him home from school...
The lanky boy stepped lithely off the bus, which pulled away in a small cloud of dust, and fairly skipped up the steps of the old house where he'd been dropped off. It was a Friday, meaning he would be spending the entire weekend with his mother. Caligosto quite liked his mother- not to say that he didn't like his father. He loved both of them equally, but his father- a soft spoken, kind, and bookish man working as a well-respected orderly at a nearby sanatorium- just wasn't as interesting as his mother, really.
"Mooooo-ooooom! Where aaaaare youuuu?" Cali called through the house, dropping his backpack by the front door and walking down the hall. He suddenly heard a clang and a crash from somewhere downstairs. "Ahhhh," he said to himself, and carefully opened the basement door. His mother was in her lab again.
He stepped down the stairs softly, careful to not cause any excessive noise. His mother was particular about the noise level down there. Many of the instruments down here were very sensitive to just about everything- at the moment he stepped cautiously over a few thick wires. "Mooom?"
"Ah, Caligosto, you're home!" he heard his mother's high, witchlike voice call; his head swung towards the source of the voice, and he noted with some happiness that his mother was behind the opaque shower curtain that served as the separating mark between her dissection room and the rest of the lab. Now she shoved the curtain aside and and pulled her facemask and hairnet off, letting her wavy black hair down and showing her sharp teeth- twice as sharp as Cali's.
Marissa Loboto's red eyes sparked at her son, her skin the same shade as his, as she walked over to him and gave him a half hug. "Excuse how messy I am; this subject kept on struggling," she said nonchalantly, and Cali nodded in agreement, noting the bloodied smock she was wearing. "How was school?"
"School was good, nothing much to talk about. Which subject are you doing?" he asked, attempting to peek behind his mother and into the dissection room. She blocked his view, though.
"Ah-ah-ah-aaah," she trilled playfully, ruffling the boy's hair, "no lookiiiing! You'll see him when he's done. If you're really wondering, it's the beaver." At the mention of this, Cali's eyes suddenly widened.
"OH! Mom! I just remembered!" he said suddenly as his mother turned to finish her dissection.
"Yes?"
"My science teacher is holding a dissection class two classes from today! She said we were doing bullfrogs!"
"Bullfrogs! How lovely! I remember when I was your age, catching frogs and fish and snipping them open with my mother's sewing shears..."
"Mom, I was wondering... could you help me find a bullfrog?"
Marissa paused, looking at her son with her head cocked to one side. "What for?"
"I wanna bring one in," Cali said, his eyes shining. "If you give permission, I'll get to do it, right?"
Inwardly, Marissa felt like grinning, which might have scared the boy if he wasn't her son and therefore wasn't used to it. "Of course, dear," she said sweetly, walking back over to him and ruffling his hair again. "I'll write you a note and you can give it to your teacher whenever."
"Thanks, mommy," Caligosto said with an almost sickeningly sweet tone in his voice, hugging his mother happily.
"Now, for the specimen: are we talking live or dead?"
--------------
Ms. Whetter's class was abuzz with excitement and dread, that Thursday afternoon; it was finally Dissection Day. Almost all were wearing old shirts, some torn, some paint stained; a few girls were bawling because they'd forgotten their shirts and would now have to risk getting their pretty little sweaters and dress shirts covered in frog guts. Caligosto had a shoebox in his lap. He fidgeted and grinned absently, thinking to himself of the fun that would be had.
Finally, their teacher strode in, wearing plastic gloves and carrying several things- a box of hair nets, a box of plastic gloves, a cardboard box full of dissection plates, a safe container full of pins and scalpels, and a large plastic tub, presumably full of amphibian cadavers to be cut into tiny bits. "Alright, class!" she said brightly, setting these things down. "Everybody line up with your partners and get your materials!"
Soon the class was settling in, getting everything ready for the step-by-step dissection. Caligosto's partner, one of the girls who'd forgotten her shirt, wrinkled her nose when she smelled the putrid odor coming from the open tub of frogs. "Uuuugh! What is that smell?" she whined, covering her nose with her hands.
"Formaldehyde, Ann," Cali said smartly, giving her a quick grin as he went off to get their materials. He carried his cardboard box with him, and quickly came back with their materials. The girl, Ann, grudgingly pulled on her gloves and hairnet, and Cali did so with great enthusiasm; then the two waited for further commands from their teacher.
"This is gonna be great," Cali murmured to himself.
"This is gonna be disgusting," Ann grumbled. "I am not touching that thing, okay?" she said to Cali, who gave a curt nod. Satisfied, the girl leaned in her chair to voice her complaints to her best friend, another who'd forgotten her shirt.
"Alright class! Take out the packets we handed out last class," Ms. Whetter called, and the children did so. "The first incision- that means 'cut', as you know- will be from the base of the neck, down to the bottom of the belly. Look at the picture in your packet to see what I mean if you don't get it. Go fast and clean, guys, but be careful with the scalpels," she called over the class as the boys set to work. Just about none of the girls wanted to touch those horrible, smelly-
Suddenly, Ann screamed. "Our frog just moved!"
"Don't be silly, Ann, it's not moving," Cali chided her, and began to aim for his cut again.
"It's looking at me!" she squealed, shrinking back in her chair.
"Totally illogical. I would know if it was."
"It's wiggling its' feet!"
"It is not! Stop lying." Cali was getting annoyed with this Ann girl, when suddenly...
"Croak??"
The entire class fell silent as a graveyard. Ann and all the other girls were pale as ghosts, riveted to their seats with their eyes locked on Caligosto and his frog; the boys' faces were frozen, turned towards the odd boy as well. Even Ms. Whetter was white as a sheet, frozen pointing to the board where pictures of all the diagrams in the packet were posted.
Caligosto looked up sheepishly, his hands still poised to slice the live frog's belly open. "Uh... oops?"
All at once, the class burst into sounds; all of them were loud, and all of them were screams. Girls jumped up and ran to the far corner of the room; boys shouted in surprise and leaned forward trying to see Cali's frog, while still reluctant to get any closer to this odd boy who had a live frog. Ms. Whetter blanched even moreso, screamed, and ran to Cali's desk.
"C- Cali!! Why is your frog alive?!"
"I brought it from home!... My mom said I could!" Cali explained as his teacher looked at him, horror in her expression.
"Come with me. Now."
--------------
Caligosto's father, Adam Smithe-Loboto, sighed as he walked out towards his car, brushing his blonde hair out of his pale face and pinching the bridge of his nose to help ease his oncoming headache. Then he pushed his glasses back up onto his face and climbed into the car, glancing his son in the backseat. Cali looked incredibly dejected, his hands between his knees and his eyes cast towards the floor of the car.
"I'm sorry, dad," he said in a tiny voice.
"You don't have to be, Cali," Adam said a little tiredly, turning to face the boy. "I guess you didn't really know any better, what with your mother's... hobbies..."
"How long am I suspended for?"
"Two weeks. Not too bad, right?"
"Yeah..." Cali looked out the window sadly, feeling too ashamed to look at his father. Adam hesitated, then placed a soft hand on his son's shoulder. Cali's eyes met his father's soft light green ones.
"Hang in there, Cal. You'll be alright. It was just another innocent mistake." His father smiled at him with his trademark sincerity, and Cali's mouth upturned minutely. Mr. Smithe-Loboto started the car, and they pulled out of the school parking lot.
"Haha... Mom's gonna kill me..." Cali remarked with a quiet chuckle. "They made me let the frog free, you know. She's not gonna be happy that I had to let it go..."
"She can find other frogs, Cali," Adam said firmly, glancing at his son in the rear-view mirror. "You don't have to replace it."
"Mmm," Caligosto said, and fell silent, looking out the window. Adam regarded his son, a little sadness in his gaze. Adam and Marissa's divorce had been hard for him, and only about a year and a half ago; and yet Cali was still so distant. A small part of Adam's mind worried that it was that exposure to his mother that was making him so closed towards him; that Marissa may be turning him against him, making him so... odd... but no, Cali was still perfectly loving towards him. He just wasn't talking much.
And bringing live, probably mutated frogs to school for dissection classes.
Adam sighed inwardly, and quietly glanced at his son again. Things will get better, he vowed to himself, and it was somewhat a promise to Caligosto. Things will get better for you, Cali.
-------------------------------
DE EEEEEEND!