"So, what was going on during the time our friend Shakespeare wrote this story?"
The class falls silent and we stare at Mister Keating as he makes his way up and down the aisles. I hear Knox scratching away on a piece of paper with his pencil. Writing then scratching, writing then scratching. A sigh will come every so often.
"Um... the plague?" Meeks guesses from the middle of the room.
Keating excitedly points. A few laughs arise.
"Good. What happened as a direct result of the plague?"
Another lull.
"A lot of people died?" Another boy pipes up.
"Getting somewhere, slowly but surely," Mister Keating says, reaching and craning for more, "What happens when people die?"
Another silence. Lots happens when people die.
Mister Keating sets his eyes on the class, facing us all. He has that look on his aged face, the look of knowing.
"Grief."
The word sits in all of us deeply. We all know some sort of grief. The loss of a loved one, a pet, a lost love.
"The plague took old lives, young lives, human lives. Misery swept with the Grimm Reaper in tow. People mourned and held funerals in ancient streets. They thought this was the end of life. The end of all things. The living wished they were dead because of the sheer amount of death. It felt like commonplace."
No sounds were heard. Mister Keating didn't ask us to talk, he just looked out at his students. He is in his element, a messenger. A storyteller.
"I want you to imagine."
I sit back in my seat.
"I want you to imagine waking up to the sounds of weeping in the streets you were raised on. You lift your hand to move the curtains to see what's going on outside your window. Skeleton hands, you're too scared to eat. Where does it come from? No one knows where this sickness comes from. Moving the curtain is an action that takes energy.. Outside, a father carries a body in his arms. The family is behind him. The mother is on her knees, begging, praying, screaming for God to bring her child back, to make it not true. 'God, WHY, God, PLEASE! Take me too!' Her other sons and daughters weep, clinging to her. You have to close the curtain."
My face is frozen into a morbid mask. No one in the room moves. There is nothing in the air.
"Mister William Shakespeare wrote this story to make people feel like they weren't alone in their state of grief. He wrote this story to make people feel better about the life they were living. How much more tragic does it get than killing yourself for the sake of being with your deceased lover in the ambiguous afterlife, and right before your lights go out, they rise, breathing in the life you no longer have?"
Mister Keating leans back onto his desk.
I let out the breath I had been holding for the duration of his speech. Knox's pencil eraser touches my back.
🌙
"Look what I found, you guys!"
A strong THUD booms and all of the attention shifts to Meeks, who stands in the doorway with a fake wooden sword in his hand, the "sharp" end against the ground.
"Now, what the hell is that for?" Neil laughs, standing up from his desk to approach Meeks.
Meeks hauls the heavy sword up and holds it out towards Neil as if to duel.
