The Interrupter
Hannah Bartlette
"So tell me," he said, folding his hands over the clean white table separating us, his perfect smooth, slicked back, dark hair shone underneath the light of the single fluorescent light above us. I could smell the rancid black coffee on his breath. "What could have possibly driven you to do something so erratic?" I looked into his convicting, deep, dark, brown eyes, I could see curiosity flitting around behind his strict façade, and after several moments passed, I ran my fingers through my un-kept, red hair, placed my hands on my lap, and began my story.
"As a student in seventh grade I was always told how exceptional I was. I was a special kid, you know. The kind that can’t be in the same classes as the other children, mostly because they hated me,” I sigh, “They’d call me names like mental and retarded. My mom would tell me to ignore their mean-spirited taunting, she would run her hand over my head and tell me, ‘don't you dare listen to them Andrew, they’re simply jealous of how special you are.’ Crazy old woman she was, -"
"So your name is Andrew? Is my file lying to me or are you ly-"
"Your file is wrong," I interrupt, shifting about in my white jumper and attempting to cross my arms over my chest. The chains on my hands clanked against the metal table loud enough to startle me into settling my hands onto my lap once more.
"Don't interrupt me!” he tells me, raising his voice, “A man in your position shouldn't bite the hand that feeds him," he answers matter-of-factly, leaning back into his chair and taking a sip from his black coffee mug.
"Maybe men in your position shouldn't be such pricks,” I retort sarcastically. I had learned that word from my father and felt quite proud that I had finally used it in the right context.
"Go on then, tell me your story," he says leaning back in his hard, white plastic chair. “This should be good; I didn't realize you retards had enough brains to speak for longer than a minute at a time."
"I don't think my mother loved me very much, or maybe, it was just me who didn't love her. I don't believe my father hated me but I know he didn't like me. He’d get drunk and come home knocking into everything. He would refer to me as his mistake, and when he was sober, he didn't refer to me at all. When I asked my mother why my father wasn't like other father’s, she told me that my being special costed quite a bit more than most ordinary people's specialness. I was my fault that we were forced to live in that awful old, smelly house full of broke people. My parents couldn’t afford to live in a normal house, so we lived in a house sectioned off by the government."
"Specialness, that's one way to put it," scoffs the interrupter.
"You’re annoying me," I say.
"Good."
"The house we lived was old and, like most of its tenants, on its last legs. However, one tenant was just as exceptional as I, his name was James and he was sort of hairy and very old, but he was my only friend. My mother did...
