Story 107: Tested

            The exam taker entered the testing center on low-burn anxiety: she could not possibly have studied any more than she had and expect to achieve better results, yet she knew there was plenty of material on which she could fail.  Nothing more could be done for it now.

            The proctor led her to a computer lab for her to take the test; the two of them were the sole occupants.

            “This is your lucky day,” he said as he led her to a terminal and accessed the test for her.  “The last group here broke out into a riot when the power went out.”

            “Oh.”

            “Yep – with just you here, this’ll be nice and peaceful today.”

            Says you, she thought.  “Thank you,” she said as she sat at the desk.

            The proctor sat at the desk next to her and spread out his gear.  “Ear plugs?” he asked as he held a pair out to her.

            “No thanks, it’s pretty quiet in here.”

            “You sure?  This thing is booked for three hours and I’m going to be watching TV the whole time.”

            “...All right then, thank you.”  She put on the ear plugs and blessed the near-silence: she could see that the proctor had started watching a live soccer game on his phone, and the crowd was not sedate.

            Five minutes after the official start time and she was still taking the practice test so she would not mess up the real one.  She always felt a sense of dread whenever she hit “Submit” on one of these things: it felt as if she had passed the point of no return and all mistakes were on her permanent record.  The test proper appeared as she heard “GOOOOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!!” and “Yessssss! – Sorry.”  She smiled an edgy smile at him: this was an inauspicious start, to say the least.

            Question 1 of 200: When thingamabob is doohickey and flibbertigibbet is whatchamacallit, which whosits is the whatsits?

A.    17

B.     September

C.     Paris

D.    All of the above

?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????

Her mind was a complete blank.  Everything she had studied for the past six months suddenly leaked out her ears and past the plugs; she searched her memory banks and received shrugs in response.  As Panic began its ascent up her spine, she remember that she could skip ahead and answer that question later.  Having to do this on the first question did not bode well, but was not necessarily a game changer.

Question 2: According to thingamabob….

Wait a minute.  Sure, thingamabob had been covered in the study guide, but it really did not seem like it was that big a deal – how come it was in the first two questions?  Skip ahead.

Question 3: When referring to thingamabob….

Ohhhh nooooooo….

She had barely studied thingamabob: her man foci had been on flim-flam and hootenanny. 

Question 4: According to thingamabob….

Those dastards.  They know hardly anyone taking this test uses thingamabob in real life!  This is a set-up!  For failure!

“Is this where the civil service test is being held?”

A small crowd stood at the door, looking as lost as she felt.

“That’s down the hall,” the proctor said as he deftly muted his phone.  “Second door on the right.”

“Could you show us?”

“I’m proctoring right now and can’t leave her alone or else this whole thing’s invalid.”

“But we’re lost.”

“Then go to the main office!  Precious seconds are ticking away for this lady, and she’ll never get them back `cause you keep hanging around!”

I won’t? she thought.  Can’t I get credit?  It’s not as if I just took a bathroom break, and apparently these ear plugs are garbage when it comes down to it.

“Where’s the main office?”

“Turn around and follow the signs!”

“But – ”

“Just get out!  Good luck on your test.”  They left as one.  “I am so sorry – that hardly ever happens, I swear,” the proctor said to her and held out his open water bottle.  “Thirsty?”

“No thanks.”

“Hopefully that’ll be the last interruption,” he said as he turned the game back on.  “Oh man, I missed the penalty kick,” he muttered.

Question 5: When accessing flim-flam, with whom does the buck stop?

Finally, one I can answer, she thought.  The test started to flow easier at that point, and she reached Question 195 when the fire alarm went off.

“What the – hold on, let me call the office,” the proctor said while her ears rang through the garbage plugs.  After a minute on the phone, he hung up and told her: “Good news is there’s no fire.  Bad news is the system’s broken and they don’t know how long it’ll be going off until they fix it.  Good thing we’ve got the ear plugs, right?”

“Yes.”

He laughed to himself as he plugged ear buds into his phone.  “Man, seems like everything’s going wrong today.  Next thing you know, the power’ll go out like it did the last time and you’ll have to come back and take the test all over again, am I right?”

Shut up, just shut up!  “Heh, heh, heh.”

“Yeah, that’d be bad.”  The game resumed.

Question 195: According to thingamabob….

Of course.

She finally finished all 200 questions to the soundtrack of high-pitched fire alarms, winging it on the unanswered ones, and had to submit her exam even though there was half an hour left or else she would never be done.  Waiting in agony for the results, a survey popped up.

That’s how they get you, she thought.  If you know you failed first, you’d never answer these things.

Question 1: Please rate your proctor 1-5, 5 being the highest.

Hmmmm…. The only thing preventing her from selecting “1” was that he had given her ear plugs.  And he did chase away the other group, eventually.  Too bad she could not select 1.5.

She finished the survey and hit “Submit” yet again.  The message appeared on the screen: Sorry, you failed, better luck the next time you give us lots of money to take this exam again.

“Yes!  We won!”  The proctor turned to her.  “My team won!  I’m so happy!  Are you done?”

“Yes, and I failed.”

“Oh.  Man.  Tough luck.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it, and you know it.”

“Uh….”

“I think it’s in your best interest to help me challenge this score for a free retest, wouldn’t you say?  Considering the very distracting environment I had?”

“Uh, yeah, but I can’t really – ”

“I think you can.  Else the main office may also hear that ‘you’ won and how happy you were about that.”

“You know, I might be able to work something out.”

“You’re very helpful.  I may actually rate you a 3 next time.”

Now she just needed to brush up on thingamabob and make sure she was assigned a different proctor; then all would be well for Exam – Take 2: The Grudge Match.

Story 106: The Haunting?

(Not based on a true story - just for Halloween)

            Oblivia was very excited to move into her late great-aunt’s dilapidated Victorian mansion.  Sure, it was a bit of a fixer-upper and needed to have such modern conveniences as central heating, central air, and central plumbing installed, but the house was all hers.  After 20+ years of sharing a three-room apartment with 10 people, she was willing to do some interior decorating in exchange for that glorious concept called personal space.

            She arrived by taxi on an overcast day that threatened rain without ever following through; she only brought an overnight bag so she could get a feel for the place before stuffing it full of useless furniture.  From the outside, she already could see the house’s non-existent paint, missing roof shingles, broken chimneys, and the other criteria required for condemnation.  She paid the taxi driver, who managed to throw her bag onto the house’s front steps without even leaving the driver’s seat before screeching the tires back to the main road, then turned to survey the property.  There were some blades of grass and a few dead plants, but she knew that she could get advice on landscaping from the three extremely close neighbors (one on either side and one behind the tiny backyard), all of whom were currently staring at her from their respective windows, through which she could hear their television sets as clear as bells.  She waved with both hands in friendly greeting at all of them until they slunk back to their boring lives behind their curtains; what caring people, she thought to herself.

            She climbed the fragile front steps, nearly losing a foot when one board broke, and unlocked the rusty front door with the ancient key that she had inherited.  The door ominously creaked open, so she took care of that issue immediately with some oil she carried for just such an occasion.  The electricity either had been disconnected or had never existed here in the first place (she could not remember which), so she had brought a bag of candles and matches along with a flashlight to assist.  Slowly turning in a circle while holding the flashlight, she took in the main hall with its dusty furniture, cobweb-ridden walls, moth-eaten drapes, rundown master staircase, and sounds of rattling chains, moans, groans, and screams.

            She gasped.  “This place – is – disgusting!” she exclaimed to no one in particular.  She feared the mold, mildew, and possible asbestos she was now breathing in, but she could not dwell too long on such thoughts, for this house literally screamed “Disaster!”

            After tossing her overnight bag onto the opera house organ, she explored the other rooms of the house.  The constantly creaking floorboards, the grandfather clock chiming 12 on every hour, and the little children choir that followed her wherever she went were all driving her up the wall with the noise pollution.  She now understood why Great-Aunt Eccentra had willed the house to her: she was the only one who could take on such a DIY project and actually like it.

            In the attic, Oblivia switched from flashlight to candlelight just because and she walked gingerly, since breaking through the floor here would result in a fall of five stories into the basement.  She saw an ancient trunk in a corner and approached it carefully, accompanied by her singing entourage.  The trunk had been locked, but oxidization had taken care of that nuisance and she opened it easily.  Inside was a massive amount of correspondence between her great-aunt and some guy named “Beloved,” to whom she had written daily for 16 years, it seemed.  The gist of the letters ran along the lines of “Why don’t you return my calls?” and “I don’t care that you already have a loving family,” and “You’re been dead the whole time I’ve been writing these, haven’t you” – in essence, the usual boring tripe.

            Oblivia made her way downstairs to the kitchen and managed to find some unspoiled canned goods that she could scarf down for dinner, in-between the utensils flying away from her and the drinking glasses being thrown against the wall.  The drafts in these places can be such a bother, she thought as she washed and dried the wayward dishes as fast as she could before they could be destroyed.

            That night, she made her way by candlelight again (her flashlight batteries had long since died and she had forgotten to bring replacements) to the master bedroom on the third floor, shunning the more conveniently placed guest bedroom on the second floor because she was the master now, and the servants’ bedrooms on the fourth floor were jail cell quality.  There was a fireplace in her bedroom, which she tried to light with her matches until the bats flew out; she opted for the extra quilts that were kept in the closet along with the glowing eyes and the growling darkness.  Much cozier after wiping the quilts and mattress down as much as possible, she curled up with her book and a bottle of room-temperature water.  Nodding off, the book slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor, where a scaly hand reached out to grab it and pulled it under the bed.  She jerked awake when a loud crash resounded throughout the house – grabbing her pepper spray and cell phone, she ran out of the room and down to the balcony above the main entrance hall.

            She had to blink a few times to focus her eyes: the main hall was filled with all types of ghosts, goblins, and bogeymen who seemed to be having a party.  She unobtrusively dialed 911, hoping they had not seen her.

            “Hello?  I’d like to report a break-in,” she whispered to the dispatcher.  “I think they’re drunk teenagers.”

            “What’s the address?”  Oblivia gave it.  “Oh, that’s the haunted house.  Yeah, you’d better get out of there.”

            “Haunted?  Oh no, these aren’t ghosts; these are very obviously deranged children.”

            “Want us to send the exorcist over?  It’s worked a few times in the past.”

            “No help whatsoever!”  Oblivia disconnected the call and ran to confront the gathering as she stood mid-staircase.

            “All right, you delinquents!”  Everyone stared at her.  “There’ll be no squatters here, so begone from my sight!”

            The ghouls collectively moaned as they shuffled off; she heard one mutter, “Eccentra was never that mean.”  Satisfied that all had gone, Oblivia returned to her bedroom.  She found her book on her bed with a note attached to the cover: “Loved the setting, hated the protagonist.  Three stars out of five.”  Shrugging in puzzlement, she tossed the book onto a chair, got into bed, and almost immediately fell asleep.

            She dreamt of her plans to extensively renovate the dank and dirty house – all these silly distractions such as the howling she now heard coming from the basement would simply need to be ignored.  She relished the challenge.

Story 105: Room for One More

            (After the Driver enters her car at the end of the workday, she buckles her seat belt, starts the engine, and turns her head to reverse out of the parking spot.  That is when she sees it: a huge spider web, attached to the left rear window and left rear seat, in the middle of which rests a huge spider)

            Spider: Hi there.

            Driver: Oh… my….

            Spider: Don’t mind me; just chillin’, waiting for the nasty bugs to come my way.  You may proceed.

            Driver: Umm, OK, but you really can’t stay here once I get home.

            Spider: Why not?

            Driver: Because, for one thing, you’re freaking me out!

            Spider: Hey, this is an arrangement that can only benefit you.  Besides, you’re the one who left the window open a crack for just any old trespasser to come on in – you should thank your lucky stars that it was me.

            Driver: That’s another thing: I’m not going to leave the window open all night long, so you’re going to wind up suffocating.

            Spider: Probably not, but thanks for your concern.

            Driver: And another thing: no bugs are going to randomly fly through the doors or the narrow crack above the window for you to trap, so you’re going to starve to death!

            Spider: You may have a point there, but let’s test that theory and find out in the morning, shall we?

            Driver: Oh all right, but don’t leave me more of a mess than you already have.

            Spider: Make no promises.

            (The next morning, the Driver enters her car)

            Driver: Morning!  Still alive?

            Spider: Oh yes, thank you for leaving the window open; that was a big help.

            (The Driver adjusts her rear view mirror and screams: a bat is hanging upside-down from the ceiling of the car)

            Bat: (Waking up) Whoa, what happened?

            Driver: What is that doing in here?!

            Spider: Oh, hope you don’t mind, since the window was open he needed a place to hang out for a while.  Get it: “hang out”?

            Bat: Groovy.

            Driver: No, no, no, I need both of you out of here now!  (She starts to get out of the car)

            Spider: Hold a minute, please just chillax –

            Driver: I will not chillax!  I can’t drive with obstructed rear views!  And aren’t you two natural enemies anyway?

            Spider: Not necessarily.

            Bat: (Half-asleep) Yeah, little dude’s pretty cool.

            Driver: I don’t care.  I’m getting the broom.  (She starts to leave again)

            Bat: (Fully awake) It’s OK, I’ll move!  (He drops to the floor)

            Spider: Yeah, I can get out of the way! (She unhooks the web and transfers it to the back of the driver’s seat) See?  Now you don’t even know we’re here.

            Driver: Except that I know you’re here.  But, I suppose you’re not doing me any harm –

            Bat: Thanks, lady, you’re all right!

            Spider: Yes, much appreciated.

            Driver: I’m blaming you guys if I get into an accident.

            Spider: Duly noted.

            (The next morning, the Driver enters her car)

            Driver: Still alive?

            Spider: (Drinking) Oh yes, we’re doing just fine, thank you.

            Bat: [Snores]

            Driver: Wonderful.  (She sees a stirring in the back seat) What… is… that?!

            Werewolf: (Sits up and yawns) Oh, hello, ma’am!  Sorry to crash in your vehicle, but these two said it was OK.

            Driver: How’d you even get in here?!

            Werewolf: Well, when I’m not a wolf, I’m a car thief.

            Driver: Get out!  (She starts to dial 911 on her cell phone)

            Werewolf: Actually, since I’m a wolf right now I won’t be stealing your car.  Or eating you, for that matter, `cause I’m full.  And no one will believe you if you tell them that you have a werewolf in the backseat of the car, so you might as well not sound crazy to the police this early in the morning.

            Driver: (Reluctantly disconnects the call) I want you all out of here in the next 30 seconds or I’m reporting you as carjackers.  (All three groan) I don’t care!

            Spider: Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us, wolf man.

            Werewolf: Hey, I have one more night on the full moon, what am I gonna do?

            Driver: Whatever you’ve done up to this point!  And shouldn’t you be changed back into a man during the daytime?

            Werewolf: It’s full moon o’clock somewhere.

            Bat: What’s going on?  Are we getting evicted?

            Driver: Yes!  I want you all out of my sight!

            Spider: Well that’s easy.  (All three duck out of sight)

            Driver: Out of my car!

Spider: But I thought we were going to drive cross-country together solving crimes!

Bat: Ooh, that’d be sweet.

Werewolf: I’d agree, but I’m wanted in seven states.  Ooh, my fur probably could be my disguise though – you mind if we do this thing only four days a month?

Driver: No we cannot!  Eject yourselves!

(The Driver’s car screeches away as the other three are left behind on the driveway)

Spider: That was a bust.  Back to braving the elements.

(A toad carrying a suitcase hops up to the group)

Toad: Hi!  Word is there’s a mobile home with room for one more.

Bat: Sure is!  (To the other two) Don’t worry, we’ll wear her down eventually.

Werewolf: Awesome, I haven’t had a real project in a long time, this’ll be great!

Spider: I call dibs on the front passenger seat!