chocolate lynx spray

The sports hall was a quiet mess of tapping pens, drumming fingers and the whining sound of ink and lead being transferred to paper. Jamie could smell the thick sweat of the boy behind him mingling in with his own chocolate lynx spray. He looked around the sports hall were his English exam was taking place, the whole hall was a mixture of heat and stress, half dead fingers scrabbling their last lines onto the blue tinged paper below them.1

He sat back on his chair; it creaked long and assuredly to itself, echoing the tone of dilapidation that was evident around the hall. The cushion had long since ceased to be, old iron nails now rusted into a mass of deep maroon and vivid orange pushed their way through the stained board between his legs. Musing on nothing he stared at his desk were the finished paper sat, beneath and around the paper lay the markings of years of exam boredom, from a mixture of 'I smoked a bong before this exam', to the always welcome, 'I want to fuck someone 'please call!', with an attractive number below which Jamie was sure he recognised as being the chippy's.2

'Five Minutes left!' the examiner wailed, his blotchy face shining with patches of unhealthy purple. Jamie leaned back on his chair sighing softly, ‘what was the point in being here’, he though mildly to himself. There was no anarchic feeling to this thought just a wish to be where he couldn’t smell the rising sent of the boy behind him. He started watching the clock, three minutes… two minutes…one Minute left. And in that solitary minute it seemed to him as though time stretched indefinitely, everything slowed, he focused, feeling the bursting drops of sweat trickle down his already soaked back, the creak of his finger bones grinding against cartilage and the aroma of over varnished wood rising from the desk and assaulting his nostrils.3

‘Time up!’ the examiner shouted, breaking into his Riviera of senses. ‘Well’, he thought, ‘time to tell that wanker that he’s in need of a wash’.4

Outside the hall, he finally was able to catch a breath of welcome fresh air. Sitting on one of the broken wooden posts that adorned the sparsely gravelled walkway, he watched the rest of his class walk past as he waited for the ‘stinker’, a couple of his friends came and sat on the other posts. Johns started talking at him, ‘It went well right..? I thought it went well… a good paper,’ Johns was small and quick, tough though. His mind never could stay in one place, his face constantly a wild array of conflicting emotions. Dan through his bag at him ‘shut the fuck up’. There was little you could describe Dan as but angry. When he did soften for odd moments you could see the wild uncontrollable animal lurking behind his eyes. He jumped up quickly, ‘what the fuck are we waiting here for anyway?’ He was building himself up, Jamie stared him down. Dan’s face fell momentarily then it was back to his usual odd smirk. 5

‘We are waiting for the piece of shit who made me spend an hour in his B.O.’ explained Jamie patently. Johns grinned, his spot covered face looking like a broken plums skin, ‘is it the mountain that was behind you?’. Jamie’s reply was cut off as the supposed mountain left the hall. The sweat on his t-shirt hung down in yellow grimy circles, his flabby chin eroding the shape of his body, its round shape mirrored in the sagging folds of his stomach. He had a neutral face, his features covered by the layers of fat that he had piled across himself as he ate.6

‘Oh’ Jamie shouted jubilantly, ‘who do we have here’. Fucking wreck my exam why don’t you, fucking stinker’ The boy backed away from jamie, fear fuelling an eruption of half said phrases ‘I didn, I, I’ 7

Sticking his face close up to the boy and sniffing Jamie said, ‘really stinker, you didn’t?’ his hot breath lanced the larger boys face making him shake uncontrollably.’ ‘Well get ready stinker we’re going to give you some exercise!’8

‘Oi!’ shouted a tall graceless women, she wore round opaque shades, clashing with her too-long oval face and thin lipped firmness. 9

Seeing her, the three friends bolted with a last firm push to the one they knew as mountain, wild laughter erupting from their fear and abandon as they ran wantonly towards the rest of the school. 10