3. Haven #2
I mean, he has a point. I remember getting the odd smack or two if I tracked mud into the trailer after Mom had cleaned, or if I woke Dad up from one of his naps. Were they being cruel? I thought so at the time…but I wiped my feet and never ran around indoors again.
Wow. I haven’t thought of my mom in over a decade.
We were never close. I mean, she died when I was four, so I barely have any memories of her. My dad? I try not to think about him at all.
CRUELTY = INTENT + POWER? / PERCEPTION +
Professor Rooke’s voice drops. “What about impact?”
Wide eyes—mine included—blink at him.
Even Kai, hands tucked under his armpits and feet crossed at the ankles, watches Rooke with an unwavering stare.
Our teacher swallows down the last of his coffee and then crumples the paper cup with a single powerful flex of his hand. He drops it on the floor and kicks it under the desk.
Kai flinches and runs his hands through his hair, our eyes meeting for a split second before he wrenches his gaze back to Rooke.
“Was I cruel to discard that cup?”
Silence.
Professor Rooke walks up to the desk and leans against it, crossing his arms as he shrugs. “No one has any objections to the violence they just witnessed? This appalling crime of littering?”
The girl beside me with the ultra-chic bob lifts her hand. “It’s an inanimate object. It doesn’t have the physiology to feel pain. Or cruelty.”
If Rooke’s impressed, he doesn’t show it.
He shrugs again. “I was done with it anyway. Someone’s bound to pick it up and toss it in the trash.”
“No harm, no foul,” I blurt out.
Rooke’s gaze snaps to me. There’s an almost feverish glee sparkling there as he pushes away from the desk, snapping his fingers in my direction.
“Impact.”
He picks up his chalk and scratches on the board.
INTENT
IMPACT
INTERPRET
“If we don’t understand the intention behind the act—“
He taps his chalk on the first word.
“How it impacts the alleged victim of the said act…”
Another furious round of tapping on the second word.
“Or how both participants interpret the act—”
The chalk screeches as he circles the last word.
He turns to us, shaking his head, the beginning of a smile teasing his mouth. I’m not the only one who’s spellbound. I swear I can hear his paper coffee cup slowly uncrumpling under the desk.
“How can we definitively say that someone is, in fact, being cruel?”
He lifts a finger, turning and heading back to the board.
“You’re not the only ones having a tough time putting a cage around this thing.
Philosophers have been grappling with it since the dawn of Hellenic thought.
Plato spoke of a man ruled by his basest desires who inflicted suffering on others for his own gain. ”
Rooke raps his knuckle beside the word INTENT. “That’s an easy one. He didn’t have good intentions, and someone suffered for it.” He raps beside IMPACT. Shrugs. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
I take notes, alternating between chewing my pen and tapping it against my chin.
If this is what college is like, I’m fucking hooked. I still don’t know what the Lucifer Effect scrawled on the board means, but maybe I’ll have scrounged up enough guts to speak to him after class.
Professor Rooke lectures about Aristotle, Freud, Seneca, Nietzsche.
Some names I’ve heard before, others are brand new. Time slips away, his lecture so riveting that I forget I’m in a class with thirty other students…
…and a boy who would giggle with me as we jumped into rain puddles together.
How did we get from there to him spitting on me and calling me a whore? I expected some degree of anger, but this?
Then again, he has spat at me before. But the context was completely different. There was mutiny involved, for one, and a very grubby bandana that was supposed to be an eye patch. Plus, he kept saying, “Aargh, me matey.”
My head is reeling by the time Professor Rooke glances at his watch. Sighing, he sets down his chalk, keeping his back turned as his students slowly emerge from his spell. Some stretch, others take quick peeks at their phones.
But then he speaks again, and everyone is immediately straining to hear his low words.
“No matter where you think it comes from. Nature. Nurture.” He turns, arms crossed. “If you want to label it evil, or neutral, or ‘it’s complicated.’” He puts air quotes around the word, and I hear the redhead beside me huff out in amusement.
“We all have a cruel streak inside us. A muscle we’re born with.” He holds out his hand, then slowly closes it into a fist, the dark blue-green veins under his skin stark.
I suddenly get all the fuss about vampires.
“Much like the Native American parable of the two wolves, there are those who choose to let that muscle waste away…” he opens his hand and shows us his palm before squeezing his hand shut again. “And those who hit the gym five times a week.”
He claps his hands together, and my soul leaves my fucking body.
“Unnecessary,” I mutter, tugging in a breath to replace the air in my lungs. The redhead turns and gives me a little smile, her hand still pressed to her chest.