Quick, dirty, and cerebral. Welcome to the microfiction:

Learning

—

Mr. Burner was a tad concerned when he found his student, Billy Auster, sitting by the side of the railing on the third floor of the School for The Miraculous Brain. Not because of the height, Billy was a fairly careful child and was not going to do any of the stupid showboating another student might.

No, it was because of what his hands were doing. While Billy sat with his legs out in the air, and one hand steadying on the railing’s bars, the other held a small object.

“Hey, Billy, what are you doing?” Mr. Burner said.

“Learning,” came the clipped response. Billy opened his palm and something gray and small dropped toward the ground without a noticeable noise to accompany it.

Billy leaned forward as far as his head could go with the bars in the way and frowned.

Mr. Burner sat down next to him. “What are you learning about?”

Billy hummed, and reached into his left side pocket and drew out another thing, which he kept hidden in his closed hand.

“Billy?”

He looked at his teacher and smirked. “Yes?”

“I asked you a question.”

“You did? Hmm. Interesting.”

Billy’s hand opened again, and another thing dropped. The teacher grew more concerned.

“Should you be doing that?”

“Probably not. Though it is for personal study.”

“Really?”

“Well, duh. If I’m in this school, I would do this. It’s the whole idea of all of us in one place.”

“I don’t know about that,” Mr. Burner said, considering using his stun gun in his back pocket. “What are you doing exactly? What is it supposed to teach you?”

Billy stuck out his tongue in thought, and with the speed of practice moved another thing to his palm and sent it falling. This time, Mr. Burner did hear a sound: a thump. A quiet one, along with a short grunt of pain.

Mr. Burner stood up in alarm and looked down the distance to see a kid lying in a pool of his own blood, with a small gray thing sticking out of the top of his head.

“I was learning something very important,” Billy said, and Mr. Burner looked back in alarm, seeing Billy now standing somewhat behind him. A shove pushed Mr. Burner over the edge, and he fell and landed right on his head. Mr. Burner did not feel any pain beyond the first second of impact.

Billy grinned, feeling clever. “I was learning nihilism.”

—

Special thanks to: Bob Gerkin, Collin Pearman, Dylan Alexander, Jerry Banfield, Michael The Comic Nerd,  and Pulsatilla Pratensis. 

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