Countdown

Note ▼

This was for a competition where the prompt was "twenty-three" and the remit was to have no dialogue or inner monologue. So I got carried away, finished it, and realised the whole damn thing was nothing but inner monologue. Oops.

23 days to go.

Hell, that was very nearly a month! Well, three weeks at least. Bloody exams. Tom turned on his computer and picked up the joystick. What was the point? He had no intention of going to college, so why did he have to be bothered with exams? Maths. Like he'd ever need to worry about Pythagoras in the real world. And French. French, for God's sake! What had possessed his parents to make him do French? When was he ever going to use that? He rolled his eyes in exasperation. He knew exactly where his tante could stick her damned plume, and it certainly wasn't on le bureau de mon oncle. And then there was English. "Write an essay on this", "write an essay about that", "write another sodding essay havering on about the next damn silly thing". And where did they get the marking from? This one was 6/10, whereas that one had been 7/10. What did that mean? At least with maths it was right or wrong. Where did that extra mark of 1/10 come from in some stupid essay? He shook his head and vented his frustration on his challenger for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, giving him the biggest beating of his short-lived virtual life.


23 hours to go.

Damn it! It was so unfair! He'd been looking forward to spending a couple of weeks this summer with his friend Jeff and his family at their villa in Spain when his pain in the backside parents had come up with a condition: C or better in every exam or it was a no-go. And now this English exam was less than a day away. How was he even supposed to prepare for it? At least with other subjects he could study stuff. How could he study write-a-bloody-essay? They could ask him to write about anything! Honestly, what was the point?


23 minutes to go.

He wiped his sweaty palms down his trousers as he waited to go into the exam room. Karl, the class know-every-damn-thing-about-every-damn-subject smiled at him. Smartass! I bet he could write a 10,000 word epic on a day in the life of a potato, still be the first one finished and get an A+++ with oak leaf cluster and a knighthood presented by Jesus himself on a winged chariot. Tom glowered at him and turned away. Momentarily the bell rang, and the class trooped into the classroom like condemned men facing the gallows. Well, all except Karl the Kreep. Smartass!


23 seconds to go.

Here we go. Here we bloody well go. What nonsense was he going to be asked to dribble on about this time? He turned the paper and read the instructions.

"Write about a time in your life where you had to perform a task under severe pressure."

God almighty. God all-bloody-mighty! Who comes up with this crap? He stared at the page for some time, his mind a complete blank, before finally leaning forward and starting to write:

23 days to go...