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Rated: E · Short Story · Comedy · #997857
Moe suffers through another long school day, which only gets longer
Moe sat in his 4th grade classroom half asleep, half daydreaming. Mr. Ulrich was reading out of a book which Moe didn't particularly enjoy. His book was closed, sitting on the right side of his desk. Moe's dreamy mind drifted to the clock ticking above the doorway. 9:35. It would be 2 and a half hours before lunch. As the clock turned to 9:36, he started counting seconds with the clock.
1...
2...
3...
4...
5...
6...
5..?
4.??
3???

"What?!" Moe looked away for a second, before gazing back at the time-reversing clock. When he looked back, the time was 9:35 once again. Moe looked across the room to see if anyone else noticed this. However, when he looked for eyes to be watching the clock, he only saw eyes staring back at him. The class was angry at him.
"Moe!" Mr. Ulrich yelled. "You turned time back!"
Moe was astonished at this turn of events.
"I...I...di-didn't muh-" Moe started, before being cut off.
"Now we have to wait until it turns back to 9:00 before it goes forward again!" Mr. Ulrich explained, very agitated. "Now, you will fill that time by reading from out book!"
Moe glanced at the clock again, which was still going backwards. He tried to shake it out of his head before beginning to read.

Moe picked up his 121 page book to begin reading. However, once he opened it up, the letters fell in a waterfall of black type into a pile of gibberish!
"Moe!" Mr. Ulrich yelled once again. "Now you will have to pay for that book!"
Moe couldn't believe what he was seeing. Were the laws of the universe reversing on him?? He grabbed the pile of letters in his hand and started spreading them out on his desk, trying to make them it's original wording.

The words didn't form sentences anymore. Some of the new words weren't even real words! Mr. Ulrich was walking steadily towards Moe. If he were to reach Moe, only God knew the consequences. Moe opened his desk, simply to hide behind it, when he felt his enraged teacher's hand slam it shut.
"Moe!" He yelled.
His name slowly repeated over and over, receding more each time.

Once again he was staring at the clock, only not dreaming this time. 9:37. It was all back to normal. Time was expanding, rather than contracting. The book was lying on the right side of his desk, all the words inside it. Moe looked hesitantly at it, before picking it up, expecting letters to fall into a heap of letters. He was holding it in his palms, smashing the book together, making sure the letters didn't trickle from the bottom of the book.

Finally Moe gathered up the courage and opened the book. His eyes were closed, because he didn't want to witness the letters fall to his desk. But when he peeked from below his eyelid, they were all still there, practically glued to the page. Moe let out a sigh of relief.

As if the fates wanted to contradict him, Moe witnessed an "E" from the word "apple" in his book slide down the page and fall to the floor. Moe glanced around the room, before quickly grabbing the "E" and putting it in it's correct spot. This time it stuck.

Moe held back a smirk as Mr. Ulrich continued to read the book.
© Copyright 2005 MacNastay (macnastay at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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