The Doloriad by Missouri Williams

Author:Missouri Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Schoolmaster’s Dilemma

The mound of fabric murmured to itself in the cool darkness of the schoolmaster’s quarters, but instead of filling him with a calm sense of his progress through time, as the image of the mound so often did, the quiet, contented rustling of the moths as they burrowed into its warm core tugged at his thoughts, made him remember his distance from them, and grievances like bile rose in the corroded alley of his throat because the schoolmaster couldn’t be sure if it was the sound and what it suggested that gave him no peace or something else entirely, a small voice that spoke above the thrum of his resentment and reminded him that everyone else was together and he was all alone; the children had not come for three days now but he felt no peace: everybody else was celebrating, and it was because of this that he had been forgotten; they were celebrating that witch and the origin story she toted around with her like a sack of old shit; they were eating and fucking and congratulating themselves on having escaped it, the disaster, the cataclysm, salvation, whatever she’d deemed it, and they were looking at their fat mother and the mess of the camp with gladness flooding their souls, happy to be alive in this hell, and he, the schoolmaster, was left alone with his wisdom and his moths and his unwavering belief that one day God would return and punish them for everything, but especially for this—for having the nerve to rejoice in their degradation, to celebrate their shame, and for leaving him all alone, a discarded toy, an abandoned, overweight doll. Now hatred washed over him. If only he still had his legs! He would skip through the forest, nimbly supporting his own wide girth, and tell them what he thought of them, before taking Dolores in his arms and carrying her back to his dark lair, and after the schoolmaster was done with her he would give her to the mound and the moths would rejoice, the mound would thrive, and he would wrap himself up in the crumbling blankets of the outermost layers and sleep the deep and contented sleep of the just. But he didn’t have his legs, and there was no peace in his heart, only hatred for her and her children, and today the mound had shut him out, the moths talked only to themselves, the bread was stale—he was alone—and just as he was beginning to think that he couldn’t endure another day like this, the schoolmaster became aware of a new impulse, and he understood that he wanted to go outside; and although he had not left his apartment by means of his own power for a long time, the schoolmaster also knew it wasn’t impossible, and so quickly, not wanting the impulse to escape and leave him alone again, he crawled away from the mound and down the corridor that led to the outside world,

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