The Classix

*chapter six*

Happy Sunday, Wattpad!

Wrote today's chapter while binge watching the new Stranger Things season in one sitting yesterday. I laughed, I cried, I full on WEPT. I had an existential crisis about growing up. I got overwhelmed by the masterful juggling of an ensemble cast. You know, the usual feelings you feel when writing!

Today's chapter is long as hell. I think 5000 words? FIVE THOUSAND! On a random Sunday! Don't say I never fed you well, bb!

Without further ado, let's get into this! ONWARD!!

PREVIOUSLY ON THE CLASSIX: Carstan (or as some like to call him, CarSATAN) is here! He's gonna be a new Famoux advisor! But why? What purpose will he serve???? It's time for our Scooby Doo Gang to find out, huh?

emeray

    On account of Eldae's lack of extensive, tumultuous history, most of the classes in my school were studies on the customs and cultures of our two neighboring nations, Notness and Betnedoor. I enjoyed these classes tremendously. It was a form of escapism––a mode of introducing myself to cities and towns that were different, nuanced. Betnedoor housed the Famoux in their glittering, bustling capital city. Notness apparently had more gorgeous natural splendors than all the rest combined. When my mother fled, she likely ended up in one of those places. And soaking up the pictures in my textbooks, I couldn't blame her. All I ever wanted to do was run away as well.

    For every good and exciting anecdote, however, there were facets to these nations that made me uneasy. One of my least favorite lessons of all was the one on prisons––on the huge, gaping penitentiaries that stood on their outskirts of cities. The punishments lurking behind their cement walls used to make my skin crawl.

    In Notness, the undisputed intelligence-capital of the world, torture is turned into a science. A criminal, upon sentence, is to become the newest case-study, and is thus made into a point of reference, a grasp at understanding the darker shades of a human being. And to really capture those shades, well, the tests aren't always the most humane. I've heard horror stories of burning, faulty surgeries, and purposeful drowning over lectures my fellow students blinked through with lackadaisical focus. The way they could become so desensitized to the terrors in their notebooks never ceased to astonish me.

    But despite the eeriness Notness supplied, conditions were by far the cruelest in Betnedoor: Crammed living accommodations, infrequent meals, and a time stamp for execution on everyone, regardless of their crime. It could be murder. It could be theft. Either way, a date was always made, and the sentenced would have to live out their few moments left in those dark and desolate quarters knowing exactly what was going to come next. That was how they kept the peace in a nation so massive––through indescribable fear.

    Eldae, unlike the others, is a place with very few structured systems at all, much less a real jail. But that was no matter. Perhaps it wasn't on a scale quite as grand as theirs, but for a long time I dreaded those lessons for the way they made me feel like I was trapped in my own sort of prison. Like those in Notness, I knew of burns, and cuts, and drowning. Like those in Betnedoor, I knew of unfair punishment. And like any convict, I knew of the endless dream of unreachable things––the dream of a second chance, a new life, a fairy godmother from an old nursery rhyme swooping in to save me from everything bad and scary in the world. And while I was busy dreading these classes whenever they came up, I knew more than a few people who relished in them––who treated the teacher's lengthy presentations like they were hearing a coach give pointers before a big game.