Just a student lying on the staffroom floor twitching. Five teachers sitting at the table trying to look bored. One casually opens a dictionary to look up a tricky English word, a woman in the corner languidly looks on as the girl quivers—now violently, now quietly pulsing.
A man arrives on an Okada, unassuming in his baseball hat and Hawaiian pattern button-up. He takes her socks off and begins to remove her demon by pulling her small toes sideways. A choked ‘no’ escapes her and she gives herself over to the seizing barrel-rolls that have characterized her episode. Now, grabbing her twisted, rigidly adducted arms, he strains against this small girl’s strength to bring them together, breaking her flexed, crucifix form.
Her mother appears in the doorway exhibiting the expected affectations—wailing, bowing beating her chest—pausing for a moment to add a genuine tear as her daughter’s body writhes away from the man now whispering softly in her ear.
Smoking embers are brought to choke her demon. The pall of smoke takes the place of what little conversation was left hanging in the room. A rhythm less dance begins around the girl, teachers placing chair cushions where the girl is expected to convulse to.
“Demons” everyone murmurs as the girl is carried out, her body completely rigid between the hands carrying her at ankles and shoulders. Her eyes remain tightly shut as she’s made to straddle a motorcycle, her face thrown back and arms out to the sun as she’s motored away between driver and father.
“Demons.” Everyone mutters again before returning to the table and their books.
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