Phone Call

Habit

"You've all finished Macbeth I assume?"

My fingers tightened around the book. Everyone had started putting out their opinions.

"The wife was awful."

"She didn't kill anyone though so what makes you say that?" The teacher prompted.

"She's heartless isn't she?" Someone shouted out.

"And bit of a bitch."

"Hey language." The teacher deeply warned. The rest of the class laughed at his basically meaningless warn. "Being a bitch isn't much of a defense as to why she's awful. I need something more solid than that. Didn't she seem defenseless to any of you?"

"Defenseless how? She literally took the knife from her husband who she had basically forced to kill some dude laying in bed and his wife and cleaned it." The girl next to me firmly stated with a raised hand. As she finished her hand lower and she smirked proudly at her answer. My eyes searched for the desk underneath my shaking hands. I pushed the book to the edge as far away from me as possible and bit my lip.

"All of you are missing my point aren't you?" The teacher sighed. "How about you Leena? You're somewhat of a poet what did you think?"

My eyes shot up and I stared at the teacher hoping that he'd called someone else's name. He stared back expectantly and nodded.

"To...to some extent she may have been defenseless..." The whole class booed my defence of the woman.

"From what Leena?" He prompted.

"Her greed." The class slowly silences as the teacher waved his hand for me to elaborate."She so badly wanted something that she no longer viewed someone as a human being. Just an obstacle. She no longer saw any other obstacle in her way of her goal as life threatening because it was particularly life threatening physically to herself." My voice became thin and shaky at this point and my hands clutched one another under the desk. "Until it drives her insane. Then she's a victim of her own conscious and kills herself to escape it."

"Very good Leena." He turned to the class. "This is the kind of analysis I expect. Catch up."

I just managed to let out a shaky breath before someone commented, "Isn't Leena sympathizing with her too much?"

My shoulders stiffened and I dropped my head. All of a sudden I was back in the chair at the hospital in Busan. Clutching my red teddy bear and listening to siren after siren.

"Yeah isn't she even worst from that light?"

"How so?"

The shoes of rushing doctors and crying patients filled my memory and the scent of cinnamon filled my senses as I remember buying my face into the teddy bear and listening to the clock.

Tick tock. TICK TOCK.

"Someone who forgets about everything because they want something so badly and then someone dies because of it? I'd go insane over it too. I'd hate myself."