This is a story about a typical day for me at work.

Teacher Ben groaned loudly. Something was throbbing painfully. At first, it was difficult to perceive what was tormenting him. After a few confused moments, he realized it was the entirety of his addled consciousness.

The discovery was disheartening; teacher Ben groaned again.

In some distant, nearly forgotten corner of his heavily damaged brain, the urge to rub his eyes somehow made itself known. Teacher Ben sent the necessary commands to his hand, but found it unresponsive. He tried to glance down to see if the limb was still properly attached, but, even at this, he failed miserably.

Another groan. For the moment, he had exhausted himself. Darkness descended for an indeterminable amount of time.

A short while later, teacher Ben awoke. Lights flickered up and down his body, and he was dimly aware of the sensation of motion. Remembering his earlier task, his brain broadcast electrical impulses to his hand, urging it desperately to move.

No response.

Another volley.

Still nothing.

With a final surge of psychic energy, he heaved all his life force into the simple act of appendage domination and obedience. This time he overdid it, and the dirty hand came flying at his eye with tremendous speed, eliciting an echoing "smack."

A solitary tear dribbled down his cheek, reflecting sunlight into rainbows across the fleshy red-eye backdrop.

Teacher Ben dry-heaved.

Bit by bit, normal corporal control returned and teacher Ben smacked his lips distastefully. His mouth was dry and tasted vaguely of sea food. He turned his head this way and that, but all the images were far too blurry to make any sense of. He leaned back and waited for the picture to come into focus.

Time passed.

After a while, it became apparent that he was in some sort of car. This conclusion produced a self-satisfied smirk of triumph.

"That explains some of the blurriness," he slurred.

"What are you doing?" a voice said. Ben ignored the question with the probably misplaced hope that it wasn't directed at him.

"Ben!" continued the voice in its irritating way. That specific name, above all others, sent little cracks of doubt into teacher Ben's assertion that the voice was none of his concern. Still, it was far too early to lose all hope. Teacher Ben snuggled down further into his seat and hoped the pesky voice would go away.

Pleasing dreams began to form.

"TEACHER BEN! We're at the school, come on, it's time to go to work."

Explicative! The gig was up. Teacher Ben still tried to ignore the voice, but the hand that clamped down on his shoulder was rudely insistent.

"School?" teacher Ben slurred. He looked down at himself. He was fully clothed. It was some kind of minor miracle.

Were these yesterday's clothes? He asked himself wistfully. Had he worn them since yesterday? His brows furrowed in contemplation. It seemed an adequate assertion so he decided to file it in his mind under cold, hard fact.

If there was one thing life had taught teacher Ben, it was that the things you don't remember are generally best left forgotten.

He stepped out of the car and nearly lost it in the parking lot. But teacher Ben was a master at such situations, and he gracefully turned the clumsy stumble into a spontaneous pirouette. A couple parents had arrived early to drop off their kids. They were staring at teacher Ben; their heads tilted slightly sideways like a dog might do. Obviously they had been impressed by teacher Ben's athleticism. Teacher Ben made a gun with his hand and shot it at them playfully as he winked.

"Nice morning to ya. Thanks for bringing the kids by," he said.

He then aimed for light spots as he walked guessing that they were less likely to be solid.

A bell rang somewhere and suddenly there was a rush of uniformed clothing. Teacher Ben huddled in a corner for fear of losing his already tentatively gained equilibrium.

"What the hell is going on?" he bellowed in the kind of fury brought about by primitive, life-threatening fear. Luckily the moment quickly passed.

Teacher Ben pushed open a door. A crowd of giggling young people sat in their imitation wood and metal desks. Teacher Ben stepped forward.

He stood erect at the head of the class, a statute of knowledge and wisdom. He licked his hand subtly and discretely ran it through his disheveled hair. He was their teacher!

Collect yourself, he whispered to himself. Come on now champ, it's easy, get it together.

His slowly regenerating self-control was suddenly shattered as his hand passed through something large and wet clinging horribly to the side of his head. Instinctively he pulled his hand in front of his face to have a look at the mysterious substance, but fortunately he caught himself in time. Undoubtedly, it was another entry for the "better left unknown" file.

"Class," he tried to say, but what came out, instead, was a horrific, demonic laugh. In a split second, he realized the gig was up, they were on to him, and the hilarity augmented exponentially. His mirth was further magnified by the fact that none of the students were laughing, they were just staring at him with open mouths as if irritated.

Somehow, that made it even funnier, and he didn't even attempt to stop.

He stood there laughing, large, tear-inducing whoops of laughter, holding his sides and clutching his bowels internally to keep from defecating himself. Laughter, in times like these, cannot be appeased, and teacher Ben was fully under its power.

Beads of sweat began to form on his brow in response to the strenuous exertion, for indeed, it was a full-body work-out. Muscles clenched and unclenched in hard to reach places, and a torrent of lactic acid was released like a pack of hounds into his blood stream to mix with the various pharmacy of foreign chemicals already residing there.

In a short while, it became too much for his horribly mistreated body to support. The bile and half-digested chicken sandwich that had been gestating patiently in teacher Ben's stomach under the pretense of foul smelling belches and painful dry-heaves, suddenly leapt forth at the completion of its adult metamorphosis into full-on projectile vomiting. The inward clenching of teacher Ben's uncontrollable laughter jarred horribly against the outward push of the convulsion and tore gaping wounds into his already half-decayed diaphragm. Blood seeped into the mixture, and added a tinge of red to the already orangish spray.

The deluge continued for a wrenching painful moment.

The students sat and took it. They stared forward like confused sheep wondering why their shepherd had suddenly spontaneously combusted.

In just a few short seconds, it was all over. Teacher Ben paused briefly in the air, balancing like a fallen leaf in a stiff wind, and then toppled like a tranquilized gorilla.

The eraser that he didn't even know he had been clutching, clattered softly from his suddenly limp hand.

All was silent.

He lay there in a puddle of his own vomit, using a piece of half chewed up banana as a pillow. Slowly, inexorably, and despite all his best efforts to prevent it, teacher Ben began to sober up.

The End