Read Online Garden of Evil by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page A

classmates, sir – together and individually. I think most of them already share a similar vision.’
    â€˜OK,’ said Jim, ‘enough of this spiritual malarkey. In this class, Special Class Two, there is only one higher power, and that higher power is called M-E, me. My name, for those who don’t already know it, is Jim Rook, and if you want to express my purpose here in a spiritual way, I will be doing my best during the coming college year to lead you out of the wilderness of street slang and text speak and general illiteracy into the promised land of nouns and verbs and adjectives and sentences that actually make some kind of sense.’
    A pale-skinned African-American boy sitting right in front of Simon Silence put up his hand. He had a long face and bulging eyes and wing-nut ears with at least half a dozen gold earrings in each of them.
    â€˜Hate to say this, sir, but that sound to me like a whole shitload of hard work for nothing. Nobody never has no trouble understanding me now. I make good enough sense.’
    â€˜What’s your name, son?’ Jim asked him.
    â€˜Jordy Brown, sir.’
    â€˜Whose face is that on your T-shirt, Jordy?’
    â€˜Snoop Dogg, sir.’
    â€˜Well, to give him his proper name, it’s Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Junior. But do you know what Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Junior, is most famous for saying?’
    Jordy Brown grinned broadly. ‘Yes, sir, he say that Britney would make a better prostitute than Christina cause she’s thicker.’
    â€˜Yes, he said that. But he also said that if the only job you can get is flipping burgers at McDonalds, make sure that you’re the best burger flipper that ever was. Like,
ever
– in the whole history of burger flippery.’
    â€˜I ain’t goin’ to flip no burgers at McDonalds, sir. Not never.’
    â€˜Maybe not. Don’t count on it. But you
are
going to be speaking and writing English for the rest of your life, so make sure you’re the best English speaker and writer you can possibly be.’
    Jordy Brown twisted around to look at Simon Silence, as if he were appealing for a second opinion, but Simon Silence simply raised one of his blond, almost-invisible eyebrows, and shrugged. Jim thought:
at least somebody in this classroom knows that I’m talking sense, even if he doesn’t talk much sense himself.
    â€˜Right,’ he said, turning to the blackboard. ‘Here we see the name of Rachel X. Speed, an award-winning poet who made her name by writing very gritty, in-your-face kind of poems. She wrote about stuff that poets don’t usually write about, like losing babies and falling in love with other women and falling in love with all the wrong men.
    â€˜This poem is called
A New Language of Love
and when I’ve finished reading it to you, I want you each to write down what you think of it. One sentence will be enough. Three sentences will be plenty, but – hey – don’t think that I’m stopping you from writing more if you want to. You can write me a whole book if you like.’
    He opened the slim, black-bound collection of Rachel X. Speed’s poetry and started to read.
    â€˜You came home last night.
    My love, my lover.
    You came up the stairs and I opened the door wide to welcome you.
    You hit me.
    You said not a single word, not even that you hated me.
    I sit here now, watching you sleep.
    My love, my lover.
    Trying to understand what you were telling me.
    It’s three a.m.
    On the other side of the room hangs a portrait of me
    An oval portrait that moves when I move.
    And writes, whenever I write.
    A portrait that shows what you have done to me by hitting me so hard
    Both of my eyes are crimson, like a clown’s, and my lips are split
    My love, my lover.
    I always believed you when you said you loved me
    So, when you stopped talking to me –
    When you started hitting me instead
    What was I to think?
    You didn’t