8.

Joshua walked through the glass double doors of his high school, with his notebooks gripped to his side. He wandered through the halls and didn't notice anything at first. Surprisingly, it was the less unusual thing that he noticed first: there were no females, just a crowd of boys his age. Then the second thing hit him: they were all standing dumbly, their eyes glazed over, their lips muttering lowly in quick, intent work.

"Hey," said Joshua. "Hey, everyone, what's going on? Why are you all whispering like that? Why are you just standing around?"

No one was moving--all held a station against a wall, some by stairs, others in the middle of the hall--no one moved about as ought to have been the norm in school. Usually the wide halls such as this were thick arteries through which the students did nothing but move, in which it was nearly impossible to stand still. But stand still they did--their eyes were rolled back under their upper lids, the whites seen through thin slits.

Joshua came close to one boy. He was a Freshman; he'd seen him before, a kind of timid young white man, the kind that cared little for glory or popularity and just want to get by without getting beaten on. Joshua noticed now what his lips were saying--"Two hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and one, two hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and two, two hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and three"--it went on like that, his mind and lips moving rapidly over the numbers.

Joshua backed away from him--he noticed now that all these boys were doing the same--counting--each was on a different number but there they went, their focus on the numbers intense, wild.

"Hey!" said Joshua. "What's wrong with all you? Why are you just counting?"

He backed away toward the doors. Then he thought: yes, the strange, the bizarre--it terrifies one more than any horror, more than any blood and guts. This--the senselessness, the irrationality--this was true horror. Man feared more in losing his mind than in losing a limb. Man understands physical torture--it makes sense that his flesh should pang when torn. But this--this irrationality, this nullification of all sense and sanity--this was worse than any rape or beating.

He fled on out the door, hoping against hope that something, somewhere would again make sense to him, that the idea that the world was run by rules and logical mechanisms would not continue and continue to be proved false. "Even if it is illusion for the world to make sense," he thought; "even if the sane one is deluded, please, let me be deluded--let me live once more in the chimera of logic, if that is what it takes for my world to make sense to me."