What's that on the Ceiling?

Ricky wasn’t the best student, nor was he the worst. He was grade-A C-level, for sure. He always doodled on his tablet, or talked to his brown-haired buddy, Jerry.

Ricky was in first grade. A fair size for his age, Ricky seemed always to blend in to the surroundings. He probably would have, too, has his blonde hair not always given him away.

Because of his constant talking in class, Ricky had to sit in the front of Mrs. Ferguson’s Social Studies class. Even then, while the rest of the class was learning how to find England on a map, Ricky was lost in his own little world. He had become so adept at daydreaming that he could give himself controlled hallucinations. There was never anything too bad in his daydreaming. At least, if there was, he could usually snap out of it quickly.

One day, however, Mrs. Ferguson was in a particularly boring lecture about the “exciting world of corn production.” Exciting. Right.So, without any time wasted, Ricky began daydreaming.

Perhaps a peek into Ricky’s head whilst dreaming would be good. Most of the time, Ricky would imagine himself on a distant planet or deep in the jungles of Saudi Arabia (he was quite bad at geography, you see). Sometimes, however, he would imagine things appearing in the classroom, such as an elephant outside or a cuckoo landing on Mrs. Ferguson’s head.

On this daydream extravaganza, Ricky imagined the school being a rocket and flying off into space. Upon landing back safely on earth, a traveling minstrel serenaded Ricky with the music that mommy didn’t allow him to listen to but he sneaked in right before going home from school. Once the minstrel finished his last piece – Bohemian Rhapsody – Ricky imagined an elephant rampaging through the classroom after having broken in from outside. The damage cleared when Ricky was asked to answer a question (What country lies north of Vietnam? He answered Myanmar). Before he could reenter his trance, he noticed a glob of some black ooze in the top-front-left corner of the room, behind Mrs. Ferguson’s desk.

He wasn’t imagining that, so he asked Jerry if he saw it, too. Jerry wouldn’t look, citing Mrs. Ferguson’s wrath with the paddle and his still-sore bum as reasons to not look. Ricky was not, however, the only person to notice the blob. Bobby, the best student in class, also noticed it. He was petrified. From his vantage point behind and to the right of Ricky, he could see fine.

The blob grew slightly, expanding at the rate of a heartbeat. An eye appeared, then another. They were the size of golf balls. A mouth, pink and hairless, grew out of the blob, which had become fuzzy. It’s [Ed Note: That grammatical error might have cost me another $750. Consarnit] teeth were like needles, and it – the mouth, that is – seemed big enough, in a first-grader’s mind, to eat a person whole. Ricky hoped with all his might that the creature would eat Mrs. Ferguson.

Bobby was frightened, still. He never had been good at dealing with “situations.” His face showed his surprise when he wet himself from fear, just the slightest bit.

Ricky was asked another question (who was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire?), and his attention was snapped away (He answered “Eisenhower”). When he returned his gaze to the blob, it was gone. He never daydreamed again. Well, not until Mrs. Ferguson began talking about the building of the pyramids, the next day. Bobby was able to go to the restroom and clean himself up without anyone noticing his accident. Ricky heartily denied seeing anything when asked by Bobby.

Ricky never did figure out just what that thing had been.