The student doodled, wondered why a whale would be white, made a note in the book’s margin, underlined a sentence.
His pen descended again but couldn’t harpoon words. The elusive whale submerged into unseen pages.
The young man slammed the book shut and jammed it into his heavy backpack. He slung the bundled freight over one shoulder and rose from the desk.
The white whale moved, too.
It swam inside inky darkness, from one book to another.
It moved through Physics, Biology, Sociology, Philosophy, Religion, Statistics, History. It migrated from ocean to ocean.
The student quickly navigated to his next classroom. Thinking of nothing. Thinking of everything. Suddenly he felt the whale slip into his bent back, shiver up his spine, then a whirl of awful whiteness in his head.
Anxiously he sought a harpoon.
But the whale swam away.
Short Stories by Richard 