More Mental Chow

Today I'm going to present for you people a silly short story I wrote a few years ago while I was on a philosophy kick. I would like comments with any reactions you might have about it, about the writing style, vocab, if you liked it, if it sucked, whatever you want to say. I'd appreciate it.
Oh, and not that any of you would, but just to be safe, even though it's not the greatest writing, please don't steal my stuff or use it without my permission. I'll have to get really upset and sue you and stuff, and that's no good. All rights reserved and that sorta shit. Brief quotes for critical writing and commenting is fine.

William Jacobs

By Sean Robert Cummings

“I think, therefore I am”

-René Descartes (1596-1650)

Will Jacobs was not the most popular guy in school. At the moment, I am sure it is easy to take this vast understatement as is. But to truly understand why he wasn’t well known, I shall tell you a story.

Will, like many people his same age, was attending college. He had been there for two years and had not enjoyed it much. This was to be will’s junior year and he was looking forward to it like a man on his way to his execution. Little did anyone know, this was not far from the truth.

One particularly gray morning, Will was lying in his uncomfortably small bed staring at the ceiling, wondering what it was worth to go on living. This thought meandered away as he turned and looked at the clock, which displayed the time in large green numbers: seven forty-five. This was only perturbing because Will’s philosophy class started at seven thirty. He very quickly jumped into his clothes from the day before and ran out the door. He arrived shortly, slipped in the door and found his usual seat near the back of the lecture hall. Good, professor Worton didn’t seem to notice. He began to nod in and out of consciousness as Worton droned on about Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech.

Will always sat in the back. He figured; since no one wanted to talk to him, they probably didn’t want to look at the back of his head either. Will didn’t mind, he was used to this behavior. It had been this way ever since he could remember. He never made any friends, his teachers never offered to help him, and he could not recall the last time he had a conversation with his parents. Will was a very lonely person.

After a couple of hours, the bell rang. Will was hardly affected. He opened his eyes just as Worton was walking out the door. What a bunch of jerks, he thought. They didn’t even bother to wake me. He gathered up his belongings in a not to hurried fashion and headed for the next building on his schedule.

“Oh great,” Will muttered sarcastically as he approached the Henson Mathematics Hall. He was never very good at math because his teachers would never slow down and let him catch up when he was confused (which is precisely the reason he was confused so often).

Except for the occasional weekend, this was how every day went for next few months. Until one day, Will arrived to class on time for once in a blue moon. Professor Worton was talking about a famous French philosopher and mathematician by the name of René Descartes. He apparently had the idea that philosophy should be totally logical like mathematics. With this thought, Will already didn’t like the sound of this guy. However, contrary to the idea, Will was interested.

“René Descartes,” said Worton, “became famous by coining this phrase, ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ or, ‘I think therefore I am’. He used this thought to enforce his idea that all animals under God were nothing more than automata or machines. He said this because he believed that to think one must have a soul and only humans have souls.”

Will was astonished to hear something so interesting. He decided maybe he should stay awake from then on. After class that day, Will left that building feeling enriched. The lecture stayed in his mind for a time. He pondered it as he strolled through campus. He thought about it as he ambled toward his car after math class. He even considered it as he drove home. He arrived home from school that day, happy for the first time in a long time.

“Hi, Mom,” Will said cheerily as he skipped through the front door and up the stairs to his room. She flashed a wondering look in his direction.

“Honey, what was that?”

“What? Why do you ask that every day?” responded Mr. Jacobs.

“Never mind,” she said without tone and returned to her crossword puzzle.

Over the next few weeks, Will’s head was filled with Cartesian philosophy. He started to read his textbook more often. Stranger still, he even read Hamlet. He loved it all. Then he decided he would change his major to philosophy.

Will’s outlook on life started to perk up a bit. He was always on time to class now. Professor Worton didn’t seem to notice a difference, so Will started to sit closer to the front of the room. No one seemed to care. This was starting to bother Will.

A red-haired girl would sometimes sit a few rows ahead of Will. He had noticed her for a few weeks since his renascence into the learning world and had developed a small crush on her. She seemed intelligent to him because she would often answer the random questions that the professor would throw out. She also had an interesting way of spinning her pen around her forefinger and catching it with her thumb. He was infatuated.

One morning after class, Will gathered up his courage to talk to her. As he passed through the door behind her, he reached up and tapped her on the shoulder. She quickly spun around and looked him in the face. Her gaze appeared to pass right through him. As he was about to say something she turned away and walked off. Will was stunned. He stood there gasping for breath. He could not believe that she completely ignored him. When Will got home later that afternoon, he couldn’t remember what had happened after she left him. It was all a blur. All he could think about was his own measly life and how terrible it was.

That night, Will tossed and turned. His sleep was all one long nightmare filled with thoughts of his own death and how it would affect the people around him. Those horrible thoughts lingered as he awoke the next morning.

This is not going to be a good day, Will thought. He knew so, because of the gray clouds rumbling outside his window. He slowly sat up and rubbed his aching eyes. He leaned over and dragged on the dirty shirt lying on the floor, slipped into the untied tennis shoes, and trudged out the door.

Willed sauntered into the classroom and fell into a chair in the back. He looked up and saw Worton writing something about Socrates on the chalkboard.

“Not again,” Will muttered apathetically.

“I hate this class,” he whispered to himself, “I don’t wanna think anymore, so I aint.”

The pencil that Will had been holding fell to the table, rolled a few inches, and toppled to the floor under the desk of the redhead that sat in front of him. She glanced back at his empty desk. She looked back toward the front not giving it a second thought. That afternoon, when Will didn’t show up for math class, nobody seemed to care. That evening, when Will didn’t come home, Mister and misses Jacobs didn’t seem to mind. From that day on, no one ever saw William Jacobs ever again. In fact, no one had ever seen William Jacobs before. This was all because of the very strange, and very sad fact that William Jacobs had inadvertently discovered that he was only a figment of his own imagination.