The time is 18:00. King Keys, The Perpetually Pensive Poet is leading a youth offender’s session.
King Keys walked into a shabby ground level building in search of where he was supposed to be. There were no staff at a reception, and there were only teenagers talking in a lounge area. Keys walked through another door whilst the people in the lounge area stared at the masked man with puzzled expressions. When he walked through the second door, he heard loud shouting full of vituperative language. Keys slid into the room and closed the door behind him. It was a large room set out like a class, and people stood and sat in the corners of the room with their phones in hand. Most of the kids were recording the dispute. The argument was between a boy and a girl who was about a year or two younger than him. The girl was named Coreen Akinyemi. She had beautiful chocolate skin and eyes that were a light hazel colour. The boy was Rasharn White.
“I beg you, please stop talking, because if I call my brother on, you you’ll be acting different. Fix up!”
Coreen shouted.
“Your brother? The one who I smacked up? Funny,” Rasharn laughed.
The Akinyemi family were extremely close. They always stood by each other, and they would never let a single member be disdained. Coreen’s blood boiled with venomous anger. She started screaming. Rasharn’s words mustered her fury. She held her Swiss army knife discretely in her jacket pocket.
“Are you stupid? I’ll stab you myself!”
Coreen exclaimed as she lunged towards Rasharn with her fist still in her pocket ready to strike.
A woman who worked with the youth offender’s leadership team, named Sandra, stood in Coreen’s way. She tried to calm her down and seclude her from the small crowd of people who had been on their phones, gathering around her. Rasharn laughed and stuck his middle finger at Coreen. She was too far away to act now, thus she let go of her knife but continued to scream and throw her hands up as if they could somehow hurt him from the distance. The woman had led her to the corner of the room, carefully ducking and dodging so that Coreen’s fists did not catch her face. An off-duty police officer with a scar from his forehead to the bridge of his nose (who worked part-time at the youth offender’s college) was watching Coreen with a firm grip on his concealed gun. The officer was called PC Connor. He was ready to intervene, but Sandra had everything under control. Keys walked to the middle of the crowd of young people. They all jumped and shouted as if they were at a rave. The officer was disgusted by Keys’ presence.
“Settle down. Sit in your seats,” Keys commanded.
All the kids listened to him and made their way to their seats. The woman who was calming down Coreen in the corner turned around to see the man who had set order to the chaos of her session. Rasharn White sat silently as he listened to the mysterious man who had saved him and his friends from tragedy two months prior. Sandra recognised the man in the mask and gave him thumbs up before returning to Coreen (who was less agitated than before).
“This is a safe environment for all of you. This is a place where no one is allowed to judge you for your past. This is a place where you are who you are and you become what you want to be. Sandra over here—he said whilst pointing at the woman speaking to Coreen—tells me that you are all talented people. I believe that you all have the potential to be talented, but I am not going to take Sandra at her word. In fact from what you have displayed of your behaviour, I believe she may even be lying. I want all of you to prove her right. I am giving all of you half an hour to create an original piece of art according to your talents,” Keys explained.
He clapped his hands enthusiastically and pointed at a young man at random. The young man was taken aback by the sudden action.
“What is your name? What is your talent? And who do you want to be?”
Keys asked forcefully.
The young man grinned.
“I’m Charles. I can draw, and I want to be an artist.”
Keys made his way to the back of the room to pick up some painting supplies from the cupboard. Coreen and Sandra were both facing Keys from the back of the room as his entrance to the session melted away any sense of agitation or anger. All the kids tried hard not to ask Keys why he was wearing a mask. Keys took some various painting equipment and an A3 sheet of paper to Charles’ desk.
“Draw anything you want. Can all the other artists in this class please come to this area over here if they would like to share the equipment given?” King Keys said.
A young woman made her way next to Charles and Keys handed her another A3 piece of paper. As soon as they had their equipment, they started painting like fools. They took their brushes and started attacking their papers like wolverines with a flurry of colours. Keys clapped again enthusiastically and pointed at Rasharn White. He didn’t need to ask any questions: Rasharn understood what Keys was asking.
“I don’t know,” he responded.
He said it without confidence and without any care. The class stayed silent apart from the sound of paintbrushes dancing gracefully on paper.
“Write me a dramatic monologue about your life. It could be a rap, a poem or a speech. I expect no less than a masterpiece,” Keys stated simply whilst handing Rasharn with paper and a pen.
Rasharn understood what Keys was saying, but he doubted his own ability. Nevertheless, he tried. Coreen took a seat at the back of the class. Keys gradually went through the whole class, motivating them to use their talents, resulting in the emergence of a wave of creativity.
Once they had all started to work hard, Keys connected his laptop to the class speakers and played some ambient music. The slow and almost distant sound of the piano in the piece of music being played took over the room and flooded it with the perfect sounds to concentrate to. Each student felt completely and utterly at peace as they worked.
A man named Jacque walked into the class. He was a short Congolese man, but he had been westernised. He was a member of staff and an ex-youth offender himself. He was impressed to see the kids that he worked with, who he knew to be some of the unruliest of people, working and focussing on creative tasks. Thirty minutes passed swiftly, and the students moaned when they found out that their time was over. Keys first asked Charles and Diletta, the second artist in the class, to present their artworks. Both were unfinished, but they were both incredibly impressive. Charles’ piece of art was a hazy self-portrait drawn in an impressionist style. In the picture, he was smoking a blunt. Charles’ friends were in the background of the painting, and one of his friends resembled the features of Jordan Jones, but the piece was unfinished so it was unclear. Diletta presented a painting of a woman in an elegant velvet red dress. It was almost photorealist. The painted woman stood confidently with a smirk on her face. There were men in the background wearing ragged clothing and handcuffs, cleaning toilets, and they stared at the woman in admiration. Although it was not finished, it looked perfect due to the outline painted with shades of orangey red. Keys asked the class to applaud the two artists. Another young woman offered to share her talent next. She sang beautifully a song she had written in the 30 minutes that had been given. Her voice had a soulful tone to it like that of Nai Palm from Hiatus Kaiyote.
Keys turned to Rasharn last to read his masterpiece to the class. He had his hood on from the moment he had started writing. He refused to take it off. He had a solemn expression, and he stood up to read. Aesthetically, he looked like the stereotype of criminals that had been pushed forward in the media. His voice was deep and gritty. He read:
’Born with a silver spoon, but I live the life of a twisted individual.
I keep good deeds to a minimal,
I sin, and I’m past feeling remorse.
My voice is coarse from smoke burning through my lungs at every instance.
Flames consume my fate. Salvation feels too distant.
The helpless delinquent:
I’m a nocturnal creature with obsidian eyes.
I’ve ruined lives and birthed nightmares.
Like Columbus, I’m territorial.
No care as to who was where first,
If I’ve arrived, I’ve colonised,
Spread misery and deprived all chances of hope.
I live a violent life. People have begged me for mercy:
I’ve never compromised.
I’ve heard God is great, but honestly, I’m scared.
This is my moment.
Death comes quick to the sinner.
I’ve heard God is forgiving, but I doubt he’ll grant my atonement.’
The class stayed quiet for a few moments. Jacque stared at Rasharn open mouthed. He walked up to him and shook his hand.
“Good work, Rasharn. That is the stuff I like to see from you.”
Starting with King Keys, the whole class applauded Rasharn. Even Coreen who had sat in her seat the entire lesson—like a bomb ready to explode—was diffused by the dark honesty of Rasharn’s words. She clapped quietly. A buzzer went. The class started to pack their stuff and make their way home. Jacque made an announcement to the class that Keys would be returning to lead their creative skills lesson in seven days. As the students left the class, they started to realise the absurdness of their session: a masked man walked into their class and gave instructions that they all followed without fuss. Sandra who stood in the corner and watched the whole session was dumbfounded that her most horrible student, Rasharn White, had talent. He was the last student to leave the room. As he left, he shook King Keys’ hand firmly and thanked him. Even King Keys, the telepath, was unsure whether Rasharn was appreciative of the opportunity he was given in lesson or appreciative of his intervention in the fight that had happened two months before.