Mercy

In college, Mercy was a teacher's pet, and by teacher she had one teacher that she loved, in a mutually respectful way, as the teacher decided Mercy was brilliant but needed guidance and Mercy wanted the guidance and so there relationship was respectful and professional yet loving.

Mercy was caught cheating. Mercy was caught literally eating another student's work.

In the afternoon of a test one semester, the teacher asked Mercy to handle the business of tending to the class. Not teaching it, per se, but taking attendance, handing out homework, collecting assignments, 30 minutes tops, no big deal, the teacher did not care if it looked like Mercy was being favored because she was and she could handle it.

Mercy could not handle it. Mercy went through all the assignments, read them with guluttony.

Zoom into Mercy, a fraction away from her face. Look at her short dark hair rebellious hair style, the grown-out princeton haircut she gave herself. Look at her lustily reading her nemesis's project, reading through every shitty story, reading through every narrative and scientific equation, reading through the ways in which her nemesis fulfilled or did not fulfill the assignment. Mercy decided to tear a page of the assignment out. She tore it out and panicked. She tore it out and panicked and then decided to eat it. She tore the page out and didn't know what to do and ate it cold, swallowed it and chewed it and had bits of it in her teeth.

She drove back to her apartment in glee. She would never get caught, not in a million years. How to tell, it looked like there were simply pages missing. That is all. Missing pages.

A security camera shows what happened. Several phone calls, several weeks, knock at the door, meetings, meetings. Mercy, you are caught cheating and putting another student's work in danger. Mercy, you stole intellectual property and then consumed it. Mercy, there are no rules in place here, Mercy, you, yet again, have shown us