Tick – – Tick – – Tick, went the clock.
Jeremy put down his pencil and took a breath.
Tick – – Tick – – Tick
Irritation boiled and bubbled inside him.
Tick – – Tick – – Tick
He looked around. Twenty six boys scribbled furiously, two stared at the ceiling and one appeared to have eaten the contents of his pencil-case.
Tick – Tick – Tick
He tried, once more, to answer question two. The one about the shortest route between A and B when B was actually F.
Tick! – Tick! – Tick!
His right eye twitched.
Tick! Tick! Tick!
“Where are the ‘Tocks!?’” he screamed, as his pencil splintered into two.
Thanks to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers. Get yourself there and join in with the weekly 100 word challenge!
me.you.coffee 
Dear Peter,
You’ve captured the classroom beautifully. I nearly fell off my chair at the image of the half-eaten pencil case contents. Jeremy seems a bit stressed. 😉 Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle, hope you fixed your chair.
Dear Mr. Binks,
The tocks are in another classroom, driving some other poor soul crazy. You put together an excellent story for the prompt. Even as I type, I’m imagining that the photo depicts the contents of the pencil-case. Well done.
Aloha,
Doug
ha ha, good call! 🙂
Lovely – I can really read (and hear) the tension build!
Thanks for reading (and hearing), Claire.
tocks eaten by ticks ! nice one 😀
Tocks eaten by Ticks eaten by Tocks. http://allpoetry.com/poem/851714-Tick-follows-Tock–waiting–by-pozo
Ah.. the ticks.. that bloody sucks.. what perfect image of tension.
Why thank you!
Now that’s what I call an out of the box submission! Well done sir. 🙂
I think I got away with it 😉
AnElephant chortles.
He, I was wondering the same thing!
Thanks for a good laugh. This picture does bring “ticks” to mind.
Dear Peter,
I have always been blessed with a gift for test taking–so much that I actually commiserated with Hermione in the first Harry Potter book when she was disappointed over finals being canceled. My sister, on the other hand, is at least as smart as myself and suffers from severe test anxiety. Standardize testing was her worst nightmare in grade school, and her college entrance exams woefully underrated her abilities. In this story, you show the world from her point of view, I believe, and you’ve done it in such a way that I can truly empathize. Thank you.
All my best,
Marie Gail
I guessh e didn’t get a tock because he was too ticked off… Randy
Nothing is more enraging than a mild annoyance that you can do nothing about.
Nice work
Very good! It made me laugh (hope it was suppose to). 😀
Oh, I get it… the tension lead up to the laugh!
Enjoyed…. Just like the annoying silence of a still classroom!
Very clever. Exams, classrooms, pencil cases, and the clock ticking away the precious minutes – ah memories!
Lovely. And I like the way you changed the intensity of the ticks.
I imagine the ticks were cockroaches in the walls?
Nicely told. I could imagine to monotony of the class room and the slow building of rage.
Been there. Well done.
If that test had been any harder, they’d have eaten the strawberries off the wallpaper, too.
You captured this well, Mister B.