He had everything; a multitude of pens
and pencils safely stashed away in their pouch, his folders neatly stacked next
to each other in his canvas backpack. He walked timidly out of his suburban
home clutching a wrinkled paper bag in his right hand.
“Have a great day at school,
sweetheart,” his mom called after him, watching him with love in her eyes as he
swung his backpack over his shoulder and stumbled off the step onto the
sidewalk. The school wasn’t far, but she worried anyway. It was her job as a
mother.
To be technical, she wasn’t his real
mother, but she loved the eight-year-old as if he were her own. Her husband was
barren, something they had recently discovered when trying to conceive several
years earlier. It was the custom in their family, as it was in the families in
the surrounding neighborhood, to have at least one child so as to keep their
traditions alive. After all, who else would the older neighbors hand down their
cherished Christmas cookie recipes to? Who else could they trust with the
secret ingredient to the Thanksgiving turkey? (It was marmalade.)
So in the year prior, the happy
couple decided to adopt the grinning eight-year-old boy they’d seen skipping
rope at the orphanage. And today was his first day of public school.
He walked along the sidewalk and
tried his best to avoid treading on the chalk drawings of other children;
hearts, tic-tac-toe, monsters, families. A lump caught in his throat as he stepped
over a crudely drawn chalk picture of a stick figure bleeding to death.
Something about the way it was sketched in happy pastel colors set him on edge
even more than he already was. But he kept on.
Sixteen minutes passed and the
school came into view. It looked no different than he’d imagined. It had a huge
flagpole out front, surrounded by a lush patch of big pink and blue flowers.
The windows were clean, the concrete walkways were swept and the grass was
green and mowed. He exhaled, a feeling of calm taking over. He tried to smile
at his new classmates, shaking the feeling that they were all staring at him
(like kids do).
He walked through one of the glass
double-doors, thanking a young blonde girl in a gingham jumper that held it open.
She nodded politely. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, he thought.
Soon after he found his classroom
and sat at the desk with his name taped to it, the bell rang, a long,
low-pitched dong, dong, dong and the
stragglers took their seats. Class was about to begin.
The teacher, a put-together-looking
lady of about fifty, skinny, with cat eye glasses and a polka dot dress stood
at the front of the class and introduced herself.
“But you already knew that, my
children,” she said, “It’s wonderful to see you all again after our summer
vacation. My, how some of you have grown in the short while we’ve been apart.”
Some of the stronger, more athletic
boys near the back of the class flexed their muscles as the girls around them
giggled. The teacher chuckled and shook her head.
“Students,” she began again, “I
would like to introduce you to Kimberly, a student teacher from the local
university. She’s studying to become an art teacher and she’ll be with us for a
short while to see what it’s like in a classroom setting. I want you all on
your best behavior.”
Kimberly smiled and waved awkwardly.
She was pretty. Hair like fall leaves. Soft lips. A delicate frame and small
features, but big round eyes like a doe.
“Now, class, if you’ll take out your
textbooks and turn to chapter four. As most of you remember, we went pretty far
last year and this is where we ended. Let’s review and see what you remember.”
At that, she jammed a needle into
the poor student teacher’s neck and pushed an amount of liquid deep into her
veins. The girl dropped. The students shifted in their seats- some from
excitement, some from regret that they should have paid far more attention in
class last year. The boy sat motionless, breathless.
Once the teacher had managed to pick
the twenty-something up from the laminate tiles and hoist her to her desk, she
then instructed her students to get out a pencil and a sheet of paper for notetaking.
She then went to a large closet in the back of the room, labeled SUPPLIES, and
pulled down a plastic bin. She walked among the desks, distributing newly
sharpened knives. One to each student.
“Ugh,” said a boy in the front row, “I’ve
got the chipped one again.”
“I’m afraid the school didn’t get
that grant like the Headmaster said we might,” responded the teacher,
continuing to pass out knives until each desk had a blade.
The teacher set the plastic bin on
the floor. “Alright students, does anyone know what we do first?”
A boy wearing a sports jersey raised
his hand and answered, “We strip her clothes off.”
“No, not quite yet. Anyone else?”
“We light the candles,” said a girl
in thick glasses.
“Right you are! But for today, we’ll
just dim the lights. They won’t let us have candles anymore after what happened
last year.” At this, she stepped over to the door and pulled down on a little
switch to the right of the frame. The lights dimmed. The boy could barely make
out the teacher’s face, let alone any of the students’.
“And now we say the chant, right?
And take her clothes off?” Another student to the right of the boy.
“You’re correct! We’re off to a good
start,” praised the teacher. “Class?”
All at once the students began
repeating a low hymn in a language the boy didn’t understand. It was low and guttural
and terrifying. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Should he run? If he ran,
what would happen? Would they catch him?
As the assembly of students echoed their
song (some of them off of cheat sheets), the teacher untied the woman’s boots,
then began slowly and gently cutting off her assistant’s sweater, then jeans,
until she was fully nude, laying sprawled on the desk.
Some of the boys in the back
giggled.
“Boys!” the teacher whispered
harshly in the midst of the chanting, “I will write you up and send you to the
Headmaster. Be respectful.”
As the low rasping of the students
continued, the teacher stood at the front of the class, behind her desk, and
waved on the first row of students to come to the front.
“Go ahead,” she urged.
And there it was.
The slicing, slaughtering, slashing
of this unconscious woman. Was she dead? Or was she simply unconscious? Or
perhaps fully conscious, though paralyzed? Could she feel what these children
were doing to her?
“Gently,” the teacher reminded, “the
Headmaster has very strict ways of doing things. Our lord must be pleased. Why
is that, children?”
The students resonated, “For he is
the giver of knowledge. Knowledge is all that we seek. Please him and he will
pour onto us the fountain of knowledge of all things.”
The boy sat at his desk, faint,
feeling sick and on the verge of tears. But the fear in his gut was too much
for him to cry. Not right now. Not while a million thoughts were scrambling
through his psyche. Not while the students around the body made cuts to the
woman’s abdomen, chest, legs, arms.
Next row, please.
And the first group sat down,
splattered in dark blood, while the next group stood to continue the
mutilation.
More chanting. The chant seemed to
go on forever, until the boy realized that his classmates had stopped singing
and he was now hearing the chorus of a hundred students in the surrounding
classrooms.
An eternity passed and his row was
called to the front. The other pupils stood and grabbed their knives, anxious
to put their mark on the student teacher, anxious to please their Headmaster.
As the students at the front of the
classroom dug their blades into flesh, the teacher called out, startling the
boy.
“Heavens! Oh, my sweet dear, I’m so
sorry! Class, we have a new student joining us this year.”
The weight of thirty faces was upon
the boy. Faces with fire in their eyes, bloody faces, tired faces, brainwashed
faces, faces that had given up and given in.
“Let us make him at home.” The dim
light flashed in their instructor’s cat eye glasses.
The blonde girl in the gingham
dress, now drenched in blood, walked around the desk and stood in front of the
boy. She smiled. Whether it was menacing or meant to be a welcome, he couldn’t
tell, especially in the dim lighting.
She pocketed her blade and picked up
the one on his desk. She looked at it, ran her thumb down the edge. A line of
bright red appeared on her skin. She pointed it at him, admiring the shine on
the steel. She flipped the weapon and thrust the handle toward the boy.
“You can stand with me,” she
whispered.
And the blonde girl in the bloody gingham
jumper smiled, and handed him the knife.
