-10:00pm-

My mouth glued shut, I look out the grate of the locker, body tight in my confinement. The janitor walks past, and I know that if I can’t make enough sound to alert her, I will be trapped here until the end of winter vacation, when some kid opens his locker to find my corpse within. But I can’t move, and I can’t speak. I desperately struggle, but the janitor’s shadow is almost out of sight.
-Seven Hours Ago; 3:00pm-

The school bell rang. Just like that, at three o’clock, thousands of students and teachers were off to their winter vacation joyously. But I needed something first. I had below an A one class, and one class only, and I had my heart set on getting at least an A-. Good thing for me, then, that I knew the dirt on this teacher. There were rumors floating around that he had slept with a senior boy each year since he graduated college and was hired as a teacher here about five years ago. There was another rumor that he liked me. I was the cute senior boy that had just turned eighteen, and this guy was twenty-nine, so it was slightly less creepy than it would be if he was like, fifty.

Anyway, I knew he liked me, so I told my girlfriend that I wouldn’t be meeting her after school today, and I walked up the stairs and waited outside his classroom for him to come up the stairs. After a little bit I entered the room and sat on his desk, waiting.

When he finally entered, it was four, and he grabbed his stuff from a closet and almost left before he saw me.

“Jesus Christ, Connor, you scared me! What are you doing here?”

“Well, I wanted to talk with you about my grade,” I said, not giving away my true intentions.

“Yeah? What about them?”

“Well, I have a C-, but I really wanted an A.”

“I gave you the grade that you earned, Connor. There’s nothing you can do for your grade now.”

“You mean there’s nothing I can do for extra credit?”

“No,” he shook his head, slightly annoyed at this point, “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Well… Is there something I can do for you?”

“What do you mean, Connor?”

“I’m legal now…” I tease a little bit, shifting on the desk so that my legs are rested apart, showing off the bottom of my jeans and something else I knew he was interested in, as according to the movies I had watched where some dumb blonde seduces her teacher. The girl would show off, so I would show off what appeals to the victim in my situation.

Mr. Thompson’s mouth dropped. “What?”

I swallow any kind of pride that might remain inside me and say, “I know you like me. I want to give you the chance to show me.”

“I can’t. I’m your teacher. This is wrong.”

“It’s not so wrong. I mean, I am over seventeen. It’s technically not illegal.”

He looks defensive for a second, so I whisper, “I want it too.”

He approached me slowly, as though he felt he shouldn’t.

I put one hand on his shoulder, massaging lightly, “No one has to know…”

“This is wrong… you’re my student…”

But my mouth is at his neck, and he can’t resist any longer.
-6:00pm-

I’m pulling on my shirt as he’s buttoning his.

I got what I wanted, my grade will be up before they go in permanently. But for some reason I don’t feel accomplished… I feel empty.

I guess he notices as I walk out without saying good by, the sagging shoulders, the bent neck, curving my head down toward the floor.

I’m utterly disgusted by myself. I turn away from the stairs and back the other way toward the classroom, passing it to enter the men’s restroom.

I let all my emotions pour from my stomach, out my mouth, and into the toilet.

This is the worst feeling that I have ever experienced. The son of the prestigious Isaac King, who paid for my school tuition, a common teacher’s sl**. I know this happens a lot more often than people let on, but it still doesn’t make me feel any better.

I watch myself in the mirror above the sink as I wash up, but I know that I’ve been contaminated by my crime. The dirt is in my soul, not on my skin, and there’s nothing that can get it out. Not that what I did was bad… I mean, it was for me, not for him, but the reasons I did it… not one person in my life would forgive me if they knew.

The mirror taunts me unyieldingly, and I feel the pressure of my own reflection weighing down on me. The person looking back isn’t me. He’s the perfect little angel that the rest of the world sees. I didn’t do this, he did.

I scream in fury as my fist hits the glass, cracking it straight in the middle of my face so that I don’t have to look at the picturesque abomination to my name that looks back at me.

Leaving the restroom, I walk down the stairs, and down the hallway. Every camera in the building makes me think that one of them may have caught what I had done, and that scares the s*** out of me. I’m not happy about what I did, and I sure as he** didn’t enjoy it, so if I don’t get into college…

It’s all for that college. Everything I do is so that I can follow in my father’s footsteps. And that just isn’t fair, is it?

Being any less than an Isaac King clone would be a disappointment to anyone around me.

I trudge down the hall, and to the doors that frame the building; you can’t get in or out of the building if these doors are locked, because you can’t get to the actual doors that let you in and out of the building.

And they are locked fast. I turn to the office but the lights are off. Everyone is gone. I turn to the doors one more time and try to open them, but to no avail.

I soon see Mr. Thompson’s reflection in the glass window on the door, and smile. We can both go home, and neither of us will mention a word of what happened to anyone as long as we live.

“Hey, Thompson! You have keys. Can you get the…”

I watch his reflection raise the scissors over his head, and turn and kick his legs out from under him.

“What the he**!” I scream.

“You’re going to tell someone! I know it!”

“Why would I… no? I won’t…”

“That’s what the last one said!”

I look at him in horror as he starts to get up. My freshman year, a senior boy went missing. He was never found, and now I know why. I had just slept with a serial rapist. “Oh, Christ!”

He lunges at me, and I scream as the scissors cut across my arm, through my letter jacket, hooking in the arm of the coat.

I twist myself out of the jacket, leaving the jacket and my backpack as I run the other way.

I don’t look back as he screams at me, cursing my existence.

Sprinting up the stairs, I hide in a classroom in the English hallway and reach for my pocket realizing that my phone is in my jacket.

Desperately searching among the computers and on the teacher’s desk for a phone, but the only phone in sight is the one that calls the intercom.

“S***,” I whisper.

And then I hear the door handle twisting behind me.

I grab the nearest possible weapon and duck under the desk, finding myself holding a stapler. I pull the lever, opening it in the way that would normally be used to attach things to walls.

This is by no means what I am intending to use it for.

I see Thompson look around the room, and I turn away, resting my back against the desk, and clutch the stapler to my chest with a death grip that my six-year-old self would use while clutching a security blanket while watching something exactly like this without my parent’s permission.

Taking a deep breath through my mouth, making sure he doesn’t hear me, I hope desperately for him to just walk the other way and leave me, so that this doesn’t have to happen.

Unfortunately for both of us, it does.

I watch his head as he looks over the desk, and thrust the stapler upward, launching a staple into his forehead.

I punch the stapler a second time when he starts to scream, blinded by the scarlet flow pouring from his brow, where the stapler has now lodged itself.

I jump out from under the desk, kicking the stapler into his face when he tries to grab me, and he falls into the computer behind him as I run, fleeing out the door as I rush across the hallway.

Sprinting down the hall, I turn over my shoulder to see if Thompson is following, and am terrified to see that he is not.

Because, at least, if he’s following me, I know where he is, and there’s no way he could pop out from behind a corner and gut me if I turned too quickly without looking.

I hide in an office off the side of a room, and wait for some time.

My heart is pounding savagely in my chest; I desperately wait for some sign of safety, or danger. Any kind of knowing is welcome at this point.
-8:00pm-

My ear to the door, I listen for a sound I thought I heard.

The door starts to open, and I can’t move. I am paralyzed in fear.

The janitor jumps back as he sees me.

“What are you doing here? School ended five hours ago!”

“Mr. Thompson’s trying to kill me!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s seriously trying to kill me!”

“Hurry, come with me. We’ll get you to a doctor.”

I look down at my arm for the first time, and, though it has stopped bleeding, it is red and enflamed.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

I look up to see scissors descend upon the janitor, and I scream as the open scissors slice across the artery in the front of his throat, cutting across it and showering me in blood.

I turn and sprint toward a staircase, but there’s suddenly a sharp pain in my leg, and I hear a loud snap, screaming as the scissors cut the muscle in the back of my leg, disabling that limb as the muscle rolls up like a measuring tape into the back of my knee, and I fall, tumbling down the stairs.
-10:00pm-

My mouth glued shut, I look out the grate of the locker, body tight in my confinement. The janitor walks past, and I know that if I can’t make enough sound to alert her, I will be trapped here until the end of winter vacation, when some kid opens his locker to find my corpse within. But I can’t move, and I can’t speak. I desperately struggle, but the janitor’s shadow is almost out of sight.

I look down and see my only chance of survival; my hurt leg.

I lift up my usable leg, and land crushingly on the other, my mouth rips the glue open as I let out a bloodcurdling scream, and hot tears pour across my cheeks.

The janitor turns back, and I slam my fists on the locker door to get her attention.

The locker swings open, and I quickly summarize what’s happening.

“There’s a phone in the art room. The office would take too long to unlock because the other janitor had the keys. I can support you there, but not up the stairs. You would be alone too long by your self.”

I nod, and the two of us make our way down the hall to the art room as fast as we can.
-10:30pm-

The janitor hangs up the phone, and I feel relief wash over me.

“I’m going to go find this teacher of yours,” she says, picking up a letter opener that is on the teacher’s desk.

I look at her once, nod, and say, “thank you.”

She turns to the door, and opens it to get a pair of pencils through her eye socket.

I scream as Thompson is upon me, and everything happens so fast.

He descends on me with the scissors again, but I sweep everything off of the table with my other leg, shattering coffee mugs used for paint onto the floor.

He backs away for a second before charging me again, but by this time I have a ceramic pot, which crashes over his head.

He falls back into a room that I immediately recognize as the kiln.

I kick the door shut, and turn the dial in front of the door.

“Burn you sunnovabitch!” I yell, and turn away, limping out of the door.

I take the poor janitor’s keys and unlock the front, slipping out into the parking lot.

Barely able to limp, I make my way to the first car in the lot, the spot that belonged to the valedictorian, the highest-ranking student in my class. If I got the grade, I would keep the spot, but the only thing that matters to me right now is making it to that spot and not passing out and freezing to death before the cops arrive.

I notice that I’m bleeding again when I make it to my car, and realize that, like my grade, I really don’t care about it anymore. I am alive, that’s all that matters.

Getting inside, I hear sirens in the distance, and allow the pain to overtake me, falling onto the steering wheel. I pass out to the loud sound of the horn and the flashing of blue and red lights.