Featured Fiction: The Teacher
“Yes, yes, absolutely yes.” The teacher sat sulking in her rickety wooden chair, her dull, silvery hair strewn about a head atop a shriveled body wrinkling beneath its tattered, off-colored cloths only the teacher might call garments.
Georg sulked back at his teacher, tearing his own bright, twisted hair out of his head, wondering when this futile monotony would come to an end. She always answered students like that, nodding her head as if someone said something somewhat intelligent—even intelligible!—when in fact nothing at all was said. He glanced across the room, quickly catching K.’s eye, exchanging the furtive, knowing look they always exchanged during the teacher’s class.
“Yes, Michael,” she mumbled, staring glazy eyed at the grey concrete wall aback the classroom. “That’s the, the Gnostic, somewhat different approach, the German for it is, I’m not sure, but yes, absolutely yes.” Georg feigned patience with her slow, whispering speech. But we know he thought she was a fool. He imagined her sitting over a steaming cauldron, whispering again, but this time almost chanting as she spewed incantation and spell over her boiling stew.
He shot a look at K., catching his eye, exchanging again that furtive, knowing look they always exchanged during the teacher’s class. He smiled devilishly at K. and began to laugh. At first he emitted slow, light-hearted laughter. But suddenly the laughter burst out of him like lava freeing itself from the pit of his fiery stomach. K. began to laugh too, and so did the others. Georg roared deeply and cackled like a witch. The others joined him and established the hellish quorum. Georg beamed.
His heart began to stammer. It kept on pounding and pounding at his brain. “Make it stop! Make it Stop!” The others were immediately silenced by his shouts. He knew the teacher was lecturing again but couldn’t hear her voice over the pounding in his head. “Stop!”
Georg couldn’t take it anymore. He exploded from his chair and jumped onto his desk. “Are you blind? Are you all ----ing blind? Either you’re all blind or I have X-ray vision if you don’t see right through this lady’s bull----!”
He launched from his desk at the quivering teacher like a raptor, landing on his vulnerable prey in vicious attack. The shreds of her clothes flew through the air as he tore her apart, pounding her with his fists, kicking like a wild bull, spitting out her tasteless flesh as the blood dripped from his lips. After cracking each of her ribs so she could no longer speak he took from her the only pleasure contained in such a person, howling loudly as he ravished the limp body before him.
Suddenly, sitting on his knees, he looked up from his meat, staring into the eyes of the others. He stood up, growled, and ran out of the classroom.
