Posts Tagged ‘bad teacher’

The Ghost Children and the Maiden

Posted: April 9, 2013 in On the Road Again
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I hung up my blanket between two trees, creating a sort of makeshift hammock. I would be okay as long as it didn’t rain. I was high enough to be out of zombie reach, but low enough that if I got knocked out, the fall wouldn’t kill me. Once I had it set up, I shimmied back up the tree and crawled into bed. I can’t tell you how long I slept, but it was at least a day if not two.

My dreams were sparse and broken. They were often of my students I killed and sometimes of Javier. When I finally woke up, the sun was high over head, beating down on me. I could feel my skin burning, but after the long winter we had I simply did not care. It just felt so good to be warm.

I checked the ground around me. I didn’t see anything, but trees. I shimmied back down. Once I was on the ground, I hurried to the stream and gulped down water until until my stomach hurt. My next adventure would be food. It had been days since I had really eaten. I could feel myself losing it.

When I looked up from the stream, I swear I could see Shelby in the distance. She stood among the trees, watching me. I nearly fell over. I pressed my fingers to my eyes, thinking that I had really fucking lost it. When I looked back up, she was still there, only now she was with the kids that had died before we had even left Alcott Elementary.

I have gone completely fucking mental.

And then, like all idiots in any horror movie that was ever made, I decide to go to Shelby. They don’t move, but once I do finally reach them, they are gone. I find myself in a clearing. I look around, but I see no sign of them.

“Shelby,” I yell out. I’m only answered back with an echo of my own voice. I meekly walk a few more steps. This doesn’t feel right. I feel the anxiousness wash over me in waves, my stomach turning to knots. “John,” I try to scream, but my voice isn’t even a whisper.

I smell them before I see them. I choke down the water-vomit that is bursting to come out of me. I fall to my knees.

I’m exhausted and unarmed. My fucking ghost students set me up. I can’t say that I can even blame them. In my life before I had come to hate being their teacher and because of my own selfishness (on more than one occasion), they all died horrible deaths.

I closed my eyes. I deserved this. And at least this way, it will be on my own terms. I embrace it. This is the way out. I’m too tired and malnourished to fight my way through another horde. This is the end to all of this shit. I draw in a deep breath, stretching out my arms, invoking my best Mel Gibson a la Braveheart that I possible can. I wait for them to reach me and just as I think that that moment has come and I was going to be torn to pieces, I felt (and tasted) a fine spray of Undead goo splatter across my face.

I opened my eyes to a scene that I had only ever seen in the movies unfolding before me. Before me stood a giant white horse. Massive. Riding it was a woman with the longest blond hair that I had ever seen. I’m talking Jane Austen/Lizzy Bennet long. What really made her stand out was the jet black leather outfit she wore like some Mrs. Darcy bicker chick hybrid. There were more leather-clad people behind her on foot. She was clearly the vanguard, taking out as many of those reaking assholes as she possibly could with her long sword.

What was most astonishing about her and her horse was how they moved among the Undead. It was as if the Undead didn;t even notice them.

I stayed transfixed until I realized that she was moving among a legit horde without so much as a grab. There was one and only answer for this:

She and her horse are hell demons sent by my dead students to drag me to hell as punishment for being the world’s shittiest teacher.

I scramble to get up and away from the demon and her hell horse. I don’t make it very far. I feel the butt of her sword hit the back of my head. I’m dazed as she pulls me by the back of my jeans, placing my on the back of her horse. Oh God. She’s got super-human strength too. I am so fucked. The demon is going to kill me and probably more brutally than any of the Undead.

She pulls back. The people behind us are fighting off what’s left of the horde. Now that I am on the horse, the Undead notice us and start grabbing for me.

What the hell?

Then without warning all there is, is black.

Things I will not do while in captivity….

Posted: May 24, 2012 in captivity, Home Sweet Home
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  1.  Get pregnant. I have since willed my ovaries to just…STOP. For the love of all that is left in the world that is good, they just need to be old and shriveled until I find a way out of this entire cluster-fuck.
  2. Develop Stockholm Syndrome for McGrady. It’s just not going to happen…ever.
  3.  Begin to talk to inanimate objects. Think Tom Hanks a la Castaway. There will be no Wilson during my imprisonment.
  4.  Stop blogging. These past two months of nothing, no outlet whatsoever was the absolute worst.
  5. Forget my kids or Javier. I want my little makeshift family back.
  6. Allow myself to pretend as we did when we were at my house that life had not changed, that the world was not dangerous.
  7. Get bitten (duh). It could happen. I haven’t figured out why yet, but McGrady has been hoarding the Undead somewhere. During the night, I see the men leading them on leashes like some rabid dog. Their eyes glow, big and bright in the dark. It’s unnerving.
  8. Let Bonnie go over the edge. I know she’s teetering.
  9. Give in to being a prisoner for the rest of my life. I will find a way out of this.
  10. Forget those I’ve loved before. I don’t want to forget my old life, or the kids we lost or the people and of course, I want to always remember who John was.

The Captive

Posted: March 18, 2012 in captivity, On the Road Again
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I hate when you look back at things and wonder why you didn’t see any of the signs until you’re so stuck in a situation that you have absolutely not idea how you’re going to get yourself out of it.

McGrady used the facade of keeping us safe to lure us all into his trust. He waited for the perfect moment which happened to be the outright chaos of the hordes to get us into his prison. We’re all kept apart from one another. The men patrol us as some sort of sick prison guard type thing. The children, from what I can gather are with my mom and the older women that were with us.

I get to be the special “prize” for McGrady at the end of all of this. The women who are of child-bearing age are kept fed, healthy and made to walk for an hour a day under a heavy watch. We’re not allowed to speak to one another though Bonnie and I do seem to watch one another to check and see if we’re at least physically okay. We’re each assigned to a man. I think Bonnie has the eldest McGrady boy and it has been made abundantly clear that I am McGrady’s treasure.

Much like Javier used to visit me at night in the house, MCgrady now does. He tries to talk to me, to explain his reasoning, but I refuse to listen to him.

“The world must go on, Elizabeth,” he says in his hardened voice. He reminds me of my father when we calls me that. I cringe every time. “In order for the world to go on, we have to have more children. More able men to protect it and make it safe again.” He usually lights a cigarette and blows the smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Isn’t it easier this way? To just do it. To leave out the emotional commitment that complicates everything? It’s just business.”

I stare off at the wall, my hands in my lap. I beat myself up on the inside, wondering why we just didn’t stay at Alcott Elementary.

“I’m not going to force you, it’s never been my style. One day though and soon, you will surrender to me just like your friend did to her assignment and life will go on.”

Assignment? Are we cattle? Cattle to be bought, sold and impregnated for the purpose of “the future”…”the greater good.” I want to slap him, I want to reach across my little cell and claw out his eyes, but I go somewhere inside of myself that’s away from him and away from this world entirely.

He stubs out his cigarette on the wall, crosses the cell and kisses me on the forehead. “It’s just business,” he whispers into my ear.

I still feel my skin crawling even after he’s left. This is not how I want my life to go, not how I want it to end either. How the hell do I get out of this one?

Freaky Friday

Posted: January 14, 2012 in Alcott School
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…Which really is an understatement. Yesterday the kids should have been coming in with freaky outfits  and hair, but instead they spent it wearing a trash bag and rubber gloves as they shoveled bits and pieces of people, dumping them into bags and lugging them outside where another group was digging an enormous in the middle of the kickball field.

There are a few straggling Undead that paw at the fence. Havier found five in the teacher’s room when we opened it. Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Swan among them. Havier baited them to follow him outside where we both decapitated each one. I can’t lie and say that there wasn’t a small part of me that enjoyed taking out Zom-Swan. She was always dumping her work on the teachers and I think on more than one occasion came to our faculty meeting buzzed.

I was terrified to have all of us that spread out , but we had to do it. I had even armed the kids with tools and weapons so that if something happened, they would at least have a chance.

I am so obviously nervous and disgusted that Havier literally shoves the bottle of hooch in my face. He wants this done and over and for us all to be back in a safe space, not out there digging mass graves in the middle of a kickball field to buried what was left of their friends and teachers. I take two long drags. I’m fuzzy and warm-headed within moments. Breakfast had been pretzels and the last cans of apple sauce – I was hardly ready to be drinking big shots of Maker’s Mark, but it’s helping me push forward.

I keep thinking how we should have covered our mouths before we started this, but Havier was quick to point out that we both had been walking around the school without anything and neither one of us were zombified. We did tell the kids that they needed to be extra careful not to touch their faces until after we were done and cleaned up.

We spent much of the afternoon gathering, burying and bleaching the shit out of the school. We decide not to start sealing off the school until after the fumes subside. Havier starts at the back and works his way up. It’s night fall by the time he makes it around to the front. Thank God, we had Hurricane Irene over the summer because Havier had plywood for every window and for the entire front.

We work systematically from back to front. We’re hurried and worried and it’s crazy just how many of the Undead of beginning to crowd the fences with all the noise we’re making. This can not go fast enough, I just want to be back in the disgusting media center with all of my kids.

Somehow we do it though just as it’s getting too dark to see and the number is rising to near-horde proportion. I am pretty drunk at this point and I think some of the kids know that too. I begin to write myself off as the world’s most horrible post-apocalyptic teacher and it is at that moment that the fence finally gives, allowing a rush of groaning, smelly, Undead to come right for us. None of us are even thinking when we drop everything that we are doing and we run into the school. It’s chaos and no one is paying attention to anything other than getting themselves to the media center. The hallways are dark now that mostly everything is boarded up and it’s like I’m reliving the field trip to the Liberty Science Center and the touch-tunnel all over again.

We’re somewhere between the front of the building and the media center when the screams start, but it’s too dark to tell where it’s coming from or who it is or what’s the way to get out of danger. I just keep running and stumbling and oh my God, I’m just drunk and none of this at all seems real.

Then we’re bak in the media enter. Havier is yelling in broken Spanish. The only word I recognize is “Thombies! Thombies!” His accent is on and nothing is okay. I’m throwing up hooch and bits of apple sauce and it’s horrible. I have lost all control of everything, including myself.

I hear Armand breaking down and Matilda trying to restrain him. I see Vincent and can hear Shelby whaling. The room is spinning. Some of the kids are covered in sprays of blood, the Undead clearly have gotten some of us. It’s awful and in that moment I just collapse on the floor, staring up at the ceiling feeling the world around me spin until it’s almost unbearable.

If this had been a moment on The Walking Dead, I’d be yelling at the TV about how stupid she was for getting too drunk…for drinking at all! But, it’s not a she that did this, it was me and I’ve fucked up horribly and now kids are lost, dead and the rest are scared and I’m just too drunk to be able to bother.

I close my eyes and I float off into my inevitable blackout.