Fiction: Hell is for Children
By request, one of my short stories from Inhabited
A couple of people have asked me if I’d post some of my fiction here. Since I’ve recently talked about teachers and teaching, here’s one from Inhabited that deals with that.
Hell Is For Children
Terry’s day sucked right from the start. He’d driven to work in such a morning fog that he barely remembered the drive. He’d walked into the teacher’s lounge to discover that not only was there no coffee on, there was no coffee to be had at all. Nothing in the basket, nothing in the box in the cabinet, and not even one of the spare cans that one of the administrative assistants sometimes stashed on top of the mailboxes.
And the mailbox was its own lack of reward. Terry had expected that the field trip approval form he’d been waiting on for a week would be sitting there. Of course, it wasn’t. He could never understand why it was so hard to put a signature on a piece of a paper for a class to visit a museum. It was inherently educational and required no real debate or additional pitching to the superintendent’s office. And yet . . . no paper.
After that, and heaving a deep sigh, he trudged back to his classroom. The computer, to his total absence of surprise, took forever to boot. One might have supposed that the purchase order for the desktop dinosaurs had been approved sometime during the Reagan administration, given all the flaws and limitations that they seemed to have. As it was, they were only two versions of Windows behind, which was just enough to be a regular pain in the ass.
Finally logged in and clicking his way to his documents, Terry made his selection and directed the damn thing to print. But no. The printer was not available.
“How the fuck can THAT be?” he asked the empty room.
He hit it again, stabbing the mouse button as if the extra pressure would make the server respond in the way that he wanted. But, again, no. Terry took a moment to rub his temples, then tried a third time.
Not happening.
Disgusted, he opened his email (which worked, to his amazement) and began to type into the recipient line. D-E-A quickly auto-populated into Deanne, whom he knew would print his handouts for him in the library. If, that was, he could get them attached.
The first attempt resulted in five minutes of THINKING and THIS REQUEST IS TAKING LONGER THAN EXPECTED. The second attempt cut his wait-time down to three minutes. Inexplicably, the third attempt worked right away. Shaking his head, Terry looked at the clock on the wall. He’d barely been there for half-an-hour, and he still had an hour before he would even have kids.
“Time flies,” he said to the emptiness, and rolled back in his chair to stand.
Terry walked down to the library. A few students milled about in the halls, wasting time before the first bell. He suppressed the urge to grin at some of the band t-shirts they sported. Sure, there was healthy representation from more recent acts like Pierce the Veil and twenty one pilots and that fucking insufferable Imagine Dragons, but Nirvana, Zeppelin, Iron Maiden and a goodly number of classic outfits staked out respectable showings. Music as a whole may have been running in a downward trajectory of suck for a lot of years, but at least a few kids still wore Slayer shirts. That had to count for something.
He walked into the office in the back of the library to discover that Deanna wasn’t around. However, she’d left his stack of print-outs and a post-it. HAD TO RUN TO MEETING! HERE YOU GO! Even if everything else was broken, she was reliable. He started back to the room, flipping idly through the stack, when he ran into the student.
Terry jumped back and looked up, his first thought entirely about the well-being of the student. He began “Are you—“, but lost the rest of the words as he noticed the blood on her face.
Remarkably, she smiled. With complete serenity, she said, “Hey, Mr. C. How are you?”
“What?!”
Clarissa tilted her head to the side, not understanding his reaction. As she did, large drops plummeted to the floor from the gash in her forehead. Terry’s eyes tracked down, watching the red splash off of the cracked linoleum. When he looked back up, Clarissa hadn’t moved; she simply started and continued to bleed.
“Are you okay, Mr. C.?”
“Forget me. Are YOU okay?”
Clarissa nodded, shaking drops onto her black Ghost t-shirt. “I’m fine.”
Terry patted himself uselessly, looking for the handkerchief that he knew he didn’t carry. “Okay, let’s get you to the nurse’s office.”
Now Clarissa’s expression changed to one of puzzlement. “What for?”
“Kid, you’re bleeding.”
Clarissa lifted her hand to her head and pulled it back. Her eyes widened a touch at seeing the red on her fingertips. She looked at him with a touch of wonderment and said, “I’m still doing that?”
That brought Terry’s attempt to move them down the hall up short. “What do you mean, still?”
More confusion. “I thought I stopped right after he quit hitting me. I guess not.”
For the first time, it settled on Terry that Clarissa might be in shock. Her almost emotionless demeanor, her lack of upset at the blood . . . it fit. Plus . . . “Clarissa, listen to me. Who hit you?”
With a matter-of-factness that was its own kind of alarming, she said, “Bobby. He does it all the time, but I don’t think he means to.”
Terry felt his mouth move without words for a few seconds. When he could manage sound, he said, “Bobby. Your boyfriend Bobby. He . . . beats you?”
Her response came out hushed, barely above a whisper. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Come with me.” Terry gestured for her to come along, mindful as always that you tried your damnedest to never actually make physical contact with the students. Fortunately, she followed.
The nurse’s office sat at the opposite end of the long hallway. Annie wasn’t around; she was probably out looking for coffee, too. Terry pointed to one of the vinyl beds with its paper-roll cover. “Have a seat.”
Clarissa sat. Terry opened the First Aid cabinet and fished out a sealed white paper bag that contained a gauze pad. He ripped the paper and handed Clarissa the pad. “Hold that on the spot, and when Miss Graham gets back, she can help you out. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
She gave him a blank nod. Terry walked out, gently pulling the door shut behind him. Clarissa might have wanted him to stay quiet, but he wasn’t going to. He was going to find Bobby.
Terry knew that Bobby hung out in the vocational wing before school. Bobby didn’t take any classes there, but he was friends with kids that did. It was also an easier spot to slip out and smoke. Terry hoped to catch him outside.
He walked through the garage. The boys inside didn’t pay much attention to him as he stopped and glanced around. Not seeing Bobby, he went to the side door and pushed. Bobby and three other boys were standing there, the low-hanging cloud above their heads looking a bit like a comic book word balloon.
Terry held the door open. “Put ‘em out and head inside, guys. I have to chat with Bobby.” Bobby gave him a dim look of surprise as he stubbed out his own Camel on the outer brick wall. The other three dropped their heads and ducked inside.
Bobby started to say, “What’s wr—“, but Terry stepped hard toward him and leaned into his face. Bobby backed up against the wall, his hazy eyes getting wider.
“What’s wrong?” Terry asked, almost with a laugh of disbelief. “What’s wrong is you beating the shit out of your girlfriend.”
“I didn’t—“
Terry slammed his hand next to Bobby’s head. “Save it! You left a gash in her head, Bobby. She probably needs stitches.”
Some of the color left his face. “She does? I didn’t—“
“Again with the didn’t?” Terry knew that he was already skating the line, but now he felt the anger really rising inside. “So you didn’t leave her with blood oozing out of her head? You didn’t put your hands on her when she says you did?”
Terry expected a denial. Returned anger. What he didn’t expect was tears. They started to run freely, and then Bobby slid down the wall, covering his head.
Sighing, Terry said, “Get up, Bobby.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Bobby said, his voice a legitimate whimper. “I told her not to touch, and she did, and I just . . .”
“Touch what?”
Bobby gingerly lifted his shirt, revealing a mottled field of yellows and purples around his ribs.
“Jesus Christ, kid.” Terry kneeled next to him. “What happened to you?”
Bobby tugged the shirt down and avoided Terry’s face. “My dad. He sits at home all day and drinks. When I get home . . . it doesn’t go well.” Bobby sniffed hard, then wiped his nose with his sleeve.
It was too fucking textbook. Dad beats kid, kid beats someone else. “So Clarissa . . .”
Lifting his eyes a bit, Bobby said, “She tried to help. I told her to leave it alone. But she touched my side and I just reacted. I didn’t mean it. I never mean it.”
Terry felt his anger deflating and redirecting. “So you admit you’ve done it before.”
He nodded, curling back into himself a bit more. The tears hadn’t stopped.
Terry drew himself back up and shook his head. He extended his hand to Bobby. “Here.”
Bobby took his hand. Terry pulled him up. He looked at the miserable boy for a long minute and then said, “Look, this is how it has to be. I’m going to take you to the Dean. You’re going tell them what you told me. And hopefully we can get you some help before it gets worse.” (And before YOU get worse, his mind supplied.)
He knew that futility presented as the frequent endpoint when you tried to disrupt the cycle of abuse, but at least there was an opportunity to break the cycle. There wasn’t much that the school could do, but the kid had bruises to spare and the resource officer had a camera in his phone, so maybe. Maybe.
Bobby shuffled along behind him, keeping his head down so as not to betray his recent tears to his classmates. Terry did him the favor of not speaking to him on the way to the offices. He knew that Bobby’s situation didn’t excuse what he’d done to Clarissa, but it sure as hell went a long way toward explaining the why of it. And avoiding anything that would compound the issue stood out as the best idea.
Inside the office, the main conference room door displayed a sign: ADMIN MEETING IN PROGRESS. PLEASE SIGN-IN AND WAIT. Terry gestured to the posting and the sign-up sheet. Bobby nodded, scrawled his name, and sunk in a chair.
“Don’t take off.” Terry kept his hands in his pockets, fighting the paternal urge to lecture and point.
“Okay,” Bobby mumbled.
“I’ll check in with the Deans later, but right now I’m going back to my room before classes start.”
Bobby gave a nod, retreating into sullen silence. Terry gave his own nod back and left. He cut through the lounge (still no fucking coffee) and took the side door by the mailboxes back into the hallway. The foot traffic filled the halls more tightly at this time, and he needed to weave a little bit to make his way through the moving field of obstacles and back to his room.
He didn’t make it there. Halfway down the hall, someone grabbed his arm. Terry turned to find Decker Simpson. A junior, Decker didn’t possess much in the way of distinguishing characteristics. He wasn’t one of Terry’s students, and Terry only really knew who he was because of a weed-related suspension he’d received the year before.
“Mr. Cannon? I need help. Like right now.”
Terry felt Decker shaking through his arm. The kid’s eyes continued to widen as he pulled on him. “It’s all right, Decker. What is it?”
“It’s Caden. He’s passed out in the bathroom.”
Terry broke into a run for the Men’s Room with Decker right beside him. As he rounded the corner to the sinks, Terry dodged a couple of other kids. One pointed. Terry made the second corner and saw Caden Beck sprawled out on the tile in front of the stalls.
He kneeled down and felt for a pulse at Caden’s neck. Thready. He lifted Caden’s hand to feel at his wrist and noticed the blueish tinge on the fingernails. Oh shit. He turned toward Caden’s face and saw the same color on his lips.
Terry looked up at Decker. “What did he take, Decker?”
“Uh,” Decker pointed into the stall. Terry saw the empty cellophane bag and hypodermic needle perched atop the steel toilet-tissue dispenser.
Putting his ear to Caden’s chest, Terry listened. The heartbeat seemed to struggle and the breathing definitely labored. Forming up his hands to do compressions, he said, “Decker, go find help and send one of the other kids for the AED by the office. I’m going to need somebody else.”
Decker left without a word. Terry took first aid refreshers when possible, and he carried his CPR certification card in his wallet at all times. He’d never dealt with a heroin overdose before. He had no idea how much he could actually do for Caden without immediate assistance.
To his surprise, Anna Ibarra kneeled beside him. It was also a huge stroke of luck; Anna took the EMT courses and had a measure of real training. “Mr. Cannon, the important things right now are rescue breathing and administering naloxone. Is he breathing?”
Terry said, “Yes, fortunately.”
Anna nodded. “Okay, stop compressions for a second. Do you know how much he took and when?”
Terry shrugged. “Bag’s empty and I’d guess it happened right before Decker got me.”
She nodded again. “Okay. I’m getting out my CPR mask. Can you get to the clinic and see if they have naloxone?”
“Will do.”
“Thanks,” she said, digging into her bag. “Have one of the kids call 911, too.”
“Right,” he said. “That’s what we did last time.”
Anna threw him an odd look, but he didn’t hesitate. Terry darted out of the bathroom, yelling at the crowd of rubberneckers gathering at the door to call 911. As he got closer to the nurse’s office, his own words circled back to hit him. He slowed, wondering why he’d said that. He shook it off and burst into the office, startling Clarissa.
“Damn, Mr. Cannon. Are you okay?”
Terry’s stomach lurched. Clarissa still held the gauze pad against her head, for all the good it was doing. Which was none. The pad presented no evidence that it had ever been white. It bulged with the girl’s blood even as rivulets continue to spill down her body and onto the floor.
“Christ, kid. Are you—“
The rest of his words disappeared underneath an unmistakable sound from the hallway. Despite his certain knowledge that the sound could really only be one thing, Terry still found himself asking, “What was that?”
Then another. Then a sustained rattle.
Terry grabbed Clarissa by the arm and practically shoved her in bathroom. “Lock that door and stay down. Wait until a teacher or administrator gets you.”
Clarissa nodded, shaking more blood onto the tile floor. She pulled the door shut. Terry heard the latch catch as another volley of gunshots erupted down the hall.
He put his hands on the office door, took a deep breath, and then clamped down with a tight grasp on the doorknob. He pushed the door open a crack and peered down the hall.
From his vantage point, he saw at least three students on the ground. He couldn’t tell if they’d been taking cover or taking bullets. One was trying to look around, so at least she was alive. The other two didn’t move. He could hear more shots down by the cafeteria, some simultaneous. So either one shooter with two weapons or more than one shooter.
Terry crouched and went into the hall. At a loping run, he made it to the first prone student. No mistake on that one. The baseball-sized hole in his throat answered the question. He slid across the floor to the next. At least two to the chest, dead as well.
The girl that he’d seen moving, whispered to him. He recognized her at Katie Chang. “Mr. Cannon. My leg.”
He moved to her and checked as gently as he could. It looked like a through-and-through on her calf. Terry looked around, got to his feet, and held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her up. He took another deep breath, bent his knees, and then swept her up into his arms. As fast as he could, he ran back to the nurse’s office.
Sitting the girl down, he knocked on the bathroom door. “Clarissa, it’s Mr. Cannon. Open the door. Katie’s been shot. She’s going to hide with you.”
The latch turned and Clarissa pulled open the door. Katie limped into the bathroom, giving Terry a pat on the arm as she did. He heard it lock for the second time. Steadying himself again, Terry plunged back into the hallway.
Terry looked both ways, then decided to go up the opposite hall from where he heard gunfire. He thought that maybe he could get more students hidden or to a reasonable degree of safety. As he began to check rooms, a massive boom echoed from the next hall. That, he surmised, was the sidearm that Resource Officer Shike had bragged about a week or so ago.
That’s what happened. Shike got it out and opened up on the first shooter. Turned his head to spray. Second one turned the MP4 that he swiped from his dad and that no fucking private citizen should have on Shike and practically cut him in half.
Vertigo snaked through his head. Terry leaned on the doorframe to keep from falling down. His stomach turned. He couldn’t understand how—
Cade didn’t make it. Anna gave him the injection and he lived, but he shot up again a week later at home and died.
Terry doubled over, vomiting freely onto the floor. A wild thought about the orange sawdust powder the custodians used sprinted through his mind just before—
Anna couldn’t handle the fact that she’d saved somebody for him to die. She quit the EMT program. Had four too many at a party in college and tried to drive. She never made it home, careening into a bicyclist before smashing into a tree.
But Clarissa . . . and Katie . . .
Different days. Katie got shot and we got her to the bathroom. She was alone. She suffered from PTSD for years and hung herself on her twenty-third birthday.
Clarissa. The bleeding was never that bad. But it was bad enough. She stayed with Bobby and got knocked up. She dropped out. He consistently beat the shit out of her and she ended up shaking the baby to death one night when it wouldn’t stop crying and her head wouldn’t stop hurting from the fresh concussion Bobby had brought her after he got laid off. She went to the women’s prison and got stabbed in the night by her cellmate for crying in her sleep a year later. Bobby died at a truck stop, shot by a driver when he tried to steal medical supplies off his rig.
And then he knew. He stood straight and shouted. “You can stop! I remember!”
Everything grew still and silent. The sounds and screams from the other hall stopped. The lights dimmed a touch. The edges of his vision seemed to lose a little clarity, as if fog had creeped in.
“Mr. Cannon. What are we doing to do with you?”
Terry turned and saw the first principal that he’d ever worked for. The officious prick looked exactly the same as had on the first day. Paunchy, balding, disingenuous, condescending.
“Fuck you, Dave.”
Dave smiled. “You know I’m not Dave. I just an administrator. And Dave’s what you think of when you hear that word.”
“I also think of Dave when I hear fatuous gasbag and fucking idiot.”
Not-Dave’s smile stretched ever wider. “Point taken.”
Terry looked around, seeing literal fog slide along the floor now. “What’s happening?”
Not-Dave’s smile faded a bit. “I thought you remembered.”
“I remember that those things happened. But not at once. And I know . . . I know I’m not there. I’m somewhere else.”
Not-Dave nodded. His face now betraying a bit of sympathy. “All correct. But it took you a while to notice this time. I think it’s getting easier. Acceptance is always a hard thing, Terry.”
“Am I . . .” Terry looked at his hands. He opened and closed them, but they didn’t even seem like his.
Not-Dave’s gentle tone locked it. “Are you what, Terry?”
“Dead. Am I dead?”
Not-Dave nodded. “Of course.”
Terry shook his head, trying to comprehend it. “How?”
Not-Dave shrugged. “The second kid. The one with the MP4. You were locking some kids in the science lab to keep them safe and didn’t see him make the corner. He put four in your back before you knew what happened. I think you went very quickly.”
“Yeah,” Terry said, letting his hands drop limply to his side. “That sounds right.”
“For what it’s worth,” Not-Dave said, “I’m sorry about all this. You’re an all right guy. I don’t get that a lot.”
Terry looked back up at Not-Dave. “What do you mean?”
Not-Dave uttered a low whistle. “You really don’t remember. Maybe it’s all working better this time. Anyway. This is Hell, Terry. One of them, anyway.”
He almost smiled. “I sort of figured. What did I do?”
“You?” Not-Dave shrugged again. “Not much of anything. Not really. Nothing would send you here, normally.”
“So why me? Why the kids?”
Not-Dave leaned against the wall and fished in his shirt pocket. “You mind?”
Terry shook his head. “I’m dead. What difference does it make?”
Not-Dave let slip a genuine laugh. “Good point.” He pulled out what looked like a severed finger which he proceeded to light at the nail. He stuck it in his mouth and drew a strong breath. “Thanks, man. Long day.”
“The kids?”
“Yeah, about that. Look, this is probably all mixed up in your head for obvious reasons. But when you died, that was like fifteen years after Cade and about eight years after Clarissa. The other things, well, they fell in there at different times.”
Terry took a step back. “What other things?”
Not-Dave shook his head. “Didn’t make it there yet.” He took another drag, then tossed the finger to the floor. He stepped on it with a sickening crack. “This scenario goes on a lot longer.”
Terry punched the locker before he realized he was going to. Not-Dave even jumped a little. “Why? What did I ever do?”
To Terry’s surprise, Not-Dave reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “Irony, my man. You were selfless.”
After several long minutes, Terry finally asked, “What?”
“Look,” Not-Dave said. “There’s not just a singular place within Hell. It’s vast, containing universes of a type unto themselves. What Dante perceived as levels is barely the tip of the lance. Hells beyond the telling of it. Sometimes, people are bound by a thing or circumstance that eventually pulls them together in the afterlife. Either the strength of their subconscious creates it or we create it, but either way, that’s where their tour of eternity begins. You with me so far?”
Terry could only nod.
“And here you have these kids. A variety of deaths over a number of years. The good ones go elsewhere. Away. The rest make their way here. And something bound them. You get what it is?”
“Me.”
Not-Dave returned the nod. “You know why?”
“I was their teacher.”
Not-Dave smirked. “They had lots of teachers. But you. Either one time that counted or many times over many years, you showed real kindness. You gave a shit, Terry. So few do.”
“And that pulled them together.”
Pulling out another finger and lighting it, Not-Dave said, “Sure. Why not, right?”
Terry looked around the fog-suffused hallway. “And then I died, and they pulled me here.”
“No, man. You went elsewhere. That’s the ironic part.”
Terry turned back to him. “So how’d I get here?”
Not-Dave smirked, an expression that made the smoldering finger jut up in the corner of his mouth. “You traded, Terry. You traded.”
“No, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Not-Dave stubbed the finger out on the wall. “You got there. You had no family, never married. You asked about the kids. You saw some that made it. You saw that some didn’t. And you were okay with most of that. But there was one.”
The gunfire echoed in Terry’s ears. “Katie.”
“Yeah. Katie. The places have funny rules about suicides. Some things have changed. Depends on how the winds of the world are blowing. But Katie, for whatever reason, went here. That didn’t sit right with you.”
“Of course not.”
Not-Dave gestured to the hallway around them. “So you said you’d trade. Sometimes they let it happen. They all talked about it, and then they took her there and sent you here. You’ve been here ever since.”
Terry leaned back against the doorframe. “Okay. I understand. Just one question.”
“Shoot.” Not-Dave quickly covered his mouth. “Sorry, poor choice of words. Ask.”
“Why did they take the deal?”
Not-Dave lowered his hand, not bothering to cover the thin grin that stretched across it. “You represented hope, Terry. You tried to help them, and they remember you for that. And every time they go through a version of what they went through, they know that they had choices and burned right through you. You remind them that they did this to themselves. What could be a crueler punishment than that?”
Anger surged through Terry and he screamed, “How am I supposed to do this knowing that it only hurts them more?”
The lights dimmed. As Not-Dave faded into darkness, he said, “It’ll be okay, Terry. You forgot that we already talked about it. Eventually, you won’t remember.”
Full dark.
The lights came back on bright enough for Terry to blink against them. He opened his eyes. When his vision cleared, he realized he was in the teacher’s lounge.
He knew he was tired. He’d driven to work in such a morning fog that he barely remembered the drive. But he didn’t know that he was so tired that he would blank on walking down to the lounge. With a sigh, he started to look for coffee.
“Hell is for Children”–Yep; Pat Benatar reference. This story came from my experiences teaching in high schools where active shooter drills, despite what some people might tell you, are an actual thing. They’re nerve-wracking in a way that fire drills aren’t, because no one really knows how they’ll react when the shooting starts. Once when I was going over the plan with a class, I had a student volunteer to help push the bookshelf in front of the door in the event of a shooting. He knew what kind of risk that could potentially submit him to if the day ever came, but he stepped up. That’s humbling. Some of the other incidents that Terry runs into (abused student, etc.) came from my experiences and other stories that I heard. Being young kind of sucks.