Bloody Hands

part one

Timothy Bouler was a fifteen year old punk who should have graduated the seventh grade two years ago but because of lack of effort, stupidity or both, he still sat in seventh grade classes.  Always, he would sit in the back with snide remarks and the occasional spit ball.  That was where he sat in Stephanie’s seventh period English class.  “Lucky me,” she would say, without humor to the other teachers.  They would give her sympathetic nods or smiles, knowing what a difficult child he was.  Timothy Bouler had a reputation that was extreme and completely accurate.  There was no need to exaggerate with this one, no sir.  He had been abandoned by his mother and neglected by his father.  The ones who felt sympathy for him had never had him in their classes.  Spit balls and snide remarks were only the tip of the ice-burg, he also regularly beat and terrorized the other students and intimidated the teachers.  Multiple suspensions and punishments did nothing to curb this behavior.  Stephanie knew for a fact that Timothy was a shit, plain and simple.  She hated him.

                It was a Friday and Timothy had been a raging shit that day as opposed to just the regular shit he normally was.  After having made a female student cry by pulling a clump of her hair out of her head, multiple spit balls and calling Stephanie a “bitch”, she had sent him from the class with a yet another suspension.  The female student whose hair had been pulled was promised some redemption and the rest of the class was sent home without any homework.  Stephanie could not handle grading papers this weekend.  She needed real time off.  A weekend home, in front of the television with Brad, would be a well deserved break.  As she straightened up her desk and locked up her top drawer that held the whiteout (don’t want the little druggies stealing it), she felt an itching on her right pinky.  It was sudden and quite intense.  It took her by surprise, immediately causing her to scratch.  She stared down at her pinky, wondering what could have brought on such a sudden and unpleasant feeling.  Expecting to see a rash or some kind of redness, she was shocked to see nothing.  The skin on her finger appeared normal.  But the insane itchy feeling persisted.  Her large, hazel eyes watered with the sharpness of the sensation on her hand.  Again, she scratched, more vigorously this time.  When the skin beneath her nails began to tear, she softly cried out but did not stop scratching.  Then mercifully, it stopped.  The terrible itching vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.  Stephanie stared with horror at the deep, red scratches that now covered the top of her right pinky.

                “That was weird,” she spoke, her voice shaken from the strangely traumatic experience.

                Stopping at the empty nurse’s office, she rinsed and then bandaged her pinky before leaving school.