The Inner Workings of a Troubled Mind: A Collection of Prose and Poetry

The Perfect Students

*WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD*

"I'll be right back," said the teacher as she rushed off to the bathroom. Upon her return, she found the kids sitting perfectly still with their backs straight, their attentive eyes directed at the board, and smiles on their faces. "What perfect little pupils!" she said as she returned to the lesson. For the rest of the day the teacher covered everything from long division to Lewis and Clark with the ease of teaching porcelain dolls. During lunch, the kids opted to eat lunch in the classroom, and at recess, they chose to stay inside and sit quietly at their desks. At the end of the day she had to remind the kids that the bell means it's time to go home.

When school started the next day, the teacher walked into the classroom to find all of her students sitting at their desks with their backs straight, toothy smiles on their faces, and wide open eyes towards the board. "Good morning class!" chirped the teacher. She was greeted with silence and smiles. She strolled over to the board to begins the day's lesson. After another undisrupted lesson, the bell rang for lunch. The kids showed no sign of getting up to go to lunch. Instead, they sat with their eyes glued to the whiteboard, their backs straight and rigid, and smiles so big that they stretch from ear to ear. "Well, I guess we're staying in for lunch today," the teacher remarked cheerily. Once again, she was greeted with silence. The teacher made a mental note to show her students her latest project as a reward for their outstanding behavior. She sat down at her desk and proceeded to eat her lunch. While eating lunch the teacher enjoys reading the day's paper. That day's headline read "ELIZABETH WARREN STILL MISSING" and underneath is a picture of a little girl with blonde ringlets, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. "Poor girl," muttered the teacher under her breath. As the teacher read on she discovered that Elizabeth Warren had been missing for two and a half weeks, and was last seen wearing a yellow, collared shirt, blue shorts, pink ballet flats, and her favorite blue, sparkly butterfly hair clip gleefully riding her red tricycle. But before the teacher could read the rest of the article, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. The teacher packed up her lunch and tucked the newspaper into her desk. "Is everyone ready to start the lesson?" the teacher inquired. They responded with alert eyes and smiling faces.

The next morning, the teacher walked into class and was greeted by the usual smiling faces of her students. "Good morning students! I brought a surprise for you all!" she said in a sing-songy voice. "Say hello to our newest student, Lizzie!" she said as she stepped aside revealing a little girl with blonde ringlets, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. The class greeted Lizzie with the same wide, unflinching smiles. After the teacher made sure that Lizzie was comfortable and had a smile on her face from ear to ear like all the rest of the students, she continued the day's lesson. About five minutes before lunch, there was a knock on the front door. "Stay right here," she instructed the class,"I'll be right back." She hurried down the hall and opened the front door. "How may I help you?" she asked. "Hello ma'am, I'm Detective Elliot Benson, and this is my partner Detective Olivia Stabler. We'd like to ask you a few questions about the disappearance of Elizabeth Warren." Just then the lunch bell rang. "It's time for lunch!" exclaimed the teacher. "Why don't I take you back to my classroom, and we can talk there?" she offered. The detectives warily accepted her offer and followed her into the house. As they walked down the hall, they were hit with a wall of funk that only got stronger as they traveled deeper into the house. Finally, they stopped in front of a door. The smell was so overpowering that it was obvious that whatever was behind the door was the source of the smell. "Well, this is my classroom! Why don't you come on in and meet my students, and then I can answer your questions?" the teacher chirped happily. When she opened the door, the detectives froze in place shocked by the horror of the scene before their eyes. Inside the room, there were twenty-four desks, a whiteboard, and a teacher's desk. Behind each of those desks was the corpse of a child. Some of the students are bloating and festering with rot while the tell-tale sickly green coloring of decay is just beginning to creep into others. In the front of the room was little Elizabeth Warren with her butterfly clip and a wide grin on her face. As the detectives scanned the room they notice that each of the bodies had wooden stakes driven through their torsos and out the back of the chairs creating the appearance of attentiveness; their eyelids had been removed, making their eyes appear open and searching; and someone slit their faces from ear to ear, permanently etching a gruesome, toothy smiles on their faces. "Aren't they just perfect?" bragged the teacher to the dumbfounded detectives. She waved goodbye to the students as the detectives ushered her out of the room in cuffs. The students didn't react. They sat perfectly still with their backs straight, eyes open, and wide smiles on their faces, pinned in perpetual perfection.