Water and Fire (BL)

Chapter 38: Trapped in the Predator's Den

Chapter 38: Trapped in the Predator's Den

The air inside the faculty room of their Values teacher was so frigid that Eric's already clammy hands shivered involuntarily.

It smelled like insect-eaten pages inside, and as he approached the stack of books on a desk, their teacher's fatty head emerged from what he's doing on the desk.

His squarish eyeglasses gave a glint of an eerie reflection of light. He adjusted it on the bridge of his nose before saying, "What are you doing here?"

Eric drew a deep breath, and calmed the storm in his heart, but still, he failed to calm his voice and it came out like the violent waves of the sea.

"I'm here to ask why I got a 55 in the exam."

The teacher tilted his head at Eric, as if asking why Eric was wondering why he got such a grade. He stood up from his chair and approached Eric.

"I gave you a 55 because of your conduct. My subject is different from the other subjects in this school, Mister Mendoza. Intelligence is not the key to get a good grade here, but your behavior, your character, and your morals."

"You're saying I don't have morals?!"

The teacher walked in a circle around him, as if encircling his prey. "It's not that. We all have morals. It's just that, recently at class I found your conduct lacking. I mean... playing around with Mister Zhou, laughing in the middle of the class, and in the actual exam, talking to David Zhou?" He stopped in front of Eric. "Don't you think it's unbecoming of a proper student?"

Eric held his exam in front of his teacher. It was so crumpled that it seemed like it would crumble in his hands. "But you should base my grade in my answers in the actual exam! Giving me a 55, it seemed like you haven't read my answers at all!"

"Mister Mendoza, your answers in the exam are one thing. Your actual conduct in real life is another thing. I just think that by giving you this grade, it will motivate you to set your conduct straight. And not just you, you should also tell David this."

"What confuses me though, is why I was the only one who got a low grade. I don't mean to compare, but you mean to say, Jarwin and his bully friends have better conduct?!"

The teacher shook his head and tsked. "Mister Mendoza, let us not look at others and look at ourselves instead. That's the only way we could change for the better."

Eric stared at him for a long time, fuming at this unbelievable teacher who seemed to have calculated his every word. It seemed like whatever Eric would say, the teacher has something to deflect Eric's words.

"Return to your classroom now. Accept your grade, change your ways, and hope that I'll give you a better grade next time."

But these words still couldn't shrug the worries in Eric's mind. What if he still give me a failing grade?!

"No."

The teacher's eyeglasses reflected off an even more sinister light. "What did you say?"

"I won't take this grade."

For a moment, the teacher stayed silent, and stared at Eric suspiciously. The air-con seemed to have gotten colder because Eric shivered even more violently.

When the teacher finally moved, he walked sinisterly to the direction of the door. His footsteps rang and echoed in the small room like an eerie music.

Reaching the door, he stopped abruptly, turned around, and grabbed the cold doorknob. Slowly, he locked the doorknob while gazing into Eric's vulnerable soul.

"Very well, if you want to have a better grade..." He adjusted his eyeglasses on his nose. A creepy smile crept up his lips. "There's only one way to resolve this."

Eric's heart raced. When the teacher slowly approached him, Eric stepped back until he hit the desk.

Eric didn't know why he felt terribly scared, except that something bad was indeed about to happen. He couldn't help feeling like a deer in the headlights.

The teacher was now inches away from him, and when he slithered his fatty arms around Eric's waist, Eric knew the worst was about to come.

"This won't take long. Just go with the flow and it'll be over without you noticing it." His sinister smile was still pasted on his face.

Instantly, Eric's body seemed to have stiffened at that exact moment. His whole body was awash with a terrible sense of dread and coldness that he trembled violently.

It seemed like the ghost which he had tried hard to bury in the depths of his subconscious materialized right in front of him. All those bouts of nightmare, all those tossing in his sleep, all those numerous failed attempts to wake up, they all seemed to culminate in this horrendous moment.

A cacophonous music from hell rang in his ears, a symphony of blasphemous sounds that seemed to be coming from his very brain.

Eric couldn't do anything except gaze at those insidious eyes behind the squarish eyeglasses for the very first time.

What he saw behind those glasses were the eyes of evil themselves.

Their teacher wrapped his arms around Eric's waist even tighter, like an ancestral serpent, and drew closer to Eric's face. He whispered, "Don't worry, nothing shall know about this."

With an evil grin on his lips, he began unbuttoning Eric's white shirt while at the same time licking the saliva off of his lips like a hungry wolf.

Eric wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn't do even that, so he was forced to stare at his predator's face helplessly.

His vision began to blur, slowly at first but quickened so much that he felt like he was falling into a dark vision of the depths of hell whose walls were twisting into indescribable surrealist paintings of hell.

As its way of protecting itself from further injury, Eric's brain fumbled for an escape, and numbed Eric's mind with good memories and happy thoughts. It scanned the contents of Eric's brain, from its cabinets down to the deepest vaults containing his most ecstatic feelings in his subconscious.

When he finally managed to close his eyes, Eric's mind searched for paradise. He found that paradise in a memory of David embracing him so comfortably.