Anxiogène

Early Education

Hello everybody! It's how I start teaching my online English lessons.

The kids are about the age before they lose their teeth, but after they stop using diapers. The reply always using a broken form of English, melange'd with their language.

My hands are grabbing the pit of my stomach as much as can when the kids break out in song.

"Opin... opin... open ub, we wan two sharwe your knowledge."

My heart beats faster as the rhythmic clicking and clanking approaching and raising in timbre and volume. The footsteps get louder, a crescendo of scratches adorn the walls. As of this instant Hide and seek has become the deadliest game, as I've also become the deadliest game.

Being in a foreign country and leaving the US because of crushing student loans and healthcare debt was the best solution to a problem. And now, here I am in a country romanticized as the capital of love, culture, art, socialism, and exquisite cuisine. I'm also the patriarch of a multicultural family with no meaning in my house, a home ruled by women, and don't misunderstand me. I couldn't be happier, that is until this instant.

"Speakin.. speakin... we will learn the contlow of love will shed and tear."

I take the hand out of my stomach. My sticky fingers were working as a piece of dollar store toilet paper, trying to hold a dam. Rummaging for my phone, it slips from my hand and cracks the screen; it is almost out of energy, so I place it on battery saver mode slicing my thumb in the swipe. I am careful not to make a sound. I have no signal, and I cannot try an emergency call for fear of them finding me sooner. So I go on Twitter, and death tolls are trending. CEO's are dropping like flies. Religious leaders are evaporating.

"Readee, oh nut hewe we come."

I teach English to privileged children using a program, and I don't even have to prepare a class; it is ready for me. I play some predetermined music, sing-along, teach some key phrases, et voilá. My session is over on to the next. I wanted to be proactive and give my children what these rich brats have, so I used my kids' method. And they seem pretty adamant.

"Boiling, Boiling, we boil the egg, no more chic-chic cracking out the shell."

Something smells. The kids are trained to use the tablets for thirty minutes, and they need to run their lessons using the internet. I once found my youngest looking around on my bank's website. By mistake, she transferred one cent to a random account. I didn't realize this at the moment, but my wife did. One cent! When she questioned the bank, we got refunded no immediately, no seventy-two hours waiting, fast, Really Fast.

"Quickly, quickly, really hurriedly, expiration funds and ends all immediately."

I look over to the neighbors, and the three children are wielding stabbing instruments; they are stabbing with the same rhythm by the stabbing its the Boiling Song. That's when boiling water slides under the opening of the door. I scream, and my hand burns the skin peels away as footsteps arrive. I hold my stomach tighter when I feel the hot dark sticky liquid spilling from inside, emptying my insides. Not in the traditional way. The door opens, and I see the faces of my children. Angelic. You know the saying: "Don't take your work home with you." Pleading to them as I repeat the words don't hurt me, I love you, I love you. They snap out of it for a moment, and with tears in their eyes, they come towards me and embrace me; my body is numb and cold, that I can't even feel my son's strong hug. My daughter's hair is in my face, and I usually can smell her coconut conditioner; all I smell is metal and boiling skin, which is the moment...

I've fantasized about this moment when they magically eliminate their kids from my existence and in this hypothetical world, one where I am truly free, of the hold they have on me, – I've been given a gift, my kids are possessed they violently murdered their mother, and now it is time, I will end them before they kill the baby and me. This is when my mind slithers into that place where I convince myself to go ahead and kill my children, the errors of my way my children the errors no scratch that horrors.

Cleansing on a global scale, to save the world some people say online. Others say it was a terrorist attack from the Democrats, using our children to eliminate us so that those damn Dems can drink our kid's blood. I should've listened. I'm falling asleep as I see my kids, the loves of my lives, singing the Earworm song; these songs never made any sense to me. They are hugging me hard, and until I finally feel something... a tugging, some squishing, my daughter holds what looks like a pale snake covered in blood squirming in her hands, as she violently pulls and drops on the floor and snapping, that's when I see their hands are inside my belly, they are pulling and twisting and snapping and biting and stepping on my entrails. I should be feeling this.

The baby? Where's the baby!

The song fades out with their laughter until.

The end.