I walked slowly to class, tired from grading papers late last night. I checked my watch, there was 10 minutes left until my 8:30pm class. It didn’t matter because they’d all be late anyways. I felt empty walking through the halls, as if I was watching from deep inside my body, as my legs moved of their own accord. 

I didn’t even stop when I got to where I taught. Opening the door easily, I rarely locked it. Not many kids took my class anyways.  

Stepping in to look at the empty room. I took a deep breath, and it felt like my hope left my body along with the air. Continuing farther into the classroom, setting my bag on the large desk that sat in the center of it. 

I sit down at my chair and begin rubbing my temples. I’ve had a 20 year long headache, thoughts bouncing around my head until a physical pain occurred. I wondered if God was punishing me for what I’ve done? I wondered if there was a God at all? 

A loud wrap on the classroom door, pulled me from my thoughts, I quickly opened my eyes, my hands still firmly on my temples. I wondered how long I’d been there, with my eyes closed, fingers glued to my head, lost in thoughts. 

I’d almost forgotten about the class until I heard a person speak, “Professor Porter?” 

I immediately knew the voice even before seeing the face, “Jared you’re late for class”. I knew he didn’t care, but I was still his teacher. I had to pretend I cared, even when my life felt meaningless, and I’d rather be anywhere else.

”I know Professor Porter but no one else is coming, and I really need to talk to you”. I paused, “No one else is coming to class?” he looked at me, eyes full of pity before nodding, “some party late last night”, he shrugged, before adding quickly, “I wasn’t there though”. 

I sighed. Rubbing my eyes, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that no one was going to show up, but a little part of me still thought that those kids cared about my teaching. It hurt too much to think about, so I returned to the conversation.

“Well, what do you need Jared?”

He looked at me, taking a deep breath before speaking, “I want you to change my grade”, I stared at him blankly, my silence seemed to make him nervous, because he continued to talk quickly, rarely stopping to take a breath.

“Please, Mr. Porter I need to pass this class, or my parents will kill me, please?”

I thought it was quite odd how he brought up his parents when he was 20 and going to college in a different state, but that was not my business. He stared at me with wide eyes after he was done talking. Panting a bit, he let out only one other word, “Please?”

I stared at him, he had done rather poorly on the past test, so poorly in fact, that it changed his class average to a failing grade. “I’m sorry, Jared I can’t do that”. 

I got up from my chair and grabbed my bag as Jared still talked off my ear about how much he needed his grade to change. He followed me around my desk and started to sound a bit desperate. His convincing started to sound like begging. He stopped me when I got to the door, grabbing my arm, a bit too tightly.

“Don’t go now, Mr. Porter”. His smile was meant to be joking if not a bit sad, but his eyes sparked with anger. I peeled his hand off me, and stated firmly, “I cannot change your grade Jared. I guess you’ll have to study harder”. 

I walked away, leaving him standing in the doorway, with his fist clenched and face angry. 

a few days later…

I sat in front of my computer, clicking through assignments and emails, bored, I had the TV on in the background and paid a little attention to it. 

I snapped back to attention when a notification popped up in the corner of the screen, my cell phone and computer were connected so someone must’ve messaged me. 

I clicked on the notification and read the message. The words, big and bright, like a warning sign, taunting me with its ominicity. I stared longer, the sentence, burrowing deep inside my mind, rerouting memories that I had long tried to forget.

“I know what you did”.

It was from an anonymous number. I settled my shaking hands long enough to type a message of my own. 

“Who are you?”

I quickly removed my quivering hands from the keyboard, anxiously awaiting their response. I inhaled quickly when I saw the message, 

“You’re a monster”. 

I felt a sudden rush of anger, I know I was a monster, I had been there, I had been on that road, I had been in that car, I had been in that courtroom. 

Does this person know about the life I took? 

I slammed the computer shut, certain I had cracked the screen. I stood up, but froze at the sound of a notification of them messaging me again.

I slowly opened the computer, not surprised to have seen a long crack across the screen in a jagged, diagonal line. The message just as concerning,

 “Don’t go now, Mr. Porter”. 

I gulped, and it felt like my heart had stopped, “Jared Green?”, I responded. 

I waited, watching the bouncing dots, made my anxiety spike.

“You got me, Mr. Porter.” 

I breathed a sigh of relief before responding back,

“Why are you messaging me from an anonymous account, what do you want?”

He replied,

“I really need you to change my grade”. 

I sighed, Jared had failed my class and was convinced he done nothing wrong, and I graded him incorrectly.

“Are we back at this again?”

As I told you before Mr. Green I cannot change your score”.  

He sent me a link and the message 

“please rethink”.  

I clicked the link, curious, it was a local news report from 20 years ago when a young man, while under the influence, hit a woman. She had two kids.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I immediately felt sick. 

It was the article I tried to bury, the one that would haunt me forever.

The article did not disclosed her name, but I knew her. I watched her being wheeled away into the ambulance while an officer read me my rights and cuffed me. I watched as the police drove away, not needing to turn on the sirens because she was already gone.

It was on my 18th birthday. 20 years ago. The worst day of my life. A day I long to forget. I wondered if I’d ever get over it, if I’d ever escape my mundane life and infectious thoughts or will I stay at prisoner in my own mind? 

Drowning and guilt and unhappiness, seems to be the route I’m taking. 

Teaching was my escape. I was focused on graduating and getting my degree instead of the girl whose life I’d watch fade out of her eyes. 

Now I was being blackmailed by one of my students. I’d follow the light that led to my peace and now I was trapped in the place that I spent far too much time in my mind except the light had faded, and there was no escape now.

It had been five days, five days of being in my head, five days of reliving that night, five days of seeing her in my mind. Remembering her blood on the streets, on my car, on my hands. 

I saw her in my dreams, she was lying there on the road, blood pooling around her, she was screaming, so piercing and so loud that it hurt my ears and reverberated my skull. And then she stopped. Everything went quiet, as if everyone in the whole world mourned her loss. 

I heard one word in my head, echoing, growing, louder, and louder, incessant, I answer, “Why?”

I wake up, shaking and sweaty every day, not wanting to get out of bed and face the student that looked at me with smug knowing. He knew I couldn’t report him to the Dean or anyone in a chain of command. Because he knew my secret, he had the power. He knew I could lose my career and everything I’ve worked so hard for. 

He had me trapped, I was an animal in his cage and he made sure I knew it every day. Yesterday he mimicked driving a car when he went to collect his test. His arrival ending in a dramatized crash and him hanging half his body over my desk, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his eyes rolling, mimicking death. His test had been crushed in my hand, and after collecting himself, he pried away from me before looking over it with an appreciative whistle he winked at me. 

“Now THIS professor, is what I deserve”

The sheets of paper beneath my hands crumpled at the memory, he was taunting me, in front of everyone, wielding my weakness, like a weapon, ever so proudly.

Glad this day was over.  

I didn’t know my body was shaking with anger until something fell off the side table, near my bed and shattered on my floor. 

I sighed, and when I exhaled, tears streamed down my face. I just sat there crying, head in my hands, feet covered in glass. I hadn’t cried in a while. I had felt like I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t allowed to mourn her death because I had caused it. 

I cried now. Chest heaving sobs that vocalized the guilt and loneliness I’ve been feeling for 20 years. Even when I was teaching, when I was in my happy place, I felt it. I have always felt it.

20 years ago I felt it. I felt it in the harsh coldness of the cuffs that confined me as they took her away, I felt it for the three years of my life that prison took from me, and I felt it just now. 

I was losing control of my emotions, my mourning cries, starting to sound manic, my body, shaking with pent-up emotions, I quickly stood up, my body trembling with the need for fresh air. 

I stepped out of my small apartment and opened the door to the outside, quickly inhaling the air like I needed it to live, gratefully ignoring the glass that stuck to my feet, piercing my skin. 

I walked out a little farther to sit on the rickety bench that stood between the cracked sidewalk in the lawn that the owner had littered with large rocks to hide bare spots in the grass. 

I heard the sound of feet on the sidewalk and my head jerked in the direction it came from. Someone stepped out into the light and I gaped at the familiar silhouette. 

I sputtered helplessly and the figure smiled and response, 

“Hey Professor, fancy see you here“.

“What are you doing here Jared, I said?” 

He smiled, “Just exploring Allen.”

He knew where I lived!

Jared smiled more at my visible nervousness. “I’m not stalking you, Alan, I promise“, he declared playfully, sticking out his little finger like a child.

“Then why are you here”, I said, carefully, trying to keep my voice sturdy. 

He shrugged, “I had to make sure you weren’t telling anyone“. 

He looked me up and down, his eyes, lingering on my bare and bloody feet. 

“But I’m sure that won’t be a problem“ he smirked, as if he won, as if he held everything in his hands, toying with my job and my head like they were games.

I put my head in my hands and heard him move closer, I peered through my fingers and saw his sneaker, he was standing right in front of me. I watched him move his foot to toy with one of the large rocks, pushing it with the toe of his shoe, watching it wobble around before abandoning it to stand up straight. 

I moved my hands to my hair,

“Why are you doing this? 

Why can’t you just leave me alone?”, I asked desperately, “I already changed your grade. 

Why can’t you just let me be”. 

My voice failed me, cracking at the end, showing my vulnerability. I felt him shrug, “I thought it would be a way to, scam a good grade.” 

I looked up at him hoping he was joking, that he didn’t just say he did this for fun. My hopefulness turned into anger when I saw the honesty in his eyes. 

I grabbed the first thing I saw. The rock felt heavy in my hands. Jared’s eyes widened, I jumped, connecting the rock 1, 2, 3 times to his head, then he fell, right after the third strike. I followed him to the ground, continuing the attack even after he had lost consciousness, fueled completely by anger. I only stopped when my grip on the rock became slippery and my hand was coated in his blood. 

I was panting, I crawled away from him, or what was him, his face was unrecognizable, mangled and bloody. 

Did I just do that?

Yes. 

I shook and turned my body before reaching the grass. Hot tears burned down my face as I continued to dry heave on the ground.  

 I fainted. 

I snapped back to consciousness by the sound of sirens, they seemed to ring annoyingly loud in my ears, they were close. The police lights flashed behind my eyelids. 

I peeled my eyes open and saw them, the police, at least 6 of them. They crowded around Jared, first, before they noticed me. I wondered how I looked to them, covered in blood and laying in a pool of my own vomit. 

One of the officers cautiously approached me “I’m going to need you to put your hands behind your back, for me”. 

I obeyed. 

I moved to roll to my stomach and clasp my hands behind my back. The officer quickly came behind me and cuffed my hands. I listen to him while he reads me my rights, I allow him to heft me from the ground, my body lacking the ability to hold myself straight, and shove me in the back of the police cruiser.

It felt as if all the energy in my body had disappeared when Jared did, I felt useless, hopeless.       

I wondered if it was worth it, if I actually fixed anything, because it seemed to me that I was right back where I started, back at the beginning of Porters past.