Other Stories by the Author

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Four boys were looking out the gymnasium window at the teacher’s parking lot.  It was raining.  They were praying.

“Please God, please don’t let her show up at school today.  Make her too sick to work,” prayed Christian.

“Please God, let her have a horrible car accident so she can’t come to school today,” prayed Sebastian.

“God, please just give us a break from her today,” prayed Mario.

“Oh, please make her just stay home,” prayed Manuel.

And as Manuel finished his prayer, Mademoiselle’s car pulled into the parking lot.  She emerged from the vehicle wearing a long bright red plastic raincoat.  The boys immediately turned away from the window, disappointed that their prayers had, again, not been answered by God.

They remembered their first day of school when Mademoiselle first introduced herself to the class.

“My name is Mademoiselle Douglas.  I am not a Ms., Miss., or a Mrs.  I am a Mademoiselle, and I will be addressed as such,” she said in a firm tone of voice.  “Failure to do so will result in punishment.  Welcome to the fifth grade.”

And punishment is what they received on a regular basis.  Her students called her “Mademoiselle Punishment” behind her back.  Boys were her favorite targets as were girls she presumed to be weak or who played with boys in the school playground during recess.

On one occasion, all the boys in the class were kept after school for two hours and forced to write lines until their fingers hurt.  To make it especially painful for them, she had them line seven sheets of paper with seven sheets of carbon paper.  If any one of the boys didn’t press down hard enough to make an imprint on the bottom page, she forced all of them to start over.

Punishment was handed down for all sorts of random reasons.  One day, during a class period especially for singing songs, she segregated the boys from the girls and made the two groups sing different parts to a song.  The girls, who outnumbered the boys by two to one, sang beautifully with high pitch angelic voices.  When the boys sang, their voices sounded dull, out of tune in a lower key than the girls.  After numerous attempts to motivate them to sing like the girls, Mademoiselle became infuriated and began screaming in the guttural voice she was born with.  A guttural voice that was caused by a large Adams apple she concealed by wearing a turtleneck sweater in winter and a small lady’s scarf during the rest of the year.

Punishment for bad singing was more singing.  She kept the boys after school and made them sing Solfège, the Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti scales, until their voices were hoarse.

“We have to do something to save ourselves from her,” declared Sebastian to the other three boys as the group walked around the schoolyard during morning recess.

“I don’t know.  I’m scared to do anything,” said a nervous Mario.  “She already sent a note home to my parents but I never gave it to them.

“What did the note say?” asked Christian.

“It said I was too nervous to be in the fifth grade.  She’s the one making me nervous.”

“How about we put a curse on her and she’ll stop teaching school,” Manuel excitedly suggested.

“What do we need for that?” asked Sebastian.

“Well, we’ll need something she wears or touches every day,” Manuel replied.

“Like that red pen she uses to mark up our homework,” said Christian.

This began the boys’ plan to place a curse on their teacher.  Christian was assigned to steal the red pen from the teacher’s desk.  Mario contributed the note to his parents written in the teacher’s handwriting.  Sebastian provided matches and some kindling for a small fire.  Manuel wrote the words to the spell that would eliminate Mademoiselle Douglas from their lives forever.

They met on Saturday afternoon in a small, wooded area located up the hill behind the school.  In a small clearing, they sat in a circle and produced the items they were assigned to bring.  Manuel pulled out a sheet of paper with the words to the curse.  Sebastian grabbed it from his hands and began reading.

“Where did you come up with this stuff?”

“It’s from the Scooby Doo episodes I watched this morning.”

“Scooby Doo!” Exclaimed Mario.  “How can this possibly work.”

“I added some stuff to it.  It’ll work fine,” Manuel said reassuringly.

Sebastian drew a pentagram on the ground with one of the dry wooden sticks he brought.  The pen and the note were placed over it.  The remaining wooden sticks were laid on top of the items.  The boys then clasped their hands together in prayer just like the statues of saints they saw at church.

Manuel began to speak, “spirits of dead students from our school.  We implore you to assist us in this curse.  Cookies in a jar, milk on a shelf, monsters of the past, present and future, old Ebenezer the specter, vampires, bats and scaredy cats, accept our offerings.”

Christian struck two wooden matches and lit the wood on fire.

Manuel continued, “we ask that you make Mademoiselle Douglas unable to ever teach us school again thus liberating us from her cruelty.”

Smoke from the fire went up into the sky in a straight line just like a flagpole.  A light wind blew through the trees.  The leaves made a rushing noise and a fawn-colored French mastiff appeared from the woods.  It barked once and ran off.  It was their confirmation.  The curse was going to work.

On Monday morning, Mademoiselle showed up at school as per normal and the torture continued.

“I told you that spell wouldn’t work,” Mario said angrily as the boys walked around the schoolyard at recess.

“I know it’s gonna work,” responded Manuel.

“Did any of you guys feel strange after church yesterday?” asked Sebastian.  “At communion, the Host tasted strange, and I had a burning feeling in the back of my throat.”

“I did too,” added Christian.  “And I coughed all afternoon.  Just an annoying thing in my throat.”

The boys agreed they all had the same experience.  It was more confirmation the spell was destined to work.  When they returned to class, Mademoiselle was standing on a chair hanging a poster on the wall above the chalk board.  After all the students were seated, she spoke.

“Be quiet!” she shouted.  “Take out your French practice exercise book and start work on page 56.”

The room filled with the sound of desktops opening and closing and the rummaging of papers.  As this took place, Mademoiselle, still standing on the chair, turned around to face the class.  

“I told you students to remain silent!” she infuriatedly shouted and stomped her left foot hard on the chair three times.

When she stomped her foot for the third time, the stiletto heel of her left shoe missed the chair, she lost her balance and she fell in a sideways motion.  It was like watching a tall thin tree fall in the woods.  She was a tall thin woman.  She was so thin, many thought she suffered from anorexia.  Her fall was broken by a table.  The tip of her left shoulder hit the edge of the table but slipped off.  When her head hit the edge of the table, her neck snapped toward the right and a cracking sound was heard.  The momentum pushed her head toward her back in an unnatural position.  Her body instantly became limp and fell to the floor.  Her eyes and mouth were open.  Her glasses were broken.  The room fell silent for what seemed to be a long time.

One student screamed and the class erupted in cheers and screams.  One boy, frightened and not knowing what to do, ran out into the hallway and pulled the fire alarm.  All the students and teachers exited the school.

Upon discovering there was a missing teacher at the assembly point in the schoolyard, the principal, who believed the building was on fire, ran into the school to look for Mademoiselle.  He found her in the same position.  She was dead.

School was cancelled for the rest of the week.  Mademoiselle’s funeral mass was held at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church next to the school where everyone attended services.  Condolences from all four corners of the town poured in for Mademoiselle.

“I told you the curse was gonna work!” exclaimed Manuel.

The four boys met in the woods behind the school that Saturday afternoon just after cartoons ended on TV.

“I didn’t expect her to die,” added Mario.  “I thought she would just stop teaching school and move away.”

“Wow.  We got rid of her!” Sebastian said enthusiastically although he was still in disbelief that all the hocus pocus had worked.

“I wonder who we’re going to get for a teacher now?” asked nervous Mario who was convinced that Mademoiselle’s replacement may be even worse.

“I bet we’re gonna get the nicest, most pleasant, most wonderful teacher in the world,” declared Christian.  “We have nothing to worry about.”

On Monday morning, Mademoiselle’s fifth grade students sat at their desks quietly waiting for the new teacher to enter the room.

Sister Mary Lorrain was a small woman in her late forties.  She wore a long dark blue mid-calf dress, a belt and a veil of the same color.  This was a modern-day habit that many Catholic Church religious orders adopted after Vatican II.  A large wooden rosary hung from her belt, and she wore a wooden cross around her neck tied with a piece of string.  Her shoes were black with thick rubber soles.  Her face looked young and she moved with agility and grace.  To the casual onlooker, it was as if she floated everywhere she walked.

After entering the classroom, she addressed the students, “Good morning.  My name is Sister Mary Lorrain.  You may call me Sister Lorrain.  I’m your new teacher.  Now, let’s bow our heads in silent prayer and ask the Lord to bless this class and to especially bless your former teacher’s soul.  Let us pray.”

When she lifted her head and opened her eyes, everyone saw a bright, square diamond shape in the center of the iris of both her eyes.  They glowed bright white.

“Sister Lorrain, what’s wrong with your eyes,” asked a curious girl with long black hair.

Sister Lorrain smiled with great joy and spoke, “I had cataract surgery and God restored my vision.  I can see all your souls and they are so beautiful.”  As she looked at each child in the room, her glance fell upon Mario and his three friends.  The smile dissolved from her face.  She quickly turned around and coughed once.

The next three weeks were the most fantastic weeks Sister Lorrain’s students ever spent at school.  They all wanted to learn from her.  She had a mystical way in which she taught them to pray where they actually physically sensed the presence of God.  They went to bed at night and dreamed of going to school forever in Sister Lorrain’s class.  She was better than Santa Clause.  They loved her.

A few weeks after Sister Lorrain’s arrival, it was time for the annual lice check.  She thoroughly checked every child in her class, using tongue depressors given to her by the public health nurse.  Every tongue depressor was only used once in order to avoid cross contaminating children without lice with those who were infected.  When it was time to check Mario, Sebastian, Christian and Manuel, she noticed that all four boys were heavily infested with lice.  She could see the nits from a distance.  She immediately sent them to see the public health nurse at the infirmary.  The boys did not return to the classroom that day.

The next morning, the four boys sat in class wearing their winter hats.  It was late fall and it was very cold in the mornings.  Sister Lorrain walked up to them and spoke softly, “boys, you know the rules.  You must take off your hats when entering a building.”

“Yes sister, but we have lice and we don’t want to give it to the other students,” said Mario nervously.

“I’m sure your parents would not have sent you to school if you still had lice,” she replied.  “Take your hats off please.”

With great reluctance, the boys removed their hats to reveal that their heads had been shaved skin clean.  This was done to eliminate the lice quickly.  Other students gasped while many laughed.  By early afternoon, some of the girls who laughed began to scratch their heads.  All the other boys began to scratch their heads as well.  Sister Lorrain discovered that the entire class was infected with lice except the curious girl with the long black hair.   She notified the public health nurse at the infirmary.  Class was immediately dismissed.  When class resumed two days later, the remainder of the boys had skin shaved heads.  Most of the girls had greasy hair from the medicated anti-lice ointment.  No one was laughing anymore.

Sister Lorrain addressed the class, “I just want to say that you should always think twice before laughing at other people’s misfortune.  You don’t know what it’s like until it happens to you.  Remember that the Bible says that no bad deed ever goes unpunished by God.”

The room was silent.  Some children began to quietly weep.

“Do you think what Sister Lorrain said about bad deeds is true?” asked Christian while talking to the other three boys during recess.

“I don’t know.  We all got lice and when everyone laughed at our bald heads, they got lice too,” replied Mario.

“I’ve been thinking about the same thing,” added Manuel.  “Do you think something bad will happen to us because of Mademoiselle?”

“It already happened,” Sebastian said with great confidence.  “We all got lice and we’re all bald.  That’s bad stuff, if you ask me.”

The next morning, Christian was making his bed and when he glanced at the window, he saw a horrible three-headed monster looking at him.  It was the devil.  He froze instantly and closed his eyes.  His heartrate skyrocketed and he felt his pulse throbbing in his teeth.  When he opened his eyes, it was gone.

After school that day, the boys played in an old, abandoned car at a junk yard a few blocks from the school.  They played there occasionally and since it was a cool sunny fall day, it seemed like a great place to visit.

“Vroom, vroom.  I’m really going fast,” exclaimed Christian, sitting in the front seat of the old car and manipulating the steering wheel.

The other boys were jumping up and down in the back seat and rocking the car from side to side.  Christian stood up and joined them in jumping up and down on the front seat.  At one point, he lost his balance and fell on his buttocks.  Just as he landed, the worn-out fabric of the seat finally ripped and a large rusted metal spring jumped up and bit him.  It tore a deep hole into the flesh of his right buttocks check.  The momentum of jumping on the springs pushed him further to the right on the seat thus creating a larger wound on his posterior end.  He was stuck on the seat and in pain.  There was a lot of blood.

At the emergency room, doctors were in disbelief that he was already developing tetanus.  Lockjaw had set in.  The vaccine was ineffective as were the drugs to ease the spasms and the pain.  His screams were heard throughout the ER.  Christian was dying in agony.  

“I actually feel sick coming here,” Mario declared to the other two boys as they entered the crowded funeral home viewing room.

It was an open casket funeral and the boys each took turns kneeling next to the deceased to pray.  When it was Mario’s turn, his stomach was in knots.  He knelt, trying to look away from Christian’s face.  He closed his eyes and tried to pray.  Flashbacks to Mademoiselle’s death played in his head as if it were a continuous recording.  He thought it was better to open his eyes and look at his dead friend than to watch Mademoiselle’s death over and over.  When he opened his eyes, Christian’s head was turned, eyes open and staring at him.  Mario was paralyzed with fear.

Christian spoke, “Mario, you have to help me.  They’re keeping me dead with these big needles stuck in my armpits.”  His voice was a bit muffled as he tried to move his lips which were sewed shut from the inside.  “Help me.  Don’t let them kill me this way.”

Mario fell to the floor and screamed.

“He’s alive!  He’s alive!  He spoke to me.  DON’T KILL HIM!”

His parents immediately came to his aid.  Mario was out of control flailing on the floor.  The people attending the viewing made disapproving noises because he was interrupting the event.  Finally, a doctor, a family friend of Christian’s family, appeared from seemingly nowhere and sedated the boy with an injection.

“He’ll sleep through the night,” announced the doctor to Mario’s parents.

Christian’s funeral service was at the same church where Mademoiselle’s service was held.  The interior of the church had dark-mustard colored carpet throughout.  Mario sat at the entrance of the front pew next to all the boys from his class.  School was cancelled for the funeral.  It was standing room only at the service as parishioners gathered to show support for the grieving family.

The wooden casket was rolled into the church.  The foot of the casket stopped right next to Mario’s pew.  Two altar boys placed two large candles mounted to a metal candelabra on both sides of the casket.  Mario was feeling anxious and tried desperately to look away from the big wooden box.  As the service progressed, he heard Christian’s muffled cries for help from within the casket.  Mario’s heartrate increased and he began to perspire and shake.  He heard knocking from inside the casket and more pleas for help from his undead friend.

“HE’S STILL ALIVE!” he screamed.

Mario leaped from his seat to rescue his dead friend.  With great effort, he opened the lid of the half-couch casket.  Unknown to everyone, it had not yet been sealed for burial.  In opening the lid, he knocked down the candles.  One candle fell onto the carpet which immediately caught fire and spread quickly throughout the church.  The other candle fell into the open casket, setting the pink interior synthetic fiber lining on fire.  Mario pulled and tugged at Christian’s body in an attempt to free him from his tomb.  Heavy black smoke was everywhere, and panic ensued in the church as people ran for the exits.  At this point, both Mario’s body and Christian’s remains were heavily engulfed in flames.  The smell of burning flesh filled the air.  Through the thick smoke, Mario was heard screaming in agony.

School was cancelled for two weeks as the community grappled with the loss of two young boys from the same fifth grade class.  Manuel and Sebastian feared for their lives and refused to leave their homes.  Their parents thought they were grieving for their lost friends.  During the two weeks off from school, they talked on the phone regularly.

“Are you in your room?” asked Sebastian.

“Yeah.  My dad put a phone next to my bed.  I don’t leave the room except to go to the bathroom and I blocked out the window with a heavy blanket,” Manuel replied.

“What are we gonna do when we have to leave the house and go to school?”

“We’ll just be really careful.  Really, really careful.”

Although it had been weeks since the lice episode, the boys’ hair was not growing back very fast.  Manuel had patches of hair growing randomly on his head.   Sebastian’s hair only grew back in a ring around his head which made him look like a monk.  Manuel had to give up on growing his hair out since the patches made him look as though he had some horrible contagious disease.  He opted to shave his head skin clean every week.  Both boys looked and felt like freaks.

Upon their return to class, Sister Lorrain addressed her students.

“We’ve been through a lot in the last few weeks.  Let us pray in the way I taught you.  Let us ask God to comfort us.”

They all bowed their heads in silence.  All the students felt the radiating love of God fall upon them, a tingling sensation from the top of their heads to the base of their spines.

“Didn’t that feel wonderful,” said Sister Lorrain.

“It felt like God was inside me, tingling all over,” said the curious girl with the long black hair.

“How did you feel Sebastian?” asked Sister Lorrain.

Sebastian paused before answering.  He was unsure how to answer.  The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had felt nothing.

“I’m not sure sister.  I’m not sure what I felt.”

“You felt nothing, Sebastian,” calmly declared Sister Lorrain.  “I know because I couldn’t see your soul.  All I saw was.”

Her last words were drowned out by the school bell that rang to announce the start of morning recess.

That day after school, Sebastian was riding his bicycle home as he did every day.  When he crossed the street at the crosswalk, still slowly riding his bike, a car stopped to let him cross.  Behind the car, a cement truck accelerated and rear ended the car.  The car leaped forward and hit Sebastian who immediately fell to the ground.  The boy, still on his bike, was pinned under the front of the car as it continued to move forward for fifty feet.  When the vehicle finally stopped, Sebastian was trapped under the motor.  The fire department had to use a crane to lift the car and extract the severely injured boy.

At the scene of the accident, police questioned the cement truck driver.

“I was trying to kill that French Mastiff dog that ran across the street,” he told the policeman.

“Why?” asked the policeman.

“Because it’s evil.  That dog is evil.  It attacked my daughter and ripped her arm off,” the driver said.  He was in a panicked state, shaking and sweating.

“Sir, have you been drinking today?”

“No. Not at all.  Just a little bit.  That dog is evil.  Evil!”

When Sebastian woke up in the hospital, he was in a partial body cast that stabilized his crushed pelvis.  His legs were covered with the usual hospital blanket and an I.V. dripped into his arm.  His parents and the doctor were in his room.

“My, my legs hurt.  My feet hurt,” he complained to the doctor in a low sedate voice.  “Give me something for the pain.  Please.  Doctor.”

“Your feet and legs can’t hurt you, Sebastian, because we had to cut them off,” said the doctor in an antiseptic tone of voice.

Sebastian’s eyes popped wide open.  He ripped the blanket off his legs to discover that both legs had been amputated above the knee.  The stumps were heavily bandaged.  His heart raced.

“I’m told that Sister Lorrain will pray for you when she comes for a visit later today,” his mother added.

The boy screamed.

After Sebastian’s accident, Manuel refused to leave his home’s property.  He was terrified.  He knew he was next to have something tragic happen to him.  His parents believed that he was in shock from all the events of the past few months.  He sat on the edge of his bed and dialed Sebastian’s number on the rotary telephone his father installed in his bedroom.

Sebastian’s mother answered the phone, “Hello.”

“This is Manuel, can I speak with Sebastian please.”

“Oh, Manuel I’m so glad you called I’ve been meaning to give you a shout and tell you about Sebastian but things were so hectic around here what with the accident and the operation and running to the hospital every day I tell you it was all too much and with Sister Lorrain calling all the time.”

The woman babbled on and didn’t allow Manuel to speak for what seemed to be a long time.  Finally, she paused to catch her breath and Manuel spoke.

“Is Sebastian home or still in the hospital?”

“Well that’s what I was trying to tell you if you’ll let me you see he’s really sick and it’ll take a very long time for him to recover so we had him placed with the monastic brothers who are trained to take care of sick people who need constant care because his father and I can’t do it what with his mens clothing store at the new mall and the country club and don’t forget I’m president of the ladies auxiliary and that takes up so much of my time running around doing errands and organizing our weekly luncheons and I’m also on the committee for the fundraiser to fix the church after that terrible fire where your friend Mario died.”

Manuel hung up the phone.  He couldn’t listen to this anymore.

A few days after the annoying phone call with Sebastian’s mother, Manuel ventured out of the house and wandered into the garage.  It was a sunny day and the large garage door was rolled up.  His father was repairing the family vacuum cleaner that sat on the work bench.

“Well son, I see you’re feeling better.  Well enough to venture into the garage,” said his father, happy to see his son was on the mend.

“Yeah, I just wanted to get some air and see what you were doing,” he said.

“You know what, how about I go into the house and get us each a bottle of Coke and you can help me fix this vacuum cleaner.  How does that sound?”

“That sounds great, dad.”

His father walked out of the garage.  Manuel approached the work bench and looked at the vacuum cleaner’s innards.  He was surprised to see how few parts actually made the machine work.  He heard a noise outside and turned to look.  The fawn-colored French Mastiff was standing just inside the garage door.  When Manuel made eye contact, the dog growled.  When it stopped growling, the table saw in the center of the garage turned itself on.  Someone grabbed Manuel’s arms and dragged him to the table saw.  He could not see who was behind him and he was overpowered by their strength.  He screamed.  He recognized the hands that pushed his wrists onto the table saw.  It was Sister Lorrain.  In an instant, the boy’s wrists were pushed through the rotating blade and his hands fell to the ground.  The French Mastiff appeared next to the table saw, picked up the hands in his mouth and ran away.  The table saw turned itself off.  Manuel was alone in the garage, bleeding heavily from his arms and screaming. 

Hearing the screams, Manuel’s father ran into the garage to find his son on the floor bleeding profusely.  Fearing that he may exsanguinate, he lit a small butane torch and cauterized both bleeding stumps.  Manuel was left with a large black and red ball at the end of his arms.

Upon returning to school a few months later, Manuel discovered that Sister Lorrain was no longer his fifth-grade teacher.  Mrs. McCluskey was now his teacher.  He sat at an empty desk next to the curious girl with the long black hair.  After sitting down, he used his mouth to grab the end of his mitten and pulled it off his right arm.  His stumps healed but in the shape of a ball.  He looked as though he had a large, black and red baseball glued to end of his arms.  The texture of the skin was wrinkled and bubbly.  In the center of the ball on his right arm, there was a hole that the doctors had made to enable Manuel to hold a pen, pencil or an eating utensil.  Due to the shape of his stumps, there were no prosthetics that fit him.  Any further surgeries to reduce the size of the balls had to wait until he was an adult.

The girl with the long black hair helped Manuel by placing a notebook on his desk so he could take notes.  She also pushed a pencil through the hole of his stump so he could write down his homework.  Manuel tried to write but became frustrated.  Anything he wrote on his paper looked more like it was drawn with a spirograph set than the handwriting of a human being.

“Don’t feel bad,” said the little girl with the long black hair.  “I’ll help you.”

“Thanks,” grumbled Manuel.

“Hey, I know what could cheer you up.  I’ll show you a picture of me and my dog.”

The girl showed Manuel a photo of herself and her dog, a fawn-colored French Mastiff.  The same one that ran off with his hands when he had the table saw accident.  In the photo, the girl’s eyes glowed bright like diamonds.

“You’re eyes!” exclaimed Manuel.

“Yes, I had cataract surgery,” said the girl with the long black hair.  “And God restored my vision.”

The End.