Mr. Nelson & The Horrible Writing Prompt

         “Okay class, get your notebooks out.  The writing prompt is on the board.”  Joe Nelson retracted the pull-down screen to reveal two words on the whiteboard:  a locket.

         The class burst into wails and groans.

         A slight smile tugged at Joe’s lips.  “What’s the problem?”

         “Worst prompt ever, Mr. Nelson,” one student volunteered.

         “Why do you hate us so?”  asked a boy seated near the window with exasperation.

         “Really, Mr. Nelson?  Really?  You could’ve asked us to write a story about a camera or chains, and I don’t think it would be any worse than this,” said another.

         Joe regarded his students with amusement, and gestured with his hands for silence. “Yes, yes, it’s practically the end of the world, I know.”  He gave them a dazzling smile.  “Come on, it’ll be great.  Get those creative juices flowing.”  He paced the room, up and down the rows, clapping his hands and gesturing to students, directing them to the task at hand.  As they pulled out paper and pens and starting jotting down ideas, the room quieted down.  But just as they settled down to write, Joe interrupted:  “Oh by the way, did I also mention it needs to be scary?”

         One student fell out of his chair and pantomimed a slow, painful death by writhing on the floor, his legs kicking with jerky, shaking movements until he became still.

         While the students laughed and chuckled in the background, Joe rolled his eyes.  “Ha, ha, very funny, Thomas.”  As Thomas picked himself up off the floor, Joe spoke:  “Alright, I know it’s going to be a challenge, but let’s get to it folks.  Write.”

         And so they began.



         Later that afternoon, long after the kids had gone, Joe sat at his desk.  His students’ writing assignments made two neat piles at his desk:  graded, not graded.  Most had been mediocre, with only a few well-crafted tales in between.

         Joe rubbed his eyes and then stretched.  He’d already been grading for about two hours, and contemplated calling it a day, but thumbing through the remaining papers he realized that he only had three more left.  Why not? he thought.  Then I‘ll go.

         The next story in the “not graded” pile was by Thomas.  Joe gave a tiny chuckle at the image of Thomas on the floor, and then began to read.  When he was done, Joe sat back, dumbfounded.

         Thomas had written an amazing story of psychological terror.  Interestingly enough, the story had begun much as the actual school day had:  with Joe in the classroom, giving the students the writing assignment of the day, with the ever-challenging “a locket” prompt as the catalyst.  But in Thomas’ story, Joe and the class were trapped in the locket, and he had tasked the students with writing a story that would show them how to escape.

         “But he didn’t answer an important question,”  Joe remarked out loud.  “How did we come to be in the locket?”

         “You really don’t remember, do you?” came a voice from behind him.  Startled, Joe whipped around in his chair to find Thomas standing in the doorway of his classroom.

         “Thomas!  My god, you scared me!  What are you doing here?”

         Thomas bore his eyes into Nelson’s with such an intensity that Joe felt himself push the chair back a bit.

         “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”  Thomas’ shoulders slumped, and he shook his head in disbelief. 

         “Excuse me?”

         “We’ve been through this, Mr. Nelson,” Thomas continued.  “It’s Regina.  She did this.  But if you refuse to believe it or remember, we’re doomed to do this again.”

         Nelson frowned.  “What?  Who—Regina?  Who’s that?”

         “Regina, Mr. Nelson.”  Thomas spoke as if he were speaking patiently to a small child.  “Re-gi-na.”  He stressed each syllable for emphasis.  “She sat in the back of the class.  She was in love with you, remember?”

         Joe held his hands up.  “What are you talking about?” He glanced at the clock.  It was almost six.  “And what are you still doing here?  Why aren’t you at home?” 

         Thomas ignored his questions.  “Regina wanted to keep you next to her—“

         “Who is Regina?  I don’t know who you’re talking about.”  Joe arched his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders, confused.  But before he could question Thomas further, an image popped into his head:  a young girl, caramel-honey skin, dreadlocks, quiet disposition.

         Eyes that screamed longing and desire.

         And then just like that, the face was gone.

         “—Mr. Nelson!  She trapped us here!  She cast some kind of spell!  She wanted you to be in love with her—“

         “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I’d never be involved with a student!”  Joe exclaimed.

         “I know that, Mr. Nelson.  But Regina didn’t care.  She came to you one day after school, and begged you to be with her, and you told her no.  Think, Mr. Nelson, try to remember!”  Thomas pleaded.

         But Joe narrowed his eyes and focused his attention on Thomas.  “Are you making this up?”

         Thomas moved in closer to Joe, gesturing wildly.  “I was there, Mr. Nelson!  You were tutoring me for an exam that we were going to take!  I left for a minute to go to the restroom, and when I came back, she was there with you, crying and hysterical, professing  her love for you.  Why don’t you remember?”

         Joe watched Thomas rant and rave and was thinking of how to calm him down when abruptly, a memory again came to him.  It was a voice, full of love and woe.  But I love you, Mr. Nelson!  It doesn’t matter that you’re my teacher!  It reverberated in his head with a sense of urgency and desperation, flitting from one side of his head to another.  Joe placed his on either side of his head, shaking it from side to side, willing the voice to stop.

         Thomas reached for Joe, grabbing his shoulders.  “You’re remembering, aren’t you?  Please, it’s the only thing that can break the spell!  If you can remember her, you’ll know you didn’t love her!  But as long as she’s hidden from your mind, Regina gets to keep you with her—and you can’t say no!”

         But even before Thomas finished speaking, the voice had ceased and was gone, and instead, Joe shrugged off Thomas’ hands and pushed him.  “Let me go, son!  You don’t approach me this way, ever!  I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to calm down!”

         Thomas stumbled a few steps backwards, then straightened himself.  He gave Joe a long, hard look but then bowed his head, signaling defeat.  “It’s why we write about a locket, Mr. Nelson.  We do this every day.  You give us the same prompt every day.”

         Joe flustered, throwing up his hands.  “What?  What are you talking about now?”

         “She wanted to give you a locket on that last day.  So she could be close to your heart.  But of course, you refused, and…and I guess she snapped, because that’s when she cast the spell or did her voodoo or cast her magic—whatever—and  that’s how we wound up here.”

         “Here?  Here where?”

         “In the locket, Mr. Nelson.  We’re all here in the locket.  I don’t know why she took us all, but she did.  You and the rest of the us, the whole class.  Maybe because her connection to you is only during English, I dunno.  But we’re in her locket so she can keep you close to her heart.”

         Joe plopped back down into the chair, flabbergasted.  “B—but, we had class…you all wrote essays...”  He gestured to the papers on his desk, then grabbed a handful and waved them in front of Thomas’ face as proof.  “See?  Do you  see, Thomas?”

         “Yes, we had class, Mr. Nelson.  We have class every day.“  Thomas’ pitch rose in frustration.  “And every day you ask us to write about a locket.”  For a moment, Thomas became pensive, reflective.  “I used to wonder why you were making us write about a locket.  You don’t remember Regina, you don’t know that we’re here, and yet…we always write about a  locket.  And then finally, it came to me.  You want us to write a different ending to this story, because somehow, even though you don’t admit it or can’t remember, I think you know.  Maybe on a subconscious level, but…you know.”

         Joe could hardly suspend his disbelief.  And yet to his surprise he found that his heart was racing, and his breathing shallow.  “Know what?” Joe asked with a tongue that was as thick and dry as cement.

         “We’re trapped in that crazy bitch’s fantasy and we’re never getting out of here.  And that’s scary as hell.”

         A tremendous noise, like metal scraping against metal, filled the study. It made the walls shake, the desks tremble and slide and fall, and brought both Joe and Thomas to their knees, covering their ears on either side of their head, screaming and writhing in pain from the sheer volume of sound.  A giant whoosh of air caused the papers on the desk to flutter and whirl upward and about the classroom, and a blinding white light filled the space.  Joe and Thomas’s eyes burned even behind lids that had closed instinctively, and they dropped flat onto their bellies to hide their faces from the light.

         But despite  their attempt to block out the noise, there was no preventing what they heard next: 

         Oh, Mr. Nelson—I love you.

         And then just as quickly, the light blinked out, the metallic scraping ceased with a sudden, thunderous clap and boom!, and the walls stopped  their thunderous shaking. 

         Joe and Thomas lay on the floor, whimpering in their recovery. When the ringing in their ears subsided and their eyes stopped tearing, Thomas looked over at Joe and said:  “Do you believe me now?”

         But when Joe looked at him, he didn’t see Thomas on the floor of his classroom, where papers were scattered about and desks were overturned.  Instead, Joe stood in front of the classroom, ready to teach.  He greeted his students with a smile, and then said:

         “Okay class, get your notebooks out. The writing prompt is on the board.”  Joe retracted the pull-down screen to reveal two words on the whiteboard:  a locket.