Classroom X - V. Sickness

The way it all came was when little Sam came into class coughing. It was a minor thing, but the teacher noticed it and sent him to the principal’s office to get picked up by his parents.

The next day, two of kids were coughing; Sam was in the hospital by then.

Then there was the vomiting and the diarrhea that contaminated the classroom and appalled the teacher. The whole floor — it became all sticky and smelly, odorous. The teacher thought about dismissing class then and there, as another child through up:

ACK BLEeeeheeheeheEEeHhHh

URHGOLLLLLLoOO0oOO

*cough cough*

As the principal reported a month later after the whole extended “incident,” there were ten distinct...happenings that occurred in the school, and particularly in Classroom ___. The teacher in charge of Classroom ___ gave a moving testimony, falling into tears at multiple points in her stirring account. The following is a brief summary of what happened:

1. In the bathrooms, all the water turned red and viscous, crimson almost, and dark too. The plumbers couldn’t pinpoint the origin of this peculiarity.
2. *See II.
3. In a week, many of the kids started having mad itches in their hair, and one of the kids actually started bleeding from the scalp, and a couple others had hair falling out. The school nurse determined the cause to be an outbreak of head lice.
4. A hive of bees was discovered right outside the classroom, and upon opening the window once, a swarm flew in, attacking the students; one student in particular suffered critical injuries and had to be taken to the emergency room.
5. Three dead deer were found in the front parking lot on Thursday morning.
6. Five kids fell from heat stroke during lunch on a exceptionally hot day.
7. Once, it rained hot water, killing lots of birds and leaving them all over the field.
8. Overnight, all the bushes and flowers lining the front parking lot, as well as the garden behind the kindergarten class, were all apparently eaten up. Authorities have not confirmed what perpetrated the incident.
9. An unexpected solar eclipse came over the school and the classroom at 11:23-28am on a Wednesday. Some of the kids said they felt dizzy afterwards.
10. All of a sudden — this was on the Monday following — about a third of the kids collapsed in the middle of class.

It was during the last event, on Monday, when the teacher took action into her own hands. As 

the children were there, either panicked or sprawled out on the ground, she grabbed one

of the kids that was lying there, motionless, and dragggged him to her desk

up front. Trrerembling, the teacher took out a pair of scissors.

She was crying as she lifted up the unconscious boy’s

shirt and thrust the point of the blade

into the child’s stomach.

And then there were

the screams.

+ +

{

[ahhhh]

The mess took a long time to get cleaned up, but it was done. No news coverage, no fanfare or celebration or public weeping. The teacher came back to work, and the kids back to school, and never spoke of the thing which had happened again except in eyes and vanishing looks and a dead flower that lingered out behind the school.