The nighttime rainfall tapped against Cassandra Bride’s
office window while she sipped her peppermint tea. Christmas lights strewn
above her ceiling illuminated an otherwise dark atmosphere. She smiled while
relaxing into her favorite office chair. Such a peaceful time of night. She
should have been in bed with a Lilian Jackson Braun novel and a kitty. Deep
inside, she knew this conversation had to take place and it couldn’t wait until
a brighter morning.
She took one last sip of tea before there was a knock on her
door. “Come in,” she said. Slogging through the office in a soaking wet hooded
jacket was Jarrod Crews, a young man with short black hair and a Seether
T-shirt underneath his rainwear. He removed his coat and hung it up on the rack
in the corner, not even bothering to dry it off. His social skills were always
a mess, so at least a drippy coat was forgivable.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Jarrod while taking a seat across
from his acting teacher.
Cassandra laid her cup of tea on the desk and waved as if it
was no big deal. “It’s not your fault, Jarrod. It’s wet out there. If I would
have known you didn’t have a car, I would have dispatched another student to
give you a ride. Any moment now we should start getting thunder storms.”
Jarrod’s eyes darted from side to side while he fidgeted
with hangnails on his thumb. “So…do you want to tell me what this is all
about?”
“Of course, of course I do. But first I want to thank you
for agreeing to see me tonight in my office. I’m sorry you had to walk through
a rainstorm, but this actually is a pretty important topic.” Cassandra cleared
her throat and straightened the straps on her black dress before leaning
forward with her hands supporting her chin.
“Am…am I in trouble?” asked Jarrod with a jittery voice,
either from the cold weather outside or his own nervousness.
Cassandra breathed a deep sigh and hesitated before starting
the necessary conversation. “Jarrod…is has come to my attention that you have
some ulterior motives for signing up for my acting class. Like the rest of your
classmates, you probably saw me in the made-for-TV movie My Gift to You, where
I played a demonic seductress. The only difference is, you took your fandom a
little too far. You can deny it all you want, but Mr. Crews…I believe the only
reason you signed up for my class was so you could be close to me. You have no
other classes in your schedule. This is your first quarter at Kelly University.
The pieces are all there. You got caught…by me.”
Jarrod nearly jumped out of his skin when the first
lightning bolt flashed outside. His breathing was labored, but for a far
different reason than the combination electromancy and aeromancy going on. “Who
told you all of this?”
“Your own mother, Jarrod. She called here the other day to
have a chat with me about your…extracurricular activities. She read me passages
from your diary. She logged onto your computer and found pictures that have no
earthly business being there. Jarrod, this is not okay. I don’t feel safe
around you anymore. You know where this is leading, right?” Tiny droplets
welled up in the student’s eyes. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Jarrod slapped his legs and gave a short, sorrowful laugh
through his tears. “I mean…you’re not wrong. You caught me red-handed. So,
that’s that, right? I should just go back to my dorm and pack my suitcase?”
Just as Jarrod stood up, Cassandra motioned with her hand
for him to sit back down. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Not just yet. There’s a lot more
to discuss than just a simple expulsion.”
The student slowly sat back down and chewed on his
fingertips while smiling sadly and shaking his head. “What else is there to
discuss? You have everything you need. My own mother basically ratted me out to
you.” Jarrod held his face in his hand and sobbed a little bit. “You’re getting
way too much pleasure out of this, Mrs. Bride.”
“You’re wrong, Jarrod. There’s absolutely no joy in this for
me. For all intents and purposes, you were a hardworking student who gave A+
performances when you needed to. This hurts me just as much as it hurts you.”
The crumbling student man-spread his legs and tucked his
head down as he tried to find the resolve to continue this conversation. The
wetness in his face, the redness in his cheeks, he was easy pickings for
Cassandra Bride. She had to admit that he put on a hell of a performance, yet
again.
“I’m not talking about you expelling me from school. That
part I get,” blubbered Jarrod through heavy breaths. “But why did you have to
go behind my back like that? You got my own mother to throw me under the bus.
For what?”
“She didn’t throw you under the bus, Jarrod. She called me
that day because she’s worried about you. Like I said, this isn’t just an open
and shut case that can be solved with expulsion. Aside from your sexual
obsession with me, there’s more than she told me about you.”
“Oh god,” stammered Jarrod as he chewed on his fingertips
some more.
Taking a sip of hot tea, Cassandra said, “Your mother tells
me that you have a hard time making new friends. She says you’re depressed and
isolated all the time, so instead of forming real relationships, you hover
around me and feed your fantasies that way. She tells me that it’s been a while
since you’ve seen your therapist.”
“Okay, enough! Enough!” snapped Jarrod while holding his hands
up defensively. Another lightning strike flashed in the sky, but he refused to
be deterred. “I get it! I’m an emotional train wreck! And yes, I do have a hard
time meeting new people. You know why? Because every time I think I have
something, my mom and dad take it away from me when they move to a new place.
And then what do I do? Start over? Take another chance? Bullshit!”
“You know, Jarrod, you can do something about that. You’re
old enough to make your own decisions. If you don’t want to move around to
different cities all the time, then you can just…”
“I can just what? Find my own place? Have you seen how much
an apartment costs these days? Have you seen the job market lately? There’s
nothing out there for me, unless you consider sleeping at a bus station and
begging for handouts to be good living.”
Cassandra set her tea down again and wheeled her office
chair towards a crumbling Jarrod Crews. She placed her hand on his shoulder and
elicited an, “Oh god!” response from him.
“Listen,” she said. “I know it’s tough out there. When I
left my acting career and became a teacher, I didn’t know anybody here at Kelly University.
I was scared just as you are now. But ultimately, you have two choices. You can
move back in with your parents and have financial security and love for as long
as you need it…or you can swallow your pride and find potential roommates with
the friends you make here. You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Jarrod. Either
choice is a valid one, but when you make that decision, you need to reap all of
the benefits that come with it. I get it. You need love. We all do.”
Jarrod wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirt sleeve
and said, “I know you told me that we have a lot to discuss…but this is getting
really fucking awkward, Mrs. Bride. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m not
even sure expulsion would be a bad thing for me. If it’s all the same to you, I
think I’ll just grab my coat and fuck off forever.”
Just as Jarrod stood up to grab his coat, Cassandra offered,
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to your dorm? Trust me, you don’t want
to walk in the rain a second time tonight.”
The lonely student looked down at his shoes and sighed. “You
know what? I think I prefer getting hit by lightning over having another
awkward conversation with you, Mrs. Bride.”
An even louder thunderbolt shook the skies as well as
Jarrod’s foundations as he jumped skittishly yet again. Cassandra asked, “Are
you sure about that, Jarrod?”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled sadly. “Well, you know
what they say: you’re more likely to be killed by a terrorist than you are to
be struck by lightning.”
Cassandra smiled amusedly. “No, no, no, Jarrod, you’ve got
that bass ackwards. You’re more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to
be killed by a terrorist.”
“…Really?....Oh…Well…What if it’s an incel terrorist?”
“Then your chances slightly increase, but that’s neither
here nor there. The point is, I’d rather you allow me to give you a ride back
to your dorm instead of getting rained on again.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the one who said
you didn’t feel comfortable being around me?” asked Jarrod.
Cassandra sighed and tucked her head while her now
ex-student put his jacket on and ventured outside in the pouring rain. “Was I
too hard on him?” she asked herself. Not even the delicious flavor of her
peppermint tea could relax her on this one. Everything that could have gone
wrong in this “important conversation” did go wrong. She lost a great student,
Jarrod lost an opportunity to open up, and everything got incredibly awkward.
But Murphy’s Law didn’t stop there…
Another bolt of lightning tore up the sky, but this time the
sounds of Jarrod wiggling and screaming echoed throughout the rainy weather.
“Oh my god!” gasped Cassandra as she dropped her now shattered teacup on the
floor. Even wearing high heels, she managed to bolt out of her office and lend
her help to a now jittering Jarrod Crews.
There he laid convulsing violently with wide eyes and a
foaming mouth. Now it was Cassandra Bride’s turn to lose a few tears as she
held her hand to her mouth in shock. She knelt beside him and cradled his head
in her lap. “I’m so sorry, Jarrod! I’m sorry!”
Even with a shivering body, Jarrod managed to form a
complete and coherent sentence with a smile on his face. “So this is what it’s
like to be held by somebody…I never knew that before…” Cold, miserable, and
electrocuted, Jarrod’s head flopped over and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Cassandra placed two fingers on his neck vein and felt no pulse surging through
him, just electricity. He died taking a little piece of heaven with him before
he went.
Cassandra teared up some more as she hugged Jarrod Crews’s
lifeless skull. During her moment of apologetic cuddling, she noticed two wire
prongs attached to his chest that led to a stun gun lying on the ground next to
him. Scratched onto the weapon was a message as clear as the day that would
come: “Incel Pride Worldwide”.
The actress’s sorrow turned into jaw-quivering fear at the
revelation that her student was murdered. She could hear footsteps running away
on the concrete sidewalk, but it was too dark to make out who they belonged to.
By the time the perp was illuminated by the streetlamp, he had already turned a
corner and hightailed it out of there.
What if there were more of them? Who else signed up for
Cassandra Bride’s class under false pretenses? Was Jarrod Crews the only
intended victim? What if…she was next? These thoughts raced violently through
her head, which was now cradled in her own hands in a lame attempt to contain
her fear. “I’ve got to get the hell out of here…I can’t stay anymore…”
