Don't Walk

      Professor Lecourt admired the effect. The three vindictive, swift pen-strokes with the new red marker disfigured the exam paper. The old black pen, which received legendary status throughout the school as the “puncturer of over-inflated grades”, was quite excellent. However, the professor craved a grade-killer with an alarming, powerful color; the new marker’s resemblance to blood was quite appealing to the Professor. He picked it up in an office-supply store earlier that day, after the black pen had finally scrawled its last 0.
         Lecourt was every student’s nightmare; few students were stupid enough to enroll in Accelerated Grammatical Analysis.  Those who did greatly regretted it, if not because of the professor, because the subject matter was boring and uninspired. Fifteen of the tests the professor graded earned a failing grade. He leaned back in his swivel chair, smirking at the thought.          
         Done admiring the new marker’s brutality, the Professor looked above the drying “F” for the name.
         “Polly Morton,” he said to himself, rolling the name over his tongue like a curse. He remembered how she had interrupted the class to say, “Could we get some extra credit, please?”
        He did not allow that type of mentality in his classroom. The Professor replied with a lengthy lecture about how the class was expected to do well. He had to make them realize that he had no intention of giving extra credit. It was a lecture he had given many times, to endless dissatisfied students.
        He thought, sitting at his desk, about the quiet, unavoidable fact that he was getting on in years. However, he cheered himself up by reliving the recent horrified faces of the class after the first test.  In the three days after, a third of the class had switched into easier classes, dropping down to Grammatical Analysis or more interesting courses. This thought made him even happier; the fewer dunderheads he had to teach, the better. He gazed fondly around his room, while twirling the red pen in his hand absently.
        The classroom in which hundreds of students suffered was as grim as the teacher who taught there. Blinds were drawn tightly over the windows, blocking the sun. Lecourt never cracked open the windows, so the air was stale and slightly dusty. There were two rows of fluorescent lights. Four lights had gone out, and a fifth was flickering in morose sort of way. In another attempt to make the students’ lives more difficult, he set up three different clocks: one unusually slow, one with mixed up numbers, and one forever frozen in the backwaters of time on 8:14 AM, on a distant day of a distant year.
        Only one clock was correct; it sat on his desk so that only he could see it. Lecourt filed away the maimed exam with the others, and took a look at this little black clock. It read “4:27 PM” in austere red numerals. He remembered fondly at parent-teacher conferences when an angry mother had thrown the last, gray clock at him. The Professor had a growing collection of broken clocks. He did not mind it much, because they were the relics of old battles, old parents, and old students. Parent-teacher conferences were his favorite time of the year. They were an excellent excuse to get annoying students in trouble without getting angry memos and faxes from the administration. Smiling with a smug sort of satisfaction, he stood up, still fiddling with the marker, and exited his classroom.
         On his way out of the school, the Professor passed Ms. Baxter, a popular teacher among both faculty and the students. She smiled encouragingly, but Lecourt glared at her and stalked frigidly past. He hated Ms. Baxter, and thought up exactly four plots to get her fired from the school before he made it outside.
         The professor was glad to be out of the building; the yellow wallpaper and clean, cozy environment gave him an untraceable feeling of anger. Once outside, it made him grin inwardly, as it was rainy, cold, and dark. The clouds were nearly black, and hung over the city, an oppressive death-mantle. Pulling out his brown, unusually rigid umbrella, he headed south along Main Street towards the busiest section of town. Cars rolled dismally by, sending up occasional splashes of murky water.
         The city of Windfall was dreary, with dirt-coated windows, a deflated economy, and polluted air. Mayor Brunswick had blamed the dirt on a recent flood, the economy on the foggy weather that had killed the sunflower crop, and the pollution on nearby, larger Lake City to the east. The people of Windfall no longer could remember the city when it was clean, prosperous, and unpolluted. Brunswick was not reelected.
          Professor Lecourt stopped to look in the Dark Brew Café, but found that he was not in the mood for coffee. From beyond the dirty windows, he thought he could see vague shapes staring blankly at him. Shivering slightly, he started walking again. A minute later, he reached the only intersection in town of considerable size, Main Street and County Highway F.
        Main had a green light, so a small crowd of people was gathered at the curb, waiting for it to turn red so that they could cross the road safely. Among the crowd, there was a pretty businesswoman discussing a business proposition on her cell phone. She was gesticulating fiercely with her free hand, even though there was no one there. A short, squat man with a bag of groceries stood in the crowd with his delinquent-looking boy of about 11. The man had not noticed that the grocery bag had a large hole in its papery brown side. A bag of carrots could be seen poking out, like a bird from its nest. A taller woman glared distastefully at the businesswoman as though she thought herself above the rudeness of cell phones. Another man was arguing with his teenage daughter about new shoes. The daughter claimed that her shoes were the new in thing and therefore required, while the father disagreed, believing them to be ridiculous looking and therefore unacceptable. The shoes seemed sad that they had inadvertently caused so much trouble.
         But the Professor, lost in thought about his students, parent-teacher conferences, and the new marker still entwined in his fingers saw none of this. He did not see the flashing “Don’t Walk” signal in orange letters become stagnant. He did not see the miserable crowd of individuals gathered at the intersection. He did not see the black “Student Driver” car until it was almost on top of him. Lecourt was completely transfixed by the silver grille that mushroomed into his vision. However, the car swerved to the right. Though he was sure that it had hit him, the professor unfroze, walked away, muttering vehemently about idiotic teenagers and lax driving laws.
         As the signal flashed “Walk” in bright blue letters, the businesswoman dropped her cell phone in shock, leaving a twisted heap of metal and broken glass. Then she attempted to piece the phone together again, failing miserably. The delinquent child and argumentative teenager screamed, their voices rising discordantly in the chilled air. The man dropped his groceries, and some tomatoes rolled out onto the street accompanied by the previously mentioned carrots. The taller woman let out a horrified squawk, as though she were a deranged chicken rather than a human being.
         While the professor stood waiting for the next light to turn, a man walked up to him. The man was wearing a black hat, downcast so that Lecourt could not see his eyes, and a full-length, dark brown coat. His hair was flecked with silver. On his thin hands he wore an obsidian ring, which seemed to absorb all the light around it. This ring, along with the hand, was resting on the professor’s shoulder. The hand seemed somehow… skeletal.
         “Someone just died,” the man in the black hat stated icily.
         “Oh,” the Professor responded, thinking this an odd introductory sentence. “Who?”
         “Someone, a student driver by the name of Polly Morton, just killed someone,” the man in the black hat elaborated, with the emotional value of the daily weather report. Lecourt did not answer but turned back to look upon the scene of the accident. The car had come to rest crushed against a street lamp, which was bent at an odd angle. Polly Morton, a teenager with brown hair and a slightly crooked nose, dragged herself out of the wreckage. She was sobbing hysterically and hyperventilating. The tall woman tried to help her, while the delinquent-looking child dialed 911. Crouched over the remains of her cell phone, the businesswoman sobbed in quiet anguish. Under the crooked shadow of the lamp, a single hand was visible from underneath the “Student Driver” Car.
        “Do you see it?” the man in the black hat prompted. Lecourt wished he could see the man’s eyes. They seemed to stare through him, as though seeing beyond the flesh to something much more intangible… He had a sudden urge to run away; it was almost as if the man had an evil aura around him, and was slowly pulling the world around him away into a sea of black.
         “See what?”
         “The hand, Professor, the hand” Lecourt was even more disconcerted that this man – whom he could not recall ever meeting – knew who he was. The man in the black hat drew closer to the professor. He tried to draw back, but in horror found that he could not.  Lecourt felt the gaping maw of the void around the man draw him in, almost magnetically.
         “Yes I… I do. It… there’s – there’s blood… all over it…” Lecourt stammered his voice cracking, looking at the ghastly scene and barely taking it in. When he looked away, he saw that his hand was now only inches from the edge of the nothing. As he struggled to pull himself away, the man in the black hat grinned. It was the most horrible thing Lecourt ever saw, this smile. It was the smile of someone who knows more than they should, sick, twisted, and jeering. When the man spoke again, the professor could hear suppressed laughter in his voice.
         “You know that it’s not blood... you’ve known since you’ve seen it…”
         “It is blood, though…”
         “Inside, you’ve already realized what has happened.”
And then, as he finally connected with emptiness, the Professor did not say anything. For, he realized in a moment of dark horror, it was not blood at all but red ink.