I stood with a gun

in my hands

my body quivering

and I

was sweating

profusely

as the immensity of the moment

slowly started sinking in...

Oh shit! I’d done it! I’d just shot my teacher!

“Bang bang!”

The students in the classroom panicked. Jumped to their feet. Shrieks, gasps, and curse words blended into the cacophony of chairs licking linoleum, sneakers squeaking as my classmates stampeded toward the door, and one kid even jumped out an open window.

(Luckily we were on the first floor... )

Now let me tell ya, the teacher I’d just shot, Mrs. Henry, oh, she was such a bully, such a fucking Nazi. She’d torment the kids, call everyone “genius” condescendingly, and she really seemed to take a special sadistic joy in making kids cry.

People like her, I gotta say, I’ve never understood. I’ve never understood those who are cruel to children. Even when I was a kid, I didn’t understand grownups like that. I mean, discipline is one thing, but abasing, abusing kids, that sort of behavior, I could never get it...

And whatever malice possessed Mrs. Henry, whatever caused her to engage in such vituperative behavior, oh, it was strong. It was a demon inside her. It was dark, and it was evil.

For fuck’s sake, the lady just looked evil too.

She had a certain prehistoric reptilian look, almost like a twin sister of Jabba the Hutt. She even had a voice similar to James Earl Jones, too, a sonorous boom of a voice, and it’d cut through us, like a sharp knife, slice open our souls. Hers was a voice of pain and horror, a voice that bashed and shattered you like a baseball bat breaking through a plate glass window.

Perhaps Mrs. Henry really was a malevolent space creature from a galaxy far, far away. I could see that ... Or perhaps she was the muse, the inspiration for Jabba the Hut ... I could see that too...

Mrs. Henry sure was about the same size as Jabba. Just a massive being. And look, I’m not super fit. I’m not ripped. I’m not The Rock or anything. I got a couple extra pounds on me, a little spare tire going. No one’s perfect and all that. And I’m not trying to “fat shame” her or anything, err, well, shit, maybe I am, because, seriously, let me tell ya, ole’ Mrs. Henry, she was HUGE. She might have been the fattest person I ever saw. Fat as one of those people you see on Maury or whatever trashy daytime talk show. One of those gargantuan beings that have to be forklifted from their bedroom. That fucking fat. For real.

Mrs. Henry must have weighed damn near 400 pounds. And she had that certain unpleasant scent obese people often have, that reek of something between piss and perspiration, though on most days her stink was masked by a particularly overpowering, nauseating perfume that smelled like a cross between chemicals and fake roses ... I’m not sure which of her stenches was worse...

I mean, really, I’m not sure how one gets that large, how one gets to be around 5’4 and 400 pounds, but I’m guessing it might have been all the soda she drank. I don’t think I ever saw her without a 2-liter of Coke nearby. Betcha that lady sucked down a gallon a day of the sugary stuff.

Or I guess it coulda been from lack of exercise too. Shit, I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Henry walk. Anywhere. At all. Hell, I’m not sure she could actually walk. She’d use a mobility cart to circle the classroom and cruise the hallways between classes. And it was when she wheeled through the hallways that she dished out the worst of her abuse. Sniping at and insulting students as she rode by.

To see ole’ Mrs. Henry rolling forth inspired terror in us all.

Mrs. Henry seemed to relish it too. She seemed to feed on our fears, sniffed for blood, and took a particular glee in putting kids down, especially the awkward, shy, quiet types. The wounded animals. The weak, the vulnerable, those straggling from the herd. Those were the ones who got it the worst.

Yup, thinking back further on it, I think that was the only time I’d see Mrs. Henry smile or laugh, when she’d insult people. It really did seem to bring her joy.

I mean, whatever it was about you, whatever was most embarrassing, she’d go after. Your dental headgear, your braces, your acne, your garlic breath, your shitty grammar, your shitty math scores, your high-riding jeans, your hand-me-downs, a color clashing outfit, a stain on your shirt, any sort of body odor (ironically enough), your bad teeth, nose hair, ear hair, you had too much ear wax, uneven sideburns, unruly bangs, an embarrassing haircut, an untied shoe, hell, any of your funky ways was fair game.

(And if you did anything notably bad, Mrs. Henry would never let you forget about it. Like the tall cute Hispanic girl, who got caught picking her nose, in class, and Mrs. Henry went on to terrorize the girl practically every day about it... )

The lady was always launching zingers. She was like a fat female Jeff Ross on a bad acid trip, an angry Bill Burr on crack, or Don Rickles’ pissed-off poltergeist conjured from a Ouija board. Probably even meaner.

I tell ya, that Mrs. Henry really should have been a roast battle comedian. I think she’d missed her calling. Maybe that’s why she was so bitter.

Whatever it was, she sure as shit was bitter. Yessir, that ole’ Mrs. Henry was bitter as fuck. She was a meanie. A grinch. A scrooge. A Stalinist. Evil incarnate. And everyone was totally terrified of her. Crowds would part, like the Red Sea, as she’d ride down those lime-green school hallways, in her mobility cart, her face screwed into a sourpuss snarl, and an icy, wicked glare flickering in her deep-set eyes...

Yessir, clear as day, I can still see ole’ Mrs. Henry rolling by, menacingly, launching drive-by putdowns ... Mrs. Henry hurling insults, like Molotov cocktails, at any student in the vicinity. The lady was such a terrorist. A fascist. Fucking hell on wheels.

Now I never saw or heard of Mrs. Henry slapping, spanking, or hitting any of the kids, striking them physically. And I guess that’d be difficult to do, from a mobility cart.

Nah, for Mrs. Henry, her words were her real weapon. And brandish them she did. Whenever she’d call on a student, had him/her come to the chalkboard, and if he/she got an answer wrong, she’d castigate, belittle the kid, call them “stupid” or scoff at them. Oftentimes kids would run out of the classroom crying. But mostly we’d take it, silently, keep the pain to ourselves.