“There are only two types of speakers in the world. First - the nervous and second - liars.”

-Mark Twain

Nathan sat in the rather uncomfortable chair, thinking about nothing in particular. It was a lazy Thursday afternoon, and Honors American History was as boring as ever. Maybe the boredom was why people dropped out. The class had a bit of a reputation among the school; its dropout rate was far higher than any other class. No one really understood why. It wasn’t a tough class or anything, and most people had a good grade in it. In fact, the class got the highest average test scores in the school. 

Nathan didn’t even know anyone who had dropped out of the class, and while he wasn’t the most popular kid in the world, he liked to think that he knew plenty of people. He looked around class idly, eyes lingering on Jacob, his best friend, Amanda, his crush (and hopefully future girlfriend) and the Teacher. He was pretty sure her name was Ms. Addison or Anderson or something along those lines, but she insisted that her students refer to her as Teacher. No one really knew why; Nathan thought that she might have some sort of obsession with her own authority. Other than that she was perfectly normal, even a little boring, but at least she wasn’t a straight-up jerk like Mr. Gonzales.

He looked out the window, observing the clouds and trying to figure out what they might look like. Suddenly, his peaceful stupor was interrupted by the firm but somewhat nasally voice of Teacher. 

“Nathan, care to tell us?” Nathan blinked, turning to her. 

“Tell you what?” 

Teacher sighed. “Tell us what President signed the Indian Removal Act.” Nathan could sense the class watching him, waiting for him to either answer or admit his stupidity. He racked his brain for the information. Was it George Washington? No. Abraham Lincoln? No. Donald Trump? Probably not. He decided to withdraw, and asked Teacher, “could you come back to me?” 

Teacher grinned humorlessly. “We would rather hear the answer now, Nathan.” The other students were watching him like a  spectator at the Colosseum watching a lion tear into a defenseless man. Nathan tried to remember the name of the stupid president, but it just wouldn’t come to him. Usually Teacher would ask someone else by this point, but she didn’t seem to lose interest in him this time.

“Nathan, we are all waiting for your answer.”

Teacher said in a patronizing voice. Nathan grumbled, feeling the frustration rise up inside of him. Teacher gave him a cold smile. He rose up angrily and shouted at Teacher:

“I don’t know, okay!” 

He slumped down in embarrassment. At least Teacher would go ask someone else. Even the meanest of teachers would surely stop by this point. But she didn’t. She just kept staring at him. 

“What’s the answer, Nathan?” she whispered. Everyone was still looking at him. Nathan seethed. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone? Why was Teacher targeting him specifically? “I’m sorry I yelled at you, ma’am, but I’ve been having a rough day and I just don’t know it.” Teacher didn’t move, and she kept staring at Nathan with almost predatory interest.

Nathan pointed to Maddie, the smartest kid in the class. “Maybe she knows, go ask her!” But Teacher did not. Even weirder, Maddie didn’t seem to notice, even though she was staring right at him. Nathan didn’t much care for the vacant look in her eyes. He felt the first pangs of fear, stabbing at him like a flu shot. Suddenly, the school bell rang, freeing him from Teacher. He walked quickly to the door. 

It was locked.

He turned back to Teacher, and nervously inquired, “Why is the door locked?” Teacher smiled pleasantly. “You can’t be leaving yet.” Nathan’s heart started thumping against his chest. “Let me out. Class is over.” Teacher began to walk towards him. “No, Nathan. You still need to answer the question.” The other kids stared at him with dead eyes. Jacob’s eyes had no trace of his usual mischievous sparkle; Amanda’s were devoid of the beauty that Nathan had fallen for; Maddie’s were dull and ignorant, a far cry from the usual intelligent glitter they expressed. Only Teacher’s eyes had life, glowing with twisted glee at Nathan’s predicament. Nathan’s nerve broke. He began to bang on the door, but to no avail. No one outside seemed to hear the banging or notice Nathan’s terrified face pressed against the glass. He turned back towards Teacher, who had exited the rows of chairs and tables, and was now approaching the doorway. Nathan turned back to the door and kicked it as hard as he could. It didn’t budge. He once again turned back, and was greeted by a horrific sight.

Teacher had begun to change.

Her eyes grew  bigger, taking on a sickly yellow hue. She looked taller as well, by at least half a foot. Her nails, once carefully trimmed, were now sharp and dirty. Her smile grew in a hideous parody of the Grinch. Nathan heard a cracking noise, and realized with dreamy terror that it was Teacher’s joints snapping as her body morphed. Her dress had begun to writhe, and her nose caved in on itself. Her face lost all definition except for those awful eyes and the ever-growing smile, which was now filled with oversized, jagged teeth. Nathan tried to scream, but his breath had deserted him. Teacher’s eyes were now a sickly orange, with dark red pupils that had been squeezed into slits, like a cat’s eye. The top of her head was now bumping against the ceiling, which was the standard eleven feet from the floor. Her dress suddenly exploded, revealing not a middle-aged human form, but something else, something rotten, formless, and horrible. 

He only got a split second glimpse of whatever terrible thing was under Teacher’s dress, because a mass of tentacles suddenly erupted from Teacher, enveloping her and surrounding her in a whirlwind of whip-like appendages. It was then that Nathan found the breath to scream, but no one could hear him. The tentacles coiled around the room, and began to grow irregular lumps, like some sort of demonic tumors. The skin around the lumps retracted, revealing diseased glowing eyes just like the pair on Teacher’s head, bathing the room in a rotten red glow. All of the hundreds of eyes swiveled around to look at Nathan, each with an indescribable hunger. The tentacles were clustered in the center of the room, where they had formed some sort of shifting cocoon, while the bigger ones were beginning to home in on Nathan like a shark that had smelled an injured fish. 

Nathan desperately looked to his classmates, who were surrounded by the tentacles. All of their eyes had rolled up to the whites, and their bodies had gone limp. Teacher’s voice suddenly came crawling from the ball of tentacles in the center of the room. “Answer the question Nathan” it said in an unnaturally natural voice. “Remember what happens to kids who don’t answer. Remember William.” 

Suddenly, Nathan did remember William, one of the kids who had supposedly dropped out of the class. William had been asked what the three-fifths compromise was, and he hadn’t known the answer. Nathan remembered fragments of what had happened next. They had all looked at William. William had tried to run. Teacher didn’t let him. Teacher had become an indescribable nightmare. William was enveloped in a swarm of tentacles, screaming and crying out for his mother. Nathan hadn’t seen what exactly happened in that ball of writhing tentacles. But he had heard. Oh god, had he heard. First, William’s screams had grown louder, and more ragged. Then, there was a hideously wet snapping noise. William’s screams degraded into inarticulate gargling. There was then a series of awful splattering sounds, and William stopped making noises of any sort, save for one last unspeakable breathless shriek. Then came the cracking, snapping, shattering, and slurping. That was all Nathan recalled of William’s fate, save one thing. A hand, which had popped out of the mass of tendrils. A bloody, twisted hand with no arm attached to it. He didn’t remember the rest, but he had an idea that he would find out soon. 

Nathan couldn’t flee, so the only thing left to do was try to fight. He picked up the recycling bin, and chucked it at the otherworldly whirlwind of death in the center of the room. A tendril seized it, and flung it into the wall. Another tentacle coiled around Nathan’s leg, and began to pull. He screamed as he was dragged into the swarm of tendrils that enveloped Teacher’s body. As he passed through the squirming barrier, his nose was assaulted with the smell of decay and rotting carcasses. As he was yanked through the wall of flailing eyeballed whips, he realized why. Nathan saw what was behind the tentacles, and realized his first split second impression that it was a formless blob was wrong. Teacher still had a body.

Or rather, several bodies.

The broken and half-eaten remains of the former American History students had been squashed together into some sort of vaguely dome-shaped lump. Some were fresher than others, with coverings of rotting skin and muscles still on their hideously deformed bodies. Some were just piles of rotted bones, oozing gray liquid that may have been the melted remains of their organs, skulls ripped open in an eternal scream. The top consisted mostly of rotting heads and torsos, while the bottom seemed to be mainly limbs, hands, and feet. The whole thing was being held together by hundreds of smaller, eyeless tentacles. The amalgamation of child corpses was covered in a soupy mess of organs, with ropes of intestines (more like out-testines now) hanging like lights on a Christmas tree. Entombed on top of the pile was William, the most recent and freshest victim. Nathan realized with dreamy terror that the gurgling noises that he had heard when William met his end were because his throat had been ripped open. Not a clean cut like from a knife, but a jagged scoop that had torn out William’s entire trachea region. 

The massive canyon in his throat made it look like the mouth of a bloody sock puppet. His partially exposed spinal cord had been bent far beyond the point of paralysis, with his torso being twisted like a slinky. The part of his midsection that wasn’t shoved into the mass of corpses had been ripped open, providing an excellent view of his scooped out interior and shattered ribs. The bones of another kid were jammed through his chest. Nathan wanted to scream (he felt like he owed it to William in some weird way), but his terror had gone far beyond that point. 

The mass of bodies shifted, and Teacher’s face materialized from the top of the fleshy pile, carried by a muscular and twisted neck. Its skin had become black and scaly. Its mouth had fully unhinged, with the agape maw big enough to consume Nathan’s head in one bite. The teeth were long and deceptively fragile looking, jutting out in ridiculous angles. The eyes were the same as the ones on the tentacles; glaring, sickly orange. On each side of the abomination, the arms emerged, normal-looking enough except for the hands. There were no fingers, but there were huge claws that looked an awful lot like the weapons that Freddy Kruger attached to his hands. They also looked identical to the thing buried in what remained of William’s head. The Teacher spoke to Nathan, in a perfectly reasonable voice;

 “Nathan, you’ve always been a good student. That’s why I'm giving you this much time to answer the question. I see the potential in you.” It looked off into the distance in an almost whimsical manner. “But you don’t have much longer to give your answer, I'm afraid. Most students aren’t able to answer at this point. Some did, and I was very proud of them. But most of them, like William, didn’t even try. They were distracted with their petty terror. There is no time for distractions in this class, Nathan.” Nathan, despite his better instincts, retorted;

“So you just kill them? Why? You don’t even give them a chance!” Teacher’s glowing eyes narrowed, seemingly angered by Nathan’s accusations. “Life doesn’t give you second chances. Now tell me, what president signed the Indian Removal Act?” Nathan took a deep breath and tried to regain his composure.

“I told you before, ma’am. I don’t know. Can you please just put me down and let me go just this one time?” Teacher laughed. “I like you Nathan, but I will not make an exception to my rules. If you don’t answer the question, you will end up like the others.” The tentacles that had a hold of him began to pull him closer to the ghastly face of Teacher. The ghastly tooth-filled hole in the center of its face began to open. Nathan lost what little courage he had mustered, and began to scream once again. Teacher’s mouth unhinged even further, and the eyes surrounding him began to gleam with hungry anticipation. Strands of spit snaked down its chin. The sickle-like claws of Teacher’s hand began to caress his body. “Do you really not know the answer, Nathan? That’s unfortunate.” 

Nathan, panicking and desperate, shouted at the approaching maw of Teacher, “I KNOW IT! I KNOW IT! JUST GIVE ME A MOMENT!” Teacher gave him a disappointed glance.

“This was always a problem with you Nathan. You never raise your hand.”

One of Teacher’s horrific tentacles coiled around Nathan’s right arm, and lifted it up. Nathan would have laughed at the absurdity of a corpse-covered abomination giving him lessons in classroom formalities if he weren’t absolutely terrified. Suddenly, the tentacle began to pull. It began to hurt. A horrible understanding flooded through Nathan. “Please, don’t…” he whimpered. His pleas fell on deaf ears. The tentacle pulled harder. And harder. And harder. Nathan screeched in several exquisite flavors of agony. Nerves connecting his arm to his shoulder gave a final blast of pain and winked out. Nathan dimly registered the crunch of his bones being torn. A final flare of unimaginable excruciation, and the arm was off. Blood splattered the floor and bloomed on the torn sleeve of Nathan’s shirt. He felt both agonizing pain and a horrible feeling of emptiness. He spastically tried to flail his missing limb, and nothing happened. Teacher jammed the newly freed limb into the amalgamation that was her body.

“Clearly you think that my methods are too harsh. But if you give coal some pressure, it becomes diamond. You will improve.” It was then that Nathan’s brain, traumatized beyond repair, had perhaps its last sane thought. Nathan began to screech in agonized terrified triumph; “ANDREW JACKSON! ANDREW JACKSON! ANDREW JACKSON PLEASE PLEASE THAT’S THE ANSWER IT’S ANDREW JACKSON!”

Teacher gave him a horrifically smug grin. “That’s right, Nathan.”

The tentacles retracted back into the mass of bodies in a frenzy of whipping noises. The mouth closed up, and the teeth retracted. The eyes turned back to a familiar hazel. The skin went back to a tanned peach color. The dress reformed over the mass of bodies, and the arms and legs came back out with a wet popping noise. The eyes of Nathan’s classmates came back into focus, and they resumed staring at Nathan with dull interest. They didn’t seem to notice the red river flowing from Nathan’s right shoulder. Teacher walked back to her desk, and sat down. But Nathan wasn’t registering any of this. Nathan had curled into the fetal position, sobbing on the floor. Teacher walked up to Nathan. “Are you all right?” she said to him, with what seemed like genuine concern. Nathan began to scream again;

 “ANDREW JACKSON! ANDREW JACKSON!” 

The next day, the class began like normal, only minus one student. Teacher visited the office of Principal Edwards the next morning, and informed him that Nathan had dropped out of her class. “It’s a shame”, she said. “He was such a bright kid. Perhaps a little…hesitant, but quite smart nonetheless.” The principal gave a knowing shake of his head. “A lot of students have dropped out of your class in the past year.” Teacher gave the principal an odd look, her eyes seeming to flash for a moment. “Who? Could you remind me?” The principal began to speak, but then stopped. Thought hard. Scratched his head. “I don’t remember their names. I’m sure the records are here somewhere. Regardless, your class has the highest dropout rate in the entire school.” Teacher frowned. “I know. My way of teaching may be a little…harsh. But I’m hard on them because I know what they are capable of. I want to make them the best they can be. You could say that I hunger for their success.” The principal smiled. “I know that. Is that why your class also has the highest average test scores? How do you do it?” Teacher gave a secretive grin. “I have my ways, Mr. Edwards.”  

By Monday of next week, everyone knew that a student had dropped out of the class. But no one could remember who exactly that student was. One student, Jacob Morson, had a faint idea that his name might have been Neil, or Nolan, or something along those lines. The only people who remembered Nathan now were the workers at the asylum where he was taken, but even they didn’t call Nathan by his real name. They called him Andrew Jackson, on account of that being the only thing he would say. Or rather, the only thing he would scream. One of them wanted to call him “Lefty”, on account of his missing arm, but the others felt it was too mean spirited. Besides those workers, no one else on the planet remembered that Nathan had even existed. Except for Teacher, of course. Teacher always remembered her students.