This was written in response to a short-story challenge.
The brief was a scary story, no longer than 400 words, written in a 48 hour time limit.
The brief was:
SCARE: A phone call
ACTION: Looking under a bed
CHARACTER: A teacher
The story is below…
*
You get home at 6pm after the meeting with the union solicitor. You always feel robbed whenever you get home later than 4.30pm. What’s the point of being a teacher? The kids, obviously, but the hours are a close second.
Home is a modest end-terrace, your little castle. It’s hot and you’ve left the kitchen window open again. You’re going to get robbed. It’s only a matter of time.
There’s nothing in the kitchen but a chilled supermarket pizza, two days past the best before date. Nothing to drink except some blackcurrant cordial and a bottle of Absinthe you bought to feel grown up.
The would-be child’s bedroom in this house contains your gaming rig that cost the same as the house deposit. Four monitors curving up the wall like a half built cocoon. The nicest chair in the house is here. There’s a mini-fridge full of energy drinks, glowing loyally. The drinks’ additives mean there’s more nutrition in this room than the kitchen.
You get a call from an unknown number on the cheap Android you had to buy. You voluntarily gave up your main phone to the school investigation to prove your innocence.
It’s the union solicitor. You only spoke to him half an hour ago. It’s annoying but he’s the only person definitely on your side.
He tells you the school investigation is going nowhere. It’s your word against the witness’s. The alleged ‘victim’ won’t say a bad word against you, whereas the witness is a known troublemaker – suspended last year. Plus, it’s harder for the panel to believe women would do that, even though they do.
Full back pay. Maybe constructive dismissal payments if you can’t go back.
Most importantly, investigation over.
It’s good news but you have no energy to log on and celebrate with your only friends. You just collapse on the sheetless bed.
The phone rings again, this solicitor never stops.
But it’s not him. It’s a distorted, synthetic voice that tells you, “Look under the bed.” The call ends.
You look. There are dozens of crude printouts of photographs on the thin, off white paper from the school printer room.
Pictures of you. With the victim in a cheap hotel lobby. Holding hands in a cinema foyer. Too close in one of the corridors at school.
Each one on their own could be explained probably, but all of them?
END
Corporate Clarke's Fiction 