I met the devil way sooner than I had expected.
When he had told me he would intervene and help me out, I didn't think it would be so soon or that he would suddenly walk in as the substitute Calculus teacher.
Yes, you heard me right. There I was, biting at the tip of my Bic and wondering if by any chance, Blake was staring over at my side. This was the only class I had with him and when he came in earlier and spotted my seating position in the middle of the class, he intentionally decided to go pick the seat far end of the class, at the corner.
God, that boy hated me so much and it was all my fault.
Our regular Calculus teacher, Miss Simeon was running late which was very unusual and most of us were already getting all rowdy in the class. For final year seniors, they all acted pretty dumb for my liking and I dully watched, Asher Hu, one of the blonde, football jocks lob paper balls at his teammates while they all guffawed senselessly.
What girls saw in jocks, I didn't understand, but like I said earlier, these jocks were our stars. Our boys. You hated, them, the school hated you. Fact.
I was about plugging my earpiece to listen to some music to calm my nerves when he walked into the class, in a charcoal black suit tailored to perfection. The devil stood before the class, with his dreadlocks looking like he had finally washed and introduced them to a comb, his wide smile showed normal teeth and his pale, sallow skin had a bit of color to it. He held a black briefcase and if I didn't know his true identity, I could have mistaken him for an actual teacher. Only that no normal person could have eyes as black as his, those still stood out distinctively despite his perfect disguise.
"Holy fuck." I swore so loudly, half the class turned to give me a curious look, I quickly buried my face in my palms after that.
"Hello, everyone," I heard him speak up, even his voice sounded nice and friendly, the madness of this man had no limits. "I'm going to be replacing your teacher, she's currently unavailable for now. You can all call me Mr A."
A?
It came ten seconds later. Azazel. Also, I had a sneaky suspicion that he had done something to our teacher, in fact, I was sure that he had done something to that nice, young teacher. His eyes swept the class and landed on me briefly, I could have sworn I saw the corners of his lips twitch in a smile.
"Now, I graded the last tests you guys had," he was saying now, his attention completely off me and on his briefcase as he tried to get it open. "And I think it's going to be a good idea to go over some the mistakes you all made."
With that, we launched into the class and the devil, surprisingly, taught very well. He went over the exercises perfectly and made accurate corrections that made us all enjoy and understand the well interactive class.
After the bell went off, he called us one after the other to get our graded test scripts. Naturally, the last two scripts left were Blake and I's and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes when he called out Blake's name.
"Mr Blake Johnson?" The devil was staring down at his script with a smile, making me wonder what he was up to this time. Blake picked up his textbooks, ran his hands through his curls and walked to the front of the class where the devil stood.
"Very good, Mr Johnson," the devil spoke, smoothly as he stared at the poor boy, they were roughly the same height of about 6ft and squared off equally. "You scored the highest in the class, most of your work showed some advanced level of Calculus."
"I took advanced classes at my old school," Blake told him, receiving the outstretched script and peering down at it.
"Oh...that explains it then." He gave him a smile that was obviously meant to be friendly but turned very ugly, he quickly took it off but not before Blake and I collectively shuddered. The way he was staring at Blake was downright creepy, like the way a fat man on a strict diet would stare at hamburgers.
"Yes, sir." Blake scratched the back of his head, his muscles flexing under the plain black tee he had on. "I should go, thank you."
And without a backwards glance at either the devil or me, still seating down at my position in the middle of the class, he left. The moment he was out of the class, I spoke the words that had been on my mind throughout the entire class.
"What did you do to Miss Simeon?"
"Who?" He looked genuinely confused as he reached for what was the last script on the table, obviously mine.
"Our Calculus teacher, Miss Simeon, what did you do to her?" I got off my seat and slowly made my way towards him. I could notice the head of his black cobra tattoo peeking out of the neck of his crisply ironed, gray dress shirt.
"Oh, so that was her name," he chuckled, mirthlessly and I felt sudden anger flare in my system, that woman was too nice to deserve whatever he did to her. "I took care of her."
"You did what?!" My suspicions were correct, he did have something to do with the disappearance of our teacher. I gritted my teeth and shook in silent fury, cursing the day I met this man. "You killed our teacher."
He looked confused for a second, frowned then sighed like he made a sudden realization. "Killed? Hades, no. She's on a month all expenses paid trip to South Africa."
"Oh." The relief I felt was instantaneous.
"Yeah," he said, dryly as he took off his black suit jacket and went around to take a seat at his desk. I had another class now, and I could already tell that I would be late. The devil reclined in his chair and studied me, carefully before speaking.
"Killing is strictly out of my jurisdiction, Miss Davies," he informed me, softly, each word carefully delivered. "I cannot take a life, safe for a few clauses to that rule which I can't explain now."
"You cannot take a life?"
"That is correct."
"You only take souls."
"That is also correct," he replied, stretching my calculus test script to me with an unreadable face. "Speaking of correct and incorrect things, your test result was really bad, Miss Davies."
I collected the script and saw the bold, large 'F' scrawled across the corner and felt a frown form on my face. I knew I didn't write this test too well, but I wasn't expecting a grade as bad as this. Suddenly, the room felt hotter and I could feel beads of sweat forming and dropping down my back, steadily soaking the pink, cotton blouse I had on.
"You failed me intentionally," I accused.
"Oh, no, kid. As amusing as that would have been, trust me, it might seem a bit hard to believe but I do have far more pressing things to do than worry about how you would fail calculus." His sarcastic tone pissed me off, his gaunt, aristocratic face showed pure amusement and I longed to yank at his dreadlocks.
"So I really failed?"
He blinked once, then reached over to his briefcase to pull it open and brought out an apple. A bright, green apple which he bit into with a loud crunch, he chewed slowly as he returned to his reclined position.
"Yes, kid. You did fail." He bit into the apple again. "But that's good, in fact, it's perfect. It's the opportunity we've been looking for."
"I don't understand." I should really leave and get to class but I still stood there staring at the devil eat an apple and explain why my being terrible at calculus was going to be of advantage.
"You're horrible at calculus." He talked slowly and deliberately. "That boy is really good at it, I play the role of a caring teacher and pair you up. Simple."
"He won't agree." I almost laughed at his plan, he made it sound so simple, without any complications and the number one complication was Blake. "It's not like you can just ask him to tutor me."
"Who said I was going to ask?" In a flash, he flicked the half eaten apple into the waste and stared at it longingly, which made me wonder why he threw it in the first place.
"Funny fruits, apples, aren't they?"
I didn't reply.
The hospital stench was getting to me.After school today, my mom had called from work to ask if I could kindly swing by the hospital to drop off some files she had forgotten in the process of her rush this morning. Molly and I were about to have some sandwiches at my place for lunch when she called, I agreed and we packed up some tomato sandwiches and pink lemonade to go for all three of us.After taking the bus heading out of town and a very long hour or so, we got to the psychiatric hospital where my mom has worked as a nurse since before I was born. She appreciated the lunch we brought her and after a few minutes of sitting around and eating, I was already impatient and ready to leave. Molly, on the other hand had made herself completely comfortable on the office couch and was ranting to my mom about how she had been saving for some new designer boots that had gotten even more expensive over the weekend.Sometimes, I
The Devil was driving the cab.At this point, I wasn't even surprised to see him anymore and I felt the first signs of a splitting migraine as he continued to weave the car at insane speed not the least disturbed by the heavy rain.Molly's eyes were still closed, with her plump, pink lips slightly parted and wet hair matting to her soft face. I wondered if she had fallen asleep by her own will or that of our infamous driver. It was probably the latter."Are you following me now?" I asked."Yes." He replied without an ounce of hesitation and I didn't know whether I was supposed to be creeped out or reassured by the thought. "And I helped you out of this rain, didn't I?""Thanks," I murmured sourly. "Also, could you maybe slow down, I wouldn't want to die before my twenty-two days are up." The dark, casual tone that I used to refer to my death scared me. Had I accepted my fat
I couldn't breathe.The large hand was firmly clamped on my throat, restricting any such luxury such as breathing. I fought the hand, desperately clawing at it when she spoke. I was startled to look at the face of my strangler and discover that it was in fact a giant woman.There were no other words to describe her safe from giant. The clear hairnet she had on did nothing to cover her short, mousy brown hair framing her square jawed face which held the first bearings of a sprouting moustache. A mole stood out on her cheek and her huge blossom rose up and down rapidly as her large, frying pan sized hands continued gripping my neck."Johnson!" She yelled, and my ears temporarily went out of commission then I heard static. "This chica is what's chasing you?"I could understand why she called me chica, most people tended to do that because of my exotic looks. My dad was part Latin and part Mexican and I had his
Friday, Day 11.Things were finally looking up.Our school was no different from those typical ones we read in books; we had the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, the computer geeks and the whole lot. However, the only difference was that we barely related with those that weren't in our cliques, meaning your only friends were those on the same social status as you.Our seating arrangements during lunch even showed the segregation clearly, the popular kids sat separate from the ones with no social status, it was the rule of the jungle called high school. I usually sat with Molly and the other cheerleaders at our special table outside. It was more of a school patio converted hangout for us. Yeah, the school didn't complain about it, why? Because the boys liked it, the jocks were everything.This town loved football more than anything, so these boys were hero worshipped.
Saturday, Day 12.My body was literally on fire.I groaned once again, making the girls put on those worried looks once more. Amanda, placing her pom poms down knelt beside me on the bench and reached out to feel my tummy which I was currently gripping.Her big, blue beautiful eyes showed intense worry for her fellow teammate and once again, I remembered this was why she deserved to get Darren. The thought snapped away as fast as it came when another shot of aches coursed through my system and I involuntarily yelled in pain. I closed my eyes, wondering why my body chose today to behave this way, we had a game right now, I was supposed to be out there, not acting as a liability here. I had started feeling the first bearings of pain earlier during practice earlier today but it got intense about an hour ago.It was an unexplainable kind of pain in the sense that I wasn't feeling it in just
Day 13.Sundays were my rest days, basically my favorite day of the week.Binge watching TV.Stuffing my face with junk that would give Amanda an instant heart attack.Wearing sweats all day.Those were my ideal Sundays, only this Sunday wasn't turning out too well and the first sign that today was going to go all wrong came in the form of my sleep deprived mom walking into the kitchen to announce that she wanted to spend the day with me. I was naturally surprised, I couldn't even remember the last time I had hung out with my mom.It was always work, I was used to it though, at least I still had her. I hadn't talked to my father in years now, I wasn't even sure of his whereabouts now, yeah, it was that bad.I had nodded and quietly continued nibbling on my waffles while she continued to stare at me critically. After coming to pick me up f
Day 14It was official, I hated this job.I stared at the ancient, black coffeemaker once again, trying to remember what Darra said to do whenever it stopped working. I couldn't even remember a thing of what the strawberry blonde had told me before hurriedly dashing off, no doubt happy to be relieved of her shift.I had resumed my job at the tea shop just today, after cheer leading practice and Phil had explained I would be working shifts with Darra at the counter, it seemed pretty easy until she had left over an hour ago and the crowd had started to increase rapidly.Between collecting orders, preparing the drinks and serving the pastries I had been totally overwhelmed and the misbehaving of the coffee machine felt like the last straw on the camel's back."What is taking the coffee so long?" I heard Blake ask, staring at me from the other side of the counter. He had been on his
Day 15The oddest thing happened when I opened my locker on Tuesday morning to remove my Biology textbooks as I had that class at the moment and was currently running late.Lock picking and hijacking was quite common in this school so it didn't really surprise me when I found out my lock had been picked and padlock now lying idly inside the locker. I took quick inventory of my things and found out nothing had been touched. My things were exactly as I had left them, even the opened pack of gummy bears were still as I had left them.Why then did they attack my locker and what had they been looking for?I pulled out my textbook, slammed the locker, taking extra care to lock the padlock carefully and inwardly made a decision to go get a better padlock at the store. The second bell went off just as I skidded into Mr Reynolds class.He had been pointing at the fake skeleton we ha