BY ZEBULON CORK

Deep within the recesses of Yargoth School, an ancient ritual was being performed. Little kids were reciting corny poetry. Slightly bigger kids were singing cringeworthy renditions of classic rock tunes. And even bigger kids were butchering the most basic of band tunes, causing many an ear to bleed.

Yes, it was time for another spring concert in Yargoth School. It was a time of great joy for parents who believed their angelic offspring could do no wrong. But it was a time of great suffering for not only the teenage students who’d been forced against their will to attend that concert, but also many of the teachers, who silently longed to chain these insufferable insolent baboons up in their basements and whip their hides raw, just like they used to do in the Dark Ages.

If you asked most of the teachers in attendance that evening, they’d be horrified at the very notion of what I just told you. But trust me. Deep within their hollow, shattered psyches, most of the teachers there desperately wanted to inflict pain and suffering.

Especially Mr. Young.

Mr. Young had been aptly named when he began his teaching career: the Superintendent of the Missing Brain School Division, the division in which Yargoth School was located, had, in one of his drunken stupors, pulled Mr. Young out of one of his science classes at the young age of ten and immediately proclaimed him the new teacher of that class. Luckily for that Superintendent, Mr. Young, who’d been known by his first name of Penshackleworth up until that fateful moment, turned out to be a teaching prodigy. He inspired his former classmates, teaching them so well that each and every one of them entered Harvard University the next year. Of course, that achievement doesn’t sound quite as impressive when you consider the fact that the president of Harvard had also made the decision to let those kids in during a drunken stupor, but hey…it still reflected pretty well on Mr. Young.

Now, though, Mr. Young was the opposite of young. He was 76 years old, far too old to still be teaching in most people’s opinions. But still he dragged his decrepit zombie bones out of bed and hauled his carcass off to the school every morning to pour his endless knowledge and insights into the raving group of ruffians and rapscallions that was the current student body.

For this year’s spring concert, Mr. Young had been assigned the unfortunate task of working the door. The person working the door tended to get blamed for everything; he got blamed when the door got left open and a draft breezed through, he got blames when the junior high band all stopped playing halfway through one of their songs, charged into the crowd and started beating parents senseless with their instruments, and he also got blamed when a pack of rabid jackals broke free from their cages in the principal’s office and mauled a couple kindergarteners in front of the entire packed audience.

None of those things had been Mr. Young’s fault, though. Well, except for the jackal thing. He might have just taken a detour into Mr. Pubb’s office and loosened the lock on the jackal cages. Just to see if the jackals would escape. Purely an academic exercise. Nothing more.

Anyway, though, when the concert started Mr. Young abandoned his post by the door and stood in the doorway of the gym, watching those tiny kids flail their way through their recitations. All Mr. Young could do was shake his head. What was it about Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that made it so hard for five-year-olds to recite? I mean, come on! Mr. Young had memorized the Bible at the age of three! Honestly. Kids these days…so soft. So wimpy. So pathetic.

It was just as Mr. Young was having these derogatory thoughts that those jackals had come in and mauled two of those poor little kindergarteners…a sight that brought Mr. Young no small satisfaction.

From there, the concert went about as smoothly as you could expect a spring concert to go (which is to say, not smoothly at all). Right when Mr. Young was about to collapse dead from all the horrible noises emanating from the gym, though, he noticed the front doors of the school open out of the corner of his eye.

Confused, Mr. Young turned and rushed back to the reception table just in time to see two people walk in.

One of these two people was a man. But not just any man: this man was a veritable mountain. He was over seven feet tall, with a mane of wild graying hair, and a thick, muscular body that put Andre the Giant to shame. Standing at his side was a little boy Mr. Young assumed was the giant’s son; the son, however, had inherited none of the giant’s physicality. He was willowy, sickly and pale. The complete opposite of the perfect physical specimen that was his dad.

The father barged into the school, practically dragging his son behind him, when Mr. Young stepped in front of him. “Excuse me,” Mr. Young said, “where do you think you’re going?”

The mountain man roared like a lion. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, getting in our way like that?!” he screamed, “if you don’t get out of my way in 2.24697 seconds, I’ll smack you so hard you’ll start believing in QAnon!”

Mr. Young was unperturbed. “Before you enter this school building, you must make the obligatory donation.”

The mountain man seethed. “What do you mean, the obligatory donation?!”

“Dad?” the willowy son whined, “can you just make the donation? The high school band really needs me.”

Mr. Young did a double-take. This shrimp, this pipsqueak, this 8-year-old-looking boy…was in high school?

The mountain man, in the meantime, huffed. “Fine!” he said, then turned to Mr. Young, “what’s this donation you’re talking about?”

“It’s really simple,” Mr. Young said, gesturing toward the table, where a wicker basket full of cash sat, “you have two options. You can either donate some money to the donation basket here – it can be anywhere from a cent to a trillion dollars, whatever you want – or you can walk through those doors free of charge…but filled with the knowledge you could have contributed to the betterment of your child’s education, but didn’t.”

The mountain man stared at Mr. Young for a moment…then laughed. “Really?” he said, “that’s the best you can do? I’m shakin’ at the knees!” The mountain man pretended to act scared for a moment, actually knocking his knees together repeatedly before going on, “your guilt trippin’ don’t scare me, old man! I’ll walk right past you and enjoy my son’s concert without giving your stupid socialist school a dime of my hard-earned cash! Come on, Florence, let’s go!” And so the mountain man dragged his kid into the school, hitting Mr. Young with his arm as he walked past…

And then, once he was about five paces away, the mountain man stopped.

Mr. Young saw the mountain man stop in his tracks, then smiled. “Oh, I didn’t say you could enter for free,” Mr. Young said, “I said you could go in free of charge…there’s still a price to be paid for your entry, you stupid mountain man…a most unbearable price indeed.”

The mountain man clutched at the sides of his head; his eyes popped out of their sockets, and his teeth chattered so loudly they literally shattered.

Mr. Young closed his eyes…then reached with his mind into the mountain man’s mind and yanked his thoughts right out of his head.

The mountain man collapsed to the ground. His kid, Florence or whatever his name was, cried out and rushed over to inspect his fallen father.

Mr. Young, in the meantime, clenched his jaw. Soon, the mountain man’s thoughts, his brain, his psyche, his very soul, condensed into physical form in his mouth. They took the shape of ten sticks of peppermint chewing gum; Mr. Young chewed on them for a moment, reshaping the very structure of the guy’s mind with his teeth, savouring the minty flavour. Then, he spat the soggy mass into his hand, and walked up to the mountain man.

“Always remember this day, young codswallop,” Mr. Young growled at that kid, Florence, “always remember this day…and remember to fear my name.”

Then, Mr. Young took the chewed-up gum that was the mountain man’s psyche, rolled it up into a long, thin string, and then began shoving it up Mr. Young’s nose.

It took a while to shove the gummy thoughts into Mr. Young’s nasal passages. When the process was complete, though, the mountain man leapt up on all fours…and began to moo like a cow.

“MOO!” the mountain man brayed, “MOO!”

“Ah, excellent,” Mr. Young said. He took a step back to examine his handiwork: a man who now thought he was a cow, destined to spend the rest of his life in the mental institute. And a kid destined to be scarred for the rest of his life, forever changed by the wrath of Mr. Young.

How many children had he made suffer like this now? A thousand? Two thousand? Mr. Young had lost count. But until the day he died he swore he would continue…and make the lives of every student not just in Yargoth School but in the entire Missing Brain School Division, a living hell.

THE END