Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Classroom Hijinks Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

CLASSROOM HIJINKS

The eyes gave away nothing. All seemed equal parts innocent and concerned, but that couldn’t be, not all of them were innocent. Hard and fast, glued, Miss Nellie Martineau looked back to the blackboard stretching nearly the entire width of the front of the classroom. The pictures of the naked people and almost naked people, cut from at least a dozen publications as far as she could tell, had become part of the scenery.

“If you don’t admit it, you’ll all lose your lunch hours for a week!” Nellie said. She turned back, red-cheeked as she peeled her eyes from a monstrous, veiny, light brown penis over her right shoulder.

The class stared forward, looking at her, not the pictures.

The students must’ve defaced the blackboard at lunch, had to have. It was her only time out of the room on Mondays. Those faces together were something like an iron wall, held by nuts and bolts. Pull one bolt and it would all fall apart.

“Ally, who did this?”

Ally, timid and bashful, her cheeks alight under the blonde freckles. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Is that so? All right, how about you, Lars? I know you didn’t have anything to do with this. You don’t want to take punishment for something you didn’t do, do you?”

Lars was another supposed weak link, but he shook his head. “I didn’t do nothing. I don’t know who done it.” Lars lowered his face below a mop of dark black hair.

Nellie pounced. Rushing to his side. “Look at me!”

He kept his eyes down.

“I said look at me!” He did and Nellie did her best to hold the severe gaze. “Now tell me, who did this?”

“I don’t know. I swear on my hockey cards. I swear on all my Christmas presents, I don’t know!” Tears ran Lars’ cheeks.

The bell rang and startled Nellie, amazed she’d wasted the entire period after lunch scolding children for the pornographic desecration of her classroom. It was only the fourth grade, she wasn’t supposed to need to worry about this kind of thing. It’s part of the reason she chose the younger grades. There were other parts too: stress, inexperience, and her glaring youthful ignorance. The main thing was that she felt she could manage pre-pubescent students.

She’d had it planned for weeks, they’d spend time every afternoon watching seasonal movies. It was to be the first half of The Polar Express, but not anymore, not after what they’d done.

The children didn’t break into chatter as usual after the bell rang. They waited on Nellie’s lead, fear in their faces.

“You’re going to wish you told me,” she said as an idea rose to her mind. She stepped to the call box and pressed the button. “Mrs. Lundowner?”

“Yes, how can I help you, Miss Martineau?” The voice came through nasally and tinny.

“I need the janitors to my room. I have a mess. I’m taking my students out for gym class now and I’ll need the mess, at very least, covered up. Please and thank you.”

“All right, I’ll check on who’s available.”

Nellie let go of the button. The children had been whispering and stopped as soon as she faced them.

“I hope you’re all feeling energetic.” Nellie sneered and frightened the students all over. “Get your coats and your boots, we’re going outside.”

“But it’s freezing!” Laura Vernon said. She was one of three Lauras in a class of twenty students. Only half the class were girls.

“And this isn’t smutty scrapbook class! You should’ve thought about the temperature before you glued that stuff to the blackboard!” Nellie planned to interrogate runners until one of them spilled. The problem had a solution. It was manageable.

There was a knock at the door.

Nellie didn’t shift her gaze. “Put your coats on!” She turned and waved Malcolm Gold into the room.

“What’s the trou—?” The words caught in the janitor’s throat as he saw the blackboard. He fought a smile. “Someone playing a trick I see.”

“That’s right and they’re all going to run until I find out which of them did it,” Nellie said as she scooped her jacket from the back of her chair.

“Dress warm, it’s finally getting nippy,” Malcolm said, his smile won the battle and surfaced.

Nellie ignored it and demanded that the students line up at the door. She’d never been so upset.

Miss Martineau was newish, only her second year at the school and she had a reputation as a light and easy teacher, but this was too big to ignore.

“Just tell me and we’ll quit!” Nellie shouted. A puff of steam rode the air on her words. The children jogged around the crunchy track, stopping often to catch their breath.

One of two Shauns leaned forward, hands on his knees. “We don’t know nothing! We’d tell, I’d tell. I promise!”

“Run, Shaun,” Nellie said.

Round and round, the children slowed into a sluggish drag, most had tears freezing on their cheeks. Nellie didn’t feel the cold. She was furious that her plan had failed. For a heartbeat, she felt sorry for any of the innocent ones.

Trouble finds the innocent just as easily, you know that., she thought.

“All right, go in and get your things,” she called out and the sad children grouped together as they streamed from the track back into the school parking lot. There were whispers and whines. “You zip it until you’re out of my sight!”

The children silenced and hobbled past their teacher. They’d spent the entire afternoon in fear and under physical strain. It left them hopelessly exhausted.

Nellie returned to her class and all the students had made their way to the bus lines and to the reception area at the front of the school where in-town parents retrieved their children. There were one or two who had to walk home, but it wasn’t far.

It was a surprise to see the blackboard clean and fresh. The troublemakers used soluble glue, apparently, and she had a guilty sting in her chest. She’d overreacted, but why hadn’t one of them snitched?

“Because they were all in on it,” she whispered to her empty classroom.

She picked up her purse from the locked drawer of her desk and flicked the light switch. She drove to her small bungalow on the outskirts of town, fed her cat, and sat down in front of the television, wondering how she’d deal with all the phone calls from angry parents.

By the time she turned in, she’d had three calls on her cellphone. Parents with sway got the number out of someone above her—she had to assume. Nellie explained what the children did and why she made them run. The angry parents swore their children had nothing to do with it and that Nellie should lose her job.

“Only a little exercise,” Nellie whispered to her pillow as she dropped away into sleep, thinking about how the children deserved everything they’d gotten. “Worse things have happened to better children, better people… Oh, Aimee.”

—

“Where’d you put them?” Nellie screeched at her students only seconds after lunch hour ended.

It was Wednesday and after the verbal tirade from the group of angry parents, the principal demanded Nellie let her students go unpunished for the pornography. Demanded that she not punish the group for what must’ve been a few bad apples, especially this time of year.

It freed her lunch from holding a detention and she decided that she’d step out, take a break from school and grab a bite from Forkin’ Scrumptious, a surprisingly tasty food truck that parked in an old Pontiac dealership lot. She sat in her car munching a steamy pork sandwich thinking it would be her last Christmas with Aimee. The hard realization made her want to float away like an errant balloon.

Nellie came back to class to find once again her room defaced. All of the books and learning materials had been replaced. There was Superman, Buffy, Spiderman, Black Bastard, Howard the Duck, and Wonder Woman. Maps of Clive Barker’s Abarat replaced the roll-up maps of the world and stacks of Archie Comics stood in place of the math booklets.

The students remained silent once again, the fear was there and it was a reasonable emotion. None of them knew that her sister, the only member left of her immediate family, was sick with a quick-spreading bronchial cancer. How could they?

Nellie felt like stretched elastic, ready to soar or ready to snap, either way, there was something coming and it would sting.

“We didn’t do it!” a boy named Jan said.

“Somebody did and I know it was one of you. Why would anyone else? You think you’re paying me back? You started this! Get your coats!”

A general groan filled the air and Nellie glared at the students until they quieted and dressed for the outside.

It was another cold day. Winter had finally begun and snow pounded the county. Nellie wasn’t about to make the kids run again, that didn’t work, but she had another idea.

“Come on, come on!” she shouted over the blustery breeze.

Snow fell sideways on the wind and the children covered their faces with their arms. They started out toward the track.

“Soccer field,” Nellie said and the students veered.

They stood, all twenty of them, waiting for instruction.

“Spread out,” Nellie said, drill sergeant to a troop of hopeless cadets. “Stretch your arms, make sure you can’t touch anybody else.”

“Miss Martineau, I’m cold,” Penny said, one of Nellie’s prime suspects.

“I’m sure you are and if you admit to doing this, I’ll let everyone back into the room.”

“But I didn’t. I don’t know who did. It wasn’t us, must’ve been someone else,” Penny said.

“Zip it, unless you’re going to confess.”

The students stood with their arms out in a scattered grouping. Those arms began to fall and students complained.

“You can only talk if you tell me who did it!” Nellie screeched. She was freezing herself.

An hour passed and the Lauras had crept together and decided they needed to go inside. They made a break for it, eight boys saw the lead and trailed.

“Stop right there!”

“Suck it!” a boy named Jake said over his shoulder.

“You stop, you stop!” Nellie shouted as she chased.

The remaining students burst off into a run, back toward the school. The boys ran to washrooms, seeking the invisible wall protecting them from a female teacher entering. The girls did the same, but used physical walls, grouping in empty stalls. Some others hid out in stairwells and in the dark cafeteria. The three Lauras had a plan and went straight for the principal.

Nellie stalked through the school, yelling into the boys’ washrooms that if they didn’t come out, she would go in.

“You will not!” Mrs. Peps said.

Nellie turned to see the principal and the Lauras from her class standing with their arms folded, scowls on their faces.

“You should see my room. Again!” Nellie said.

“Show me,” Mrs. Peps said.

Just as Nellie left it: comics and fantasy artwork. “See!”

Mrs. Peps frowned. She knew Nellie’s personal trouble and this was disruption of the highest degree. It left her to play middle ground.

“Girls, do you know who did this?” Mrs. Peps asked.

“We think she did it,” Laura Munt said, a fat girl with greasy hair and yellowy skin.

“Why would I do this?” Nellie said.

The bell rang.

“Girls, get ready for home,” Mrs. Peps said and then stepped closer to Nellie. “I’ll figure this out and I’ll get to the bottom of this. You don’t worry about a thing.”

—

There were nine calls to her cellphone, all demanded an explanation, and when that explanation didn’t fit well, the callers demanded her resignation.

Nellie wished she could turn off her phone, but she awaited the call, the death ring. She’d never forgive herself if Aimee went into the hospital a last time and Nellie wasn’t there to see her away. Nellie wanted to take leave and stay with her sister, but Aimee wouldn’t allow it.

No choice, Nellie waited for one call, but took all others. She only half-listened to the angry parents and thought about her sister, wishing they’d branched further away from each other, took husbands, had kids, or moved to foreign countries. They hadn’t and since their parents died in an automobile accident a decade earlier, Nellie and Aimee had only each other.

Nellie fell asleep with her phone in her hand.

—

“In this together to the end, huh?” Nellie said, her voice a viper’s hiss as she stomped out of the classroom.

It was Friday, she came back from lunch to find her room littered with red cups, each cup had a hole drilled and glue poured into the base. Red cups on every surface, including the teacher’s desk, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, everywhere.

The students laughed and then realized they’d once again face the consequences.

“Who did it?” Jan demanded, he was sick of getting crap for somebody else.

Nobody fessed up.

“Come on, you’ll be a hero. This is, like, the best one yet. Who did it?”

Nobody answered.

Nellie stomped into the room, crushing cups underfoot. She carried a large box, skipping ropes poked above the flaps. “Line up at the door,” she said.

“We’re not going out to the track or the soccer field, are we?” Laura Anderson asked, possibly the plainest girl in the county: medium brown hair, shaped like a plank, small facial features, moderate skull, boney shoulders.

“Nope, line up,” Nellie said.

They did.

She tied children to each other as if in a prisoner conga line. Once she’d finished that, she rooted down into the bottom of the box from the equipment room. She took cloth football flags, doubled them, and then tied a gag over each student’s mouth.

“Together to the end,” Nellie said.

She could hardly fathom the principal’s flip-flop. The woman told Nellie that she’d get to the bottom of things and then, the following morning, she told Nellie that if one more thing happened that she’d lose her job. It was impossible that these kids would beat her.

“Together to the end,” Nellie whispered thinking of herself and her sister. If she lost her job, then she could spend more time with Aimee.

The students stared at the teacher with fear in their eyes. Nellie grabbed her jacket and opened her desk. She pulled out a small knife that she’d confiscated at the beginning of the year. She showed the knife and poked the boy on the front of the conga.

“March!”

—

“For she’s a jolly good sister…” the identical retirees sang as they carried a cake.

“Oh, you guys,” Miss Horner said. She wore dyed blonde hair riding atop a soft face, the extra weight beneath her skin helped to stave off much wrinkling. “I thought you said you were going to get me?”

One of the Horner brothers scratched his head. “We tried, sis.”

“I think we owe someone an apology,” the other said.

“We thought you were in the room at the end of the hall.”

“Oh, no, you’re the ones been doing stuff in Mrs. Martineau’s room? It’s been a real stink around here. You didn’t do anything else, did you?”

The men both shrugged, playfully.

“Oh, you didn’t. Come on. Let’s go! She’s about to lose her mind. She’s been punishing the whole class for your shenanigans. Parents are furious, the principal’s furious, jeepers creepers, you’ve got the whole school in a tizzy,” the old teacher said.

She wondered how she missed the connection when she heard about the porn and the comics. Her brothers were never swift and they’d promised that they’d get her when she retired. She should’ve retired the June prior, but said she’d stay on until Mrs. Lyons’ maternity leave ended. 

Miss Horner stopped in the doorway of Nellie’s classroom.

“You made this mess? What’s with the skipping ropes?” she asked, there were a few ropes on the floor amid the crushed cups.

“We didn’t… What in the hell?” one brother asked. He stared out a window.

“Oh my God,” the other said, gazing out the same window.

The back of the school featured a view of the parking lot, the playground, and the track. The front of the school met a small path of snow-covered grass and a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence was the street and beyond that was Ayik Lake. It had been constantly below zero centigrade for close to a week, but before that, it had been quite warm.

The Horner trio chased outside toward the lake.

—

Nellie pulled the gags from five of the shivering children and had the line march out onto the frozen lake. “Now tell me. That ice isn’t so thick, ya know?”

She’d ungagged the weakest children and they all wailed for help, pleading for anyone to save them.

“I asked you a question!” Nellie said.

“I don’ know, I don’ know!” Lars wailed.

“Stop, stop!” Miss Horner shouted run-waddling toward Nellie. Her brothers followed, both had bum knees and bum hips.

“This is your last chance! If you don’t tell me… I know you’re all guilty!” Nellie shouted.

The children shivered but remained in place near the center of the small lake.

“You deserve this, you do! Aimee doesn’t! Just you!”

“Children, come in!” Miss Horner shouted and then grabbed Nellie by the shoulders, huffing. “It was a mistake, my brothers tried to prank me, but got the wrong room.”

Nellie saw the panic in Miss Horner’s eyes and realization washed over her. Tying children together and marching them out onto thin ice was probably an overreaction and they were mostly innocent. Her sister was innocent too, but that was out of her control. She couldn’t fix everything, but maybe she could fix this.

“Come in!” Nellie said as she took three steps out onto the ice.

She slipped and her feet shot out from beneath her. Butt down, she crashed through the surface, her backside finding the cold earth only two feet below the rush of frosty water. A loud crack cried through the air as it chased to the center of the lake. The children screamed against gags, trying to run in every direction, but getting nowhere thanks to the ropes.

Nellie struggled to free herself from the ice. The cold stung and sucked all the air from her lungs. Her eyes cemented on the panicking children. Jessica White, a tall girl with a pig nose and fiery red hair was the first to fall. Two Lauras, Jan, a Shaun, a Patrick, and then the rest followed, crashing through the ice as if from a controlled implosion, centralizing the action to a small space.

Plunk-plunk-plunk.

It was quiet for a moment. Nellie remained stuck in the ice, her shoulders, arms, head, and thighs sticking out from the frozen trap.

Panicked people rushed around behind her. Nellie didn’t hear them. She watched for floating students.

“Look!” one of the onlookers shouted.

A bubble burst on the surface, a head bobbed topside and then sank, lifelessly. A red football flag remained on the surface amid the small ripples.

Nellie freed herself and stood watching as her butt numbed in the breeze. It was all such a mix-up and she wondered how well that defense would work in court. Not well, she assumed.

There were wails and tears. Teachers and students stood in the freezing winter atmosphere, peering helplessly out to the lake. It was the monster of all misunderstandings.

Nellie’s phone rang in her pocket. Absently, she retrieved it and answered, “Hello?”

“Nell! Nell! It’s only by a little, but it’s shrinking. The new treatment seems to be working! Nell? Nellie, are you there? Fantastic, huh?”

Aimee was jubilant and Nellie thought that at least her sister might be healthy enough to visit her in prison. Take life’s little battles one step at a time. This was good news.

XX