Surprise Dissection Day

Rick’s students were not their usual bright selves.

His first class was never that bright-eyed or bushy-tailed. It was unproductively early in their morning for their developing minds, so he couldn’t blame them. Always a tough crowd, always a hard sell. But when his second class came in with dim spirits, and then his third, he began to wonder if he had missed some unpleasant news.

He paused after passing out a challenge sheet around the room and before announcing what spectacular historical subject he had in store for them today. Hoping that getting their troubles off of their collective chests would make them a little more learning-ready, Rick said, “You all look a little low today, guys! What’s got you down?”

The students peeked at each other and shuffled. Third hour was often his most unruly class, since it was right after their lunch. Today, however, they responded to his friendly and approachably query with naught but shuffling.

Finally, a student spoke up from her seat in the front. “It’s Surprise Dissection Day in Mr. Garcia’s class today,” she said glumly.

Ah.

Rick outwardly looked flummoxed for a second before he chuckled light-heartedly. “That Garcia sure is a character! You kids are going to be the class most prepared for roughing it in the wilds in the entire state.” Several students winced at Rick’s boy-scout cheer, which merely fueled his boy-scout cheer. “You guys have already had his class today, right? So that’s all behind you now.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever done it, Sir,” the student replied, “but the spirit of Surprise Dissection Day sticks with you. Much like the fluids expelled during the process.”

Rick kept his wince mostly under control. “If I were Mr. Starchman, I’d be giving you a star for your excellent use of the word ‘expelled!’” he complimented her. “I am not Mr. Starchman, however. Nor am I Mr. Garcia, so there will be no expulsions of any kind during my class today—unless we are talking about the expulsion of our Pilgrim ancestors from England!” he segued masterfully.

Several students hated it so much they partially liquidized in their seats.  Seeing as they were now vulnerable, Rick dove headlong into their education, hopefully instilling some juicy historical facts in their growing brains before they tuned him out again.

The class went fine. Potentially better than normal, because everyone was so subdued, though he didn’t even enjoy seeing the kids look down. Surprise Dissection Day clung to the students for more reasons than the objectionable scent of fresh frogs and mice: the moody atmosphere emanating from the educator supervising it.

Rick couldn’t remember last night very well, and he now knew why. Well, in a way, he already had known why: he slept like a log. He had gone to bed early and slept peacefully all night, having been completely tuckered out by…

…Well. By ‘Mr.’ Jean Garcia.

However, if Mr. Jean Garcia had shown up to his own classes today with bags of dead animals and no lesson plan, that meant his night had not ended there.

Everyone was still so subdued at the end of class that Rick was able to ‘cheat’ a little. He managed to make a moment where no one was looking at him, and borrowed Lucifer to get through the school quickly, in the few, spare seconds while the halls were empty of students, right before the flood for passing time.

In those spare seconds, of course, he had to deal with Lucifer.

“Whatever reasoning you’ve lighted upon to convince yourself this is necessary, it isn’t,” the old magician griped.

Outside the windows, a storm which had not existed the moment before lashed at the trees and beat down on the roof. The bricks of the school building groaned and creaked, not made for the world they found themselves heedlessly transported to. Rick ran down the route he knew was quietest and emptiest, ducking into a back hall and through a janitor’s closet to assure he was not seen.

“I haven’t convinced myself it’s necessary,” Rick replied, nearly catching the edge of a sable cloth that shrouded an unknown, tall object in the corner. Was it a globe when outside of his headspace? A stack of boxes? A mop in its bucket or an anatomical skeleton? Whatever innocent object it was in the light of day, in Rick’s endless, thrashing night, it became a mystery. “It was just convenient.”

“Ah, yes. I simply live to be convenient,” Lucifer complained. He was in his library, tucked between two shelves, running his fingers along a row of gilded spines. The shelves conveniently slid down the hall with him, floating behind Rick’s running feet like a particularly heavy haunting.

As always, the sky above them was black.

“That’s good; I live to be inconvenient, which is why I think we’re so well matched to each other,” Rick bantered, doing a suddenly inspired little jig around what appeared to be globes of darkness that appeared in his way. Basketballs in storage? Mice scurrying over the floor? Drifting, malign spirits? Who knew? Not Rick.

“I know you’re headed toward Jean’s laboratory,” Lucifer sighed, pulling a book halfway off of his rolling shelves, glancing at it, and then despondently tucking it back in.

Lucifer had no choice but to know a lot about Jean, including having Jean’s location at any point in time as well memorized as Rick did. Because of the nature of their working relationship, specifically the nature of what they were working against, Lucifer’s sunglasses had to stay on Rick’s person at all times… So.

So, he knew a lot about Jean.

“An understandable motive, then, and not one that needs excess explanation,” Rick smiled. His thighs ached pleasantly as he turned the final corner that would let him swing suddenly into the science classroom, with a mere snap of door in its frame, if he was lucky.

“This is a very silly thing to use great arcane power for,” Lucifer grumbled, but he left it there.

Rick grabbed the door handle, shining brazen and promising within his murky world, and snapped it open and shut. He was inside; he left spirit trance and, just like a magic trick, appeared.

“Presto!” he said, lifting one arm of his head for some extra flair. Jean fumbled in dumping a plate of assorted guts into some microwave-safe plasticware.

His class had to have cleared out mere seconds before. Jean knew he only had a little time to work. He was half-hunched over the remains of the gristly lesson he had just given his students, his arms covered to his elbows in black, plastic gloves which he could rip off and rinse down in the emergency sink before the next batch of students arrived. His attire was spotless; the viscera went only up to his wrists, but those it blanketed like velvet. He had not denied himself the simple pleasure, it seemed, of briefly plunging his hands into the gore.

Rick placed both hands on his hips. “You have to work on your terrible posture,” he commented, because there were not many comments he could make about the fact that Jean was hunched predatorily over the completely unnecessary carcasses without saying one of the forbidden words.

He and Jean were very, very careful about what they said and did at work. The rules were well-established and had served them well for years. They never touched each other, not even casually (as Rick had no idea how to do casual touch convincingly). There was a sizable bank of words they did not say, and that included ‘wolf’, ‘corpse’, ‘bait’, ‘prowl’, and almost any other word he could use to describe the situation he saw in front of him. It also included every permutation of ‘spirit’ Rick could think of, most terms of endearment, any reference to a handful of years in their collective pasts… and so forth.

There was a general understanding among faculty that they were familiar with each other outside of work. That was unavoidable. Administration had to know they had the same address for tax purposes, and there were still teachers on staff who had taught them when they were both students at Mayview Middle fifteen years ago. They did everything in their power to keep that understanding merely general. If they only had to worry about rumors of their relationship getting fed into the mill, that would be enough, but there was much more to worry about than that.

Jean’s sleep-deprived, red-rimmed eyes stared wildly at Rick for a moment. He blinked, and his pupils dilated. “That was a pretty dramatic entrance for a pretty lackluster take,” he said.

“What fridge have you designated for those vile victuals?” Rick asked him, humorously but pointedly.

Jean returned his eyes and attention to his work. “Chest freezer out back,” he said. “Hazard fridge in the office until then.”

As a science teacher, Jean had access to equipment that it was unlikely anyone else would touch… and that innocent sandwiches seldom wandered into. At home, Jean maintained a large, locked chest freezer between the back of the house and the fence that Rick had never touched and never would unless his life depended on it. It did, occasionally, host meat intended to become food; it more often held bait and accidents.

“I think the last Surprise Dissection Day was only a few months ago,” Rick said, walking a few steps into the room; he did not get anywhere near Jean’s prey, but he wanted it to be less likely that he would be seen from the hall, just in case. “The kids will start to think you’re getting the supply yourself.”

“I do get the supply myself,” Jean said matter-of-factly, turning to the side to pick up a tray of ex-frogs. “And the rumor that I do that goes around regularly. Everyone knows I’m a hunter. That’s not a secret.”

No, it wasn’t. And what had begun as a careful cover—asking off for every big hunting day in advance, showing off shed antlers and dropped feathers in biology lessons, carrying around a regularly renewed bowhunting license he could pull out in case anyone asked—had become a convenient not-really-a-secret that could be used to excuse his eccentricities. Kids with keen senses for abnormalities asked to see his license, or for pictures of slain bucks, and he was happy to provide a few for brief adolescent respect and for slaking the rumors. A video released by the state Department of Parks and Recreation that Jean had not consented to appear in but which featured him firing a crossbow at a distant target was also regularly discovered and circulated amongst particularity tech-savvy teens. Jean had been annoyed at first, but had gradually accepted it as part of the cover… that wasn’t really a cover at all, frankly.

The animals that he quickly and confidently divided into ‘bait’ and ‘compost’ piles now, however, had not been shot by arrows. Nor had they been pierced by curved claw or pointed teeth, for that matter. Critters that small usually died of sheer fear.

“It’s still not something you should draw extra attention to,” Rick pointed out.

“Is this what you had to get here so quickly for?” Jean asked, because he could not say ‘is this what you had to borrow Lucifer’s powers in broad daylight for?’ while they were at work.

“My students were not their sunny selves today,” Rick defended himself. “I asked them what had their atmospheres so pressurized, and they told me that it was Surprise Dissection Day again.”

“Your students,” Jean griped, but then he heaved a tired sigh. “Naturally, I am the hated, treacherous Science Stepfather, and you the cool and beloved Father of History.”

“It’s not just that they were not expecting to take apart small creatures today,” Rick continued, keeping his tone carefully even. (He could not let Jean know how funny that was.) “When their teachers are tired and stressed, they can tell.”

Jean moved to wipe his forehead, but managed to stop himself just before he made a very gory mistake. “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he admitted, looking at his gloved and bloody palm.

“Any?” Rick asked.

“Any,” Jean admitted. “I don’t have ten hours of work in me today. Sue me.”

“How is monitoring several hundred dissections not ten hours of work?” Rick asked, but he knew. It would be like asking him to start safe campfires for marshmallow-melting and tunes-singing or hike a well-marked state park trail for ten hours; that is, not work at all.

“You break a few eggs,” Jean said vaguely, because he was phenomenally sleep-deprived and not prepared for better than that. He finished sorting through his trays and glanced up at the clock; three minutes gone of a ten-minute passing time. “I usually start getting students at five ‘til,” he warned Rick.

“I know,” Rick brushed him off. “Try not to be a sp—scarecrow of doom looming over your next period, okay?”

“I will try not to be a scarecrow of doom looming over my next period,” promised the exhausted harbinger of doom who howled death into the wicked woods every mournful full moon. Including last night, which was why he was doing such an excellent impression of someone massively hung over.

“And I want to see that you’ve gotten some good shut-eye tomorrow,” Rick said firmly, and by ‘tomorrow’ he of course meant ‘tonight.’

“You will see me getting some good shut-eye in a ditch, because I will be falling asleep on my drive home today,” grumbled Jean, disappearing momentarily to push the bait he was keeping into the hazmat fridge in his office before reappearing.

Rick looked at him, trying to catch his eyes. He didn’t get them. This he attributed to the fact that, as usual, there was nothing in his own eyes to catch. “You’ll come to me for help before it comes to that,” he said, and in his head he added, right?

“Yeah, of course,” Jean sighed, and quickly and efficiently snapped up the ends of the befouled garbage bag he had tossed the compost into and knotted it. “I have to take this out to the bin before next hour. Get back to your room before they start a search party.”

“That’s only happened twice. Three times, at most,” Rick cheerfully disagreed.

Jean hefted the bag and began to lope toward the back door, which was in theory an emergency door, but he had personally disabled the alarm years ago. Once as a student, actually, and then again as faculty, and permanently this time. “Don’t die,” Jean sighed over his shoulder.

“You either,” Rick returned, and the door shut.

He stood, for a second, looking at the shut door. Then he turned and left the room. He did not drop in on Lucifer this time, as he had plenty of time to walk back to his own classroom, and being able to walk and think might do him some good.

Halfway through passing period, the halls were packed with kids, who, depending on how much homework they had or had not done, either waved and said hello to him or quickly ducked out of view. He had never stopped a student to nag them in the hall, though, so he liked to believe that didn’t reflect on him. He did not use the time to think; he said hello to all the kids who said hello to him, paused to congratulate the most recent winner of a local talent show, and walked into his own classroom with barely a minute to spare. After that, he was Mr. Spender, History Teacher for the next hour, which he almost always enjoyed.

After work, he stayed with the Activity Club and Jean eventually moseyed out his personal back door late, as was his habit. That is, Rick took it on faith that he did; they never left together and Rick hardly ever saw him leaving. Since Jean had masterfully avoided being responsible for any student group, he was almost always home before Rick, and sometimes out again before he arrived, leaving behind the scent of smoke and his wallet on the counter.

Rick was, despite himself, relieved to see Jean’s car in the drive when he finally arrived home himself. He knew it was just him latching on to the worst possibility, as always, but he had been running the phrase ‘see me in a ditch’ in his head since Jean said it. But there was his car, so he had come home, and so if Jean was in a ditch at this point, it was because he had chosen to non-violently lay down in it.

When Rick inserted his keys to unlock the front door, there was still a knot of tension between his shoulders. Deep inside, he expected a bit of an argument; subdued, they always were, never any yelling, never any slammed doors or storming out, and they always ended when Jean breathed a heavy, defeated sigh and went out for a smoke. In fact it had taken Rick a while to adjust to the style of ‘arguments’ that Jean practiced, where no biting insults were exchanged, no property was destroyed, and they went back to liking each other again after a five minute break. Without even any elaborate retaliation three days later when he least expected it.

Still, the arguments being civil did not make them pleasant. Rick opened the door and then closed and locked it behind him. He called out, “It’s me,” but didn’t get a response.

Out back, or already returned to the woods? Rick took off his shoes and hung up his jacket, then came into the kitchen to see Jean’s wallet on the counter where it was supposed to be. The kitchen and living room were empty.

He was outside, then. That was true a good 50% of the time. Jean quite literally could not be caged, a cheesy line that Rick would absolutely say more often if more people already knew about the relationship and would understand the context of the bad joke without a lengthy explanation.

He put down his own keys and wallet and stepped into the bedroom to change his clothes. The door was slightly ajar, and when he nudged it open with his shoulder, he found Jean in bed.

Collapsed in bed, actually. He was laying down sideways, on his back, with his feet hanging off the edge. He was still wearing his work clothes. Half-clutched in one hand was an old, soft t-shirt he had surely meant to change into. He was lightly snoring. The was no gentle haze of smoke, no smell of viscera. He had come home, laid down for a moment, and immediately fallen asleep.

Rick felt the urge to sit down next to him, or pull his hair back behind his ears, but he didn’t let himself. Jean was too jumpy; if he felt something, he would wake up. Instead Rick watched him for just a little while, ten seconds or fifteen, and then quietly grabbed a clean outfit, changed, and walked back out.