Collection Season
Frustrated by how people around her dismiss her ideas, a young woman finds support and validation from the school nurse. Unfortunately, the nurse literally feeds off the rebellious energy of the young
Round 3 of the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition was tough. Tough prompt, tough timeline, tough competition.
I am grateful for the opportunity, proud of my submissions, and not surprised that this story didn’t make the cut. Round 3 had a tight 48 hour turnaround. Unfortunately for me, those 48 hours fell on a weekend trip to visit my friend Jim for the first time in Pasadena. Not a great setup for writing! I had hoped to get my prompt ahead of my flight and work on this story on the plane, but alas, I didn’t get it until after I arrived on Friday in California, and the submission was due at 11:59 PM EST (8:59 PST!) on that Sunday.
I drafted and revised this story with madcap help from my friends while eating at a lovely sushi place in Pasadena in the 8:00 PM hour, furiously cutting to make the word count by the end of the hour and the meal. What remains is a cosmic horror story that is set on the foundation I wanted, but does not have the level of polish and completeness I had hoped for.
Once again, the format for this competition is that writers are assigned a prompt and a word count (2,000 for this round). My parameters were:
GENRE: Horror 😱
SUBJECT: Change of seasons
CHARACTER: A school nurse
I’m not a big consumer of Horror in books or film, but my favorite Horror stories are the ones that feature major Good vs. Evil cosmically weird clashes that Stephen King has (sometimes) perfected. What follows is my attempt to portray that sort of present-day battle where a young woman is preyed upon because she argues for a rich, contextual view of history. One that is too often dismissed by those who won’t tolerate complexity or contradiction.
Content warning: Though not sexual in nature, an older man preys on a young woman.
“Her story doesn’t end there.” Vi didn’t bother raising her hand. She knew the teacher would ignore it. He didn’t want to engage with the material or with the students. All he cared about was joking with the football players and figuring out how to jump to coaching at the college level.
“That’s where the chapter ends, Violet, so that’s where we stop.”
Vi’s chest burned, enflamed by this way of thinking. “But she did so much more with the rest of her life! Helen Keller gets reduced to a caricature when she should be celebrated for fighting for the rights for women and people with disabilities!”
She knew Mr. Huberman didn’t care, but she wanted her classmates to know. Why couldn’t people handle anything more complex than a sanitized, black and white version of a person? Yes, Helen Keller should be remembered for her early work to help blind people communicate and also revered for her involvement in the founding of the ACLU and the Socialist Party of America.
“Can I just say—“
Mr. Huberman cut her off, staring at her through the top of his glasses. “Not today, Violet.”
Vi’s insides churned while he droned on about busy work. She kept meeting these walls of resistance everywhere she turned. Her teachers didn’t want to be challenged, her parents were too busy to listen, and her friends were too preoccupied with pop culture and high school drama.
Between classes, she decided to stop in the nurse’s office. Mr. Keri was always so kind and present. Every time she visited his office with an anxious stomach, she came away feeling reset and, in a profound way, seen.
The waiting room was empty, the only sound coming from the slow and steady ticks of a decades old clock on the wall. Vi dropped her backpack in a chair that had a tear in the fabric and sat down in the good one next to it, her phone out of her bag before she made contact with the seat. The school had tried blocking social media sites, but everyone knew how to get around it.
“Oh, hello Vi!” Mr. Keri said, appearing from the connected room. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” She regaled him with the recent events in History class.
“A lot of people get uncomfortable with any sort of complication,” he told her. “It’s so much easier to have a simple answer.” Vi screwed up her lips, not liking the statement, but recognizing its truth. “It must be hard trying to make people understand something when they just won’t hear it.”
Vi’s frustration melted away. The knot in her stomach untangled. It was so validating to have someone actually listen to what she was saying. She wished her teachers would be more like him. And though something about his attention felt eager, and slightly unnerving, she ignored that faint feeling.
“It’s not just history. My friends can be so stupid–they let boys treat them in ways they would never treat each other, and they never care when I tell them they need to stick up for themselves.”
Mr. Keri got it. He told her exactly what she wanted to hear. “Vi, you’re tuned into things that so many people aren’t, and that’s almost unfair to you. What should be a gift can be a bit of a curse.” He glanced into the connected examination room. “Hey, come in here a sec, I have something that might be able to help.”
Vi followed him into the adjacent room, tinged green with a sterile, antiseptic smell that permeated the space. She hoped he had a life-changing book to give her, or maybe something she could carry with her as a reminder that people like Mr. Keri existed. She’d find it easier to argue and keep anxiety at bay if she had a talisman from him.
“Are you ready for Spring?” he asked her, rummaging through drawers. He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s been such a long winter. I don’t know about you, but I get so drained.”
He turned with a blood pressure cuff in his hand and closed the door. A flutter of discomfort traveled through Vi’s chest, barely registered. She didn’t even know this room had a door.
There was a privacy curtain used to shield the cot where students could lie down if they felt dizzy or sick. Mr. Keri pulled it aside and motioned for her to sit on the cot. “I’d like to get a blood pressure reading. You’re dealing with a lot.”
He’d never done that before, but Vi obliged. He wrapped it tight around her bare arm. She felt it swell and was hyper aware of the blood coursing through her veins. Each heartbeat felt as loud as the ticking clock she could hear so clearly, despite the closed door.
Her arm started to grow uncomfortable, but Mr. Keri made no move to relieve the pressure. Instead, he returned to his drawer. “Vi, I know this might be uncomfortable, but I want you to know that you’re doing something really important. I need something from you that I can’t exist without.”
He turned around with a needle in his hand. Panic erupted in Vi. “What the hell? What are you doing?”
Was he smiling? All of a sudden, the facade broke, and Vi could see past the veneer of friendliness he had put on this past year. Gone was the supportive caregiver. She was prey, she was captive, and she was unmoored.
“I’ve been so tired!” He wasn’t exactly speaking to her directly—he was letting all his guards down, and Vi could feel a wrongness oozing from him. It was as if the physical space he took up became a multi-dimensional nexus of realms. Vi had never considered herself a spiritual person, but here she was suddenly confronted with a malevolence she could only describe as Evil.
Vi slid off the cot and pulled on the edge of the blood pressure cuff. It didn’t budge. She yanked harder, then tried to wriggle out, but it was too tight, and she found herself tethered to an unnaturally strong anchor. “HELP!” she screamed, hoping to draw anyone into the room.
He ignored her, and as if savoring a meal about to be served from a favorite restaurant, advanced on her.. “It’s been such a long winter,” he repeated. “Nothing revitalizes me like that burst of energy that arrives with a world reborn in Spring.”
“What are you?!” Vi desperately looked for something to hurt him with. He advanced with the needle. She kicked, swung her free fist, but he was impervious to any physical assault.
“You of all people are like a shot of adrenaline, Vi.” She didn’t know what he meant, didn’t care. But at this distance, she was overwhelmed by nausea, her very soul revolting against his presence. He plunged the needle directly into her gut.
Vi’s soul felt the stab. Her senses fractured and she was no longer her body. She was in a maelstrom of energy and emotion. Blinded by the intensity, she focused instead with a sixth sense to shape the chaos around her.
There! Like the pulse of a deep bass, she sensed another being in the storm. Aware of this sensation, she suddenly felt others as they attuned to her. Together they shouted to Vi: He’s done this before, to all of us! He takes willpower from the strong-willed, using it to restore his own energy!
Vi felt exactly what he stole from those that preceded her. She was connected to them. Each had been a young woman, full of insight, rebellion, and raw energy. Mr. Keri had siphoned it away, leaving them in the physical world as mere shells of their former selves. Compliant: less able to fight, to push, to prod, to provoke.
Vi’s will to resist surged. Could she connect with this power? Her time was short. She knew what future lay ahead if she couldn’t break this cycle and sever this connection between her and Mr. Keri.
She felt her own willpower draining and focused on her connection to the others. They infused her and she built up a primal, soundless scream to wordlessly thunder “NO.”
Beast Keri turned to her, salivating at this new swell of energy. It was growing at a scale he had never seen focused on one place.
With a soundless explosion, Vi unleashed her communal order to Stop. The vortex shifted. A corona of energy expanded at light speed, freezing all that Vi could perceive.
Silence.
Stillness.
Relief.
Vi was back in her body, drained, but not permanently. With a shock she realized her sight was gone. She knew it wouldn’t return–it had been the price to escape with her soul intact. She had her voice, her soul, and her will, and that would have to be enough, like it had been for Helen Keller. Evil would not be banished by one young woman alone.