Stuff I wrote in my early 20s
The Substitute
Written in 2012
If I recall correctly, this story exists because my girlfriend at the time asked me to write her a horror story set in a school. I think I wrote this in a single night, in all likelihood fuelled by certain illicit substances. It's not a million miles away from the kind of thing I write today - in fact, it features a lot of things I'm still interested in, like body horror and surreal plot twists. I may or may not have posted this on Creepypasta back in the day; my memories of that time in my life are very, very hazy.
I am under no illusions that anyone will believe this statement of events, in fact I'm sure that it will probably be used as further evidence of my insanity. But I can swear to its accuracy and fully intend to swear by it until my death. And given the horrors that I have witnessed, I hope that my death comes quickly.
The events in question began on a Thursday morning, which I'm sure you will recall was the first day of the blizzard. I was a student, by the name of Adam Ferguson, and I was already in the classroom, along with my classmates, before the school bell rang.
It was cold outside - already starting to snow. I think that's why so many of us flocked to the halls and the classrooms before school began – we wanted to warm our hands on the boilers, and simply be away from the subzero temperatures.
The bell rang and there was the usual noise and chatter amongst the students, right up until the moment that Mr. Kafka, the substitute teacher, entered the room. An eerie silence befell the classroom, and as cold as it was outside, I can't help but feel that the outside air was not the source of the chill which entered the room at that moment.
It's not as if we'd never had a substitute teacher before – but there was something inexplicably strange about the way that Mr. Kafka was able to silence a room full of boisterous adolescents simply by walking in.
His appearance, strictly speaking, was not entirely unusual. He was bald, wearing a thick coat and ear muffs – there wasn't anything unusual there. But there was an intensity in his gaze, something 'off' about the way that his cold blue eyes, his cold dead eyes bored into each and every one of us as he spoke.
“Your regular teacher... has been unable to make it today. He has informed us... that he is stuck in the snow.”
He spoke with an accent, though I couldn't place it. At first I thought Scottish, but he sounded more European than that, perhaps Dutch or German.
I also recall how unusual his manner of speaking was. While he spoke clearly and precisely, he would also speak in blocks with inappropriate pauses in the middle of sentences.
“I... am Mr. Kafka. I shall be... facilitating... your science lesson for today.”
I glanced at my friend Nathan, sitting next to me, and he glanced back at me. Though we didn't say anything out loud – Mr. Kafka had such a presence that we became irrationally too afraid to say anything out loud – it was clear by the furrows of his brow, the serious nod, that he too felt there was something sinister about this substitute teacher.
Again this was not so unusual – we'd had dozens of oddball substitute teachers in the past. There was the lady that we all thought was a witch, or the teacher who was probably teaching us while stoned. Superficially there was nothing unusual about Mr. Kafka, or his mannerisms, or the day in question.
But I could feel it bubbling away under the surface. I think we all could.
The lesson began like any other – we were doing a unit on biology, and Mr. Kafka told us about the hermit crab and how it sheds its old shell and uses something else in its place. He even brought in a hermit crab that he'd found – I don't know where he got it from – and demonstrated, showing us how this crab in particular used a can of Coke as a shell.
It was an impressive object lesson, and in spite of his mannerisms he seemed to be a very effective and knowledgeable teacher. He gave me the impression of being a highly educated scientist, forced for one reason or another into teaching, despite this being quite below him.
It wasn't until one of the students – a girl, Anita, was caught using a cellphone that things began to change.
“Stand!” he commanded her. “Give me your cell phone!”
I knew Anita, and she was... well, she was one of the more rebellious students. She was in detention a lot and this wasn't the first time she had spoken back to a teacher.
“No!” she told him in defiance. “You can't make me. It's my property!”
“There are rules... Anita... and you must learn... obedience.”
There was something sinister about the way he leered at her, stepping slowly towards her. I'm not saying that his teeth were bared and he was drooling, but there was something predatory about the way he approached her.
Anita took a deep breath and was about to yell something back at him, until suddenly he was right there in front of her, towering over her. There was a subtle change in her demeanour – she swallowed and before she could decide whether or not to continue to defy Mr. Kafka, he had snatched her phone from her hands.
My initial reaction was one a congratulatory one – few teachers had the skill to tame Anita, but this died out as soon as I saw what happened next.
Mr. Kafka leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, loud enough that the whole class could hear him.
“Come with me,” he rasped, in such a tone that not even Anita would have been brave enough to deny him.
She got up, momentarily returning to herself as she kicked the chair and angrily walked towards the back room, where the teaching supplies were kept.
“Please continue reading page 43 of your textbooks,” Mr. Kafka said to the class as he closed the door, presumably to reprimand Anita privately.
As soon as the two left the room, noise and chatter returned to the classroom. There was banging on the door, and Anita could be heard screaming, but it drowned out by the banging and yelling that the rest of the class was engaging in.
“Sounds like she's throwing a tantrum in there,” joked Nathan as we listened to the screams from the next room. Neither of us could have ever suspected the horrors of what was actually happening in there.
The din of the room died down as Mr. Kafka returned. Anita did not return with him and he made no mention of it – nor did anyone else – as he continued to give his lesson.
“In nature it is not unusual for an animal, when lacking a particular necessity, to substitute one thing for another thing. The example of the hermit crab is but one, but even in the human race we are known to adapt, even going to far as to transplant organs from each other and, in rare cases, from other animals to use as substitutes for our own.
“Imagine if we could substitute our feeble eyes for the eyes of a hawk, or our feeble limbs for the strong limbs of a gorilla...”
“Imagine if we could substitute this feeble teacher for our regular one!” quipped Tom – our class clown, from the back row, which gave way to chuckles from the rest of the class.
Mr. Kafka was not amused.
It was clear by the glare he gave Tom, which dripped in totality with venom, while his cold dead eyes suddenly heated up to resemble the hate filled eyes of a killer. For just a flicker of a second the cold blue of his irises turned bright red, as if the blood vessels in his eyes were bursting one by one.
I thought he was going to strangle Tom there and then, but instead he barked a single order at him.
“COME WITH ME. NOW.”
Tom, like Anita, was no stranger to being in trouble, but he was not nearly as recalcitrant as she was. He sighed and shook his head, a gesture we'd seen before and knew to mean “Now I'm going to pay”, and walked to the back room, where Mr. Kafka had taken Anita – and from which she still hadn't returned.
The class remained a little more silent this time – we were curious and wanted to know what was happening in that mysterious back room.
But what we heard gave us few, if any clues, to the magnitude of the atrocities that were being committed.
All we heard were muffled voices, followed by a loud bang, and then silence. It was about 10 minutes before Mr. Kafka emerged again, looking a little more nervous, but saying nothing as he ploughed on with the lesson.
“One of the... key aspects... of evolution,” he said, “Is the ability... of certain intelligent animals.... to substitute inefficient traits, be they external or genetic for more efficient ones.”
He spoke quietly, and I hadn't noticed until then that what he was saying had very little to do with what we were supposed to be studying. He seemed to be rambling, and what he was saying was incredibly disconcerting.
“Please continue to read your textbooks. I require absolute silence.”
It was a rare event that a substitute teacher was able to get the class to obey them, much less work in total silence – even our regular teacher had difficulty with that. But no one dared to cross the sinister Mr. Kafka for fear that they too might disappear into the mysterious room at the back of the classroom.
I copied the notes off the board, until my pen ran out of ink. As Mr. Kafka turned and crept towards the back room – where Tom and Anita still had not yet returned – I murmured to Nathan, asking him if I could borrow a pen.
Mr. Kafka broke the silence with a sudden violent screech.
“ADAM FERGUSON... I ASKED FOR SILENCE!” he yelled.
It took me a moment before I realised he was baring down on me, spittle dripping from the corners of his lips and bloodshot eyes wide and focussed on me in rage and hate.
“Get up.... GET UP!” he yelled and I nervously got to my feet, aware that the whole class were staring at me in morbid fascination.
He grabbed me by the back and shoved me towards the back room. I was tempted to resist, but my rational mind took over and told me that there was no possible way that anything truly horrific could be occurring in that next room – Tom and Anita were probably in there writing lines.
In the back room, Mr. Kafka pushed me into a wooden seat, and towered above me, like a soldier interrogating a suspected terrorist.
I noticed that the room contained textbooks, as well as beakers and other strange pieces of apparatus which I presumed were for use by the senior classes. But I also noticed that Tom and Anita were nowhere to be seen.
Mr. Kafka was breathing heavily, his face in mine, I could feel his warm and uneven breaths on my face.
He looked like he was about to scream, but instead his voice came out soft and menacing.
“When I ask for silence, I expect silence.”
“I was just trying to borrow a pen,” I said.
Mr. Kafka's face twitched a few times and he looked up at something behind me, and made a face as if though he was about to vomit. I didn't dare to look behind me, though I could feel a presence, a shadow fall over me.
“I see,” he said, barely more than a whisper. “Well in future please do not whisper when I instructed clearly my desire for silence.”
He was still looking over me, but I noticed that his gaze shifted and whatever was behind me – if indeed there was anything at all – seemed to have gone.
Still not making eye contact he beckoned for me to re-join the class.
I stood, expecting that perhaps he would try to keep me, or perhaps he was going to kill me. But with an open palm he continued to gesture in the direction of the classroom.
I tried to look behind me, to find out where Tom and Anita were but he hurried me out before I had a chance. For a split second I was sure I saw a piece of fabric the same colour as the shirt Anita had been wearing, but another solid push from Mr. Kafka and I was back in the classroom.
Silently I retook my seat, and the class's morbid interest seemed to have disappeared. Mr. Kafka remained in the mysterious back room, while I returned to work, occasionally glancing up to watch the snow outside continue to fall, faster and heavier.
There was a knock on the door of the classroom, which broke the silence, and Mr. Kafka was greeted by one of the first year students, a 13 year old who looked closer to 8 and who was carrying a note.
Mr. Kafka read the note aloud. “Due to... adverse... weather conditions... the school shall be... closed. Students whose... parents... are unable to collect them.... shall be required to remain at school for the duration of.... the night.”
The news brought cheers from the class, and most people began packing their things and leaving. I knew that my parents weren't going to collect me – I always had to take public transport to get to and from school, and this was the case come rain, shine or indeed snow.
There were a handful of others in my position remaindered, while the vast majority were off home.
Mr. Kafka shut the door once the other students departed and looked over those of us who were left – there weren't many.
“Well it seems you are all... lucky to be... given an extra-educational opportunity,” said Mr. Kafka with a very creepy smile, one which was really nothing more than him baring his teeth at us.
“Mr. Kafka... where's Anita?” asked Fiona, a blonde girl near the back, who noticed that Anita's bags were still sitting unclaimed at the back of the classroom.
“Ah, yes...” Said Mr. Kafka, in a voice like the hissing of a snake, as he stepped towards Fiona. “She is... in the back room. Perhaps... you would be so kind as to fetch her...”
Fiona stood and walked confidently to the back room. Mr. Kafka continued to grin and slowly began to follow her in.
There was silence at first, and then beyond all doubt came a scream from Fiona. And then there was silence once more.
Those of us left in the classroom watched Mr. Kafka emerge once more, but sans Fiona, Tom or Anita.
I glanced uneasily around the room, and the others glanced uneasily at me.
“What's going on?” someone asked.
“I am glad... that you have asked...” said Mr. Kafka, sitting comfortably on a stool at the front of the class. “I am going to show you something that no high school student has ever witnessed.
“I shall show you... an advance in science... something... a privilege... for all of you!”
Despite the snow outside, and the heaters working full blast to counteract it, at that moment the inside of the classroom became much colder than it was outside.
“I have spoken of substitution,” said Mr. Kafka, “And so I have done so. Let me begin by presenting Anita, the disobedient girl.
“I have substituted parts of her with parts of a dog, to make her obey. Come, Anita.”
There were screams, as what was almost definitely Anita emerged – same clothes, same skin, same body, same hair. But the front of her skull had been surgically removed, and stitched onto her face was the face and snout of a dog.
“Anita... sit!” said Mr. Kafka, pointing her to her old chair, where she walked and then curled down over.
“You're sick!” came a yell from behind me as one of the boys in my class ran for the exit. “I'm calling the cops!”
“Go right ahead. I wish you... good luck... in getting them to believe you...” purred Mr. Kafka deviously.
Others too began to run, but I stayed where I was, transfixed, too shocked to move.
“Run as fast as you can...” said Mr. Kafka, “but you will not outrun Tom, whose feeble human legs have been replaced by the strong, fast limbs of a Cheetah!”
It was true. In a flash one of the escaping boys was caught in the jaws of a beast which looked like a leopard or a Cheetah – but it was wearing Tom's clothe. As it looked up, I saw clearly that it was Tom, but with the limbs of a different animal, and with an elongated jaw filled with long sharp canines.
There was blood everywhere as "Tom" bit into the escaping student's neck, mauling and devouring him until his screaming finally turned to silence.
“Well I daresay our time here... is running short so I'd best show you Fiona...” said Mr. Kafka.
Of all of them, Fiona was the worst – all that was left of her was her blonde hair and naked, bloodstained torso. Her limbs had been ripped off and replaced by pincers, while her face was that of the hermit crab that Mr. Kafka had showed us before.
“I have substituted much of Fiona's human parts... oh but she's still her, aren't you?”
The thing, "Fiona", seemed to nod as it crawled towards the rest of us.
“And don't you see also that beauty is subjective... real beauty comes from strength and the ability to survive in the wild. I would dare anyone, any predator, to overpower Fiona now...”
I don't know why I said it, but the fear in me turned to rage, and before I knew it I was yelling:
“You're the predator around here!”
I expected Mr. Kafka to react dyspeptically, but to my surprise he laughed.
“I am,” he said. “And you, Ferguson... you are but prey...”
As soon as he said this, the three monsters – Fiona, Tom and Anita turned and leered at me.
I picked up a chair and began to back away from them, hoping that perhaps the chair might shield me from them.
Fiona snapped her enormous pincers at me, snatching the chair out of my hand and casting it away, while the others sneered and growled.
I tried to back away and towards the door, but before I was able to turn and run, Mr. Kafka himself grabbed me from behind and dragged me away, to the back room.
I struggled as much as I could, but his grip was too strong. I felt the sting of a hypodermic needle driving into my flesh. My strength drained away as Mr. Kafka threw me into a chair and placed a metal dish over my head.
I was losing consciousness and for a second it looked as if he had too, though I was too blurry to tell. I felt a searing pain in the top of my head, a burning sensation, as if my skull was being penetrated by lasers.
The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness completely was a comforting yell - “THIS IS THE POLICE!”
I was vaguely able to make out figures, humanoid ones, coming towards Mr. Kafka but that was the last thing I saw.
When I next woke, I thought that perhaps I was at home, and it had all been a nightmare. But a look at my surroundings made me realise I was wrong.
I tried to get up, but something was restraining me – a straitjacket.
Had I gone insane? Was it real and had I lost my mind? Or – more likely – was it all a hallucination, and I had been committed here?
But the truth was more terrifying than anything.
A nurse entered the room, as did a policeman. I assumed that the former wanted to help me with the trauma, while the latter wanted a statement of events.
But the questions I got from the policeman were bizarre. They made no sense.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“I don't know what you're talking about!” I said. “Please, can't you tell me what's going on?”
The cop angrily leered at me.
“Don't you play dumb with me, you scumbag!” he growled through gritted teeth. “One of your victims was my daughter!”
I tried to break free from the constraints of the straitjacket but couldn't. And then suddenly, I caught a glimpse of my reflection on the policeman's shiny badge.
Except it wasn't really my reflection that I saw.
It was Mr. Kafka's.