may 12th, 2025 - JANUARY 1st 1992.v1 (short story)

I don’t remember her face too well. It’s been so long, and I was so young. At that age, I had to look up at her, making her smile the most memorable feature. She was my first grade teacher, and she carried this certain type of glow around with her; that I distinctly remember. She was really young too, or at least I felt like she was, compared to other teachers at my school. It really took years of contemplation to draw out the rest of the details about her, like a paint by numbers. The vintage band tees, the brightly colored vans, and her being a summer counselor at an all girls music camp out in Asheville. All of those details came from a game of telephone my memories played with one another.

But really, what I know of her came from that field trip. It was so hot from all the kids packed so closely together. The vinyl seats of the school bus stuck to my little arms and legs. It peeled from my skin whenever I tried to move, like removing a bandaid slowly. The pine trees blurred and brushed by, as we made our way out to that lake down in the base. There was a park there, and nature trails, and those informational historical plaques that talked about settlers and whatnot. I don’t remember being coupled up with any of my classmates. It was a different time. We were kinda set loose to roam about, or maybe I’m just misremembering. Maybe I was straying off from the herd when I wasn’t supposed to.

I just remember walking around the bed of that mountain, in all of that dense brush and weeds. It was cold down there. The sun was blocked out from the ridge and tree limbs, and the creek bounced the cool wind up against the cliff face. I remember looking up those rocks and seeing something odd. At first I couldn’t make it out, it was something so foreign to me, it just looked like a spill. Like a strange waterfall, plastering itself against the jagged slope. I traced the gunk down the side of the mountain as it got progressively thicker and more viscous. Its red matter led my eyes to this violent pulp laying about a few yards away from me. Its hooves were mangled, and its guts laid out against some fallen stones. I held my breath, watching its teeth chatter within its tight muzzle. Its doe eyes staring at me, begging me to help her. I sobbed uncontrollably.

The next thing I knew, my teacher was swooping me up in her arms, holding my head against her chest. As if to say, “It’s okay, this sometimes happens.” She brought me back to the bus and cradled me as all my classmates watched me cry. In my teary sights, I remember the look of confusion they all had. And that’s all I remember of that day. It’s funny how memories just end at the important bits, as if the rest of life doesn’t matter.

Summer break came and went, I left the first grade and moved on to the second. I had a new teacher, a new class, maybe just a few of the same students from that field trip were there too. I didn’t care for my new teacher, I wanted my old one. I remember begging to be put back into her class. I hated that first day back. Periodically through the first half of the school year, I would see her outside whenever our class was out for recess. I would run up to her and hug her every chance I got. She’d hold me like she had done before.

During that winter break, she had just gotten home from a New Years party out in some college town somewhere. She was murdered in her apartment in the early morning of the new year along with two other unrelated women. The man who did it killed himself before the police could arrest him. To this day, there is no known motive. I don’t remember how I found out. I just remember my father trying to explain death to me when I got back to school. Oddly enough, I don’t remember crying in that moment like I did when I saw that deer. I don’t think I fully understood what had happened. I still don’t to this day.

I did eventually cry, albeit months later. My mother brought home a family pet, I think in an effort to ease my heart. It was a white kitten with black spots, almost like a dairy cow pattern. I don’t know where she got him from, but he was in a small cardboard box. I remember she sat me down and opened it in front of me. I remember seeing his little face poking out, his whiskers poking out over the box’s edge. Those innocent black ears and that white face. He looked at me with his big cat eyes, and I began to cry.