It made me nervous.Interacting with humans too much could be a recipe for disaster.Immediately,reflexively, I flinched, unable to stop myself.My pulse began to tick upward, and I reached up, desperately loosening my tie.This was precisely why I didn’t want to come back here.Things were different abroad.The states were—
Crack!
I jumped, unable to stop myself.The thunder continued to rumble, low and loud, rocking the room, and I couldn’t escape it.Too fast, I was breathing too fast, and my heart was beating too quickly.Black pushed in on the edges of my vision, and vertigo made the room tilt on its axis.
“No, no, no.Breathe, dammit.Breathe, Caleb.”
But I was seeing it all again.It was too late.
My parents stood before me in a hallway—our old home.We were just talking, a stupid conversation about dinner or what to do that night.I couldn’t remember now.But I could remember what came next.I wouldalwaysremember what came next.
Twenty years, and the wounds were as fresh as they ever were.
I saw the door launched inward, kicked in by the man now standing on the other side of the threshold.Curses and threats shouted through the air were the appetizer to the main course of breaking and entering.An entire crew of them—humans…hunters—shoved into the house, flinging me to the side as I rushed to help my parents, to keep them out of harm’s way.
It had been of no use.I was still only a young man, no older than my students now.Twenty-two and I watched the life I loved, the parents who’d raised me, protected me, and loved me fiercely, as it was torn from me, casting me into shadow and pain.
I couldn’t breathe, observing from too close a distance as it unfolded in front of me all over again.The doors were slamming around me, and my parents were screaming.I could feel the iron grip of the oldest man there as he commanded his followers—just men who’d fallen into the leader’s web of malice—to kill my parents, to leave me alive so that I could carry this warning to “all you fucking heathens.”
The men slit their throats, one after the other, blood pouring from the wounds and soaking into the carpet at their feet.
I had screamed then, until I couldn’t, until the authorities poured into my home, dragging my frozen, shell-shocked self out of the house and into the back of a vehicle.They were gone, just like that; my parents had been eliminated from this reality, and all because they were different.
Because we were all different fromthem.
“Professor Harkert,” I looked up to see a member of the faculty with her bag standing at the door, “I’m supposed to teach in here next period.Did you—”
“Apologies.”I stood up, gathering my things quickly and hurrying toward the door.“I got distracted.Have a good class.”
“No worries at all.”The woman, Professor Kirby, if I remembered correctly, smiled, her easy-going expression so calm in the face of the turbulence that still racked my mind.“You too.Have a good class, I mean.”
She didn’t need to know that I didn’t have any other classes today, so I just smiled and nodded back, getting out of there as quickly as I could without being rude.I headed to the faculty building just a few minutes away from where I’d taught spellcasting and proceeded directly to my office.Boxes were still stacked in the corners, the bookshelves bare as I hadn’t had a moment to fully unpack everything yet.
Slumping down in the seat behind the large oak desk that sat at the back of the room, I sighed, dropping my head into my hands.This was not how I wanted to start the school year.I couldn’t even make it a single day before my PTSD symptoms reared their ugly head.And yes, I’d been struggling for some time, but being back here, where everything happened, it just made it so much worse.
I went into my bag, pulling out the small set of keys I always had with me, and used the smallest one to unlock the top drawer in the desk.Inside was my stash of necessary items, and I took out the bottle of Prozac and whiskey, using one to take the other.I’d forgotten to take the medication this morning, maybe that was why everything felt so much harder today.
It could also be that I hadn’t been in Rockport for about two decades and had been met with a problematic student encounter not five minutes out of the gate.
Images of the women in my class resurfaced, and I groaned, thoroughly annoyed with myself.Where the human society at large was rather prudish and full of assholes that would kill you as soon as look at you, witches and other creatures tended to be a bit more on the “eh, fuck it” wavelength.
Though they’re both rather abysmal when it comes to the treatment of mental health.
Enjoying the burn of the alcohol down my throat, I put things away as I considered what the hell I wanted to do this evening.This would likely be one of the last times I didn’t have papers and assignments to grade, and stressed was a mild way of putting how I felt.
I was also still pretty damn wound-up from seeing Ms.Chamberlain and Montgomery.
Pulling up the school email I had for announcements, I noticed the distinct lack of any news and signed out as quickly as I’d logged in.I couldn’t just go back to my apartment and sit there.Last night had taken everything in me not to devolve into a mess about seeing…Temperanceat the bonfire.I’d wanted to do things to the image of seeing her there, bathed in the glorious orange glow of the fire, that were beyond inappropriate.
And after class today, it was that much worse.“You are such a piece of shit.”
But unfortunately, I was a piece of shit who also needed to get this out.I couldn’t let myself bottle it all up as much as I wanted to.I’d combust and take too many people along with me, something I remembered from the years immediately following my parents’ deaths.
My phone buzzed, and I picked up to see a message from one of the few “social” contacts I had.
Elaina:Hey, you swinging by the club now that you’re in town?We’d love to see you.;)
As far as timing went, Elaina was right on point.Going to The Knotted Broomstick to relieve a bit of tension sounded as good a plan as any.And gods knew that I hadn’t been tending to my kink needs very much over the past few months.
