The Principal’s Office

The parents of Julian Shaver had been called and asked to come to school immediately and report to the principal’s office. No, they were assured, it was “not a medical emergency” and Julian himself was “fine.” This was the third time in four months this had occurred, so the writing was on the wall: probable expulsion.

The Shavers met in the middle school parking lot and entered the building together. They exchanged a few pointed barbs on their way into the building, each blaming the other for the worsening of Julian’s educational prospects. And then they put on their brightest fake smiles as they opened the lettered door and together entered the principal’s office.

The elderly secretary, Miss Murray, came running up to them in a panic, grabbing Mrs. Shaver by the arm. It was clear she couldn’t even speak, afflicted with some fresh horror. She pulled them like Lassie might, wordlessly, leading them into the inner sanctum where the principal, Mrs. Shredsolver, was supposed to be holding court from behind her large desk in a spacious office with a view onto a restful inner courtyard of cherry trees where children mercifully never appeared.

Instead, Mrs. Shredsolver was floating and spinning in the middle of a fiery wormhole that had opened up in space in the middle of the room, halfway between the floor and ceiling. She was looking rather well-toasted by this point, screaming as she spun like a compass needle in the Bermuda Triangle. Somehow she was managing to hold onto the walls of the tunnel but could not escape its vortex of flickering flames.

“Tunnel to Hell,” Mrs. Shaver said with a sigh. “Already. At only thirteen and a half.”

“I told you he was progressing behind our backs,” Mr. Shaver tsk-tsk’ed.

Julian was standing there, pie-eyed and exultant with evil. He was not even aware his parents had entered the room. He was busily conducting the spell he had finally perfected.

Mother waved her left hand and Father waved his right hand and the tunnel to Hell collapsed backwards into the room like a Slinky made of fire. The principal fell down onto the center of the floor, a hard landing.

Mrs. Shredsolver tried to maintain a minimum of decorum and assert her professional power by quickly getting up and brushing herself off, putting out some small flames by patting her tweed jacket as she did so.

Still smoking, she intoned, “I’m afraid that would be our third strike. Funny, I always thought the tunnel to Hell would go down…”

“Oh, that’s a quaint idea, a geological one, a holdover from the medieval period, really…” began Mrs. Shaver. But Mr. Shaver’s basilisk glare made her realize it was time to stop speaking so she did.

Indeed, the basilisk glares were going all directions in the principal’s office. Both parents in turn fixed their stares on their child and Julian himself was giving back outrageous looks since he felt his parents had trespassed on one of his masterworks. He had worked for months to perfect that opening into Hell. If anyone deserved to arrive there early, pre-posthumously, he was certain it was Mrs. Shredsolver. She just couldn’t stop sucking on those hard candies while she lectured him from behind that big desk.

Mrs. Shredsolver was rapidly regaining her professional gravitas. She refused to look at Julian or anywhere remotely near the part of the room where he was standing and still looking quite un-contrite.

“We’ll be happy to clean up his transcript for you. I see no reason why such lovely people should be burdened by having to shop around endlessly for their next educational opportunity, when a simple touch-up of his record should be enough to open up the prospects for the next leg of his academic journey to the heights of…well, whatever it is you want to achieve with this…prodigy.” “Prodigy” was clearly a euphemism. All unpleasantnesses would clearly be expunged from the child’s records. It was indeed a blessing for all parties.

“You are very kind to be so understanding,” Mr. Shaver said sympathetically. And he could not resist pointing the general direction of where the principal’s hair had broken out into a small wildfire yet again.

She swatted at it and extinguished the tiny ambitious flames.

“Yes, indeed,” she said. “Quite right.” She was already beckoning her secretary to pull Julian’s file from her cabinet.

The principal quickly walked the family out of her office and then out of her school. She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she saw them get into their respective vehicles. Julian went with his mother. His father didn’t say another word to the boy before getting into his car and taking off, presumably back to work.

Back in her office, the principal fell backwards into her antiquated swivel chair and briefly relived the horror of the past half hour. It was enough horror to know that Hell was potentially so very close, at any given moment, but even worse was the glimpse she had caught of some of its current residents. She had not expected to see so many former colleagues from her own school. And some of those were the ones trying the hardest to pull her all the way down into the inferno. “Go figure,” she thought, and began sucking on a hard yellow candy that distracted her wonderfully, just wonderfully, from worrying about things that did not really concern her.