CHAPTER 1 - The Man with the Bus Schedule
I had a whopper of a black eye. It was the purple/black kind that gets all puffy and looks kind of like a cheese pizza that was left in the oven too long. It bulged one whole side of my face so I could barely see out of the slit between swollen folds of black skin.
In short, it was the sort of black eye to be proud of, and to show off to everyone but your mother.
The only problem was, it hurt like the dickens. I fingered the eye tenderly as I walked through the park toward home after school. A small, white bird that had been pecking at some seeds looked up at me as I did so. "Ouch!" I cried, causing the bird to flutter away. It then start squawking at me angrily. Even the slightest touch brought excruciating pain.
"Hi, Blake!" came an annoyingly cheerful voice from behind me. Turning, my heart sank at the sight of gossipy Mary Ellen Paul and her new bucktoothed friend Frieda Mult. "Hi, Mary Ellen," I grumbled in a tone of voice that clearly said "Get lost!"
"Ooh!" cried Mary Ellen. "What happened to your eye?" While Mary Ellen seemed concerned, I noticed that Frieda smiled in pleasure at the ugly sight.
"It's nothing," I said, with a casual wave of my hand. Before I could stop her, Mary Ellen reached out and touched it.
"Don't do that!!" I yelled, my face turning white in pain. Mary Ellen backed off with a frown, but Frieda's smile grew even wider. "It hurts!" Putting my hand to my eye, I was surprised when I pulled it away to see a small spot of blood on my fingers. "See that?" I said with a frown. "It's bleeding!"
"Well, why don't you go DO something about it, then?" asked Mary Ellen hotly. "That makes more sense than standing around, trying to show it off!"
"I'm not showing it off," I cried. "I was going home to do something about it!"
"Who gave it to you, anyway?" asked Mary Ellen curiously.
"Donny Poindexter," I grumbled, scowling. Even saying the name made me flinch. Ugly, mean, built like a tank, and my worst enemy for as long as I could remember, Donny Poindexter was like a massive cold sore in your mouth that never went away. It was hard to image how anyone could hate someone as much as Donny hated me.
Except for the dream. At the start of the school year, I'd had the strangest dream in which Poindexter had incredibly started to become my friend. In the dream, I had a wizard science teacher named Mr. Marlin, who turned the whole class into worms one day and roaches the next. Then the dream turned weird, and I had been tricked into drinking a wizard potion that made me super powerful, after which I started destroying things. But finally I woke up and found it was all a dream and Poindexter was meaner to me than ever.
"It's your own fault for not standing up to him," said Mary Ellen with a scowl. "All bullies are cowards!"
"Not Poindexter!" I cried. "Call him a coward and he's likely to break through your teeth with his fist, so he can yank out your tonsils."
Mary Ellen raised an eyebrow. "So, is that why you got the black eye? Because you called him a coward?" Frieda's smile broadened in hope that I would tell them all the gory details.
"No," I said, suddenly looking down at the grass in embarrassment. "He said he didn't like me standing in his shadow, and then let me have it."
"The silly things you boys do to each other," said Mary Ellen with a dismissive toss of her head. "Frieda and I are on our way home to make pickle brownies. Wanna come?"
At my look of sheer horror, Mary Ellen said simply, "Suit yourself, then." She and Frieda trounced up the sidewalk in a way that reminded me of mindless mosquitoes.
I sat down heavily on a park bench. School was bad enough without people like Mary Ellen Paul to grate on my nerves. Just about everything about it was bad--the boring classes, Poindexter, disgusting lunches, Poindexter, endless homework, Poindexter, bad grades no matter how hard I worked, Poindexter. I sighed heavily.
"You really should contain your enthusiasm for life more," came a voice to my left. "Your bubbling excitement might cause some of us old geezers to experience heart failure."
I swung around to stare at the person who had spoken. "Mr. Marlin!" I cried. It was the science teacher from my dream! He was sitting next to me on the park bench, holding a bus schedule as if he had been reading it intensely. Only he was holding it upside down.
"Correction," said the old man, his long, grey beard wobbling like a yoyo with each word he spoke. "My name is Mr. Snulkbarf, as I seem to recall telling you once before in this park. And if I remember correctly, you admitted that any resemblance to my being your science teacher was a sheer intentional coincidence that obviously never happened precisely because it could not be avoided." Mr. Marlin smiled at me, while putting down the bus schedule.
I squinched my good eye, trying hard to understand what he had just said.
"I can see by your bored expression that you think it's time to politely look at your watch, then say you have to leave," said Mr. Marlin. "However, I have some important news for you that will undoubtedly stick in your mind as tightly as last night's homework. Tomorrow, you are going to have a new math teacher."
"Huh?" I responded, my slow mind still struggling to catch up. "How do you know that? And why would Mr. Harris leave? He's been there so long he taught my dad when he was a kid! And how can I even be talking to you? You're nothing but a person I met in a dream once!"
Mr. Marlin spread his hands wide, while looking up at the sky. "Ah, what is a dream!" he said dramatically. "Isn't it just reality filmed in black and white, except when you eat in a dream you still wake up hungry?" He looked at me as if he had just said something profound.
"As for your math teacher," he continued, "let's just say I have my sources, and they all confirm that as of tomorrow, Mr. Harris--to his surprise--will find himself on extended leave. Although he will not be going to spend a week floating leisurely on his back across the fowl smelling Great Salt Lake, as he has long dreamed of doing."
"Who will my new teacher be?" I asked curiously.
"A kindly, gentle fellow who has an odd obsession about blood and dreams," replied Mr. Marlin with a smile.
"Dreams?" I said in surprise, my stomach lurching slightly. "You mean, like the dream I had?"
"Precisely," said Mr. Marlin. "And knowing how talkative you are, and how much you love sharing your fascinating dream with others, I have no doubt you will be wise enough to not follow my advice to tell him all about it!"
I screwed up my good eye again, my feeble mind again trying to catch up with what Mr. Marlin had just said.
"Do you mind if I come with you?" asked Mr. Marlin unexpectedly.
"To school?" I asked in surprise.
"Yes," said Mr. Marlin. "I was sharp enough in my day to succeed at flunking English, math and history all at the same time--quite an accomplishment, since a triple flunker is not easy to achieve. So I'm sure I can be of tremendous help to you."
"Well ..." I said, rubbing my chin, while thinking I was on the verge of being a triple flunker myself, "I guess you can come. But won't it look funny, an old guy like you coming into my classes?"
"No funnier than that purple beaked Marmaleek eating the mirror off that car over there," said Mr. Marlin, pointing. I turned quickly to look, but saw nothing but a sparrow pecking at the grass. Turning back, I was astounded to see that Mr. Marlin had completely disappeared!
"Mr. Marlin?" I called, looking all around. "Mr. Snulkbarf? Where are you?" There was no answer.
I shook my head as if to clear it from a fog. Had I been dreaming again? In the weeks since my former dream, I had become more and more convinced of how bizarre and impossible it had all been. When it first happened, it had been so real, I'd sometimes woken up at night in a cold sweat, fearful that it just might have been true. But as time passed, I came to see it more for what it really was--a warning not to eat pepperoni pizza and chili burritos before going to bed.
But seeing Mr. Marlin--that is, Mr. Snulkbarf--had somehow brought the unreality of it all crashing down around my head once more. Could it have been real? Had Mr.
Marlin actually been my science teacher? Had Poindexter really almost become my friend? Had I taken a wizard's potion that transformed me into an all powerful killing machine?
I shook my head once more, then headed off down the sidewalk toward home. No. Absolutely not. It was all too fantastic. I must have been hallucinating to think I'd met Mr. Marlin again. Fun as he had been as a dreamed-up science teacher, it had been an increasing relief to not see him again in the weeks since the dream. It had helped in my effort to convince myself that it really had been just a dream.
In short, I was probably just having a relapse. No doubt it was the green spaghetti and black meatballs the lunch ladies have served for school lunch earlier that day.
Reaching the corner, I looked back at the park bench where I'd hallucinated seeing Mr. Marlin. The bus schedule was still sitting there, upside down. I shook my head again, then walked quickly away. Surely, someone else had left it there by mistake.
THE STEWARDS OF LIGHT SERIES by Duane L. Ostler
1 My Science Teacher is a Wizard
2 My Math Teacher is a Vampire
3 My History Teacher is a Leprechaun
4 My English Teacher is a Werewolf
5 My Gym Teacher is a Fairy
6 My Art Teacher is a Troll
7 My Computer Teacher is a Ghost
8 The School Lunch Ladies are Mermaids
9 My Health Teacher is a Zombie
10 My School Librarian is an Elf
11 My School Principal is an Imposter
12 The School Janitors are Aliens
OTHER BOOKS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM DUANE L. OSTLER:
Fiction
Detectives in Diapers: The Mystery of the Aztec Amulet
The Wards of Clovis Gloober
Itchy Mitch and the Taming of Broken Jaw Junction
Santa v Afton (under pen name "Silas Flint")
Running for the Guv (under pen name "Silas Flint")
Nonfiction
The Ninth Amendment: Key to Understanding the Bill of Rights
A Conversation About Abortion Between Justice Blackmun and the Founding Fathers
Abortion: What the Founding Fathers Thought About It
How to be Your Own Lawyer in a Non-Criminal Case in the USA (under pen name "Silas Flint")
The First Auto Laws in the United States (under pen name "Silas Flint")
Bizarre Takings Cases in the United States and Australia (under pen name "Silas Flint")
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Duane L. Ostler was raised in Southern Idaho, where the wind never stops. He has lived in Australia, Mexico, Brazil, China, the big Island of Hawaii, and—most foreign of all—New Jersey. He has driven an ice cream truck, sold auto parts, been a tax collector and practiced law, and recently obtained a PhD in legal history. He and his wife have five children and two cats.
TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR: mailto:[email protected]
My Science Teacher is a Wizard Page 13