I am 19 years old as I write this, and this horrible and strange death happened back in middle school. I have had recurring nightmares about it, and I think the only way I can move on with my life is if I deal with it here and now.
Our teacher was Mr. Franklin. He was substituting for his second week in a row. He was alright I guess. I didn’t have any problems with him.
The day it happened, Mr. Franklin walked into the class and announced that this was his last day with us and that today we were going to be working with clay. Before I say any more, I just want to say that Mr. Franklin wasn’t a bad guy as far as I knew. I don’t think he deserved what happened to him. And as far as I have been able to dig up on the situation, it still remains a mystery as to why it happened.
It all started when this one kid Lesley, who was always causing trouble and even bullied other kids, decided it would be funny to throw some wet clay at me.
Mr. Franklin scolded him and told him to go to the principal’s office, and then He came to me and tried to wipe some clay off of my face. But then he pulled back in pain and I saw that his hand was a little burned. I thought that maybe he had an accident while cooking breakfast.
He looked at his hand, and the place where the clay had touched was dissolving. He was hissing in pain and looked so confused. Then I felt another glob of clay hit me right in the ear. Lesley laughed at me. I was so mad at that point that I grabbed a handful of my clay and threw it at him, splattering him in the chest. He grabbed some clay from another kid and threw it at me but missed and hit my friend Trina sitting behind me. She got mad and started throwing her clay at Lesley, but she sucked at throwing, and the clay was getting everywhere. Finally, the entire classroom erupted in a war of clay.
It was flying everywhere and getting on everything. Mr. Franklin tried to stop it, but he seemed to be in pain from his hand burns. Then, I saw a glob of it hit him right on the cheek; I could hear the sissling of his flesh. He started to scream and tried to wipe it off, only burning his other hand and smearing deeper into his skin. He used his shirt to try and get it off; it worked, except that some of his face came off as well; His cheek was little more than melted slime around the exposed cheek bones.
He was screaming in agony, when another glob got him right in the face and covered his mouth and eyes. His muffled screams were horrifying to me. I started screaming for everyone to stop, but that seemed to just make it worse. Suddenly, everyone seemed to focus their aim on Mr. Franklin. Maybe they didn’t realize what was happening to him.
They were raining the clay down on him as his muffled screams grew louder and louder. He clawed at the clay with his hands that were almost reduced to bloodied nubs. Some of it came off long enough for me to see that he looked almost exactly like the bad guy’s melted twisted face melting off of the skull at the end of Indiana Jones: Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
He fell to the ground covered head to toe with the clay and was writhing in it, and then he crawled under his desk trying to escape the clay. I felt so bad for him. I even tried to get between him and the class that was still throwing the clay. The smell was metalic, and carbon.
I got to him, and his body was only twitching now. The clay was now dissolving his whole head. The class had finally stopped and they came standing behind me staring at what was left of Mr. Franklin as he melted into a pull of gore.
The cops showed up, but they couldn’t figure out what happened any better than I could. I heard that the clay itself was taken and analyzed, but nothing seemed to be wrong with it. No traces of acid or anything. All the kids in the classroom were covered in the same clay and it didn’t hurt them at all. It’s been years, but I still remember it happening.
Anyway, the school district just acted like it didn’t happen. We were all forced to carry on and to never speak of it again.They didn’t even mention Mr. Franklin in an announcement. I thought about taking a look into it. But I couldn’t find anyone who worked at the school, no police reports, or even most of my friends in class even remembered it happening.
How can they forget something like that? I actually still have some of that clay in a box somewhere of all my old art projects from middle school, and I went digging through my attic before sitting down to write this. I couldn’t find the box of my stuff. I called my mom and asked if she had it, and she said that she did.
Then she said that she still had the clay astray I made for her. But then she said, “well, it was here a second ago.”
Shit…
I gotta go. I’ll update soon…
Christ, what kind of clay is this?