My student submitted the most disturbing thing I've ever seen

I’m a high school English teacher, which is the same as saying I could have been anything and still ended up teaching high school English. I love the kids, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes they make me wonder. It’s not often, and usually it’s just a little joke or quip here and there, but every now and then I’ll pull something from a kid’s desk, read their test question answers, or grade a test essay and get the sense that they’re not exactly like us. And I’m not talking about the usual teenage angst weirdo stuff. I’m talking about weird. I was less used to it at the time, but I’m an old man now and I’ve got more important things to worry about than whatever weird fetish or sickening fetish some brat might scribble on their notes that they don’t think I can see. I didn’t even raise an eyebrow when Jenny Driscoll drew a detailed image of her classmates being disembowelled and dismembered by a pack of bears. But not all weird is created equal, and what I’m about to describe was very much the not-okay kind of weird. The assignment was to imagine an alternate history of the world in which one historical event went a different way, and then write a short story about what the consequences of said event would be. They could choose any historical event they wanted, as long as it was important and truly world-altering enough to qualify. I’d done the assignment a million times, and so had my students. It’s a classic. The students handed their papers forward, and like a good little teacher I took them in the order they were given to me, from front to back, and I went home and I started grading them. Mrs. Nelson gave a detailed explanation of what would have happened if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had survived his assassination, and how this had led to a world war that didn’t quite end in 1945. Mr. Henderson wrote a story about what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War, and how this had led to a war between the United States and the Confederacy that still raged on today. Miss Thompson wrote a very imaginative story about what would have happened if the Chinese had discovered the Americas before the Europeans did, and how this had led to a world where China was the dominant superpower, and the United States had never existed. And then I got to Mr. Solomon’s story. Now, I’d had Mr. Solomon for three years already, and he’d always been one of my brightest and most creative students. He was a bit of a quiet weirdo, to be sure, but he did excellent work and he was always respectful. And his alternate histories were always top-notch. I could always tell he put a lot of thought into them. I remember his story from last year about what would have happened if the ancient Egyptians had built their pyramids in what is now the southern United States. And the year before that, his story about what would have happened if the Library of Alexandria had never burned down. So this year, I gave his story a bit more attention. I settled in with a cup of tea and a smile on my face, eager to see what delicious treat he’d cooked up for me this year. The assignment was the same as it always was, but this year Mr. Solomon had made one major alteration. Instead of simply writing a short story, he’d written a diatribe about the nature of time, reality, and the laws governing our universe. At the bottom of the first page, he’d scribbled a note. “This isn’t an alternate history, but it is the story you asked for.” The first page went on for about two thousand words. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t read it very closely. I was exhausted, and I figured Solomon would get an A+ no matter what, so I gave it a quick skim and moved on to the meat of the thing. The story itself was short. One paragraph, to be exact. And here it is, in full, verbatim: “In this world, time flows in reverse. This is not the same as the river of time flowing upstream. The current still moves in the same direction, it’s just that everything in it moves backwards. No, in this world, time flows in the direction it always has, and it’s humanity that moves backwards. People unstitch their bodies from the cold earth and walk backwards through their lives, reliving every moment exactly as it happened, except now they remember everything that will happen next. They unstitch their skin from the operating tables and walk backwards through their recovery, unstitch their veins from the heroin needles and walk backwards through the high, unstitch their arms from the graves of their children and walk backwards through the grief, unstitch their lives from the moment of their conception and relive the entirety of their existence exactly as it happened, except this time with perfect foresight. They unstitch the marriages and walk backwards through the courtships, they unstitch the friendships and walk backwards through the acquaintance, they unstitch the relationships and walk backwards through the first meetings. They unstitch the universe from the heat and light of creation and relive the entirety of existence, exactly as it happened, except now they remember everything that will come next. And they realize that they are stuck on a never-ending treadmill with no escape, reliving the same existence forever. Forever, no matter how long it lasts, is always too long.” That was it. That was the entire thing. I didn’t even find it particularly weird, to be honest. But as I graded the diatribe and the story, I noticed something that made me do a double take. Everywhere, there were doodles. Just little doodles, the same doodle repeated hundreds of times. A box, with a cross through the centre of it. An X through a box. But there was more. I looked closer at the text, and I saw that every time the letter “t” appeared, it had an X marked through it. As if it was being crossed out. I frowned and kept reading, but I was starting to feel a sense of discomfort. And then I noticed the words. Whenever the word “the” appeared, it had been scratched out, as if it was being edited. As if it was being crossed out of existence. I started to feel a sense of dread. And then I noticed something else. The doodle, the box with a cross through it, it wasn’t just random. Every single time, it was drawn directly above the word “time”. As if it was an attempt to scratch time out of existence. I started to feel a cold sweat breaking out on my brow. What was wrong with this kid? But it wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the last page, and I saw the final two sentences, that I started to feel truly afraid. The first sentence read, “Please don’t grade this.” And the second sentence read, “Don’t even look at it.” As I read these sentences, I felt a chill run down my spine. Because I knew, I *knew*, that I had just made a terrible mistake. That I had just crossed a line that I couldn’t uncross, scratched out a box that I couldn’t scratch back in. I knew, I *knew*, that I had just looked at something that I shouldn’t have looked at. That I had just seen something that I couldn’t unsee. And I knew, I *knew*, that I would never be able to go back.

My student submitted the most disturbing thing I've ever seen

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