A Professor's Letter

'Since you've come so far -

Dearest Reader.

Let me tell you a story.'

February 11th, XXXX

To the Editors of Musings:

I feel as though it's finally time to tell the public the truth.

They deserve it for putting up with my cryptic silences for the last month while I have been growing to understand exactly what has happened.

For once, I'm not the person that the whole town pretends does not exist. Here, in the long, winding hallways of this beautiful university where I serve as the newest psychology professor, I am someone important. But this story is getting away from me.

Let me start, first, with the person who I used to be.

Name: Phillip J. Vitale
Profession: Professional Janitor of Hopewell High School
Mental status: Unhappy
Marital state: Unmarried

Every single spare inch - even centimeter - of space in my house was plastered of posters. No, not of half-undressed celebrities and their resident sucker-uppers, but of serial killers.

From the Killer Clown to the Blood Countess.

Their faces stared down at me from every angle. Underneath every image, after years of hard work, I had described their most likely motivations. They varied, as all human minds do, but I knew that without a doubt, my contributions were correct.

You see, I was a genius under this ridiculous guise. I knew things that others had not even discovered. But it wasn't realized until after this - this destined event that people realized.

I lived in a small town.

They even had small minds.

The largest two professions in Hopewell were housewife and small store owner. They didn't know anything - not of the world surrounding them, not of the possible dangers that were waiting to pounce on their little heads. But they had something more precious. Their innocence.

I regret to have destroyed it, but I suppose that it was for their own good.

The day that my tale starts was like any other. The school kids, the classes, the teachers - and of course, the legends of the Bathroom Door.

Ah, so that's where it makes its first appearance.

It was a girl's bathroom, as to be expected, that seemed to be perpetually out of service. I spent more time on my knees scrubbing the floor in that couple of square feet than in entire rest of the school combined, but even then, I did not know its magic.

There were rumors that surrounded it, of course. People believed that somehow, if you could bear to write your names on the door, and admit to your greatest problems, the bathroom door would take them and turn them into nothing more but a story to tell your grandchildren. Yes, it would make them disappear as though it had never existed. It was Hopewell's magical genie.

It took all of my courage, but that day, after a bout of scrubbing, I finally looked up at the wall to read names bordering on heartfelt notes.

There was a girl who signed her name S.K. who had scrawled her fears of living with her chronic inability to get close to people of the other gender. She threatened suicide, but over the message, someone had painted a huge 'Thank you.'

Another, presumably female teen, had admitted to a case of a constantly-missing self esteem. How dejecting indeed. I would have you know that this is quite common amongst this population, and therefore, this note was not really all that special. But it had been crossed out by a self-assured hand, so I supposed that they had gotten what they were looking for.

Personally, I believed that it was some psychological effect. When people admit to their fears, somehow it becomes less important. And added to their beliefs that the bathroom was magical - well, there's your explanation. Nothing arcane to it.

But, that day, I had a marker in my pocket.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had inscribed my name on the bottom right corner of the door, and the wish that someday people would admit to my genius. That I would no longer be suffering in this tiny town with a minimal wage job, stifled into normalcy.

I had a lot bottled in back then.

Now I suppose that this story is the only thing that I have left in my drawer of secrets. Maybe this piece of 

paper will help me come to terms with the past and its implications on my present.

The next day, I was back on my knees.

A pipe had burst somewhere and water was spilling out of the toilet as though it was a fountain in its past life. So, this is where things get interesting, but I've told this story to the police enough times that it might be starting to sound a little hollow.

So, I look up, and there on the far left corner was a singular note.

"You'd best watch out 'cause you'll all be visiting Hades. Forever.

It's not just going to be a vacation for you fools.

Do you really believe that a bathroom will protect you?

I'm going to enjoy this."

I did what every self-respecting citizen would do. I called the cops.

This is when my story really begins to heat up. However, it is also time for my next lecture, and that is much higher on my list of priorities.

There's no harm in ending with a little tiny cliffhanger, right?

I'll just tell you one thing. That killer - yes, that serial killer - they never ended up killing a single soul.

Yours truly,

Phillip J Vitale

Phillip J. Vitale

Professor of Psychology at Leighton University