Invisible Ink

until he gave them permission to stop. The torment went on for almost an hour, and murmuring students flocked to classroom windows to watch the criminals utter weak protests and groan in agony as their bare soles blistered underfoot.

That display of the headmaster’s authoritative power had been deeply impressed into young Peter’s mind and he consequently adopted a meek, obedient persona for fear of winding up on the tyrant’s bad side. He was a rulefollower and made excellent grades, so it didn’t take him long to be elected head-boy by the time he was in sixth form. It was a position that offered him perfect immunity from the punishment he so feared, and he operated at the headmaster’s side as his loyal right-hand man. Every Wednesday afternoon, Peter would take his lunch tray from his solitary desk in the library and carry it to the headmaster’s office, where the two would meet to discuss pressing concerns within the student body. Peter didn’t need friends to be aware of his peer’s grovelings. “Peter Brown” and “Headmaster Johnson” had quickly become synonymous, and he spent his last two years of secondary school as a feared outcast. Still, he always found himself telling stories about the number of peas in the shepherd’s pie or the quality of the cricket team’s uniforms, simply to cover the truth that most of the student complaints were about the headmaster himself.

One may say that not much has seemed to change ten years later, as Peter stands to the side and watches Headmaster Johnson walk through the dark classroom doorway and flick on the overhead fluorescents. The classroom appears pristine, as though it were cleaned thoroughly several times a day, but the undisguised must of leather-bound books and chalkboard dust hits Peter with a wave of déjà vu that makes him feel a little sick. As he subtly attempts to steady himself on a wooden chair, the headmaster sets his briefcase down on the teacher’s desk and begins unbuckling the leather straps.

“So Mr. Brown, what made you decide to return to our beloved academy to apply for a teaching position?”

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