There's a Man in the Woods

The air in the classroom had become unbreathable, heavy with a silent and poisonous tension. It all started with a simple spark sown by this kid, Sid, a perverse shadow hidden behind the air of an angel. Quickly, the lies began to thrive like vermin in the minds of the other children, fueling a collective paranoia that was as absurd as it was unstoppable. Bat ears, pools of imaginary blood, a phantom killer lurking behind the pines... Each day brought its share of infantile hallucinations elevated to absolute truths. No matter how much the professor shouted the truth, tried to shake these blind parents who were complicit in the stupidity of their offspring, nothing worked. For this right-thinking community, a child was not lying. It was the master who became the monster, the accused, the ideal culprit. By fighting against this wall of mud and institutional deafness, something was clearly broken in his mind. The boundaries between the real and the absurd have finally collapsed. Under constant pressure, harassed by management, rejected by everyone, he gradually sank into paranoid madness. His words became incoherent, his lessons more and more erratic, seeing threats everywhere, sinking into a spiral where reality began to shift. It was precisely what the parents were waiting for: an excuse. His superior, embarrassed by this scandal and giving in to the general panic of the families, summoned him to his office to inform him of his immediate dismissal, describing him as unstable and dangerous. Expelled from the establishment, pilloried by public rumor, the professor has completely lost his footing. Wandering the streets, unable to escape the incessant buzz of these lies that haunted him, he ended up falling completely, sinking into a chemical decline, turning to drugs to anesthetize the chaos of his own brain. C'est dans cet état second,between hallucinatory visions, consciousness clouded by substances and a resentment that had become unhealthy, that he understood the terrible lesson of this story: since the whole world was calling for a monster in the woods, it was high time to stop fighting and finally play the role that had been written for him..

​« "There's a man in the woods." What a spectacle. Before this story started, this school was still respectable. My students and I used to skip down the hill to the honeysuckle, Pluck a couple and collect their nectar while they picked their fill. Except one obnoxious kid, Sid, who just watched them eat the flowers While he skeeved and scowled, cause he couldn't bear to share his sweet treats throughout the recess hour.

​« But I can play along. I can be good. Do you hear that, Sid? There's a man in the woods. »