Prompt #13

The Prompt: The chairs are all thrown around, the books and papers are scattered, and the coffee is spilled. Write about what happened before or what happened after.

He stood, panting heavily and staring at the mess he had made. Sweat streamed down his face as realized what he had done. This was his school, his work. It wasn’t his home where anything he did remained personal. Anything he did here would have consequences. If he got fired he would never find another teaching job.

Pete sank to his knees amidst the papers strewn across the floor, his face buried in his hands. Something wet and cold began to sink into the right leg of his pants and it took him a moment to realize it was from his coffee, his coffee that he hadn’t had time to drink this morning because- He shook his head as a bitter taste filled his mouth. He kicked the coffee cup away, aware that it was a childish gesture. No one was around to see, what did it matter if he acted like a child?

“Mr. Elliot?” A voice called softly. Pete glanced up and recognized one of his students, a freshman he’d taught for little over a month. “What-?”

He didn’t know why she had stayed this late after school, but a wave of embarrassment washed over him for his tantrum. The rage vanished as quickly as it had come on. “There was a bit of an accident, but I’ve got it under control now.”

She nodded somewhat hesitantly, but when Pete stood up and made a show of wiping up the spilled coffee, she left. He placed one of the chairs upright and sat in it, surveying the mess his tantrum had caused. It had been horribly immature. He hadn’t thrown a tantrum since he’d been a young child and even then they had been infrequent. Pete didn’t know how his maturity had regressed so far as to throwing tantrums. He shakily picked up the book his freshman classes were reading and closed it, placing it on the desk exactly as it had been ten minutes before.

He did this with the rest of the room, hiding any evidence of his brief but uncontrollable rage. The freshman papers were stained brown from the coffee, but Pete carefully shuffled them together and placed them on the desk in a single neat stack. When he was done, the papers were the only remaining proof that anything out of the ordinary had happened and they were easy enough to explain away.