Jonas Lockwood stood before the freshly bleached whiteboard.
He was discussing the architecture of the cosmos, his voice smooth, commanding the vast space of the lecture hall.
"Most people," Jonas articulated, pacing slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, "consider time to be an independent quantity—a constant, linear river. This perception is comforting, but fundamentally inaccurate." He paused, allowing the gravity of the statement to settle. "In reality, time is a dependent quantity. Its flow, its very rate of passage, is warped by the concentration of mass. It bends, it stretches, it slows down near objects of high density—a phenomenon most dramatically observed in the gravitational well of a black hole."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. "Hypothetically," he quipped, injecting a measure of dark levity, "time travel is not a function of speed, but of distortion. We could achieve it by severely bending the space-time fabric around high-density objects, like black holes or theoretical wormholes."
Mid-sentence, a jagged, sudden pain pierced his skull.
The sophisticated façade crumbled instantly. A cold, clammy sheet of sweat broke across his brow, tracing tracks down his temples. His throat constricted, seizing up, dry and demanding. He spun quickly, presenting only his stiff, six-foot back to the classroom, shielding his moment of vulnerability.
Fumbling within the inner pocket of his jacket, he produced a small, unmarked bottle of medication. His hand trembled visibly, a frantic, desperate tremor. He managed, with excruciating difficulty, to dry-swallow a capsule. The swift, internal surge of relief was palpable, an electric abatement of the agony. He took a shallow breath, composed his features, and rotated back to the class, ready to resume his lecture on the curved universe.
THE TEARING SMILE
At the very last row, shrouded in the shadows cast by the high ceiling, a student began to smile.
It was not a pleasant expression. It was slow, laborious, a deliberate distortion that soon widened into a terrifying grimace, pulling at the corners of his mouth until the skin looked taut, strained, as if it would tear his face apart.
Then, with an abrupt, bone-jarring impact, he violently smashed his forehead against the solid wooden desk.
The sound echoed in the sudden silence—a wet, splintering crack. A palpable shockwave rippled through the seated students. They craned their necks, staring at the boy in horrified disbelief.
He repeated the action. Smash.
A spray of crimson arterial blood arced out, splattering across the notebooks and faces of the adjacent students, who immediately recoiled, scrambling backward. The collective revulsion was absolute. The boy smashed his head against the desk surface again and again, each impact duller and more sickening than the last.
Jonas Lockwood, however, remained rooted by the podium, his posture rigid. He was paralyzed, not by indifference, but by a sudden, terrifying suspicion: Was this real? The trauma of his life, the dark circles under his eyes, the need for medication—it all coalesced into a single, overwhelming doubt. He watched, a statue of absolute, detached calm, convincing himself this was just another elaborate, cruel trick of his failing mind.
It took the shriek of a terrified girl to break the paralysis. She stumbled toward the podium, her voice choked with panic.
"Professor! Please! You have to help him!"
At the sound of the direct plea, Jonas's deep psychological defense mechanism shattered. The calm, icy mask shifted instantaneously to a look of utter chaos—a flicker of pure, unadulterated terror and confusion that warped his handsome features.
The boy in the back row stopped.
His ruined face, a canvas of pulverized tissue, splinters of desk wood protruding from his brow, and streaming blood, tilted upward. His teeth were either missing or horribly misaligned, giving his mouth a monstrous, uneven gape. He was looking directly at Jonas.
Then, he delivered a final, chilling creepy smile.
With a convulsive, final exertion of strength, he drove his head down onto the desk one last time with unimaginable pressure. The sound was not a crack, but a crush. His skull gave way entirely. Fragments of bone, soft pieces of brain matter, and a geyser of blood splashed out onto the surrounding area.
Jonas Lockwood stared, his previous psychological fortress completely annihilated, leaving only shock etched upon his face.