Author's Notes:
Full disclaimer, Teacher's Crossroad, contains scenes of sex. It also includes scenes that may disturb sensitive readers.
That sounds darker than I intended, but I suppose that's what disclaimers do.
All that said, it's a Burnt Redstone story, so truthfully, how dark do you think it's gonna get?
Originally intended to be three separate submissions (parts), I've merged them together for simplicity.
All characters engaging in sexual relationships or activities are 18 years old or older.
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Teacher's Crossroad
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Part 1
Chapter 1
The ending of one life and the redirection of another fit neatly within a span of a few seconds.
One second: Tyson glares at his wife of twenty years sitting in the passenger seat, though he was already beginning to regret the hurtful words he'd just lashed out.
Two seconds: Tyson catches the motion of something huge and dark, quickly filling the passenger side window behind Imani's angry expression when her lovely face turns to him.
Three seconds: Impacts too extreme to feel and too many to register. Sounds too loud to hear, but distinctly experienced. Flashes of light and dark. Pain and nothingness, too much of both.
Unknown seconds later: Tyson surfaces to see stars through tall grasses, cold water from the ditch soaking through the remains of his clothes. The sensation of pain returns to sweep over him...
...and he knows she's gone.
"NO! No! No..."
Tyson surged up from his pillow to gasp for breath as the recurring nightmare shocked him awake, as it often had over the past five years.
Ghost pain floated over and through his body, forcing him to recall the year he lost in the hospital recovering from his injuries—seemingly endless hours of pushing through the pain to get his body to function again.
Once hands could grip, and arms regained their range of motion, once feet could balance his mass, and legs could support and push his bulk upright, he leaned into the machinery to find a way to cover his mental pain with pure physical agony.
Excess was shed, and he'd carried much of it. It'd felt like layers were peeling away as he struggled to find a reason to continue. He was becoming a new man, but for what?
His frailness gradually became strength, yet he pushed harder. He'd convinced himself that the pain cleansed him, but in truth, it was just avoidance. After a year of merciless exercise routines, the physiotherapists only allowed him brief supervised visits to the gym. This forced him to concentrate on his grief counseling. He needed to stop avoiding the mental anguish that drove him to bury himself in pain.
It took another eight months before the doctors felt he was safe enough to send home.
"Awww, Sugar, is that bad dream back again?"
Her voice was achingly familiar yet so out of place. Tyson's heart clenched each time he heard it, but he refused to respond. He'd clawed his way out of the darkness when he was recovering in the hospital, and the foundation he was building his new life upon depended on the keen edge of his mind. He wasn't going to give up on that now.
Imani was dead. She was gone.
She wasn't sitting at the end of his bed, slim and toned in her silk nightie, her mane of curly hair waiting for his fingers, milk chocolate skin begging to be touched, and watching him with soft brown eyes full of love and compassion.
Tyson dropped back to his pillow as he closed his eyes and rubbed his face.
He ran through his equations- and when he reached the result, he opened his eyes, and as always, she was gone.
The doctors had thrown a lot of jargon at him while they did their best to dissect his feelings, his memories of the crash, and how he felt about his mother. Survivor's Guilt and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder were at the top of the list, but there were so many others; he'd forgotten their names.
He never spoke to the doctors about Imani's occasional nocturnal visits. If he had, he'd likely still be in the hospital. It was simpler to just accept the periodic brain blip and move on. Besides, he had his other love: mathematics, to bring rationality back to his mind.
She'd started appearing to him at night after he'd begun really pushing himself in his physio sessions. As he rested in his bed, muscles screaming in agony, he'd hallucinated that she'd come to visit him. From the start, he knew enough to keep his mouth shut about it. He got information on what it might mean
after
he was sent home.
He read a lot about what the mind can do to resolve the loss of a loved one, especially after a traumatic accident. His unwillingness to accept her loss, demonstrated just moments ago by his cries when he awoke, meant his mind was looking for ways to fill that gap in his life. Where only vacuum existed, his mind filled the emptiness with... her.
Five years was a long time to carry the hallucinations, but like his self-imposed solitude and his regimented daily schedule, he took comfort in familiarity. Maybe he just wasn't ready to move forward.
As it always did after having the nightmare, his mind returned to the night of the party.
Tyson hadn't even wanted to go. It was Imani who'd been so insistent on getting out of the house, saying they had to make an appearance, as the man had been so supportive. He was the one who'd helped Tyson get his position as a professor of advanced mathematics at the local university. That's what the man told everyone, at least. Tyson knew the truth. It was the Dean's wife who made it happen.
