Mr. Hound: A Short Story

A man of humble proportions and a delocalized figure, a man I may now recognize as myself. The thick curls that once occupied my scalp were gone with a few swift moves of an electric razor. My eyebrows, once bushy and untamed, now thin, straight and a little uneven. Natalie said once the caterpillars were plucked I’d really see the difference. She was right. I was thinking of Natalie as I boarded the train in civilian clothes. The last bit of money in my wallet got me a haircut and a train ticket home. If, home is still where I think it is.
The train car was full of shady figures; I most certainly fit in. My phone was dead. That’s to be expected when it’s locked up for ten years.
“Dammit,” I said under my breath. A kid in a hoodie saw my dilemma

Hound, well, I guess he’s not the new principle anymore. Time stops in prison, for 10 years, my life was a six by eight cell and my memories of the outside. My history feels like fiction. The present feels like the midnight showing of reality. Mr. Hound was a man with a large ego and hero complex even larger. He came to the school to “save” it. Honestly, I don’t even remember the principle who came before Mr. Hound. Whoever he was, he minded he own damn business, we did our jobs, I assume he did his. Mr. Hound, on the other hand, had staff meetings everyday, he expected a report on student and self reflections at the end of each week, he even saw it fit to lock the exits! He had guts but those guts were getting in the way of my smoke breaks. I brought it up, asking him to at least give me a key and he recommended I quit. I recommended he take the ruler out of his rear end. From that day on I started leaning out my window to light up and from that day on, kids actually started focusing in class and grades started to rise. Yes, Mr. Hound was a sick kind of hell, but he did get the results he wanted. All was fine and dandy, I even started to like Mr. Hound and his dad like humor, but then he went and got me the minimum sentence for