My dark Professor

6

Caspar

She didn't come to class.

The first thing I noticed when I entered was the empty sit at the front. I don't know exactly when I started paying attention to her presence but now I couldn't stop. I look for her in every class. She spends the time in silence and only talks when I ask her a question directly.

I bet the other students were starting to notice the extra attention I give to her which is unlike me to do.

I rush through the lesson, my mood darker than usual.

For the rest of the day, I unconsciously look out for a girl with kinky black hair and glittering chocolate skin. Several times I come across other girls who look like her and almost approach them but stop when I notice they weren't her. They didn't have dark doll-like eyes. Eyes that suck me into their vortex.

I go home earlier than usual. The house was empty not even the gardener in sight. Since I didn't have a house-help, yet I went into the kitchen and prepared food for myself.

I eat dinner alone at the long fancy dining table. Loneliness creeps in. I should be used to it by now. The loneliness. But no matter how much I like to believe that I disliked people and was better off without them, sometimes I felt the weight of being without company.

I was deliberately torturing myself by living in a seven thousand square feet mansion. A place meant for a large family, not a lonely brooding artist. But it was a gift from my mother. The last gift she gave me. It wouldn't be right to live anywhere else. This house was a gift from her mother, her grandmother, and so on. From generation to generation, it was remodeled and passed down to the children of the rose family.

I was honoring and also dishonoring the legacy by owning it. But I couldn't abandon it. It needed to live on.

My phone rings, ending my musing.

I glance at it to see that it was Travis. I contemplated ignoring him, but I needed to talk to someone to improve my mood and he was the only person who could do that.

"Hello."

"What took you so long to answer," he whines.

I roll my eyes in reply then remember he couldn't see me.

"What's up?" I ask.

"What? You didn't miss me?"

"Get on with the reason you interrupted me, Travis."

"Geez, Caspar, I knew you missed me but take it easy."

"I'm hanging up," I threaten.

"Okay, Okay. You still don't have a house-help right?"

"Yes..." I drawl, not getting where he was going with this.

"Well, knowing you I already guessed right. I also know you won't bother searching for one, you'd rather starve in that cold mansion of yours. So as a good friend will do, I put up some flyers online. And voila! It took me a week, but I finally found one!"

I go speechless for a minute.

"Hello? Are you there?"

I clear my throat before answering.

"Since when did you become my personal assistant?"

I was grateful. I really was. But I wouldn't brush up his already big ego by telling him so.

"Since you refused to get one."

"As I told you before. I am not like you. I am a teacher. I don't need a personal assistant."