Teach a Teacher a Lesson

Present

Day...

Sam left the reception area and returned to his cabin. He needed a moment to gather his bearings before heading back to the navigation room. He didn't need his captain's ever-insightful and interrogative gaze upon him. No one should ever become aware of his vengeful plans.

Once inside his sanctuary, he paced up and down relentlessly. The rage boiling in his veins fired his blood. He could feel his nostrils flaring as both his breath and pace quickened. If he wasn't inside a ship, laden with five thousand people, he would be screaming at the top of his lungs now. Oh, how he hated her!

How dare she disturb his peace like that? How dare she barge into his life again after all these years? How dare she bring back all the memories he had tried so hard to forget?

When he thought he had finally managed to leave his past behind and start anew, there she was, finding a way to crawl back into his life... to occupy his mind once again.

Of all the cruise ships out there, why did she have to choose his? A morbid laugh escaped his lips considering the cruel game the Fates had decided to play with him. Could he live through all that pain again? He might be feeling an uncontrollable rage right now, but deep inside he knew the truth. He had loved her once... truly... with a pure love. The kind of love you feel only once in a lifetime, and she...

She had taken his heart in her hands and crushed it like a dried flower. She had humiliated him, and then as if that wasn't enough, his own father had condemned him into an even more humiliating and cruel way of life. He could never forget the physical and mental pain he had gone through while he was in the army.

After what had happened that night at the damned prom, his oh-so-righteous father felt it beneath him to have his son suspended from school for improper behavior, especially two weeks before the end of the year, and had decided that a five-year compulsory service in the army would straighten up his worthless, disrespectful, and undisciplined hide. His father's precise words that day. Even now, he couldn't tell what had stung more achingly in his heart that night: Rita's slap in front of his teachers and classmates and the ridicule he had to endure, or his father's disparaging words. Or was it the disappointed look he had glimpsed in his father's eyes for just a fraction of the second? His heart still gave an acute twinge every time he brought that memory back.

At that moment, he could tell what his father was feeling. His eyes had told him everything, that he couldn't have been his son, because his sons knew their place. They were honorable and obedient and knew better than to stray away from the rules either of society or propriety. His sons knew how to treat their superiors... with total respect.

His mother had begged for Sam, but his father was adamant in his decision. He wouldn't bow to his wife's plea for forgiveness. She had tried to make him reconsider and convince him that it was simply a foolish mistake an infatuated youth had made. But his father had thought that his own leniency toward his youngest son had brought this shame upon him. And since he would have to partake in it, he would be the one to decide his son's fate. And the decision had been made... irreversibly.

Getting special permission to sit the final exams, after his father had pleaded his case with the school's committee, Sam was allowed to finish his school year. Suffice it to say, that it was the two most dreadful weeks of his life. Not only did he have to endure the ridicule and the cruel comments of every student present, but also the scornful look in Rita's eyes, and that was what had hurt him more. He had hoped his kiss would have brought her straight into his arms, that she would have felt how much he loved her, but she had drifted even further from him. She wouldn't let him talk to her, avoided him as though he was the devil himself and the few times that they happened upon each other, she transfixed him with the coldest gaze he had ever seen.

At the time, he had thought it was the worst period in his life. But the true nightmare started a week after, when he found himself cramped with a dozen young men in a bus outside the recruitment office. His father had abandoned him after signing him in what felt like a death penalty.

He had had a hard time adjusting to this new way of life. He was young and reckless, and the more defiant he was, the harsher the punishment he had to endure. He had thought that his cocky arrogant ways would get him by there, as it did back at school. But this was no school, and Sam was not the golden boy anymore. "You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," the only friend he had managed to make while at the camp used to tell him. Nobody else seemed to like him; that was because his disobedience brought them more physical pain than what they were already forced to endure.

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One day, during their morning training, Sam bragged to his friend that he had had tougher training while at high school. The drill sergeant heard him and made the entire troop run an extra five miles. Everyone was furious with Sam, but he laughed it off and ran the distance without even breaking into a sweat.

He had been running all his life; this was nothing extra to him. He had a smug smile on his face when he finished, thinking that everyone would be proud of him as they were at his school. But not here! The other soldiers were exhausted, and they all looked at him as though it was his fault. Why blame him if they were such a lousy bunch of wusses and couldn't take a little run? But instead of being proud of him, his comrades hated him and his drill sergeant was determined to smack that smug grin out of his face.

Before he dismissed everyone else, the drill sergeant made Sam strip off all his clothes and run naked around the camp, holding his gun high up in the air. Sam had never been more embarrassed in his life, but he didn't back down. He held his chin up and kept running. Half an hour later, his arms went numb, and he was no longer able to hold his gun up. When he lowered his arms, the drill sergeant cursed him so vilely that Sam put them back up, determined to endure this just to spite him. However, half an hour later, his limbs gave up and he fell to his knees retching his exhaustion. Involuntarily, tears rolled down his eyes, and though he wiped them away quickly, it didn't go unnoticed.

"Your war-hero papa ain't here to help you, boy. Obey me or you'll suffer!" the drill sergeant had told him, making fun of that moment of weakness of his.

After that day, Sam decided that he wouldn't let them break him like that again. But on the occasions he slipped into his old bravado again, his torture was even crueler and more painful. And most of the times, the others were made to suffer along with him.

In the end, they won. Surely, they made a man out of him, but he was no longer a free spirit. He was broken inside. When his training was over and it was time to go on a mission, he was a soldier ready to obey every command, no matter how absurd his common sense told him it was.

He had been through hell those five years and the only thing that kept him sane was that he knew it would soon be over and then he would be a free man once again. But all through that time, he blamed her for everything that had happened to him.

And now, all the hatred he had piled up for her then was surfacing again threatening to consume him alive.

She was going to pay for everything.

He may have fallen for her once, but this time he would not give in to her charms. At twenty-eight now, he was a tough, confident man, and Rita would be made to kneel before him begging for forgiveness when he was done with her. His course of action was plotted. He would taunt and torment her until she fully succumbed to his seductive ways, and then he would break her heart into so many pieces that she would never feel whole again, ever in her life... exactly like she had made him feel.

How he was still feeling... empty... void of all good sentiments. Rita was going to pay for it all.