The blue glow of the screen flickered across his pale face, casting shadows that danced like specters between the rows of bookmarked social media profiles. Mark Heller leaned back in his chair, fingers hovering over the keyboard, each click a calculated predation. The office air hung stale and heavy with the scent of aftershave masking day-old sweat. Three empty paper coffee cups formed a semicircle around his monitor—sentinels guarding his secret world.
Lily’s Instagram was a tapestry of teenage vulnerability—dance photos, snapchat filters, glimpses of a life lived without understanding the eyes watching. Her privacy settings meant nothing to someone with his access, his position, his carefully cultivated reputation. A thousand pixels of trust, violated with each scroll. He’d memorized her schedule by now—third period English, lunch at 12:15, volleyball practice until 4:30. Digital stalking had become analog.
Mark wiped the sheen of perspiration from his upper lip. The thrill was chemical, addictive. His mouse circled a photo of Lily at last month’s homecoming dance, the low cut of her cheap Macy’s dress catching the gymnasium’s harsh lighting. He extended a shaking finger and traced the curvature of her chest. She’d posed with friends near the punch bowl, unaware of his presence in the background, watching even then. He right-clicked, saved. File name: “L_Spencer_10_15.jpg.” Organized. Methodical. Like everything in his life.
Twenty-five years as Oakridge High’s principal. Twenty-five years of building trust. Twenty-five years of being seen as a pillar, a protector. The irony wasn’t lost on him, but the compartmentalization had become second nature—necessary survival. During school hours, he was Principal Heller, firm handshake, voice of authority in morning announcements, occasional guest speaker at PTA meetings. After hours, he became something else entirely.
He scrolled through her most recent photos. A screenshot here. A saved story there. Each capture was a trophy, a moment stolen without consent. The school network made it easy. Administrative privileges were a skeleton key to digital intimacy. Years ago, after an unfortunate near-miss with a custodian late one night, he’d convinced the board that monitoring student accounts was about “safety,” about “protection.” No one questioned why the reports only came from his office, why the IT department had been subtly locked out of certain administrative functions.
The carpet beneath his feet was worn thin where his chair had rolled back and forth for years, threadbare polyester exposing concrete beneath. A physical manifestation of his animalistic routine. Arrive early. Lock door. Survey, collect, enjoy. Occasionally fabricate notes about budget concerns if anyone knocked. Lunch alone. More surveillance. More collecting. In his younger days, more enjoyment. Less so now. Meetings. Home to an empty house where the silence screamed accusations he’d long since learned to ignore. But then it was at home the real Mark Heller could come out. It was alone in an empty house where Mark had a community.
Then back to work and the flimsy façade would return. On the wall, his commendations glimmered—plaques from the school board, community service awards, photographs with local politicians. His thinning, wispy hair and narrow frame always in stark contrast to the robotically lifelike figures at his side. Respectability was the perfect camouflage. “Educator of the Year” read one dusty frame, its glass reflecting his hunched silhouette back at him like a funhouse mirror distorting what little humanity remained. The glow from Mark’s computer painted his sun starved face.
The timestamp on Lily’s latest post showed three minutes ago. Cafeteria bathroom selfie. Lips glossed pink. Hair pulled back. He recognized that tank top she was wearing. She had worn it just two weeks prior. He knew because it had shown just enough of the top of her bra line as to allow him to “dress code her” Mark moved his face closer to the screen. He hated his eyes for slowly failing him. Right-click. Save. He felt his pulse quicken, blood rushing to places that made him shift in an intoxicated haze right there in his chair. His hand instinctively made its way down to his lap. She was fifty yards away, just down the hallway. Close enough to smell the strawberry body spray she always wore.
His mouse hovered over a direct message for the school’s internal messaging system. Just another concerned administrator, he’d tell himself. Just looking out for a student’s well-being. The way a student presents themselves matters. The lie tasted familiar, copper-like on his tongue—blood from where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek during yesterday’s faculty meeting when Lily had delivered attendance sheets to his office. The rancor of the deceit excited him. He’d sent similar messages before. Casual at first. A comment about a college application. An offer for “extra credit” opportunities. Then comments about appearance. Questions about dating life. Invitations to discuss her “potential” after hours when the building emptied of witnesses. The grooming was methodical, refined through years of practice and failures. He’d learned which girls to target—the ones from broken homes, with distracted parents, with dreams bigger than their bank accounts could support. The ones who needed recommendation letters. The ones who’d been taught to respect authority without question. In the eyes of parents and faculty alike, it’s what made him an exemplary administrator, educator, and leader.
The locked drawer in his desk contained a USB drive with folders labeled by graduation year. Some going back a decade. Some students he still followed online, now grown women with careers and children of their own. Some had blocked him after graduation. Some hadn’t. Some still responded to his occasional “just checking in” messages at 2 AM, conditioned responses born from years of subtle manipulation. The power dynamic never truly disappeared. Neither did the shame he weaponized against them: “You initiated. You smiled. You came. It’s been years, who would believe you now?”
Outside his office window, the football field stretched—a landscape of inherited power, of systems that protected men like him. White. Respected. Untouchable. Three superintendents had come and gone during his tenure, each one viewing him as indispensable, each one putting their signature on contract renewals without reading the complaints buried in files marked “resolved.” The blinds cut the view into horizontal strips, a metaphor he was too self-absorbed to appreciate. Rain had started, turning the grass slick and dark, droplets striking the window like accusations that couldn’t penetrate his sanctuary.
A knock at the door made him flinch. He hated that after all of these years he still did that. His knuckles whitened against the mouse, yellowed fingernails digging half-moons into his palm.
“Principal Heller?” The voice belonged to Ms. Ina Kaminski, the new vice principal. Young. Sharp. Something in her eyes suggested she didn’t fully buy his carefully constructed persona. She’d been hired despite his objections—board politics beyond even his influence. Sometimes you just can’t fight credentials. She wore button-downs instead of dresses, kept her office door open during student meetings, installed her own security camera that fed to her personal laptop.
“One moment,” he called, voice tenuously steady while the adrenaline flooded his system like a drug. Two keystrokes and his screen displayed a budget spreadsheet. Three more and the evidence was minimized, hidden behind legitimate work. The door unlocked with a practiced casualness, the same unhurried movement he’d perfected for surprise classroom observations and unexpected parent visits.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. Her eyes scanned the room—taking in the closed blinds, the locked filing cabinet, the tissue box positioned within arm’s reach of his keyboard. A familiar chill traveled down her spine. “But there’s been another complaint about the girls’ locker room security cameras. The angle seems wrong again. Three students reported feeling… observed while changing. I mean for godssake, Mark, I don’t even understand why we have those cameras to begin with.”
His face betrayed nothing, the skin a waxy mask perfected through decades of parent-teacher conferences where he’d delivered bad news with practiced sympathy. “Ina, Ina, Ina, kids these days have a lot of expensive electronics that they keep in their lockers”, he began to stand up from his desk but thought better of it. “Plus, you know the school board determined it’s safest for the community to have exterior facing cameras inside the locker room. We paid for that whole study! It’s probably just another IT issue. I’ll handle it personally.” His heart pounded as his tongue darted across dry lips. “The system sometimes resets after power fluctuations.”
Her gaze lingered too long on his computer screen, then shifted to the framed photographs on his desk—all facing him, none visible to visitors. “The school board wants proper documentation this time. After what happened at Westridge High…” Her voice carried an edge, a challenge.
The reference hung between them, a noose tightening. Principal McCoy, two counties over, arrested last spring. Similar accusations. Similar patterns. Girls reporting inappropriate comments. Missing security footage. Locked office doors. The man had been a colleague, a close friend, an online compatriot. They’d shared techniques at conferences, spoken extensively, publicly and privately, about “student management” and “monitoring.” Exchanged files on encrypted drives. Mark had destroyed his phone the day of the arrest, dumped it in pieces across three different county landfills. He’d changed passwords, purged email accounts, spent a weekend shredding paper files. Just precautions, he’d told himself. Nothing connecting them directly. The last message Mark ever received from McCoy was encrypted on one of their numerous file sharing platforms. It was a plea for Mark to submit a character testimony in McCoy’s favor. Mark never responded.
“Of course,” he replied, voice flat but pulse thundering in his temples. “Documentation. Always.” His right eye twitched involuntarily—a new development, a crack in the façade.
A notification pinged. A local news station’s article: “Mark Heller: 25 Years of Dedicated Service to Oakridge Community.” The puff piece he’d orchestrated through a former student of special interest now working in media. Melissa. Class of 2006. She still flinched when they met at district events, still avoided eye contact, still wrote whatever he asked. Insurance. Reputation management. The game was evolving, requiring more maintenance, more points of leverage, more failsafes against an increasingly vigilant world.
Ms. Kaminski left, the scent of her skepticism lingering like cheap perfume mingled with threat. She had made it clear during her rounds of interviews that during her tenure that would be asking questions, reviewing old complaints that had been buried in administrative limbo, speaking privately with female students during lunch periods—sessions he couldn’t monitor, couldn’t control. She’d requested access to historical security footage that he’d long since corrupted. A problem to be managed, eventually. He had enough practice making troublemakers disappear—transfers, retirements, sudden career changes. One guidance counselor had even left education entirely after he’d planted prescription medication in her desk during a drug sweep.
He smiled, lips stretching over his yellowing teeth that needed whitening again before next month’s school board presentation. Stood up. Adjusted his whistle. The weight of it around his neck was comforting, an emblem of authority that jangled against the faculty ID badge that granted him access to every room in the building. His hand briefly touched the small camera disguised as a pen in his shirt pocket. New technology. Better resolution. Harder to detect. One of the last useful vestiges of McCoy. The receipt for it buried in school equipment expenses labeled “Audio/Visual Educational Materials.”
The girls’ basketball team was waiting in the gym, already sweating through practice drills. Mark lingered in the back of the gym before approaching the team. He watched the children participate in the one activity that many of them spent the whole day looking forward to. The one activity unsullied by the pressures of academia or social pressures. As they finished running suicides, Mark blew his whistle. He twisted the top of the pen that rested in his shirt pocket and instructed them to start stretching.
And no one would ever see. Not the real Mark Heller beneath the community leader veneer. Not the calculated paths he took through hallways to brush against certain students between classes, timing his movements to the rhythm of the bell schedule. Not how – under the guise of searching for various forms of paraphernalia – he positioned himself at the bottom of the bleachers during assemblies, looking up. Not the files growing larger each day, meticulously categorized and encrypted. Not the network of similar men and women he connected with on platforms that required multiple authentication steps, where they traded techniques and trophies like baseball cards, where they warned each other about investigations and journalists and new laws.
The rain beat harder against the window as he combed what few sweaty hairs he had left. He looked at his reflection in the black computer screen and rehearsed his “concerned-mentor” expression while running through his speech about “wasted potential” and opportunities for “private coaching” that he could offer Lily after practice. It was 5:30 and she was due to meet him in his office any minute. It was the same routine he had performed exactly 113 times since he started working as an educator over a quarter of a century before. It was easier when he had first started, of course. Times were different and he also used to be their contemporaries. Then he was like a cool older sibling. As his appetite started to shift and his hairline began to recede, so too did his tactics. Mark had to become more deliberate in his presentation and his delivery. The consequence of every “close call” became more serious which meant what was once an extracurricular interest would have to become a vocation.
A timid voice hung in the entrance way of his office. Mark’s cold eyes descended on the child.
“Oh, come in sweetie. I don’t bite.”
Jesus Christ that was a dark read. I feel like I need to go take a shower.