Mister Diablo: The Devil Made Me Do It.

The call came in at 5:30 AM.  After a few rings, I rolled over and answered my phone with my eyes closed.  I was greeted with a robotic voice.

"Hello, this is the sub-finder system...  You have a job request at... Drew Middle School. Subject... English.  To accept this press..."  I press the pound key and rolled out of bed.

An hour later I'm pulling into the parking lot of one of the most troubled middle schools in South LA. I check in at the main office.  As the dour-looking looking clerk hands me a set of classroom keys, a veteran teacher looks over and takes note that I'm being sent to Room 207.  He makes a face.

"Wow.  They gave you Castro's class... Good luck.  You'll need it."  He walks away chuckling.

The classroom is located on the remote reaches of the campus, cut off from any immediate support.  I enter the room and am relived to see that the room looks tidy and organized.  In seconds I can survey a room and tell if the teacher has their shit together.  This one does.  She's left a handwritten note on the desk.

"Dear sub, my periods are working on the following pages, please have them complete the review on (such and such) a page.  To be honest, my students are difficult.  You will have your hands full, particularly first period and third and fifth..."

Just then, the bell rang.

Within seconds, kids began to kick the class room door , demanding entrance.  Which is actually ironic since most of them act like they absolute hate to be in here.  I wait a few moments, ignoring the incessant pounding, until the last bell rings.  Then, I open the door slowly.  In front of me I see a pack of 30 kids staring back at me.

"Damn, took you long enough!" Barks a pissed off girl with an attitude.

"Who the fuck are you?"  Says a tough looking kid with mohawk as he sizes me up and down. Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question.  I'd taken this job for a variety of reasons, but it wasn't what I was ever trained for.  I never studied teaching in college, I was a successful writer and filmmaker before signing up to wander the seemingly endless teacherless classrooms of the sprawling South LA district. Really, who the fuck was I? What business did I have trying to teach these kids.

But I'm not here to ponder my deeper questions at the moment.  I have a job to do.

"Who the fuck am I?"  I reply with a wicked grin,  "I'm Mister Diablo."

The touch kids takes a step back.  "Oh shit, I heard of you..."

"Good. Get in here and sit down."  The students comply without much protest.  Several ask me the same question as they saunter by and head for their seats.

"You gonna tell us a story, Diablo?"

"Maybe, it depends on how much work you do for me."  I let out an evil laugh and slam the door shut behind the last kid.  They're in my world now...

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The Los Angeles Unified School District had its good schools, but it also had its dysfunctional, heartbreaking disaster campuses too... more than it should by any moral standard.  I learned that the very first day on the job.  I was called to teach a math class at Markham Middle School in Watts.  The class was housed in a bungalow that I shared with another classroom.  When I got to the room, I quickly discovered that there  had been no teacher there in months.  There was no lesson plan.  No books.  Nada.  The room was tagged from top to bottom.  I called the main office, asking for some direction as to what to do and the person on the phone said simply, "teach" and hung up on me.

The room shared a door with another classroom.  There was a friendly young white dude with a trim beard and a tie in there.  He was wearing a bright blue whistle around his neck.  He explained to me that he had was taking over for a retired teacher.  He was a brand new Special Education instructor, fresh out of UCLA.   His classroom looked fully prepped and organized.

"Well, here we go," he said with a confident smile.

I'll never forgot the horror that ensued that day.

These kids weren't stupid.  All of them came from the three housing projects that surrounded the campus.  They knew the drill.  There were no real grades or consequences.  Period after period I fought this endless battle against total chaos. I tried making up lessons and telling lies that I was there for a brand new teacher, but they called bullshit on me every time.  I couldn't get security to come, even when fistfights broke out.

By noon, I was ready to have a nervous breakdown.  It was then that I noticed the muffled sound of a  loud whistle being blown.  It was coming from the next room.  I went to the door we shared, opened it and peeked inside.  The nice young fellow with the trim beard was backed into a corner - his eyes as big as saucers.  Students were running around the room completely amok.  His whistle was no longer around his neck. A student was standing on top of his desk, blowing it as hard as he could.

I quietly shut the door.  My own troubles were getting worse.  The students in my class looked on the verge of a mass riot as well.  It was boredom more than anything.  I didn't have an assignment to give them and I couldn't fool them into buying into one I made up, so what could I do?  If only there was a "spell" that I could cast on them to engage them.

Suddenly, it hit me.  Why not tell them a story?  I was a professional writer, after all.  it was something I was good at.  I thought about it for a moment and realized that every kid I'd ever met liked a good scary campfire story.

I recalled how much the film The Exorcist scared the living crap out of me as a kid.  In fact, I  found the film to be so profoundly terrifying that it took me until I was 19 years old to actually watch it completely.  The story continued to fascinate me and I read a book about the real events that inspired the bestselling book and movie.

"Who wants to hear the true story behind The Exorcist?"  I asked.  Every hand in the class shot up.  I turned down the lights and proceeded to tell my tale.

"Once upon a time there was a boy about your age, his name was Danny.  Danny was a nice kid, but he liked to play with Oujia boards..."  

I went on to tell the whole story, complete with me imitating the voices of all the characters, including the devil.  I spun chairs around like disembodied ghosts, screamed "It burns!!!" when priest threw holy water on me.  I'm not trying to brag, but I did tell the story pretty damn well.

The kids screamed a few times when I spooked them, but were otherwise utterly spellbound and quiet the entire period.  They begged me for another story, but the bell rang.  That's when I discovered my secret weapon: storytelling.  That's also when I lost my former identity and became the entity known as "Mister Diablo."

As the weeks and months went on I expanded my spoken stories to include The Amityville Horror, Rosemary's Baby, Bloody Mary and a dozen or so original stories I made up.  The most popular one I created was called "Nancy Hernandez and The Black Widows."  The kids could relate to it: a sweet innocent school-girl, Nancy Hernandez, is bullied to death by an evil all-girl gang "The Black Widows" - but then her ghost comes back from the grave and starts getting revenge by killing off each gang girl one-by-one in twisted murders that go along with each gang girl's nickname.   I always implied to the students that the story took place at this very school where they were sitting right now.   This always got them freaked out.  Sometimes I got complaints from P.E. teachers that kids wouldn't come into the "haunted" locker room and change into their gym clothes, but I took these objections in stride - the important thing was my off beat technique was actually working. 

Because my stories were so popular, I could do what almost no other sub can pull off in the worse schools in the district:  I could get kids to actually settle down do their work.  I'd tell the students if they sat quietly and did their assignments, I'd reward them with a cool ghost story.   The attrition rate at that time for teachers  in  South LA was extremely high.  Uncovered classrooms were rampant on some campuses.   Every day I was offered long term assignments, some for entire semesters.  The worse the school - the more chronic the problem.  I took most of the longer ones when I could. 

Poor kids across the city sometimes went a whole year without a regular instructor, just a different sub every day.  If this wasn't a crime - it should have been.   I did everything within my power to stop the bleeding, even if it meant entertaining them with a tale of demonic possession.   I had to teach every subject... math, history, English, science, PE.   There were times I'd be lucky if I got any books to use for instruction at all.   In spite of not being a "regular" teacher, the students I taught passed their district and state exams.   I wrote up lesson plans and stayed up all night grading papers just like a full time teacher. 

I saw kids grow up and blossom before my eyes.  I saw too many kids fail and dropout.  I saw a few I know die, Gonzo, Erick, Manuel...  Schools can become gang factories if they fall apart. That's the real nightmare I fought against. 

I'm never thanked by the administration for covering the gaping holes in their faulty school management - in fact, most of the administration at these schools looked upon me with suspicion and contempt even though they depended on me everyday.  I think it had something to do with prejudice against horror or alternative teaching techniques. 

A pretty typical interaction with school administration would be my long running battle with Ms. Growl, the Vice Principal of a Middle School deep in the heart of South LA. She actually dragged me in front of the principal once and accused me of teaching "witchcraft."   The principal refused to write me up, however, since telling ghost stories isn't actually the same thing as casting black magic spells and he'd look like an idiot. 

Another time Ms. Growl confronted me in the school cafeteria and screamed at me in front of the whole staff.   Apparently she's caught two kids in the library printing out a tale I wrote about the chupacabra from my website.

"I caught them reading page after page of it!" She snarled. 

"Ok... So wait, you're mad because kids are reading in the library?"  I ask, trying to keep a straight face.  

"You think this is funny?!!"  She barked at me.  "There's no chupacabra!!    You're spreading lies and introducing students to violence and the supernatural!!" 

She went on and on about how she's going to have me banned from the district for good if she heard another student call me "Mister Diablo" again, blah, blah, blah....  I nodded along like I'm listening, but truly I didn't give a shit.  The real danger these kids faced wasn't being emotionally scarred from my spooky stories, but from real dangers like: gangs, drugs, poverty and broken families.

For that reason, I continued to tell ghost stories and the school continued to call me to sub - because they had too many empty classrooms and no one besides me who was both stupid enough to volunteer to teach in them and could actually get results.  Besides, if I were banned from this particular school, ten more would call me the next day.  There were too many kids and too few teachers in South LA - and that was where the real evil laid, not between the pages of my twisted imagination. 

               *************************************************

Back inside Castro's troubled classroom, I made a deal with the students; if they did their assignment, I'd tell them a story at the end of the period - but if they acted like a bunch of fools, I promised I'd send them to the office and make their lives miserable.  Every period finished their work with time to spare.   I told them the Nancy Hernandez and the Black Widows story.  I got right up to the good part where the last gang member "Shorty" faces off with the vengeful ghost when the bell rang.

"Sorry, I have to stop here.  Get your stuff - it's time to go."  The students groaned in unison and begged me to finish the story.  Maybe tomorrow I promised.  The once angry crowd of kids left, "dapping" me as they exit.

"You actually pretty cool,  Mister Diablo." said one of the toughest of kids as he sauntered by.  I smiled. 

I knew I'd be back the next day -  there was plenty of work for the devil around here... 

See and hear more random Diablo thoughts and artwork at www.diablocomics.com