Gemotions

He’d always been a strange boy. She’d tried her best, but the unsettling aura around young Thomas had never fully dissipated. Now, years later, a package arrived, addressed in a familiar, blocky scrawl. Inside, a taxidermied crow perched on a miniature replica of her classroom desk. Her stomach lurched.

A note was pinned to the crow’s wing. "To the teacher who always saw the potential." The words seemed to mock her, twisted and sinister. She backed away from the table, her breath catching in her throat, feeling the blood drain from her face.

Every hair on her body stood on end as the crow's beady eyes seemed to follow her movements. She reached for the phone, but the numbers swam before her. She slumped into a chair, the air thick with a sense of impending doom.