The English Teacher (Also, the Insta-Thot Model)

Tessa O’Connor-Peters

An elderly woman, with 2 canvas tote bags full of essays, shuffles into a small, dark apartment. The decor is spartan. She drops the bags onto her coffee table. She will spend the majority of her time over the weekend grading term papers. But, for now, she wants to get comfortable. It’s been a long day.

She thinks about how tired she is as she changes into some sweats. Every year, she gets a little more exhausted dealing with the horde of middle school kids. Their constant bombardment of hormones, their flaring emotions, their squabbles. She still has a couple more years until she can retire and she can’t wait. It doesn’t help that she has her side-gig to worry about.

Returning to the kitchen, she starts a tea kettle on the boil, in preparation of brewing an herbal blend of lemon and wintergreen. The elderly woman has a lot to do for her side-gig tonight, but still needs to be able to sleep afterwards. While the kettle boils, the woman throws a subscription meal into her microwave.

Soon enough, she is sitting at her dining room table, a mug of tea steaming and a microwave meal ready to eat. The woman goes through her bills as she shovels food in her mouth. The latest private investigator is expensive, especially since he found nothing new. Her brother disappeared without a trace 20 years ago. She’s determined to find him.

The woman sighs and forwards the money to the P.I., determined to find a better one. She thereupon sets to work on her side-gig, the thing she started so long ago as a fun way to pay for college and has turned into a necessary way to pay for investigations. She logs into Insta-Thot, checks messages, and starts her photoshop work. A sponsor wants “her” to model their new fashion line. She takes photos from before her brother was kidnapped and quality images she took of the new clothes and runs them through the AI art generator system she uses. AI certainly made her life easier. Before these tools came out, she would meticulously need to shape and warp the clothes unto those old photos, then tweak the backgrounds to make them look “new”. Now, the computer does all of that for her. She still needs to photoshop the results, removing weird artifacts and the like, but the work is easier. She’ll need to finish the “shoot” tonight to have it ready to go live in the morning.

She works until she can’t keep her eyes open anymore. She falls asleep in her office computer chair.

The Broadcast (Tessa’s Apartment Office Space)

The elderly woman rouses at 2 AM, stiff in her chair, to an Insta-Thot friend request notification. The woman has her notification settings such that regular user requests are handled automatically. Only influencer accounts of a certain size get the personal touch.

The account in question confuses her. The subscriber count looks way below her notification threshold. And the content is downright... pornographic. A buxom blonde in a strangely sensational bunny-girl cosplay getup, doing a combination of stage magic acts with everything exposed, general tomfoolery, and sex with equally fantastic animal-girl cosplayers. The woman can’t see how the blonde keeps those ears pinned. The animatronics of those ears are certainly impressive, the woman is **** to admit.

The woman opens the message, to see what this Tina, Titan of Trickery wishes to say. A single line, one that causes the blood of the elderly woman to boil: “I know where your sibling is, cutie.”

She almost breaks her mouse opening a private message with this Tina character. She types out: “Who are you?”

The ellipses pop up almost immediately, as if this Tina was expecting her. The message sent only further angers the woman: “Well, cutie, I’m Tina, Titan of Trickery! I’m one of your sibling’s wives. Wanna come over for some tea?”

Typing furiously, the woman responds: “How DARE you! Mocking me with the loss of my brother. He is too respectable to marry a tart like you!”

The woman moves to close the private message thread and block this Tina, only to see the ellipses pop up again. The blonde sent a picture this time. The man in the picture looks old, but still Francis. He looks happy, for once in his life. And that blonde bunny is kissing him on the cheek. From her many, many years working with photoshop, she can tell the photo is authentic. The woman stares at it for a while. It hurts to see it. Francis, happy with this skank? It doesn’t make sense...

More typing, though this message is a little more hopeful: “If you really know him, I want to talk to him. Now. My number hasn’t changed. Have him call me.”

The response is frustrating: “Unfortunately, cutie, your sibling is a little busy right now. If you’d like, I can send a ride for you in the morning. You can talk in person then. Would you like that?”

After all these years, all that searching, all that money, Francis finds himself? One final message: “I expect to be taken directly to him in the morning.”

The woman closes her web browser. Shuts down her computer. Then, finally, she goes to bed, hoping against hope that this Tina skank is telling the truth.

Tessa

Tessa finds herself in a castle hallway instead of her room. The throne room on the other end of the open doors is disturbing. Ms. Cummings, a mediocre student she had her first year teaching in Tacoma, is sitting on a throne. Ms. Fletcher and Mr. McCallister, two students from Ms. Cummings year, along with a woman in a prisoner’s jumpsuit, stand to one side. On the other, a strange blue woman with an incredibly familiar face and that skank.

Tessa walks over to give that skank a piece of her mind, “Where is my brother, you harlot?!?!?!?!?”

The blue woman wraps Tessa in a hug. Tessa struggles against it. The woman whispers, a voice melodic and full of emotion, “Sis, I know this doesn’t make sense right now, but it’s me. We’ll talk later, but, for now, I got a job to do.” When she lets go, Tessa steps away, looking into this strange woman’s face more intently. Why does this woman have Francis’s face?

Ms. Cummings stammers, “Wait, Ms. O’Connor-Peters is SassyTessaOfficial? Really? That makes zero sense, Tyalangan.”

Tessa blushes, her face turning as red as her hair used to be, “Ms. Cummings, why are you on Insta-Thot? It is not healthy for young people.”

The prisoner exclaims, “Hah! You really subscribe to this old bitty’s Insta-Thot account? What kind of freak are you, girl?” Then, a moment later, flips off the blue woman.

Gaia: -1 XP (Insulting the Mistress)

Ms. Cummings gets a little defensive, “Hey, I follow a lot of Insta-Thot influencers. They are inspirational. For instance, I just started following a weird fantasy fitness influencer to help encourage me to maybe join a gym. Who was it again? Wulf Den Life?”

The skank perks up, “Ooooh, Mona’s following our wolf-girlfriend, Tyalangan! Neat!”

The woman who claims to be Tessa’s brother nods, and Ms. Cummings exclaims, “Ooooh, THAT’S where I recognize you. You’re one of the Insta-Thot girls that show up on Wulf Den Life’s recommendations. I looked into you, but decided that the good posts were too expensive. Is that Josie’s abs that yummy in real life?”

The bunny-skank giggles as the woman who claims to be Tessa’s brother shakes her head. The skank declares, “Oh, they are even yummier. Right, Tyalangan?”

“Right, my bonny bunny. Still, we have an itinerary to complete. Tessa, care to introduce yourself to the audience?”

“I am here to return my brother home, not deal with whatever nonsense Ms. Cummings has gotten herself into. So, if you would put this on hold so I can get whatever explanation as to how a blue skinned woman has my brother’s exact face, I’ll be on my way.”

The woman’s voice bores itself into Tessa’s mind, “It’s not that simple, sister. Your world is on the verge of calamity. I used the power of the show to save you by making you a contestant. I know Mona wasn’t your favorite student, but she’s a good kid that needs some guidance. So, please, sis, play along with the game. You’ll need to, if you want to have a world to return to.”

Tessa thinks hard, “Can you hear me, Francis?”

The woman replies in Tessa’s mind again, “It’s Tyalangan now, but yes.”

Tessa replies in her mind, “What happened?”

The woman mentally answers, “Again, sis, it’s a story too long for right now. In short, I was in Ms. Cummings’s situation about a century ago, by my perspective, or about 20 years by yours. We’ll talk when there is time. For now, the show needs to continue. So, introduce yourself before I need to **** you to.”

Tessa’s heart aches. The woman’s words convey a lot of pain. The questions come, the nature of which are mildly disturbing. Interestingly, they included asking about Tessa’s measurements from her prime, not now. Tessa answers aloud, “My name is Tessa O’Connor-Peters and I am a middle school English teacher. Ms. Cummings was a student, as were Ms. Fletcher and Mr. McCallister over there. Apparently, Ms. Cummings is also a subscriber to my Insta-Thot account. I am currently 62 years old, which makes me exceedingly incapable of competing in a show of this nature, if I understand it correctly from these questions. I am a feminine preferring bisexual. It has been a couple of decades since I last was sexually active, as I have been devoting all of my free time between my two jobs in trying to find my long-lost brother. In my prime, my body measurements were 38F-30-36, but I’ve gained quite a bit around my waist since then. Is that sufficient?”

Ms. Cummings is raising her hand. Tessa nods, which prompts the question, “Uh, Ms. O’Connor-Peters, how did you run an Insta-Thot account? I mean, obviously you did because why else would you be here, but you aren’t exactly modeling material anymore.”

“Tactless, Ms. Cummings, but fair. I have an extensive collection of photos from back in my prime and they serve as a basis for an AI art model. For sponsored posts, the sponsor sends me appropriate images, or items that I use to make said images, and use them to run the model. I learned a lot of photoshop skills before AI art became a thing, and I use them to generate fresh images. It’s really quite simple. Half of the accounts on Insta-Thot are fake women. Mine was at least built off of me.”

The skank Tina declares, “And if you follow Tina, Titan of Trickery...” she pauses for a stinger before proceeding, “...you get 100% authentic real-life hot Tina action, cuties. So subscribe now!”

Tessa stands on the other side of the prisoner. She has much to consider. The woman who may, somehow, actually be her brother speaks again, “Tessa, our fourth contestant. Two left, perverts. Next, the closest thing our dear Mona had to an actual romantic relationship. Their fling lasted only one evening, but it was a magical one. Our penultimate contestant, the prom date, Andromeda Saloman.”

Ms. Saloman? Now there is a name I haven’t heard of in years. My best student that year. How is she going to handle being wrapped up in this?