A lot of the little kids in my town like to laugh and joke with each other about Mr. Poo Poo. Personally, I don't really think it's that funny. The kids don't really understand why the adults don't like them talking about it. They just know the name and that's it. I suppose that's the way it should be.

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They don't need to know the truth yet. They deserve to still have some goddamn innocence.

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This all happened several years ago. I was just starting my career as a teacher back around the time. I was in my late twenties, in my second year at Cochrane Hills Elementary, and for all intents and purposes was doing pretty well.

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I never really spoke to the guy who came to be known as Mr. Poo Poo, but I had seen him around. His name was Ronald French and he was the school janitor. French wasn't a lot younger than I was, but just looking at the guy it was clear that he was one miserable sonofabitch. He was always unkempt and sweaty. He had a pretty heavyset build and a large round head with a face that seemed too small for it. I don't think I ever actually saw him smile. Not once.

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Now, dealing with kids can be pretty rough, especially young kids. Most of them are pretty well behaved. But every now and then you'll get one who's a real fucking asshole and at the time, the one in my grade was Daniel Lord.

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Danny (as we called him) was the kid we had to talk around when the other kids could see us, because if we got caught calling him a little asshole in public, then we'd probably have to go to the principal's office ourselves. Thankfully, Danny wasn’t in my class. But by God, I felt for the poor teacher who did have to put up with him all day… He was eight years old and was his Mommy and Daddy's perfect little angel who could do no wrong and always got whatever he wanted… Which meant that he came to school expecting the same golden treatment and when he didn't get it, he'd act out. He'd hit other kids, throw screaming tantrums when he didn't get his way and at one point, he told his parents that another teacher had hit him. Now, we had witnesses confirming otherwise. But it was a shitshow nonetheless.

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Naturally, Danny was also a little bit of a bully. Not just toward the other kids. This little bastard had an ego, and he picked on whoever he thought wouldn’t stand up to him. That included Ronald French.

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French usually ignored the kids when they were being rambunctious, avoiding them when he could and resentfully cleaning up the mess when he could. And I guess that Danny saw his quiet demeanor as some form of weakness, and decided that the man was fair game. So whenever he got the chance he’d go out of his way to antagonist the poor man. If he saw him cleaning in the hall, he’d throw things at him. If he saw him mopping, he’d dump something on the freshly cleaned floor. He liked to spit on the floor whenever he saw him, and a couple of times French had spoken to the teachers about incidents where Danny had started pissing on the bathroom floor, or leaving other disgusting messes in the bathroom, just because he knew French would have to clean it up.

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Now, obviously, we called home. We sent letters home. We sent Danny to the principal's office. Danny’s teacher and the principal even had a sit down meeting with the kids parents to try and address his behavioral problems! But they were good and adamant that their little angel could never behave so horribly. It had to be some other, rambunctious bastard child because according to them, when they asked Danny about all the shitty things he’d done, he swore up and down that it wasn’t him. Eight year olds can’t lie, right?

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I suppose I should make it clear right now, that while I do partially blame Danny for all that he did. I blame his parents even more. They had every chance to discipline this kind of behavior. They could’ve raised their kid right. They chose not to. I don’t think their horrible parenting justifies everything that would eventually happen… Not by a long shot. But they let their kid turn into a goddamn psychopath and despite our best efforts to correct that kind of behavior, nothing was ever really done and Danny continued to be a little shit…

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It was mid September and we were comfortably back in the swing of the school year when the Poo Incident happened. Danny had just entered 4th grade and was back to his same old games. Now - I don’t know exactly how it all went down. I only heard everything through secondhand sources, but I’ve heard enough to get a general idea about what happened.

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French had been doing his rounds and was in the middle of cleaning the bathrooms just before recess. He’d walked in and was immediately greeted by the disgusting sight of little Danny Lord taking a shit in the sink… Because of course he was.

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Now, French wasn’t exactly the poster child of patience, but I’ve got to admit that I really don’t blame him for getting angry. I mean… Come on… That’s just disgusting. According to the way French told it, Danny had this giant (pardon my expression) shit eating grin on his face. He probably assumed that he’d finish his disgusting business and run along scot free just as he always did, leaving French to clean up the most disgusting mess possible. But French wasn’t having it that day. The man put his foot down!

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He went off on Danny, screaming at the kid over what he’d just done, calling him out on the past few years of vile, disgusting behavior, and refusing to let the kid leave. French had demanded that Danny clean up his own mess.

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Danny wasn’t too happy about French finally standing up to him. And as expected, he didn’t take it very well. He’d gotten as far as removing the poo from the sink… Before deciding that the best way to deal with this situation, would be to double down on just how ridiculously vile it all was, and hurl the entire turd right at Ronald French.

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Yeah.

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That went over about as well as expected.

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I can very clearly remember the way French screamed at Danny as he chased him out of the bathroom, swearing at him and saying things like:

“GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SONOFABITCH!”

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I remember seeing Danny Lord, sprinting down the hall at top speed, laughing like a goddamn madman, with French jogging slowly after him, red in the face and panting heavily. Had he actually caught Danny, I would not have been surprised if he would have actually killed him right then and there.

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The Principal got involved before the situation could escalate further, and from there it took a few weeks to get the whole circus somewhat resolved. French was damn lucky that he didn’t get fired for what happened. He hadn’t ever actually laid a hand on Danny, which was probably what saved him. But he got chewed out hard, for the way he’d yelled at him.

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As for Danny himself. He got two weeks suspension, and there was a whole fight with his parents over why that was necessary. According to Danny, he’d been minding his own business when suddenly, our janitor (who was inexplicably covered in shit) charged at him, screaming like a lunatic and his parents were happy to stick with that version of the story. They demanded that French be fired for attacking their precious angel. The Principals retort to that was basically: “Your child threw his own shit at the man, after being rightfully chastized, for behaving in a way that was nothing short of abhorrent. We’re not firing a man for getting angry after a child threw their own shit at him.”

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As a precaution against this sort of thing happening again - Every child was then assigned a Bathroom Buddy, the idea there being that if we put children like Danny with a child who was more inclined not to behave like a vile sociopath, that might prevent another incident from happening. To its credit, I guess it sort of worked, since we’ve never had anything quite that bad happen since.

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Just gonna… Get myself a drink before I continue really quick. Retelling all of this has kinda made me nauseous. I mean, I like working with kids but… Jeez… With every career, there are days where you regret all of your life choices. And that day… Hell, the memory of that day, definitely makes me rethink having become a teacher…Feel free to get yourself a drink too… Stand up. Take a deep breath. Just like, take a moment.

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Because this story gets much, much worse.

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Danny was predictably the one who started calling French, ‘Mr. Poo Poo.’ Well, he actually called French a lot of names, generally referring to The Poo Incident. But Mr. Poo Poo was the one that stuck. Now, I guess that’s the exact sort of name an eight year old would make up. I mean, if you’ve ever met an eight year old boy, you’ll know they’re kinda gross and love that sort of scatological humor. Most people would just ignore it and wait for it all to die down.

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But, unfortunately, French’s new nickname caught on among a lot of the students, who just had a goddamn blast with his new name.

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Nobody ever called him: ‘Mr. French’ anymore, it was always, ‘Mr. Poo Poo’, and you could just tell that it was getting to him.

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On top of that, the kids had gotten more abusive too. It wasn’t all of them, of course. But a lot of the troublemakers had decided that since Danny could get away with harassing French, they could get away with it too. They’d throw things at him while he was working, some of them would just keep yelling: “MR.POO POO!” at him until he finally got mad.

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He even started complaining that people were calling him that outside of the school, and that some of the local high schoolers had spray painted it on the garage of his parents house, where he lived. Within the month, Ronald French had handed in his resignation. We put out a call to hire a new janitor and we all figured that would be the end of it.

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Christ… I wish it had been the end of it…

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As far as I know, nobody really spoke to French in the weeks leading up to Halloween. I think I might’ve seen him at the grocery store once, but I never bothered to say hello or anything like that. Seemed to me like he was keeping to himself, probably taking a break after all the abuse he’d gotten from those kids, and at the time I would’ve said I couldn’t blame him for it.

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When Halloween finally rolled around, Ronald French was the last thing on anyone's mind. Everyone was more focused on their own affairs.

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On the big night, I stayed home, put on the same cursed puppet costume I’d had from last year, and handed out candy to the kids. I remember seeing a lot of my students at my door that night, dressed in all sorts of fun, ghoulish little costumes. I made sure to compliment all of them. I was even friendly to Danny Lord when he showed up at my door, dressed in a disturbingly gory zombie costume, although I remember that when I handed the little bastard his candy, he just perused it with a look of disappointment on his face, then looked at me as if I’d somehow personally offended him. Even with his parents standing right behind him, I wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t going to just throw the candy right back in my face.

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That aside though, it seemed like a pretty good Halloween and at the end of the night, when I ran out of candy (in no small part thanks to my own snacking) and took down some of the more fragile decorations, I remember feeling pretty content.

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I went to bed to get up in time for work the next day and was excited to hear about just how much fun the kids all had. I’d had 24 kids in my class that year.

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Of those 24, 6 called in sick the day after Halloween, and it wasn’t just my class…

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The way I heard it, the emergency room of our little town was jam packed. During the night, approximately 37 people, most of them children, had been rushed to the hospital. The symptoms they displayed were just about all the same. Convulsions, vomiting up blood, and seizures.

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By the time school started that day… Several of the children who’d once been in our classes were already dead. And that number would just keep climbing over the next several days as more and more children succumbed to whatever it was that had taken hold of them.

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The Police were out in force, obviously. They’d figured out pretty quickly that someone must have put something in the candy they’d been giving out, but considering the fact that most of the kids who’d been affected had visited God only knows how many houses, it was anyone's guess as to who’d done it.

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I recall hearing about them interviewing the parents, and then after a few days, they started interviewing the people whos houses they’d visited. They’d asked me if I still had any samples of the candy I’d given the kids, they asked for receipts, the whole nine yards.

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Within the week, they’d managed to narrow down the list of suspects to one.

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Ronald French.

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Apparently, on Halloween, on top of the regular candy he’d given out, French had also handed out some treats that he’d made himself. Bags of little chocolate covered marshmallows, covered in colorful sprinkles.

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As soon as the police had pieced it together, they obviously put out a warrant for French’s arrest. They’d searched his house, but found no trace of him. What they did find were the corpses of his parents in their bedroom. They’d been killed by the same poison French had used on the children.

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A lot of the parents called out for justice, obviously. I mean, can you really blame them? The death toll was rising a little more every day. In the several days it had taken them to determine French was the most likely suspect, 8 of the children he’d poisoned were dead… And it was beyond clear that several more of them would never fully recover.

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The police did what they could but French was long gone. They’d determined that he’d left town on Halloween night and was probably out of state. They kept looking, obviously. But as one week turned to two, two turned to four and the next calendar year quietly crept closer, people started to slowly give up hope.

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Funnily enough, Danny Lord’s parents were quiet through all this. Danny himself hadn’t been one of the victims. His parents had thrown out the marshmallows, claiming that the packaging hadn’t looked properly sealed, or something like that. Whatever the reason… They spared Danny the same fate that befell a lot of his classmates.

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And I don’t think that was lost on the kid.

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As the week after Halloween dragged on, the death toll rose from 8 to 12, I remember noticing that Danny was a hell of a lot quieter than he’d ever been before. He had this sort of look in his eyes… A faraway, slightly shellshocked look that was hard to really describe. Danny wasn’t as much of a troublemaker after that day. He wasn’t a perfect student, but he was nothing like he’d been before Halloween. And that faraway, shellshocked look in his eyes never seemed to fade. Even as years went by, it was still there. A silent, knowing horror.

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As much of a pain in the ass as the kid had been… I wouldn’t have wished this on him. For all the crap he’d pulled, at the end of the day he was always still just a kid. He was eight, for Christ's sake. He needed to grow up, not to end up living through the aftermath of some psychopath's fucked up revenge scheme.

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Danny was in my class the next year, and I remember that he never really seemed to talk much. He avoided the kids who had been poisoned like the plague, and though I never heard or saw anything, I got the impression that they wanted nothing to do with him.

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I didn’t keep that close of an eye on Danny as he grew up, but I saw enough. I knew he didn’t have a lot of friends in high school and I knew he’d never gone to college. The first time I spoke to him after he left my school was about 15 years after the Halloween Incident.

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I’d run into him at a bar, where he was sitting alone, drowning his sorrows. He’d actually recognized me and said hello. I figured I had some time to chat, and I sat down beside the kid and we talked for a little while. At 22, he’d already fallen pretty hard into the bottle. He still had that shellshocked, faraway look in his eye. In fact… I’d say he looked more like a corpse than a man. I could see scars on his wrists, just barely hidden by his sleeves.

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I remember that he asked me if I remembered Ron French. I told him I had, and he’d asked me:

“Do you think he was always crazy?”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“What he did… Back on Halloween… Was he always like that or was it…” He’d trailed off, but I got the gist of what he was saying.

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“I remember… When I was at his house that year. When he was handing out the marshmallows. I recognized him… I remember… I remember I’d said… ‘Hello Mr. Poo Poo…’” Danny said that name with such disgust in his voice. Not for the man, but for the name.

“And he’d smiled at me. I remember thinking it was a normal smile, like… A really, really happy smile… I don’t ever remember him smiling like that before, and he’d said: ‘That costume’s a good look on you.’ Then he’d given me the candy… You remember that costume, right? I was a zombie.”

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“Yeah. I remember.” I said, before taking a sip of my drink. I sighed then thought for a moment. I tried to envision French smiling, but the mental image just wouldn’t appear in my head.

“I think French was… He was a sick man.” I said, “You were a bratty fucking kid but… Well. You were still just a kid. He was a grown ass man and he made a choice.”

“Was being a kid really an excuse?” Danny asked, looking at me with those dead eyes of his.

I didn’t have an answer to that.

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The kids still talk about Mr. Poo Poo to this day, but over the years they’ve started speaking of him with the same quiet fascination that children seem to feel when they speak about other urban legends. Those who understood what had happened, or were lucky enough to survive the poisonings used to say the name with a quiet fear, but the newer kids have lost that. It’s not real to them. It’s a silly name with a silly spooky store attached to it. But to those of us who remember it, to those of us who had to live through it, or continue to live with it, it holds the same terrible weight that it’s always had.

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There is no happy ending to this story. There’s no satisfying resolution I can give you. Ronald French didn’t meet some ironic fate after he fled the state. As far as I can tell, nobody really knows what happened to him. About six months after the poisoning, a man who matched his description was killed in a car accident, when a semi T-Boned him. They never managed to positively ID the body, but a lot of people are pretty sure it was him… Pretty sure… Not that it’s much of a comfort for those who lost their children, but I hope it was him.

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As for Danny Lord… I still see him around sometimes. I hear he bounces from job to job, but other than that there’s very little to be said about him. I don’t doubt that he blames himself for what happened that day and that some people in town blame him too. Me? Well, I’ve already given my thoughts on the subject.

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Sometimes, the world is just a miserable place.