V.

I arrived late to class after spending several minutes looking for the girl with the faded magenta eye.

It seemed inconceivable that someone so close to me could have vanished without a trace like that. How and when did she disappear? It must have been the moment I gazed upon those faceless students, that fraction of a second which had opened an opportunity for her to slip away.

Rosalyne, you dolt, I told myself.

It was less the deftness of the escape and more my own carelessness. I had been so preoccupied with the source of the girl's apparent apprehensions that I had forgotten my own private fixation with her!

And now both objet petit a had vanished like apparitions.

When I entered Room 1999-7, my eyes shuffled to the back of the class. The girl was not there. I decided then that I would take her seat. It wasn’t strictly speaking hers, and there was no rule that I had to stick to my corner by the window. I had chosen the spot because with black mold ever encroaching on the borders of the room, I preferred easy access to fresh air.

The stackable chair consisted of a navy blue thermoplastic seat and back supported by four tubular steel legs. The desk and its black storage cubby stood separately on adjustable chrome supports.

These specifications could be found on every other desk in the classroom, but unlike the other desks, anyone who sat at this particular seat would have been drawn immediately to the desktop, where its laminated trapezoidal wooden face had been gashed by knife marks that carved messages, demands, threats, both familiar and new to me.

Presented henceforth were the carvings in approximate order of appearance, for each carving was layered on top of another like geological strata, with the most recent etchings on top and the oldest scrawls near indecipherable at the bottom:

We know how to send a message

Film club now

Come to film club now Natasha

We’re watching Apocalypse Anew again. Come.

Moving apartments doesn’t help

Come again today

Come to film club again today

We know where you live

You’ll end up like the rest at this rate.

Why are you ignoring us?

Please join us

Come join the film club, Natasha. We’re watching Apocalypse Anew

Hi Natasha Yu. Welcome to the Bergerac.

deskny

I looked to my left and right.

Professor Medea was in the middle of her lecture, something about constructing formal logic, if my intermittent eavesdropping was any proper indication. My fellow classmates occupied a broad spectrum of variable interest in class and not one of their hollow visages turned towards me as I discovered, as they undoubtedly had, that the girl with the faded magenta eye had been subjected to some sort of hazing ritual.

Did no one have anything to say?

I did.

This was unconscionable, unforgivable.

In the wake of my discovery, dark spots, spots which perhaps were always there, surfaced on the people’s necks and spread outward from the center of their concave indented heads like expelled pollen from flowers of evil.

I had discovered at that moment a new strain of black mold, of Stachybotrys chartarum, that thrived not in waterlogged buildings but on the epidermis of human beings drenched head to toe in the river of nihil.

Black mold climbed up the windows pasted along the drywall adjacent to the hallway. They crowded the glass as spectators and watched with glee as the air of the classroom grew thick with this new mutation.

The newborn spores rose to the ceiling. The panels turned black. The mold washed over the flickering lights; the classroom would have darkened were it not for the graybent sunshine from outside.

“Rosalyne?”

I registered but did not care about the voice. My focus remained pinned to the ceiling, where the fungal growth squirmed and twisted into the shape of a single black eye. Its eyelids came apart, and the light from fluorescent tubes beamed at me the gaze of a blinding white pupil.

It blinked.

And so did I.

“Rosalyne,” came the voice of Professor Medea.

When I reopened my eyes, the mold was gone. It had fled into the crevices above the ceiling. The black mold on the windows had also disappeared and was back to populating the far wall on the other side of the hallway.

Coincidentally, my fellow classmates were also missing. Perhaps they had been subsumed into the mold, consumed by it, or maybe they had been mold itself. I mean, what was the difference?

“Class is over now,” said the professor. “This is the third time you’ve fallen asleep since the start of the summer, Rosalyne.”

“I’m sorry,” I lied. I had, of course, been awake the whole time. “This desk…”

“Just because it’s in the back of the room, doesn’t mean I can’t tell you aren’t sleeping,” the professor replied. “Look, I know you’ve been seeing William a lot, recently.”

“William?”

“William Caraway? He’s…”

“Oh. Mr. Caraway,” I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been seeing him. He tells me he knows you.”

“It’s probably stressful for you, to see him and also participate in class.”

“Why would that be? He’s helping me with all sorts of things.”

“Yes, I suppose he is,” the professor sighed. “Look, Rosalyne. I know why you’re here. It’s been tough with everything that’s… going on, but I know you’re committed to doing this for your brother. I can help you, of course. I owe him that much. If you need anything…”

“How can you say that?” I glared at Professor Medea’s empty face.

How had she not been consumed by the same mold as the others, I wondered.

I pointed again at the desk.

“Do you know the girl who sits here?”

“That’s Natasha Yu’s usual seat,” the professor said. Her shoulder muscles froze. Her hands slipped into her pockets to hide the imminent sweat building in her palms. “She wasn’t in today, it seems.”

“And what’s this?” I gestured to the marks on the girl’s desk. “You recognize this don’t you?”

“I…”

“You’re willing to help me,” I scoffed. “I bet you saw my family name and instantly knew who I was. If you know Mr. Caraway, then you probably know what my parents are paying him right now. Let me guess, you want to offer me tutoring services? You want me to introduce you to my mom and dad. I’m troubled, not blind. The philosophy department is on its way out, or maybe the mycotoxins in the Bergerac will kill us all first. That wouldn’t be so bad. How would you formalize a logical function that results in our department’s self-extermination? But private tutorship among old money from the aristocracy still means something. You can teach me about the cave and the parable of the ship and make more than you ever did here.”

“Rosalyne, that’s enough!”

“Not yet,” I said, “because I haven’t made my point yet. I can tell that several different knives cut out these messages. This one was carved with a Swiss Army knife. This one is a paring knife. A group did this. Which group did it, Professor Medea? Don’t tell me. I think I already know, but why did you let them do it? You offer to help me, but you won’t stop this?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking–”

“What? Is she giving you trouble, professor?”

The owner of the yellow sundress walked into the classroom, followed by her other well clothed stooges. Professor Medea began to quiver. I scanned their waists. The girl with the denim shorts carried a pocket knife in plain sight.

“What are you doing here?” Professor Medea asked.

“I’m looking for Natasha, of course,” said the yellow sundress. “I see she’s not here. I see she’s been replaced by someone else. Maybe this is all Destiny’s intent.”

The yellow sundress approached me. Professor Medea fell away. She almost tripped on the chair behind her. The sundress swayed. I wondered which knife I would find beneath it.

“Come,” it said. “Come join the film club and watch Apocalypse Anew with us.”