#8

So there I was, alone in the union, staring at the shard of paper on the table before me.

Seven beautiful numbers started pointing at me, with a sort of slant that made me think this girl must see the world at an angle. Maybe she just really liked her fonts to be italics. Then I realized she just must have held the paper at a wacky angle and I was really over-analyzing the situation and needed to start breathing regularly again or I would go unconscious and collapse.

"Elly" was her name. I started committing it to memory because of my tendency to forget names and lose shots at more dates with the women to whom they belong.

"Elly...Elly...Elly..." I mouthed, staring at the paper and picturing her face. I must tell you, it was not an unpleasant thing, thinking of her.

Her hair was long, straight, bouncy, and black. I can not resist a women with long, straight, bouncy black hair. I don't know why, but they are most proficient at wrapping me around their little fingers.

Her eyes were green. No, wait, they were blue... oh, then I remembered! They were blue in the center and green as they went out towards the rest of her face.

Her lipstick was funny, I couldn't put my finger on it but I knew the colors were awesome to behold, and the shape of her lips themselves wasn''t bad, either.

Moving downward, her chest was... well, I think I better stop right there before I get myself in trouble. I'll just say it was impossible to confuse her with anything that isn't female, and then let you fill in the rest of her.

I put the slice of paper in my pocket, and patted them gently like they were my newest pet. I realized this was a bad idea, being as I tend to kill my pets. In fact, I tend to kill pets in general.

You don't believe me?

I've gone through four hamsters, two gerbils, 25 fish, a dog, a cat, a litter of kittens (I tried to give them all a bath when they were half a week old), eight toads, 2 turtles and a parakeet.

My dad once bought me a pet rock, so I could have something I couldn't kill. I took it out of the box

#7

Selena had abandoned me, and the hot sorority sisters were gone. My mind felt as if it were in a whirlwind, trying to grasp a thought, something to save me from this horrible fate.

The baby had winked at me, but not at her mother. Her mother was displeased, probably thinking I had been brainwashing her flesh and blood to hate her and thus she was getting ready to dispatch me from this life. I believed she very likely had a garrote in her purse at that very moment.

Selena squealed with joy at the sight of her mother and started reaching to her mother with unsteady arms that turned like corkscrews in the air. The kid decided to save me after all.

"Hey sweetie," Jenny said as the light came back into her face. "Alex didn't try to molest you or anything while I was away, did he?"

"Mam-ma," said the little angel, seeming to chew on her words as she said them. She cooed with contentment as Jenny pulled her close and rocked her to and fro. Katie looked ready to tear the baby from her mother at the slightest opportunity and run for the door. I had to get her mind onto something else.

"Hey Katie, how's the custodian job working out," I said, which, when asked of Katie, translates to "what is the most disgusting thing you've had to deal with today?".

"Oh, Alex, I've been wanting to tell you," she said, pretending to enjoy my inquiry. "Did you read the Fourum comment about Justin Hall?"

I acknowledged.

"I had to clean up the remains of a deer that some jackass gutted and cleaned in the bathroom," she said, pausing at the word "cleaned" to swallow a vomit-in-progress. "I swear it must have been a Chi Omega." She paused again, before naming the Greek letters.

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"I've just come to expect that sort of behavior from frat boys," she said.

"Chi Omega is a sorority," I said, growing more confused.

"Oh, I meant Alpha Chi Omega," she said, drawing out the "Alpha" for emphasis.

"They're a sorority, too," I said as I realized that while she may have had a traumatizing experience, she had no idea who she was trying to pin the blame on.

"Well, someone killed a deer and left its innards in there, and I had to clean it up," she said.

"Is this sudden blame game with Greek alphabet soup somehow related to Spring b---," I tried to ask. Katie grabbed my jaw, dug her fingernails into my lips and squeezed, ending the question.

"Not another word," she said, her voice bearing the warmth of a night under the stars in Antarctica.

If you must know, Katie had herself a one-night-stand with what she believes to have been a fraternity brother during Spring Break two years ago. She based this judgment off her partial memory of his shirt having "funny-looking letters on it." She later had a false-alarm of the late-visitor kind, and from that moment on has hated everything Greek in existence. She was even banned from the food court after decking one of the employees when he offered her a free sample of some falafel.

I have since maintained that he deserved it, as would you if you'd seen her send him flying through the salad bar sneeze guard. I have also made it a point to never, ever go near her with the scent of a pita on my breath.

Katie relaxed her grip and I checked for bleeding. We resumed conversation.

"I figured someone had done something nasty, but that's downright insane," I said. "However, I must admit it's much more creative than your average throw-feces-around-the-room character."

"Just give him a damned medal, why don' cha?" she said as she grabbed her bag and stood up. She leaned over to Jenny and the baby, who had been shielded from the previous, disgusting conversation by their envelopment in one another.

"Goodbye Selena, my swee..." she said, but couldn't get the second syllable of "sweetie" out before the child erupted in howls of terror as tears streamed down her face, her normal reaction to Katie getting too close for comfort whilst not in a good mood. "Aw, screw it."

Jenny looked at me. I looked at Jenny. Selena calmed down, then got that funny look babies get from time to time.

"Oh how I look forward to the day you've finished potty training," she said as she stood up, big me farewell, and made her way to bathroom she'd just left.

#6

There is this girl that that totally mystifies me, and at the same time, terrifies me. She has these eyes that look straight through you, as if her gaze is piercing through your soul, and this devious little grin that sucks your will from your body.

Her name is Selena, and don't think you can resist this munchkin's charm.

I took my seat, and Katie was so focused on the kid that she didn't notice me. I imagine Jenny had existed to her only as an arm that was holding Selena.

We tossed small talk, then Jenny asked a dangerous question.

"Could you hold her for a few minutes while Katie and I go to the restroom?" she said. "We both really have to go."

Katie's brow furrowed with confusion, then her eyes focused on me as she acknowledged my presence for the first time and became intense pits of jealousy. She was terrible at holding babies. No matter how gentle she held them, even if she had a necklace of pacifiers, baby bottles, and teddy bears on her neck, small children hated physical contact with her.

I, however, got along with kids, Selena included, fairly well; plus, I needed a few minutes to think before Katie had a chance to interrogate me about anything Bat had said regarding her recently.

"Sure, I'll hold on to the little doll for ya," I replied, and assumed the position. You know the one, you lean in, extend your arms, and be ready to dive for the catch in case the little bugger manages to wiggle loose while being transferred. No one likes to see baby brains on the floor, after all.

Jenny and Katie got up, stretched, and took off for the hallway that led to the restrooms. They alternated at looking back every few steps, each one saying with her eyes that if that child was not in better condition than how they left her, they would both relish in tearing me to pieces upon their return.

I got the message, and cupped one arm behind Selena's back and head. She looked at me, grinned, and started manipulating her mouth as though she were chew a piece of licorice.

"Ahh... Ahhhll... Ahhhlk," she paused and looked at me for recognition.

"Alex?" I replied. Her smile broadened. Mine felt like it reached back, below, and behind my ears. Selena knew "mama" and "dada," and now she was trying my name. I could've cried.

"Very good, there, that was very, very good," I said, hoping she'd do it again so I'd know I wasn't imagining it.

"Alleechhh.. aaall...aaaaccccccchhhooo!" She sneezed in my eyes. A baby sneeze, where the head mostly stays still because they still aren't that flexible and the sneeze just seems to pop out of them. You know, it's like a wave starts at their fingers and toes and pushes all the way to their face, their eyes close, and WOOOOOOOOSH!!!!

My eyes stung bad enough to make me think I'd dipped my face in acid. Who knows what Jenny'd been feeding her?

I took one arm and rubbed it in my face, and once I had my vision back I focused them on her again. Selena was proud of herself, she was giggling at me. She knew how cute she was, and that made her dangerous.

"Umm, excuse me sir?" said the sorority sister at the next table, (you can always spot them by the whites of their Greek-lettered T-Shirts). "My friend here wanted to know if that's your daughter."

Her friend, likewise in Greek garb, wrinkled her face in anger for being the scapegoat of her friend's curiosity. Either that, or she was embarrassed from being outed as a person who was interested in me. It's like the scarlet letter, I tell yah.

"No, this little angel belongs to my friend," I answered. "She needed to take a break so I'm caring for her for the time being."

A tiny light popped on in the back of sorority girl #2's head, reflected off her inner ear, filtered through her cerebrum, and refracted through her left eye. She liked that answer. I liked her eyes. She let a little smile shine through the middle of her mouth. I curled the corners of my lips up, nodded and remembering my duties I returned my attention to Selena.

WOOOOOOOOSH!!!! went Salina's sneeze. I had forgotten the other characteristic of baby sneezes, that they come in groups, and I would pay dearly.

I gasped for breath, my mouth wide open so not to suck in baby drool. Big mistake.

WOOOOOOOOSH!!!! WOOOOOOOOSH!!!! she went again. I wasn't holding a baby, I had a geyser in my arms.

Sorority chicks 1 and 2 were clutching to their chairs as they nearly laughed themselves to the floor when I finally wiped my eyes out enough to see. The kept on for a few minutes.

I thought my chances were through when #2 got up, still snickering, wrote something down on a piece of paper, and walked my way.

"Here," she said as she laid it on the table, the seven digits beaming with triumph. "My phone number, you earned it."

I barely managed to mumble a "hello" and "my name's Alex" before she turned to go. She snorted while walking back to her table, and she and her friend both grabbed their sides and book bags and giggled on their way out.

I looked back at Selena, my eyes ready to slam shut at any instance. She had a grin on her face that seemed rather sly, and then she winked her left eye at me.

"Did she just wink at you?" demanded the Katie from behind me, who apparently had gained the ability to appear out of thin air whilst between dance practice and trying to get her political science degree. I should note that judging from the tone of her voice, she was so full of envy the entire nation of Ireland was completely put to shame by the shades of green her skin took on.

"Um, I think so," I answered, suddenly afraid that I might have broken the child.

"She never winks at me," Katie moaned.

"She never winks at me, either," said Jenny, her voice eminating from Katie's left.

I had two women, both likely under the influence of hormones, jealous of me. My life expectancy was dropping faster and faster as I looked to Selena for help.

Her eyes read "Hey, you're on your own now."

#5

Several desires milled about in my mind.

The first was to gouge out my eyes so that I wouldn't have to look at Bat's face, oozing with the sheepishness of a man who'd just realized he was a serial killer.

The others were along those lines, but much meaner. Too mean to type out.

"Bat, that's my friend you are talking about," I squeaked at first, then found some of that anger and put it through my vocal cords. "And now I have a mental image that inspires thoughts of nothing but suicide."

"Oh, come on Alex. Like you've never wanted to tap that..." he whined; I had to stop him once again.

"Stop. First of all, don't defend yourself with overused rap lyrics. You are from rural Kansas, you do not relate to Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Nas, or any other person in that branch of the recording industry.

"Second," I was on fire, and the kids at the surrounding tables were leaning in to hear while pretending not to notice.

"Katie and I have a platonic relationship based on trust, do not speak of her in that fashion. Hell, don't use those words about any friend of mine around me."

All the while, Bat kept trying to speak but was overrun like a turtle under a steamroller by my barrage of angry sputtering.

"Third, while most girls who say they intend to wait until marriage to fuck someone ultimately become liars, Katie is hell-bent on her chastity plans. I've seen guys limp out of bars after she put a stun gun to their genitals because they dared to hit on her, and this was before she started this relationship with you."

I paused and glared, my bloodshot eyes looking straight through Bat at CNN on the big screen behind him. The NASDAQ was up 20 points, at least there was some good news.

"And above all, you're telling me you did this on the day we promised to toast Reg?"

He didn't answer, I suppose I had finally beaten down so many of his attempts to speak that he had given up.

"Well, did I miss anything?" I demanded.

"No, you pretty much summed it up there," he sighed. "But I know you've always been jealous that I have Katie and you have, well, nothing."

"That is not only a steaming pile of bullshit, but beyond the point," I screamed quietly. Bat had somehow put me on the defense. "I already told you my relationship with Katie is entirely platon..."

"Hey, I'm not the dude who keeps befriending girls in hopes they'll screw him out of boredom," he said, coming in for the kill. "I mean, hasn't life taught you that women never date guys for being nice, they date them for image?"

I just sat there dumbfounded, the patrons at the surrounding tables no longer concealing their interest but looking directly at us. My intent was to demolish Bat with guilt, but he was cutting me to ribbons with this.

"Here's what you are, Alex," he said while I tried to bring this to a halt, but he washed right over me. "You are a man who is always there for the women in your life, you listen to their thoughts and problems and hopes and dreams, you care about what they say and how they feel, and you treat them with respect. Am I right?"

His scowl had become a look of triumph. I couldn't deny this, and I wouldn't dare confirm it, so I just kept on looking at him. Then he threw a gauntlet across my face.

"Shit, Alex, you might as well be gay, you might as well be Katie's gay friend," he crowed.

I found my mental footing.

"Where the fuck does this come from, Bat? Where? What the hell makes you so special compared to me?" I was re-engaging the target. "And what the hell did you do to make Katie... make her... no, wait, I really don't ever want to know."

He wrinkled his face like he'd been stung in the cheek half an hour before by a bee.

"I'm just defending myself, Alex, that's all," he said, rediscovering his smirk. "As for Katie? I took her ring shopping after lunch cuz we ate at the mall. I took down a bunch of notes, stressed her ring size, and then I went to her apartment for the studying and," he paused to judge if I wanted hear any more, "well, you can figure out the rest."

"So when's the wedding?" I inquired. His pause had given me time to plan my next offense, and his smirk was gone.

"Well, at the time, I really meant that I wanted to marry her," he hemmed and hawed his way through that, and I cut him off.

"But what?" I demanded, not liking where this was headed. "Is she your future wife, or a wind-up sex toy?"

"I'm not so sure now," he almost moaned. "I mean, yeah, we've been dating a year now, I thought we should talk about it, and she was so happy to see those rings so I just kept the momentum going from there."

"So you lied to get in her pants, Bat?" The phrase felt sour coming from me, but at least I had him cornered and the guilt I'd wanted all along poured out of his eyes. "Now, as for being nice, that just comes naturally to me, and it's all I have. We aren't all born with expensive cars, a famous family or greek letters on all our shirts like you. Some of us have to make do with what we got."

I stood and grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder, flinging a rooster tail of water out a few of the spectators our conversation had accumulated. I pushed through a few more of them and made my way out of the Union.

I didn't tell Bat goodbye. I didn't even look at him after I got up from the table.

I shuffled my feet down the stairs, and there was Katie, sitting at a table with our mutual friend Jenny. Jenny was holding her 8-month-old daughter Selena, and Katie had that look of parental-whimsy in her eyes, which were locked on the kid.

Jenny spotted me and waved me over. I wanted to avoid speaking with Katie very much at this particular moment and prayed for something less painful to occur; like maybe a dentist would appear and give me a root canal with a pipe cleaner.

Instead, I carried myself over for a conversation I expected be as dangerous as a matchbook salesman in a powder keg.

#4

It started in the middle of Bat's lips. He had been frowning, his eyes diverted from me as he let out a sigh, but I saw the very beginning of it.

The smile spread across his face like a cheap PowerPoint transition, and I realized immediately that he had been pulling my leg like a pinball machine plunger.

"For crying out loud, Alex, you are gullible," he sneered in triumph. "Hey, while I got you here, there's this oceanfront property I have in Arizona that I wanted to show you. We can take my private jet, or, if you prefer, my teleporter.

Not only had he fooled me, he'd scared me; and then he rubbed it in. I tried to brush it off with a joke.

"Funny you should call me a word that isn't even in the English language, Bat," I said. "'Gullible' isn't even in the dictionary, but here you are, an English major, using it."

I was just trying to joke around to save face, so imagine my surprise when he went ahead and reached into his bag for the dictionary he carries to some of his writing classes to thwart the efforts of his sadistically anal-retentant teachers.

"Oh yeah, Alex?" he accepted my challenge, licked his digits and thumbed through the pages. "Look what we have here."

"G"

"G-U"

"G-U-L-L, the bird," he continued with the same carnivorous grin, "which I will flip you in just a sec... oh here we are: G-U-L-L-I-B-L-E. Gullible, defined as 'easily deceived or duped...'"

"BUT I'm certain a picture of you would suffice there Bat," I interrupted. "You did, after all, have to look it up."

I wasn't sure which of us was more surprised that he fell for it.

"Alex, that's harsh," he moaned.

"Whatever," I figured I should ride this streak of luck as best I could. "So, where'd you go to get the radiator fixed in Council Grove?"

"This auto shop that was near the grade school; I called my dad and he told me they do great cooling system work," he answered, without even checking his own story. "I can vouch for that now, they saved me and Katie on a Sunday."

It was at that moment he realized I had caught him. His eyes went to the table, then back up to me, again with the unspoken apology.

I had just figured that if the Wildcat story was false, so was the tire. Bat was an thoroughly honest person most of the time, his lies are few but they are not far between. In fact, they tend to clump together for a nice little falsehood festival from time to time.

"You know why we were supposed to meet, Bat," I was ready to kill him with words again. "Yesterday marked five years since Reg..."

"I know, damn it, Alex," he busted into my sentence. "Look, I miss Reggie too, and I wanted to toast him and honor him and what he meant and keep our promise, but something came up. Besides, it wasn't that big of a deal."

I was going to mention Reggie earlier on, but I didn't have the nerve.

Reggie Fairchild, Bat, and I had been good friends our sophomore year of High School. We sat on the bench together in football, basketball, and played golf together even though our school didn't have a team for it.

One night that fall, we went together to see a school play about World War II. It centered around these three soldiers, one of whom dies at the end of the first act. In the second act, the two survivors run into each other exactly five years after the fateful battle that took their friend. They sit down, share a few beers and talk about their friend, themselves, their lives, and their futures. They toast all four.

The third act was a dull, poorly written pile of excrement. Well, at least the first ten minutes were, cause after that us three had walked out.

As crept out of that theater, Reggie started talking about how hard-hitting it was to see a part of this circle of friends be broken, and how inspiring it was to see it come back together like that. He was almost disturbed over it, but much to my regret I didn't pursue the reason.

The next day, Reggie played five games of Russian Roulette, with a final score of four and one. We know this because he either forgot to stop the tape after recording his last will, or wanted to let it be known that it took chance five shots at point-blank range to take him out.

His girlfriend had dumped him three days before for his older brother; he found out by catching them together in his bed. It turned out she had just used Reggie to make the guy jealous and come after her, which had been her plan all along. Reggie never told anyone out of shame, he just let it eat him hollow before he collapsed in on himself. He never even made a peep for help.

The tape was played in private to me, Bat, and his brother, the three people he said on the tape that he wanted to listen to it besides his parents. He forgave his brother, but not his ex-girlfriend. He told his family to give his clothes and anything else of his they didn't want to charity. And he asked me and Bat to remember the second act of that play.

Mercifully, his parents stopped the tape when he cocked his dad's old .357 Magnum revolver the first time.

Bat and I agreed to honor Reggie as he had asked, his brother joined the army and finally died fighting in Iraq after years of trying to pay in kind for his brother's demise.

"So, what was so great you missed out on toasting Reggie?" I said after a long, dull pause.

"Well, me and Katie went out for lunch yesterday," he droned on, seeming afraid of where the answer would take both of us, "then we went back to her place to study for a while and then, well, we got to, ah, um..."

I stopped him there. This was an answer I didn't want to have spelled out.

#3

I hadn't gone ten steps into the Union before Bat spotted me, and we made eye contact. I gave him a nod, he returned it, and we made our way towards each other while wading through the teeming masses of fellow students that were on their way to and from classes.

Bat's a good friend, not my best friend, but a good one still. His eyes looked a bit weary, poking out from under his blue "BASS Pro Shops" hat and his step was off; his boots kept walking but they seemed out of alignment, like he'd strained a few muscles in very recent history.

His girlfriend, Katie, was not there, as usual. Bat and Katie are a strange couple. I've known both of them for about a year now, and they have both acknowledged their relationship as a serious one, but I have never seen them together. Not once.

He was smiling. Not the giant "hello" one, mind you, that he normally beamed, but rather a diminished form that, when coupled with the softness in his eyes, poured out a powerful, sappy apology.

It was a good start. Bat was supposed to meet me the night before for a few beers in Aggieville, but didn't show. I wound up sitting alone in a bar for an hour, looking rather pathetic with my glass of Budweiser while happy couples, frat brothers, and the help gawked at me with pity, thinking some girl had tricked me into waiting for her there.

The waitress lost all chance of a tip when she reassured me there was "plenty of other fish in the sea."

We walked next to one another for a good twenty feet and were taking a seat in the food court before he said it.

"Hey, Alex, I'm sorry I didn't show last night," he said. "Katie and I were down at the lake in Council Grove yesterday and I got a flat. You know how that flint is."

Ah, yes, flint. I'm afraid this is going to require back-to-back lessons in Geography and Geology.

Think of the state of Kansas. If that's too hard or boring for you, think of a rectangle that is almost twice as wide as it is tall with the upper right hand corner nicked off.

Now, imagine a lopsided kite that's between the middle of the state and the eastern border and almost as tall as the whole thing, stopping just short of the northern border and reaching across the southern one into Oklahoma. This is the approximate shape of the area covered by the Flint Hills, and Manhattan is near the eastern corner of it.

The area is characterized by the presence of a very special rock called flint and the large, rolling hills that defy the stereotype of "flat Kansas." If you haven't realized why they call it the "Flint Hills" yet, well, there's no hope for you.

I learned during my semester of Geology lab that there is no scientific explanation available for the presence of flint, or chert as many uptight, self-righteous geologists call it, in the Flint Hills. Flint is made of silica, a volcanic mineral, but Kansas rock is mostly limestone, a sedimentary rock made up of dead sea creatures.

Or at least that's what the GTA said. You should never totally trust someone who gets paid that little.

Thus, there should be no flint in Kansas. Countless tires should not be falling apart every year because they should not be getting sliced to pieces by the sharp stuff, and countless tire shop owners should not be raking in barrels of cash from the sales of new tires that should not be replacing old ones.

But things still fell to the ground before Newton discovered gravity; the lack of a scientific explanation doesn't change reality. I thought this might mean we didn't really need scientists, but before I went too deep into that thought I realized Bat was still talking.

"... and we were pulling back onto the highway to come back to Manhattan and meet you when it went," he said, trying to assuage my anger. "The tire didn't even stay in one piece, it just flew apart before we could stop."

I inquired about the extra tire most cars carry in case this happens, and both his and Katie's cell phones, which I'd tried to reach on several occasions.

"As luck would have it, the spare was flat and both our phones were dead," he told me, "apparently we'd called each other earlier in the day and the two of us forgot to hang up. I had to collect on quite a few favors to get back to town by midnight. I'm really sorry we stood you up like that."

I wanted to curse him out. I wanted to abuse him with all the mean words I knew, to use a few of the things I know about his past to humiliate him, to drive his self-worth into the ground. I was going to rip him apart piece by piece with language... but something stopped me, much to my chagrin.

"It's all right, Bat," I said. "It could happen to anybody."

I pushed my anger down somewhere into my mind where it would not affect me, and the conversation moved on to lighter things.

"Have you heard the rumor about what they found in Justin Hall?" Bat inquired. I had never seen a more desperate attempt to change the subject.

He correctly guessed from my face that I hadn't the slightest sliver of an idea what he was asking about, and filled me in.

"There was a fourum comment in the paper about a mess in Justin hall..."

My eyes popped out of my face so hard they could have slapped Bat across his face as I remembered my pre-nap reading.

"Yeah!" I interrupted. "It was the very last one, sounded like someone went crazy with some TP or whatever."

"It wasn't toilet paper, Alex," he mused. "It's not even funny." The apology in Bat's eyes was gone, and unease took its place.

I stared at him for a beat. I was afraid to let this go any further, but I had to know.

"So what was it?"

"I don't know, but I've been hearing all kinds of rumors," Bat explained. "I don't know who to trust for information."

"Well, what do you believe?"

"Well, you know Willie, the mascot?"

To not know of Willie the Wildcat is an impossible thing if you are a K-Stater. The fur-headed jersey-wearing feline is the beloved leader of the University's fans at games and recruiting events. Local businesses have him in their advertisements, prospective students see him visit schools from time to time, and there are some who believe he even has his own harem of choice sorority sisters. It's only a theory.

"No, who is he?" I shot back. I couldn't keep all my frustration locked up, and he asked a dumb question.

"Well, they found his head stuffed in one of the toilets, or so I'm told." He sighed.

I mentally picked my jaw up off of the table and stared him in the eye for a few seconds.

"Wow, was it another school, or are they talking about an inside job?" I almost stuttered.

"No idea."

"Wait," I paused, and a terrifying thought entered my mind. "Are we talking about just the mascot head here, or did someone actually die?"

Bat looked down at his feet, he didn't want to have to spell out this answer.