Friday, October 16, 2009

Going to Honolulu next week!

Hey all,
It's been a while since I've made a real post. As you can see I've added three more chapters of my novel right below this. Feel free to read it and give me some feedback.
In other news, I'm going to Hawaii next week for the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Honolulu. I'll be there from Monday through Friday, and I know it's gonna be excellent. Especially given that my lab is paying for 90% of the cost of it. :)
Also, Brandi and I are about to have our first anniversary, next Friday. It's been going so well with her, I can't imagine it not lasting. :)
That's it for today!
Tyler

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 10

Wednesday was another early morning, so I was up at 6:30 again. This time the shower area wasn’t quite as packed… the line was only just extended outside the bathroom door. As I walked up, I noticed Holly right in front of me.
“Hi Emma. How’s it going?” she asked, clearly still not quite awake. She was wearing just her robe and shower shoes, and carrying her little basket of shower supplies, same as me.
“Oh, alright. Bio 100 again this morning. Good thing it’s only on Monday and Wednesday. I’d hate to be up this early on Fridays.”
“Lucky. My Friday morning will be just as early as this. Photography class involves us going out and catching scenes with morning dew and stuff like that, so they make it pretty early, but it’s only for an hour and then I have a break for an hour and a half before Philosophy.”
“Oh I guess that means we’re not in the same section. I have mine at ten with Anglo. You?”
“Eleven with Walters. She seems pretty cool, albeit a bit behind the times. She uses overhead transparencies instead of Powerpoint!”
“Sucks,” I said. “Anglo seems fine, nothing special.” The girl in front of Holly took a shower as two girls finished up and vacated. “Looks like you’re up.”
“Yep. See you later Emma.” She pulled off her robe as she was walking toward the shower area, giving me a bit too much of a peek at her ass. Ok, seriously, I thought to myself, I know they say that college girls all turn bi, but is it really supposed to happen to me during the first week? First Brenda, now Holly?
I took the next open shower and washed off quickly, hoping to finish up before Holly got done to avoid another awkward, naked conversation. I was in luck, as she was nowhere to be seen when I pulled back my curtain after toweling off. I headed back to my room, got dressed and such, and walked to class.
Dr. Docker’s lecture was a bit more interesting, as he went over the theory of evolution in detail. Our high school was, of course, required to teach evolution, but our Bio teacher was a Christian, and as such she had felt it necessary to also cover “Intelligent Design”, intentionally not telling us much about either theory. I had been forced to learn more about evolution myself by reading a few books on the subject.
Dr. Docker, however, started off the lecture by saying “If you are strongly opposed to the theory of evolution, then you have the option of leaving the class today. However, the material covered here WILL be on the midterm, and you will be responsible for it whether you believe in it or not.” When someone tried to protest, he suggested that if she had a problem with it, she could take it up with the head of the Biology department. She left the lecture hall, making a scene by stomping her feet like a five-year-old, and most of the class chuckled at her.
“I would like to point out, now that only reasonable people are left in the room, that evolutionary theory does not in any way preclude the existence of a higher power or even a creator of all life,” Dr. Docker said. “I myself attend church every Sunday and personally believe in God. If you would like to discuss more with me about the subject, I would be happy to meet with you during office hours. For now, let’s begin.”
The lecture was great, full of colorful images and short movies on the subject of evolution. I got the feeling that I would enjoy this class a lot more than high school biology. I made a note of Dr. Docker’s office hours when he showed them at the end of his talk, in case I wanted to ask him a question.
On my way out of the lecture hall, I recognized Tara, one of the twins from Magic 101, walking in front of me with a small group of friends. She saw me as she turned the corner and winked, then went back to chatting. I suppose that’s how we should deal with each other outside of class, I thought. We can’t make it seem like we’re a group.
Philosophy and Chem were sort of lame again, and both professors assigned a lot of reading for Friday. I went to the Student Center again for lunch and had a pretty decent veggie burger and fries. During the next hour and a half until my Seminar, I went to the library and sat in a cozy corner to start on the Chemistry reading. The material was familiar from high school Chem but much more in-depth than we had ever gone. I got lost a few times in the jargon that the book was using until I found the glossary at the end. I had only gotten three-quarters through the assigned reading before I had to go to seminar, so I vowed to myself to finish it that night.
Dr. Holden’s seminar for the day included scenes from the “Into the Future” series involving Doc Brown and his portrayal as a “mad scientist”. He went on to point out that there were real scientists who disliked the stereotype. “As for myself, however, I embrace my inner mad scientist,” he said with a chuckle. “You should see my office full of beakers and test tubes of all sizes.”
After class, I decided to take the long way back to Randall, as the sun was shining really nicely and I felt like a walk. I started around the circle toward the Greek housing. As I was passing the ADO house, I saw two people enter the woods next to the bus stop where I had gotten dropped off, across from Greek Row. Just before they disappeared into the woods, I realized that one of them was Yaseiko, one of the girls at dinner Monday night before Magic 101, along with a tall guy wearing shorts, no shirt, and a backwards visor. They looked like they might have been sneaking off for a quickie or something, so I smiled and kept going.
When I got back to Randall, Allie was there, actually doing some homework for the first time that I had seen. “Hey,” I said as I walked in. “How was your day?”
“Eh, not bad I guess. Classes seem simple enough, I’m just trying to get used to the way the professors lecture. My Comp Sci prof just reads off of his Powerpoint, so he’s pretty boring. I may not even go to most of the lectures and just download them myself and go through them.”
I thought that was a bad idea, but didn’t say that. “So far my professors are pretty good. At least, I don’t have any specific complaints. But it’s still the first week. Who knows what fresh hell they may have waiting for us?” We both laughed at that.
Since I didn’t have anything else specific to do for the evening, I decided I’d take a run before it got late. I hadn’t gotten to exercise at all really since arriving, so it would be nice to stretch my legs again. I put on some bike shorts and a tight t-shirt over a sports bra, clipped my mp3 player to my shorts, and walked out of Randall.
I hadn’t really decided where I would run yet, but once I got outside I realized it would be easiest to just follow the large loop around campus, maybe making a detour into the gym for a little cardio on an elliptical machine or something after a lap or two. I put my headphones on, started up some up-beat emo music, and got up to a nice pace. I jogged past Fraternity Row and got a few catcalls from some guys smoking on the porch of the LXA house. I gave them a small wave and kept going, passing Frat Row and going toward the academic row. I passed a couple of people I recognized, including Crystal from the diving class, who gave me a little wave.
I went past the gym and the dorms, finishing my first lap, and started on my second. I was just about to pass the LXA house again when I saw the guys from the porch running across the road toward the bus stop. I couldn’t hear what they were yelling with my headphones in, but as soon as I removed them I heard a girl’s scream coming from the woods behind the bus stop. I saw that one of the LXA guys was already talking to someone on an emergency call box in front of their house, so I decided to follow the others and see what was going on. I ran across the road and into the woods where I had seen the guys enter.
I could still hear the girl screaming, over and over. Once in a while she would get out something like “Oh my GOD!” in between screams. She finally stopped screaming, and within a minute I could see the LXA guys standing in a sort of semi-circle in a clearing ahead, with two of them holding onto an extremely frantic-looking girl wearing ADO letters. I ran up and asked the guys “What the hell happened to her?”
One of the guys turned around, looking pale and sickened. “You may not want to see this,” was all he said before falling to his knees and retching. As he bent down, I got a glimpse of the scene behind him.
At the foot of a large oak tree lay two bodies, mostly naked. I could see some of their clothing that had been thrown off to the side, presumably in the throes of passion. However, their bodies were almost entirely burned, head to toe. Just as I saw them, the stench of burned hair and flesh hit me, and I gagged and retched. The tree behind the poor couple was also burned, which made it seem like someone had simply turned a flamethrower in their direction and held it on them until they were dead. It was a horrible thing to see, and all of my instincts were telling me to run away as fast as I could.
“Wh-who would do something like this?” one of the guys asked. “Why would anyone… oh God…”
After losing my lunch, I was able to bear the stench enough to look more closely at the bodies of the poor couple. I realized that the skirt and tank top that had been thrown off to the side were the same ones that Yaseiko was wearing when I saw her sneak off into the woods earlier, and then I realized that, even with her hair burned off and her face indistinguishable, this must be her lying dead, next to the guy she went into the woods with. “I… I know that girl,” I said, feeling a deep sickness at what I was seeing. “Her name’s Yaseiko… and I saw her going off into the woods with that guy earlier. Oh God… this is…”
“Oh God… oh no… Yaseiko. That means this is…. Jason? Oh God no! Jason!” One of the LXA guys was on his knees weeping now, and the others looked even more distraught. The girl who had been screaming was just sobbing on the shoulder of one of the other guys now, unable to bear looking anymore.
“No way man, that couldn’t be Jason. That guy’s too tall… it looks like Yaseiko was out here with someone else man. Look at the shorts he was wearing…” he picked them up, “this guy was a Gamma.”
“Hey man, you shouldn’t touch anything here,” I said, still trying to keep from screaming bloody murder myself. “The cops will need to… like… see all of this. Oh God, this is just… horrible…” I couldn’t come up with any more words, and just doubled over, weeping.
A campus police officer showed up a few minutes later, wide-eyed at the carnage, and told us all to back off. He radioed back and asked to have the state police contacted, and set up a perimeter with some “CAUTION” tape he had on his belt.
The next two hours are a blur in my mind, giving statements to the police and signing documents. I told the police about how I had seen Yaseiko and her mystery man going off into the woods on my way back from class, and described him as best I could remember. The police had apparently contacted the Gamma Delta Pi house to see if any of their brothers were missing, but the body had not yet been identified. The officer in charge said they would try to keep the local news away at least for a few hours, but to expect them to try to get interviews the next day, and advised all of us to stick with “no comment” until the investigation was concluded.
I went back to my room after an exhausting time with the police, numb from everything I had witnessed. After I got to my room and saw that Allie wasn’t around, I decided that what I really needed was some time in the hot tub to try to relax. I stripped out of my running outfit and put on my robe, not bothering with a bathing suit this time, and walked down the hall to the bathroom.
No one was in the bathroom, as it was only around 5:30, so I entered the hot tub area, turned on the jets and heater, and sat for a few minutes waiting for the water to heat up. Once it was up to ninety-seven, I hung up my robe and sank down in the hot water, willing the day’s events away.
I don’t know how long I was actually in the hot tub, because I think I may’ve fallen asleep for a time, but I was awoken by the water level going up a bit and the feeling of something brushing past my foot. I opened my eyes to see that Holly was there, naked again, but with her chest submerged. “Sorry Emma, didn’t mean to wake you,” she said, smiling.
“No problem. I didn’t really mean to fall asleep in here. What time is it?”
“About six. You know it's dangerous to fall asleep in a hot tub... what’s wrong? You look… well, terrible, no offense.”
“None taken. I actually had about the worst day possible. I… umm… well I saw a murder scene today.”
“What?? Where? Are you okay?” She was obviously alarmed, but seemed really worried about me, which I found sweet.
“I mean, yeah. I’m not supposed to talk about it much yet until the investigation is like… finished or whatever. Basically, I was one of several who found a couple dead in the woods today. I was out jogging… and… sorry, I just don’t want to talk about it right now. It was really horrible.”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about it, I understand. My God… I’m so sorry you had to go through that. If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll be around, okay? Do you want to be left alone? I can go back to my room…”
“No, not at all. Let’s just talk about something else…”
“Would you like another back massage? You know… anything that will help.”
“Umm… actually, yeah, that would be great.” I moved to the other side of the tub and turned my back to Holly, grateful for anything that could possibly take my mind off of the day’s events. She began massaging my shoulders and neck, and it felt great.
“So were your classes okay today?” she asked, obviously just trying to make conversation.
“Yeah… wow I had almost forgotten I had classes today. Yeah they were fine. I don’t even remember my Bio class anymore.” She had moved down to the middle of my back, massaging while the jets helped also, and it felt really amazing. I leaned my head against my arm on the side of the hot tub, just reveling in the feeling of the massage and the jets.
There was some chatting, and I mentioned the party in my room on Friday night, then I started trailing off. Holly was still speaking softly, about her classes, but I was beginning to lull off to sleep again. Her hands felt really amazing on my back and shoulders, and she just kept going for what seemed like forever. I settled in closer to her so she could do a better job.
“Umm, Emma?” she asked.
“Mmm?” I could barely answer, totally caught up in the moment.
“I can’t tell from your reactions, so I’m just going to ask. Are you into me?”
I sat up straighter, but didn’t turn around, letting her continue her massage. “I… I’m not sure. I’ve never really had feelings for a girl before or anything… you’re really good-looking though… I don’t know.” I was stammering, surprised and flustered and turned on all at the same time.
Holly started massaging my back a bit slower, putting more work into each stroke. “Well, see, I think you’re really hot, and I don’t want to mess up our friendship or anything, but…” She moved up to my shoulders again, and then moved her hands forward a bit, moving down toward my breasts. It felt so amazing, I couldn’t help but lean back and let her keep going.
“Alright girls, it’s time to take that to one of your rooms,” a voice said from the doorway of the hot tub room.
“Aah!” I yelped. I looked over and there was Natasha the RA, to ruin the fun as only an RA can.
“S… sorry Natasha,” Holly said. She jumped out of the hot tub and pulled on her robe. I did the same. “Come on Emma, let’s umm… go to my room. No one’s there.”
Without even thinking about what I was doing, I followed Holly down the hall to her room. She unlocked and opened the door, and beckoned me through into the dark room. As soon as the door was closed behind her, she dropped her robe, turned toward me and kissed me. For some reason, my dumb ass wasn’t expecting it and I started tipping backwards, and ended up pulling us both down onto the hard floor. “Oww!” I yelped, as my elbow hit the wood. Holly made a matching sound as her knee hit hard. We lay there on the floor and burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
“Ok, let’s start over,” Emma said, leaning over me. She untied my bathrobe and pulled it back to expose my chest. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
I nodded my head, not trusting my words. I was about to have sex for the first time at college. I just never expected it would be with a girl.

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 9

The next morning, after being disappointed to find Allie still playing WOW and just going to bed wishing I didn’t have a roommate, I woke at nine am, since my first class on Tuesdays wasn’t until eleven. Allie was already gone. I made a mental note to ask her for her schedule and then post both of them up in our room somewhere. I got showered and dressed without incident and headed out at about 10:30 for my first class of the day, Physics.
The Physics and Chemistry building was directly behind the student center, so I walked through the middle path across campus, past the library, as I had for my classes the day before. As I passed the student center I saw Brenda walking with a group of ADO girls toward me, and flagged her down.
“I’ll meet up with you guys at lunch,” she told her girls. “Hey! How’re you doing today? Still reeling?”
“Yeah, I mean it’s all pretty hard to take in, ya know?” I was speaking a bit quietly, given that there were so many people around.
“Well hey, if you want to talk some more about it, I’m free after lunch until like 4, so we could sit down somewhere quiet and discuss it a bit.”
“That would be awesome, Brenda. How about three o’clock in the library? I’ve kinda got a ton of questions and wanted someone to tell about the weird stuff that happened to me recently.”
“It’s a date! I’ll see you at three in the entranceway.” She waved and headed toward the student center.
I headed to Physics class. The professor ended up being the same one that Allie had, Dr. Jacobs. He was a younger guy, probably early thirties, with an excited way of talking about Physics that made me think he must not have been a professor for very long yet.
“Today, we’ll just go into some introductory stuff. I know that a pre-requisite for this class is to have taken a Physics class before, but I want to make sure everyone is on the same page. We’re going to go through chapter one of your text, going over each formula that you should all be familiar with already. For Wednesday’s class I’ll be assigning a short quiz that will tell me if you’re adequately prepared for this course. If you do badly on it, I will recommend that you be placed in Physics 101. However, I don’t really expect any of you to do that poorly on it, because it’s pretty straightforward. Let’s get started.”
Of course, class was boring since it was just a review of stuff I’d already mastered in high school, so I sat there acting like I was paying attention and thought about other things, as I could tell most of the class was doing. At the end of class, Dr. Jacobs gave out his quiz like he’d promised and sent us on our way to “becoming the physicists that this world needs”. Right.
Noon was lunch hour for me so I stopped in the student center for some pizza then pulled out my laptop and surfed the net until almost one. Then I headed over to the A&H building again, for English 101. As I expected, it was boring and monotonous and we were assigned to read the first two acts of Romeo and Juliet, which I had read a long time ago, and write a three-page critique of it by next Tuesday. The professor, Dr. Yantz, reminded me of that guy from the eye drops commercial… “the study of the English language is awesome,” he had declared at the beginning of the class, in the most monotone voice possible. Okay, maybe not that exact phrase, but you get the idea. The guy sucks.
English got out at 2:30, so I headed to the library to wait for Brenda, surfing the net for a bit longer before she came in and smiled at me. “Where should we go?” I asked, not sure if anywhere was really quiet and secluded enough for the conversation we were going to have.
“Follow me.” She led me to the elevator and then up to the ninth floor, which was marked on the elevator as “Conference rooms”. We walked past about four large rooms with projectors and whiteboards in them and then came to a small hallway with three doors on each side of it. Brenda led me to the last door on the left and we entered a tiny room, almost a cubicle, with a chalk board on one side and a desk with a chair on the other. She pushed the chair over to the wall, motioned for me to sit in it, and then sat on the desk across from me. “So, what kinds of questions do you have?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess I could start with my own stories.” I detailed each of the incidents for her, even the embarrassing one with Rand. She laughed a bit about it but I could tell she felt bad about it too.
“Those things happen after we turn sixteen. That’s the age when magical ability starts manifesting, it seems. It sounds like you have natural ability with all three lower magics, which is rare and impressive.”
I blushed a little at her use of the word “impressive”. “Thanks,” I said, “but I just can’t see it as anything but a deterrent to my life being normal. I mean, who has nipples of fire?”
“Well I mean, I started manifesting cold a bit when I came of age, including a very uncomfortable incident with an ex-girlfriend, but once I found out about nature magic, I decided I had to focus on it. It becomes easier to control your powers as you start to understand them more. That’s the point of the Magic 101 class… to teach you how to NOT accidently hurt yourself or someone else.”
Ex-girlfriend. The word stuck in my brain. So she’s gay.
“Why nature magic?” I asked, trying to get images out of my head that would shame a pornstar.
“Well, I guess I’ve always been kind of a hippie. I love plants and animals, and really like being able to talk to them. You’d be surprised the conversations you could have with a squirrel.”
“So you can actually hold a conversation? In words?”
“No, not in words. And conversation is probably a bad term for it. You really can only convey and understand feelings, except for really intelligent creatures like dolphins. Oh man, swimming with dolphins becomes a whole new experience when you can actually speak to them. They really are almost as intelligent as us.”
“Wow… what else can nature magic do?” I was intrigued by her, but I have never been the type to go all mushy over fuzzy creatures. Dolphins though… that’s a whole different ball game.
“Well, as you saw I can help things grow. That’s a manipulation of metabolism more than anything… I’m not actually speeding up the life of the plant or anything like that. Really strong nature mages can actually take on aspects of animals, like the werewolves you read about. The book sort of demonizes that side of it, but I hope to one day be able to grow wings and fly.”
“Has anyone ever been able to DO that??”
“You’ve heard of angels, right? That’s a nature mage playing a joke on some poor sap. So far, though, all I can do is this.” Brenda closed her eyes and suddenly her hair reshaped itself into a cascade of scarlet and white feathers. “Pretty neat, eh?” She smiled a brilliant smile and changed her hair back.
“Wow… you look beautiful like that…” I stammered.
“Aww, thanks Emma. You’re cute. So what have you read about the other magics?”
“Well so far just the basics of heat and cold, and that thought magic is basically telepathy. And that life magic sounds scary.”
“Well, Vince may look a bit dark, but he’s really a sweetheart. Life magic is extremely hard to learn, and his focus on it is mostly because of his father dying of cancer. He wants to find a way to keep that from happening to anyone he can help.”
I felt a stab of regret for thinking Vince was creepy. “What exactly can life magic do? That mouse that he revived… was it really alive, or just some type of… undead creature?” I had a horrible mental flash of a zombie mouse eating its way through a carcass.
“Oh no, it was truly alive. Small animals can be brought back completely. Scholar mages think it’s because they have no souls. Larger animals are tougher, but can be done. More intelligent creatures, like whales, dolphins and primates, can be returned to life, but stay in a catatonic state after that. There IS such a thing as ‘undeath’ though, which is a perverse mix of life and death. Only the most depraved life mages try it, and it almost always ends with them being killed by either their own creations or other mages.”
“Wow… heavy stuff. So how do you keep from just giving up and going completely loony?”
“Eh, same as anyone else. By partying.” She smiled. “We have some fun times together.”
“Speaking of, I’m thinking of having a get-together in my dorm room this weekend, would you be interested?”
“I would love to, but I’m an RA, so I can’t drink in the dorms.”
“Oh, that sucks. Which floor are you on?”
“First floor. I’m in charge of one wing of mixed suites, so I’m sure you can imagine the kind of crap I have to deal with down there. This is my second year of it though, so I guess it must not be too bad.”
We chatted for a while longer about partying and a little about ADO. She was very adamant that they weren’t the typical sorority girls, and given how awesome she was I couldn’t help but believe her. At around quarter ‘til four, Brenda said she had to head out to a TA session that she was giving for Chemistry 102, which I would have the following semester, so we parted ways outside the library and I headed back to Randall to get a head start on reading for Bio and Chem before my last class of the day, Beginning Scuba.
Allie was back in the room when I got there, reading some type of fantasy novel or something. I laughed to myself as I realized that if she knew that I was going to be actually practicing magic this year, she’d be extremely jealous. If anyone should have had these weird things happening to her, it should be Allie, not me.
“Hey Allie, would you be ok with a party in our room this Friday night?” I asked.
“Umm, sure I guess. Who all would be here?” She sounded a bit apprehensive.
“Just some girls from the floor and any guys they might want to bring, and Stacey from Broadwater. I promise it won’t get out of hand or anything.”
“Sure, that sounds like fun. How are we going to get booze, though?”
That’s a good question, I thought. “I’m not sure. I have a fake ID but I’m not sure how well it’ll work here. I always used it at the same place back home. Maybe I’ll ask Brenda…”
“Isn’t Brenda an RA?” Allie looked a little fearful again.
“Yeah but she’s really cool, I know she won’t cause us any problems. I’ll tell people to show up around 8 or so, is that ok?”
“Sure, sounds good.”
I laid down on my bed and read my Bio book for about an hour, getting through the first two chapters easily since it was very much a review for me. After that I played around online, learning about the newest stupid internet memes and which friends on Facebook had gone from “In a Relationship” to “Single” today.
At 5:30, I got changed into my one-piece and put on shorts and a t-shirt over it. Then I headed to the dining hall and had an early dinner before it was time to be at the gym at seven for Scuba. I picked Scuba because I’ve always wanted to try diving but I don’t want to have to pay out the ass for it. The equipment is all included so the only thing we have to pay for ourselves is a bathing suit, so I figured, why not? The only bad thing is that it’s from 7-10 on Tuesday nights, but I figured it’d be worth it. There would also be a few Saturday afternoon excursions to lakes to try diving in a more realistic setting, and the final exam would actually be a trip to Myrtle Beach, which we had to pay extra for, of course. We have the option of taking our final in the pool if we don’t want to pay for the trip. I hadn’t yet decided which I would choose. It would probably depend on whether I had the $150 available when it came time to sign up.
The pool was really easy to find in the gym, so I was actually there about twenty minutes before class was to start. There were a few people doing laps in the pool, and a couple of girls sunning themselves under a huge sunroof at one end of the pool complex, but it was starting to get dark so I figured they would head out soon. At the other end of the pool I saw a young woman bringing out diving equipment from a closet and setting it next to the pool, so I figured she must be our TA. I walked around the pool, admiring one guy that was doing laps in the lane right next to where I was walking as I went. He was doing the backstroke so I had a great view of his washboard abs. Sigh. I need to get laid soon. My night with Rand wasn’t very fulfilling…
When I reached the other end of the pool I saw that the girl bringing out the scuba equipment was actually older than I she looked from afar… probably in her early thirties. She must be the instructor, I thought. I walked up and said “Hi, I’m Emma. I’m in the scuba class.”
“Emma…“ she pulled out a clipboard. “Emma Dawes?”
“That’s me. Are you the instructor?”
“You got it. I’m Angela Akers. I’m not a professor or anything, so you can call me Angela. You excited to try out diving?”
“Yeah, definitely. I’ve always wanted to try. Any big tips?”
“Yeah. Don’t drown. That would look bad on my record. Mind helping me pull out some of this stuff?”
“Sure.” I put down the sports bag I had brought and helped her carry out three more sets of gear. There were nine total, arranged in a line along the edge of the pool. I assumed that meant I would have eight fellow classmates, or maybe seven if Angela used a set to show us how to put it on or something.
A few minutes later, other people started showing up, and Angela set about kicking everyone out of our half of the pool. The hot guy I had noticed moved over to a lane on the opposite end and kept swimming, this time freestyle.
“Alright, I think everyone’s here,” Angela said. “I’m Angela Akers. Call me Angela… I’m not a professor or a doctor. I’m actually a part-time nurse, and just teach this course on Tuesdays and the advanced course on Thursdays at the same time. I’m sure you all know that the equipment is provided, but if you have any of your own equipment, you’re free to use that instead. I see that you brought a wetsuit, Mr…?”
“Collins. Andrew,” said a tall, lankey guy who had come in wearing a full wetsuit with the hood pulled back to reveal curly brown hair. He had a round nose and some strange looking eyes, but all in all was a nice looking guy. “Yeah, my dad’s had me diving for years, but I never got certified officially, so I can’t take the advanced class yet.”
“Quite right, Mr. Collins. All of you will get certified in diving by the end of this course, as long as you are willing to pay the certification fee, which I think right now is $75. Don’t quote me on that.”
The other students were a fairly nondescript group, probably because we were all wearing simple swimsuits that we could fit under a wetsuit. Angela pointed us toward men’s and women’s changing rooms, where she had hung up wetsuits of various sizes for us to try on. I found one that fit me very well, although the constriction on my chest was pretty uncomfortable at first, and you could see my nipple ring even through the wetsuit. The other two girls in the class found some that fit them as well. One girl was short and Latino, and she introduced herself as Maria. The other girl was tall and sporty-looking, with her hair back in a ponytail beneath a visor, and she said her name was Crystal. We chatted just a bit while we changed but I got the feeling that the three of us wouldn’t really become friends.
Back out at the pool, the five guys in the class had gotten changed also, and Angela showed us first just how to put on our flippers and strap on the tank. She said that today we wouldn’t actually be doing much, just getting used to treading water with the tanks on. She assigned us each a spot in the pool and told us to jump in, using the flippers to get ourselves back up to the surface. I jumped in, expecting to sink way down because of the tank, but I suppose the natural buoyancy of the air in the tanks was enough to keep me pretty close to the surface. I barely had to kick to keep my head up.
Maria wasn’t quite so lucky. She came up sputtering after about ten seconds, grabbed the side of the pool and coughed for a minute before calming down. “I wasn’t really expecting to go under,” she said. I rolled my eyes to myself. What exactly did you expect, then?
“Excuse me! Who said that?” She was looking at each of us. “Who just made fun of me? I will rip you a new asshole, whoever it was.”
Well, she’s easy to piss off. But did she just hear me? That was weird. Maybe I have a little bit of thought magic in me. I told myself to be careful what I was thinking AT people. Maria was still looking very sour, but Angela got us started on breathing exercises to calm down during a dive, and it was forgotten. Angela let us go early instead of keeping us for the entire three hours that night, so at about 8:30 we finished up, put our equipment away and changed out of our wetsuits.
As we were all leaving, Angela called me back. “Hey, let’s go in my office just for a second.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, just come on for a second.”
I walked into her office, which really just looked like a converted broom closet, and sat down. She closed the door and sat across from me. “You can’t be pulling that telepath shit around here.”
“What?” How in the world…?
“I know about you magic kids, and I have a pretty good sense for it. I could tell you said something to Maria with your mind, and you can’t be doing that in regular classes. I’d suggest you talk to Dr. Holden about how to control that as soon as possible. That’s all. See you next week.”
“Umm… ok, thanks. And, sorry.”
“It’s okay. Just something we have to deal with at this fucked up school. Have a good week.”
I walked out, wondering how she could have known what happened. Maybe she was a magic user herself? But she had said “you magic kids” like I was of a different breed or something, like I wasn’t human. It creeped me out, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way back to Randall.

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 8

“Now, then. You’ve all had a taste of what true magic can do in this world.” Dr. Holden looked out at us from behind his desk, where just a few minutes ago several miracles had been performed by college kids. “Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to explain to you what we know about how it works.”
I think all of us were still staring at him in complete shock, with no idea how to respond. Then the chubby, enthusiastic girl raised her hand.
“Yes, Ms. Seletyn?” Dr. Holden asked.
“When do we start doing that?” Again, she seemed to be just a bit too enthusiastic after what we had just seen. I was still trying to wrap my head around all of it.
“In due time, Ms. Seletyn. First, you all have a lot of studying to do. I will conclude my first lecture now, and then I will assign you all some reading to do until next week’s class. We meet every Monday night for about three hours normally. If you have any other commitments on Monday nights, I’d suggest finding ways to move them. This is the only time when none of the students have class. The reason given for that is to give you students a time slot to hold meetings for clubs and such things, but in reality this course is the main reason that every student has this time off.”
That seemed strange to me. “So, the school administration knows about this?” I asked.
“Yes, Ms. Dawes. Not all of the administrators are aware of what we do here, of course. The president of the school is required to be informed, and a few other key administrators and faculty. For the most part, though, the school is clueless.
“Now, we’re going to start off with a history lesson. Please get yourselves a copy of Elemental History from the bookshelf all the way to the right.” He gestured to the cleaner shelves on that side of the room. “I won’t keep you here long tonight, seeing as this whole thing must be quite a shock to you, and you’ll need to rest tonight to take it all in.”
Each of us dutifully walked over to the bookshelf and chose copies of the worn textbooks. I looked through three of them before I chose one that had been highlighted in heavily. I have never been one to highlight in books myself, instead relying on previous students to tell me what they think is important. After we took our seats once more, Dr. Holden pointed us toward ‘Chapter 1: The REAL History of our World’.
I began reading. The first few paragraphs described how our history as we knew it had been warped by religious groups and others who didn’t believe in magic and weren’t worth persuading. The magic community has apparently always been very secretive about their existence, so lack of belief just made it easier to hide. The chapter went on to explain that many of the “ghost” or “monster” stories that we had been told since birth were really just misinterpretations of some form of elemental magic. It detailed a few stories of werewolves (actually a clan of mages who had used nature magic to take on the appearance and attributes of a wolf, but could not control their need to hunt and had become feral) and vampires (evil life mages who had learned the art of siphoning energy from those around them to extend their lives).
I’ve always been a slow reader, so I only got about halfway through the chapter by the time Dr. Holden declared “Alright students, I’m going to let you go for tonight, unless there are any specific questions…?”
“Dr. Holden?” The red-haired girl raised her hand.
“Yes, Ms. Laredo.”
“So, this book is basically saying that monsters… vampires, werewolves… they actually exist?” She sounded like she was close to screaming her head off and running for her life.
“Well, at this time, I know of none that exist. The clan of wolf-mages was killed off long ago, and the cult of Dracula hasn’t existed for hundreds of years. The point is that they DID exist, and could again, providing a mage gained enough knowledge to pull off that level of magic. We keep a tight guard on what is allowed and forbidden, but there are always going to be rogue mages out there performing and teaching things of which the greater community of magic does not approve.” Dr. Holden looked sort of wistful for a minute, then promptly said, “Alright then, class dismissed. Finish chapter one and read the table of contents to familiarize yourself with it before next week’s class. You may choose a book jacket from this box with which to disguise your textbook as one from a course which is no longer offered at this school. NEVER let anyone read those books. Guard them with your lives, for fear of losing them if you are discovered by the general public. ‘Witch hunts’ are very real, and have occurred more often than most people think.”
We all slowly got up to leave, none of us knowing exactly what we had just been through. I mean, magic? Witchcraft? I believed it only because of the very strange things that had happened to me over the past few weeks.
I followed the red-haired siblings up the stairs, with the blonde and the nerdy guy following me. The red-heads were speaking in hushed whispers, and when I glanced behind me I could see that the blonde was beaming.
As we got to the top of the stairs, the blonde spoke up. “Hey guys,” she said, “before we all leave, what are your names? If we’re going to be seeing each other every week, we should get to know one another a bit. I’m Rita”
“Tara,” the red-haired girl said. “This is my brother Taylor.”
“Hey,” he said, giving a little half-wave.
“I’m Emma,” I said.
“And I am Rong,” the Chinese guy said. “Pleased to meet you, Rita, Tara, Taylor and Emma.” He had that jerky way of talking that screamed “I haven’t lived here very long.”
“Nice to meet you too, Rong,” Rita said. “Anyone want to go to the D-hall for a late snack?”
“I’m actually really exhausted,” I said. I really didn’t feel like doing any hanging out right now, after everything we’d just seen. “I’m probably going to go back, finish the chapter, and head to bed.”
“Same here,” Taylor said. “I’m beat.”
“I’m umm… tired too. Sorry Rita, maybe next week,” Tara said. It didn’t look to me like she was at all interested in hanging out, in fact it looked like she was actually a little afraid of us.
“I must go back and study this ‘magic’ book. Thank very much for the invitation,” Rong said, then began walking quickly away.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you all next week,” I said. I headed out of the A&H building, walking back toward Randall.
Campus was well-lit at night, with brights lights above every path and little phone boxes every few blocks with blue lights on top that said “Emergency call box” on the side. I passed the library and was soon at Randall. Outside, I spotted Allie smoking a cigarette with a small group of other people. She waved, extinguished her cig and walked into the building with me. “How were your classes today?” she asked.
“Oh, they were fine. Mostly to be expected. My seminar course was cool. You?”
“They were pretty good. I think I’m really going to like my Physics professor, Jacobs. Comp Sci will be a joke for the first year, because I didn’t take the AP classes but I’ve done way more than what they’ll be teaching.”
“Yeah it’s the same for me in Bio. Oh well, just means the class will be easy, eh?”
We got up to our room and Allie went straight to her computer and started up WOW again. I had a feeling she would be doing that a lot. I opened my computer and checked my e-mail, then decided to finish the chapter from my magic text. Sitting at my desk, I continued through the chapter.
The magic community has seen its share of abusers, as stated earlier, but most of us just wish to learn more about our world. As ‘magical scientists’, we have come up with a set of axioms which seem to be constant in the world of magic:
1. Heat and cold magic are true polar opposites, in that one can effectively cancel the other. To use heat or cold magic is to change the speed with which atomic particles move within a substance.
2. Force magic occurs at the molecular level, and can move or reshape materials but not change their inherent molecular properties.
3. Nature magic involves the ability to commune with nature, not to control it. One may speed metabolic processes, or manipulate genetic information in a living thing, but nature magic cannot change the inherent energies of life. Thus nature and life magics are separate and exclusive.
4. Thought magic seems to be an inherently human ability, as it cannot be used to influence even the highest forms of animal life. Consequently, telepaths normally have very little nature magic ability, as thought magic requires a strict human-centric focus to be mastered.
5. Life magic can be used by few, and those who are able to cultivate their ability in it must normally eschew the other forms of magic to gain any real influence over life energies.
The workings of nature, thought, and life magics are relatively poorly understood when compared to heat, cold and force magics. Because of the intricacies and nuances required, nature, thought and life magics have been termed the “higher” magics, while heat, cold, and force magics have been given the term “lower” magics. This does not imply that those who practice the lower magics be less superior, only that these magics are more well understood at the scientific level.
The chapter continued on to explain that only those very highly gifted in magical ability could manipulate more than one of the higher magics, whereas most mages have at least some ability with all of the lower magics.
I finished up the chapter and put the book away. It was still hard to believe that magic could be real, but after seeing what I had that day, and all the weird stuff that had happened to me recently, how could I be skeptical?
Allie was still on WOW, talking over a microphone with someone named “Icedawg” about their upcoming raid on some dungeon or another. I hope she at least can turn off the WOW if we have friends over, I thought.
It was getting close to eleven, but I was restless. I decided to relax in the hot tub for a while. I changed into a blue one-piece and walked down the hall to the restroom. The main restroom area was deserted. I headed toward the back of the shower area and heard the sounds of the jets already on from the hot tub room. As I turned the corner I saw Holly from across the hall lounging in the tub, a look of contentment on her face, with headphones in. I didn’t want to disturb her, so I hung my towel up and tried to get in as quietly as possible, but she must have felt the movement of the water because she opened her eyes, smiled and said “Hi Emma!” She sat up a bit and pulled the headphones from her ears.
As Holly sat up, I noticed that she wasn’t actually wearing a top at all. Her breasts were nicely proportional to her body, with smaller nipples than mine but larger areolas. She must’ve noticed me staring a bit… actually I was probably staring at her tits with my mouth slightly ajar, given that I had been about to say “Hi, Holly” but had never gotten that far. She blushed and covered her chest with her right arm. “Sorry… I figured we’re in a bathroom so it would be kosher to go nude… does it bother you? I can leave…”
“Oh, no way!” I finally found my voice. “Sorry, it was just unexpected. You don’t need to leave at all.” I’m sure I was blushing deep crimson also at this point.
“Okay, good, cuz the jets feel REALLY good.” She lay back down in the water a bit to submerge her chest. “So, how was your day?”
“All in all, not bad I guess. Yours?”
“Ugh… I already don’t like my Latin professor. She gave us a huge paper to write by Friday about why we decided on Latin as opposed to any other foreign language. I have no idea what I’m going to write.”
“Wow, that sucks. I’m still trying to decide between German and Russian. I didn’t really like French or Spanish in high school, so I thought I’d try something different. I can’t imagine learning an Asian language though… too many alphabets.” I relaxed a bit more and adjusted the jets to be stronger on my lower back.
“Definitely. Other than Latin, my other classes seem fine,” Holly said. “I’m a Photography major, so I have a couple related to that, and I also have Intro to Philosophy to get a Humanities credit out of the way.”
“Photography, eh? Do you have a portfolio? I’ve always been really amazed at artists… I can’t do it myself.”
“Oh I feel the same way about you science people,” she said. “You’re all way too analytical. No time to have fun,” she said, winking at me.
“Ha! We scientists know how to have fun, trust me. I was actually thinking of having a small party this weekend in our room as an ice-breaker. You in?”
“Hell yeah! Are you sure Allie would be cool with it though? She seems a bit quiet and reserved…”
“I think she’ll be fine. It would be a good time for her to break out of her shell a bit, anyway.” The jets felt great, but my one-piece was sort of loose in the back and the jets weren’t hitting my lower back quite right. I considered for a half second just taking it off, but decided against it.
Holly noticed my discomfort and said “Is your back hurting?”
“Yeah, a little. The jets can’t quite get to the spot I need help with.”
“Turn around, I’ll massage you a bit. I’m kind of an expert at it.”
“Umm… okay.” I couldn’t really say no, could I? Even if she was naked and offering me a massage. While naked. In a hot tub.
I turned around and I felt her hands on my shoulders. She started kneading, and it felt incredible. I forgot all about the situation we were in and just closed my eyes and concentrated on how great it felt. She worked all the way down my back to where the one-piece came together. “I can’t really get to your lower back, pull down your suit.”
I pulled the suit down off my shoulders without hesitation, just to let her continue the massage. She worked the rest of my back all the way down to my tailbone, and then back up to the shoulders. Then she massaged my neck, and ran her fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. I was getting turned on, despite every inclination I’d had before. Just as I was about to turn around and kiss her, she stopped and said “How’d that feel?”
“Wow… that was great,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. I turned around without pulling up my suit and there she was, naked right in front of me. She hadn’t moved back over to her side of the hot tub yet.
“Wow, you have a great body, Emma. I wish my tits looked that great.”
“What are you talking about? Yours are perfect. Look how much bigger my left one is than my right one!” I grabbed both breasts to emphasize the difference.
Holly giggled. “Yeah, well at least you have nice abs. Mine are flabby.” She stood up a bit, just enough to give me a peek at her nether regions that I REALLY didn’t need right at that moment. She was closely shaved down there.
What am I doing? Since when do I want to look at other girls’ pussies? I was feeling uncomfortable again, but still really turned on from the massage. “Hey, I’m gonna head out. The steam’s getting to me a bit.” I pulled up my top and secured it behind my neck.
“Oh, alright,” Holly said, obviously disappointed. “Well, hopefully we’ll run into each other here again.”
“I’m sure,” I said, flashing her a big smile. I got out, toweled off and walked back to my room, hoping above anything that Allie wasn’t there so that I could have some private time.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 7

It wasn’t quite a dungeon. The stairs descended in a spiral, with oil lamps hanging from the walls every half-spiral or so. As we got to the bottom of the stairs, I got a glimpse of a well-lit chamber ahead. I stepped out of the stairwell, and into a twenty-by-twenty room, lit by oil lamps, which looked like simply an underground classroom. It looked as if someone had taken desks and chairs from upstairs over the course of many, many years, because some of the desks looked ancient, and some looked like they were only a few years old. The mismatched desks were only a small surprise though.
The left wall was entirely taken up by bookshelves filled with books and scrolls and any number of things. Most of the shelves were covered over with cobwebs and the tomes stored on them had obviously not been used in a very long time, except for one set of bookshelves toward the other end of the room which looked well-used and well-cleaned. On the right wall were a few doors, built right into the stone walls, which led to who-knows-where. And at the front of the room was a huge desk covered in all sorts of papers, which I assumed must be Dr. Holden’s desk.
“Upperclassmen, go practice in the lab. I’ll need a volunteer from each discipline, of course, to stay behind. Freshmen, please choose a seat close to the front of the room where you will easily see our demonstrations. This will be your first night of class this year.” About eight people filed out of the room through the middle door set into the wall, and closed it. There were ten other students left in the room, including Vince, Yaseiko and Brenda.
“But professor… I’m not signed up for any night classes,” stammered a cute red-headed girl wearing jeans and a tight tee-shirt that read in small letters If you can read this, you’re staring at my chest.
“Of course you didn’t, child. You’ll understand everything soon enough. Please, sit,” Dr. Holden said, gesturing to the seats.
We took seats close to the front, and I looked around at the other freshmen. There were five of us, each looking as nervous as I felt. Besides the red-head girl, there was one other girl who was plump, with blonde hair and a fascinated smile. She sat at the desk to my right, wearing jeans and a tight-fitting pink polo top. She leaned over and said, excitedly, “Isn’t this amazing? I mean, magic!”
“Umm… yeah… I don’t know what to make of it,” I said warily.
On the other side of the portly blonde was a guy with red hair, wearing jeans and a Dave Matthews shirt. The red-haired girl was sitting on his other side, and now that I saw them next to each other I realized that they must be siblings, if not twins. They both had a hawknose, firey green eyes and identical expressions of confusion on their faces.
Finally, on my left was a short but skinny guy, obviously of Asian descent. He wore a loosely-buttoned dress shirt and slacks, and wide-rimmed black glasses. I almost expected to see a pocket protector in his shirt.
“Good evening, class, I am Dr. Holden. Now that we’re all situated, I’m sure you’re wondering why exactly you’re here,” said Dr. Holden from behind the main desk in the front of the room. The six upperclassmen that had stayed in the room with us were lined up on either side of him, looking passive, except for Brenda, who was smiling at me. I felt myself blush a bit, and struggled to pay attention only to Dr. Holden, and not to her.
“I have been teaching at this institution for about 26 years now. Before me, there was another faculty member who taught this course, and before him a whole line of them. This course has been taught since before the University itself existed, in fact. We call it ‘Magic 101’. Simple, and to the point.”
“Now, the million dollar question. How many of you have had some very strange things happen to you in the past six months or so?” We all raised our hands. “And how many of you can explain these strange events?” All but one of the hands went down. The blonde had hers up. “Yes, Ms. Seletyn.”
“Magic!” she said, obviously just a little too excited about the idea. I caught the red-haired girl roll her eyes where ‘Ms. Seletyn’ couldn’t see.
“That is correct, Ms. Seletyn. Magic. Now, we’re not talking about fairy-tale magic. There are no elves, no fairies, and no unicorns. We’re talking about raw magic, elemental magic. Science will tell you that the world around you is made of particles, of atoms and molecules, and they are absolutely correct. What scientists, for the most part, do not know about is that there are more forces at work in our universe than just Physics and Chemistry and Mathematics. All of these sciences are useful for studying our world, but there are some things that modern science cannot explain.” He made a waving gesture toward the students on either side of himself. “These upperclassmen are about to demonstrate the six elements of magic to you.”
A guy in his early twenties far to Dr. Holden’s left stepped forward. He was short, probably no more than five and a half feet tall. He had black hair cropped short and spiked, with the tips colored bright red. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. His nose was small and pointed, and he wore a grin that showed teeth that looked coffee-stained. He wore a tight red shirt with an image of a dragon on it, black denim pants that were a bit too tight for him, and large black boots.
“Mr. Fargo will now demonstrate the element of heat,” Holden said. The guy then raised a hand, palm-up, in front of himself. He stood there for a few seconds, and just as I thought that nothing was going to happen his fingers started to glow a faint red. The red color got stronger and stronger until suddenly a small flame burst into existence right above his hand. “As you can see, the ability to create fire spontaneously cannot be explained by science as you know it. We have our own brand of science with which we study these phenomena, and hopefully each of you will learn to use and control these magics.”
Fargo closed his palm, cutting off the flame, and stepped back. I could still see the red glow in his hand for a few seconds, but it quickly faded.
“Next, Ms. Ilane will demonstrate the element of cold.” A young woman stepped forward next to Fargo, about a head taller than him. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a long ponytail behind her back, and she had icy blue eyes and a faint hint of a smile on her lips. She was all legs, which she had accented by wearing a short miniskirt reminiscent of a cheerleader’s skirt. Her top was pink and had an artistic-looking, abstract pattern in sky blue sewn onto it.
Ilane picked up a glass of water from the desk in front of her. After a few seconds her hand and the glass both started collecting moisture from the air, sort of how a glass of ice water sweats. A few more seconds went by and abruptly the water in the glass froze solid, as well as the water droplets that had collected on her hand and the outside of the glass. “The polar opposite of heat magic, the element of cold is literally the absence of heat, and using it allows one to slow down the movement of atomic particles in matter,” Holden explained. “As you can see, this allows one to change the state of gases to liquids, liquids to solids, etcetera.”
Ilane stepped back and handed the glass to Fargo, who warmed it just enough to melt some of the ice, then took a swig from it.
“Next up is Ms. Ito,” Holden said, gesturing immediately to his left toward the Asian girl from before, Yaseiko. “She will be demonstrating the element of force.”
Force? I thought. What could that mean? I had a flashback to Physics class in high school, when we learned that force was equal to mass times velocity.
Yaseiko stepped forward. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of little pieces of paper, almost confetti. She dropped the paper flecks into a large jar that was sitting on the desk in front of her, then held her hand over the jar. As we watched, the paper flecks started shifting a bit on the bottom of the jar, then a few of them began to whip around. After about ten seconds she had created a confetti tornado in the large jar.
“Force magic,” Holden began, “is the ability to create motion at the molecular level of matter, as opposed to heat and cold magics which speed up or slow atomic particles. The simplest type of matter to manipulate in this way is air, which is what you see Ms. Ito doing now. As one progresses in the study of force magic, one can learn to move more dense objects in this way… liquids, for example. Some who devote their lives to the study of force magic can learn even to manipulate solids such as metal, to reshape objects with their magical ability.” Yaseiko stepped back and the paper settled back to the bottom of the jar.
“Ms. Romero will now demonstrate what we call ‘nature magic’ for you.” Holden gestured to Brenda, standing to his right.
She stepped forward and placed a small flowerpot with some soil in it onto the table. “Zach, could I have a bit of that water, please?” she was looking back at the fire guy. He passed the half-full glass to her. She reached into her purse and pulled out a little paper packet. When she held it up for us, I could see that it said “Marigolds” on the front, and must’ve been a small packet of seeds. She pushed her finger down into the soil to create a hole, then opened the packet and poured a few seeds into it. After pressing the hole shut, she poured a bit of water into the soil. She then held her right hand over the flowerpot and closed her eyes.
Almost immediately, a small green shoot popped out off the soil, followed by four others. The five little vines grew at an incredible rate, growing around her fingers and upward. After what seemed like only moments, the small plants had grown to the point of having flower buds, which burst forth with beautiful red, yellow, and orange marigolds. “As you can see, using nature magic can allow one to help plants grow rapidly. It also gives one the ability to understand and sometimes even speak with animals, and has a host of other applications that we will eventually get to.”
The stems of the flowers had grown around Brenda’s fingers in such a way that it looked like the flowers were growing directly out of her hand. She carefully extracted herself from them and looked up at me, giving me a stunning smile. She stepped back to her original place in line.
“The next element is difficult to demonstrate visually. This is the element of thought. It is believed that the element of thought is actually just an unknown part of our own minds being unlocked and used by some. It has known many names throughout the years, such as telepathy and clairvoyance. Ms. Rodriguez will be demonstrating thought magic to you by simply placing the image of an object into your minds, then explaining exactly what you saw.”
A young woman of Hispanic heritage stepped forward from between Brenda and Vince. She was around the same height as Yaseiko, with an oval-shaped face and very wavy, dark hair. She wore a simple blue v-neck top and jean shorts.
I suddenly got a strange feeling, like I was being watched, but from every side at once. The image of a speedboat, flying across a choppy sea in bright daylight exploded into my mind. The boat was driven by a Hispanic man in his forties, and pulled behind the boat on skis was Ms. Rodriguez herself, smiling and wearing a two-piece bikini. Her large breasts were practically trying to jump out of the bikini top. “Right now, you should all be seeing me being pulled behind my dad’s speedboat, wearing a red and white striped swimsuit, off the coast of Cozumel,” she said. Her voice was very loud and commanding, with a strong Mexican accent.
The creepy feeling faded along with the image, and it left me feeling a little violated, but none the worse for the wear. “I apologize for the invasion of your minds, but it’s the easiest way to make you understand that it’s real,” Stefanie said. Wait… how do I know that her name is Stefanie? She didn’t say it did she? The whole telepathy thing freaked me out a bit.
“Finally, Mr. Davis is going to demonstrate the most difficult and probably the most abused element, life,” Dr. Holden said. “Life magic is the ability to manipulate the raw energy created by and contained within living organisms.”
Vince stepped forward, holding a shoebox. He opened the lid and pulled a small white mouse from inside. To my shock and slight nausea, he used one hand to snap the mouse’s neck. I saw Brenda flinch, and heard sharp inhales of breath from several of the other freshmen.
“Why did you DO that?” the red-headed twins gasped in unison.
“Don’t worry, students, the mouse will be fine,” Dr. Holden said gently. “Just watch.”
Vince held the clearly dead mouse in his right hand, palm up, showing it to us. With his left hand, he touched one of the flowers that Brenda had just grown. He then closed his eyes and his brow furrowed in concentration. “Mr. Davis is going to transfer the life energy from the plant, back to the mouse, healing its injuries. It will be very taxing for him, as life magic is strong, raw energy which he must channel through himself.”
As I watched, the beautiful flower began to rapidly wither, finally turning completely brown, petals falling off onto the soil beneath. The mouse’s tail twitched, then it jumped up, obviously frightened by its ordeal, and jumped from Vince’s palm down to the desk. Brenda reached down onto the desk, and the mouse ran straight for her, climbing up her arm all the way to her shoulder, where it sat, shivering.
Vince opened his eyes, looking dazed for a second, before he stepped over to the side of the desk and sat heavily down in a chair. His hair was sweaty as if he had just been to the gym, and his hands were shaking a bit. He looked drained and defeated, but I stared at him in awe. He had just brought a creature back from the dead!
“That, students, concludes your introduction to the world of magic,” Dr. Holden said, with an air of finality. “Any questions about the demonstrations?” We all stared at him in shock. “No? Alright then, volunteers, you may go join your classmates in the practice hall. The freshmen and I have a lot to talk about.”

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 6

“Magic. Like… fairies and wands and spells… that kind of magic?” I stammered. Obviously this guy was nuts.
“No, not like you read about in fantasy books. There are no such things as elves or fairies or anything like that. And you don’t need a wand for this. We’re talking about the ability to change your surroundings, manipulate the very space around you. True magic.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you, but I think I’m going to leave now, because you’re not making any sense and I have a feeling that you haven’t made sense in a long time.” I turned to leave, willing myself not to look back at his black pits where eyes should be.
“You want a demonstration, then? Here, watch.” Suddenly a huge plush chair that was sitting off to the side of the aisle lifted, moved into the aisle, and dropped back to the floor. I stopped in my tracks.
“That’s impossible,” I said, my voice shaking.
“No, it’s not. It’s impossible for people without our gifts. Not impossible for me. Not impossible for you.”
I turned around to face him. His eyes looked normal again, sort of a hazel color. “Why do you think that I could do any of this? Be an ‘Elementalist’?”
His eyes went black again. “Because I can see it in you. You have the ability. You don’t know how to control it yet. We can help you with that.”
“Even if I did, what if I don’t want to join your little club? What if I’d rather just be normal?”
“Oh, you could never be normal. But we can’t force you to join our club. I’ll tell you what. Come to the dining hall tonight at seven and find me. You can meet the others. Then if you would like to, you can come with us to our meeting. If you’re not into it, you can leave. Deal?”
I didn’t know what to say. Strange things had happened, that was for sure. The door on graduation day. The burns on Rand’s bed. The ice on my blankets. This was too much for me to handle. “I’ll consider it. I don’t want to make any promises.”
“That’s fine. I trust you’ll make the right decision. See you at seven.”
I walked slowly to the stairs, looked back once more to see him smiling at me, and got out of the library as quickly as I could without making myself look like an idiot. Magic? Elementalists? What the hell was all that? And did he really move that chair, or was it a setup? I thought about all of these things on my way back to my dorm. The guy had really creeped me out, but after talking to him, I didn’t find him as scary. He wanted me to join a club. That’s not so bad. A club of magic users… ok no, he must be insane.
By the time I got back to my room, I still hadn’t decided what to do about it. My logical mind told me that magic was, of course, impossible. But some small part of me, very small, was telling me that it was all true. That the weird things that had been happening couldn’t all be coincidence. That maybe I was more than just a plain old girl from Kentucky.
That thought, that I might be someone special, is probably what made me go to the dining hall at seven. I looked around and saw the guy sitting at a table with four others, each of whom looked like they belonged to completely different crowds.
There was a punk-looking girl wearing Vans, a pink plaid skirt and a top not unlike the one I’d worn for Rand. Her hair was black with blue streaks, and she wore alternating black and pink nail polish. She was a little on the heavier side, but not at all fat, and looked to be pretty short. Hard to tell when she was sitting.
Next to her was a guy who looked like he could be a model. He had wide shoulders, was very tall and muscular, and had a crew cut. He also wore plaid shorts and flip-flops, which said to me that he was probably a douche.
Next to him was my creepy guy from earlier, and next was the girl I had seen him with that other night here in the dining hall. She was asian and super-skinny, with pigtails tied up in crazy little bows. She wore a tight, black, slightly transparent tee-shirt and obviously had a bright pink bra on underneath. Her black shorts were as tight as they possibly could be, and she had on black platform boots. She had black nail polish, black lipstick, and dark eye shadow to complete her sexy-goth-girl visage.
Finally, there was a girl that looked like she could have come directly from the soccer field. She had short brown hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, was wearing a workout top and sweats, and had dirty tennis shoes on. She wasn’t terribly tall, but definitely muscular. I could tell she had small breasts to begin with, and in a sports bra and workout top they were basically nonexistent.
Creepy guy spotted me and motioned for me to come over. There was an empty seat between the skater girl and the sporty one, and I sat.
“This is her, guys,” said creepy guy.
“Umm… hi. I’m Emma,” I said.
“Hi Emma. I’m Casey.” That was the skater girl.
“I’m Derek.” The model guy.
“Vince.” Creepy guy.
“Yaseiko,” the Asian girl said, with a slight accent. She had a very high voice, reminding me of some anime that I’d seen years ago.
“And I’m Claire. Welcome to our group. Hope you can handle it.” Claire seemed gruff, like she would be betting that I, in fact, would not be able to handle it. Honestly, I had no idea whether I could or not.
“Claire, be nice,” Vince said. “She’s a freshman, and just needs some guidance. That’s our job, remember?”
“Why do you guys think I need guidance from you?” I asked, slightly irritated that they apparently thought I was some kind of child.
“Because if you don’t learn to control yourself, you’ll be in for a world of hurt. Trust me,” Casey said.
“Alright guys, let’s have something to eat, then we’ll head over to the meeting,” Vince said. “You hungry, Emma?”
“Yeah, starving.” We all went up and got food, sat back down, and ate. It seemed almost normal, except that I was eating with a bunch of kids who apparently thought they had magical powers. The things I let myself get talked into…
After having a fairly awkward meal, sitting and listening in on what seemed like fairly normal conversation between the rest of them, we returned our trays and I followed them outside. We all started walking toward the academic side of campus. Luckily the path through the center of campus is well-lit, and the trees are sparse along it so it didn’t feel unsafe. We got to the A&H building, and went inside.
The building seemed much more ominous inside at night, with dimly lit corridors and doors with dark windows. We descended a stairwell off to the left of the main entrance of the building, and were suddenly in a basement storage area for tons of old art supplies and machinery. There were still doors along the hallway as if there were classrooms, but they had obviously not been in use for many years. We walked down the hallway and I started to hear voices coming from the end of the hallway. We came to a door that actually had some light behind it, and was obviously where the voices were emanating from.
Vince opened the door and I saw about ten other people there, milling around a large stone sculpture of a person in the far corner of the room. The room was lit with only a few bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, so it was shadowy in the room, but even in the sparse light the sculpture was breathtaking. It depicted a man in a loincloth holding fire in one hand and a stone in his other. On his back were small, feathered wings, and he was standing on what looked like the crest of a wave, which had what looked like icicles hanging from its front end. In the middle of his forehead, there was a third eye. It was incredibly detailed, despite its obvious age.
I looked around the room and saw a couple familiar faces. Brenda was across the room to my left, and she smiled and gave me a little wave when she saw me. Her hand-made sorority letters were gone, replaced with a tight, dark green top and a flowing blood-red skirt. Her tattoo was much easier to see now thanks to her low-cut top, and I noticed that it was a Chinese symbol. I couldn’t tell what it might mean, of course. Brenda looked absolutely gorgeous, and it made me feel like I should have dressed up or something. Wait a second… since when have I ever cared what any other girl thought of how I dressed? It must be something about her…
I also saw Dr. Holden off to my right, holding a wooden cane and tapping it impatiently on the floor. He nodded at me, but I couldn’t tell if he recognized me as one of his new students or not. That’s strange, I thought, I wonder why Holden would be here at the meeting of a student club. Maybe he’s the faculty advisor or something?
Once we had all entered and the door was closed, Dr. Holden rapped his cane loudly against the bottom of the statue, calling for attention. “Alright young men and women, thank you for coming, as always. I see a few new faces tonight, suggesting that this year’s freshman class isn’t a complete loss.” He looked at me and winked. “I believe everyone is here who will be getting here, so let’s head downstairs.”
Holden closed his eyes, and I felt a strange sensation in the back of my skull. The statue started slowly rising, and I realized that it was attached to a large square stone underneath. The base stone rose out of the hole it had been wedged into, and then began sliding to the side of where it had been. As the statue moved, I saw a stairwell appear from underneath. The stairs were set into the floor and looked as ancient as the statue itself. After a few moments the statue stopped sliding and Holden opened his eyes. “Avanti, young ones!” he said, with a sly smile on his face. The others in the room started down the stairs. “I’m supposed to go down there?” I asked Vince, astonished at the prospect.
“Yep, down there is where we’ll teach you the ropes, kid,” he said, gesturing for me to follow the crowd. I followed Vince over to the stairs, and with only a bit of hesitation, took my first steps down into what I was really hoping wasn’t a dungeon.

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 5

I woke up to a sound like glass falling to the floor after a window shatters. Sort of a weird tinkling sound. I still felt cold. In fact… I felt really cold. I looked down, and saw that there was a fine sheet of ice across my blankets. I sat up, and more of the ice cracked and fell to the floor. I looked down, and there was a puddle of water on the floor next to the bed. I wanted to get down out of bed, but there was even ice on the top rung of the ladder at the head of the bed, which I used to get up to the top bunk.
The weirdest thing is, as I sat up, I realized that the room wasn’t cold at all. The air in the room felt sweltering to me. And the ice was melting very quickly to soak my blankets and make more of a mess on the floor.
“Ummm… Allie?” I said, wondering how I was going to get down.
“Mmm… huh?” she mumbled, obviously still asleep.
“Hey… could you turn on the light? I… can’t get out of bed right now.”
“Wha? Um… ok?” She stepped out of bed. “Aah! Why is the floor all wet?”
“That’s one of the reasons I can’t get out of bed.”
She turned on the light. “How in the world did all that freezing cold water get in here? Is there a pipe leak or something? Is that… ice?!”
“Yeah. It’s melting really fast though. I have no idea how there could be ice in the room when it’s so super hot in here.”
“You think it’s hot? I think it’s pretty chilly… Come on, I’ll help you down.” She reached up to grab my hand. But she yelped and pulled back. “Emma, your hand is so cold!” She reached back up and helped me down. “We’re gonna have to call maintenance or something. I don’t know how it’s possible that ice formed on your bed, but it’s gotta be a maintenance problem… right?” She looked at me expectantly.
“Of course. That’s the only explanation,” I muttered.
We called down to the desk, and the girl there said that they really couldn’t send anyone tonight, could we clean up the mess and wait until tomorrow night? I was a little upset that they couldn’t do something, but it WAS three thirty in the morning. I pulled my blankets off the bed. Strangely, the sheets were completely fine, although a bit cool. We dried the floor with the blankets since they were already soaked, then went back to bed. It was warm enough in the room to not need a blanket anyway. I fell quickly back asleep, wondering what kind of maintenance anomaly could possibly cause this weirdness.
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The next morning, maintenance came and went, saying there was nothing wrong that they could see. Very strange, but the incident was quickly forgotten, at least by me. I could tell that Allie wasn’t gonna give up on an explanation that easily, as she kept checking the ductwork after the maintenance people left. “There’s gotta be something that caused that…” she’d murmur to herself. I let her go, planning out my class schedule and doing other things normal college kids do when they move in. Normal. Totally normal.
That day, I called up Stacey for our shopping trip. We took one of the school shuttles to Super Target and bought a bunch of stuff that we needed. It was a fun trip, and it was good to know that there was a supermarket close that I could go to if I needed it. We got back and Stacey asked if I wanted to hang out at her dorm later, and I said sure.
Stacey and I hung out for most of the evening, and she introduced me to a few of her friends from Broadwater, none of whom I can really remember in detail. Her room was sort of a suite, with a two-person bedroom similar to mine, but instead of just a sink in their room they had a bathroom that was shared with the room next door, so that four girls had a bathroom of their own. That’s nice and all, but I figured I’d be ok with the communal bathrooms, especially with the hot tub available. They did have a much nicer lounge, with an HDTV and Blu-ray player, which Stacey informed me had been donated by her father. Hmm… must be nice, I thought to myself.
The next few days flew by in a blur. There were all kinds of activities planned for us freshmen, including a small concert featuring some local bands. I checked it out, but nothing struck me as amazing. There were also some workshops on how to study and keep sane, which I of course blew off. I can handle myself, thank you very much.
Before I knew it, the upperclassmen had arrived on campus. Suddenly the place seemed a lot more crowded. The arrival of the older students also meant that we only had a few days left until school started. The activities planned for the Saturday and Sunday before the first day of school on Monday were much more broad… free movies out on the quad, ice cream socials put on by sororities, even a beginners’ chess tournament sponsored by the chess club. I stayed away from all of that, even when Stacey tried to convince me to check out Alpha Delta Omega with her. I just couldn’t imagine joining a sorority, not even if my life depended on it. Hopefully Stacey wouldn’t turn into a caddy, bitchy…
Anyway, Sunday night we had another floor meeting. This time, the upperclassmen were there, of course, so where the chairs had been half full before, there weren’t enough for everyone now. There looked to be a total of about fifty girls on our floor, which is a lot to share four bathrooms. Thankfully we didn’t have to go through stupid name games this time, so the meeting only lasted about a half hour, and then we were free to go worry about what the first day of classes might bring.
My first class the next morning would start at 8:30 am, so I set my alarm for 6:30 to make sure I had plenty of time to get ready. I didn’t know how crowded the shower area would be. I lay in bed for a long time, wondering what would happen tomorrow. I hope I don’t screw this up. I really don’t want to have to go home with my tail between my legs. I drifted off to sleep, hoping above all that I had enough pencils and paper for the next day.
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I was glad I set my alarm early. The shower area was packed, with a short line of three girls waiting for showers when I got out there. I waited patiently for my turn, and when it came I was really glad for the partitions between the showers… some of these girls were not so good looking, and I caught one girl staring with a sly smile on her face as I was unwrapping from my robe. She was cute and all, but I’d never found any girl attractive enough to actually consider hopping the fence for her.
I took a quick shower, since I knew other girls were waiting, then toweled off and went back to my room in my robe. Allie had gotten up while I was gone, and was looking through her closet for something to wear. I’d learned early on that she wasn’t the type to shower every morning. Her habits so far had been to bathe every two days or so, and always at night. For the first day of classes, you’d think she’d shower, I thought, but I of course didn’t say anything to her. Who am I to judge?
My first class of the day was Biology 100. I had to walk across campus to the Life Sciences building for it, so I left at around 8:10 to make sure I had plenty of time to find it. I passed a few guys smoking and joking outside of Randall, and one of them said “Hi,” and smiled at me. I gave him a quick smile and mumbled a greeting, then kept walking. Now was not the time to strike up a conversation with a random guy. Besides, I don’t like the taste of a smoker’s mouth. Rand had been the exception to the rule, since he smoked only cloves and so always tasted more like cigars than cigarettes…
It took me about six minutes to walk across campus using the path through the middle, which was lined with trees and full of other students going the same direction. I reached the academic buildings and looked at a little campus map I had brought with me. The Life Sciences building seemed to be a few buildings to my right, so I walked past Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences to get there. The outside of Life Sciences was drab, a simple building with simple brick walls. From what I could tell, this building was not very new, but didn’t look as old as Arts and Humanities did. The place had a musty smell to it, like it hadn’t been given a good cleaning in years. There were elevators, though I didn’t have to use them since my class was in the auditorium on the first floor, room 106.
I walked in and found that it was stadium-style seating, with room for about 100 students. I sat toward the middle of a section of seats and waited for a few minutes, listening to an acoustic playlist on my mp3 player. About ten minutes later the professor walked in, pulling a cart full of notes and what looked like a DNA model. I had taken Advanced Placement Biology in high school, but only scored a 3 on the test, so I had a good amount of knowledge on the subject, but hadn’t gotten the college credit.
The professor’s last name was Docker, and she looked as if she’d been teaching intro Biology for about twenty years too many. Once she started speaking, though, I found her to be easy to listen to, and she had a good way of explaining everything. The first class was mostly Dr. Docker telling us about the syllabus and giving a broad overview of the subjects we would be covering. An hour later we all filed out of the room. I hadn’t learned anything new, but I felt like I would enjoy the class.
The rest of the morning was much the same, as I went to Philosophy 101, then Chemistry 101. The only class I was at all worried about so far was Chem, as the professor had seemed hard and formal, and spoke of pop quizzes. There were reading assignments for each class, which I planned to get started on that night. I may not look like the typical nerdy kid, but I have always taken my school work seriously.
I went to get lunch at noon, at the student center in the middle of the academic buildings. It felt like a mall food court, and I ended up with some chicken pasta which wasn’t bad but wasn’t great either. Oh, well, what can you expect on a student meal plan? I sat by myself at a small table and ate, taking my time since I didn’t have another class until 1:30.
As I was chowing down, I noticed Stacey walking toward me, and flagged her down. She was walking with a few girls from ADO, and they kept walking over to a larger table a ways away. “Hey!” Stacey said as she sat down across from me. “How was your first day of classes so far?”
“Oh, just about what I expected. Chem might be a bitch, but the others seem fine. I’m looking forward to the seminar I’ve got this afternoon. It’s on the portrayal of scientists in the media. Should be cool.”
“Yeah, that sounds really fun. I’ve only had one class so far, Art History 101 this morning. A joke, really, for anyone who’s studied Art History before, but that’s how it works. Hey, would you want to join me over at the ADO table?” She looked at me with an almost pleading look in her eyes. I knew she wanted me to get along with her possible future “sisters”.
“Umm… yeah I guess I can do that. They’re not gonna steal my soul?”
“Haha no they’re pretty cool. Very laid-back. Give them a chance.”
“Alright, just because we’re shopping buddies though.”
I walked over with her and sat at the large table next to her. There were maybe twelve other girls there, a few wearing letters and a few others that I assumed were prospective members, like Stacey. “Hey guys,” she announced, “this is Emma. Emma, this is…” and she rattled off the names of every girl at the table. None of them stuck, except for one girl who I remembered was also on our floor, named Brenda, who was sitting directly across from me.
Brenda had strikingly dark eyes, dark brown hair with highlights, and a pretty nice body. She was wearing her ADO letters, but they looked like they had been sewn by hand, giving her a more free-spirit look than the other girls around the table. I also noticed the hint of a tattoo peeking out from under her shirt above her right breast. All-in-all, a very nice looking girl.
The girls all said their greetings to me, with none of the judgemental looks that I was expecting. They went back to the conversation they had been having, about a social they were planning with one of the frats. Brenda asked me what my major was, and I of course answered “Undecided, but something in the sciences.”
She smiled and told me she was in her third year of Biochemistry, and was loving it. “If you’re considering it, I’d be glad to show you some of the stuff I’m working on, and help you out with your freshman Chem class. That is always the tough one for everyone.”
“That would be awesome! Thank you so much, Brenda!” I meant it. She seemed like a great potential source of information about the school and the program. We talked for a while longer, then it was almost time to get to class. I exchanged numbers with Brenda and said goodbye.
Stacey had a class starting at the same time, so we walked together out of the student center and turned left, toward the Arts and Humanities building, where both of our classes would be. The A&H building seemed to be the oldest academic building on campus, with pillars out front and gargoyles on the roof. It seemed out of place in the midst of the other buildings, which each looked like they couldn’t have been more than forty years old. The hallways were wide, the echoes loud, and it creeped me out. I went up to the second floor to my classroom.
The seminar class was really interesting. The professor, Dr. Holden, told us that he was a Chemist by trade but that he’s always had an interest in television and movies, and the way that scientists are either portrayed as insane villains or unlikely heroes in much of pop culture. He was a small, round man, with a slight limp when he walked, as if he might have a prosthetic knee. The top of his head was bald, surrounded by a ring of pure white hair, carefully trimmed and well-managed. His pug nose held up his tiny glasses, and below that was a thin white mustache. His eyes always seemed to be hiding a secret, and his cheeks were always rosy from the exertion of his teaching style. That first day, he wore nicely tailored dress slacks, contrasted horribly by a dress shirt that looked like it was from the early seventies; all purples and greens in an erratic design. He wore green suspenders and no tie.
I liked Dr. Holden, he seemed like the type of teacher I always hoped to have for any class in high school… full of jokes that were actually funny but not afraid to tell us when he wants us to work hard. The grade for the class would be determined almost exclusively by a pair of long essays, one at midterm and one as our final. He said that he’d give us more details about those later.
For the rest of the period, he showed us clips of scientists in various forms; Professor Fink from The Simpsons, Dr. Frankenstein from the old black and white movie, Dr. Manil from Mutants, and many others. All in all, it was an amazing start to what I expected to be an amazing class.
After walking out of the A&H building, as I was on my way back to Randall, I noticed the creepy guy from the dining hall before. He was sitting on a bench in front of the library, and he was staring at me again. The same dark, ominous stare he had given me before. My heart froze over again, and I quickly looked away. When I dared to take a quick look back, he was walking into the library. Alright, that’s it. I need to see what this guy’s deal is, I thought, and started walking toward the library.
I went inside, through the small security area, and looked around. The first floor was mostly filled with computer labs and little computer stations where you could look up the card catalog. I looked toward the other end of the room, past all of the computer labs, and saw the back of the guy’s jacket going down a stairwell marked “Journals M-Z”. I kept following him, wondering what he might be looking at journals for this early in the year.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw that the room was nothing but shelves of journals. This must have been a part of a storage basement that they had turned into usable space. It was shadowy and dusty down there, like no one had messed with these journals for years. I started going down the main aisle, looking for the weird guy. I spotted the back of his head over the top of a shelf ahead, and quickly hid.
I waited for him to go a bit farther, then turned back into the main aisle. Unexpectedly, he was standing in the aisle, staring right at me. Taking a second to really look at him, I noticed a bunch of silver rings on his fingers, and a celtic-looking symbol on a necklace he wore. His eyes were solid black again. This time they stayed that way.
“I’ve known you were there all along. You can’t hide from me.”
My blood turned to ice, and I turned to run.
“Stop.” There was something strange in his voice that forced me to stop. I turned around. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to induct you.”
“Induct me… into what?” I asked, shakily.
“Just a little club. A club for people like you, who have strange gifts. I’m sure you’ve noticed things happening recently, right? Fires start where they shouldn’t, things might fly across the room randomly. Am I right?”
I slowly nodded. Weird things HAD been happening lately.
“These things are all the signs of our kind.”
My knees were jelly. I wanted to run, but my feet wouldn’t listen. “Our kind? What… kind?”
“Witches. Warlocks. Magic users have had many names over the years. That’s what you are. The name we like to use, though, is Elementalists.”

Coed Witchery 101 - Chapter 4

My roommate hadn’t shown up yet, apparently, because the room was empty. There was a sink in the back corner with a mirrored medicine cabinet above it. There were two wardrobes with drawers at the bottom of them, and two desks, and two of those extra-long twin beds. Just as expected. The setup of the room wasn’t ideal, I decided, and set to work rearranging things a bit. I’d have to ask my roommate if we could bunk the beds. I wouldn’t mind having the top bunk if she’d be ok with it, and it would give us some more room to work with.
We had a large window on the far wall, and an A/C unit below it, and I decided that having the desks arranged to allow some light in from the window if we felt like having it would be good, so I put the two desks on opposite sides of the room around the window. That put one desk right next to the sink, which I didn’t like, so I moved them both to the left wall. I put the wardrobes next to the desks, and the beds on the opposite wall. After I was done, it seemed a bit more cozy, and we had a little bit of floor space where we could maybe put a refrigerator if we decided to rent one.
I had a flash of jealousy for the first floor residents. We were on an all-girls’ floor, and right below us on the second floor would be the guys, but the first floor was all mixed suites, with single bedrooms and bathrooms for four people instead of the whole floor. I envied them, but I just couldn’t afford the suites. Maybe once I’ve got a campus job…
I moved my bags into the room then, and started unpacking a few things. I put my red satin sheets, which I love, on my bed and started putting some clothes in the wardrobe that I had claimed for myself. A lot of my clothing would be coming in the mail, so I really only had about a week’s worth to put away. After that was done, I set up my laptop on the desk, plugged it into the Ethernet jack, and started surfing the net. We had gotten our login names and passwords in the mail, so I signed on and checked my e-mail. I was about to start browsing to my favorite weblogs when my roommate walked in.
The first impression I got of her was “nerd”. That’s fine with me, of course, I was a nerd too. I remembered from our orientation packet that her name was Allison and that she was a Computer Science major. Her hair was very dark brown, a bit mousy looking. She had glasses and a bit of a pudgy face, but she could be a cute girl if she put some effort to it. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and carrying a military-issue duffel bag. Must be an army brat. Her t-shirt, stretched across her chest, said “+5 shirt of smiting”. Hmm… a Dungeons and Dragons kid too. This could be a long year…
She seemed startled to see me at first, but quickly recovered. “Hi, I’m Allie,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Hey Allie. I’m Emma. Need a hand with anything?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine. Thanks though.” She smiled at me.
I let her get a little settled in while I surfed some more. Once she had unpacked a little, I pitched the idea of the bunk beds. “Hmm… I guess we could try it out. I’m afraid of heights though…”
“Oh I can take the top bunk. I don’t mind a bit of climbing. It would give us enough room in here to maybe put a TV stand and a small TV. Maybe even a small futon. What do you think?”
“That could be cool,” she said, still obviously shy. “I’d like to be able to watch Mutants every week.”
“Awesome, I’m into Mutants too. We can have roommate bonding time drooling over Peter,” I said with a wink. She giggled just a bit and we went to work bunking the beds.
About an hour later, after we had gotten pretty well settled in, there was a knock on our doorframe. “Hey guys!” said an enthusiastic-looking girl at our doorway. She looked to be a couple years older, short and muscular. Obviously our RA. She must be an athelete, I thought to myself. “I’m your RA, Natasha. We’re going to have a floor meeting at 5, so if you guys could meet us all in the lounge that would be awesome!” A little too perky. Ugh.
“We’ll be there,” I said.
“Okay, see you soon!”
I gave Allie a look that basically summed up my feelings about Natasha. She nodded her head very seriously and then we both burst out laughing.
I decided to check out the shower facilities before the meeting, so I walked down the hall until I found a restroom. I looked inside and saw about ten sinks with mirrors above them, six stalls, and the entrance to the shower area. I walked in and saw that there were ten showerheads with partitions between them, a small shelf below each to put your shampoo and such, and a little hook on the opposite side of the shower area to hang your towel. Not bad, really. At least they try for a little bit of privacy. None of the showers were in use now, of course, it being the middle of the day.
I saw another opening on the other end of the shower area, and got curious. I walked through and found that there was a hot tub in there! Not a really nice one, of course, and only big enough for two people at most, but it was nice to know that if I needed to soak and veg out a bit, I had somewhere to do it. Finding the hidden hot tub made me curious if all of the bathrooms were that way, so I walked down the hall some more and checked out the other ones. There were four womens’ rooms on the floor, and two for men, surprisingly. I suppose it didn’t make sense for visitors to have to walk down a whole floor.
Two of the other rooms were smaller, with only 6 showerheads and no hot tub, but the one all the way at the other end of the hall was identical to the first one I found. I was genuinely impressed with the facilities in Randall, and wondered if the other dorms were like this.
When I got back to the room, Allie had her computer out and was playing World of Warcraft. Uh-oh, I thought to myself, she might stay up all night playing that crap. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
I surfed the net for a while more until it was time to go to the floor meeting. Allie closed out of WOW and we locked our door on the way out.
The lounge was toward the middle of the hall, between the two smaller bathrooms. I saw other girls filing into it, looking about as excited as I was. As I walked in the door I saw that there were three refrigerators on one side of the room, with two ranges and some countertop space right next to them. On the other side was a fair sized television with a DVD/VCR combo next to it. In the center, currently, were about 40 chairs placed in a circle, half-filled with girls. Oh God, I knew we’d have to do stupid introduction games. NOT what I had in mind for my first night at school.
I’m not going to detail the stupidity of the next hour and a half. Suffice it to say that the peppy RA had three others just like her, and they made us do stupid name memorization games which would never work.
Several of the girls looked like the type I would want nothing to do with, the cheerleaders/prom queens, but I had learned on the bus that looks could be deceiving. I decided to give every one of them an honest chance.
I didn’t make any new friends at the meeting because there were just too many people, but as Allie and I were walking out we chatted with a couple girls who were walking our direction, Cynthia and Holly. We found out that they lived right across the hall from us. Cynthia had short black hair, a beak-shaped nose, and was a rugby player; tall, lean, muscular and obviously full of energy. Holly seemed to me like the typical girl-next-door; wavy brown hair down to her shoulders, a cute oval-shaped face, freckles, and dressed casually in jeans and a form-fitting tee shirt. Both of them were very friendly and we all decided to go get dinner together at around seven.
During the discussion, Allie hadn’t said too much. She was obviously a bit introverted, so I determined right then to try to break her out of her shell a bit. You can’t have people over to your place if you have an awkward roommate, so I wanted to make sure she wasn’t one. Despite her nerdy appearance, I could see a lot of potential there for having fun, I’d just have to bring it out.
Seven o’clock rolled around, and Holly knocked lightly on our doorframe. “You guys ready?”
“Yep, let me just put my shoes on,” I said. “Oh, hey, do you mind if I call someone and ask her if she’d like to meet us there? I met someone in Broadwater this morning.” I had almost forgotten about Stacey.
“Totally fine with us,” Cynthia said, from somewhere behind Holly. I gave Stacey a call, but she didn’t answer. Might be in her own floor meeting, I thought.
We walked out into the hallway, and it seemed as if a lot of people had the same idea… tons of girls were headed out of the dorm. We went with the crowd and made it outside.
“Do you guys mind if I have a smoke on the walk over?” Allie asked, surprising me. We all shook our heads, although it looked like Holly made a sour face after.
So, we walked and talked over to the dining hall. The dining hall is a low, ugly building set between two dorms about four buildings down from Randall. It didn’t look overly crowded inside, but there was a short line out the door to get in. We got at the end of the line and chatted a bit more, just small talk.
Once we got inside, we were assaulted by the smell of fried food and grease. There were separate stations for different types of food, and a lot of it seemed edible. I went to the vegetarian section first, just because usually veg food is more healthy. I found some really delicious-looking stir-fry and some hummus and pita bread. Then I went back over to the “Home Cookin’” section and got a bit of turkey and gravy.
I got myself some soda and found Cynthia already seated at a table. She had nothing but meat and fruit on her tray, which wasn’t terribly surprising. The other girls found us and we all ate, eyeing up guys that walked past and making comments. Typical female behavior, I suppose. I learned that Cynthia was an Econ major, and Holly was a History major, planning to minor in Religious Studies. I told them all that I was undecided, but I wanted to do something in science.
During all this small talk, I noticed a guy sitting at the table next to us, directly across from me. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, dark hair, blue eyes, a bit of stubble on his chin, wearing mostly black… normally my type of guy, I’d say. What I noticed about him, though, was that he was staring at me. It was starting to make me a little uncomfortable, because it wasn’t the “Ooh, she’s hot” type of stare. He wasn’t smirking. He was just staring at me solemnly, like he was trying to read my thoughts. I tried not to make eye contact again, but the next time I did, for a brief second, I could swear his blue eyes turned all black. Then it was gone and he looked away to chat with a girl sitting at his table. They got up, and just before leaving he gave me that cold stare again, and this time the girl with him did it too.
“… and I was thinking of taking Philosophy 101, but then I changed my mind… Emma, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Cynthia said, rousing me out of my thoughts.
“Oh, yeah… sorry.” I tried to join in the conversation again, but over and over, that guy’s face came back to me. I couldn’t get him out of my head. We finished our dinner and headed out, but even when I was back at my room later, trying to fall asleep, his face haunted me. Who was that guy? Why was he staring at me? I felt cold, just thinking about him…