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by Anne Gleason
They're doing another round of room searches!" Cat sputters to her roommate Syl, over the phone. "I just heard it from Jessica in the 24 hour reading room." Syl, reclining in her dorm room easy chair, doesn't seem to muster up much concern. She gently peels a tangerine. "I mean, it's crazy, Syl. They really think there's some kind of . . . I don't know . . . alien or something on campus," Cat continues. The library phone crackles with static.
"It's just routine now," Syl says, "Like about every 10 days they check the rooms to make sure that one of their students isn't housing some extra-terrestrial life-form. Ever since that big electrical storm happened last month, it's like the whole biology and astronomy departments are convinced that there's some new life forms multiplying out in Foster Woods and the Arboretum . . . hahaha." Syl drops the tangerine and it rolls across the dusty wood floor. "It still is a kind of creepy topic though, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Cat says after a long pause, "I just hope they don't find anything. It might make me sleep a little easier if they don't find one of those little creatures they keep whispering about in the labs and hallways."
Screams were heard around 7:30am. Missy, next door neighbor to Cat and Syl, checked out what was going on. She must have been banging on the door, two doors down (Tania and Stella's room) forever. A wracked Stella opened the door, hysterically crying. "She's dead! She's dead!" Missy looked into the room and saw the severely emaciated, lifeless body of Tania lying on the floor.
The city police came onto the scene 45 minutes later. Tania was declared dead from severe dehydration at 3:00 a.m., just five and a half hours before. "It's impossible," Stella whimpered, "She had a big glass of water before she went to bed, I saw her do it! I know she was on the skinny side, but she wasn't life or death thin." The police inspector in charge begged to differ. Tania's death via dehydration was very real, almost unearthly in its severity.
"Officer Nelson, come here now," a tall, lanky junior officer named Hunter half-shouted. Nelson rushed to Hunter's side.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't know if this has been reported yet, but this girl is missing a second toe on her right foot. I'm no doctor, but it looks like the toe has been ripped off . . . no, bit off! And her foot looks more shrunken than the rest of her body." Hunter wiped a few drops of sweat off his brow. His eyes were two and a half inches from Tania's second missing toe. "It looks like a faint ring of lipstick on the spot where the toe was removed." Officer Nelson shook his half-bald head and yelled out into the hallway: "Let's get those analysts in."
Lightning and thunder welcomed the third floor of Whitney dormitory's spring dinner, an anti-formal event. It was dusk and Syl, Cat, Missy, and Stella were preparing to go out for late dinner and drinks at The Grotto, a minimalist-looking French bistro in town. Piecing together some evening outfits, the young women of floor 3 were feeling queasy from the storm. "I feel sick," said Cat, "I think I might have to stay home tonight. I'm feeling really kinda weak." With a half-made-up face, she flopped down into an easy chair in Stella's room.
"I think we're all just feeling psycho because of Tania..." Stella tried to continue but couldn't.
Syl grabbed control of the conversation. "Let's just go out, have a few drinks, forget we all are freaking out, and enjoy ourselves, OK? We deserve it." Plans were mulled over, make-up and clothes put on, and decisions made. Stella decided to stay home, as did Cat. Syl, Missy, along with Ruth and Gina (two girls from across the hall) decided to make it out to the restaurant through all this pouring rain. They screamed under their umbrellas, racing to the car.
"Well, I really need to get some sleep soon," Stella told Cat, while staring out the rain-splattered window. "Do you have any more of those sleeping pills?"
"Yeah, they're in the top left hand drawer of my desk," Cat said. Stella walked into Cat and Syl's room while Cat began to strip off her make-up in front of the shared bathroom's mirror. "Remember, it's the left hand drawer!" she reiterated, yelling down the hall. Stella was distracted by the momentarily blinding lightning and crack of thunder. She opened the top right hand drawer. Digging through the mess of papers, pens, and clutter, Stella fingers a tiny soft object and pulls it out of the jumble. A fleshy toe lay lifeless in the center of her palm. Eyes wide with fear, her lips parted, mouth slacked. The door closed and locked behind her. A hand grabbed the toe from her palm and tossed it into the garbage can. She spun around to see Cat's deathly pale face in front of her.
"I'm so thirsty," Cat said, "Will you help me?"
