Oswald floated through the sunlit air as a familiar feminine
voice whispered to him. “Come closer, my love. Come closer.” The little guy
half-closed his eyes in anticipation of the seduction. The closer he floated
towards this voice, the brighter the sunlight became. Whoever was sending these
vibes had the radiance of an angel. And then Oswald could see a pair of plump
red lips calling for him and making kissing noises to further tempt him. He
puckered his own marijuana-scented lips and prepared for the love-making
session he desperately desired.
And then the little guy opened his eyes and saw those red
lips were hiding a serpentine tongue and elongated fangs dripping with poison.
Oswald’s heart thumped in his chest and his eyes widened upon learning this face
belonged to Antero Magnus, whose cyan eyes rolled so far back in his head that
redness became horrifyingly apparent. “Give me a kiss, lover boy!” slithered
Antero before taking a massive bite out of his former protégé’s skull. Oswald’s
brains oozed out of the bite marks while his skull cracked in half, rendering
him lifeless in an instant.
“Oswald, wake up!” shouted a more genuine female voice and
the dwarf snapped awake while inhaling a raspy breath. Sitting up in his bed
and soaked to the bone with sweat, he noticed he was back in his dorm room just
like Nikita Johnson promised. Low and behold, there she was standing over his
exhausted body with wetness in her eyes. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said. “You
looked like you were having a nightmare.”
The little person wiped the blurriness out of his eyes and
said, “I did have a nightmare. A bunch of virgins in masks came and beat the
shit out of everyone at school. Wait a minute. That was just a nightmare,
right?”
“I’m afraid not, Oswald. Our college really was attacked.
It’s all over the media. I was watching GNN on my phone.” The dwarf tried to
crawl out of bed, but Nikita placed a hand in front of him to keep him from
doing so. “Don’t, Oswald. You’re hurt. Just lay there for a few more minutes.”
Oswald face-palmed and whispered, “Goddamn you, Antero.”
“What did you just say?”
“Um…I, uh…oh, no…”
Nikita folded her arms and asked, “How do you know who
Antero Magnus is?”
“How do YOU know him?”
Nikita sighed and sat down on the bed next to her rescuer’s
feet. She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger before
finally satisfying Oswald’s curiosity. “He’s in one of my classes. I’m double
majoring in English and political science and apparently he’s majoring in
political science too. Every single time he’d share one of his papers with the
class…he…” She wiped a tear from her eye. “He just sounded so entitled. He felt
like the world owed him sex. He was incredibly sexist on so many levels. I
don’t think he’d even be happy if he found a relationship. He’d just continue
the cycle of hatred. And the worst part about this is….my professor is too
scared to challenge him because he thinks Antero will snap.”
“That definitely sounds like something he’d do,” said Oswald
absentmindedly before backpedaling with a series of “um’s” and “uh’s”.
“Are you hiding something from me? How do you know Antero?
Please be honest.” No answer. Just a nervous stare from the little guy.
“Oswald, if you know something about Antero, you need to tell me. You heard
those masked guys yelling things like Love Is Black and muttering shit about
Chads and Stacys. If Antero really is behind all of that, you need to tell the
police. That’s information they need.” Still no answer. “Oswald, what’s going
on?!”
The dwarf sighed and plopped his head back on the pillow.
“Antero tried to get me to join his group. He calls it Incelbordination or some
shit like that.”
“You didn’t actually join them, did you?” asked Nikita with
a shaky voice. “Oswald, if I find out you’re mixed up in this sexist crap, I’m
going to…”
“I turned them down!” A long beat of uncomfortable silence
hung between them. “I saw what those people are capable of. I’ve been to one of
their chat rooms. The shit they talked about…it was disgusting. They joked
about murdering and raping women. Although, it turned out not to be much of a
joke, did it.”
“You need to go to the police and tell them everything you
know.”
“…I’m sorry, Nikita, I can’t.”
“Why not?” Another beat of silence built a wall between them
until Nikita’s eyes widened at something that appeared to be in Oswald’s coat,
which he still wore in bed. She reached inside despite the dwarf swatting at
her hands and pulled out several ready rolls. “Oh my god…this is why? You’re
afraid the police are going to find these?”
Holding up his hands defensively, Oswald explained, “Look, I
have a prescription for those, okay? I’ve got a severe case of depression and
pot is the only thing that’s working.”
“Are you sure it’s working?” asked Nikita rhetorically.
“Because I’ve heard your love stories in Valerie’s class. I’ve heard your
poetry. Whatever’s wrong with you, these rolls aren’t doing the trick.”
“Sometimes they take a while to kick in!” snapped Oswald.
“Then again, sometimes there isn’t a cure for what’s going on in real life!”
“If you’re not going to report Antero to the police, then I
will. I’ll even put in a good word for you with the cops!”
“You can’t do that, Nikita! You can’t force your
straightedge crap on the whole fucking world! It doesn’t work like that! I need
that marijuana just to get me through the day unscathed! It’s not my fault
everybody else wants to be a prick and fuck up my therapy!”
Nikita’s face transformed from desperate tears to passionate
anger at the “straightedge crap” talking point. “Just so you know, I do have a
dog in this fight when it comes to drugs and alcohol. My dad smoked all the
weed he could find and on top of that drank every bottle of booze within a ten
mile fucking radius. He did all of this when I was just a little girl. He’d
come home from work smelling like he’d just bathed in raw sewage. And then late
at night he went for a drive…” She wiped a way another tear and sniffled. “He
never came home. Crashed into the river and drowned. I blame him for
everything, but I blame the drugs he took even more.”
Oswald sighed and face-palmed once again. “I’m sorry for
your loss, Nikita. Trust me, I know how that feels.”
“Then why are you smoking this shit to begin with?!”
screamed Nikita, causing her target to pull the covers halfway over his face.
“If you know how it feels, then why are you repeating this garbage?! This stuff
isn’t curing you. It’s making you into a monster. You want proof? You’re
worried that the cops are going to find this on you when you throw Antero under
the bus. Well…I don’t have to worry about that because I’m not stupid enough to
repeat the same mistakes over and over again.”
“Nikita…please give those back to me.”
“Not a chance, Oswald. I’m not going to let you fuck over
this entire school after what they went through!”
“Why, you little!” grunted the dwarf as he attempted to roll
out of bed and onto his feet. Because of his injuries, all he could do was plop
on his ass and pull a muscle in his lower back. He screamed and coughed while
pounding the floor with his fist, ignoring the fact that there used to be glass
in his knuckles.
“I’m sorry, Oswald…but you did this to yourself!” said
Nikita before turning around and marching away.
“No, wait! Don’t go! You can’t turn me in for this! They’ll
put me in prison forever! I don’t’ deserve that shit!” The sound of Nikita
slamming the front door behind her prompted Oswald to scream even more curse
words while pounding the floor with both fists this time as well as his heels.
He didn’t get much offense into the floor due to his agonized lower back, but
that didn’t stop him from trying.
Just like Nikita before him, Oswald found an excuse to shed
tears, but his own sobbing was loud and obnoxious enough to awaken his couch
potato roommate, who screamed, “Hey! Shut up in there!” Except Oswald didn’t
shut up. He cursed and pounded the ground some more until he was ready for
another trip to the subconscious theater.
“Don’t do this to me, Nikita,” he whispered as he was
falling asleep again. “Please…don’t…do…this…”
