This choice: The dean’s office, oh no! • Go Back...Chapter #4Marks in hot water by: Dolleo   Mark tapped his foot nervously, still not sure if he was losing his mind or not. It all started a week ago when he got out of bed and immediately tripped on a plastic truck his roommate had apparently left on the floor for some reason, it looked like something a two year old would play with. Mark had no idea why his dorm mate would own that, let alone leave it on their floor, but with the roomie in question already out for the day he just had to forget about it and move on with his mornings. And when Mark finally did confront him, not only did his roommate have no idea what he was talking about, but the evidence had completely disappeared. If that was it Mark would have resigned to the possibility that Tom just kept a childhood keepsake hidden in their dorm and somehow managed to re-hide it again just in time, but it wasn’t. Since that day he kept noticing oddity after oddity of things that weren’t supposed to be there only for them to disappear soon after.
On the second day Mark kept catching people sucking their thumbs out of the corner of his eye only for them to not be when he turned. On the third day he had to do a double take when he thought he saw a row of oversized strollers chained up outside of a building on campus, but that second glance proved them to be bikes on a bike rack after all. The fourth day was a day Mark had no classes so he enjoyed himself on the couch watching tv, thank god for that guy on his floor who knew how to steal cable… but every channel was wrong. First few were all Saturday morning cartoons, after that he found channel after channel of preschool shows. He didn’t stay on any one of them to glean any further context, but when he decided to stop channel surfing and punch in a channel number that should have been sports central he caught a snippet of a conversation between a kid character and an adult character going over the episode's lesson. But for some reason it sounded backwards as the kid seemed to be lecturing his mom about how other parents wouldn’t want to play with her if she didn’t share. Channel 45 wasn’t sports central any more, rather it was one of those sensory stimulation videos people put on for babies with the dancing fruit. Although every now and again there would be a strawberry in a football helmet. Mark began to fumble with the remote trying to figure out if someone had screwed with the settings somehow. But in his mounting panic he accidentally turned the TV off. And when he turned it back on sports central was going over the highlights of last night’s big game. He didn’t want to but Mark couldn’t repeat the phenomenon.
On day four Mark walked into the second floor men's room of the library and found the changing station bigger than any kangaroo care station he’d ever seen before. And he knew how big this fold out table was meant to be. He’d made one or two… questionable decisions on it before. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be big enough for someone twice his size. He was locked there, just staring at the gray plastic rectangle on the wall questioning just about everything until the timer went off on the motion sensor and the room went dark. When he waved his arm and the bathroom lit up every stall was gone. The tile floor was bare and empty as if no one had ever bothered considering hooking up a toilet. Instead the walls were lined with those mounted plastic fold outs big enough to be doors. There was also a shelf stocked with something not impossible to guess but Mark bolted out of there before he could take in any more.
The sixth day was one of two firsts for Mark, the first time he was looking for one of these anomalies, and the first time he wasn’t alone when he witnessed one. He was going out with friends as the sun was just threatening to set, his head was on a swivel and a few of his companions asked if someone was following him. He assured them it was nothing like that as they crossed the quad but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw it. A dozen or less yards away a girl sat on her bench, breastfeeding her boyfriend. He didn’t dare look away, at this point he knew deep down that it could disappear if he looked away for even a second. And he couldn’t let it disappear without the group seeing what he saw, he needed them to see, he needed to not be crazy. But when he waved them over and asked if they thought there was anything weird about the two on the bench their responses were… less than comforting. Patrick shrugged out of the corner of his eye and said he didn’t want to stare at it but it’s not like he had to, Jerry said something about how there were probably better places for it but it wasn’t any of his business and Leslie went as far as to say it was kinda sweet. That got Mark to turn away and give her a look of shocked confusion, but when she returned his gaze with one of confusion Mark felt his stomach drop. Sure enough when he looked again the young lovers were just making out like any other college couple. So Mark did his best to play it off and move one. He kept his head down for the rest of the night, he didn’t want to see any more weird things if he was the only one who’d seen them.
The next morning there was a bit of an incident when the cute girl who sat next to him in his Poli Sci class asked to borrow a pen. He was happy to accommodate but let out a yell and fell out of his chair when he blinked and the sexy mature young woman was suddenly an overgrown snot nosed rugrat reaching for him with grubby hands covered in finger paints. And that outburst is what landed him here, in dean Sullivans office, trying to explain away all his odd behavior people had apparently reported over the past few days. He couldn’t tell the truth, of course. If she didn’t expel him she might have him committed. So he did his best to navigate his insane week offering up convenient little explanations for all the odd things he’d done or said while avoiding the truly odd things he’d experienced. It didn’t seem like she believed him as she raised a hand for him to stop half way through his excuse for his apparent breakdown that morning.
“Look, I understand you student’s are under a lot of stress” she began, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose “but it’s up to you to take care of your own mental health with the resources we’ve provided. Now…” the dean seemed to trail off as she leaned to the side in her chair and peered over Mark's shoulder if she was looking anywhere at all. Then she locked eyes with Mark and surprised him with how she chose to finish her sentence.
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