Green Tea, Part II

Note: if you have not read the beginning of this story, do not read part II. Read the previous post first. Additionally, if you didn't like the first part, don't bother reading this one.

CJ was listening to Jack Johnson on his iPod, and didn’t hear a word. He kept running, and running. Pretty soon he had gone three miles instead of his usual two, and then another. By the end of mile five he was running faster, and he was exhausted, and he felt marvelous. He practically leapt the college wall before slowing to a jog to cool down. Finally he went into his dorm and crashed onto a sofa in the common room.

“Will someone, for all love, bring me a glass of water?”

“Oh I’d love to,” said Richard Snofbury who was perpetually on hand.

CJ downed the entire bottle of water that Richard Snofbury brought him and walked down to his room where he laid down and took an unplanned little nap. When he woke up it was very dark. He blinked a few times rapidly; his contacts were dry. He squinted warily at his surroundings. He was not in his bedroom, and if he was not entirely mistaken, he was on the third floor of Henderson Library.

The lights were off, and the floor was silent, deathly so. Light came through a few high windows, but it was the cold, faint light of the moon and it illuminated little.

What am I doing here? he thought. Do I sleepwalk now? And why is it so cold? And—what is that?

What was it? It is hard to say. It was a chill feeling, a frightening feeling, but not a dangerous one. It was an object close to him, but not a thing, and not a person. It was not logical. Then it stepped forth from a darker shadow into a lighter one.

Wait. Stop. CJ’s breath came in double speed; he cocked his head to one side and he stared, stared long and hard, and he strained his ears to catch the sound of a footfall, and he heard none.

The apparition walked up the long hallway once, twice, and CJ still had no motivation to move or speak. He sat still in his chair, like a big pink stalk of celery. The ghost turned and made its third walk down the library. He stopped about twenty feet from the table where CJ sat and held out one hand. To CJ’s dazed mind, it looked like the hand of Virgil, offering to lead him down through the depths of Inferno and up through Purgatory. But he couldn’t accept the invitation; he couldn’t seem to move at all actually. And whatever it was that was going on, he knew he was too frightened to do anything about it anyway. It was above all very tiring, and all he could think of doing was sleeping. But before he relapsed into unconsciousness, CJ noticed that the ghost was wearing a tie pin the shape of a crescent moon, and it shone in the darkness. That’s interesting, he thought.

At roughly six-thirty the next morning, CJ woke up in his own bed with a headache like an angry water buffalo. This condition was not helped by the fact that he immediately began to try to think very hard. He was perplexed. How did he get back into his dorm? In his pajamas no less! Surely his roommate would know if he had been up in the middle of the night.

“Joe! Joe wake up!” CJ shook his friend’s shoulder hard. A groggy face appeared from beneath the covers. “Did you hear anything last night? Like did you hear me get up and leave or anything?”

“Huuh? Dude, you were here all night. I heard you snoring, and it kept me up, and as if that weren’t bad enough, now you’re waking me up again. Thank you so much.” Joe turned his face toward the wall and went back to sleep.

Here all night? How could that be? And CJ didn’t snore, or at least he didn’t think he did. No one had ever told him he did. Was it even possible that he had dreamed the whole nighttime episode? He wasn’t under any particular stress, wasn’t prone to hallucinations. What could it have been, though, if not that? Could it have been real? Why not? And then again, why?

CJ’s headache was not being improved by the incessant wrinkling of his forehead. Exhausted more than he felt he should have been, he swallowed four Ibuprofen and flopped back down on his bed and slept through his first two classes.

When he woke up once again his headache was better, but his mind was still puzzling over the questions. What really happened? CJ dressed slowly and walked out into the brilliant noonday sunshine. Things were much harder to hide in the light than in the eerie seven percent light of the moon; things were much clearer at noon than midnight. His mind entirely wrapped up in his perplexity, he did not see Maryanne approaching from behind. It startled him entirely to hear, in aged and sepulchral tones, words which he felt should not have been addressed to him.

“Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,Unless it be while some tormenting dreamAffrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog.”

Maryanne finished with an increase in volume and a glare of fierce intensity directed at CJ’s bewildered face.

“What?” he asked.

“Am I very convincing?” asked Maryanne in her usual voice. “Someone silly decided to make me play Queen Margaret in this semester’s Shakespeare production, and I’m not sure I can do it. Please tell me if I was any good.”

“No, no. You’re very good. All too good, in fact.” CJ was still a bit shaken from the initial shock of being addressed with such a curse.

“Oh good. Hey, are you okay? You look a little funny.”

“No I’m fine. Just a little preoccupied, that’s all.” He smiled a bit and walked away towards Henderson Library. He climbed the two flights of stairs to get him to the third floor, and he paused as he looked over the room. There it was—the exact chair he had been sitting in the night before. It was as innocent-looking a chair as any other, but that had nothing to do with the dread CJ felt as he looked at it. His mind was still perturbed. What on earth had happened? In frustration he pulled a Calc textbook off the shelf and began working problems.

Joe walked by, “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m doing Calculus problems. I find it relaxing.”

“You’re insane.”

“Sure, whatever,” muttered CJ. Politeness is a lovely thing, but there are times when a person’s frame of mind will not allow it.

Joe left and quiet returned to CJ’s corner of the library. Quiet? Not really.

Someone around the corner was typing on an exceptionally loud keyboard. It sounded like a two-finger typist, who made frequent mistakes. Honestly, why couldn’t people just take the time to learn correctly? The student shelving books two rows down ought to have stayed home. Either that or the dust on the books was too much for him. Each sneeze seemed to increase in volume and intensity. As CJ tried to settle back into his chair, the air conditioner turned on with a low hum. He tried to block out the sound, but a woman in high heels walking across the polished wood floor effectively drowned it out for him. How far was she going to walk? Oh sure, just turn around and come all the way back. The elevator sounded a quick ding and another girl in heels stepped out. Two are better than one? Not likely. A boy dropped a book on his toes and cursed it soundly. A tallish man started to use the photocopier, while the secretary on the floor began systematically opening and closing every single drawer in her desk and file cabinets. An imaginary object brushing against CJ’s ankles made him start almost out of his seat, and just as he was about to reassume his pretense of contemplation, a group of twelve high school students entered the library, chattering like demons.

“Gaaagghh!” he uttered somewhat more loudly than he had intended. Sighing angrily, he slammed his books together and walked out of the door. As it shut behind him, there was a brief silence in the room, and then a boy laughed. Some people.

CJ chose to go outside to think things over. He was like Superman—he drew his power from the sun. Maybe it would infuse some sense into him and he could do something about his problem. One, he could figure out what happened, or Two, he could forget about the whole thing and stop worrying.

Perhaps it was wishful thinking to hope for an answer from the sun, for Nature teaches us very little beyond our own finitude. And that wasn’t very helpful for CJ. His brain seemed frozen and he only mechanically greeted his friends and acquaintances as they passed him. Jennie, Mark, Joe, Frederick, George, Lisa, Richard Snofbury—wait, was that Richard Snofbury? It looked like him, but at the same time, it really didn’t. He wasn’t wearing glasses; he wasn’t stuttering; he wasn’t blinking, or sniffing, or sweating, or looking bovine in the least. And his hair was done in a much more attractive fashion than before. What had happened to him? He even looked taller. And to top off the transformation, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and a red silk tie.

“How is your day going?” asked Richard Snofbury smoothly.

“Swell, thanks,” replied CJ dubiously. He narrowed his eyes at this new person, and thought that there was something he ought to have remembered. And then he saw a silver tie pin in the shape of a crescent moon fixing Richard Snofbury’s tie to his shirt, and it became clear. Not the details, but the big picture. “It was you—last night, that was you!”

“Very clever of you to have noticed,” said Richard Snofbury, with a bit of sarcastic inflection. The look on his face was at that moment not a terribly attractive one, as it contained a good deal of condescension and pride. But it was the fellow’s one moment of glory, so I suppose we must not grudge him his bit of unholy triumph.

CJ was still piecing the bits together. “The water you gave me…that was part of it,” he paused, “but how did you keep Joe from realizing I was gone? He said he heard me snoring all night!”

“George slept in your bed for most of the time, actually,” he smirked.

CJ shuddered. He would be washing his sheets that night. “Wow. And that’s it, I guess.” He was still a bit dazed from this interesting series of revelations that he didn’t know quite what to think. And then all of a sudden he did. He knew exactly what to think, and without any warning, he exploded into howls of laughter. He laughed and chuckled and giggled like a schoolgirl and wheezed until the tears leaked out of his eyes and he had to lean on a rail for support. Richard Snofbury, while no longer wearing his glasses or cow-like expression, was yet perplexed. This was not the reaction he had anticipated, and he was slightly disappointed. It is very difficult to gloat over a hysterical enemy who cannot speak for laughing.

Finally CJ recovered himself, and gasped out between chuckles, “That’s the best joke anyone’s ever played on me.” He patted Richard on the shoulder. “Congratulations!” And as he continued laughing, a smile started creeping over Richard’s face. It was pretty funny after all. And it proved that CJ was the best kind of prankster, because he could take it as well as give it out. Through their laughter that afternoon a fast friendship was formed, and a fearsome duo that would terrorize St. Osmund’s unsuspecting for the next two years.