For those among our ranks who have disappeared.

Morning

In the dark it is not the things moving around in my room that I worry about. It is the things that don’t move.

3 in the gorge, 2 on the bedrock, 1 in a room, and some pieces in the chapel’s memorial crawl space – all accidents. Officer Dan looked through the 8 pages of paperwork he had managed to file over the last semester. He was pleased with his prudent expedition of casework, which allowed numerous families to jumpstart their new lives. The spring had been rather uneventful. The summaries read: 3 suicides, 2 accidental slips, 1 alcohol related incident, and a talented cry for attention – all victims of which as yet unidentified.

In the world of forensic analysis, a universal system has been adopted for the adequate determination of cause of death. At the top of police reports there are two checkboxes plainly written. Check 1 for Murder, 2 for Other.

Checkbox 2 is by far the most widely checked checkbox in the history of civilization. This is because checking 2 not only keeps paperwork and departmental costs down, but also initiates an automatic fruit basket delivery to the chief investigating officer’s home, as outlined in §31, p. 253 of the Patriot Act.

Evidently, all the bodily remains found over the course of the semester had fallen under Category 2. As officer Dan loaded his suburban trashcan to the brim with unwanted bananas and strawberries, he briefly felt remorse for the injustice which had been done, but all this nonsense was put to an end as he abruptly froze to ice, as unmoving and unwavering as a stone.

I awoke in my room to the calls of whippoorwills and a banging on the window. Had the year’s gruesome tales been but a dream I would have found comfort in falling back to rest in the warm confines of my bed. Unfortunately, those who were students of the University could find no comfort, could have no peace of mind, not now, not this semester. It was still dark outside, but I got dressed and went to the gym for a swim.

As you might imagine, one can expect very little company in a brominated pool at 6 in the morning spring semester. I looked at today’s workout, jumped in, and started the 16-hundred-meter free on 30. In the water a wonderful vacuousness engulfs your mind for the first 10 laps, but as you pass 15 your mind starts to wander, and by 20 you remember why you went for a swim in the first place. The silent screams you heard when the first incidents began, plague your thoughts, and motivate you to swim faster. 21 The look of terror and sadness on the faces of those who had seen Beth. 22 The unseemly misdirections found in the school newspaper. 23 The frequent reoccurrences randomly dealt. It was time for me to get out; I grabbed a towel and headed for the showers.

Perhaps the incidents had always been around. Perhaps people had simply ignored them, or they had been exceedingly infrequent, or had only happened in private - far from the tainted eyes of onlookers. Once it finally happened during the day, however, it could no longer be glossed over or easily forgotten. Beth had been enjoying a bagel at 2pm just off of campus in a coffee shop. She had been thinking about school, her golden retriever, and life after college. This tranquility was rather short lived, as her appearance quickly evolved to be volatile and shocking. Screams filled the air as Beth cried out for help, but the contorting gruesomeness plaguing her body sent shoppers fleeing the store rather than running for help. When the police and ambulances arrived and entered the store, it was obvious that Beth had been there. A thin, aerosol, burst of remains were present, but the overwhelming majority of Beth was gone. One of the onlookers happened to write to the school newspaper on the event and was censored, but his weekly radio show described it in such terrifying terms that it would long be remembered.

“Unlucky are those who are cursed with this fate, to be fine one minute, and the next, be bleeding out of existence.”

I got out of the shower, got dressed, and headed to class. It was snowing, and as usual, the snow was not falling from the sky, but rather moving parallel to it. As I hobbled my way across campus, and shielded my eyes from the weather that must have attracted the original settlers to this hellscape, I caught a glimpse of humanity. A group of 50 spectators were following a short, unusually attractive student, who was shouting at them.

In the event of Beth’s death, the first to be alerted by the university’s emergency messaging system were the tour guides. The alert came in the form of an email, and this email answered a rather obvious Q&A: ‘When parents ask you the frequency of students bleeding out of existence, you are to respond, “it’s actually quite rare, and well below the national average.”’ No figures were to be given, as it was assumed that most visitors would feel stupid for admitting that they hadn’t heard of ANYONE bleeding out of existence at any other institution across the US. Perhaps they had been left out of the loop.

A presidential email was retrieved from the previous month’s sent folder and reforwarded to the student body. It reminded us that, ‘when a student is lost, everyone feels its effect. No one is an island unto themselves, … I encourage everyone to take advantage of the university’s wonderful counseling services. Spots are available, and the door is always open.’ The email failed to recognize that spots were available because they charged students 200 bucks an hour, and the door was only open during ‘administrative’ business hours, that is to say 6 hours a day, when you are in class.

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Evening

As I arrived at my first lecture, I realized that my professor had not prepared for class, and after a brief delay, I remembered that he was assigning 90 question problem sets, in weeks alternating with the class’s 5 midterms - all of which were necessary. Predicting a long night for myself, I found ease in snoring through the lecture’s technical difficulties, that were regularly ‘unexpected’.

But then, as I slept, I found my mind back in darker things. I was in the engineering lab, overlooking events which I had only heard about. A professor was leaning over Jeff, a student who had recently contracted swine flu. Jeff had been receiving financial aid for graduate school, but earlier in the week, this arrangement had come into question. The university had failed to pay financial aid to itself in time, and was charging Jeff late fees. Among the possible causes of this conundrum was the fact that the department for financial aid was located in a different building than the Bursar’s office. Another possible cause was that the university hoped to collect a few more cents by committing financial fraud, but this claim would be outlandish. Either way, Jeff was forced to devote 4 hours to fixing the miscommunication between the departments. He was brilliant, but the combined stress from swine flu and financial aid caused him to fail his B exam. His professor was rather cold and unapologetic: “shit happens,” the professor stated, “and unfortunately it looks like life is shitting on you.” Moments after receiving the news that he had wasted 3 years and thousands of dollars on graduate school, Jeff turned red and began to cry, but covered his face as his body exploded in a fiery blaze. The shards evaporated before hitting onlookers, but an aerosol spray stained the floor. Jeff had been the second person to bleed out of existence, but would not be the last.

Over succeeding weeks, the body count grew, and most displayed the characteristic bleeding out of existence. Even more troubling was the prevalence of unidentified remains, which had recently been appearing on and off campus.

The different departments within the university and greater city never really supported cross talk; one department would find the spray and the other would find unidentified remains. It is interesting to note that the number of unidentified deaths exactly equaled the number of individuals who had been reported to bleed out of existence. This fact was recognized, but no one ever made any sense out of it.

The university and police noticed that many of the individuals who had died had been drinkers, or drug users and so linked this fact to the cause of death. They failed to acknowledge that most students were drinkers, or drug users, and that this simple fact by itself made the proposed link seem both less believable and more propagandistic.

The noise of people closing books and donning jackets awoke me, and momentarily shook the incidents from my mind. I had cared little for such things until it happened to my friend. I was going to his memorial service today.

Taking a shortcut to lunch, away from the herd of sleepwalkers, I arrived 5 minutes ahead of schedule.

In the wake of the current financial crisis, the university had lost much of its endowment. As I ate the slop, which had replaced award winning dining years ago, I listened in on the discussion transpiring at the table in front of me. Evidently these people worked for campus dining.

“If I didn’t get this stuff for free I wouldn’t pay for this crap,” person A noted.

“How much are they charging for it now, I heard the rates went up?” person B inquired.

“$12 a meal” person C answered.

“How long do you think it will take before the students notice that the university has regained most of its endowment since the crash, and that we are still using grade D meat?” person A asked.

“Don’t some of these kids pay $3000 for MCAT courses? They probably think they are getting a bargain.” The table laughed.

I returned my slop at the tray return and I walked back to my apartment.

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Night

I put on my black pants, my white shirt, my gray tie, and my dark navy blue blazer. I sat on my bed in silence, looking at my clock. After several minutes, it was a quarter till 4, and I got up to go to my friend’s memorial service.

As a member of an on campus singing group, I know that it is customary to rehearse and do a quick run through of the program before a concert. Evidently, this nicety of being prepared, which is always displayed by unpaid student entertainment groups, has not yet been adopted for commemorating the untimely death of a 20 year old. The service took place in a dank basement with paint peeling from the walls – perhaps The Chapel had been booked by another memorial service for one of those ‘infrequent’ student deaths. The preacher quietly looked at the sheet in front of him, evidently containing the list of players on his fantasy football team, for it certainly didn’t contain information that allowed him to correctly pronounce my friend’s fraternity name, or even the name of the friend himself. 5 minutes into the sermon, 4 students walked into the service, all the way up the aisle, and crossed right in front of the preacher to sit in the front row. One of them was wearing a fluorescent, lime green hat.

The first speaker was a representative of the University. She didn’t know my friend. She never met him. She didn’t seem to particularly give a damn about the occurrence, though she did seem to have no choice in presenting. She had no material, so she dug up my friend’s essay from applying to the university, she read from it as though the essay was written with his deepest beliefs, and as if the reading of it was not a violation of his privacy. She continued to read from public records that mentioned my friend for the next 10 minutes -how personable. One of our friends got up to talk, but had no speech because he ‘wanted to speak from the heart.’ This was cute… until the other friend who got up to talk also said that he had no speech because he ‘wanted to speak from the heart.’ Then they just looked like they didn’t give enough of a shit to put the effort in. There was a slide show, or rather there was supposed to be one. But the computer provided was 10 years old, and froze during the sermon. As a frantic pianist improvised and this problem was investigated, a misguided preacher thanked the coordinators of the event. When the next computer came up, it was apparent that this slideshow had never been opened on a Windows before, and that no one knew the correct program needed to open it.

As I headed back to my apartment for the night, I reflected upon the service, happy in the knowledge that nothing could possibly ruin my day worse than this already had. I finished my homework, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

I try to remember my friend as his research professor put it. He made her feel good about herself, like she was making a difference in the world, if only for one student, who was always eager to answer questions and help fellow students out. Unfortunately, many would not remember him.

He had bled out of existence, and in a few short weeks, many others would follow suit - all to be forgotten, disrespected, and unavenged by even so much as an acknowledgement that something was not right. The frequency of bleeding out here is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than at other places, statistically so, but no one cares to put forward a cause, and work to resolve this issue.

“Shit happens”, “Well, it’s not my fault”, and “I’m tired of these stupid fucking dipshits getting depressed and costing me 50,000 in tax dollars every time one bleeds out,” are perhaps the most compassionate responses I have heard issued off the cuff by officials. Fences would be erected, not because they could really do anything, but because it was the cheapest option for limiting liability suits. Parties would be held on the quad to commemorate the most recent deaths, with pop song performances by local singing groups, free cotton candy, and balloon animal folding – the kind of stuff which is customary at the viewings before funerals, and which clearly prevents bleeding out of existence.

I would be leaving this place in a month’s time, graduating, and moving on to the real world, but the memories of our indifference to make a stand, to question the system we were presented, and to prevent the deaths of many a system wronged would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

When I sleep, it is not the things that move that scare me, it is the things that stay the same.