Trade or Dare
Dan sat in the college library browsing the internet. He clicks a Wikipedia article: Poltergeist. After a bit of reading he closes his browser and looks at his desktop for a few seconds, deep in thought. He looks at the time: 3:25, his Latin class started in five minutes. With a deep breath he packed up his laptop and headed for class.
An hour and a half later, Dan was driving home. On his passenger seat sat a graded quiz, 45/100, an F. Dan had been doing well in all of his other classes but Latin just wasn’t for him. It seemed like it didn’t matter how much he studied, he failed every assignment so far.
He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, he had moved in there a few months ago when the semester started. As he walked up toward his apartment, he dreaded what the next few hours would bring. After unlocking the door, he went to turn the handle and push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. The handle turned but he could not get the door open no matter how hard he pushed. As he was slamming his shoulder into the door, his neighbor Mrs, Davis peeked her head out of her apartment. “Is everything alright dear?”
“Yes Mrs. Davis, sorry for the noise.” Dan said, leaning on the door, “This door has just been troublesome lat-” as he was talking, it swung open and he landed inside, after which the door slammed shut.
“Hehehe” he heard from all around him. To Dan’s understanding, he was living with a poltergeist, a creature that haunts specific people by affecting physical objects, and supposedly feeds on stress or negative emotions, which explains why it showed up on the day he failed his first Latin assignment. This poltergeist, however, was not like many he read about online. This one didn’t ever want to do anything except be minorly annoying; it didn’t break things or hurt people, just unplugged his alarm clock at night or turned the toaster up too high, both of which happened this morning, always followed by that infuriating snicker.
Dan got up and sighed, he walked to the couch and turned on his TV. After watching for about an hour the TV shut off randomly.
“Hehehe.”
He got up and saw that it had come unplugged, he was not surprised. “I guess that’s enough TV for today.” He muttered and went to the kitchen for something to eat.
As he was microwaving some extra pizza the trash can suddenly tipped over, spilling all of its contents. “Hehehe”, he heard once again. Dan stared at it for a moment, a dead look in his eyes, and proceeded to clean it up. When he finally finished, he went back to his microwave. Tears welled up in his eyes as he saw that ten minutes had been added to his microwave, turning his last slice of pizza into a puddle. “God damn it!” He yelled, kicking the cabinet. He winced at the pain in his toe. “I’m done with this shit!”
He went to the desk in his bedroom and pulled out his Latin textbook, he was going to cut this off at its source. He studied from then until his morning class the next day. When he returned he picked up where he left off. However, the more he studied, the more reckless the spirit became. He heard crashes coming from the living room, water running in the bathroom, but he didn’t care; he downed his third energy drink and got back to work.
It was the day of his final exam. He left his bedroom and without looking at his surroundings, made his way out of the apartment and to school. He had slept eleven hours in five days, but he was confident that his struggle would be over soon.
Driving home from school, Dan knew that he had done perfect on the exam. As he walked through the house, he paid attention to the destruction for the first time. The TV was shattered in the living room, food in the kitchen was strewn everywhere, and water was still running from every faucet in the bathroom, soaking through the floor. As he went to shut off the water, knowing that his landlord was going to come up to kick him out at any second, he saw writing on the mirror. “præteriens videam vos postero semestri.”
“See you next semester.”
Had a hard time pasting with highlights so here are links to google docs:
Color Coded
Color Coded & Revised
It was interesting to see how often I used clichés as well as how sometimes it is hard to recognize them. I don’t think I’m being too vague with abstractions but I may be generalizing too much as i found myself having a hard time replacing my generalizations with with more farfetched ones.
