It was a dark winter evening. After getting off work Brian headed over to a dark corner of campus to meet a friend and see Saul Williams’ unique brand of poetry. Uneasy, Brian was constantly looking over his shoulder. It had been a while since he had come around this part of OSU, and for good reason. Five years he survived this place before getting the hell out.
Brian turned his head quickly. It was so quick it could have been an anomaly in his imagination, but he knew better. It was foolish to think he could just walk down the street like he used to. He should have stayed indoors and used the archaic network of walkways that crisscrossed over the maze of roads and sidewalks.
Then they were there. Five of them. Two freshmen, two sophomores, and Optical, a tall senior with a mess of brown hair and a pair of glasses with one lens missing.
“Alpha… Haven’t seen you in a while. I hear they got you workin’ up in the Humanities College.” The disdain behind those last two words was palpable. “Shouldn’t you be back there dissecting some postmodern arguments?”
Brian took a minute to look over the crew. All of them had scars cutting through tattoos of mathematical formulas and diagrams. “That’s funny, Opti. You know I’m doin’ tech support.”
Optical smirked, “I hope they give you good life insurance, because I expect they won’t find more than a picoliter of you when we’re done.” He stepped closer, followed by his cronies.
“What’s your tolerance on that estimate?” said a voice from the shadows. They all looked just as Professor Q stepped into the light. Seeing him, Optical shot a last look at Brian with squinted eyes and was gone a second later.
“Were they that bad when I was here?” Brian asked the professor.
“Oh my, I seem to recall them being quite a bit worse,” he said, grinning as they walked on down the street.
