Something Convivial

It was Sunday. As on every day in recent memory, I woke far too early with a feeling like a lead apricot pit in my stomach. I put my ear to the wall and listened...

He left his room, and I tailed him, as I had done for the week prior. Though I was following him, I could not altogether shake the feeling that I, too, was being followed. A look over my shoulder met only a quiet scampering and an oval-shaped piece of feces.

He went where he's been going--the library--and, as always, he swiped his card and opened a door which my card does not open. However, today, made swift by my determination, I slipped a flyer in the crack of the door before the bolt caught. I waited for the other side of the door to clear. Convinced of my safety, I pulled the door open and stepped into darkness.

The upper levels of the library are full of secrets. I heard, once, of a room on the third or fourth floor which contains a full library on the Nazi Holocaust. I had never heard of this room before. It was completely dark, and a few steps forward brought my left knee together with a large metal object. I felt around the object, trying to get an idea of what it was. I found myself groping in the space between it and the wall, at which point I was knocked out by a blow to the head.

A small blow however, as I came to a few minutes later. The room was lit and I could see, now, that the large object was some sort of gas-powered generator. I also saw Vladimir, his pet rat on his shoulder. It was at this point I realized that my arms and legs were tied behind my back.

"Alfonzo, I might ask you to stop interfering if it weren't already too late."

"What have you done?"

"Rather, what am I in the process of doing? I'm making this school number one in the nation, and I'm making my career in the process."

He hit a number of dusty switches and the generator started rumbling. He began connecting cables from the generator to some sort of large computer. Pressing a button, the Windows start-up noise rang out, loud enough to be heard over the generator.

As Vladimir set his plan in motion, I began to fray the rope binding my hands with my fingernails (another reason not to bite them, kids). The sound of multiple television channels came from the computer system.

"I need not make the mistake of telling you my plan. I gather you already know the broad strokes."

"It's unethical,, Vlad. You can't just expose people to any compound you mix up in a lab. You don't know what it will do to people."

"The strong will become stronger. Those who don't survive were too weak to begin with."

"You need to run more tests! You've only tested it two actual people."

"Well, let's make it three." Saying this, he swiveled the monitor of his computer to face me. On it I saw mostly snow, and I heard the same noise that I caught on camera so many weeks ago; the same thing that had caused that freshman girl to fall to the ground, convulsing and bleeding from the nose.

I turned away, but soon Vladimir had taken my head in his hands and turned it towards the screen. I tried to shut my eyes, but he forced them open again.

"Embrace it, Alfonzo. Think how much better we'll get along."

The chaos filled my eyes and ears and I began to feel myself being pushed to the borders of my mind. I felt a trickle of blood collecting in my nose when, in my head, a bell rang in the key of epiphany.

Hit him, you idiot.

So I hit him. Throwing my still-bound arms backward into his stomach, he let go of my head and clutched his chest. I clumsily flung myself forward and hopped, though I don't know why (which is to say, I know that I was hopping because my legs were bound, but I don't know where I thought I was going to hop to).

And if, through all the things I've written for you, you hadn't already figured out that God hates me, here's your chance : I tripped on a nail.

By the time I hit the ground, Vladimir was up and moving towards me. He, through strength I did not know he possessed, picked me up and sat me on my own hands before, once again, turning my head towards the computer screen.

He stood up to swivel the screen again, and you know what? All I could think about was that that bastard had set me down right on the nail I had tripped on. I complained to myself, silently, for a good ten seconds before realizing the great boon he had provided me with.

I hooked my binding over the head of the nail and began wearing it away, far quicker than with my fingernails. I could feel the rope loosening as Vladimir returned to hold my head still, but I tucked my hands further under my legs, out of sight, so that I might undo my leg bindings.

"Alfonzo, you are mistaken in thinking that I am somehow bad. If I were truly bad, I would have killed you by now. But no! I am committed to my vision of a brighter, more intelligent future! So committed, in fact, that I am willing to include you in the vision. Does this mean nothing to you? I want to release you from the bonds of your imbecility. You will be my child."

"Oh will I?" This time, I merely stood up, but Vladimir seemed as breathless now as before. I reached into my pocket for my backup plan, and found nothing.

Vladimir pulled a syringe and vial out of his pocket.

"Alfonzo, your taste for the dramatic has betrayed you. Do you think, just because I'm enmeshed in all of this, that I have stopped reading the blog? I read about your meeting with my unfortunate mentor, and I divined your plan from your heavy-handed narrative. The moment I knocked you out, I took these from you. I must admit, I was expecting you to use bleach, or toothpaste, or some approximation as pathetic as you are. But this," he squinted at the vial, "this would have done everything you wanted it to," he smashed the vial on the ground, "if only I hadn't read about it!"

So, I admit, I was in more than a little trouble. I looked at the cables Vladimir had been connecting to his computer.

"Don't even think about it, Alfonzo. If you touch those, you will die by electrocution."

I drew my hand close to my chest and continued my frantic scan of the room, while trying to avoid looking at the computer screen.

....the computer screen.... I moved towards the computer and surprised myself by twisting the swivel-screen right off.

"You bastard," Vladimir said, growling as he moved towards me. I looked at the heavy flat-screen in my hands, looked at the angry Russian charging my way, and smashed him over the head with it. He fell just as hard as he did in Kansas City.

The prick.

The computer and generator still running and Vladimir out cold, I was at a bit of a loss. I suppose I've seen enough spy movies to know that the bad guy is best left alive and conscious until the plans he precipitated have been brought to an end, but in James Bond's defense, you just don't think of that sort of thing when there's a 180-pound Russian running at you.

I opened the gas tank on the generator, which had apparently been filled recently, so waiting for it to run on empty was out of the question. I turned to find Rat 85 standing on Vladimir's chest. It was something primal, even cro-magnon, that compelled me to do what I did next.

I shoved the rat in the gas tank. I figured that, if pissing in someone's gas tank can break their car, then surely an entire animal in the gas tank will fuck everything up. It took about ten minutes--time which I spent alternately kicking Vladimir's computer and trying not to think of what was going on in that gas tank. Sure enough, the generator began and wheeze and grind and smell a little, until it finally stopped.

I unhooked the cables from the computer and disposed of it in a manner which I choose not to disclose (I learned from my mistake, Vlad).

Let me tell you, just in case you thought otherwise, that I am a good person. I stood above Vlad, thinking about how little I wanted to carry him down from the attic of the library. I swear to you all, I took three steps towards the door, turned around, and dragged that heavy bastard all the way down to the lobby of the library. Needless to say, I attracted a lot of attention. Someone asked me what happened.

"He tripped and fell in the stairwell. I'm his suitemate, and I saw it happened."

A woman behind the counter called an ambulance as I crouched over Vlad's unconscious form. A crowd was converging on us when I noticed, impressed in bright red on his forehead, the word "DELL".

Before the throng descended, I got up and out of the library. As I ran by the people rushing towards Vlad, I heard whispers of "He saved him!" and "Who is that?"

I've never felt more like a hero.