Before the Flood: An Unputdownable Psychological Thriller by Alex Lasker

Author:Alex Lasker [Lasker, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alex Lasker
Published: 2023-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

EIGHT

THE NEXT MORNING AT CHAPEL there was a skit sponsored by the student council. A “news reporter” was interviewing a middle-aged “townie” and his “wife” in wonderfully bad hair and makeup. The student audience was eating it up.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” said the reporter: “Nine feet tall, sort of a slimy green head like a grasshopper...”

“Wearing a baseball cap,” the townie man replied.

“A baseball cap?!” gasped the reporter.

“A Red Sox cap, sure as I’m standing here. That’s how we knew they were a form of higher intelligence. A Yankee cap would nevah go ovah round these pahts.”

The reporter waited for the laughter to die down, then: “Of course not. How did you feel when they took you aboard?”

“Oh, I was scared,” answered the townie wife.

“Naturally. Who wouldn’t be?”

“I mean, I’ve never even been on an airplane. I’m afraid of heights.”

And so on. It was obvious that with the possible exception of Papadop, no one at the Academy gave the slightest credence to the flying saucer stories circulating around town.

The clique strode down the hall, boisterous as usual but incongruously bare-legged and wearing flip flops under their overcoats. Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” could be heard through Dick’s half-open door. Dick sat in his armchair reading.

Schill barked as they passed his door, “That guy sings as bad as you look, Hopeless!”

Without looking up, Dick shot back, “Thanks!”

“The least you can do is close your door when you listen to that shit,” said Granny as he pulled Dick’s door shut. Immediately Wise taped a sheet of paper to the door with something dangling from it. The boys snickered and continued down the hall.

The clique bounded past me as I was on my way up from classes.

“Surfin’ Brian! Surf’s up, time to hit the beach!” said Wise.

Granny added, “Bring your girlfriend, if he’s feeling up to it.”

I did my best to ignore them. When I reached the top of the stairs, I turned toward my room and saw a couple of students looking at Dick’s door and laughing. As they walked away I went up to look. The sheet of paper read “EXCUSE MY MOOD, GUYS. IT’S THAT TIME OF MONTH.” Signed, “DICKLESS”. Taped to the paper itself was a tampon, stained red.

I stared at it for a moment with a mixture of anger and sadness, then quietly removed it and stuffed the whole thing in my coat pocket. Then I knocked.

“Fuck off,” said Dick.

I opened the door. Dick looked up suspiciously, relaxed when he saw who it was. I shut the door behind me. Dick turned the stereo off.

“Sorry. I thought you were one of them.”

“We need a code,” I said with a smile. “Who’re you reading now?”

He was about halfway through a thick tome entitled “Modern English Romantic Poets.”

“Wordsworth. He’s pretty cool. Real into nature. He believed that the universe is a living whole.” He closed the book. “I might believe that if I wasn’t at Harkness. I mean, this place is definitely a hole, but living? I don’t know.

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