“Hey, Kath. This is Seth, just calling to say hi. Give me a call some time.” It went that way more often then not these days. She was somewhere, he knew that. But more and more he never got an answer from her. And as for the prospect of getting a return call, it was poor at best. Seth figured his best bet to see her was tomorrow in Creative Writing. Just the thought of the course reminded him of the story he was supposed to be writing instead of feeling sorry for himself, and calling Kathy every ten minutes or so.
Seth was tired of the brush off he was getting, yet in his mind he didn’t know how to set it right. He needed somehow to reach a final state. Without the final state, he couldn’t even try to put his emotions back in order. That was Seth’s problem, when dealing with people, he too often he sought out a final state. Or tried to apply his real relationships to some predetermined set of rules that he thought relationships were supposed to fit into. The problem was that like most people, he had picked up his set of rules from TV, movies, an occasional book, and the rare mathematical theorm. In those, relationships are explained, their parameters explored, and limits tested. All in an hour or less, well mostly.
He stared dully at the phone, it resisted Seth’s attempt to make it ring. He picked up the receiver and considered trying her number again. Maybe she was just changing a load of laundry or something like that. It wasn’t uncommon in th dorms to wander through the halls as study breaks or when bored. Or maybe Seth only did that, he wasn’t sure.
“Give it up, its over. Get on with your life. Write your silly little story, that you’ve been whining about for the last week. Go to Quig’s get stone, stinking drunk, and pick yourself up a new lush. She can treat you like crap just as well as Kath ever did, and I don’t have to watch you wander around in this depraved manner.” Standing in the doorway, feeling very proud of his little summation of Seth’s life, was Jim, Seth’s roommate.
Seth on the other hand had several things going through his head. First, he wondered why a supposedly kind and generous god had invented roommates. This thought was coming more and more frequently these days. But, what upset him more was the validity of the statement. It was over, he just didn’t know how to let go of it. Over wasn’t the right word, not in it’s inability to exemplify the relationship, but more because it tended imply that the relationship existed anywhere but his own mind. And, of course, there was the ever present grand literary masterpiece, just waiting to be written.
“You know, your are such the gentleman. Your sympathy is only surpassed by your tact.” Seth replied sarcastically. He hoped that would shut Jim up. He hoped he would wander into the lounge to watch Jeopardy or something.
Jim walked through the doorway and closed the door. He sat down at his desk and spun the chair around so that he was looking at Seth again. Seth was picking up that Jim had something to say he considered ways of avoiding it, but in the end decieded to just get it over with. Seth hung up the phone, and after a long pause Jim eventually said, “Umm, Seth, you don’t suppose I could use the room for a little while? Abigail said she was coming down and… well, you know….”
Seth was surprised the man could still be embarrassed at making the request given the frequency in which he made it. Seth tried to muster a tone of resentment and disdain. “Yeah, sure. Just don’t do it on my bed or in my chair.” If Jim caught on to the resentment he gave no notice. Seth got up and more or less stalked out of the room.
Seth wandered down the hallway towards ‘The Crossroads.’ The Crossroads were the intersection of two hallways every little clique had there own name for it. Seth like the Crossroads, in general people would gather and discuss anything from the nature of personality and the Big Bang to the weather and the latest meal at the cafateria. As he approached however he saw a couple from down the hall doing things that should probably be best confined to a room.
This brought back the whole Kath problem. Again maybe problem wasn’t the right word. It really wasn’t like a problem intellectually Seth knew what needed to be done. All he had to was to stop acting like a lost puppy. Realize the kernel of truth under Jim’s words and get on with his life. The obstacle was in his heart. Despite it all, he didn’t hate her. He should, she did nothing but use and hurt him. But he hadn’t yet broken the emotional ties.
Eventually Seth heard a voice, “Excuse me, do you mind? This is sort of a private moment.” It seems that Seth, caught in his reverie, had been staring.
“Uh, sorry, just leaving.” Seth mumbled back and quickly head for the door.
Seth headed downstairs and through the lobby. The cold October air hit him and he realized that he had left his jacket and bag in his room. He didn’t dare return though. He walked through the underpass watching all the people around him. It was early evening and the campus’ main throughfair was alive with student heading to thier various destinations. Seth didn’t enjoy all the similing faces and so he quickened his pace. He headed to the computer labs of Anderson Hall.
In the lab over the next six hours he finally managed to write two pages of text, that both qualified as a story and he was willing to let fourteen strangers read. The story wasn’t much of a story, but after six hours Seth just didn’t care anymore. He’d decided that life is just some big incomprehensible equation that he just couldn’t balance. Seth was a math major.
Seth stumbled back to his room and opened the door. The place stank of sex. Briefly he wondered if the participants noticed that smell or not. Seth couldn’t aswer that question from expience. His resentment grew again. Seth carefully slammed the door loud enough to wake the lovers, but quiet enough for it to be construed as an accident.
The two woke with a start and looked around trying to figure out what was going on. Seth whispered, “Sorry.” With a hidden smile Seth went to sleep.
Kathy never showed up in Creative Writing. She was normally good about attending classes, but like almost all college students she wasn’t above missing a class if a better offer came along. Seth spent the day suffering through having his story ripped to shreds by unfeeling, unappreciative clods. The story was pretty bad.
When Seth returned to his room Jim was thankfully absent. Seth picked up the phone and dialed Kathy’s number. Ring. Ring. Seth was expecting the machine to pick up as it always did. Instead there was frantic voice, “Kathy? Is that you?”
“No. It’s Seth. I take it she isn’t there? As usual.”
The voice toned down a little and it could be made out to be Karen, Kathy’s roommate. “No, as far as I can tell she hasn’t been in the room in three or four days. Have you seen or heard from her?”
His first thoughts were ones of jealousy. Seth figured she found another man and was spending her nights there. His heart went cold. Seth thought and realized he hadn’t seen her since Monday. It was Thursday now. She was heading towards some strange library over at Georgetown. “No, I haven’t seen her since Monday. What do you mean she hasn’t been in the room. Has she moved out or something?”
“No all of her stuff is still here, but there’s no evidence that she’s changed her clothes, slept in her bed, used the bathroom or anything. In fact her bookbag is just where it was on Monday. It’s like she just up and disapeared. I’m really worried about her.”
Seth’s mind raced through all the cheezy movies he’d seen and he knew just what to do. Seth conjured images of people looking through morgues and hospitals looking for an unidentified friend.
“Oh, my God!” Karen broke down and started balling.
Seth had to admit that perhaps he didn’t know exactly what to do. He tried to calm Karen down. He also figured out there were a few steps before searching the city of dead unidentified bodies. He’d have to call her parents and the police. Then it hit him. She could really be dead, or mutilated. He began to cry himself understanding the enourmity of the situation. Then Seth’s emotions shutdown and his logical mind kicked into high gear. This was how Seth delt with high stress emotions. It’s how he dealt with death, he didn’t, at least not directly.
“I’m going to come over there and see if we can figure what happened to Kath.”
With difficulty Karen got control of her voice, “Yeah, I’ll be waiting.”
Seth left the dorm and went to McDowell Hall. Kathy and Karen lived on the fifth floor. The walk was short but tense. Seth kept running the situation through his head and he couldn’t come up with and good reason why Kathy wouldn’t have returned. Even if she had found a lover, God forbid, she would have attended some classes and returned to her dorm to pick up clothes and a toothbrush. The only acceptible scenario Seth could think of was if a relative become ill, or passed away. Kathy might have been called away and failed to leave a note. Even if she was called away she would have taken her toothbrush, clothes and other things.
Seth finally arrived at Karen’s room. One look around and he could tell that she had not taken any of her things. Everything was as it always was. Karen was sitting on Kathy’s bed, her mascarra traced the tears pouring down her cheeks. Seth sat down next to her and she clamped on to him like a vise. She buried her head in the crook of his neck and she cried on his shoulder.
Seth attemped to comfort her. “I’m sure she’s ok. She’ll be back you’ll see.” Karen didn’t seem to be responding.
Kathy never did return to her dorm room. Over the next several hours Seth and Karen called Kathy’s parents, the police, campus police, and every hospital they could find. It was always the same answer. No one knew where she was. Kathy’s parents came down. The police issued an A.P.B. Ultimately Kathy was never found.
At some point over the next several days Seth collapsed. The campus police found him wandering the roof of Hughes Hall. Tears pouring from his eyes and blood trickling from his temple where he ripped through the skin with his fingernail. They managed to get him down from the roof without hurting himself or anybody else. Seth was sent home, and eventully he seemed to get over his melancholy. His sheets were stained with blood less often. He stopped talking to Karen and the memories began to fade. In time Seth’s doctors allowed him to return to school. He transfered to UCLA, changed his major to computer science and started the whole student process over again.
At first it was hard, but eventually Seth managed to adapt and continued on with his education. Seth spent the next four years absorbed in his school work he considered little else and graduated with a 3.9 GPA. He went on to do his graduate work at Stanford. He earned his doctorate eight years after returning to school. By this time Kathy was only a bad memory that only came out to haunt him on cold winter nights. Seth never managed to properly resocialize after leaving school the first time.
[I presume this story was to go on and involve what terrible thing has happened to Kathy and how her return further destroys Seth. But it was never written so you see it in it's current form. I felt the beginning was worth publishing even if it is incomplete.]
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So I was thinking about