Couched in Terror

by Nick

So I went up to Philly to see my brother graduate from medical school. Since I was up there, he wanted me to help him move a sofa into his apartment. I asked if we were going to carry it through the street, a little unsure of this possibility. "Don't worry" he said. "It's light, and not too far." Yeah, if I was Thor. This thing had to weigh like 200 pounds or something. After hauling it into an elevator and down to the lobby, we had to engage the doorman in a duel of wits to get him to open the door for us. Then we hauled it the 20 miles to his new apartment. At various points, we had to stop and sleep for the evening. My arm probably fell off two or three times. Finally we get to his new apartment and haul it into the elevator. At this point, the sofa decides that it doesn't like its new surroundings and starts spitting out splinters and staples at me. Beaten, bruised, and near death, I just manage to get the sofa into his apartment. I promptly make use of his new status as "doctor" to keep me from dying on the spot.

A Sticky Situation

by Robert

It was a sunny spring day just like any other... except that this spring, sunny days were few and far between. So it was a sunny spring day unlike most others, in that it was sunny, not in any other way... except for the slightly higher than average pollen count.

No matter.

It was a sunny spring day more-or-less like any other sunny spring day. The birds were singing; the insects were buzzing; the wind whispered softly through the trees. Small puffy white clouds ambled their way across the sphere of the sky. I guess they must have blocked the sun occasionally, but I never really noticed such an occurrence. For the purposes of this story, let's just say that it was sunny except when...

I'll start again.

The sea was angry that day, my friends.

Sorry.

The weather was entirely inconsequential and unremarkable. I was walking from my apartment to the Physics Building, as I so often do, since I am a physics major and often have class in that particular building, when, suddenly, I saw a stick of gargantuan proportions,lying sinisterly on the path ahead of me.

"Oh no!" I said in a moment of remarkable 20/20 foresight, "I will use way too many commas in the sentence preceding this!

"And there's a stick in my way."

I spent several minutes gathering my wits about me and checking my underwear for signs of soiling. When I was confident I had at least half my wits on me and underwear no dirtier than usual, I turned my attention to the stick.

This overgrown splinter stretched for more than three feet. A foot up from the base, which had obviously been torn roughly and rudely from its parent branch, the stick split in a V. One arm lay restlessly along the ground while the other stretched up, grabbing and clawing at the air. The monster was completely bereft of life; not a single leaf ordained its gruesome figure. This lack of greenery only made its knobby black twigs seem even more sinister.

But I knew I could not focus on dark thoughts. I must find a way around this branch and complete my ten-minute odyssey to the Physics Building. Then a thought hit me. Perhaps this branch, this limb, was not meant for me. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was lying in wait for another who would pass this way. If only I could avoid its snaring grasp, I could complete my quest.

I sidled forward, towards the terrible bough. A zephyr nudged the branch, causing it to sway ever so slightly. I almost gave up the approach, but instead I steeled myself and forced my feet forwards. Just then, in one of those life-affirming moments of epiphany, I saw my salvation: The left third of the sidewalk was not blocked by the awful stick. I shuffled to the left of the path. The stick did not react. I inched closer. The stick lay there, for all the world an inanimate object. Cautiously I crept forward: four feet . . . three feet . . . two feet . . . . No movement. No acknowledgment of my presence. Eighteen inches . . . twelve . . . six . . . I threw caution to the wind and dashed forward, keeping as always to the left edge of the path . . . .

And I was through. I was past my tormentor, my foe, that limb of horror. I dared not look back, like Lot's wife, to see what evil was behind me. I just quickened my pace and held a firm course to the Physics Building, where I arrived for class a fashionable five minutes late.

And I never took that route to the Physics Building again.

Pickup or Delivery?

by Mike

It was a rather slow Friday night. Neither Doug [his roommate - ed.] nor myself really felt like cooking, so we did what any self respecting college student would do and decided to call up Papa John's. That was our first mistake.

As it turns out, there wasn't a menu anywhere in the apartment. So we go online and get the number for the one in College Park. Nothing unusual, nothing that we suspected of being pure unmitigated evil. So we call up the Papa, only to learn that the CP Papa John's was being renovated and would be closed until the very next day. This should have tipped us off, but our minds were not functioning at peak capacity due to hunger, so we just shrugged it off as being an interesting coincidence. But, in our blissful ignorance of the plot afoot, we simply called the next closest one, which was in Hyattsville and a mere two or three miles away. We soon learn that they don't deliver to CP. After a brief discussion, Doug and I decided that it was worth the effort to pick it up, as it was only a couple of miles down 193. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

We set out to get the pizza, after receiving instructions from a person that, at the time, we did not realize was the source of all the evil in the world. His name was Yah'hoo. Now, I'd dealt with Yah'hoo before, and while his directions were never great, they always got me where I needed to go. In a sense, that was what happened this time; in another, more literal sense, he sent us through hell and back.

He started out being petty; he sent us the wrong way down 193. We went like 3 or 4 miles before we decided we should turn around, so it wasn't that big a deal. Eventually we found the place where Yah'hoo had told us to turn, and that was where the real trouble began.

We wound up going along a dark and very creepy street (I believe it was actually Elm Street). It twisted and turned, and a black cat crossed our path several times. Soon we realized the terrible truth; though we had driven for several minutes between each encounter, they were all the same cat. And then it hit us; we were trapped in a maze. It took us four hours of driving around until we finally emerged onto a lit street, and lo and behold, the Papa John's was there. We went in, got our pizza, and set out to leave. And on the way out, we realized just how cruel a trick Yah'hoo had played on us... Papa John's was right on 193!

And wouldn't you know it, the pizza was cold.

Thief Trek

by Lauren

Mondays have never been particularly good days for me, considering it's the end of the weekend and the start of the normally stressful mess that I call a week. This last one, though, has really been a trip.

My day started at 1 am, when I received a phone call from the friendly neighborhood campus police informing me that someone had reported a person trying to steal my car and that I needed to go talk to the officer in the parking lot. After he checked my license, walked around the car for a minute, and asked me questions like which apartment I lived in, what my social security number was, what my favorite breakfast cereal was, and who would win in a poker game between Elvis Presley and William Shatner, he told me there was little he could actually do besides writing a report, and that I should go back to sleep.

Four hours of sleep later, I got up for class. Afraid that my car door, which was now at a 45 degree angle to where it was supposed to be, would fly off of my car and kill some unfortunate pedestrian if I actually drove to school, I chose to hike over to campus. Between classes, I had to trek all the way back home to my apartment to do all the things I had forgotten to do in the morning, like eating. After walking the twenty miles across campus, I got home with ten minutes to eat lunch, grab my guitar for my music class, and call my parents to ask how to file an insurance claim. Thinking the last one would be most important, I decided to call my parents. This normally simple task was somewhat complicated by the fact that my parents were on vacation in Italy. After fighting my way through twelve different touchtone menus, a slew of Italian phone operators, half of the mafia, and accidentally tapping into the Matrix a couple of times, I finally got to talk to my Dad. He told me that he was glad I was okay, but that there was little anyone could actually do until he got home besides writing a report, and that I shouldn't worry about the car. I should be more worried about the $1200 phone bill I'd just racked up in four and half minutes.

From that point, I had exactly a half hour to get from Courtyards to the Performing Arts Center. After missing every van, bus, and other form of public transportation onto campus, I chose to risk hiking to campus again. I trekked my way across Rt. 193, through parking lots, over mountains, through jungle foliage, and across desert sands before the demons attacked me. I had managed to knock quite a few of them out with my guitar when I saw the Performing Arts Center off in the distance. I was so happy that I ran past the demons and rushed through the door. I walked to my class, happy that I was only a little late and thanking heaven that I was finally going to get to sit down for the first time since I woke up. That was when I noticed the sign on the door to the classroom that said my class had been cancelled.

The moral of this story: Thieves are stupid.

Training Day

by Nick

So I was sitting around yesterday afternoon playing a little Diablo 2. I had just started a new Hardcore character and was making some good progress. Suddenly, around 3:00 pm, I heard a knock at my door. When I answered it, Mitch was standing there waiting to kidnap me. You can imagine my surprise. I was blindfolded and thrown into the trunk of a car. When we stopped, I was let out and forced to undergo a series of training exercises. Apparently, I had been recruited by a top secret government organization to seek out and destroy Saddam Huessein. They tested my hand-eye coordination by pitting me against other potential recruits in Guilty Gear XX and Tekken Tag Tournament. Then they made me watch Cowboy Bebop as "do's and do not's" training. In the end, I was cut and driven back to my apartment around 2:00 am. I was debriefed and soon collapsed on my bed, not getting up until around noon today. And that's why this story is late.