ElvenAngel
I forget stuff because I had to make room in my he
I don't know if you'd call this a horror story or a comedic story or whatever. It's just a short story that I wrote while in college. I'm not sure what I was trying to say with it XD
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The Chartophagoi, that’s what we called them. The professors that demanded so much research, so much writing, so much paper in fact, every week and every month, that students used to joke about them feeding on that colossal amount of whitened wood pulp that must have accumulated all the time; hence, “the paper-eaters”. Of course, we never said that out loud, oh no, we had a certain degree of respect for those holy creatures. But when frustration would boil over, it could be muttered among students in the library, the cafeteria or the lounge. We even turned it into an intellectual joke, drawn out of Homer: “The Chartophagoi”.
The same year, when I was dealing with these Chartophagoi, I had a roommate, Wilson. Wilson was a spry but tall and narrow fellow, with gray, monochromatic eyes and the blandest and bleached-out brown hair I’ve ever seen on a man, more gray than brown. Rarely, he would stutter, but only faintly, despite his neurotic attitude. Oh yes, Wilson was neurotic, more than a high-strung hare, in fact. He looked like a hare, too.
Stress was a nightmare for Wilson, just as it was for many other students. Stress has driven people to suicide and has shortened human lifespan a good deal of years anyway. In fact, I’ve seen stress make people snap and do some pretty horrid things. Stress motivates some spree killers to shoot up a lot of innocent people before they blow their own brains out.
Overall, stress turns some people into wrecks and others into monsters.
Wilson just wasn’t sure what stress did to him. In the time that we lived together, once I saw him have such a bad breakdown that it was like his stomach had turned inside out, he couldn’t seem to stop vomiting. Not until he was dry as a raisin in hospital, anyway.
One other time he just exploded into a rage, punching me in the face and then going out and kicking a stray dog that got in his way, so hard that I swore he’d killed the poor thing. When he came to his senses, he was the same nervous man, apologizing for hours. And the last time, he got such a shocker that he lost his voice for a whole month!
I thought I’d seen everything with him, but Wilson’s latest feat had stunned me. It was probably related to this important thesis that he had to deliver in three weeks—it was all he talked about at the time, and yet I had no idea what that thesis was about. At any rate, Wilson had started eating paper.
I am not joking or exaggerating for the sake of a shocking account here. He said he couldn’t help it. He was nervous as ever; jumping at everything and any bit of paper that he got his hands on was most likely gnawed on voraciously.
I got him to the hospital of course, to see a doctor and maybe get some tranquilizer medication of some kind. I was hoping it would help him to see an expert and save us both the embarrassment, should this latest antic of his get further out. Wilson just wound up refusing any medication. He even ate the prescription.
He just kept writing and working on that dumb academic essay of his. Dumb because he just couldn’t shut the bloody hell up about it. All he’d talk about was that essay. If he wasn’t chattering off like that, he was eating paper. I don’t know how he did it. I didn’t even know what that paper was on, even after all this time and all his chatter. He simply did not make any sense most of the time, but part of the blame must be mine.
Back then, I kept telling myself to ignore him; that he’d eventually grow out of it. He had to grow out of it, or he’d really get sick this time.
It’s all coming back to me now, how I’d have to hide any important papers or books of mine so that he wouldn’t add them to his unorthodox diet. Some friends of ours, blood idiots if you ask me, found this whole thing very amusing. They came over and practically fed him paper. Like he was some kind of pet rabbit they were told not to abuse but did it anyway because they were dumb kids. I had to kick them out of our dorm every time.
I can’t remember how log exactly this lasted, but I think it was the whole semester, since the professor that had requested this paper gave the students a big extension. It certainly felt like the whole semester, with me waking up at night sometimes, to the sound of paper being munched on from his side of the dorm; crumpling paper, shuffling on sheets and the rumble of maws grinding whitened, starched wood-pulp. It almost drove me mad.
Wilson wasn’t alone; plenty of other students were suffering from breakdowns that semester. I didn’t think anyone else turned into a paper-vore though, but it was still pretty pathetic. I wasn’t so hectic because I knew I was an average student (well, mostly) and so I didn’t expect to neither write a phenomenal paper nor fail in some catastrophic manner. I got curious and did a bit of research, to find that the eating of a variety of objects is not such an unusual thing for neurotics.
Wilson, in the meantime, was getting worse. He started losing weight—not that he had much to lose, which made the whole affair rather worrying—his girlfriend left him (I never blamed her) and his car was stolen because he left the keys in the ignition one night. All the while his paper was developing and he was so stressed that, if his essay wasn’t typed, he’d have eaten it too, I really think he would have done so.
One evening we were relaxing during a sudden power-failure on the campus and we got talking. I don’t recall what we were talking about when the prattle turned to this:
“D’you think you’ll quit munching on paper when you get the paper and class done?” I asked.
“No idea, Dickie” he replied, even though he always knew I hated being called Dick or Dickie. “I don’t know what I’ll do. You know what you’ll do after you’re through with here?” he went on between crumpling and munching paper.
“I’m not sure, I’ll probably head home to unwind for a bit and then get to work,” I said casually. At the time I hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
“Lucky,” was the quibbled reply. “You’ll fit right in, Dick. My old m-man will grill on m-me to join-join the army,” he went on, bitterly munching. I noticed he’d started to stutter.
“He can’t force you, Wilson.”
“I know, but it m-makes me n-nervous.”
I was getting annoyed at the everlasting darkness of the power-out and the sound of his paper-eating. The following day I had to deal with one of the Chartophagoi and I wasn’t in the best of moods. “For God’s sake, Wilson, what the devil are you eating this time?”
I think he shrugged nonchalantly then. “J-Just an old textbook. One of mine, d-don’t worry. I th-think it’s on the T-T-Transcendentalists. It could be P-P-Poe though; I picked it in the-the dark.”
I shook my head. “You’ll get sick. You heard what that doctor told you.”
Wilson sighed. I’d never heard him sigh before. “I d-don’t think it really m-m-matters, Richard.”
The lights came back on then, and I never got the chance to reply or even ask him what he meant. I almost wish the damn power had stayed down.
I visited my Chartophagoi the next morning, to get the expected dismissal of a draft I’d done. Naturally, for a Chartophagoi, they demanded more. It made me think of Wilson. He got back his own paper too, that day. I remembered Wilson’s statement from last night when my Chartophagoi quoted Thoreau on something. I don’t remember which quote it was but I’m sure it was Thoreau. Wilson had been munching on Transcendentalists.
When I got back to our dorm it was quiet. I thought Wilson was catching up on some sleep since he hadn’t been sleeping well by then, often waking up in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake him up and in the dim light of the evening I didn’t think to check the bed thoroughly. I headed quietly to my desk beside his (an early arrangement to save some space) just to find it a mess when I turned on the table-light. I’ve never been a neat-freak, especially not where desks are concerned, but this was beyond me. Books were strewn over the desk, papers torn, shredded, crumpled and just plain missing. Various papers—like notes, memos, doodles and scribbles were tossed around haphazardly. I was quite taken aback from the sight and yes, I was angry too. The deadline was coming up soon and I had things to round up. The last thing I’d needed was a meltdown of disorganization.
I turned back to the bed to wake Wilson up and demand some explanations. When I yanked the covers from the bed, I knew he wasn’t there. But I also realized the smell of vomit, not as pungent as normal vomit is. In the table light I saw chunks on the floor by Wilson’s bed and Wilson’s side of the dorm, by the desks. It was slimy, full of white paper bits and it meant Wilson had to be around.
I opened the bathroom door, almost knowing what to expect. I stumbled back, swallowing down my own urge to throw up. Wilson lay in the tub, naked as a skinned rabbit, in a pool of blood, vomit and paper floating in the gunk. He looked oddly serene in his despair, head rolled back against the edge of the tub, vomit and paper pulp dribbling from his mouth, his glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling through puffy eyelids. He had a paper-cutter in one hand, now lying limp on his lap, half-stained from the foul mixture in the tub.
I covered my mouth—what else could I do? Wilson was surely dead, either from the blood-loss or from chocking on his own paper-laced vomit. He certainly looked gorged and bloated enough for the latter. I almost fell on my rear when a sound startled me in the darkness of the room and for a dreadful second I thought it was him, still alive and realizing my presence. But it was just the building, creaking, settling for the night.
I stumbled out of the dorm, panicked. I don’t remember much after that. I believe I began to shout and had a breakdown…and fainted. It’s embarrassing but I woke up in the infirmary. I’ve never fainted before, or since. The next few days were a daze. I had a nervous breakdown and had to be watched. My sister came from upstate to keep an eye on me.
We went to the funeral; I got to meet Wilson’s family and got the shrewd impression that they somehow blamed me. Wilson was right about his father; he was stern, unapproachable—an army man to the bone. Nobody really talked to me and I left early with my sister. I was sick. I wound up missing a lot of classes; I had nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night in a panic because I thought I heard Wilson chewing paper by my ear.
Once or twice, I even thought I’d seen him in the dead of night, standing in our dorm, dripping water, blood and other, indescribable fluids, stark-naked, wild eyed and clutching papers and chewing on them. Always staring at me.
This went on for days. I started losing weight—losing my mind too, maybe. By the time I was able to resume classes, I looked haggard. Wilson still haunted me.
And what about the other Chartophagoi? After the initial shock of a student committing suicide out of stress and in such a manner, they resumed business as usual. I was business as usual, no special treatment. I hadn’t been able to write a thing since that night, though.
I recall how my Chartophagoi—Dr. Spinge, was her name, I think, requested to see me at some point. She told me she noticed I looked ‘upset’ and was wondering if it had affected my work.
I was beyond upset. I couldn’t describe what I felt. But I had to say something.
“My dead room-mate ate my thesis, professor.”
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The Chartophagoi
The same year, when I was dealing with these Chartophagoi, I had a roommate, Wilson. Wilson was a spry but tall and narrow fellow, with gray, monochromatic eyes and the blandest and bleached-out brown hair I’ve ever seen on a man, more gray than brown. Rarely, he would stutter, but only faintly, despite his neurotic attitude. Oh yes, Wilson was neurotic, more than a high-strung hare, in fact. He looked like a hare, too.
Stress was a nightmare for Wilson, just as it was for many other students. Stress has driven people to suicide and has shortened human lifespan a good deal of years anyway. In fact, I’ve seen stress make people snap and do some pretty horrid things. Stress motivates some spree killers to shoot up a lot of innocent people before they blow their own brains out.
Overall, stress turns some people into wrecks and others into monsters.
Wilson just wasn’t sure what stress did to him. In the time that we lived together, once I saw him have such a bad breakdown that it was like his stomach had turned inside out, he couldn’t seem to stop vomiting. Not until he was dry as a raisin in hospital, anyway.
One other time he just exploded into a rage, punching me in the face and then going out and kicking a stray dog that got in his way, so hard that I swore he’d killed the poor thing. When he came to his senses, he was the same nervous man, apologizing for hours. And the last time, he got such a shocker that he lost his voice for a whole month!
I thought I’d seen everything with him, but Wilson’s latest feat had stunned me. It was probably related to this important thesis that he had to deliver in three weeks—it was all he talked about at the time, and yet I had no idea what that thesis was about. At any rate, Wilson had started eating paper.
I am not joking or exaggerating for the sake of a shocking account here. He said he couldn’t help it. He was nervous as ever; jumping at everything and any bit of paper that he got his hands on was most likely gnawed on voraciously.
I got him to the hospital of course, to see a doctor and maybe get some tranquilizer medication of some kind. I was hoping it would help him to see an expert and save us both the embarrassment, should this latest antic of his get further out. Wilson just wound up refusing any medication. He even ate the prescription.
He just kept writing and working on that dumb academic essay of his. Dumb because he just couldn’t shut the bloody hell up about it. All he’d talk about was that essay. If he wasn’t chattering off like that, he was eating paper. I don’t know how he did it. I didn’t even know what that paper was on, even after all this time and all his chatter. He simply did not make any sense most of the time, but part of the blame must be mine.
Back then, I kept telling myself to ignore him; that he’d eventually grow out of it. He had to grow out of it, or he’d really get sick this time.
It’s all coming back to me now, how I’d have to hide any important papers or books of mine so that he wouldn’t add them to his unorthodox diet. Some friends of ours, blood idiots if you ask me, found this whole thing very amusing. They came over and practically fed him paper. Like he was some kind of pet rabbit they were told not to abuse but did it anyway because they were dumb kids. I had to kick them out of our dorm every time.
I can’t remember how log exactly this lasted, but I think it was the whole semester, since the professor that had requested this paper gave the students a big extension. It certainly felt like the whole semester, with me waking up at night sometimes, to the sound of paper being munched on from his side of the dorm; crumpling paper, shuffling on sheets and the rumble of maws grinding whitened, starched wood-pulp. It almost drove me mad.
Wilson wasn’t alone; plenty of other students were suffering from breakdowns that semester. I didn’t think anyone else turned into a paper-vore though, but it was still pretty pathetic. I wasn’t so hectic because I knew I was an average student (well, mostly) and so I didn’t expect to neither write a phenomenal paper nor fail in some catastrophic manner. I got curious and did a bit of research, to find that the eating of a variety of objects is not such an unusual thing for neurotics.
Wilson, in the meantime, was getting worse. He started losing weight—not that he had much to lose, which made the whole affair rather worrying—his girlfriend left him (I never blamed her) and his car was stolen because he left the keys in the ignition one night. All the while his paper was developing and he was so stressed that, if his essay wasn’t typed, he’d have eaten it too, I really think he would have done so.
One evening we were relaxing during a sudden power-failure on the campus and we got talking. I don’t recall what we were talking about when the prattle turned to this:
“D’you think you’ll quit munching on paper when you get the paper and class done?” I asked.
“No idea, Dickie” he replied, even though he always knew I hated being called Dick or Dickie. “I don’t know what I’ll do. You know what you’ll do after you’re through with here?” he went on between crumpling and munching paper.
“I’m not sure, I’ll probably head home to unwind for a bit and then get to work,” I said casually. At the time I hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
“Lucky,” was the quibbled reply. “You’ll fit right in, Dick. My old m-man will grill on m-me to join-join the army,” he went on, bitterly munching. I noticed he’d started to stutter.
“He can’t force you, Wilson.”
“I know, but it m-makes me n-nervous.”
I was getting annoyed at the everlasting darkness of the power-out and the sound of his paper-eating. The following day I had to deal with one of the Chartophagoi and I wasn’t in the best of moods. “For God’s sake, Wilson, what the devil are you eating this time?”
I think he shrugged nonchalantly then. “J-Just an old textbook. One of mine, d-don’t worry. I th-think it’s on the T-T-Transcendentalists. It could be P-P-Poe though; I picked it in the-the dark.”
I shook my head. “You’ll get sick. You heard what that doctor told you.”
Wilson sighed. I’d never heard him sigh before. “I d-don’t think it really m-m-matters, Richard.”
The lights came back on then, and I never got the chance to reply or even ask him what he meant. I almost wish the damn power had stayed down.
I visited my Chartophagoi the next morning, to get the expected dismissal of a draft I’d done. Naturally, for a Chartophagoi, they demanded more. It made me think of Wilson. He got back his own paper too, that day. I remembered Wilson’s statement from last night when my Chartophagoi quoted Thoreau on something. I don’t remember which quote it was but I’m sure it was Thoreau. Wilson had been munching on Transcendentalists.
When I got back to our dorm it was quiet. I thought Wilson was catching up on some sleep since he hadn’t been sleeping well by then, often waking up in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake him up and in the dim light of the evening I didn’t think to check the bed thoroughly. I headed quietly to my desk beside his (an early arrangement to save some space) just to find it a mess when I turned on the table-light. I’ve never been a neat-freak, especially not where desks are concerned, but this was beyond me. Books were strewn over the desk, papers torn, shredded, crumpled and just plain missing. Various papers—like notes, memos, doodles and scribbles were tossed around haphazardly. I was quite taken aback from the sight and yes, I was angry too. The deadline was coming up soon and I had things to round up. The last thing I’d needed was a meltdown of disorganization.
I turned back to the bed to wake Wilson up and demand some explanations. When I yanked the covers from the bed, I knew he wasn’t there. But I also realized the smell of vomit, not as pungent as normal vomit is. In the table light I saw chunks on the floor by Wilson’s bed and Wilson’s side of the dorm, by the desks. It was slimy, full of white paper bits and it meant Wilson had to be around.
I opened the bathroom door, almost knowing what to expect. I stumbled back, swallowing down my own urge to throw up. Wilson lay in the tub, naked as a skinned rabbit, in a pool of blood, vomit and paper floating in the gunk. He looked oddly serene in his despair, head rolled back against the edge of the tub, vomit and paper pulp dribbling from his mouth, his glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling through puffy eyelids. He had a paper-cutter in one hand, now lying limp on his lap, half-stained from the foul mixture in the tub.
I covered my mouth—what else could I do? Wilson was surely dead, either from the blood-loss or from chocking on his own paper-laced vomit. He certainly looked gorged and bloated enough for the latter. I almost fell on my rear when a sound startled me in the darkness of the room and for a dreadful second I thought it was him, still alive and realizing my presence. But it was just the building, creaking, settling for the night.
I stumbled out of the dorm, panicked. I don’t remember much after that. I believe I began to shout and had a breakdown…and fainted. It’s embarrassing but I woke up in the infirmary. I’ve never fainted before, or since. The next few days were a daze. I had a nervous breakdown and had to be watched. My sister came from upstate to keep an eye on me.
We went to the funeral; I got to meet Wilson’s family and got the shrewd impression that they somehow blamed me. Wilson was right about his father; he was stern, unapproachable—an army man to the bone. Nobody really talked to me and I left early with my sister. I was sick. I wound up missing a lot of classes; I had nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night in a panic because I thought I heard Wilson chewing paper by my ear.
Once or twice, I even thought I’d seen him in the dead of night, standing in our dorm, dripping water, blood and other, indescribable fluids, stark-naked, wild eyed and clutching papers and chewing on them. Always staring at me.
This went on for days. I started losing weight—losing my mind too, maybe. By the time I was able to resume classes, I looked haggard. Wilson still haunted me.
And what about the other Chartophagoi? After the initial shock of a student committing suicide out of stress and in such a manner, they resumed business as usual. I was business as usual, no special treatment. I hadn’t been able to write a thing since that night, though.
I recall how my Chartophagoi—Dr. Spinge, was her name, I think, requested to see me at some point. She told me she noticed I looked ‘upset’ and was wondering if it had affected my work.
I was beyond upset. I couldn’t describe what I felt. But I had to say something.
“My dead room-mate ate my thesis, professor.”