The Undergraduates Read online

  The Undergraduates

  Part One

  Copyright 2016 by Steven Snell

  Independent Edition, License Notes

  All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  (That being said, sometimes fiction mirrors life.)

  Any errors in judgement, interpretation and grammar are the narrator’s own.

  The

  Undergraduates

  Part One

  Steven

  Snell

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  The Author

  Preface

  Shawn's journey may be tough to read at times — his inner turmoil is exhibited in a forceful encounter that could be misinterpreted if the scene wasn’t so carefully choreographed — but it’s vividly memorable, in part because of how well Steven captures the streets and people Shawn is so eager to explore. You may have read The Undergradautes in a few novesl before, but never quite like this.

  1.

  Karen’s on her stomach, eyes closed but awake, one leg exposed from under my covers. A naked back, dark skin. Her arms under my white pillow and her black hair volcanic ash giving body to a glacier. I’m on the edge of my bed, at her feet, staring out my third floor window.

  It’s humid, but not hot. Clouds, but long shadows. Traffic in the streets. A crane in the distance hoisting metal girders creating a building. Another one of glass and crossed steel hiding the evening sun. A child on the street hollering, a happy cheer. It’s late summer.

  Karen comes here, most weeks, up the stairs, down the hallway, into my bedroom, on top of me. She comes to be something more than what she is. I am what she needs me to be. I escape my past; Karen escapes her husband.

  She rolls over to look where I’m looking. Pauses. “I should get going?”

  I turn my head to her. “… Okay.”

  “… See you soon?”

  “I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

  “Me too.”

  “See you there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Then she leaves as she always does.

  2.

  It’s raining. I’m watching it from inside, on my couch, my head tilted back to look at the clouds, apartment buildings, office towers. In the foreground a large tree stands at the end of a gravel parking lot being battered by the rain. I watch the leaves, watch them tremble.

  I reach for my mug of tea on the coffee table, take a sip and set it down on my chest. I yawn into the back of my hand.

  It’s late afternoon, too early to be yawning. I take a deep breath.

  I think about how the tree feels. I think about going out to the balcony to feel the rain. I think that I don’t feel like doing anything.

  Time passes, the rain falls, I do nothing.

  I get up and go to the washroom.

  I return to the couch.

  I wait for something, anything to compel me. Nothing does.

  My gaze wanders my apartment. Kitchen, door to the washroom, hallway to the bedroom, bookshelves, artwork on the walls, the sliding door to the balcony, a large clock with roman numerals on the wall.

  The large clock with Roman numerals on my wall. A girl bought it for me four or five years ago, maybe six. It was the summer before we started university. Must be five. Her name was Tricia, is Tricia. She bought it for me so I knew what time it was while she was in San Francisco with her family for three weeks. Three weeks and one-time zone away from me. “Every time I look at my watch I’ll know you’re in the future.” That’s what she said when I opened the present. I said, “And you’ll be in the past.” It sounded worse than I meant it. She’s married now, lives in a suburb on a man-made lake east of here. That was her future.

  I sigh out a breath. My rib cage rises, sinks. The mug of tea still on my chest. I take a sip.

  On another wall is a painting of reds above the mantel. It was brought back from Japan by a girl I no longer talk to. I think her name is Alice, maybe Alison. The canvas is just thick red paint as if spread on with a spatula and then spread on again. “It’s the ocean’s surface after a dolphin slaughter.” That’s what she said as she watched me looking at it. I replied, “That’s grotesque, but beautiful.”

  My gaze continues to wander returning outside. The rain, it looks like rain in Chicago, Vancouver, Prague, Switzerland. It looks like Ingrid and I under a cheap yellow umbrella we had bought to avoid a sudden downpour. We ducked into the train station to escape the failing umbrella and ended up escaping the country altogether. We said goodbye and keep in touch from Hamburg. The umbrella is in my closet; I don’t know where Ingrid is.

  A song is on in the background coming from my computer sitting on a desk in the corner of my apartment. I focus on it. Another song begins. Just a violin, a song composed by Arvo Pärt. I close my eyes and wait for the chorus. This song a download sent to me from a girl in Holland. We began sending each other music after meeting exiting a concert in Rotterdam. I noticed her figure, her style, the way she had her hair tied off-centre at the base of her neck. “Pretty amazing, eh?” I had asked.

  She turned and looked at me and smiled and said with a strong accent, “Very lovely.”

  I said, “I wish I could play an instrument.”

  She replied, “I wish I was an instrument.”

  She introduced me to Icelandic folk music. I began her love for Canadian post-rock. We wrote and mused about other bands at other concerts. Travelling the world, listening to music, being a part of the life. We stopped writing when she met a musician from Ireland.

  I take a sip of tea and look back at the dolphin slaughter. On the mantle below it on a stack of other books is a hard-bound copy of The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe. It was a gift from John, part apology, part just “something I wanted to do.”

  John and I were friends, are friends, less friends than we used to be. He wanted somethi
ng more, attempted something once. We had known each other for months. We met at university, became friends quickly and shared the same sense of humour. We both enjoyed going to galleries, shows, concerts, walking aimlessly in the city. We went for a drink and a play and then another drink, another one. We were walking back to my apartment where he’d continue on to his way to his as he always did. We stopped, thanked each other for the evening, hugged. He kissed me. He pulled back quickly and said, “Sorry,” looked down and said, “Sorry sorry sorry.” He turned quickly and quickly walked off, quickly quickly. I didn’t say anything. He sent me a message the next day that said, “SORRY.” I replied, “Please don’t ruin our friendship.” The following day after work he came by and dropped off the book and said sorry sorry sorry again.

  “Just friends?”

  He said, “Yes, I hope so.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay, good, good good.”

  I take another sip of tea.

  I turn my wrist over and look at the time. My silver watch with a thick orange strap is from a woman whose husband built one of the apartment complexes I can see from my couch. It’s 4:17; 23:17 GMT.

  The song ends, another one begins.

  I puff out my cheeks, pop them.

  This is where I live, the stories in it are embedded in it; objects from other places, sometimes told to me sitting beside me, lying beside me, on top of me saying I missed you. This is me, a grey afternoon feeling, I don’t know what I’m feeling. I slowly roll my head from side to side.

  I’m just other people, their tales told from the other edge of a pillow, on a sidewalk, a park bench, the passenger seat of a car. They take me to where their stories were created from across a table eating pasta and drinking wine, in a lecture theatre, inside them, feeling their heat on me, their moisture spilling out on me, moaning something in a foreign language and our scent filling the sleeper cab of the Eurostar, a taxicab in Bali. I’m stories.

  I put my tea down on the coffee table and pick up the remote and turn on the TV. CBC news. I mute it and read the news feeder at the bottom of the screen. An oil spill up north, native land rights in Ontario, the after effects of a tropical storm in The States.

  I work with a man from Washington DC. He grew up in Sudan. Sometimes I have him tell me stories. We were in the elevator once and it got stuck between floors. I shook my head, quietly cursed and smiled asking him if he believes in God. He said, “I didn’t, I did, then didn’t want to.”

  “Maybe now’s a good time?”

  “Maybe,” he said with a laugh. Then he added after a silent minute, “I didn’t like what people did in his name.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “God.” He hesitated then looked over to me. “Now I believe that others believe.”

  I nodded. A few minutes later the elevator started. He mumbled, “Thank God.” We laughed.

  There are other stories I’ve become. I’ve been on swings in rural Saskatchewan, my dress billowing with the breeze. I’ve searched through the night for my lost dog and got mononucleosis when I was twelve. I’ve performed on stage in drag and tossed my bra filled with beans into the audience. I’ve gone to high school bush parties and lost my virginity.

  Stories from friends, acquaintances, people. Figuring out loud how they got to where they were, where they want to go. Some stories short ones to get them out of writer’s block living in the basement of their parent’s house or ending relationships with boyfriends they can no longer tolerate. My breasts appeared at age 8, 12, 17. I had my foreskin removed at 13. My first nosebleed at 7. My first heartbreak in Grade 5, my teacher Mr. Kozelek. I got my period in Grade 7 and I ran home crying with my jacket wrapped around my waist.

  I’ve been in Portugal, sub-Saharan Africa. New Zealand, Madagascar, America, Austria, sailed over the Tropic of Cancer. I’ve been to a topless beach for the first time in Spain. I reside in Calgary but it’s not where I live. I’m a nomad. I’m in countries and over continents via people beside me, above me, under me, walking beside me. I’ve seen the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Little Mermaid in Denmark. They’ve placed me in their countries, their houses, their beliefs, their fears. I’m part of their mental maps of their bedrooms and couches and showers and balconies and back porches. In a world too large to know, they’ve given me enough pieces to have a feeling of it, to picture it, to picture them, them someone place on a map in a bed silent moaning breathing wanting sweat beading dripping down to my chest as they take me someplace else as we roll around in a sleeping bag deep in a forest.

  I lift up my mug again and take a long sip and rest it back on my chest. This orange and blue and green mug is from a store in Seattle I bought when leaving Gabriella for what should’ve been for good. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. We were committed, in a relationship, she moved here for me. Then we weren’t. She moved back home. It happened over a year ago but we’ve remained within an arm’s reach, a broken arm, a compound fracture.

  Her and I. We’re on my couch watching a movie. Simple, easy. We laugh when we’re supposed to laugh, get closer when we’re supposed to get closer. The movie finishes and we’re holding each other. We talk about the movie. We talk about the rest of the evening. Sometimes we don’t talk at all. We get closer. Closer. She’s sitting on my lap. We’re kissing. Clothes are being removed. Getting closer.

  But I hate thinking about her. I don’t hate thinking about her. I don’t know what to think. I get angry when I think. I’m angry now. The weight on my face a scowl and I’d hit someone if I wasn’t so bored. I miss her, really miss her. Really miss her. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the idea of her.

  I sit up and adjust myself and tuck my legs under me. I lean my elbow against a pillow and take a sip of tea and put the mug down on the coffee table and try not to think of her. The coffee table. I bought it on a sunny afternoon with Cynthia. After two weeks of 20th Century Film Studies together we’ve been the same person but two people since. She once said to me, “If I had a penis, I’d want it to be yours. I mean, if I had to be a bloke, I’d want to be you.” I replied, “You’re too sweet” and she said, “No I’m not” and I smiled and said, “I know, because you’re me.” We left the girl’s apartment that I bought the table from and we walked it together the seven blocks back to my place. We stopped halfway and rested in front of her place. Sitting on it on the sidewalk Cynthia said to me, “If you buy a TV and expect me to help you carry it to your apartment, I’ll shoot you in your face.”

  Another song finishes, another song starts.

  Vehicles pass outside, their tires slapping the wet pavement.

  Another program on the TV.

  My head hurts. A dull ache that settles behind my ears. Maybe I’m getting a cold. Maybe it’s my medication. I think I forgot to take it today, maybe yesterday too. The side effects to taking them, to not taking them. My drawn and quartered brain, horses tearing it into a million little pieces. My synapses exploding and my eyes a vehicle driving too fast losing control on wet pavement spinning twisted metal tossed off a cliff and broken trees delineating my trajectory. My mind, what was once a Ninth Symphony is now reduced to a musical score, a single sheet of unaccompanied music, a jingle.

  I close my eyes and squeeze the bridge of my nose. I picture a large snow covered field, a frozen lake, a jumbo jet with engines on fire emergency landing on it. The plane on the bottom of the deep lake with bodies, luggage and the black box trapped inside as the plane settles into the silt.

  I look at the clock on the wall. I watch the second hand, the minute hand. I try to perceive the hour hand moving. I’m staring at it from a centimeter away. Click. Click. Click.

  I’m composed of pieces, a modern machine of modulated units. Divided for efficiency. Functional. Separated into a lifeless orifice. Food in, stool out. A Ford factory. Offered wage hikes quashed by the Board. Turning bolts, turning bolts, turning bolts. Production. Process. Click. Click. Click.

  My eyelids get heavy. Open, close, blink, cl
ose again. I fall asleep, not a deep sleep, just enough for the images to linger. The clock, the painting, the mug, the watch, the table, The Cask of Amontillado on the mantel. Edgar Allen Poe and my aching head. My aching head. Deeper sleep. A darker deep sleep.

  A darkness over my squatted body piled in the corner trapped in the catacombs of a medieval city. I’m in a labyrinth of sewers and the faint pungent smell of urine and dead rats swirl and float by my naked feet and I’m scratching at the stones. Grit under my bleeding fingernails. Brick upon brick stacked before me, I’m reduced to a child chocking on my own tears and Edgar Allen Poe some nocturnal creature hanging from the crypt’s ceiling clucking his tongue that sound, that sound, that sound emitting from the roof of his mouth.

  Above, past concrete, ducts and pipes; soil, grass and chirping crickets, the air lit in a euphoric fire of explosions. Fireworks in the dark sky night and hollers of joy and laughter never sinking reaching down to the cavernous hell of subterranean alleys in the City of Love I’m trapped under.

  A draft cuts at my bare skin as though a door is opened in a sealed building. This wind a noose and I sway to and fro hanging from the roof under the Parisian town its entrails consumed by the creatures scurrying in slum and squalor around me. Wall torches throw light leaking in between cracks in the mortar reflecting on the whites of my eyes. I try to open them. I tuck tighter into the corner and sweep away a severed floating past. I clasp my hands and shove them between my thighs. Cobwebs in my hair.

  Amontillado is building my cask and I’m Fortunato.

  I’m not asleep and I’m not awake but I can’t fall out of it. I can’t urge my body to wake. A nightmare.

  I can’t escape the cask and bile shakes out of my core and the stench of stomach remnants misshapes the air but I’m too wasted to care and I can’t even scream because I have nothing to say nothing to force out over my blue lips. I breathe and take my last gasps before the wall is sealed and say, Amonti … I’m … so sorry … Amontillado … so sor ry … so … so … sor … ssssssss …