Fateful Encounter

Exhausted

It was already 7:40 in the morning as I was walked through the sliding doors to the building that housed my classroom. Because class started in twenty more minutes, I decided it would be best to go into the giant lecture hall that was my class and grab a spot.

"Damn Jess you look like death...you ok?" Remarked Kira as she walked up to me with concern written all over her face.

"Ha...I feel like it to be honest. I woke up in the middle of the night to a weird sound and I could not fall back asleep for the life of me...," that was half the truth. The other half I kept to myself for the fear of judgement. Even though I met Kira last semester, she always proved to be a nonjudgmental person, but I didn't want to explain to her the weird sound of someone yelling, the feather I found last night and the fact that it was bigger than any feather on this planet...besides Mothman's. I still held onto that theory once I woke up because it was the only thing that helped me make sense of the whole situation, despite the fact that I knew it was an absurd theory. But whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

We slowly made our way into class and snagged a spot in the front. Lecture was for three hours and after that I got to go home...go home to my bed and take a nap and regain some of the sleep I had lost from my little "crater-adventure."

"Morning Jeeesssssss!!"

I looked up to see Alex, Ryan, Lisa and Sarah walking towards me. "Mornin' guys!" I happily greeted. After they grabbed a spot near Kira and I, they all talked about how their weekend was. I sat and listened quietly and was overall thankful to hear that they had a good Saturday and Sunday because to be completely honest, it restored a sense or normality and helped me forget how tired I was.

'Mothman...black feather...burned...tired...feather...black...tired...feather...feather...fea-,' was all I could think about until I was pulled out of my repetitious thoughts by Ryan.

"You okay there Jess?"

"What? Oh! Yeah! Sorry."

"Haha, you just looked out of it there..."

"Yeaaahhhh, I sort of am. I got no sleep last night because I woke up at like three and it was hard to fall back asleep," I quietly explained still lost in my thoughts.

"Why did you wake up?" Asked Alex.

"Was someone over at your house," Sarah asked, with a seductive implication laced within her question.

"Ha! I wish, that would have been great, but no. There was a weird sound that woke me up. Probably someone moving the garbage can or something, I don't know."

"Moving their garbage can at three in the morning? Really?" Asked Kira incredulously.

"Hey man, you never know...people do weird shit in the late hours of the night," stated Alex.

"Yes and then they wake up people like me who now have to struggle with getting through three hours of lecture," I sadly stated.

"Haha, you'll get through it Jess," Lisa said with a warm smile, "we gotchu girl!"

After a couple minutes of my friends going back and forth about what they were going to do after class, our professor finally walked in through the door. Monday lectures were great because each week, we have been getting different professors to lecture on their topic of specialty. For being a nursing student, I was grateful that my class and I got to hear their different viewpoints.

Ten minutes into lecture, I began to doze off. Drinking water wasn't helping and the granola bar I just ate made it worse. I decided to tune out and start recording the lecture on my phone that way I would be able to go back and listen to it at home. For me, I am the type of person that can never fall asleep in class. I will doze off, but would always end up jolting myself awake and I especially could not do that now due to the fact I was sitting in the front row.

'God why did I have to sit right here today and why on the day of a good lecture...,' I thought.

In order to keep myself awake, I decided to look up Mothman on my laptop. I personally didn't care if the people behind could see what I was looking up, I just needed to keep myself awake and mentally engaged in something else for the next couple hours. Google wasn't turning up anything useful so I decided to go onto Reddit. In the year that I have been on Reddit, I have learned that it's a good tool to look up anything. It may not be credible, but I just needed answers to what I was searching and I didn't care where I got them.

I started with 'Mothman', then redefined my search to 'black feathers,' and then to 'burnt black feather.' With each search, much of results that came up were threads talking about purifying and cleansing using Native American rituals. While it could be plausible that someone may have been outside doing something like that, it didn't explain why there was a crater in middle of street or why the feather was so abnormally long.

After going back and forth between looking up stuff on Reddit and paying little attention to lecture, class was finally over and I was thankful that I could now go home.

'I better knuckle under and listen to lecture after I take a nap...' I mentally scolded myself as I packed my laptop away.

"We're gonna head out now Jess, but you go home and get some sleep okay? We'll see you tomorrow!" stated Ryan.

"Alrighty, sounds good, see y'all tomorrow!" I replied back.

And just like I was walking out of the lecture hall and towards the sliding doors of the building.