Tidbits

The Graduate

It hadn't felt like cheating. It started last night the same way so many nights do: with me collapsing face-first into a stack of papers, tears running off my face and causing the ink in my notes to bleed, and crying, "Please, please, Goddess – or anything that might be listening... please, just help me be done! I'll give anything!"

I really hadn't expected anything to show up. But a demon did show up, in a cloud of smoke, bearing a stack of scrolls in a perfect imitation of my handwriting, a cup of freshly-brewed relaxation potion, and an enchanted quill that would allow me to sign a contract with my own blood. 

I had been planning on doing the right thing and calling campus security. But he had been so nice. So understanding. He saw right through me, but not in the same way Professor Stratusbeard saw through my excuses for turning in assignments late or missing class. The demon saw my strengths, the bright person I used to believe I was. He made me feel like I really was bright, deep down inside. So what if I kept messing up? It was just the environment squandering me. The competition, the peer-critique, the vast campus. Once I got away from there, degree in hand, I prove I was better than all this.

The papers he handed me were the papers I could have written. They were my thoughts, my writing voice, echoes of passion I used to have. How could I turn down a physical manifestation of the brilliant wizard I could have been?

So I took the papers. I drank the potion. I signed the contract.

-

The school cleric listens with a grave face, and realize how weak my excuses are. I sound exactly like the textbook examples in the "protection against evil magic" unit of the mandatory, one-credit campus life class I had to take freshman year. "The demon was so nice!" "It felt harmless!" "I was desperate, and I thought I would have the rest of my life to find a way to break the oath!" All those warnings I thought would never even apply to me. Falling for such an obvious trick was humiliating, but confessing to cheating was worse. School healers took oaths of confidentiality, so she couldn't report me, but I felt worthless. I'd already failed so many classes that I had to switch my major from alchemy to bardic studies. Now I couldn't even manage that on my own merit.

"This happened last night?" the cleric asks, and I nod. It's evening. I noticed the demonic runes on my body this morning, but I turned in my papers and took my exams before coming to see the cleric.

She scrutinizes my blackened skin, pinching one of freshly formed markings on my neck. "At this rate, you won't live to see the next sunrise. I can pray to reclaim your soul in the Goddess's name, but it has to happen immediately, and it requires a commitment from you as well."

"That's fine." Now that my studies are done, I'll have time to volunteer for the church. It might even be nice, sort of like an internship.

"Anything a demon gives you, gives it a grasp on your soul. In order to free yourself, you have to destroy its grasp on you. The Goddess can't free anyone who willingly hangs on." She pauses. The meaning of her words sink in. As she sees my countenance fall, she clarifies, unnecessarily, "You'll need to bring those papers here. To be ceremonially destroyed."

I imagine going to Professor Stratusbeard with the unfinished, tear-stained essay I'd been attempting the night before, and some half-hearted excuse that I'd accidentally turned the wrong thing. He'd squint down at me in disapproval, a look I knew from when I had to beg him to let me retake his class. Best case scenario, he accepts my excuses at face value and agrees to exchange the essay I turned in with the inferior version I actually wrote. Worst case, he figures out what actually happened and I'm expelled for cheating.

"Okay. I'll be back soon," I say weakly. She wouldn't want to hear anything else.

I'm so tired I can barely will my legs to move, but I manage to re-cast my illusion spell so none of my peers see the demon runes. The last thing I need is to be the subject of rumors, the next anecdote the campus life professors tell morbidly intrigued freshman. People in the hallways are jovial, flying around on broosticks and calling out to friends. A crowd of boys in the herbalism department's courtyard are turning rocks into frogs and playing dodgeball with them. They're like children. I try to remember feeling like they felt. When I was a freshman, finals week had been tiring, but it had left me feeling accomplished. I'd saved copies of my essays so I could send them to my parents. I'd gone out for ice-cream with classmates to celebrate.

The fond memory compels me to stop by the ice-cream shop on my way home and order the biggest sundae on the menu, extra nuts. I dump the rest of the gold I have on hand into the tip jar. I savor my treat as I head back to my dorm, and I begin to feel a little better. Other graduating students have dumped all their unwanted possessions in the hall, and I browse through until I find a novel that it looks like I can finish in a few hours. Then I go upstairs to my room, snuggle up under the covers, and read until my eyes get heavy. Finally, I can go to sleep in total peace, no classes to wake up for or deadlines to haunt my dreams. Tomorrow, I'll be a college graduate.