The Kahn Lurkers
by Kate Weissenberger, Staff Writer
Dear Diary,
After a long week of sleeping between classes, I wanted to escape the French House apartment (with no roommate, the silence gets dull) and take a walk. There’s really nothing that inspires more awe in me than the twinkle of the lighters on the porch of South, so I thought I’d head down Professor. Something weird happened tonight, though. I shoved the front door open and started at a flats-friendly pace, Animal Collective blasting… only to hear something run behind me as I passed Kahn. Surely it was just some sort of critter, but I could have sworn that it sounded like a many-legged stampede of unbroken Doc Martens. I heard it again as I passed Talcott, but spotted no perp. It’s probably just the panning.
Dearer Diary,
I’ve stopped wearing my headphones while I walk, but being left alone with my thoughts has only made it worse. I’m convinced that I’m being followed. Two weekends in a row, the scattered footsteps have followed me from building to building as soon as the sun sets. I haven’t gotten a bloody death threat on a napkin or anything, and during the week I don’t hear a peep out of them, but I know I saw messily-winged eyes through the cracks in the blinds this afternoon. I hear whispers, too—something about “the funk.” If I’m being followed, can’t they at least say something interesting? It’s Oberlin. It’s hard to say if they’re on about music or musk, but either way it’s nothing new.
I’m sure it’s an olfactory issue, though, because the stench that lingers in their wake is completely unpalatable. It’s rich with that sulfurous reek of Wilder, only more potent, and with a strange inclusion of Ocean Man Mega Surf Blast cologne. Maybe they’re trying to poison and rob me. I can’t imagine it’d be much of a thrill, though; all of my shit already smells just like them, thanks to the holding pattern they maintain on the windows once I go to sleep. My bergamot candle doesn’t make a dent.
Dearest Diary,
I’ve gone through a lot of shit at this school. I’ve been poisoned by Stevenson mussels, cheated out of the money in my parents’ 529, and cheated on regular-style. But even having seen all that, I can safely say that I never expected to be fucking stalked here! Who even does that anymore? Have we not optimized such things? There’s an app for that!
I knew something was happening at Hark tonight, and this guy from my Marxist Theory class was going to be there, so I pulled myself together and quietly made my way out of French House a few hours ago. It was a strangely quiet start to the night—no scurrying, no disembodied voices—until I decided to cut through Wilder Bowl. There were bodies, dozens of bodies, descending upon me, and I had no choice but to run for my life. As the creatures began shrieking, I burst through the door and ran up the stairs, hoping to lose them and exit through the side, only to find that the hallway was a bloody, emergency-light red. My personal horror movie even had mood lighting.
I was still dazed when the lock clicked and the mass broke through the door, rounded shoulders rising and falling in time with an Umami-flavored wheeze. I stumbled backward, watching the crimson light accentuate every blemish on their faces.
“Where’s the funk?”
“Huh?”
“Where’s the function?”
It hit me. The stalkers weren't men trying to get fresh; they were just freshmen. Poor, bored, Yakless freshmen. I set aside my bafflement and forced a word out.
“Sneed.”
With a collective shriek of mirth, the freshmen streamed out the door and headed to fall slightly short of fulfilling their wildest desires.
