By Sharon Greene
In light of recent developments, we talked to junior, Ampersand Holland, about the sentient mold epidemic and her concerns about the college’s silence on the growing threat. Ms. Holland was standing outside Stone Row. She was wearing concealing clothing, in the great tradition of long socks to protect from the Hudson Valley’s other true enemy: deer ticks. Despite the fact that the mold is the main threat, I understood her desire to be well protected. Her pants were tucked into her socks and she wore a turtleneck, even though the cool fall weather had barely caressed the campus. As we spoke, she steadily rolled her turtleneck higher and higher. “I can’t hear you,” I said. At this point, her entire head was sucked into the turtleneck. She scowled. Probably.
“How has this affected dorm life,” I asked.
“People aren’t around much, they sleep there and that’s about it.”
“Are you worried about their health?”
“Yeah, most of my friends live in Stone Row, but they’re all bumming in Tiv houses.” I applauded this move. A short stint in a Tivoli house is the modern-day equivalent of the Victorian practice of taking airs in the mountains of Europe to cure such diseases as typhoid and hysteria. Problems we still have not truly been eradicated, even in our esteemed community at Bard. I imagined the inhabitants of Stone Row, wheeled out onto a gentle Tivoli lawn, a nightgown and heavy tartan blanket on their laps, their eyes hollow. Perhaps a leaf or two would drift onto their laps. They won’t notice. They have seen beyond the realms of men.
“Not Carter Riley, though.”
“Excuse me?”
“Carter Riley is getting what’s coming to him. He lives across from me. Yeah, I’ve got German lit with him. That Carter--the mold’s got his number.”
”Do you think the administration is taking adequate steps-”
“I hope his skin peels off and the mold oozes out from under it. I hope he’s just this walking mold zombie, like in ‘Last of Us.’ I hope his parents have to come put him down and then adopt a new kid, who’s also barely surviving the apocalypse. I hope they can’t even identify his fuzzy, disintegrating body. Carter Riley.”
At this point, she rolled her turtleneck back up over her head and slouched to the ground in front of H. Potter. She lit a cigarette. Godspeed, Stone Row. Godspeed.
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