"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Waiting Game

“What’s the plan, Kara?” I asked, excitement brewing deep inside of me. I could tell that Kara had a wonderful idea, a plan to end all plans, and that I would probably be considered one of the living again by dinnertime. “Are we going to go on national television?” I inquired happily. “Are we going to get the Army to help us? The Coast Guard? The Girl Scouts?”

“I’m going to…” She trailed off while reaching for her book bag, which contained, no doubt, some sort of mind-controlling device that would help us reprogram all the people who thought that I was dead. I wondered if maybe we could also reprogram everyone to think that they owed me money.

“Yes?” I couldn’t stand the anticipation much longer.

“I’m going to …class,” she replied, slinging her book bag over her shoulder. “I have a really big test in about 15 minutes.”

Although I tried to hold it back to save face, I felt myself frowning. It was something that I had gotten used to over the past few hours.

“How’s taking a test going to help me?”

Kara grabbed a pen that had been sitting on her desk and chucked it carelessly into the top pocket of her bag. “Matt, if I miss this test, I’ll probably fail college. The test is worth 99 percent of my final GPA in all of my classes, including the ones I haven’t taken yet. I wouldn’t be much of a help to you then, would I? A college failure and a ghost would have a lot of trouble of convincing people to do anything but try some new kind of hamburger at McDonald’s. If I miss this one, I might as well have just gone looking for a job straight out of high school, because at least people would have taken me seriously then and not have thought that I was a slacker.”

I nodded dejectedly in acceptance and agreement, if not enthusiasm. “So when will you be back?” I asked.

“In about two hours.”

I sighed. Kara smiled and gave me a hug. “Don’t worry, Matt. I’ve got a plan all ready for when I come back. All you have to do is kill a few hours while I’m gone.”

“Did you have to use the word ‘kill?’”

Personally, it was one of my favorite verbs, but today it hardly seemed appropriate.

She chuckled. I managed a vague grin. “Why don’t you take a nap while I’m gone?” Kara asked. Turing her attention towards Shannon, she asked, “Would it be okay if Matt stayed here until I got back?”

Shannon had been watching an infomercial for some “revolutionary new product” that was supposed to save marriages, clean carpets and eliminate pesky trips to the doctor. I could tell it was hard for her to rip herself away from the “Ultra Omnisphere 3000’s” hypnotic lure, but she afforded us most of her attention. “I wouldn’t let him go anywhere else anyway. It’d be pretty dangerous for him to leave,” she admitted, copying down the number on the screen.

It was a good point. “That’s phenomenal; you’re right,” I concurred. “I mean, what if someone tried to catch me and use me as proof of the existence of ghosts?”

“That’s right,” continued Shannon. “They’d probably perform weird experiments on you to see what makes ghosts tick.”

But wasn’t that logic flawed? “Wouldn’t they discover that I was still alive then and everything would be okay?”

Kara and Shannon glared at me.

“I guess you’re right. They’d probably conclude that ghosts are a lot like humans, only shorter and into video games.”

“That’s right,” returned Kara, reaching for the doorknob. “But that’s not going to happen, because you’re going to stay here for a few hours. Until I get back, you should take a nap. Then we’ll get started on de-ghosting you.”

I walked over and ran my fingers through the stuffed dog’s white fur. I gathered that a ghost wouldn’t have been able to appreciate such a nice texture. I was glad I wasn’t really dead. “Thanks, Kara. Good luck on that test.”

“Don’t worry about anything,” she assured me in a comforting tone, opening the door and walking down the hall. She yelled to me from the stairs. “Sweet dreams!”

“Fat chance!” I yelled back. I never have good dreams. I closed the door and shuffled back over to Kara’s bed.

Hanging on Shannon’s pushpin board, among a few Christmas and birthday cards, was an eerie paper swan. Shannon had found it that same morning; the wind blew it up next to her as she left the dorm to do some laundry. Its pencil dot eyes reminded me of the tiny, sinister eyes of the lead orphan and it made me feel terribly cold. Its number-two lead peepers were gazing straight through me, as if I were as insignificant as a particle of dust leisurely descending to the floor. A proverbial chill tickled my spine.

After adverting my eyes from the strange swan, I was about to ask Shannon if she thought that I could sneak into movies if people thought I was a ghost, but she was suddenly missing. I looked around for a moment, wondering if there really was a ghost in the room. Maybe Shannon was a ghost and had just hid it very well for 20 years, and now that there was a new “ghost” in town, she felt threatened! But when I started searching for a vacuum with which to possibly attack and contain her if she became violent or tried to make me watch something stupid on TV, like Spongebob Squarepants or the news, I spied her by the shattered window.

“Do you think it’s all right to leave the window like this over the winter vacation?” she asked me, examining a few remaining glass shards that had fallen on the floor.

My eyes narrowed. “Sure it’s fine… if you want to be assaulted by Nosferatu.”

“What are you talking about?”

I rolled my eyes. “Open windows are a beacon for the undead. Vampires love to climb into any open spaces of a dwelling and slowly devour the blood of its occupants.”

Now it was Shannon who rolled her eyes. Obviously she didn’t know what she was dealing with. “That’s just a superstition, Matt. Everyone knows that vampires haven’t existed since 1492 when Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ destroyed Dracula in the Spanish-American War.”

“Vampires do exist,” I snapped. “Didn’t you hear about that town in Alaska that was besieged by hundreds of vampires?”

I could tell that Shannon was interested. She shook her head “no” and waited intently for me to explain. The hook was firmly planted, and now it was time to reel in the catch.

“Well, in Alaska, darkness and daylight each last for months at a time, depending on the seasons. Vampires converged in this one town and attacked it during the nearly month-long night.”

Shannon slapped her hand to her mouth in surprise. I went on, despite her obvious shock. She needed to know the truth, because vampire safety is nothing to ignore until Halloween.

“And do you know how the vampires found out about the town?”

Shannon again shook her head, this time almost paralyzed with fear.

“Now, remember, I work for a newspaper, so what I’m about to tell you must be true.”

Shannon nodded.

“A 20-year-old girl left her bedroom window slightly cracked while she brushed her teeth.”

Shannon dashed over to her computer, stared for a moment at the creepy paper swan, and began a Google search for “vampire safety techniques.” Like the hero I am, I had saved another soul from vampire damnation. I figured that as a reward for learning her lesson about the dangers of vampire break-ins (and because I didn’t want Kara to have to do it), I would clean up the rest of the shattered glass on the floor. There were still shards of the broken glass sticking out of the window frame in creative, jagged patterns, so after collecting all the pieces, I carefully stuck my head out to throw them away. However, as I let them drop to the ground, something alarmed me: Crazy Soup Girl (in any condition) was nowhere to be found.

Just then, Shannon pulled me back into the dorm. “You fool! Do you want to have your delicious scalp snacked on by a vampire bat!?”

I had taught her well.

Shannon threw on her coat as I returned to the comfort of Kara’s bed. “Where are you going?” I asked her.

“We need to get a tarp or something to cover that open window. We can’t let our scent travel too far, or every vampire in the tri-state area will be all over us like ants on honey. They can smell our fear, you know, so try not to be scared of anything while I’m gone, like that giant spider crawling up your leg.”

I had taught her really well.

Shannon burst out of the room in search of something to cover the newly created vampire portal, exclaiming “Maybe I’ll get a crucifix tattooed on my arm, just incase the one under my pillow is knocked out of my hand or something.” The door creaked shut behind her.

I was alone again. Shrugging my shoulders, I started to sit down on Kara’s bed for the ninth time that day, but I got a bad feeling about it and halted halfway through. I had almost sat on Kara’s stuffed Dalmatian, Rolley. Kara and Rolley had been nearly inseparable since Kara received him as a gift from her great aunt 14 years ago. Rolley was always quiet, usually just sitting on a bed or a chair, but it was hard to miss his presence. In his own mysterious way, he had stopped me from sitting on him for the millionth or so time.

Despite all the extra sleep I’d been getting lately, I was ready to wrap a blanket around my head to block out the sunlight and go to sleep standing up if I had to. Maybe waking up to find out that the world thought I was dead, breaking up a school function, and sneaking into a dorm building like a snake had taken more out of me than I had realized. Up until that moment, everything depended on getting to school to clear things up, then finding Kara to enlist her help. But, now there was nothing left for me to do, so I had the time to notice that I was seriously exhausted.

I took Rolley and put him at the foot of the bed so I wouldn’t (ironically) roll over him in my sleep. Pulling the covers up to my neck – and over, as to shield myself from any vampires that might come through the window hole – I prepared to waste time the fastest and most efficient way I could, besides taking any more business classes. Through the assorted sounds of dorm life, I closed my eyes and drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Gaining Ground

“I can explain!” I clichéd, in the most non-threatening voice I could muster. Instinctively, I scanned the room for anyone else I’d have to explain my situation to and spotted Shannon sitting at her desk, her attention focused on her laptop computer. For a few beautiful seconds, I assumed that I could brush by her and focus on explaining my situation to Kara. Alas, my plan was trounced when she suddenly looked up from her screen and straight at me. She must have locked on to my scent with that ingenious device she wears on her face that she refers to as a “nose.” Curses!

I really couldn’t deal with two frantic girls at once, so I concentrated on Kara and prayed that Shannon would listen as well, instead of just calling the Ghostbusters.

“I really can explain!” I yelled.

“This ought to be good,” Kara replied calmly. She still stood in front of me, her hand remaining on the doorknob.

I blinked a few times with joyous disbelief. “You mean you’re not going to scream and run away?!” I was puzzled, but also ecstatic, kind of like a dog when you come home from work early. I hoped that I wouldn’t suddenly wet myself like my canine cousins sometimes do.

“Run away? Why, just because you’re a little muddy?” she returned, walking back into the room and sitting on her bed. “I’d stick around even if you were covered with tuna and had dead fish in your pockets.”

“That’s great Kara, but there’s something I need to-”

“Take off that muddy jacket and come sit next to me. Let’s watch some TV.”

Thankfully, my girlfriend and her roommate were woefully uninformed! Neither of them had read the newspaper that day! I guess when The Dean had come to their door with his crazy bullhorn trying to get them to get out of bed to come to my impromptu memorial, Kara and Shannon had simply taken Kara’s mattress and placed it against the door, muffling out even the loudest of The Dean’s flustered protests. Kara went back to sleep on the rug with her pillow, blanket and stuffed dog, Rolley, and after about ten minutes of howling obscenities at their door, The Dean gave up and moved on. Ironically, it probably would have been easier to just go to the damn service, but I wasn’t about to start complaining about that!

I stood, staring mystified at Kara. I couldn’t believe that both she and Shannon had completely missed the news that everyone and his brother’s therapist knew about. What luck! For a few seconds, Kara and Shannon ignored me because they were watching Charlton Heston’s new cooking show, From My Cold Dead Hams. But soon, using her finely tuned psychic powers, Kara sensed my bewilderment. Either that, or she picked up on the fact that I had been creepily staring at her for the past 20 minutes. But I’m pretty sure it was the other thing.

“Matt, are you all right?” she inquired, a look of concern washing over her face. “What’s wrong?”

I had made it to the one person (or two, if Shannon didn’t have any homework) who could help me out of the unexpected mess I found myself in, but I quickly realized that I had no idea what I was going to say to her. How do you explain to someone that everyone thinks you’re dead, and a ghost too now, because of an erroneous newspaper article? I hadn’t even brought a copy of the paper with me! And although I’m a very serious person, Kara might think that I was joking about the whole thing, go to class, and then go back home for the winter break. Then I’d be stuck “haunting” my own home, never leaving the driveway and living off of cheese and ramen noodles until the spring semester! Only this time people would think I was dead! I had to approach the subject gently and gain Kara’s trust before telling her the whole confusing tale. I removed my jacket, sat on the bed next to her, and eased carefully into the awful events of the day. Very calmly, I began my story.

“OH MY GOD, KARA!!! Everyone thinks I’m a ghost but I’m not really dead and orphans beat me up so Mom smashed my Christmas gifts with a big hammer and then I wanted French fries but I had to hide behind a tree and some neon green orange pants girl threw her soup at me and it’s all because of The Dean’s bullhorn and the newspaper!”

Twenty or so minutes later, after Kara managed to get me to stop weeping so hard, I told her the whole miserable story – from the orphans to the obituary, and finally, The Dean’s sinful bullhorn. Just as I feared, Kara thought I was joking.

“I think you’re joking,” Kara said predictably. “If it’s in a newspaper, it must be true. I mean, how could anyone be so stupid as to think you were…”

Just then, Crazy Soup Girl’s voice came echoing down the hallway.

“…and his ghost flew through the wall, firing some kind of lasers wherever he looked! His mud-caked body oozed with corruption and shined with evil! He attacked me and consumed my delicious gourmet soup in one malicious slurp!”

Crazy Soup Girl flung herself into Kara and Shannon’s room. She desperately shook Kara by the shoulders. “Kara! Shannon! We all need to get out of here! This dorm is haunted by the terrible ghost of Matt Fr-”

And that was right around the time when she caught sight of me. I waved dumbly at her.

“There he is! Sweet Merciful Jesus, I can feel him licking my soul with his demonic, hellfire-charred eyes!” With that, Crazy Soup Girl ran straight for the window and gracefully dove out. I guess someone had done a great job cleaning it that day, because that window seemed open… that is, until Crazy Soup Girl shattered it on the way out. As I watched her sail through the window, glass spraying around her, she looked like an ugly neon bird attempting to take flight. Actually, I hoped that maybe she would sprout wings and fly away before hitting the unforgiving soil below.

I could see by reading her lips that Kara was attempting to form words, but every time she got close to actually saying one, something went off in her head that brought her back to square one. It was kind of like a car that almost started, but promptly died before it could be driven to the shop. In my head, I thanked Crazy Soup Girl for being so gullible.

“I… I’m really sorry that I thought you were joking,” said Kara, hugging me tightly.

As I heard the telltale thud of Crazy Soup girl versus the ground outside the window, Kara continued, “We can’t just leave it like this.”

“I know,” I muttered. “Also, someone should really go out there and clean up what’s left of Crazy Soup Gi-”

“We need to do something to help you!” Kara exclaimed. Something glowed in her eyes as she spoke. I had heard about things like this before – it was called the “Eye of the Tiger” and it usually meant that someone was about to get severely beaten in the name of victory and personal perseverance. I began to back away from Kara, afraid that she was going to fix the problem by actually killing me. That way, I really would be a ghost and universal equilibrium would be achieved once more. Although it would probably have been the easiest of the solutions, somehow I wasn’t too keen on it. I braced myself for a thrashing.

“We’ve got to let people know you’re still alive!” Kara yelled, thrusting her fist in the air triumphantly.

A smile slowly formed on my mud-caked, grass-smeared face.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Breaking and Entering for Fun and Profit

The campus was like a horror film: cold, silent and dead. The chilling winds gusted through the bare treetops – the only noise to be heard on the entire campus. It was as if there had been a devastating nuclear strike between the soccer field and the dorms and I was the last person on earth, just like that Twilight Zone episode I mentioned before. Although I knew it was silly, I feared that at any second, a zombie or an alien hoard would jump out and feast upon my unsuspecting bones, perhaps saving one of my thighs to stir leftovers reheated the following day.

Of all the things that I could have been considering while dashing towards my final chance at rescue, from comforting my inconsolable mother to figuring out how to convince everyone that I was still alive, I was thinking about French fries. I hadn’t really thought about it before today, because I had no reason to, but being a mock ghost was definitely a tiring occupation. However, as I closed in on Kara’s dorm building, I abandoned my thoughts of French fries for reality; and I ask you, what’s more real than being falsely accused of ghostary?

Alas! My brilliant plan had a single major flaw: There was no (conventional) way of entering Kara’s dorm without calling her and getting her to come down and let me in. Most likely, she had already read the paper today, or if she hadn’t, her roommate Shannon had. And if either of them had been to that demented bullhorn pep rally of The Dean’s, calling her would only lead to more heartbreak and devastation. She’d think it was some sort of repulsive joke and hang up on me. Or worse, she might think I was trying to contact her from beyond the grave, start screaming, and call an exorcist. The last thing I needed that day was to be exorcized while still living. I bet that’s never been done before. If exorcizing a spirit makes it go back to hell or finally be put to rest, where would my living spirit be carted off to? I bet the whole affair would royally confuse God and cause a rip in the fabric of reality, and I didn’t much like the idea of having been mistakenly reported dead and inadvertently playing a role in the world’s destruction all in the same agonizing day.

If I couldn’t go through the front door, I had to find another way in! My primitive hunting instincts kicked in instantly. I hid behind a nearby sapling, smearing some crushed grass on my face as camouflage. Then, I covered myself with mud, chuckling under my breath at the cleverness of my disguise. No one would see me there behind the sapling and its remaining leaf now, as I had become one with nature! I was half man, half plant, and as long as no one looked in my general direction, I could hide out for weeks, maybe even years, living off of the land and escaping the awful destiny fate had dealt me early that morning.

But, my goal wasn’t to become a jungle boy (that particular morning, at least). My goal was to infiltrate the fortress “College Courts Building 3” and destroy the heinous rumors of my demise with the help of my girlfriend and our combined wits. From behind my infallible disguise, I surveyed the building for a flaw in its security. Small cracks in the building’s exterior were structural instabilities that I could possibly exploit with some C4, a malleable plastic explosive that could be molded into the crack and detonated at a safe distance. However, searching through my pockets, I saw that during my rush to escape the house that morning, I had left all of my C4 at home. Damn!

I had to find yet another way to gain entry to the building. Searching carefully, I spied an open window on the ground floor. Eureka! I could climb through the window! Luckily, it led to the dorm’s lounge. That meant that I could sneak in without the occupants of a ground level dorm room calling security and complaining about how some sort of plant creature had infiltrated their dorm and tracked muddy foot prints all over the pretty yellow rug on which they throw up every Thursday night.

Making sure the surrounding area was still deserted before abandoning my perfect camouflage, I dashed for the bush and underneath the dorm’s mercifully open window. Hopefully, no one would get the great idea to dump hot coffee or bad tasting soup out the window as I crouched under it.

Before that could happen, I hoisted myself onto the windowsill and slid though the open window. I was disgusted. Whoever had left the window open had given me a portal to my salvation indeed; but they had also paved the way for a vicious vampire attack later that night. Had I been among the ranks of the night dwellers, I could have feasted upon an entire dorm full of unsuspecting women in a horrid, yet strangely erotic tragedy.

I tried to push the idea out of my head as I carefully stood back up. The first thing I saw was almost as horrendous as the vampire attack I had just been thinking about. Waddling about the communal kitchen was an odd girl with both pigtails and a ponytail. She was wearing a neon green shirt with orange sweatpants and large pink sunglasses. She was holding a pot of steaming soup and big mug of piping hot coffee.

“Gee, I guess it was pretty dumb of me to think that I could make a delicious soup out of my old notebooks and failed science tests,” she admitted loudly, staring into the pot of Lord knows what. “And this coffee I made out of my roommate’s dirty socks isn’t very good for some reason. Maybe I’ll throw it out the window!”

In my brain, I filed the event I was witnessing under “Saw it Coming.”

But then Crazy Soup Girl caught me watching her. I attempted to pass myself off as an unusually handsome lamp by standing very still and trying to reflect the most light I could off of my body, but she somehow saw through my clever guise. I knew she was getting ready to scream.

I stared her straight into her strange, multi-colored eyes. “Boo,” I muttered softly.

The metal pot slid out of her hand, hitting the floor and safely bouncing away from her, the scalding contents barely missing her exposed feet. With no further encouragement from me, she leapt over the spill and she and her dirty sock coffee escaped to the sanctuary of her dorm room. I observed her desperate scramble with interest. At least there were some advantages to being a “ghost.” Well, unless she had somehow been spooked by the strange man covered with mud and leaves crawling through her window and staring at her menacingly. But I doubt that.

Quietly, I threw open the lounge door and stomped up the steps. I dashed through another door and finally I stood outside of Kara’s room. But, having finally reached my destination, I found that I didn’t know what to do. Should I just knock? What if she already heard the news? What then?

Before I could make a decision, however, the door swung open. I stood face to face with Kara. Her eyes grew wide.

My heart sank to my knees.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Standing Alone

As I pulled through the front gates and into the college, I had to maneuver myself past a large crowd that had formed on the soccer field. I slowly inched my way through the masses and squinted into horde, as if crinkling up my eyes would allow me to use some kind of latent x-ray vision. As I tilted my head to get a better view, I caught sight of the cause of the disturbance. It was The Dean. He was standing atop a small makeshift stage in the middle of the snow-covered field, broadcasting to what looked to be the entire remaining population of the college – those unlucky souls who had to stay to the bitter end before winter break began. My heart sank. I knew deep down what The Dean was announcing. A single tear slid down my cheek, turned into an icicle, and broke off.

I stepped out of the car and worked my way into the undulating crowd. At first I couldn’t hear what The Dean was saying. The only thing that registered was his voice amplified through the bullhorn he held, though still indistinguishable. Those around me ranged from indifferent to pissed off. Many were yawning or still wearing their pajamas, because 11 a.m. is still early morning in college life. A liquid snake, I slithered through the mob, closer and closer to the core. Finally, I found myself between a girl in a puffy white jacket and Dr. Zan, a professor that I had last semester for a history class called “Granola Through the Ages.” I could go no further. I twisted my head so my ear was towards The Dean and tried to interpret his muffled ramblings.

“…never talked to him, but his hair looked delicious,” mused The Dean.

“He’s right, you know,” Dr. Zan agreed.

“Who?” I asked, mumbling, though I already knew the answer.

“But I know it must have come as a great shock to us all,” The Dean began somberly, “as I forced you all out of bed, one by one, by screaming at every door with my bullhorn. But obviously with good reason. The death of a classmate is nothing to be ignored; to sleep through like so many parties where you get very intoxicated and pass out in the hot early morning sun. This is especially true when the deceased is someone as widely known and respected as Matthew.”

“Who?” inquired a voice from behind me. I was sure it was someone I wouldn’t have liked anyway, had I known him.

“He was a jerk!” exclaimed a guy to my left who had been droning on a cell phone up until then. I wondered how he could possibly have been listening to The Dean when seconds before he had seemed so immersed in his cell phone conversation. As he melted back into his long distance world, I made a mental note to step on his foot when I left.

Other voices rang out from all sides: “Can we go back to sleep now?”

“I’m missing General Hospital for this!”

“I need to study for my test!”

“I like wearing women’s undergarments!”

I slapped my hand against my forehead. My case of mistaken death had reached as far as the college, and worse, the news had been used as an excuse to get everyone out of bed prematurely. The mood was still somber, but it would have been somber for the right reasons had The Dean waited three hours before giving his misguided eulogy. Now, not only was I “dead,” but hated as well. I was responsible for everyone’s bad mood on the last day before going home for Winter Recess, a day of tests and high anxiety as it was. Now everyone was going to fall asleep on their finals, drooling on the test paper and smearing their answers because their brains were all fried! And what of the people who knew me? More accurately, what about people who know me?

Wait, that was it! I needed to find someone I knew and work from there. Maybe I could convince them that I wasn’t really dead. Yet, how would I get out of the crowd? Since I had weaved my way into the indifferent mass, others had stepped in and formed an impenetrable gelatinous casing around me.

“What do you think happened to him?” asked the short girl in a puffy white jacket. The jacket was so huge on her that her arms rested on its sides and stuck out like those of a stuffed animal.

“Presumably he was devoured by the gods for wearing white after Labor Day,” replied Dr. Zan. “It’s really a pity. Too many of this nation’s youth meet their unfortunate end that way.”

“I never liked him much to begin with,” continued the girl in the white jacket. “His head was always shaped like a carrot. And he smelled like a goat, too.”

I sneered.

“Well, at least I never looked like a walking marshmallow, lardcoat!” I shouted, fed up that not a single individual had mourned my passing since I had arrived. Unintentionally, but very much to my advantage, everyone around me heard my frustrated outburst. Now I had I way out!

Those who hadn’t run away were treated to The Dean screaming like a little girl through the bullhorn. He must have really liked that bullhorn too, because he had neglected to throw it down.

“Oh dear God! It’s his ghost!

 It’s the ghost of Matt!” His bullhorn quivered and The Dean froze in place, apparently too spooked to speak. Unfortunately, everyone who hadn’t heard me the first time was frantically glaring in my direction or already speeding towards their dorm, shrieking and stumbling about like they had been covered in liquefied sugar and left in a field full of fire ant hills.

I slapped my forehead once more, this time grunting because slapping your forehead in disbelief really starts to hurt after awhile. “The obituary was a mistake! I’m still alive! See? I’m real!” I tapped my chest, over my heart, producing a hollow noise to illustrate my solid state.

“But if it’s in a newspaper, it must be true!” blared the bullhorn protruding from The Dean’s mouth. With that, he sprinted from his platform and disappeared into the surrounding neighborhood. Well, at least the captives could go and study for their tests now, although hammering crosses to their dorm room doors and cowering under their beds with their rosary beads was probably slightly above studying on several people’s agendas at that point.

No matter. I needed to find someone who knew me, someone I could trust! But Santa wasn’t coming for another three days, and Mickey Mouse lived millions of miles away in the mysterious kingdom of “Florida.”

Of course! My girlfriend, Kara, would know what to do! In nine out of ten crises, she was the one to help me out. From the time I fell asleep while shoveling my driveway and woke up face down in a snowdrift, with my nostrils frozen shut, to the time I accidentally got a pumpkin stuck on my head and tried to shock it off by sticking the stem in the nearest wall socket, Kara was always getting me out of some sort of trouble. Hopefully she could help me.

“But what if the fiendish lies have reached her by now?” I wondered. It was just a chance that I would have to take. Readjusting the collar of my black leather jacket purposefully, I shot off in the direction of Kara’s dorm.

If she had already heard, any chance of normalcy, of my ordinary world, was lost. (It’s that dramatic?)

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Into the Fray

I don’t know if my mother heard the flush of the toilet, but upon my reentrance, I found her with her ear plastered to the wall and mumbling something about my ghostly moans from the beyond sounding a lot like rushing water. I walked past her and sat on my bed, deep in thought.

“Everyone who read the newspaper this morning now thinks I’m dead,” I mumbled to myself. That’s when my mother threw a white sheet over her head and pretended to be a ghost, in order to trick her otherworldly son into thinking she was just another spirit and making him feel more at home.

Well, how bad could being dead really be? I’d never have to go to school or work again, I’d never have to pay taxes, I’d never have to talk to people I don’t like, and showering, shaving and wearing pants, all my hated foes since day one, were now as optional as ketchup on French fries. Through some cosmic fluke, I had been given the chance to play as many video games as I could stomach while roaming about my home gleefully unshaven and gloriously sans-pants. Call it karma. Call it luck. Hell, you could even call it Richard Simmons if you wanted. That wouldn’t change the fact that after 100 million hours of doing tedious schoolwork and trying to get a decent job, I could actually do something that I wanted to do for a change.

“This is great!” I exclaimed, throwing off my pants and attempting to shove them though the tiny holes of my window screen. After a few seconds, I gave up and threw them on the floor.

“This is awful!” exclaimed my grief-stricken mother, picking my pants up off the floor and throwing them in the hamper. “What am I going to do with all the Christmas presents I bought you? Dead people can’t receive Christmas gifts.”

My heart sunk to my belly button. With my voice trembling, I asked, “What about birthday gifts?”

“Dead people don’t celebrate birthdays because when you’re dead, you don’t have them anymore,” Mom informed me. “But for some reason, one can continue receiving Hanukkah presents, even if they weren’t Jewish to begin with.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t force out a single word and my mouth hung open like a gate in the wind.

Mom left the room and came back a few seconds later with a huge iron hammer. In between blacking out with disbelief every few seconds, I wondered how she was carrying around something so big.

“I guess I’ll just have to smash them all,” she said. She dashed from my room and headed for the secret present repository that has remained a mystery to my brother and me since the beginning of Christmas itself in the early ‘80s.

I snapped out of my trace, screaming, “Oh dear God!” I desperately swung my hands above my head. “If I wasn’t dead before, this is going to kill me for sure!”

In the distance, the hammer whizzed through the air like a pack of killer bees. I closed my eyes and prayed that at least I’d be able to tell what each gift had been by the sound it made as it was shattered from existence. Yet, after waiting a respectable amount of time, I heard nothing. I opened my eyes and stopped grimacing.

My mother’s voice was soft and muffled. “Actually, I should probably give these to charity. Or, better yet…”

I knew what she was about to say. I readied my lungs.

“…the orphans!”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”

What kind of cruel, twisted fate had God and the ornery orphans bestowed upon me!? The situation reminded me of that episode of The Twilight Zone where a man happened to be inside a bank vault during a nuclear attack, and when he came out, he was the only living soul on the planet. He finally had the time he craved to do what he loved more than anything: reading. Yet, as soon as he found a conveniently intact library, he accidentally stepped on his glasses, crushing them to pieces. I felt just like this man; I had all the time in the world to play them, but how would I ever get new video games if Mom kept smashing them all or giving them to those contemptible orphans?

“This is awful!” I exclaimed, reaching for my discarded pants. I tugged them back on speedily (and reluctantly) and grabbed Mom’s keys from the table. Obviously, with her only second son not dead, she had to take the day off from work to grieve and watch The Price is Right, so I could use her car without causing a(nother) problem.

Something had to be done. If I was going to come up with a plan of some kind to get everyone to see the truth, to see that I was still among the living, I needed to assess the total damage the obituary had inflicted. I needed to see how far the rumor had spread, and then I could begin working on damage control. Luckily, it was the last day of exams before winter vacation, and most of my friends from college would still be there. If I stepped out of my car and people started barreling away from me, screaming something about ghosts and needing Scooby Doo to come save them, I’d know that it was worse than I thought. But hopefully, the erroneous news of my death hadn’t gone beyond the relatively small distribution of the Wappingers Falls Tribune. I mean really, who reads the obituaries but the families of those who have passed on and morbid Irish people like my mother, who have been reading obituaries since the potato famine?

I dashed out into the frigid winter air, side-stepping the patch of ice along my walkway that had been building since Thanksgiving. I felt much better about the entire situation as I hopped into Mom’s car, backed down the driveway, knocked over our garbage cans, and sped off towards the college.

I was positive that my salvation would soon be at hand.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 2

You ready for the next chapter?

Yeah, me too.

Chapter 2: Read All About It

Have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming and you could control it? That’s only ever happened to me once in my life, and I guess I kind of wasted it. During the summer between third and fourth grade, I had a dream that I was forced to go back to school in the middle of July. At that age, there were two things I hated – learning and socializing – and school was chockfull of both, in the same way that orphans are chockfull of sin. I realized at a very early age that video games gave me all the human interaction I needed, outside of my mother and father, who bought me new games, and my brother, whose room we kept the Nintendo in. Both of those accursed school activities kept me from my games and therefore needed to be kept to a minimum.

So you can imagine how upset I was when in the middle of the summer, I suddenly found myself in a place of learning, surrounded by smelly, whiny children. My instructor was droning on and on about the solar system or something, her scholastic ramblings a powerful neurotoxin to me. After a few moments of trying to concoct a machine that would simultaneously stab a pencil through my temple while smacking me in the head with my science book, it hit me (a realization, not my science book): I was dreaming!

“Wait a minute!” I shouted, wicked students looking up from the blackest blackboard and staring at me. “You can’t fool me! This is a dream! I’m going to wake up right now and play Super Transvestite Bros.!”

As quickly as the horror had begun, I found myself sitting straight up in my bed, the sheets so soaked with my terrified sweat that small fish had begun nesting in my blankets. I could have done anything in that dream, like fly, play video games, or, uh, fly some more, but instead, I decided to simply come back to the real world.

Now have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming and you couldn’t control it? That too has only ever happened to me once in my life, and let me tell you, it was awful. It happened to me the night after the orphans had beaten me so cruelly. It was as if Satan himself had burrowed through my floorboards to stick hot pokers in my eyes while I slumbered.

Crappy dreams are nothing new to me. I’m used to having bad dreams, because I have one almost every night. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a good dream. But the one I had that night went from being a bad dream to the worst nightmare I’ve ever had the terror of experiencing. There I was, surrounded by 100,000 miniature orphans (I know because I counted), each kicking me and jabbing me with their teeny sharpened elbows. I was completely immobilized and all I could do was scream like a little girl and wet myself with an endless supply of hot, steaming urine. Now I know how poor Gulliver must have felt as the Lilliputians tied him down, walked all over him and presumably contemplated venturing deep into his massive pantaloons.

I knew that my tiny torturers were simply figments of my subconscious. Yet, unlike the back-to-school dream of the past, I could do nothing about it but attempt to taunt the impish orphans with the fact that I was on to them and their dream-invading ways.

At first they didn’t respond. They just kept walking all over me, stopping only to poke their knife-like elbows into my quivering flesh. However, then I got a reaction I wasn’t expecting. “I know what’s going on!” I exclaimed for the 1000th time, staring at an orphan who was digging his diminutive heel into my collarbone. “I know this is a dream!”

“Ooooh, Dream Weaver!” sang the orphan, jumping up and grabbing a microphone out of thin air, “I believe you can get me through the niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”

Now I was really confused. The orphans suddenly stopped what they were doing and all followed suit with the first singing orphan, belting out both high and low notes with vigor and vibrato. Thus began the demented orphan sing along of the greatest hits of the 80s, atop their (literally) captive audience. Instrumental accompaniment reverberated from an unknown source, and each orphan suddenly had a shiny new microphone to wail into. I didn’t know what was worse, the orphans beating me once more in my slumber or this wicked medley of 20-year-old superhits. All I could do was stare in bewilderment. After a rousing rendition of Van Halen’s “Jump,” the orphans were halfway through Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” when my eyes suddenly jetted open. I was finally back to the relative safety of my room!

I had forgotten that my clock radio alarm was set to W-ALF, the local ‘80s rock station. For the past 15 minutes it had been going off, signaling the beginning of a new day and assaulting my dreams at the very same time. I sat bolt upright and rubbed the crust and the dried blood out of my eyes.

I felt like I had been slugged by Rocky Balboa - or twice by Apollo Creed, rest his soul. Every inch of my body ached, every muscle cried out for relief. Even sitting up was an act of sheer willpower. Actually, now that I think about it, it was pretty much the same as every morning.

Although I was already behind schedule at that point, I let myself steal a few more seconds of precious idle time. Just when I was about to get up and face the day, though still not knowing how I planned to get to school without a car, my mother burst through the door. Her eyes were red and puffy and she was sniffling. At first I thought that she was coming down with a case of the Wooping SARS, and I attempted to fashion my blanket into a makeshift facemask. But as she got closer and I saw the telltale droplets on her cheeks, it became apparent what was really going on and I felt stupid for missing it. She had a newspaper in her hand, so obviously, some stinky creature, like a skunk or onions, had been living in the mailbox, so when Mom had taken the paper out and opened it to read the funnies (or the obituaries, she enjoys both equally) she jostled the thing from its nest and it sprayed her in the eyes with its crazy stink chemicals.

“Mom!” I exclaimed, jumping out of bed and rushing to her, “your eyes are leaking! Did that odious skunk-creature hurt you?”

Mom took one look at me and threw her arms around my midsection. “That stinkophile must have done a real number on her,” I thought. “She’s hugging me so hard it almost hurts.”

“Oh, it’s awful, Matt!” she sobbed.

“It’ll be all right,” I returned calmly, hugging her back. “All we need is some tomato juice for the smell and some way to replenish the strange fluid that’s leaking from your eye sockets.”

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you!” yelled my mother, thrusting the newspaper into my hands. As she continued squeezing me, I peeked over her shoulder and saw the page to which she had opened the paper.

“You’re upset about the Ying-Yang Gang’s latest jewel heist?” Now I know that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but I didn’t think Mom would mourn their loss like that.

“No, next to it,” returned my sobbing mother.

There, in front of me, was something that very few people see in their lifetime: I was face to face with my own obituary. Confusion hit me like a sack full of doorknobs. I knew I had slept an uncommonly long time last night, but had it been so long that my body shut down all functions permanently and I died? I hadn’t even noticed!

Quickly, I checked to see if I was still breathing. Indeed, my morning breath might have been enough to kill a healthy child or a sickly adult, but it was hardly enough to take down a healthy 22-year-old boy/man, especially when that 22-year-old was the source.

Then I thought that perhaps my heart had exploded during my tangle with the orphan marauders, but I quickly dismissed that theory because I could feel the heart in question beating so hard at the sight of my own death notice that I wondered if it somehow needed to get out of my chest and into the outside world.

The possibility that I was actually a ghost was right out of the question as well, because Mom was clearly hugging the heck out of me. If I had indeed been a specter, Mom would have fallen through me and onto the floor when she tried to embrace me, resulting in a tragic, yet dementedly comical event that would have brought a tear to the eye of even the surliest of pirates.

I had been staring at the newspaper the whole time these possibilities were bouncing around in my head, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t yet read my own obituary. After all, only one in five people are Matt, so it could have been someone else, couldn’t it? I let out a sigh of relief. Obviously it was some other Matt, and once I could get my mother to stop freaking out, I could calmly prove it to her by showing her that it wasn’t really my obituary.

However, before I could do that, I automatically read the page heading with the newspaper name at the top, as my time spent copyediting had taught me. And that’s when the ghastly truth crept into my sleep-addled brain like a lightning bolt through a set of power lines.

The heading read “The Wappingers Falls Tribune, December 22, 2004.” Obviously, because I had failed to show up to work the previous day, my boss assumed that I had died; after all, I’ve never missed a day of work in my life, in this job or the last. As a courtesy to his not-so-late employee, he had quickly added my obituary a few hours before deadline. Ironically, since I hadn’t been there to proofread it, my obituary was full of spelling errors and punctuation mistakes. While reading it, I couldn’t help making mental notes of all the errors. I knew that after I got this whole thing straightened out, I would demand that I be allowed to fix the mistakes and re-run my obituary in the next paper, printing a correction that I really wasn’t dead in the issue after that. I also noticed that since the people at work didn’t know me very well, they had to make up a few things to finish the obituary:

Matthew

Matthew, of State County, a formar emplotyee of Entertainment For Everyone and The Wappinger Falls Tribune and Homemaker entered into rezt on Tuesday, Decenbre 21, 2004,, after a long and arduous battle with Athleet’s Foot and underarm fungus. He was 22 yaers old.

teh Daughter of Jeorge Washington and Jesus H. Christ he was born in Nov. 5, 1892, in new York City, China. He was maRried to thje late Chairman Meow, the, beloved famliy pet, of 256 years.

Mathew was a graduate of Ministink Valley Middle Skool and an avid Member of the churc h of Sinners for Satan in Walden, Kitten Stompers of america, NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Lov), and foundr of www.BeattheElders.com. A verteran of WWII, he fought valiantly fro the Nazi caus and relished shoplifting from the lokal bakery. A true hobo by nature, he loved hurting childern and picking up sTrange men fromn bingo tournaments. After looseing his last bid for the presidencyt to Allen Keys, he spent much of his time poisoning dolphans and grave robbing.

Survivors inklude Richard Hatch and Boston Rob, as well as anyone who is still alivvve to read this. He was predecaesed by Gandhi, Richard Nixon, and Disco.

Services well be held as soon as we find hiz body

*   *   *

“My God! There are so many errors!” I screamed, horrified. “I live in Slate County, not State County!”

My mother clung to me like a barnacle, still apparently unaware of my lack of rigor mortis. All that was running through my mind was that infamous line, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Yeah, no kidding! But even in my current shocking situation, I knew that actually uttering that infamous phrase would have been the most trite thing I could have done, as well as the fact that it would have been lost on my current… unreceptive company.

So instead, I went with the much wittier response of panicking.

“Mom! I’m not dead! I’m right here! Please look at me!” I shouted, worrying suddenly where my magazine subscriptions would be sent if I were thought to be dead.

For the first time since she came into my room that morning bearing the terrible news of my false demise, Mom let go of me. With her hands still on my shoulders, she stared into my eyes and shook her head sadly. “My poor dead son!” she sobbed, “Don’t you know that if you read it in a newspaper it must be true?”

“But Mom, I’m fine! I’m right here,” I replied frantically, putting my hands on my chest as if to illustrate my still-beating heart.

“My only son… dead!” lamented my weeping mother, ignoring me completely and using my nearby homework to dry her tears. Convincing my mother that my heart was still beating was like trying to push smoke into a bottle with a baseball bat.

“But Mom, you have two sons! Remember Ian? Your first born? I mean, he just washed your car yester-”

“Dead!” she sobbed once more.

I was beginning to notice a pattern.

Although I was positive that mother would have been very receptive to the fact that I was still alive after a few weeks of hardcore brainwashing, I knew that I had to turn my mind to other, more pressing matters.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella, Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Vertigo

I can’t tell you how much I hate orphans. I’m convinced that they were all sent from hell and disguised as lovable hobos in order to ruin lives, specifically mine. Oliver Twist, Annie, Danny DeVito – all those witty, lovable orphans – are odious lies. Orphans are really a bloodthirsty bunch; the smaller, the more deadly. They lie in wait behind garbage cans or near orphanages – or as I like to call them, Dens of Deception – and persuade the kind and the gullible to “help” them. But then, the orphans attack with their nefarious fists, and at that point, you’d have to be nothing short of a ninja or a child services worker (or a ninja child services worker) to escape their abominable terror.

Unfortunately for me, with no background in child services and only a moderate level of ninjary, I was one of those kind, gullible people who fell into the orphans’ trap. And, to add insult to literal injury, it happened while I was trying to support my quirky habit of, you know, going to college.

Perhaps it would be better to introduce myself first, so you’ll know to whom to send your pro-orphan hate mail. My name is Matt. I’m about 5’3”, with long, dark brown hair that I always have pulled back into a puffy ponytail. I hate being short, but there’s really not much I can do about it but try to walk tall and take advantage of my increased stealth whenever I can.

Anyway, I’m a senior at a close-knit college. Considering I’m a commuter with a job outside of the confines of the campus, I’ve pretty much taken to living in my unreliable Ford Taurus. For awhile, I worked in retail at a small entertainment store in the local mall called Entertainment For Everyone. But, last summer, a customer jumped me in the DVD section – I swear he grabbed me with his tentacles and reeled me in from afar – and forced me to look up every song Wayne Newton has ever sung. Then he told me I was no help and left the store without buying anything, so I decided it might be time for a career change: one related to my English and Media Studies majors.

So, now I work as a copyeditor and reporter for a small local newspaper, the Wappingers Falls Tribune. The pay is better than my old job, but the atmosphere and sense of camaraderie is virtually non-existent. Instead of all the employees rising to a common goal of hating the customers, I just write about boring local concerts without actually being there to see the event. Sometimes I wonder if getting an extra 29 cents an hour automatically means that I have to be bored all day at work.

But, I’ll wager that after beginning this with a verbal assault on what many people consider an underprivileged group of innocents, you’re wondering what happened that would make me hate orphans so much. I don’t blame you; I would too. Allow me to explain.

I was on my way to work one snowy Tuesday, ready for another invigorating 13-hour day. The thought of working practically Industrial Revolution hours during the heavy snowstorm that was just beginning chilled even the warmest bones in my body. Thankfully though, my boss always keeps the heat at a blazing 47 degrees. With such extravagant heat expenditures, the office is always like a sauna. Sensing it was going to be one of those warm days at the office, I put on my light parka and only five sweaters that morning.

I live about 30 million miles away from work, which is about 11 million miles past the college. So like a good little copyeditor, I made sure to get up at 4:30 in the morning, giving myself an extra half hour to bail out my buried car with the torture device my father devilishly refers to as a “snow shovel.”

All this took place about 20 minutes after I had gone to sleep, after doing my nightly kilo of homework. Hurrah! I had gotten nearly six more minutes of sleep than usual! Having really stuck it to the man, I was feeling quite proud of myself.

After digging my vehicle out of a snowdrift approximately the size of Rosie O’Donnell, I hit the icy roads. I hummed and I sang to whatever song was playing on the radio and before I knew it, it was 1:30 p.m. It was eight hours well spent; I was only minutes away from my destination and another long, boring day at work. But that’s when everything changed.

That’s when I became a dead man.

Crossing a long, harsh bend in the street, I saw them. On the side of the road, two children stood huddled around a fire weakly burning in a steel garbage drum. Through the rapidly falling snow, I could tell they were shivering like mad and coughing up icicles. Or perhaps it was hail; I couldn’t be sure. One of them stared at me with impossibly huge eyes, imploring me to somehow help her. I slammed on the brakes.

My parka, my five sweaters and I stepped out of the car and approached the children. “We are orphans!” exclaimed the orphan with the huge eyes. “We are cold and it is snowing!”

“My nasal drip has formed a rather festive icicle,” interjected the male orphan, adding, “I, too, am an orphan!”

“What can I do to help you poor orphaned children?” I asked. I had trouble holding back the tears. How could the world not want these two lovely children?

“You can give us one of your sweaters,” replied the orphan with the huge eyes, staring straight into my soul.

“Of course!” I exclaimed, removing my parka. I was planning on giving them my top layer sweater. Hopefully, it would be a really warm day at work.
“You can give us your gloves,” suggested the second orphan. I pulled them off and handed them to the quiet male orphan.

“What else?” I asked. I’d have given them almost anything they asked for, the poor creatures. They had put a vice grip on my heart with their impoverished fingers.

“You can give us…” The female orphan trailed off.

“Yes?”

“YOUR SOUL!” The orphan with the huge eyes ripped off her glasses, revealing her true eyes, small and sinister.

Just then, some sort of abominable snowman burst from the nearby trees. I could tell by the way he was leering at us that the lumbering yeti no doubt craved childflesh. “Orphans! Get behind me! I’ll protect you!” I screamed, assuming my most potent ninja stance. I knew full well that I was a mediocre ninja at best, but desperate times call for, uh, ninjas. If Japanese cartoons hadn’t been lying to me all these years, I’d suddenly find the power I needed to defeat this urban yeti in a highly predictable, yet vastly entertaining turn of events.

The sasquatch may have been huge, but he was also terrifying. I would use that to my advantage. But before I could strike the enraged bigfoot with my work-in-progress-but-still-quite-deadly ninja jamboree, the now sinister-eyed orphan stopped me.

“Hey ponytail boy! You’re the one who needs protection!” she exclaimed. The yeti shook off its odious snow covering to reveal a third, very large, very hairy orphan. He stared down at me, from about 60 stories up, with a crooked, satanic smile.

My jaw hit the ground slightly before my body did, and the next thing I knew, I was being accosted by crazed orphans. They were like pack animals, tearing away the tasty skin of their fallen prey. As tiny fists rained down on my tender flesh, I was glad I had given the silent orphan my gloves, because they helped shield some of the small, stinging blows.

They crowded around me like bees on honey-covered puppies, Sinister Eyes leading the assault, while The Yeti leapt into the passenger side of my car, sitting on the sack of expensive toys and kittens I was planning to drop off in the Christmas charity box right next to the office. Between the terrible blows, I cringed as I heard his dangerous ass cheeks grind every last toy into some kind of plastic paté.

“Thanks a lot, sucker!” bellowed Sinister Eyes, hopping into the driver’s seat of my car. Even at nine years old, she was somehow able to reach the pedals. Silent Orphan hopped into the back seat, and in seconds, they had driven off, tires squealing and cheery Christmas music blaring from the opened windows. I lied heroically in a pool of my own fluids, but it was no use. The villainous orphans had escaped. Fortunately, about three hours later, a helpful hobo assisted me by taking my wallet. At least some people in this world can be counted on to do the right thing!

I spent the next few hours on the side of the road, slipping in and out of consciousness. During the coherent times, I took to counting the snowflakes that were accumulating on my nose. But while unconscious, I had visions of tiny, probing eyes and miniature fists raining down on me like napalm from above. At last, my eyes popped open and I finally came to. It was already dark. Looking at my bloody-yet-still-intact watch (which, miraculously, the gang of orphans had neglected to take), I saw that it was 2 a.m. Egad! I had missed work! Pulling myself out of the crumpled ball I had been in for the last 11 hours, I found that, although a little frostbitten in my unimportant extremities, like my fingers, I was basically all right.

It was too late to call work and tell them that I hadn’t skipped out to play video games or watch TV: My boss had probably left a long time ago, like five minutes or so. Thus, I began my lonely, frigid walk home. It managed to rain, snow and hail all at the same time about 35 seconds into my trek. Reaching for my hood to deflect some of what could only be described as God’s horrible rage against short people with long hair, I realized that it wasn’t there; the orphans had pilfered it and tied it to my car’s antenna as a souvenir of our epic struggle.

It was then that I cursed orphans forever as the damned souls they are!

Fortunately, only a few raccoons and other assorted woodland creatures attacked me on my trek. Then a nice man who asked me lots of questions about sweaty men in tight, skimpy underwear gave me a ride home the rest of the way, as well as a cheerful pat on the behind. By the time I finally dragged myself through my front door, it was 6:30 in the morning. Thankfully, the nice man had driven quickly, muttering something about an “escape route” and an “arrest warrant.”

After the God-awful day I had, I simply fell into my soft, inviting bed, ignoring my homework for the first time in my three and a half years of college. Somehow, after sleeping most of the day, if being unconscious counts, I was still exhausted.

Pulling those covers around my blood-caked and bruised body had never felt so good.

"Misprint!" - The Course Overload Novella: An Introduction

I know this might come as a shock to the reader, but there’s really no way around it – I’m a dead man. Well, not “dead” in the traditional “stopped moving and started rotting” sense, because it would be difficult for me to be writing this if that were the case; it’s really hard to see what you’re typing in a coffin. No, I was dead in a really big misunderstanding kind of way. And it wasn’t even my fault.

Well, mostly.

Unfortunately, my good name is on the line. I’m a fine, upstanding citizen. Yet, through a series of one-in-a-million coincidences and fantastic misunderstandings, my entire county thinks otherwise. I need to relay my side of the story, the gospel truth, to anyone who will listen. Everything I say in these pages happened exactly the way I’ve described it; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Elvis.

I’m not the kind of person who pads his experiences to make a better story. I’m all about the truth of the matter. And the truth of the matter is that I’m just an innocent man trying to live his own life. But you’ve got eyes. (Unless you’re a pirate with dual eye patches and you’re reading this in brail.) I’ll let you examine the facts and make your own decision…

Chapter 1 coming soon!

Course Overload #27: "Milk Quest"

You’d think that a guy would be happy about being wet and naked with a lady he’s never seen before. But when that happened to me last Tuesday, I was anything but pleased. I had just locked myself out of my dorm room after taking a shower with nothing but a towel, my cell phone, and my extemporaneous body fat to protect me. It was kind of like being on Survivor, only there was no money at stake and the chances of me catching and eating a rat were slightly lower.

After a few frantic phone calls, all omitting the trivial fact that I had done something incredibly stupid was stark naked, save for a girly towel, I managed to get a hold of security. Four minutes later, I heard a knock at the door, and my towel and I went to answer it. However, instead of the hardened security man I had envisioned busting down my door with a thunderous kick and firing a hail of bullets through my computer screen to make I was safe from computer viruses, security had instead sent a young woman who, upon seeing my exposed, dripping torso, released a confused yelp and averted her eyes. That’s when she accused me of calling her over on purpose so I could show her “what my momma gave me.” I didn’t bother explaining myself, because I was too busy weeping with an embarrassment that, along with Freddy Krueger and circus clowns, will plague my restless dreams until the day that my therapist decides that I’m normal.

But lo! I know what you’re all thinking. Or at least, what you’re all supposed to be thinking: “Matt is a commuter! That sissy doesn’t have a room on campus!” Well, devoted fan(s), no longer is Matt a lowly commuter… Now he’s a lowly resident! After seven semesters of driving 35 minutes back and forth every day, up hill, both ways, in the snow, I was tired of waking up early, rarely having time to eat, and never being able to find a decent parking spot. But through the magic of whining to my parents, all of that has finally changed! Now I get to take full advantage of resident life, like waking up early, rarely having time to eat, and never being able to find a decent parking spot, all from the comfort of a single, cramped room! Hurrah

Actually, living on campus looked a whole lot easier before I actually did. True, now I don’t have to hunt for a parking spot every morning, but there’s still a whole new set of challenges to deal with now that I’m a resident, like eating. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was being able to come back to my dorm and have a nice snack in between classes, instead of clogging my arteries by ordering French fries with a side of lard at the café every time a class let out early. It seems simple enough, right? Wrong. My first week here, I didn’t have a refrigerator. No refrigerator meant no milk. And no milk meant no cereal. My unopened box of Cocoa Puffs sat atop my dresser, taunting me cruelly from the day I arrived to the time I drifted into an uneasy sleep Friday night.

Morning broke outside my window that Saturday, and I was ready and waiting for it. My eyes popped open and I sat straight up, hitting my head on the top of the bunk bed above me. The night before, my father had shown up unexpectedly bearing a small refrigerator. Now I could finally get some milk! Throwing the covers off my bed, I knew in my heart that I was going to have my Cocoa Puffs that very morning, or die trying. Or I'd wind up waiting until lunch. Whatever.

I’ve never been on campus that early on a Saturday morning, so I had no idea that neither the campus store nor the café are open on weekends. Of course I discovered that the hard way, trudging both places through the approximately 12 foot tall snow drifts that had piled up the Saturday before.

Predictably, my milk-hating car had died earlier in the week, so there was no way I could simply go to Price Chopper for the beverage I so craved. Egad! Was I to be without my life-sustaining Cocoa Puffs for the rest of the weekend!? Of course not! It takes more than sub-zero weather, epic mounds of snow, and no transportation to stop me! I know I could have easily used a substitute liquid, like vodka, on my cereal, but never would I fold in my quest for milk!

Although I had already been in the bitter, student-killing cold for nearly 16 hours, desperately searching the campus for an outlet for my milky madness, I struck out towards the Sunoco station down the street. My ears were so numb I feared that merely touching them might break them off like icicles. Yet I continued on, almost getting mowed down by crazy, anti-milk motorists whose sole purposes in life is to prevent me from having breakfast. At last, after having to tunnel though a pile of snow nearly the size of the Great Wall of China with my bare hands, I emerged in front of the magical gas station! I hauled my gallon sized prize out of the gigantic refrigerator and rushed it to the indifferent cashier. “Sweet, sweet lactose!” I exclaimed, charging out of the mini-mart. I could feel exhaustion nipping at my heels, but maybe I could make it back to my dorm before I collapsed!

A horn honked, and as I looked up yell at whoever was trying to run over me that time, I saw my friend Michelle waiting at a nearby stop light! I was saved! The milk cradled under my arm like a child, I dashed towards the waiting vehicle. Michelle waved at me and grinned angelically.

Then the light changed and she sped away. I think I began screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything though the ice in my ears. Everything went dark, and I felt my fingers go numb, although I maintained my vice grip on the milk. The last thing I remember was hearing an ambulance siren in the distance, praying it was for me, and not being surprised as it sped right past my fallen body. “Sirens are so romantic,” I thought to myself. Then I slipped into a coma.

When I finally woke up, it was 11 p.m. As I lay dying, my milk had frozen into a horrifying block of condensed cream. There would be no cereal for me that night. I would have cried if all the water molecules in my body hadn’t frozen solid.

*    *    *

So, as I stood dripping wet in my towel, occasionally ducking into the bathroom to avoid questioning eyes, I realized that everyone has their own set of problems. I’ve been on both sides of the coin, and I know that commuters have a horrible time finding a parking spot and are often left out of college activates, and residents constantly have to battle the lack of decent food and accidentally locking themselves out of their rooms. But what bonds us together, what makes us all unified students of the same college, is our mutual love of cereal. Indeed, we are all coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs in our own, special way, so let us never forget our glorious shared heritage.

So, the next time you lock yourself out of your room, walk right down to the café and have yourself a big bowl of cereal. Unless it’s the weekend. Then you’re screwed.