The morning was quite misty, as it usually was during this time of year in early fall. Silence pockmarked with the sound of birds chirping were the only sounds that accompanied me as I walked through the university grounds on my way to the library. The street lamps were still on during time of morning, making the whole journey appear as if I were walking straight through a swamp.
Eventually, the arched dome of the university's library could be seen through the haze, and I immediately sought refuge inside from the biting cold air. I laughed at myself for always underestimating these mornings, and dressed less than appropriate for the soon-to-be colder weather. And for that, I was thankful that I was a regular customer at the on-campus coffee shop, where brews of all sorts kept many a student warm during these frigid times.
And here now, in the library, it was moderately heated and immediately brought relief to my skin. I walked up to the front desk, hoping that the text I had reserved would be in today, despite it being so early.
"Hello there," I said to the librarian. "I'd like to see if my book has arrived."
"Of course. Could I have your ID, please?" I handed over my student ID card, slightly tarnished with wear over the years of use. She immediately scanned it and looked to the computer monitor for my identity and book status. "Ah, yes, Mr. Ian Andrews? Your book arrived a while back. Please wait here while I retrieve it for you." She handed back my card with a smile and disappeared into one of the many back rooms of the library.
Taking a sip of my hot chocolate, I leaned against the desk and observed the library's adornments from my leisure position. A number of great abstract paintings hung on the walls around, perched up and down the height of the atrium as a glass ceiling showed the darkened skies above. The desks on the first floor, normally filled with study groups, sat empty as they stood next to the towering shelves with multitudes of references and texts.
A click from the nearby office clock made my ears tick, and I looked to it to see that the time had just only hit eight in the morning. Within an hour, the first students would be making their way in here, occupying the tables and study rooms throughout the many floors of the library.
"Here you are, Mr. Andrews." I turned around to see the librarian place the book on the counter, opening the cover and scanning the barcode. "I'll have to ask that you be careful with this book. As you can see, it's beginning to fall apart in a few places, and it'd cost the university a lot of money to replace it."
"I'll be careful with it," I assured her. "Doesn't the library do repair services?"
"Not with this one," she said, shaking her head. "At this point, actively attempting to repair the materials on this book would only end up damaging it more. It's a shame, since it's such a recent edition, too. If only the budget cuts weren't so bad... and if students like yourself weren't so reckless with the book."
"On behalf of my peers, I apologize," I said jokingly. "Well, thank you, then." I checked the book and saw that it was due back at the library in two weeks, but I only needed it for the span of today. It had been hell trying to reserve this book without another student - a graduate student, most likely - taking it from under my nose. Reserving it had been the only way to guarantee that I'd actually be able to obtain a copy, if only temporarily.
I found an elevator and took it up to the top floor. Usually, there would be at least a table, room, or chair empty for me to use, and I liked sitting by the windows as it gave a great view while studying. Sure enough, the entire top floor was completely vacant, and I was left to pick my seat as I wished.
The corner rooms were always the best, as they offered a great view overlooking the main campus that was unmatched anywhere else, so that was naturally my first choice. Settling down inside, I flipped open the book and began examining the contents for what I needed.
It was a fairly obscure text, but as an environmental engineering major with a side interest in agriculture, my professor had recommended it to me for reading. I wasn't entirely sure now, since looking over the text, the author was extremely disorganized and used words that not even I knew, so it was a waste of time. I sat back and sighed: this book was definitely going to be in the return box before I left.
Downing the rest of my lukewarm beverage, I checked my phone to see if I had any other plans for the day. As it turned out, I didn't: today happened to be one of my off-days where I had no classes. That meant that aside from my standard bouts of playing video games or watching various shows and My Little Pony, it was simply a day to relax.
Fumbling with my pockets, I struggled to fit my phone inside when it began to ring. Giving a huff of frustration, I pulled out the device and checked to see who was calling: Travis, an acquaintance of mine who I met during one of my math classes. We didn't exactly hang out a lot, but we kept in contact well enough.
"Hello?" I said.
"Ian, dude, just here to remind you that we have that math homework due tomorrow! Proofs and all that, remember?" he said.
"Aw, crap. Yeah, I'm on it, thanks for reminding me."
Travis laughed. "No problem, Ian, just looking out for all us students. At least our study groups have been somewhat helpful for the class, after everyone's... uh, bad performance on the midterms. Anyway, I'll catch you later." The line clicked as he hung up. Well, at least he was always dependable, so there was that.
And now here I was, stuck in the library with nothing to do. I was doing fairly well in all my classes, so I figured that using this day to relax couldn't hurt. But, first things first: I had to return this obsolete text to the front desk. I couldn't believe that I went through so much time and trouble to get it... and decided that I was probably better off gleaning proper tree-growing habits from agricultural magazines.
I visited the dining hall nearby, looking for a quick meal before I ran to my car for my math book. The mist had picked up into a light drizzle now, and dozens of students scrambled by me as I pulled out my umbrella. At least in this case, I was well-prepared, but the cold wind still stung.
Soup was always a regular favorite of mine during these times, and today made no difference: I gave myself the liberty of stocking up on various crackers and other foodstuffs to consume along with it. I usually didn't like eating at the dining hall, but given the current climate, I relented due to the proximity of the building. At least I could get to my classes easily enough from here, and I didn't end up having to drive my car.
The line wasn't too long, as most of the students preferred to eat at other locations; the university was pretty close to downtown, only a walk away, so I guess that most went for better fare instead. I wasn't too picky, so I picked up my tray and chose my intended food. And with my food in hand, I walked out of the cafeteria and stopped, thinking about where I would sit.
I'd never been here before, nor did I want to make a habit out of it, so I decided to find myself a nice cozy corner of the dining hall, in one of the more secluded sections that also had a nice carpeting to it, unlike the hard cold tiling of the greater dining areas. I sat down with my food and proceeded begin eating, bringing out my notes and reading them over. It was mostly a menial task to make myself look busy while eating; after all, in a dining hall that was occupied mostly by people eating in groups, it was a bit sad to eat by yourself, and I think that opinion rubbed off on me a bit. So I decided to make myself look busy.
I guess it would be fortuitous that I had decided to look at it; the ones in particular I had randomly pulled out from my pack were my math notes from our most recent class, and much like what Travis told me, there were proofs. Lots of them, and hard to boot. I flipped a few pages in mental disgust, again reminding myself of my displeasure for the mathematical field as I continued consuming my lunch.
And then the sound came. No, it wasn't a sound; more like a feeling, masquerading as a sound. I looked up, a feeling like nails on a chalkboard in my mind, as if it were screaming to tell me something, to focus on something just beyond my knowledge. I didn't know what it was, and I frantically began to look around only to stop myself from looking stupid shortly after. There was nothing wrong, nothing out of place. It was just me... and I had no idea why I had done that.
So I settled back into my routine again, now feeling embarrassed as the sole couple sitting a few tables away had taken notice of my sudden outburst, and I again attempted to busy myself by burying my attention in the notes. That didn't work, though, and I was unsurprisingly alarmed: nothing like that had ever happened in my entire life to elicit such a reaction from me, and certainly not from such a mundane situation like the one I was currently in. Was I going insane?
I downed the last of my now-lukewarm soup with a few quick gulps, and pack up my things at a leisurely pace, so as to not again create a new incident. I leave the tray and its dinnerware contents at the cafeteria's collector, and make my way out of the building and again into the cold biting wind and now hard-hitting rain. Days like these I did not particularly enjoy, since super cold and super wet meant a pretty miserable me that didn't want to do anything else besides bundling up in my bed the moment I got home.
But I still had classes, and any student worth his salt would always put those over anything else. I couldn't say it wasn't hard to just walk to my car and drive home, though, and that thought remained with me every step of the way as I headed across campus, past the library and through the campus' center. Not much longer after that, the four-story building which housed today's class was visible, and I dodged a pair of students reminding everyone of the upcoming student body elections before heading through the glass doors inside.
The building wasn't anything special, nothing like the computer science majors' dedicated labs building, or the arts building with all their specialized classrooms for every artsy profession. This one was pretty generic, just a building with some offices at the top, and a bunch of classrooms underneath. I walked up to the second floor, hung a right, and headed straight down to the end of the hall, where the one on the left was my next class.
A window sat at the end of the trek, and I stopped there to admire the outside scenery. The administration building for the campus sat right across from here, and it was certainly a sight to behold, bearing architecture hailing from colonial times, and there were dozens of students camped out underneath its grand entrance to avoid the cold and rain. I was glad that I didn't have to join them anytime soon, and whipped out my phone to check for classes.
As soon as I did so, that feeling returned. Only stronger this time, and the hairs on the back of my head immediately stood on their ends. Suddenly, I heard a sound... except it actually was one this time, not some tingly feeling in my head, but very faint like someone was calling out to me from far away and from behind a door. I tried to focus, trying to hear what the hell it was trying to say; I closed my eyes and concentrated.
It was saying my name.
My ears rang, and all sound of the rain hitting the window bled out from my mind, as it felt like I had suddenly gone deaf and that lone noise grew louder. I opened my eyes and turned around, and saw nothing in the hall, no one there except for myself. My mouth hung open in pure disbelief, and that little thought in the back of my mind again grew bigger. This... wasn't normal, or at least in the scope of normal I was used to. Twice in a single day wasn't a cause for alarm—yet—and I dearly hoped that it would just go away after a while.
Hope, of course, being the operative word. Going mad wasn't really something I had planned in my schedule for this term, and I wanted to see if the effects were recurrent before deciding on a course of action or getting anyone involved. And just like that, the feeling had left as suddenly as it had came, and no trace could be felt of it. I violently shook my head for a moment, letting the disorientation override the prickly feeling in my head.
Right after that, I checked my cell phone: the time was five minutes until class, and yet there was no one here. For any class on campus, it was guaranteed that there would always been a few people who showed up early. I guess I was the only one. Figuring that I shouldn't waste any more time on this issue any longer, I opened the door and stepped into the classroom.
After ten minutes past the hour, I realized that no one showed up to class at all, and a quick check to my email reminded me why: obviously, they had been cancelled, due to the professor having something come up on such short notice that he couldn't arrange for a replacement. And that certainly made me feel like a fool.
So what else was there to do this day, when I had finished my classes? I had no idea, and I had begun my way back down the stairs again when something caught my eye. Something very, very noticeable; a blur of brown, yellow, and orange barely exited the corner of my eye as I went down the stairs, and prompted me to increase my pace in order to catch whoever it was walking down there.
And yet again, it eluded me. I made it to the bottom of the stairs in record time, only to see... nothing. There was still a sizeable space between the bottom of the stairwell and the nearest hall and exits, so I should have been able to catch whoever it was. I kicked myself mentally again: I knew what I saw, and it was a person. Definitely a person. And if that person had been walking down the stairs, I would have noticed another important detail which I had idiotically ignored on my rush to learn who it was.
There were no footsteps. In a dead quiet building, with no one in here other than me and the sound of rain, footsteps should have echoed louder than anything around. And when you're walking down the stairs yourself, the telltale sound of another's footsteps should have been easily heard. Yet when I had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, only silence greeted me.
Either this was one really elaborate prank by somebody who was both really annoying and incredibly dedicated that just so happened to be hiding close by, or... I was losing my mind. Both choices were equally far-fetched, and I was fairly certain that no one had entered in the building after me. Then that would mean that if the prankster guess was true, then the person might have been in here to begin with. Or not. They could have just played a random prank on any person that came in here. Or not. Lots of exchanges between myself and I ensued.
And then another idea implanted myself into my head, one that quickly silenced all my thoughts and made me unceremoniously shove it into my mind's cabinet labeled 'bullshit'. As I walked outside into the downpour again, I crossed the campus made my way to my car, determined to make it back home and just put this whole day behind me. Listening to the radio on my commute, grabbing something to eat as I arrived home, and then just burying myself in schoolwork and videogames after that.
I didn't touch any of my MLP things, and the small amount of merchandise I had regarding near my computer left a sour taste in my mouth. I spent the rest of that day downstairs in the living room, letting the mind-numbing contents of television pull me away from that thought. Brown... yellow... and orange. I must have been tired more than I thought, and I fell asleep on the couch, the white noise from the running news report lull me to dreamland.
Brown... yellow... and orange.
I guess someone must have been pretty dedicated to this prank to dress up as Applejack.