Almost Overheard
KARL, a fresher, is sitting at?Vanbrugh Stalls looking through some leaflets. COLIN, a second-year, stands behind him.
COLIN: The main drag of Vanbrugh corridor is bristling with the fresh intake of students. Karl stands outside the gentlewoman’s lavatory, thumbing through advice-giving pamphlets.
KARL: Oh hi. My name’s Karl.
COLIN: He said, optimistically.
KARL: Are you first-year?
COLIN: He asked, irrespective of danger.
KARL: Yes, well, I best get on.
COLIN: And with that he left, hurrying down corridors, trying to put from his mind the imminent and unavoidable threat of doom.
KARL: Very funny.
COLIN: He muttered knowing it wasn’t.
KARL: Look, can you stop following me? You’re making me nervous.
COLIN: Indeed, Karl was nervous. More nervous he had not been in the past.
KARL: That doesn’t make sense.
COLIN: Dazed, confused, disorientated by the barrage of omnipotent narrative, he picked up his pace, his feet clipping along the floor ever faster, bringing him out onto the feculence-smeared concrete of the ironically named Vanbrugh Paradise.
KARL: Look, just please leave me alone.
COLIN: Yelled the infuriated boy.
KARL: Somebody help!
COLIN: But nobody did. His cries were in vain. Slowly, and surely he realised the extent of his doom and knew there could be only one course of action to escape the incessant narration.
KARL: Keep back. I’m warning you.
COLIN: He came to a halt, his lungs now out of all manner of breath from the frantic, futile running and vitriolic bawling. He found him self flanked by the campus lake. Its hypnotic waters drew his eyes in, tempting him with an escape from the imposing stranger’s constant recitation of events.
KARL: Come one step closer and I’ll jump. I’ll do it! I’ll kill myself.
COLIN: And the boy knew what he must do.
KARL: I’m not joking, you know.
COLIN: He turned, closed his eyes, offered up a silent prayer. The grimy, greasy water seemed to reassure him. He leapt.
KARL: What? This is only knee deep. Oh I see. Yes, yes, very funny. Get the fresher to jump into the lake and we can all have a laugh when he discovers it’s too shallow to kill you.
COLIN: The gathering crowd indeed did laugh at the humiliated boy, not least because the water, though too shallow to kill, was still lethal.
KARL: What?
COLIN: And with that he was carried away for numerous injections.
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