A Welcome Distraction

Pinpricks of anger began to intermingle with the sadness, floating to the surface like pulp in a carton of orange juice. He wondered how he could have possibly explained anything to her, when he wasn’t even sure what happened himself. He didn’t tell her anything because there was nothing to say. The only souvenirs he brought back from what was supposed to be a winter break abroad in Ireland were ugly, gnarled scars crisscrossing his back and a year of academic stagnation. No amount of mental straining could dredge up recollections of his salvation from that place nor could Sam remember the immediate aftermath of his extraction back to campus, in fact, Paul said that he had denied that he even left the country for a time. All that he could recall was a cobbled street and something… something else with him; something awful and old. How could he have explained any of that to Esme? As he pondered the inner landscape that was quickly withering around him, a pain welled up in Sam’s stomach, clawing at the fundamental places that kept him going. Breakups were never his forte and that deficiency was only exacerbated by the circumstances of this night’s events. A few days of ice cream and Netflix weren’t gonna cut it, but wallowing wasn’t going to help either. He should have gone to the fucking Christmas party. Emma seemed nice at least until he turfed that interaction with the very cause of his current predicament. Despite the school’s best attempts at keeping the fact that a student had gone missing from reaching the general populace, it wasn’t long before one fateful tweet from a well-meaning classmate lit a wildfire of online conspiracy and campus wide concern with Sam at the center. Even a local news station picked up on the conflagration and had a field day with the various meme pages and falsified accounts that seemed to pave over the genuine worry and apprehension that your friends and family felt. In the off chance anyone did find out it was Sam who was embroiled in the missing student incident, he never knew for sure what version of the story they had heard or what strange new aura they were ascribing to him.

It was with a heavy heart that the dean made the executive decision to have him held back a year, citing that while the absence policy extended to accommodate extenuating circumstances, missing nearly an entire academic year was inexcusable even on paper next to the events surrounding his sudden departure and statistically improbable return. Sam harbored no ill will against the man and took his lashes with a stony-faced resolve, knowing full well that he was not in trouble as he broke the news to his friends that he would be graduating a year after them.

The warmly lit landscape of his bedroom was punctured by a stark, whitish light coming from the phone he had thrown on the nightstand. It was a text from Max. ‘Wyd tomorrow?’. Well there was his escape from ruthless masturbation. Sam shot back a reply ‘Nothing after classes, why?’. The scintillating blurb that meant Max was typing appeared then disappeared before another grey text box appeared, ‘No classes tomorrow. Snow day remember?’. Oh yeah. The campus wide email stated that due to the projected snowfall; classes would be delayed until 1 pm until the plows could finish clearing paths for the shuttles, but given his morning schedule, that meant Sam was home free for the last day before break. A nice hot chocolate and a walk in the snow sounded nice right about now as he realized just how heavy his eyes were. Sleep proper wouldn’t come tonight; it never did ever since his return. Now his nights consisted of bouts of restless sleep punctuated with furious, calf cramping sex with Esme in some vain effort to biologically tire himself enough to **** his eyes shut. Now, without the girl of his dreams to snuggle up beside, he had nothing to do but hope the nightmares would allow him to steal more than a few hours of sleep.