Crimson Cursive

The jaded Patricia was grading the last of her English 101 papers for the semester in the summer sun of a shared office. She set to rest a red pen, done with a gory short story titled: "The Exsanguination of Rain." Every written piece the freshman had submitted so far always worked in some dark-haired star; a pale-skinned vampire calling himself Kursor.

The professor in her thirties sat back in her chair and groaned with a stretch, "maybe I should talk to her about it." With those types of men there's always a catch. The girl's obsession with violent vampires didn't seem healthy. She ran her fingers through the length of her golden bob and studied the fires of her flashing nails. But who was she to judge someone else's obsessions? She thought about the unknown penman passing her secret poems.

Patricia's amber marbles rolled over to the glossy snakeskin folio. She had bought it just to fit the collection of her admirer's notes. The exotic folder, crafted from the skin of an albino emerald anaconda drowned in an onyx pit filled with a pool of vampire squid ink at the bottom of a cave, had cost Patricia a pretty sum. But, when she had seen it go up at one of MU's Blue Moon Auctions, she knew it was perfect somehow. The little index card that came with it explained the special nature of the folder's construction and materials, but she had lost it somewhere among the scattered mess of her desk. Now, the hissing folder sat, silently seducing her, on the tower of papers teetering aloft the corner of her desk.

Transporting the folio to the space in front of her with delicate grace, she dragged her fingers and nails across the obsidian skin and swallowed hard, thinking about the papers of sweeping ink within. She slipped two fingers, deep, up into the soft folio and, with a bite of her lip, spread the covers wide open. A line hooked onto the golden edge of her expanding pupils and yanked the halos of her eyes into its red embrace. A vivid incubus dwelling beneath the surface of the words already had its tongue buried, deep and squirming, inside the blushing folds of her brain before she could withdraw a single finger from the center groove of her precious folder. Her eyes ran up and down the tall, crimson loops of cursive. Goosebumps exploded all over her body, her breath quickened, nipples stiffened, sex slickened. Patricia licked her lips and let slip a shuddering gasp as the flow of her secret admirer's words began to devour her.

Her other hand traced a finger down her neck and along the rim of her loosely buttoned, silk blue blouse. The tip of her nail grazed the gooseflesh of her upper left breast and sent a rushy shiver into the tips of her nipples. The ruby ink of the poem curved around her mind and the incubus' tongue twisted further into her core. Her heart dripped a good pace and her finger continued further down her chest, running across the expensive silk of her blouse, sliding the fabric over the sensitive stiffness of her breasts. The incubus found her at the center of her labyrinth and, after she tasted the promise of his words, he convinced her to let him take control of just her fingertip. Patricia's breath came out ragged as he coyly spun circles around her left rosebud with the polished, round edge of a single one of her finger nails.

She was nearly at the end of the poem when her finger reached the lip of her pencil skirt and slipped under the edge of the fabric along the side of her left thigh, tugging it towards her. The incubus slid her finger along the smooth, tight curve of her thigh and in between her legs, seeking an easy way into the humid cave of her skirt. Patricia licked her lips and watched the incubus haunt her fingertip. She slowly spread her legs apart for him and her finger brushed along the anxious skin of her left inner thigh until it found the mossy grooves of her valley laden with dew. Just as her eyes hit the period in the last line of the poem, her finger slid up a groove and pressed upon the slick cushion of her button. Her incubus swirled her whole mind about her fingertip and she felt the effects of his words about to finally overrun her sense of control. She closed her eyes and joined in with her other fingers running them down the sides of her aching opening while the incubus worked just the possessed tip of her left index finger. The crimson cursive finally clicked together in the center of her mind and the door to her unconscious libido burst ajar. Patricia licked her lips as the tips of her fingers grasped for the hand of her incubus guide.

"Patricia, my office now," a short, burly man, popped out, yelling, from the singular office at the end of the room and popped back in like an overgrown whack-a-mole.

Her salacious buzz died and she closed her folder with a sigh. The incubus' ruby tongue slipped out the grooves of her pink matter with a sucking pop. Patricia rolled her eyes and stood up from her desk, frustrated. The chair wheels squeaked away from her anger as she pushed it out of her way. She smoothed her grey skirt and checked the buttons on her blouse. Patricia roused the best smile she could as she took a breath and strode into the department head of the English faculty's office.

"Close and lock the door," the mustachioed man standing in front of a window said, pointing with a thick finger.

The man's unusual demeanor baffled Patricia, so she shut and locked the door.

"What's going on Dave?" Patricia asked with clenched eyebrows.

"Sit, sit, Patricia" the man said, shuffling closed the dusty blinds behind his desk.

Patricia sat in the round mustard chair across from his desk and crossed her arms and legs. What did this queer fool want? She began to bounce one of her long legs impatiently. She had things to do, she had things to read herself into...

He eventually sat down at his desk and looked at Patricia with a serious look.

"We have a problem," Dave confessed, wiping his shiny head with a handkerchief he whirled out of some hidden nook.

Patricia raised an eyebrow, what could have possibly gotten this fruity geezer so disturbed? She hadn't seen him this bothered since before she became tenured; the time he thought one of his star pupils was going to expose his blooming taste in young men.

"At first I thought it was a joke shared between students," Dave said, "but then, a girl's parents sent me a letter, so I looked into it."

"How long do you intend to be vague?" Patricia asked, staring at the sheen glistening across the red pump bobbing up and down at the end of her foot. She didn't have the patience these days to care about his problems, he'd burned her too many times over the years.

"Do you know professor Sea?" Dave asked.

"Who?" Patricia replied, turning up from her foot towards the squat man behind the desk, "which department are they in?"

"Our department, English," Dave said, studying her seriously.

"Dave, what are you talking about," Patricia laughed, "our department is so small, I know all the professors and there's no professor Sea. What are you getting at?"

"Exactly," Dave said, locking his thick fingers together, "there's a professor in our very department that I know nothing about, out there in the wild, teaching classes."

Patricia uncrossed her arms, "you're joking? How is such a thing even possible?"

"Do you know the history of this school?" Dave asked.

"What does that have to do with anything? You keep jumping around, are you trying to be intentionally obnoxious?" Patricia said.

"MU was an experimental college founded in 1954, by a man and three partners. Do you remember the man's name?" Dave asked.

"M. Sea," Patricia answered after a moment of looking up and to her left, "yeah, that was his name, and three anonymous others, like you said." She twirled her expensive heel in the glare of sun that leaked through the holes of the blinds.

"Now, don't you think it awfully strange that this professor who has been, apparently, teaching a fraudulent poetry lecture since the beginning of the year, is also named Sea?" Dave asked.

Patricia studied the serious look on his face, she had never seen the thick, black caterpillar of his mustache so still. Had the revolting thing finally died? Was it about to tumble off his top lip and curl up on the desk in front of him?

"What do you think? It's his ghost or something?" Patricia laughed, "or some guy pushing past a hundred decided to return to his old post?"

"Don't be absurd," Dave said, sitting back in his chair, "what I'm saying is, there's an imposter out there, in my department, leading classes, essentially making a fool of me, and I want you to get to the bottom of it."

"Me?" Patricia gasped and uncrossed her legs. Dave glanced down and raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, you," Dave said, caressing his mustache, "I'm thinking about retiring soon and if you do this for me, I'll make sure you're the one in this chair after I leave."

Patrica looked around the dinky room. As much as she knew he was lying, she did want his job. The faded office represented more control.

"Fine," she sighed, "I'll look into it, when and where is this imposter teaching classes?"

Dave shrugged and looked down to straighten his tie, "he's not in the system, I don't even know how students end up enrolled in his classes, but I looked into the girl's registration and a 'Poetry 454' class is listed, but there's no time and place entered."

Patricia's eyes narrowed, "Poetry 454? Did you talk to systems, how're they actually getting the fake class validated?"

"No, I want to keep this hush-hush for now," Dave said, "how would it look to the dean if I had some rogue professor teaching, who knows what, in my department?"

"Well how am I supposed to find this Sea nut if we don't know anything about them?" Patricia asked. The whole mystery surrounding Sea tickled the sleeping bead of her curiosity and she was starting to feel like some slick private eye.

"The girl's name is Maison," Dave said, "I can't find her anymore, but her roommate was Clarissa Carkova, she's in your English 101 class, maybe you can talk to her about Maison."

"Clarissa?" Patricia asked, "and Maison is the girl of the parents who sent you the letter?"

"Yeah," Dave said.

"Well what did the letter say exactly?" Patricia asked, "can I read it?"

"It didn't say much," Dave said, crossing his hairy arms, "I shredded it."

"You did what? Did they threaten you or something," Patricia asked.

"That's the weird part," Dave said, "in the letter, the parents thanked me for letting Professor Sea free their daughter."

"What?!" Patricia yelped, "are you sure the letter was from her parents?"

Dave nodded, "Yes, I checked up on it. How stupid do you think I am, Patricia?" He smiled and the caterpillar stretched, "talk to Clarissa, see what you can find out, I want this guy outta my hair."

Dave ran a hand along the stretched-thin bridges of hair that criss-crossed his freckled scalp. Patricia struggled not to smirk.

"So it's a guy then? Well, I'll try to talk with Clarissa today after class," Patricia said. This Sea intrigued her, what had he done to that Maison girl? Freed her? What kind of nonsense is that? Patricia fingered her bottom lip with a nail from her left hand.

"And please be discreet about it, Patricia," Dave said, gesturing to his chair, "if you ever want to end up sitting here."

Patricia rolled her eyes, licked her bottom lip, and stood to leave.

"By the way," Dave said, "there's a party tomorrow night hosted by the school's largest donor, everyone who is anyone will be there, if you handle this issue for me, I'll bring you with."

Patricia gaped at him, "are you talking about 'Nuèch Masco,' the end of year masquerade?" Her heart began to throb, the party was so hush-hush, she thought it just a fairy tale.

Dave put a hairy-knuckled finger to his lips for secrecy, "yes, now go find this phony professor and get rid of him, today if possible, please."

She left the room baffled and elated. Nuèch Masco? It was real? And she was going?

-

Patricia's tumbled citrines watched the buoyant ponytail of Clarissa intently after her English 101 class had ended. The geology major wore minty-grey leggings paired with the standard myrtle green, oversized college hoodie the flock of students like her preferred. The black "MU" trimmed in purple on the front of her sweatshirt rippled as Clarissa bounced over like a green rabbit towards the desk of the pale Milly. Patricia observed the two sylphs like a mad scientist, she had paired Clarissa and Milly together for the previous project, just for the alchemical sport of it. Their personalities clashed so much, Patricia wanted to see what happened when the two opposing forces had to work together.

"Do you have something else of yours I can read Milly, anything more about Kursor from your other story?" Clarissa pestered Milly.

"Why are you interested in Kursor?" Milly asked, crossing her arms screened tightly in sleeves of black mesh.

"I don't know, I just," Clarissa poked a blushing book with black covers on Milly's desk with a finger, "I just want to know more about his type, that's all."

Milly scooped her book across the desk and dropped it gently in her bag next to her, "no sorry, 'The Exsanguination of Rain' was the only story I wrote about him."

Clarissa narrowed her blue eyes at Milly, "I don't believe you."

"Look, uh, Cary was it?" Milly asked, swiping the dark curtains of her bangs out from her eyes and smiling.

"What! We were just partners last week and you forgot my name already?" Clarissa asked, more amazed than offended.

"It has nothing to do with you, Cary, I'm just not good with names," Milly said, grabbing the strap of her round bag and smiling at Clarissa, "or faces really."

"So you're just not good with people then, is that what you're saying?" Clarissa said, propping herself up with two hands on the top of Milly's desk and leaning forward into the goth's face reflecting her sarcastic smile back at her. The baggy, school hoodie slid forward and revealed a glimpse of Clarissa's sublime form beneath it.

Patricia interrupted the two opposites with a hand on Clarissa's chest and took her aside, "can I talk with you Miss Carkova?" She said, feigning concern.

Clarissa followed her off to the side of the class as everyone else filed out of the room. Her ponytail rippled as she turned her delicate head to glare at Milly blending into the crowd of freshmen that left the room.

"Clarissa," Patricia said, "pay attention."

Clarissa turned away from Milly, "sorry Ms. S., I just know she's lying about Kursor, she must've written more about him, she just doesn't want me reading it."

Patricia glanced at the back of Milly's head as it bobbed down the hall with the rest of the students.

"Look Clarissa, if you answer my questions," Patricia said, "I'll let you read everything Milly wrote for my class this semester. I promise you she actually wrote quite a bit about Kursor."

Clarissa's eyes widened and she smiled, "are you serious?"

"Yeah, now answer my question," Patricia said, licking her lips, "your dormmate Maison, where is she?"

Clarissa's eyes darkened and she shrugged tiredly, "I don't know, she came back one night last week like a zombie kinda, repeating his name..." Clarissa collapsed down into a nearby desk.

"Whose name?" Patricia asked, sitting on the top of another desk across from her.

"Professor Sea," Clarissa said, glancing between Patricia's knees, "Maison was packing up her things in a real haphazard way," Clarissa expressed a motion with her girlish fingers, "so I cornered her, and asked what the hell she was up to. She said, she was going to be like Mr. Sea's TA or something and anything else he wanted her to be," Clarissa gazed up at Patricia and fidgeted with a blue ring on her finger, "Maison said, she was so empty, she could become anything he wanted, so long as he stayed inside her house. That was the last time I saw her and this is all she left behind." Clarissa pulled a vibrant spiral notebook out of her bag and plopped it on the top of her desk with a clatter.

Patricia leaned forward slightly and picked the notebook up. She fingered through the pages of pink writing and her eyes widened. It had started off with the name of the class: "POETRY 454" followed by the date of the first day of the current semester. From there it continued for a couple days of normal seeming notes until it began to steadily devolve into an obsessive scrawl of devotion for Professor Sea. Patricia scanned page after page of hearts and fanatic ramblings of pure love. Two entire pages were simply: "I WANT YOUR CHILD," written in bold pink letters over and over. The fingers of torn paper reaching through the silver coil, indicated a page had been ripped from between these two compulsive pages. What followed after were empty days with just the date until the last page written on said: "my mind is an empty void." Patricia fanned the rest of the blank pages before her eyes and at the very end of the notebook, she found a double-spaced story, stapled and wrinkled. Across the first page it said: "An Empty Vessel, by Maison Meido."

Patricia loosened a button on her blouse, readjusted herself on the desk, and spread her legs, preparing herself to read the short story.

Clarissa's warm, soft hand silently slipped under the edge of Patricia's skirt, far above her left knee and Patricia lowered the paper, staring into her Clarissa's eyes.

"What do you think you're doing?" Patricia asked, as Clarissa's hand disappeared under her skirt and came to rest at the top of her inner thigh. The curve of Clarissa's thumb and index finger pressed into the groove where the supple meat of Patricia's mound met her pelvis and Clarissa squeezed gently. Clarissa stroked her thumb, once, up the silky pillow of flesh along the outermost edge of Patricia's left lip, careful not to cross the line of actually touching Patricia's moistness.

"Is this really about Maison?" Clarissa asked, tilting her head, "the way you're sitting, I can smell you, you know." She raked her nails through the intimate patch of Patricia's curls.

Patricia batted Clarissa's hand away with Maison's short story and crossed her legs.

"It's pretty," Clarissa continued, biting the tip of a dirty finger, "like a glistening, pink peach topped with spun-sugar caramel, though it's not my usual thing, I wouldn't mind letting you borrow my mouth in exchange for juicing up my grade a little." She gazed up at Patricia with her wet blueberries and flashed a devilish smirk.

"Sorry to break it to you, but I don't give out easy grades like that," Patricia said, "and I would be careful if I were you, trying that scam on other professors, knowing this place, one of them might actually take you up on it."

Clarissa crossed her arms in a huff and sank into her desk.

Patricia handed the notebook back to Clarissa and returned her focus to reading the first page of the short story featuring Maison and Professor Sea himself, she quickly skimmed the thirteen or so pages.

"For you, no collar needed

a bed so pure, pleading

my goddess of a head

holler like a burning sea

silent and churning

you're yearning for me

to seed it."

Clarissa whispered quietly to herself, reading something off the back of the paper Patricia held.

The professor read quickly and ignored Clarissa's whispering, as her blazing-fast amber beads vacuumed in the gist of Maison's fantasy. Her pen was in her hand automatically and she circled a typo early in the story where the name "Molly" was used in place of "Maison." Patricia raised an eyebrow, why hadn't Sea caught that? She put the red pen away after awhile, noticing Sea had caught everything else in the student's fantasy.

Patricia, perplexed by the prophetic story, scrunched her eyebrows together and handed the paper back to Clarissa after finishing it, "did you read this?"