Love and Papyrus

Mandy Garcia was haunted by mold. She had dreams about it. She awoke in the middle of the night, still seeing images of her papyrus scrolls falling apart, their delicate edges ravaged by the hungry tendrils of fuzzy gray stains.

The other graduate students in the lab were not helping. Lately, they treated her as if she carried the black plague. Even though she used disposable gloves and cleaned her lab coat regularly, if she came near a colleague's collection, he would shelter his specimens and shoo her away. Her professor would not allow her in his office unless he could smell the ethanol on her from across his desk.

She was responsible for the care and mounting of all Egyptian papyrus scrolls, rolls, and pages at the university. This included cleaning any samples with mold. The mold infecting her latest project was proving difficult. No matter how much scrapping or ethanol she applied, by the next day the mold would return, gray-white blotches growing somewhere on the sheet.

Leaning back from her magnifying glass, Mandy put the spatula back on the table, brushing her bangs out of her eyes with her wrist to avoid rubbing ethanol onto her eyes. Looking around the office, she saw most of her coworkers absorbed in their projects. The lab was quiet, only the sounds of keystrokes or ruffled pages breaking the silence.

Archeology graduate students were not social creatures by nature, and water cooler conversations were rare. Nearly all of her coworkers were male. She and Amy were the only women that worked under Dr. Levens. Most of the men in the office spent more time reading about dead people than talking with the living, and her gender only exacerbated the problem.

Mandy took this in stride. She hadn't studied archeology to find Harrison Ford wearing a fedora and leather jacket. She loved history. She enjoyed her job, believed herself to be capable, and disliked the idea of an office relationship conflicting with her work, with one exception.

Ted was tall. Ted worked out. Ted was published. Ted went on digs in Iraq with armed bodyguards. Most importantly, Ted never wore a bow tie to the office.

He was six years older than Mandy, and taught Babylonian studies at the university. At lunch one day, Amy told her that Ted was divorced, and that he had gained sole custody of his six year old daughter. Mandy wanted to know what his ex-wife had done to lose all privileges to her child.

"How's the Virgil project coming?"

Mandy jumped in her seat and spun around to find Ted sitting on the desk behind her. She felt heat rushing to her cheeks, partly because he had surprised her.

"Jesus, Ted, you scared me."

"Sorry," he said, smiling. "You're usually glued to your magnifying glass. I figured you were taking a break. How are those sheets coming?"

"Oh, you know," she said, "sporadic at best." When it was clear that he was not going to laugh, she quickly continued. "I can't keep the stuff from coming back. I'm tempted to just scrub the whole thing with ethanol, but the glyphs on this are already so faded."

"You'll get it," he said. "When you get done though, I have some other rolls I'd like you to look at. I already checked with Dr. Levens, and he's approved a cross department project. I'd like to bring you in for the papyrus studies. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," she said.

"Thanks. I'll quit bugging you and let you get back to work," he said, standing up and heading back to his office. Mandy watched him enter before she dropped her head on her desk.

"Sporadic at best?" she heard Amy say from across the table.

"I know," Mandy said. "I know."

"It could be worse," Amy said. "You could have spilled ethanol all over his pants again."

Mandy lifted her head off of the table, and looked at her friend. Amy was shorter than Mandy, with pale complexion and short black hair that was always up in a bun.

"That's probably why he was sitting so far back on the desk," Mandy said.

"I don't know, he wanted your help, right? That's a good sign."

"We'll see," Mandy said. "Besides, at this rate, I'm never going to finish these sheets."

"Still no luck?" Amy said.

"Of course not. This stuff is nasty. Speaking of which," she said, standing up and opening the cabinet above her desk. She removed a petri dish.

"What the hell?" she said, turning the dish in her hands.

"What is it?" Amy asked, coming around the desk so she could see. Mandy handed her the dish.

"I put that up there this morning. All I did was take a little flake, and now, look at this thing."

Amy turned the dish first one way, then the other. The inside was covered in green-white blotches, with long, thin tendrils rising out of them. Most of the tendrils ended in a large brittle white pod.

"I was going to take this to a friend in the biology department and ask her how to kill it," Mandy said, taking the dish and gently shaking it. "Can you hand me those tweezers over there?"

"You'd better not let Dr. Levens see you," Amy said, handing her the tool.

"I know," Mandy said. She knew if she got caught she'd probably get a lecture about lab-wide mildew infections, but she wanted to examine the odd looking pods.

Removing the lid, she placed the dish on her desk. She gently grasped one of the larger pods with the tweezers, and lightly pulled on it. Neither the pod or the stalk it attached to came off. She adjusted her grip and pulled a little harder. Suddenly, the pod ruptured, throwing a bright green cloud of dust in her face. It smelled putrid, reminding her rotten cabbage.

Amy ran around the table and grabbed a box of tissues, offering one to her. "I can smell that from here," she said, keeping her distance. "I hope it's not poisonous."

"I didn't swallow any of it," Mandy told her, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. Just to be safe, she poured some hand sanitizer on her hands and wiped it all over her face. She placed the cover back on the petri dish and moved it away from the edge of the desk, glaring at it for good measure.

Turning back to her to the papyrus sheets on her desk, she noticed something odd. Before, she could have sworn that all of the blotches on the sheet had been the same color. Now it looked like several of them were ringed with brown.

"I'm going crazy," she said.

"What is it?" Amy asked. "It was poisonous, wasn't it? Are you about to go into convulsions? I've been taking a first aid class. Try not to choke on your own tongue."

"It's not convulsions," Mandy said, leaning over the magnifying glass again, spatula in hand. When she scraped at one of the ringed blotches, it easily lifted off the page. "Apparently some of these colonies are dying off."

"Well that's good news," Amy said, returning her attention to her own work. "Let me know if you need chest compressions."

Mandy stared at the blotches. Maybe she had been so absorbed that she had missed the dry brown rings before. This wouldn't be the first time she'd overlooked some small detail. It annoyed her, but if it meant working with Ted even sooner, she would deal with it.

Later that evening, Mandy suspected that her friend had been right about the mold being poisonous. She began having chills, and soon she was shivering.

She couldn't afford the flu this close to the end of the semester. She hoped it was only a case of hypochondria as she sat on the edge of her bathtub, thermometer in mouth, her shoulder length hair pulled back into a pony tail. She was wearing cotton pajamas and a pair of pink bunny slippers that her sister had given her as a joke.

She took the thermometer out of her mouth and noted that the red line stretched past the 100 degree mark. "Just perfect," she said, washing off the thermometer and putting it back inside its case.

She began her evening ritual of taking out her contacts and removing the little make up she wore. After rinsing her face, she looked in the mirror and felt her breath catch in her throat. Her eyes, usually a dark brown like her mother's, were now a luminescent amber. They seemed almost to be glowing. A quick flip of the light switch revealed that they were.

She quickly flipped the light back on, and then just as quickly covered her gaping mouth. Both her upper and lower canines were now twice as long as before.

She closed her eyes and took several deep breathes. She told herself that she had been very busy at the lab over the last few weeks, and that this hallucination was probably just a symptom of stress, maybe even a result of her fever. If she could relax, when she opened her eyes, she would see that things were back to normal. Hesitantly opening one eye, she saw that her situation was instead getting worse.

During her breif timeout, her ears had elongated into points. Not only that, but two smooth shiny black horns had sprouted from right above her hairline. A quick tug showed they were solidly attached to her skull.

"This," she told her reflection, "is not happening. I refuse to deal with this shit right now." She turned around and walked into her bedroom.

She was forced to stop mid-stride as both heads of the her bunny slippers were impaled by long black talons, apparently growing out from the front of her toes. Her finger nails, normally kept short and clean, were elongating into thin black claws.

She also noticed that she was getting taller. There was already several inches between the bottoms of her pajama pants and her feet, and the gap between her shirt and pants was growing larger as she watched.

Suddenly, the changes to her body accelerated. She felt the pressure around her feet increase until the slippers split across the top, revealing much larger feet with a black talon on each toe. She grew another few inches as her pajama bottoms split down the back of her expanding calves and up the sides of her thighs. Her legs looked far more toned than she remembered.

Her shirt was not doing any better. She had already lost most of her buttons up the front as her rib cage and shoulders grew too large for the thin cotton top. She felt the sleeves split up her arms and shoulders before the final button gave way.

She felt a split second of pressure at the base of her spine before a thick tail shot out, destroying the elastic band of her pajama bottoms and underwear, leaving her naked except for the ragged remains of her top that hung loosely about her shoulders. She held the shredded tatters in one shaking hand, before dropping them to the floor, near the rest of her ruined clothing.

Looking at in the bedroom's full length mirror, she saw that she now stood at nearly six and a half feet, her light frame replaced by something more sinewy and predatory.

Walking over to her bed, she sat down, and tried not to hyperventilate. She grasped the wooden footboard of the bed and focused on slowing her breathing. Slowly, she felt her breath coming in smaller and smaller gasps. Relaxing her grip on the footboard, she was alarmed to see that she had nearly shattered the thick wooden plank with her grip.

She sat there, both hands resting in her lap, and considered what to do. She could not call her friends. The idea of them seeing her like this was mortifying. Calling 9-1-1 seemed equally hopeless. She doubted medical science had a cure for her condition. She was sure she had just broken several fundamental laws of physics. That left waiting and hoping that by morning she would be back to normal.

There was no sense in her waiting up all night, but she knew that her nerves would never let her sleep. Going back into her bathroom, she took two of the Benadryl tablets she kept in the medicine cabinet, and then took another for good measure. Swallowing the pills, she glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror.

She quickly turned off the lights and settled into bed, careful not to shred her sheets with any of her new nails. Gradually, she felt the drug taking effect, and she drifted off to sleep.

She awoke to the sound of the garbage men emptying her dumpster in the alley. Sitting up, she threw off her comforter. Looking at her fingers and feet, running her hands over her head, she seemed to be back to normal. She ran into the bathroom to make sure, examining her teeth and eyes.

Some time later, after she had dried her eyes, blown her nose, and convinced herself that it had all been a fever dream, she went into her kitchen. The clock above her stove read 9:38. Dr. Levens was probably curious as to why she had not come in. When she checked her cell phone, she saw that she had two messages. She called her office's number, and Amy answered in a frantic voice.

"Mandy, where are you?" she asked. "Dr. Levens has been looking for you."

"I got sick last night, and forgot to call in this morning," Mandy said. "Why? What's wrong?"

"It's the papyrus. When Dr. Levens came in this morning, he found all of the hieroglyphics on them were gone. Not just the one you were working on either. All of them. He nearly had a stroke. You had better get up here."

"Tell him I'll be there in half an hour," she said, already on her way into her bedroom.

"I will. See you in a bit," Amy said. "You aren't still sick are you?"

"No, I'm feeling a lot better," Mandy told her, and she meant it.

She was running out the front door after showering and brushing her teeth, her hair still damp, with a bagel between her teeth. It was less than ten minutes from her house to her work, but it felt like she hit every red light on the way.

Dr. Levens was waiting for her at the front door of the lab. She explained everything that she had been working on over the last week as she followed him inside. He showed her all of the empty sheets, even several that never been cleaned yet. Two had even been inside his office overnight.

She checked that she still had all of the photos taken of the sheets before she had mounted, and emailed copies to Dr. Levens. He instructed her to send off samples of the papyrus to their affiliates to determine if there had been a chemical or biological reaction with the ink on the sheets.

"How are you doing?" Amy asked her after Levens had went back inside his office.

"I've had better mornings," Mandy told her.

"What happened last night?"

"Stomach bug."

"Do you think it was the spores?"

Mandy glanced at the papyrus sheets. All of the mold spots had turned a dry brown. "Yeah, probably."

"Well, let me know if you need any help."

"Thanks," Mandy said, putting the phone to her ear as she dialed a lab upstate.

Several hours later, her morning had almost returned to normal. Dr. Levens had calmed down enough to take his lunch. The other labs had agreed to run tests on any samples she sent.

She sat back in her chair, hands behind her head, and stretched. She turned around to see one of her coworkers, a taller guy from Ionian studies, walking past. He waved, and complimented her on her new outfit.

Mandy thanked him, and looked down at her clothes. She'd worn this outfit at least twice that month already, and she had thrown it on in a rush this morning. She knew something was up when another guy from Native American studies asked if she had gotten a new haircut.

"Who knew vomiting could be so helpful with the boys," Amy said. "Looks like everybody wins with bulimia."

"Don't be crude," Mandy said. She wondered if this had anything to do with last night. She caught herself running her hand back across her hair, searching for something that should not have been there.

Fortunately, she was too busy for the rest of the day to notice any other odd behavior from the men in the office. She checked with Dr. Levens before she left, and he gave her the addresses of the labs where she could mail the papyrus samples.

She was headed out the door with the sheets inside boxes for shipping when she noticed Ted holding the door open for her.

"Thank you," she said over the two boxes in her hands.

"No problem," Ted said, following her out the door and walking alongside her. "You need a hand with those?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. They're not heavy."

"I insist," he said, taking the top box off of her hands. "It would look bad if someone saw you with both boxes and me just walking beside you."

"Oh I see. This is really more about your image than it is about helping me."

"You know how guys are. We have to keep everyone thinking we're gentlemen."

"So, you're saying that you're not a gentleman? Maybe I shouldn't be letting you help with these after all."

He laughed. "That didn't quite come out the way I wanted."

Mandy smiled. Usually when he talked to her, she always seemed to knock something over, or drop things on his foot. It felt good to flirt and have him laugh.

"So how did it go?" he asked. "Things back to normal yet?"

"Close enough," she said. "We're mailing these sheets to two different labs for sampling. They'll let us know if something reacted with the parchment."

"What do you think happened?"

Mandy shrugged. "Not a clue," she said, pushing open the front door with her hip. "That's my car over here."

He waited while she unlocked her vehicle and opened the back door so that he could place his box inside.

"Thank you," she said, closing the door.

"No problem," he said, hands in his pockets. He looked uncomfortable.

"So hey, I was going to ask you," he said, after a pause. "My daughter's staying with my parents tonight, and I'm stuck by myself. I was wondering if you might like to grab something to eat?"

"What, like a date?" she asked.

"Well, not really. I mean, yeah, sort of. Just a meal and drinks. Nothing too formal or anything."

"Sure," she said, wishing that she could have given Amy a high-five right there in the parking lot. "I have to run these sheets to the post office though."

"Yeah, absolutely," he said, the relief visible on his face. "You know Gino's, down on Round Tree? Do you want to meet there in like, half an hour?"

"Sounds good," she said, opening her car door. "See you in a little bit."

She watched him walk back to his own car before she got inside, closing the door behind her, staring at herself in her rear-view mirror. She stopped her inner celebrating long enough to consider what had just happened the night before.

To hell with it. She wasn't going to miss having dinner with Ted. She started her car and drove off towards the post office.

Gino's was a small dimly-lit pizzeria, with murals of Italy painted on every wall. The smell of fresh bread drifting out of the kitchen smelt cozy and warm. She saw Ted sitting at a table, two waters with lemon and two menus in front of him.

"How did the trip to the post office go?" he asked.

"Normal for 5 o'clock," she said. "I saw a woman threaten another lady with vehicular manslaughter."

"Sounds fun," he said, their waiter walking up to their table. He was a short, dark-complected man, with a graying crew cut.

"Hey Ted," the man said. "No Lucy tonight?"

"No, she's staying with my parents tonight. Just us two."

"What can I get you to drink then?" the man asked.

"Let me have the Italian Margarita," Ted said.

"Are those very strong?" she asked their waiter.

"You could sterilize surgical equipment with it," he told her.

"I'll have one too then," she said.

"Two Italian Margaritas," the man said, walking back towards the bar.

"So," she said, "your daughter is named Lucy?"

"Yeah, we eat here a lot. Probably too much. She loves Anthony," he said, nodding at their waiter.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Six years. She just finished kindergarten."

"Oh wow," she said. "Kindergarten. Before you know it, she'll be wearing make up, having her period, bringing strange boys home..."

"Yeah, we've both agreed she's going to skip right over the teens and just go right into college."

"Let me know how that works out. My dad still swears my older sister made him lose all of his hair."