CHAPTER 3


"Y'all are stupid. You need to check out the dictionary, 'cause y'all are stupid."

Rice doesn't remember the moment, but it's burned into my memory, when Socialite first spoke in our presence.

"Can you elaborate a little for us?"

Our prof, Huntarr, had been exceptionally indulgent up to then, letting the dime store geek students list off their fave masturbation sites, and the tech freaks describe the best way to make napalm in a fruit cellar. He seemed to be a pundit of zen mastery, and that was alright with me since I'm the kind that generally likes to let things go. And somehow the freak in the baseball cap and the goatee, who seemed to be on the verge of going postal on the room, had finally gotten Huntarr's goat.

It's hard to say why. The guy's attitude was anything but challenging; more like a half-baked attempt at sliding an opinion under the radar, but still getting an opinion out there, that happened to be outwardly hostile. Maybe Huntarr liked the guy and just wanted to let him have his say, to break the monotony of hearing another repressed guy who just wanted to rant about the last game he played while stroking a joystick in a frenzy of saliva spraying monologue. Whatever the case, while the rest of the class twitched under assault, Huntarr waited for the guy's answer with a mildly curious smile on his face.

"Well?"

The guy somehow managed to slump even more in his chair.

"I'm listening to y'all and none of you know how to speak. So dictionaries."

Huntarr waited.

"They're cool."

"Cool. I guess they are, if..."

"People suck."

"What. All people?"

"Yup."

"You too.?"

"Yup"

And with that, the guy I'd dubbed the "socialite" stroked a couple of keys on his keyboard and fell silent. Huntarr looked instantly bored.

"Thanks for enlightening us. Now, how about you. What's cool?"

He gestured to the child prodigy in the corner with no skin. I kept an eye on Socialite, anticipating his snap at any moment. I looked to Rice, trying to warn him of my fears. He just waved his hand, said don't worry about it, and showed me how he could crush his computer tower with his buttocks. Huntarr looked over at the screeching metal and plastic, a little enviously I thought, then went back to the no-skin kid.

_______________________________________

" I heard that that's a good read."

Socialite put down his dictionary and looked up at me and Rice, standing over his table. In no time flat he'd origamyd the dictionary into a super dense, recyclable scimitar.

"Don't make me use this you bastards."

Rice surprised me by staying calm and sitting at the table.

"Dude. Don't worry about it."

In a blur of motion, Rice swooped a tupperware of Rice onto the table and flashed a winning smile.

"You ever tried this ?"

Socialite sliced the top of the tupperware off with his scimitar, and a hail of Rice cascaded over the library floor.

"Aw man! That tupperware was from Persia."

"You mean Iran."

"I mean Persia! Bastard."

And with that Rice swooped around and grabbed Socialite by the throat in a buttocky grip of iron. Socialite dropped the scimitar and desperately tried to pry Rice's buttocks apart.

"May as well try and stop a flood with a tampon you retard."

Socialite turned green. Then blue. Then yellow with red poka-dots. A thought hit me to jump in and pry the cheeks apart myself. Then I thought better of it.

"Rice. Let 'im go man."

But he attacked Persia."

"He attacked a tupperware."

"Full of Persia!"

"Full of Rice."

"That's what I said!"

"Man that Rice is good."

"Yeah? You like it?"

That was all the distraction I needed. He relaxed his buttocks enough that I managed to quickly pry socialite free. Rice was pissed, but now Socialite had his scimitar back, so there'd be no quick, retaliation-free grab.

"So you guys gonna chill out or what? This is getting pretty annoying."

Socialite lowered his scimitar and rubbed his throat.

"What the hell do you freaks want anyway?"

"We want you to join our group."

Both of them looked at me incredulously. I gave Rice an annoyed look.

"Shit! Yeah, that's right. I totally forgot when he attacked the rice."

"I didn't attack your goddamn..."

"Whaddayasay?"

Socialite unfolded his scimitar back into dictionary form and started skimming through.

"I don't know. Who are you guys anyway?"

"I'm Rice, and this is 2-cock."

"You've got 2 cocks?"

"Yeah."

"I'm in."

"Groovy dude. I got a good feeling about this."

The group hug lasted a long time. I don't know what the hell Rice was talking about (something like the GDP of some country called Payamastan), but Socialite was running through words from the dictionary, in alphabetical order, listing the words, definitions, and etymologies of each of them in turn. There was a Paul Anka song I couldn't get out of my head, driving me slowly insane, and I was loudly humming it.

We all stopped simultaneously.

The smell that permeated the room was familiar; sickeningly sweet and fleshy, but indefinable. We eventually found the source in the corner, at the air vent, in the form of an odd drip. What was odd was that it was dripping upwards, and I'd swear that each droplet of whatever it was was smiling at us. A chill ran up my spine. Rice threw a clump of rice into his mouth and started hallucinating, saying "don't worry about it over and over." Socialite sneered at the drops.

"Hope both those cocks of yours work dude."