Delirious: 57

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She watched from a safe distance as the man exited his one of the faculty houses. There were many buildings dotting the borders of the campus, originally imagined as guesthouses for Blythewood's heirs but long since appropriated for visiting professors. Shane's quarry seemed to fit the bill.

She had watched the corpulent man for an hour, had followed him as he walked the campus. He never ventured near her invisible fence and she did not know if he could. She remembered him. One does not so quickly forget such a face, especially when it yelled about her close up, the jowls quivering obscenely. Now he just seemed doughy and avuncular, his tan tweed suit had grown around him like bark. She could easily imagine him teaching some soporific course, putting undergraduates into light comas. He didn't seem strictly human, superimpositions of knotted limbs and green veins echoing over his ample frame.

She hoped that, when confronted with her killer and certainly with Virgil's, she would know exactly what she had to do, that there would be one simple course of action. How could she unleash unbelievable power in a theater because some creepy man grabbed her and stare weakly at genuine danger, at a murderer. She couldn't avenge Virgil or herself, so she fell to the comfort of observing. Observation and study, even if it could not bring finality, at least brought her on a familiar trip.

When he walked toward the fence, her knew she had to act or lose the opportunity. Until the snowball left her hand, she was still undecided as to how she would arrest his departure for campus.

He turned to her, shaking his head, and removed a handkerchief to clean his spectacles of the snow. She shouted, "Smartelfham… damn it, svartlehiem? Spartlime!" Her fingers splayed out and she tried to summon whatever magic has once flowed through her, begging it to come before the man reached her.

He reached for her hands and held them in his, collapsing her fingers into her palm. "I anticipated it would come to this. Could we at least retire to somewhere more accommodating, Miss?"

She could not even hear him. He would not get the first word, nor would she permit him the last. She needed to get everything out. "You shot my friend."

Rhys put his glasses back on, ironwood frames and dewdrop lenses. He nodded and walked toward her, as a distant relative advancing to apologize for missing her last eighteen birthdays. "While my finger did not pull the trigger, it may as well have and I take full moral responsibility. It was a regrettable error, I fear. I read his obituary - Virgil Kim -- he seemed a lad of promise. I had seen him around the campus, though never had the pleasure--"

"You meant to kill me," she stated flatly.

"Yes, I rather intended to try. Yet you stand before me. I am sorry to have so misjudged you, it will not happen again. I am rapidly comprehending my error," he replied, yet sounded so kindly and sincerely sorry. He put his arm around her shoulder and she did not feel the drive to stop him.

"Why? Why the hell do you want me dead?"

Rhys' eyes bulged, more jungle than forest green. "I believe that I have gotten more than a little carried away. I am aware how little good that does either of us, or Mr. Kim. Did you know him?"

Shane nodded, resisting the urge to feel comforted. "He was… we were friends, yeah."

"I am infinitely sorry. We -- my associates and I - thought ourselves the perpetrators of heroic acts. It is simple to lose oneself to stories. Have you ever felt that way?"

Shane could only nod again, the language so soothing and familiar to her ears. So often, all she ever had were stories.

"So," he continued, "I was led to believe… some thing that seem not to be true. The truth, at least as far as I knew a decade ago, is that I am a botany professor here. Upon meeting my partner Anchal under less than auspicious circumstances, I was led to believe I was and am something more. She told me of certain forecasts, and legends of this campus."

"And she lied to you?"

He thought for a moment. "No, she did not. I have witnessed such things as leads me to believe that she is quite possibly something mythical, as, it seems, am I. Not in physicality. As far as science is concerned, I am utterly human. Yet I feel-"

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