The brilliance and horror of going to uni at your home town is that you get to see your family often. Currently writing from the glorious wifi of my parents' house.
There's this girl in my course. We had a seminar a few weeks ago, on this poem, 'That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection'. The professor was asking us our thoughts, and I spewed out this concept about the poem following the narrative of the bible. As I blurted it out I realised it was quite good - or rather, maybe it was when they told me after (my coursemates that is). Said it outshone them or something. It's always vaguely uncomfortable receiving that kind of compliment, although it's probably better than being on the other end.
The thing is, this girl is ... there's something off about her. I've grown to dislike her over the course. Odd comments, these glances she directs at me. Suddenly it's like every action she's making is measured to undermine me. She's trying to ruin me. I don't even know how but she is, there's this malice in her eyes. Sure she laughs and chats and all that shit. She gets on with the others too, but that makes it worse, like she's turning them against me too. I don't know how to explain it. I was never particularly good friends with them to begin with, but now it's like she's trying to get them in on whatever her plan is. I'm sure she has one. But I don't know why. It must have started in the first few weeks of this term. She transferred from another course - no idea how she did it but yay for me she fucking did it. I avoid going near her student housing block. I can see a window across from my own room in the private apartments, facing me, another, from the uni-ran block on the other side of the road. Her block. So yeah, it's pretty unavoidable. But that other room opposite, with the curtains always closed. It's hers. Never seen her there (for obvious reasons), but I'm sure of it. Must be. Right opposite me; it's as bad as those charred trees.
I feel sick. Enough about those trees, I can smell the gasoline again. That tangy smell, almost metallic, not a scent really, that sounds too natural, even the word stench does, more like a presence lurking. So I shut my own curtains. See how she likes that. It's like smoke signals - am I thinking of bullfighting? Spaghetti westerns take place in Italy, the filming that is. Cowboys & Indians. So the curtains are billowing in the wind like a matador's cape or a smoke cloud, which gets me thinking again about that fucking gasoline fire, in the night, where you can't see the smoke, you can't see the smoke it's just vanishing above the red and into the ink it's fucking gone without even the sky because of all these clouds. So when I tug the curtains I have to do it in the right way, the right jerks and beats so that she gets my message and knows to fuck off. We got an email off a different professor and guess what, it's on the same poem. I know she's going to use my points, I fucking know she'll steal them for the essay. I point it out but she'll say I know she says that it was accidental or that she forget or that it got into her subconsious because it was so good but how the fuck do I know if I can believe her?
I think my girlfriend's in on it too. I'm at my house which is much closer to hers so I see a lot more of her. Crazy sounding, but she's got her eyes on House of Leaves, my second copy, the one with all the notes. Returns day after day asking for it again, not verbally of course, she knows she can't give herself away, but that's what she wants me to do with the book. She asked if she would like it once, since I'm always talking about it, and I didn't know it then but now I'm realising she wasn't wanting to just read it she wants my copy in particular. The one with my notes. All the pencil scratches I've done across it, the pictures and the annotations I've done every night every morning sometimes she's asking, because it's everything I'm saving up for my final dissertation I was always planning to do on it. She's coming over, I see her so often now and I'm sure that's part of her plan, like she made sure I'd be on Christmas break so I'd be in my house, and she could come get it from me. She won't. It's under the floorboards now with my other secrets. No way she can fucking have it. I just hope she doesn't hear the floor creak and figure out where I've moved it. It doesn't matter, I'm not answering her calls or texts, and I'll be moving back to my room soon, so she won't have easy access to me or my book, like she does visiting me here putting cough medicine in my tea or whatever to make sure I'm sleepy and docile. I won't be, I never sleep these days. Too much work. There's just not enough time to sleep I don't want another fire, not that it was me I don't think, anyway mainly it's that I'll start my dissertation soon, even though I don't have to think about that for years, I'm doing the planning for it. And then the course is bothering me with all these essays, like the one that girl is gonna take. Another reason to close my curtains, so she doesn't see my codes with a long-range camera or something. Smoke signals have the benefit of blocking out sight even as they try to communicate. And it's funny, the entire thing takes up the entire floor of my room back at the apartments, all the sheets with my thoughts on Danielewski's codes, even Poe's, and the symbolism etc etc etc e She's ringing right now. Can't see the caller name from the other side of the room, but I'm sure it's her I'm sure that's the phone's vibrating. She's been messaging me all day, and texting, and calling, but I am so fucking on to her it's enough to make me laugh, how she feigns worry. Sometimes I think she looks like the girl on my course too, just in her expression I mean. Girlfriend's hair is black like charcoal, the girl on my course is this vomit-yellowbrown rat-shade. But when my girlfriend smiles at me, it's like Her smile, and it unnerves me and I better remember to mention that the reason for her wanting my notes is that she's the girl's accomplice. They say probably that they don't know each other, but they do somehow, either she turned my grilfriend against me or she was against me from the start and she was sent to fucking befriend and hit on and fuck me or something until she could get to the book.
The phone's still tremoring. I don't have a voicemail, so it won't stop. She's still on the other end of the line, tugging it like string to bait me. I don't see the hook but I can certainly feel it when it comes to impale me. I won't answer her. I won't answer her. I'll go back to the apartment and she can fuck off. I'll be allone with the work and the smoke signals. I'm alone.
Everyone knows that memory is like a book you can read and my book is House of Leaves, that's where I have all my notes but even more than that, if I lose the book I lose all my memories of it when they start to vanish again like the one on that fire night, unless I was asleep, they'll vanish because the stolen book's full of ink, and memory's always refilling we are people and we have minds because it's always rewriting and in remembering memories of remembering we keep our minds intact as consistent forms and if I lose it the ink still wet is gonna seep off like drops of tears and all that ink is gonna slither off and I'll lose it all, I'll lose my notes on the book and my understanding of it which is just another word for my memory what I am what I can't lose and I can't lose it I don't want to lose it
