~Slop~

Chapter 2
Signs

Chapter Description: Jack witnesses some strange occurrences during his first night on campus.

Jack

My parents dropped me off at my new college, and left pretty quick.

Oh, sorry. I’m Jack Arnold, luckiest guy in the world. You see, This college, Slope or slop or whatever it’s called, accepted me. ME! Some context, I’m a terrible student. I applied to all the worst colleges, and they wouldn’t take me. I honestly thought i’d be working at a Macdonalds for the rest of my life, but then this place showed up.

Back to my parents, they seemed a bit... off. A little too excited to be getting rid of me. We’ve definitely had our differences, but they’re still my parents. As much as they bothered me, I always knew I could trust them. And hey, they found me this place. Not bad, mom and dad.\

I guess I should describe the campus. It’s pretty small, sort of secluded in the mountains. It’s a bit weird too, I didn’t see any upperclassmen about, just freshman like me, getting dropped off by their parents. Maybe the upperclassman come in a week or two? I don’t know. And I dont really care.

My dorm is pretty sweet. It’s in something called the High Lofts, which are this group of towers near the front that the freshman stay in. I also saw there were three other residential buildings. One was called the Middle Building, one was the Element building, and one was just called "Infinite". Really strange names, if you ask me.

My room was on the top floor, which is cool. I met my roomate, who I can’t say I really like a whole lot. He’s like... whats that reading word? My Tin Foil? It’s like in Lord of the Rings, Sam is Frodo’s Tin Foil because their like opposites or something.

That’s probably actually not it, but whatever. I’m not school smart, deal with it.

Anyway, my roommate is the opposite of me. First off, he’s a pretty big guy. The first words he said to me were "See that girl across the hall?" I nodded. He replied "I’m gonna bang her."

After that lovely exchange, I found out that his name was Logan. He somehow did worse than me in Highschool. He had actually flunked out. Good job, Logan.

I settled into my dorm as quickly as possible, and then as soon as my stuff was down, I left the room and took a walk around campus. I picked up my class schedule at the front desk. When I looked at the information, though, I was a bit shocked.

[B]Name: Jack Arnold

Age: Undetermined

Haircolor: Brown

Eyes: Hazel

Sex Fe --- [Male]

This wasn’t at all my information. The name was right, but my hair is blonde, not brown. My eyes are green, not hazel. It sort of bothered me that Female was crossed out and Male had to be written in. And Age undetermined? What?

"Excuse me?" I said the the lady at the front desk. "This information is wrong."

The lady looked up quickly and her eyes widened. "Oh no, I am so sorry! That’s not for you. Here, take this." She snatched the pink slip I had and replaced it with the blue one everyone else had. "Sorry, It’s my first day here." she said. Her nametag said ’Wendy’

I smiled uneasily. "Mine too, Wendy." I joked.

I tried to forget about that weird incident and went to dinner. It still bothered me though. Something was very... Off about that info sheet. Something was wrong. I just couldn’t place it at the time.

Meanwhile, I didn’t really know who to sit with, so I got my food and sat alone. It wasn’t too long until a group of big guys came over and started to bother me.

"Get up, this is where we’re sitting." said one of them.

I looked up. "Why can’t you just sit somewhere else?"

"Because we don’t have to." said another one. He picked up my sandwich and shoved it in his mouth. "Leave."

I began to get up when I heard a familiar voice. "Go the fuck away." said Logan. He stood between us.

"Make us---" The kid couldn’t even finish his sentence before Logan had decked him. He backed off, bloody.

We watched as the guy looked back up at Logan. He could take Logan pretty easily, but instead, I saw tears well up in his eyes.

"Teacher! Logan hit me!" He yelled to the whole cafeteria. Nobody came to his rescue though, he just sort of sat there crying on the floor for a few minutes. Then he stood up, and Logan and I burst out laughing. He wet his pants!

He saw what he had done and ran away into the bathroom. His friends kept laughing but decided not to mess with us anymore.

Logan sat down next to me. "You literally made that guy wet his pants!" I said.

"Yea," said Logan. "I’m pretty amazing. I was sure he would’ve murdered my on the spot, but guess I scared him.

"Sort of weird though..." I said. "Maybe something’s in the water, making grown men act like ten year olds."

"Yea," Logan laughed. "Or the food."

We sort of sat quietly for a moment. "What do you think is in these sandwiches anyway?" I said, examining the weird mystery meat inside my bread slices.

"Dunno." said Logan. "I’ve just been calling it Slop."

Logan and I talked for a bit longer, and he turned out not to be such a bad guy. We went back to our dorm after that, since classes would start tomorrow, and I didn’t really want to oversleep my first day. This place really needed to work out for me.

I tried sleeping, but something was bothering me. Something about earlier... with the front desk lady and the information sheet. Something was really strange. I kept thinking and thinking, what I saw that had me so uneased. I contemplated for what seemed like hours.

Until I came up with a solution. I figured it out. I knew what had been so off! so strange! So familiar.

The letter had been in my mother’s handwriting.