He talked about Italy, an affected moistness in his voice, and Michelangelo could have sculpted his golden curls with a scrupulous chisel. His hands danced, ignorant of the flicker of his rings, reluctant to distance themselves from his frail torso, from the backdrop of an oversized, arty jumper accenting bird shoulders. The statuesque and the theatrical camouflaged the jittery eyes behind small round glasses, the way they camouflaged a middle-class background. On most, the illusion of this updated version of the dark academia aesthetics (The Secret History for Gen Z) worked wonders, easing the pressure in his orbits. Yet, he knew his mirage would flicker the moment they would learn his parents had named him Donald. He never corrected people generously calling him Don, even though he had chosen the more active, softer Do for himself; his smile only dug his Snoopy face deeper. And so, the curation of the self never stopped.
Among the immutable parade of bold prints in primary colors, dainty jewels stayed afloat long enough to receive the compliments of his close friends, a string of extraverted girls, homely enough to make him stand out in their group, upper-class enough to open him perspectives. To my knowledge, he only rubbed shoulders with other boys during class time, concealing as best as he could the ooze of his feeling of inferiority behind a raised chin, while his brand sneakers quivered against the leg of his chair.
He always took care to leave several seats between Inigo and him, as if by fear of being amalgamated with the cohort’s other gay student, phagocytosed by his heliacal aura. I had witnessed them leaving Inigo’s student room on Freshers’ Week, but apart from Mary and her acute gossip-radar, nobody could suspect an indiscretion between the two, all traces of intimacy having evaporated on the sun prince’s side. A knowing ear could locate a yearning in Do’s tone when he teased Inigo about his Grindr army being helpless to save him, or when he slurred a retort to his classmate professing getting railed by Jacob Elordi as his life goal. Only the arrival of a second Donald quelled this heart soreness.
The new student had deigned to join us on second year after a European Grand Tour in the style of the eighteenth century. The whole of his essence had been relegated to his jawline, one a Renaissance sculptor would not even have been able to fathom, its thickness, its squareness fully belonging to our century of SUVs and cosmetic surgeon’s hammers. It looked so faux on his juvenile features, they crumbled under its weight in a permanent oral gaping. And yet, nothing, not even a fresh breath of air could pierce through the density of the second Donald. He talked about Paris as if it was a car show, and displayed a cluelessness about the world that matched a bachelor pad in Fitzrovia. His Saville Row suit appeared to have been sewn directly on his runt frame. Both his academic efforts (or lack thereof) and aloof manners disclosed how well adjusted he was to a world built for men just like him.
Out of intellectual exasperation and class resentment, I had nicknamed him Don’t, and I believed Do would follow in my footsteps. To my greatest displeasure, my friend did not. He instead joined the choir of girls in trance, overcame with the sway of the Alpha chin and the gilded void. A brain or a high social status served as the only antidotes. Queen Mary did not bow to Don’t, he bowed to her. She would casually drop the existence of a boyfriend in the conversation, but tolerated, if not encouraged, his submissive flirting in a meticulously scripted powerplay. In her shadow, Do watched. Waited.
I have no idea if he discovered something about himself while studying his homonym. Or perhaps he did not digest that encounter with a career counsellor who asked him where he saw himself in thirty years: he “needed to know”, if we wished to “thrive”. The wear and tear of university translated differently depending on people. Some were regressing, infantilizing themselves to put off the moment of facing responsibilities, building forts of plushies and kawaii accessories, or decrypting the mood of the city’s various bouncers as if it was their full-time job. Others let the august walls of the library close in on them, press their juice, leaving only pulp on the pages of their written assignments, in an acidic smell of compulsion that lingered long after graduation. During his final year, Do enrolled in Dashcombe U’s most prestigious societies: architecture, entrepreneurship, law, etc. He crafted an obsequious tone of voice and grin, taking people’s hands in both of his, bowing slightly towards them in the manner of a pontiff, suddenly profoundly invested in their unique soul. The cohort, the lecturers, our assigned librarian Erichto, and even Elijah, the guy with the skeleton hoodie who worked part-time at the cafeteria learnt how he intended to climb the ladder in the LGBTQ+ activist sector: he parroted it as if rehearsing in front of his mirror. During Orville Mansfield’s lecture on the New Street Act of 1813, Becky stared at him, muttering something about manifesting, before diving back into Zara’s online shop.
Once, I noticed his presence at the Uni’s gym. He took off a Banksy tee, revealing a draft of bulk peeking out from under a tank top. Grabbing dumbbells the circumference of a LP record, he cast a neurotic glance to his reflection in the mirror before laying on a bench, arched thighs, his knuckles blanching on the handles, heads pressed on his chest in an imitation of amychesis where he would be the one clawed to blood, grunting viscerally before dropping the free weights on the rubber ground, eyes glazed by a ghost of never-was about which I was unable to decide whether it was solar or looksmaxxing.
Throughout Michaelmas term, Orville’s inscrutable lecturer eyes had lingered on the brand-new can-Do attitude, and, before the Christmas break, he pulled out of his hat an off-topic guest speaker. The genial stranger scanned the gaggle of bored students, scratched his goatee while glancing at Mansfield, before morphing into the influential ally president of an association promoting LGBTQ+ history, selling his project of an interpretive exhibition for Pride month to Do, and to Do only. At the end of the talk, the student’s hands attempted to cover the speaker’s, but this one beat him to it, swallowing them whole into ravenous palms.
“I’ve heard promising things about you, my guy. Call me Percy, and come work with me as a part-time assistant.”
The young man giggled, and the gold of his glasses stood out against his crimson cheeks. His voice increased an octave as he accepted, and he looked around. Unfortunately, most of the class had already disbanded, with both Inigo and Don’t considering Orville’s course as optional.
Hilary term started. The cat bot delivering our orders at the cafeteria no longer worked (again), and my classmate Blake fidgeted at the nearby table with all his masculine Balkan energy, when Do charged straight at him, nearly knocking over Elijah who was bringing our hot dogs and wedges.
“The art gallerist, Florence, told me you were an artist,” he blurted out, breathless.
Casting a sarcastic bad-boy look in my direction, Blake sing-songed “Nice to see ya too, Donald.”
This initial salvo did not knock our classmate off his trajectory. “See, I have to hire young artists and performers for my job. I’m looking for rising talents who would pay tribute to major events in LGBTQ+ history…”
Elijah slammed the first plate on the table, and with amused fingers, the artist retrieved a salted piece of potato, dipped it in ketchup, and stared at the assistant with a snide grin.
“I vote Tory, Duck.”
He waited for Do’s facial muscles to recover before turning toward the cafeteria’s worker, who was serving my order. “Why don’t you ask Lij instead? He’s like a poet or somethin’, and right up your back alley…”
Blake drew an annoyed look from the waiter: his macho-man act had no effect on him. When he was not taking orders from the brats at Dashcombe U, Elijah worked at a board game café, acting as an informal chaperone when I brought my first dates there. He had developed a low tolerance for assholes from these experiences, and he gave my neighbors the finger before going back behind his counter.
Rather than vanishing into the vexation of the rejections, Do evolved into a frantic, mechanical behaviour, scouting art Freshers on campus with an impassioned speech, disappearing from field trips after an exchange of evocative glances with a handsome stranger, or endlessly swiping on dating apps during Walter’s class on human sacrifices in Maya art. I was walking past Percy’s offices on my way to work, at least, if the plaque on the façade of the Victorian terraced house was to be believed, as the philanthropist appeared to enjoy meeting his new talents outside on the sidewalk, appraising racehorses, fair bulls, tongue languidly licking his upper lip, ignoring the portfolios and the scrolling of photos and videos on the screens. Meanwhile, the ornated hands of Do rested on the back of their necks, divorced from his torso, and devoted to their parasympathetic nervous system up until Percy invited them in, Do returning again and again to the city.
I recognized some of these young men on the missing posters that covered the noticeboards of my supermarket and of the Student Union. Their disquieting bloom had taken on the acrid taste of the commonplace at Dashcombe, yet I could not manage to purge their toxin from my liver. I had a tacit friendship pact with Do; it felt like a betrayal to talk to someone about whatever was going on. Taking advantage of an oral presentation, I decided to confront the assistant.
“You look like a successful recruiter,” I murmured, leaning in behind him while Mary deciphered the text Susan had written for her.
He did not turn his head, but I caught a queasy movement of his eyes on the side.
“Too bad the twinks you bring to Percy go AWOL soon after.” I let my threatening tone linger between us, waiting for goosebumps, a defensive recoil, an accelerated pulse. I reaped none of that. Do kept staring at the PowerPoint slides, his stouter shoulders straining a banal white shirt. After a while, his cheeks twitched, not a smile, not a deglutition, and he just murmured to no one in particular, “Percy says I have a great career ahead of me.”
His boss waited for him after class, leaning against his Jaguar in the campus entrance. Do quickened his pace to meet him, exuberant to the gums, like a repressed nausea. He stopped dead upon failing to capture his attention, and followed his concupiscent glance. Inigo leaned on a bench, under the caress of the golden hour. A fragile forget-me-not tucked into his ephebic mane, he distributed cannabidiolic smiles to passerbys. Percy’s voice reached my ears.
“He would be perfect.” A pause. “For the Alexander the Great part of the show.”
Like an onion in a deep fryer, the layers of aloofness and glibness peeled away from Do’s vulnerable heart, and a spasm of pure dread seized him.
“That’s… That’s a terrible idea… t-trust me. I know the guy you truly need… His name is… Donald too.”
They got into the car, and I watched them disappear into the traffic, my muscles twitching so violently I feared I would collapse on the sidewalk.
The malaise had not passed when I lay down on my bed next to Hawksmoor. Petting mindlessly his silky white fur, I kept replaying the scenes of the past week, and the one I assisted earlier in my mind. Vigorously head-butting me, the cat purred like a motor, licking my face until I looked at him. His irises flickered like sparklers in the dark room, which wove itself with the material dreams are made of. A lamp lit up, and, raising myself onto my elbows, I discovered Percy’s office.
The predator invited Don’t in, and an ashen Do slipped into the background like an unexpected shadow in a Caravaggio. The illuminated pair sat on a shabby couch, Percy’s fingers molding the shoulder of the privileged young man. The assistant let himself drop into a chair behind a desk devoid of documents or computers in the lucifuge part of the scene.
No dialogue vibrated against my eardrums, only a crackle of cartilage as Percy’s mouth opened, sweeping away his goatee so his ruddy skin could accommodate the relief of an expanding skull. His bald spot stretched upwards, causing his long greasy hair to tumble down a swollen nape. His eyeballs rotated, as the rest of his upper face was carrying out a mitosis, creating new visages, none more appetizing than the original one, intercalated with oversized canines. The cranial expansion stabilized, and vulvar swellings opened in the place once occupied by the ears, revealing dark blue corneas, and bristling with binary code eyelashes. A moss-colored and perfumed mucus dripped from beneath the techno-creature’s chin, where its actual maw concealed itself, its nail-like dentition chattering with impatience. The arm which rested on Don’t shoulders had turned reptilian, even though the fool stayed oblivious to the metamorphosis occurring next to him. His blissful expression never left him, even as greenish saliva trickled down his face, and fangs clamped shut on his straw-blond hair.
I observed my friend Do lose his muscular mass, shrinking in the chair, pale shape in the chiaroscuro, his pupils like pinheads, dark circles exposing cheekbones like unburied dead: without hope of eternal rest. Do watched right to the end the slow ingestion of Don’t by the boa-esque entity, until his jawline became nothing more than a digested memory.
I woke up disoriented, in a pool of icy, sirupy sweat, Hawksmoor conscientiously running its paw behind its ear: it was going to rain. Indeed, long sobs opacified the classroom windows a few hours later.
“We haven’t seen much of the second Donald lately,” Susan mused with a longing sigh.
“Pretty sure this guy is a NPC,” Becky preached, while swallowing her last Skittles Squishy Cloudz.
A nervous laughter extricated itself from my chest. Queen Mary wriggled on her chair like a sulky child.
“I was planning to introduce him to Father to show him I was building a good network...”
Her childish whimper rang strangely through the room, and her court had the grace to ignore it. I went to sit within Do’s field of vision. He could not see me. In the haze inside his eyes, a fragile lunar glow barely illuminated a miniature version of himself climbing a ladder. Yet the ladder did not go up. Nothing ever went up it, in this purgatory so far from Italy.
This story was originally meant to appear at the beginning of Dewayne Hollow’s collection, but the vibe felt too similar to Satori’s (a much stronger piece). So, I set it aside, even though I liked certain aspects of it. I figured that, since it has no reference to other pieces and thus functions almost like a standalone story, you might still enjoy it and feel inspired to explore this “horror academia” universe.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
In decades of writing I have never even thought to use other tools to help me writing than an English (yeah I’m an English second-language writer) and synonym dictionary. If some humans out there felt the need to use a machine to produce what they call their writing to ease some insecurities, that was their problem until they made it everybody’s problem with witch-hunting weaponized by greedy platforms. So I won’t willingly feed my human writing to AI to prove some petty and jealous people that I, indeed, worked my ass off to write my texts by myself. And if you still feel the need to be a petty and jealous individual and scan my text with that self-own of a tool, here’s what you are allowing it to swallow:
You had me at "phagocytosed".
The writing and story is great, as usual. And I smiled hugely at the notebook pics--love it!