Raiders of the Forgotten Time Capsule
By: John E. Dippshitte
In retrospect, the $20 was not worth the madness of the whole affair. But as they say, $20 is $20, and a story is a story. My editors demanded another magnum opus of me, or I would be fired from this distinguished rag. Needless to say, upon receiving this Instagram DM, I jumped on the lead like a senior jumps on a winter break GO trip application:
DO YOU WANT TO EXPOSE TRUTH ABOUT SU TIME CAPSULE? IF YOU WRITE ABOUT IT, MY DAD WILL PAY YOU.
This message came from a now deceased student who I will refer to as the Susky Republican. After coordinating through further messages and investigating by way of Facebook during Dr. Roth’s bothersome lecture, I found out what was really motivating the duo. The Susky Republican’s father, also recently deceased, was an alumnus of SU in the 80s. The Alumnus (as he will be referred to from here on) caught a bad fever. The fever of ignorance and nostalgia. The brain rot of American conservatism, to be more precise. It was so terminal that the Alumnus thought that the old university mascot had been secretly locked away in the Natural Science Center’s time capsule.
At the time, I l-m-a-o’d. Loudly, much to Dr. Roth’s displeasure. I would get to watch those idiots vandalize the school and possibly be arrested, all the while getting a story out of it? It was no wonder that I followed through. Knowing what I know now… but how could I have known?
I met them at the witching hour at the science building. The Susky Republican was short, and wore a stupid trench coat and a stupid hat and a stupid bolo tie with an elephant trapped in the central gem. The Alumnus was bald but bearded, and wore musty tight-fitting university merchandise. He didn’t sport the riverhawk–instead, his attire bore another symbol that I didn’t recognize. Now it is seared into my memory. The Crusader.
The Alumnus shook my hand without permission, slipping me $20. “Put this toward your tuition, kid.”
I wiped the same hand along my jacket’s side, put on a smile, thanking him.
The duo, with a couple of Walmart pickaxes, got to work. It didn’t take long–the structure of the building might as well have been paper. The Susky Republican dove into the hole like a child into a coal mine, resurfacing with a lockbox. The Alumnus whipped out a colt .45, blasting the box and nearly grazing his son without hesitation.
The box popped open of its own accord, and a shining mass shrieked out of it. The Alumnus fell to his knees and yelled, “Look! My mascot! My SU! The Crusader!”
The old mascot rose out of the light, a monument of flame. It looked at the Alumnus. Flames burst out of his eyes and mouth, leaving him to crumple into a skin-suit heap after they died out. The mascot turned its gaze to the son. The spirit’s voice, echoes of ash, proclaimed, “BOLO TIES ARE GAY.”
The Susky Republican crumpled like a piece of paper, but instead of a ball he became nothingness.
I couldn’t move. I could only bask in the roaring phantom’s furnace presence. I yelped as it pointed to me with a sword. It said, “YOU WILL SUFFER A MISERY GREATER THAN THESE FOOLS. YOU WILL LIVE, AND STAY HERE ALL YOUR YEARS, AS I WAS ONCE CONDEMNED.”
“But what about you? Where will you go now?”
“THE FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE, TO CASH IN ON MY BRAND AND THE BOOMER ALUMNI. I AM FINALLY FREE OF THIS SHITHOLE. PEACE OUT.”
And so the phantom galloped down the street, flickering off into the night. The next day, I found the capsule intact. But sometimes I have nightmares of being behind that wall myself.
