Vengeance is Repaid: The Sequel to the Blood on the Bowtie Incident


Kyle Burkett



So Saturday we had the big River Cleanup. The concept is this: a bunch of people get free rafting on the river if they pick up some trash along the way, followed by a picnic and door prizes. Traditionally the River Cleanup is an excellent time to vent grievances and otherwise renew the rivalry between the English Club and the Creative Writers’ Guild. This usually takes the form of us shouting poetry between the rafts. The group who can shout the most water-related poetry is proclaimed the winner, always begrudgingly. Since we don’t have an impartial judge, it’s difficult to quantify the poetry, but somehow there’s never a tie.

Anyway, this year didn’t start off any different from other years. Dr. Gastle brought The Rime of the Ancient Mariner on laminated paper and duct taped it to the bottom of his raft to ensure an English Club victory. Brittany brought the Atlantis sections from The Flowering of the Rod by H. D. I decided to bring a performance piece, but in the end I opted against using it for fear of falling out of the raft. I don’t really like getting all wet.

So we were getting close to the end of the trip. Gastle was still in the middle of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He illustrated the section breaks by falling out of his raft and splashing around for a few minutes. We were such poor river goers that we fell out without any logical timing anyway. Well, about when Gastle’s voice was getting tired from so much reading, the ancient mariner was feeling love for the thousand thousand slimy things crawling on the surface of the ocean, and time slowed down to a stop. Gastle was stopped mid-caesura. All the boats had stopped on the river, and everything was still, except for the boat ahead of me. I watched Dr. Railsback shout “Vengeance is mine!” while beating Shorty’s head against a rock. When the kid passed out, Dr. Railsback shoved him into the trash bag. Then time resumed, and the ancient mariner was saved by the angels of the dead crew. Shorty wasn’t quite so lucky. Once we got on land, his bag got dumped in the huge pile with the rest of the garbage.

During the picnic, I asked one of the organizers what they did with the trash we picked up. He said that most of it went to the landfill in Highlands. Apparently, their landfill is almost ready to be covered over and made into a golf course. I hoped that Shorty would be able to wake up and find his way out of the trash bag before making it to Highlands. It would be hard to hitch a ride back to campus from that far away. Unfortunately, such was not the case. It was harder than it is for most people because Shorty doesn’t have a guardian angel. Getting beheaded kind of puts a damper on your ability to receive celestial intervention for your safety. So he didn’t wake up until after the trash collectors threw his bag into the landfill.

Anyway, I saw Shorty wandering on to campus on my way to class a few days later. He looked and smelled awful. That gash on his head would need some medical attention. He looked at me with this crazed look in his eyes and held up his thumb and forefinger half and inch apart. “I was this close to being buried alive!” he said. Then he wandered off. I’ve heard he hasn’t come out of his house since the incident. I tried to go by and see if he was okay, but Dave answered the door and told me Shorty was still on the floor in the bathroom, rocking himself in the fetal position. I’ll just leave it at that. When he’s ready, he’ll snap out of it on his own.



back to the darkness