The ends of her fingers numb, Kendra crept behind Hilary on the short but arduous trek to the dining hall.\u00a0 Each time she blinked, the puffy form of the stuffed octopus loomed before her, its mouth twisted into a coy smile.\u00a0 Its elliptical eyes taunted her, their innocent demeanor crumbling as its sinister soul festered within.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Soul?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>She shook her head to clear the cobwebs.\u00a0 This was a stuffed octopus; Franklin the freshman cymbal was trolling her.\u00a0 That had to be it.\u00a0 Stuffed octopi couldn’t possibly–.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the dining hall, she downed more coffee than usual.\u00a0 She brushed Hilary’s concerned query, insisted she was caffeine- and sleep-deprived.\u00a0 There was nothing to worry about; Franklin was trolling her; it was her imagination–.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Something soft tickled the nape of her neck.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The volume of Kendra’s scream could have drowned out a jet engine.\u00a0 While no glass shatter, several patrons did drop their plastic cups, and one dude was unfortunate enough to spill chai down the front of his shirt.\u00a0 Kendra leapt to her feet and batted her shoulders to brush the wretched thing off her, but there was nothing there.\u00a0 She glanced wildly around her, impervious to the perplexed gazes of her fellow students, but there was no sign of the octopus–not on the chair, the floor, or in the clutches of a certain Franklin F. Franklin, with whom she was unfortunate enough to have in two of her classes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The thing that had tickled her neck was Kendra’s own hair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Her face the shade of the zero in the center of The Horseshoe, Kendra returned to her seat.\u00a0 “It’s alright, guys,” she managed with a nervous laugh.\u00a0 “I just got startled, is all.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With that, the onlookers returned to whatever enticed them on their cell phones, save for the guy who had spilled chai on his shirt.\u00a0 He was presently aiding a dining hall worker in cleaning up the mess and letting loose a poetic string of curses that would have put Shakespeare to shame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Kendra, are you sure you’re okay?”\u00a0 Frowning, Hilary bit into the dining hall French toast, which didn’t have a very French feel to it once one added syrup, but no matter.\u00a0 “That was–.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I thought it was\u00a0him.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Kendra couldn’t bring herself to say the word octopus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>For some reason, she thought of the octopus as being male, primarily because the person she associated with stuffed reversible octopi was male.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “You…thought it was your stuffed octopus.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “He’s not\u00a0my–<\/em>my plushie!\u00a0 It’s alive, Hilary!\u00a0 IT’S EVIL!”\u00a0 This earned her a few more looks from the patrons whose phone screens were not especially interesting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “It’s a stuffed octopus, Kendra.\u00a0 It can’t be alive.\u00a0 Look, I’m stressed about school, too, but this–you need to relax, sis.\u00a0 I can give you tips to help you destress–”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I don’t\u00a0need\u00a0<\/em>to destress!\u00a0 I need to get to the bottom of this–this\u00a0thing!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Because whatever this is might very well possess me.”\u00a0 Steeling herself, Kendra stood and slung her backpack over her shoulder.\u00a0 “I’ll see you later, Hilary.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Wait, what about your brekkie?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kendra hesitated and studied her un-French toast–English toast?–and gingerly resumed her seat at the crusty dining table.\u00a0 “After breakfast,” she amended, setting her pack down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To Be Continued…………………………………………………………………………..<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ends of her fingers numb, Kendra crept behind Hilary on the short but arduous trek to the dining hall.\u00a0 Each time she blinked, the puffy form of the stuffed octopus loomed before her, its mouth twisted into a coy smile.\u00a0 Its elliptical eyes taunted her, their innocent demeanor crumbling as its sinister soul festered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2243,"featured_media":17619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1221,1257,1772,1797,1794,1752,1072,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18958"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19032,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958\/revisions\/19032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}