#augustinetalks

PART III : ANOTHER YEAR BEGINS 

Almost a year has passed since the night of the bonfire. Time should heal all wounds, yet this one remains a half-stitched scar, splitting open and bleeding fresh for those who have yet to get over the loss. A wound can’t heal if it’s unclean. There is something infecting this one, something malignant lodged deep inside of it. A piece of grit, a splinter. A secret.

The clean slate that the summer promised never came to pass; St. Augustine’s is not the same as it once was. In the dead-end hallways, beneath the stone archways, trapped in the shadows of what was once a holy abbey- sin breeds and guilt festers. Secrets swarm like droning flies. Distrust creeps in like the first whiff of rot. Those who hold knowledge are quiet, simmering with potential– those who don’t are tense, hungry for answers.

Nothing is the same. No one is who they once were. It remains to be seen now, how their story unfolds from here.

idk… what this is either… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

your phone rings. there’s a helicopter on the helipad to pick you up. your seatmate’s phone rings to tell them the same. all your classmates’ phones are ringing to tell them there’s a helicopter to pick them up, even the ones that don’t have helicopters. when you all climb up the helipad, you all find a yacht instead.

the tarn calls. it is always not-quite-frozen, even during the hottest summers and the coldest winters. it is almost like a siren-song. you ask yourself if this was what frederick wells heard in his last moments.

it’s tradition, they say, when you ask why you are being hazed. it’s always been like this and always will be. the smile when they say that is too-wide, their teeth too-white and too many for that mouth. when you parrot always? their laughter sounds like birds shrieking.

your dormitory is in the east wing. you sleep soundly in your first night here. when the senior student gives you a map the following morning, you look down only to realise that there are no wings.

the tarn calls. your roommate meets you at the end of your class to tell you it’s safe for skating now. you tell him to go on ahead and that you need to put down your stuff in your room first. when you get to your dorm, you see your roommate fast asleep. you head back to the lake with your heart pounding in your chest, and you throw a stone across the not-quite-frozen lake. the ice crumbles under the weight and you realise that if you had stepped there, you would have fallen to its icy depths.

you do not know where your professor sleeps at night. you only see them during your classes and only ever in your classes. you do not see them anywhere else. the map doesn’t say if there’s a faculty housing somewhere in the campus.

you’re an international student and so is your roommate. your classes are filled with international students. even the janitor is an international student. you don’t think you’ve ever seen a swiss person.

when your adviser hands you your curriculum, you notice the lack of science classes. when you ask why, he tells you that it’s because there is no science in saint augustine. he is floating as he says this. you are floating as well. there is no science in saint augustine, you tell yourself, almost as a reminder.

there’s a costume party going on in the wine cellar and almost everybody but you were dressed up as monks. you wake up with a hangover and you tell your roommate about yesterday night and ask them why they weren’t there. they frown and tell you that there was no party last night. under your bed, you find a crumpled cowl.

the townspeople look at you. they stare, and they are silent as you walk through town. you stare at them right back and wonder who is the real monster here.

the orchestra is practising. all day and all night, you hear them play that haunting melody. when you complain to a friend of yours about the lack of variety, she tells you that the orchestra hasn’t practiced for a while now.

‘sorry i’m late, i wasn’t going to come’ looks

➢ BESNIER-LIU FAMILY TREE

❝  I will either find a way, or make one. ❞

aesthetic || meet: elizabeth the wallflower

saint augustine;

“Even now I remember those pictures, like pictures in a storybook one loved as a child. Radiant meadows, mountains vaporous in the trembling distance; leaves ankle-deep on a gusty autumn road; bonfires and fog in the valleys; cellos, dark window-panes, snow.”