#dandelionwhiner

Let me introduce you to a little place called Wittenberg University, a friendly liberal arts school with several respectable secret societies, whose buildings scream into the darkness. • The Shifters hold parades without warning. I think they’re parades, no one knows what else to call them. They show up with paper clips of all sizes stuck to their vests, singing out of tune and off key to each other, walk around part of campus, and then shout a whole lot more when they get to wherever they decide to hold the end-of-parade-ritual. After the ritual, they melt back into the student body. • The Mathies Honors House windows are not to be opened on the South side, or bats will, in fact, fly in. This happened to us two years ago around Christmas; against my friend’s better judgement, we named the little cutie pie “Batrick;” I had my hair in a bun and big gloves, so I elected to coax Batrick out from under the couch and put him in a secure box clearly labelled “caution: live bat,” and both bat and box were gone by the morning, and not even the Honors Program director knew what happened to Batrick or the new batcave I’d made him. • Mathies Honors House is, according to everyone but me, haunted as a doll in a horror movie. Fellow late-night students report strange shadows, footsteps, the coffee maker being used, and all the signs of another person being there without that person actually opening the heavy, noisy door to the outside. Maybe it’s because I’m trans; there’s something about trans folks and ghosts getting on well. Then again, it may have been that I got all my haunting done freshman year: I listened to a lonely and breathtaking song, and my synesthesia gave me visions of a golden city far that brought me to tears as I wrote them. I couldn’t shake the dreams of the beautiful dead city for a month. • For a month in the springtime, migrating crows make Wittenberg their home. Or they used to; we drove them away with air cannons and by making our buildings scream like dying crows, like an eagle’s cry, and like bells when anything got near the crow sensors. We did not invest in aiming the crow sensors well, so they scream at pedestrians, too, especially late at night. We are all used to the screaming and bleating and sounds of bells. • Needless to say, until two years ago when we finally got the crows under control, they pooped on everything and everyone in sight. People left their disgusting umbrellas by the door. Hats were ruined. No one went barefoot for a solid month. Car paint peeled clean off from the acid. Buildings groaned and aged just a little faster. It was a dark time. • Beneath the university, running through most of the college town, is a vast and labyrinthine network of steam tunnels. Conflicting legends abound: They start in the art building, the secret societies meet in them and use them to sneak into any building on campus, they start in the chapel or the Honors Dorm, the secret societies only use them for initiation rituals. The real secret is that they are likely out of OSHA compliance: Filled with bat guano and toxic mold, the last people who explored them had to be hospitalized because they breathed in too many mold spores. After a light snow, a keen observer can see and follow the paths melted by the hot tunnels below. • No One Steps On The Seal Before Graduation. It’s better and considerably safer this way. • If you see Shifters or other secret societies doing strange things, don’t pry, and don’t interfere, and only ask questions to upperclassmen you know and trust. The Shifters don’t use steam tunnels to get everywhere. On graduation, every Shifter donates a single key to something on-campus. They can go anywhere. • The Gnomes or The Wizards - opinions differ on which secret society did this - unlocked the chapel bell-tower, repelled out of the upper air vents down the tower exterior, and cemented mosaic tile onto the marble statues of religious and philosophical figures at the top. •