That night after I had met Owen, I walked across campus to my halls, re-hashing the events of the evening. My friends had gone on ahead, appropriately tipsy for a Friday night, and I trailed behind, listening to the sounds of their boisterous voices bouncing off the cobbles. The February forecast had warned of snow and I was looking upwards for it, but it seemed a clear night. The glass in the windows of the buildings seemed icier, sharper, and the still spaces left by the irregular rise and fall of the wind magnified small noises into repeating echoes. I walked for a while in this way, looking up at where the tops of the buildings touched the sky like long grey canines sinking into something dark and fleshy. There was a sound coming towards me from ahead, which I thought had been one of my friends banging his keys on the railings, but it dawned on me that I had been alone for quite some time and the sound had remained. It was a keening metallic clang, irregular with the wind. I followed it to the side of King’s Porter’s Lodge, at which point I spied in the darkness a climbing carabiner attached to part of the drainpiping. It was easy enough for me to shimmy up and unclip it – thanks to my father, I had plenty of climbing and mountaineering experience - but just as I had managed to undo the screw lock and unhook it with one hand, I must have triggered off a motion-detecting light, because the backs of my eyeballs were suddenly seared with white and pink. Rigid with shock, I fell right off the side of the building. I was lucky the fall was only five feet or so. My legs took most of the impact, and I fell backwards, jarring my tailbone on the stone paving. I was up again fast after that, and shot off like a rabbit back to my building, my heart going like a juggernaut about to charge out of my chest. It wasn’t until ten minutes after I got up to my dark bedroom and collapsed getting my breath back before I turned on my desk lamp; I had a good look at my spoil, whereupon I realised, to my complete bafflement, that my own initials - E. P. - were scratched into the surface of the metal.
W. T. Beauville, Untitled
