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The skunk lived. How heroic was it to spare him? As he put the skunk’s home behind him, he could not shed the nagging thought that this was not over. May have been his imagination, but he rarely spared people. For good reason, considering what he had seen. Once, it ended poorly. In recent memory, it ended in mystery. He was still not certain what Josh did with John Doe. The state of unknown was hardest. Unknowns often turned into problems. The more he thought about his decision, the more it unsettled him. He could not go back on his decision. Heroes should not second guess themselves. Indecisiveness led to more victims. It was time to go. He wandered through the side streets on his way out of town. It was time to move on and let things cool down in Oak Pointe. The police did not do a very good job at preventing villainy, but they knew how to locate dead bodies and try to find those responsible. The dull, abiding anger

One last stitch and done. The tear in the green dress fully mended with matching thread. One would have to look closely to even know it had been torn. More careful work had never been done. At least, not by David. He removed the rest of the thread from the needle and carefully placed it back in his sewing kit, then rewound the thread around the bobbin. He handed the dress to Sasha. Sasha took the dress and held it before her. It was one of her favorites, but not her only outfit, as she was wearing a nearly identical dress in a lighter shade of green. David liked green on her. An anthro dog with off-white fur the color of hazy dishwater and black splotches; a whippet to be precise. She was tall for a woman, but quite a bit shorter than David. She ran the tavern in Digbury and had the build of a fit tavern owner; not a typical waif like most whippets, but not fat like someone with access to lots of good food. She gave the dress a look with her

Liz was working late these days. She tracked the patients’ dietary intake throughout the day, so she arrived a few hours after breakfast and stayed a few hours after supper. It allowed her to enter all the day’s data before she went home, so she could look at it fresh the next morning. Part of a research project she hoped would improve patient nutrition. A project she was very dedicated to. So, Dion knew she would still be at work. He raced to St. Mary’s Hospital, breaking the speed limit the entire way. The only thought on his mind was getting to her before Myles. Had he ever been this scared before? Hard to tell. His thoughts were not on himself, but her. Any emotions were just background noise. As he walked through the front doors, he tried to call her. Voicemail picked up after four rings. He entered the stairwell and called again, no answer. Dion stopped ascending the stairwell and tried to call again. Again, no answer.

Roughly one hour ago, the last student turned in his Intro to Chemistry 1 final exam. Dion added it to the stack of papers about 800 sheets high. A mighty task for anyone else, but he preferred it to electronic tests. He was thankful it was still acceptable to give tests on paper, even in a computer dependent age. Just him and his red pen, sitting at a desk, marking tests. Probably his favorite part of the job. No teaching a throng of students. No office hours answering the same question he had been asked a dozen times or students getting angry at him for not accepting their wrong answers. The volume of tests was rough, though. Made him miss the small class sizes of community college. Half way through the pile, he just finished scoring the multiple-choice section of Daryl Phillips’s exam (he only got half correct) and was mostly through his drawn out, rambling journey through a long form stoichiometry problem when the lights over

Deadlines cared little for moral panic. Before Dion could get used to worrying about it, the perfume was due. In front of Dr. Gilbert’s office once again. Same as every month, he stared at the door, waiting to gather enough confidence to knock. Before, he never wanted to barge in. He knew what went on in there. Except this time, he was empty handed. No perfume to serve as an offering to appease the monster. This should have been where he felt intense dread churning throughout his entire body like a seasick sea. Instead, he felt calm. Maybe not quite calm, but… steadfast? He knew what he had to do with no reservations. Dr. Gilbert did not deserve a knock. Well, maybe a quick one, but he was not waiting to be invited in. Get this over with. Dion delivered three raps on the door, grasped the knob, and swung it open. He invited himself in, pushing it shut behind him. Not slamming it, though. That would be a little too rude.

After being leaned on heavily for months, Dr. Gilbert finally got Dion to go to one of his staff mixers. The skunk finally ran out of excuses and did not want to know what would happen if he said no again. Besides, this one did not seem so unbearable. A gathering of the heads of various departments and their favorite professors working under them. And, perhaps, favorite grad students with benefits. There were maybe a couple dozen people and the atmosphere was less formal. Maybe a little too informal? The conversations were raunchier than Dion liked. Prior perceptions indicated professors were above telling blue jokes and expounding upon their various sexual conquests, but a lot of his perceptions about the purity of academia shattered over the past year. It was nothing like academia old timers in St. Ambrose spoke of. He wondered if it was always this bad under the surface or changed for the worse recently. He took his place

Two months passed faster than they seemed. They always did. Dion kept his end of the bargain. He made more perfume for Dr. Gilbert, one bottle per month. There was no way he went through an entire bottle each month. He had to be stockpiling it. At least, Dion hoped so. It meant a few more late nights at work. Easy enough to explain. He was doing research. Any extra work activities to advance one’s career involved a suitable time commitment. The extra money was a little harder to explain. $5000 was larger than his paycheck and a monthly bonus seemed excessive. As they shared finances, keeping it from Liz was impossible. He could explain it away well enough. Money for materials and the extra work he was putting in. She trusted him enough to believe it. He disliked abusing Liz’s trust like that, but he was getting used to it. He was getting used to a lot these days. Besides, it was not a complete lie. He put in a fifty-hour

Dion did not go directly home after the wholly unpleasant encounter with Samantha. He made a beeline to his office. A cramped, windowless thing in the basement of the Chemistry Building. Had enough room for a desk which was either 50 or 150 years old if you went by the style or number of scratches, a bookshelf, and a computer Dion used maybe twice per week. Enough room for a student to visit, but he rarely had visitors during his office hours. Even though he had hundreds of students in his lectures, they had other things to do than learn chemistry. Test scores were abysmal. He hated it here. Hated his office. Hated Samantha. Hated it all even more than before. But, he could not go home. Dumping this all on Liz would be unfair. Needed to process it. Figure out how to tell her what happened. Could he? Maybe not. It would terrify her and she would not approve of what he was asked to do. She was a fighter and would encourage him to fight back.

Dion never had cause to visit a history professor’s office. While he had to take humanities courses as an undergraduate, they were nothing but rote memorization and regurgitating facts for exams. An easy ‘A’, as one would call it. No real reason to avail himself to the professor’s office hours if he had no questions. None aside from socializing or networking for a career in… whatever history majors did after graduation. Neither of those appealed to him, so he kept well away. He expected a lot of historical artifacts, books, dust, and leather furniture. Dr. Gilbert had half of those. Maybe one and a half. The leather furniture was there, but only one bookshelf. Even that was not stuffed with books, as one shelf was full of bottled water. No historical posters or even reproductions on the wall, save for one. This was a framed reproduction of a newspaper article announcing the emancipation proclamation. The rest of the wall was

Dion looked himself over, standing before Liz. The new suit fit him like a new suit bought off the rack at a department store on short notice. His other suit still fit, but it, like his other suits before, grew too tight around the middle. He was starting to seriously consider cutting back on the sweets. Partly because of that and partly because Liz strongly hinted at it whenever he reached for his nightly dessert. Tonight, however, was not the night for it. The first semester was over and the professors from the diverse departments were invited to a campus-wide mixer. This meant there would be a lot of calorically dense finger foods, pastries, and rich drinks. All sweet or salty or heavy. Delicious, but diet busting. A Crawford tradition, this meant attendance was mandatory. Not officially, but it may as well have been. Missing it meant ostracization. Normally, Dion would not mind. However, he wanted to make a good impression to get his foot in the door with the