It was a typical autumn morning.  The sky was a clear blue, the air was cold and the old windows were bathed in condensation around Marina’s draughty flat.  She locked the front door behind her and headed to her lecture in the Roger Stevens building on campus. She headed through the communal garden where shrubs and plants lay strewn about from the strong winds of the night before.  It was still early and her lecture wasn’t due to start for a good hour, so Marina sat on a bench overlooking the ornamental pond and ate her banana.  She stared into the distance, paying no attention to her surroundings, lost in her thoughts of the night before.  A sudden raucous quack from a nearby duck uncomfortably snapped her out of her stupor.  It was frantically attempting to mount one of the females, but its manner was unusual, unlike anything Marina had seen on any wildlife programme.  It seemed deranged and hell-bent.  Out of control.  Marina felt a dizziness overcome her once again.  The ground spun around in circles beneath her and she felt sick.  She held onto the bench and tried to slow down her breathing.  Eventually her panic subsided and her mind cleared.  She looked across at the duck that seemed to have triggered this event.  It was rambunctiously mating with a female.  Its eyes were pearl black and glazed over like two onyx marbles and seemed to be staring directly at her.  As soon as it had done its deed it took flight, its wings beating frantically giving it great speed.  It flew toward the lecture theatre and slammed forcefully into one of the glass window panes of the café on the ground floor.  The sound of its cracking neck vibrated around the pond as a small puff of feathers flew into the air.  Marina watched unemotionally as the duck, with its broken neck at right angles to its body plopped to the floor leaving a bloody smear on the large window pane. She got up, threw her banana skin into the bin and headed to her lecture.

 

Climbing the maze of stairways Marina arrived at the lecture room, entered, and took a seat next to her class mate Jasmine. They were both from Norwich and had got talking at a freshers party and bonded through the commonality in their home-town. Jasmine beamed warmly at Marina but she could only manage a brief smile in response.  Before long the lecture started and after just a short while the boring drawl of the professor’s voice became a constant annoyance.  Marina became uncomfortable sitting wedged in shoulder to shoulder with her classmates with her legs occasionally banging against the wooden surface in front of her.  Her lower back began to tingle before a deep throbbing pain emerged just above her bum cheeks.  At the same time the tips of her fingers became warm and inflamed.  The pressure in them built until it felt as though the tips were engorged with blood and ready to burst open.  She shuffled in her chair and stuffed her hands under her legs and stretched out her fingers.  As she grit her teeth and tried to conceal the pain, black razor sharp pointed tips sprouted from her fingertips and pierced the fabric of the seat. Marina briefly yelped in pain. The whole of the class turned toward her.

 

“Is there a problem Miss Woodford?” enquired the professor in an accusatory tone.

 

Marina looked around as all the eyes in the room focused on her. At first she felt embarrassed but that quickly turned to anger which seemed to dim the pain she was still experiencing.

 

“No. No problem at all,” she replied in a monotone voice while locking her gaze onto that of her teachers.

 

The professor continued his lecture whilst Marina scraped her newly emerged bladed finger-tips against the wooden core of her seat below the fabric covering. The professor had been slowly pacing from side to side during his presentation but now he suddenly stopped. His face turned pale and he bent over slightly as though about to throw up. But then to the amazement of all in the room his trousers bulged outwards slightly at the front and back. After a low squelchy gurgling sound a stream of shit, piss and blood gushed out of the professor's trouser leg bottoms and pooled around his shiny black shoes accompanied by a foul smell of sewage. Most of the audience of students recoiled in horror while some stared in disbelief or even laughed. As the stream of effluent subsided the professor started to suffer from some kind of fit with his hips jerking back and forth. On around the tenth jerk he let out a painful wail and a deluge of his spunk squirted out inside his underpants, so much so that it immediately saturated the groin region of his trousers and dripped down his legs onto the floor. The professor clutched himself at the groin and backside and ran from the room. The theatre buzzed with students' voices recounting in amazement what they'd just witnessed. The commotion disturbed Marina whose pain had once again subsided and whose finger-tips had miraculously returned to normal.

 

“Can we get out of here please?” she pleaded of Jasmine.

 

“Yeh, of course.”

 

They both got out of their seats, pushed their way through the throng of excited students and headed through the exit.