The cold rain outside the window of the IT department of Hunt Independent School in Cambridge beat its steady rhythm into Arthur's brain.  The computers had all the typical access issues and requests on a Friday evening.  The 5th of April sometimes saw better weather, but not usually.  The only interesting access across the networks, interesting to Arthur, was some kid who was hitting independent roleplaying games forums.  He downloaded a few times, spiking the network with a high speed hit, but then it was done.  The rest of the access was about soccer, girls, cars, some blocked, some allowed.

Arthur smiled, briefly drawn out of his malaise.  He recognized the kid's login.  Most of these kids were spoilt little bastards, but he tended to get along with them.  A few well-judged permissions across the network generally made him fairly popular with the students.  He remembered how it was when he was at school, the teachers barely had a clue about internet security back then, now they employed people like him.  He felt it only fair to give the kids a chance, if the board got their way, they'd block anything more controversial than a LOL cat...  Arthur hated LOL cats.  He was a full and self-confessed geek, but something about those crappy, home-made, poorly spelled posters made him want to open a Korean restaurant specializing in 'Not Dog.'  So, if it wasn't porn - sure way to get fired - he generally okayed the page requests.

No one else sat in the IT department, having retired for the evening, the monitoring schedule that Arthur maintained had planted him there for a week.  The systems were running smoothly however and the security in place was sufficient to keep the morals of the Hunt Independent boys minds at bay for the moment.  He had a server install to accomplish before he left for another school, but it wasn't an emergency.  The room itself was well heated with all the equipment running, outside the room, outside the building, Arthur had colder air to look forward to.

Glancing at the raindrops as they rattled and bled against the old, Victorian, window-panes, Arthur sighed and invented ways to procrastinate.  He glanced at the RP sites the boy was accessing, interested to see what games got teenagers interested these days.  He trawled the game forums and the conspiracy sites - taking note of the new 'supers-sightings.'  In recent months, aliens had become passe, a new craze had taken over for reporting the supposed superhuman feats of certain individuals.  Of course, skeptically minded as he was, Arthur didn't think much of that sort of nonsense, it was just research for a game he had been working on.  Besides, it was another welcome distraction from his current state of affairs.

The student whose log-in was PrecipiNate, surfed pages linked to a website called Story-Games and also of some bloke named ArtExercise.  The downloads came from ArtExercise, a guy in the states who didn't seem to know what he was doing.  At any rate, the conspiracy sites seemed only vaguely more interesting.  The fairly new but most popular of the sites was Ragnarok2013.  The website promised that the Mayans had a new world shift in order rather than its destruction and superpowers were the new world order.  The site admin was SuperNWO in an attempt to be clever.

His week had not been good.  Breaking the drab monotony of his job were the twin black streaks of his ex-girlfriend and his ex-partner to be concerned with.  Shona had stolen his flatmate and his room, Ryan... well he couldn't prove anything...  It had been a year since his former best friend had moved away, now here were rumours of new game developments from some small company in Hicksville USA that sounded suspiciously similar to ideas he'd begun to outline to Ryan some years previously.  Now Julie was calling every couple of hours to ask if he still had her hair dryer, and the council tax still needed to be paid, not to mention his credit card bill, insurance and the looming inevitability of his next M.O.T....

When the text on his screen began to blur before his tired eyes, he rubbed them and yawned.  The glow of the LCD screen in the dark room gave a pale, ghost like cast to his narrow features.  Arthur did not cut an impressive figure.  Though not unattractive, he was scrawny and appeared constantly undernourished.  His ginger hair was unkempt and his clothes were rarely better kept.  Bizarrely, the bewlidered, scruffy look inspired strangely maternal instincts in certain girls, though such relationships consistently ended in disaster for the distracted and disorganized computer graduate.  

Running his hands down his face, as if the entire thing might actually slide off if he tugged hard enough, Arthur decided to call it a day.  After searching about his work-station for his keys and other possessions, he reached forward to turn off his laptop.

The laptop powered down, and Arthur was able to bag it up and was neatly loaded like a pack animal, prepared to make the short jaunt to his vehicle and still get completely soaked in the process.  Taking not more than two steps his hand brushed against his computer bag and the keys flung out of his hand and skidded across the floor.  The normal response filtered out of him, a silent curse, a deep sigh, and a slight shake of the head.  The keys had fallen not far away but it was enough of a nuisance to bend down, completely laden.  An odd smell hit Arthur's nostrils, like hot leather seats baked in the sun.

Still cursing, he put his bag down and shuffled forward on his hands and knees to grab the keys, wrinkling his nose at the strange smell he looked about, trying to define its source.  He wondered if something was burning in the department.

Arthur couldn't see anything that looked like smoke or even seem to identify where the smell was coming from, only that it was present.  Spying the keys and reaching out towards them, Arthur was suddenly astonished to find the keys flip off the ground and right into his hand.  The keys were fastened to his palm like he was a magnet and when he closed his fingers around the jingling ring, the smell disappeared.

Arthur blinked, gaping dumbly at his closed fist, rubbed his reddened, exhausted eyes with his free hand then raised his fist to eye-level, slowly opening it as he did so.  The keys were there, unharmed.  Peering cautiously, he prodded them about his palm.  They seemed normal. 

"Bloody hell."  He exclaimed to the empty classroom.

Deciding that he had obviously suffered some sort of epileptic fit brought on by sleep deprivation and watching too many garish flash animations, he hurried out of the building.  Pulling up the collar of his jacket and inclining his head against the oncoming rain, Arthur crunched across the gravel driveway to his beat up old Volkswagen Polo.  The car squatted cantankerously in front of the school, like an incontinent elderly homeless man, leaking oil and spoiling the general ambiance of privileged austerity that Hunt Independent tried so hard to cultivate.  Fumbling with the keys in the lock, Arthur cursed as the car door stuck.  Kicking it, he simultaneously pulled the handle, wrenching it open with a protesting *Crunk* and nearly dropping his bag on his toes in the process.  

Like so many aspects of driving 'Red Ruin,' there was a knack to it.   Slinging his bag in the passenger seat and strapping it in for safety,  Arthur began the complex and subtle blend of persistence, prayer and extreme violence required to get his car started.  The grunts, coughs, choking gasps of the vehicle made the car again sounded rather like an elderly homeless man with other more personal problems, but it gave up the fight and belched its way into life, this time.  It was a source of amusement to those who saw it, fortunately the foul weather muted some of the horrid sounds and the rain had attentions focused indoors instead of out.

Arthur was quickly on his way to the local assigned housing amid one of the boys' dorms across the campus.  A distance only suitable for walking on a warm summer day and with company.  It was one of the few times the Red Ruin was a blessing instead of a curse.  As Arthur rounded the curve the road forked ahead leaving him with a minor dilemma, risk the weather and the reliability of his car to go tot he pub or just retire for the evening in his sparse room and possibly socializing with resident assistants in the lobby area.

However tempting the thought of a pint was right now, Arthur conceded that the combination of country roads and poor weather would make the journey a hazardous one.  Besides, once he got to the village, he would most likely be forced to sleep in his car - painful, or take a room in one of the many picturesque B&B's - expensive.  In the end he decided it best to sleep, rather than drink, his worries away and took to road to the left which curved round past the school playing fields and the terraced formal gardens.  The gardens had been laid down when Hunt Hall was still the summer home of the Ashcroft-Hunts and were a fine example of nature ordered in keeping with the principles of the Enlightenment.  They were still well tended by the school gardeners and added a fresh breath of colour as the season turned.  Just now however, they appeared drab and lifeless beneath the shroud of spring rain.   The Dormitory building itself was tucked behind a section of woodland and wild-garden, the graceless contours of the modern structure hidden out of sight of the Hall and more picturesque areas of the grounds.  Constructing them had the double advantage of freeing up classroom space in the main building while banishing the unkempt and unruly students in their leisure time and thus rendering the whole school more acceptable to the visiting parents of current or prospective students.

A room in a building full of pubescent boys was hardly ideal accommodation, but given his recent change in circumstances, Arthur was glad it had been provided as part of his contract.      Pulling in beside the school mini-bus and the caretaker's car, he killed the engine, which uttered a spluttering cough as it died, gathered his things and ran for the front door through the rain.  Arthur felt a single ice cold drop fall down onto the back of his neck from the eave and then heard the hiss of steam.  The feeling of the chill drop was gone without explanation.  The expectation of the fat ice cold running down his back was missing.

In the door, it was just the scene he might expect in the lobby.  A couple of the RAs were watching women's soccer on the television and making comments on both playing ability and their ability to make the women happy should they run across them in their daily lives.  Arthur knew however the RAs could barely run from the building to their cars in a rain such as the one outside. 

One of them looked over their shoulder, "There he is," Jake said.  "Are you walking floors tonight?  Cause I might have a lady friend come over and I don't want to leave my room."

"You mum?" Albert said beside him.

"No.  yours," Jake responded.

"There's nothing going on," Albert said to Arthur.  "Must have been a busy day, no one is raising a ruckus on any of the floors.  What are you going ta get into?"

"To 'be honest, I'm shattered, mate...gonna lie down for half an hour and get something to eat."  Arthur replied, taking off his sodden coat and hanging it on the back of a chair.  "Jake, in the unlikely event you actually get laid tonight, I'll do your rounds for you, better get proof, mind!" 

With a faint parting smile, Arthur headed to his room.   It was small and relatively unadorned, most of his things were still boxed up and haunting the hallway of his old flat.  A large rucksack contained most of his clothes and the few other items he had brought with him.  On the small desk, the varnish had long since worn or been scraped away, replaced with a variety of crude scrawlings from its days as a classroom table.  It held a lamp, a ring-binder and a handful of technical manuals and science-fiction novels, propped up with what appeared to be a small bust of Cthulhu but was, in-fact, an 'Amazing Chanting Cthulhu Alarm Clock - When the stars are right, you'll be the first to know!'   It was a present from Julie, or possibly Katherine, years ago.  When the alarm went off a horrible, screeching voice chanted, "Ea! Ea! Cthulhu F'Tagn!" At the same time, LED's made the eyes flash red.   Wisely, Arthur had removed the batteries.  He still held a sneaking suspicion it might start up again, without warning, of its own accord...
Sometimes he wondered if the rise of the Old Ones might not be a viable solution to his current problems.

Emptying his pockets onto the desk, Arthur then removed his soaking shoes and slumped down on the bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling and occasionally glancing across at his phone.  After fifteen minutes or so winding down, he started to wonder what had actually happened to him in the computer lab.  Had he had a seizure? He struggled briefly with a bout of hypochondria, fearing he might die of some sudden brain hemorrhage if he fell asleep...  Covering Jake's duties seemed preferable to beer or sleep at that moment.

Suddenly restless, Arthur fired up his laptop and walked across the hall to the small kitchen the resident staff shared.  He switched the kettle on, dropped a tea bag in an old mug, the enamel chipped and cracked, and emptied a packet of instant noodles unceremoniously into a bowl.  The kettle boiled and clicked off, he filled both receptacles, covering the bowl with a plate, and returned to his room.  

Sitting down at the desk, Arthur put the bowl and mug to one side and switched on the lamp.  He connected to the internet and ran a search, first for evidence for hallucinations brought on by seizures and then as an after-thought, remembering an article he had seen in the Fortean Times, for anything relating to Human Magnetism, hyperconductivity and unusual phenomena where large volumes of electrical equipment were concerned.

While he trawled through various links, he sipped his tea, noisily and gave his noodles an occasional stir.  The websites turned up a variety of detailed technical term laden websites for seizure information that summed up indicated that hallucinations were possible.  The Fortean Times revealed the normal weirdness that it did and even a link for a site on unexplained mysteries indicated a conference in which people tested exactly how magnetic they were.  Not much solid information there however.

One web site that popped up to have a combination of magnetism and humans was a website called Underground Supers 2013 hosts a bevy of forums that have a multitude of people reporting on superpowers.  A site similar to the other strange phenomena websites, but specializing in the rash of recent news stories involving super powered people.  Some claiming to have super powers, some claiming to see them.  Getting into the information made Arthur believe that the people jumping to the forefront are a bunch of wannabes.

Arthur shook his head with a sardonic smile.  He was definitely loosing it, trawling through sites like this in his spare time.  He began to wonder if maybe he'd been spending a bit too much time on research for his new game.  Certainly Shona had thought so.  His present circumstances were a clear testament to this.  Hungrily, he wolfed down the bowl of noodles while searching for more credible accounts.  He figured he should make an appointment to see his doctor.  Tiredness was one thing, but blackouts and hallucinations were cause for concern.  

Nothing more credible graced the screen.  In fact the accounts only seemed to get weirder.  Such things were either not common, which was likely, or not a popular target of research grants, also likely.  As the time dragged forward and the Cthulu's tentacles swung ever more pendulously in perfect time, or outside of time and space however one looked at it, Arthur was forced at last to push himself away from the desk and laptop and consider sleep.  As Arthur pushed however, the smell returned and this time with visuals.  His arms from his elbows to his hands looked like molten metal and liquid pulses emanated along the length of the otherworldly sight.  Both Arthur and his chair pushed with force across the room to his bed where he came to an abrupt stop.

The simple action of pushing off had propelled him seated across the room and the final pulses of liquid red hot metal cooled and ended and his arms and hands returned to normal.  A muffled, "Arthur! Keep it down! echoed into his room through the wall."

Arthur stared at his arms, turning his hands over, fingers splayed as he inspected them, eyes bulging.  

"Sorry, sorry fell off my bed..."  He called out, though his voice died to a mumble as he blurted out his feeble excuse.  Heart pounding, he got to his feet and pushed his chair back under the desk.   Fumbling around in the top drawer, he pulled out a small blister pack of vallium.  He popped out two and swallowed them with the tepid dregs of his tea, screwing up his face as he did so.  Stripping down to his boxers as quickly as he could, Arthur clambered into bed and turning off the light.  As he hid, childishly, beneath his covers he was still aware of his heart hammering against his ribs until the vallium began to take effect and he gradually calmed down.

'Just stress...'  Arthur muttered to himself, as he began to feel himself sink into the cushion of drug-induced soporific warmth.   'Just been working myself too hard...'  The medications started to take affect fairly quickly after lying down.  The combination of little on the stomach along with a rapidly pumping adrenalin forced teh soothing chemicals through his bloodstream quickly.  In the last few moment before falling asleep, he belched up some of the bitter tea opening his eyes only barely with a foul expression, just in time to see a pillar of flame disipating into the air and then slumber took him.

**** **** **** **** **** 

"Ea! Ea! Cthulhu F'Tagn!" The screeching sound of a cultist jolted Arthur from his bed.  The small red numbers of his normal alarm clock read 7:00 am on the bed next to him.  The flashing red lights of Cthulu across the room with the shaking tentacles seemed to play upon his worst nightmares, it had started up again of its own accord.  Cursing, vision still blurred with sleep, he stumbled out of bed in a tangle of bed clothes, thumping the alarm clock until the screeching ceased and the glowing eyes faded with reluctant malevolence.  With his head still filled with cotton wool, Arthur grumpily put on his dressing-gown and monster-slippers, padding through to the kitchen to make coffee.  Through the window a cow dully chewed its cud and watched Arthur fumble through his post-awakening activities.

As the bitter infusion began to clear the cobwebs from his mind, Arthur suddenly recalled he had given the clock a power-ectomy some time ago.  Beginning to wonder which joker (and in this place, it could easily be staff or student) had decided to replace the batteries in the infernal thing.  Stomping back to his room, he put the coffee cup down, clumsily spilling some and adding to the patchwork of stains that covered the old desk. Muttering to himself, he picked up the bust and pulled open the back to remove the batteries yet again.

The battery case cover is tight but Arthur manages to get it off and carefully folded around the fresh set of batteries is a small note signed by Jake with a smiley face making an incorrect Cthulu reference about his prank.  The swinging tendrils stop as the first battery is popped out of place.  The bitter taste of coffee without creamer yet applied seemed to finally be taking affect as the vision of a cow chewing its cud recalled into Arthur's mind from the Kitchen window.

He recalled that it was Saturday and he had no reason to be awake at this ungodly hour.  Mornings were never well received by Arthur, Jake knew this as well as anyone and damnit, he would pay.  Oh yes.   He was not quite ready to formulate his intricate vengeance, however, and would've returned to bed had the events of the previous night not still played upon his mind. according to his phone it was seven thirty AM.  Too early to sort out any of his immediate concerns, or even make an appointment with his doctor.  Instead, he finished his coffee, grabbed a towel and his toilet bag, wearily wandering through to the bathroom to take a long, well deserved wash. 

Arthur found the showers unoccupied this early in the morning and was able to enjoy the solitude in the communal facility, a rare chance in which he got to choose the best showerhead so that he wasn't merely dripped upon or drenched under a waterhose of incredible force..  The cold water turned hot quick enough as the pelting hard mist of water burst downwards.  Arthur scrubbed up and leaned with hands against the wall looking downward, letting the water hit the back of his neck.  At that moment, the smell returned, that scent of baking leather; suddenly water began hitting  Arthur in the face from below.  Standing up straight and looking to the side, Arthur saw his hands, glowing as if made of molten metal.  The water that fell downwards reversed direction before hitting the ground and popped back upwards until gravity seemed to take hold once again and feel down on him in a repetitive cycle.  Some of the water splashed outside of this zone of influence and seemed to be pooling around him. 

Arthur could also seem that he himself was floating somewhat off the ground at about the same point that the water was reflecting upwards.  He let out a yelp of surprise, which echoed round the tiled bathroom, before grabbing hold of the metal pipes in a panic.  Not knowing what else to do, he tried to push himself back down until his feet were touching the tiled floor once again.

"Aw, Criminy," Jake's voice resounded with a yawn through the bathroom, "Arthur, we're near 'nuff the woods that spiders are going to come into the bathroom now and again."  The shock of being above the ground level and Jake's voice seemed to be enough to break the recirculating water of the shower and the liquid splashed noisily onto the tile and gravity seemed to take the same hold on Arthur at the same time and he found himself hanging onto the pipes with just toes touching onto the tile floor.

Jake stepped into the showers and tossed his towel on the dry benches against the far wall and seemed to ignore Arthur all together as he turned on the showers by muscle memory and touch alone.  His own shower starting to spray down on him he looked around.  "That's odd, Arthur, but I'm not seeing a spider.  What are you doing up this early anywa.... oh yeah.  heh heh.  Good one huh?"

Arthur had turned very pale, though Jake did not seem to notice.  he carefully dropped to the floor, nearly slipping on the soapy, wet tiles.
"I don't believe it...."  he said faintly, barely perceiving the other young man. "I'm...I'm going back to bed...  He shuffled out, barely remembering to grab his towel while shivering, more from fear, than from the cold.

At nine, he rang the local doctor's surgery in an attempt to arrange an out-of-hours visit.  His hand still shook as he dialled the number.

-> JUMP TO April 6th