You wake up to your friend and roommate sitting on your chest, and you can’t breathe. You struggle to throw him off, curling and slapping ineffectually at his legs.
He grins, assuring you that it’s all a joke.
“Good, you’re up.” And he gets off your chest. You do not respond, still not forgiving him for the tightness in your lungs. He grins and turns away. “You’ve got a big day today.” He tosses you a button-up. “Quarter-finals, gotta look sharp.” You sigh and pull yourself out of bed still refusing to talk to your infuriatingly chipper roommate.
He doesn’t watch as you pull on your trousers but thumbs through your flows from the other day. You keep them carefully labeled and organized so as to never misplace your record of a debate.
“Is this even English?” your friend teases. You shrug into your starched and stiff-collared shirt.
“Vowels waste time. I can read them just fine.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” your friend snorts, and for some reason he flips through your unused paper, pristinely unfolded and clipped to a legal-sized clipboard. He leaves the hotel with you, following you to the debater-modified classroom, the illustrious location of quarterfinals. But suddenly becoming inexplicably nervous, he leaves you, mumbling something about getting breakfast or maybe coffee too if he’s in the mood. You quickly forget about his strange departure, reading into only his
sly “I’ll see you in semi’s anyway” and writing off any inconsistencies in his behaviour. The round begins following an exchange of flash drives and disclosures.
Your opponent stands up to give her first speech, and you reach to pull a few sheets of paper from your clipboard. But as you pull off the blank pages, an unfamiliar folded printout slides to the floor. In a flurry of swift action, you pull it back to the table and tuck it under the other sheets on your desk. You write furiously to make up for the first few seconds of the speech. Five minutes in, your opponent launches into the body of a particularly long piece of evidence, slurring her words slightly to make time for other cards. You can’t catch a word, and you’re tempted by the mysterious paper peeking from your flows.
Unfolding it carefully, you recognize a Wikipedia article and wrinkle your nose at the title: Alp (folklore). But your opponent continues to slur through a wordy card by the National Science Foundation. You have time. You begin to read:
Not to be confused with the similarly named Alp-luachra, the alp is sometimes likened to a vampire, but its behavior is more akin to that of the incubus. It is distinct from both of these creatures in that it wears a magic hat called a Tarnkappe, from which it draws its powers…Its victims are often females, whom it attacks during the night, controlling their dreams and creating horrible nightmares (hence the German word. Alptraum [“elf dream”], meaning a nightmare). An alp attack is called an Alpdruck, or often Alpdrücke, which means “elf pressure”. Alpdruck is when an alp sits astride a sleeper’s chest and becomes heavier until the crushing weight awakens the terrified and breathless dreamer. The victim awakes unable to move under the alp’s weight…The alp is often associated with vampires because it will drink blood from the nipples of men and young children, though women are the preferred victim of the invariably male alp, for it favors the taste of breast milk.
Your partner looks at you sharply.
“Cross-Ex?” she asks pointedly. You fold the paper.
“We’ll take a few seconds of prep.” Your partner looks back at her flows and nods at your decision like she agrees with it.
Only you know that she’s furious, hiding her angry anxiety under a mask of easy calm. But it’s not in her best interest to make you look bad.
In five seconds, you scribble a couple questions. Debaters love to hear themselves talk. It should be easy to fill three minutes.
And it is. Your partner quickly forgets your mishap.
The round ends leaving you with the triumphant feeling of doing the best you could. It’s not a crushing victory, but you’ve done nothing wrong.
You forget about the round and the deliberating panel of judges as your friend slips into the back of the room.
It occurs to you that you’ve never seen him without his hat. You stare at him until one judge collects the signed ballots and clears his throat, but he never once catches your eye.
Nihilistic Porcupine 