Fluorescent lights quiver above me.
I scramble into the Maggie Benston Centre, shaken, heartbeat slamming against my ribcage like a snare drum caught in my chest. Tripping as I throw myself down the staircase — I’m too terrified to look back . . . but too human not to.
Nothing.
The sliding doors hold off the dark barrage of nighttime. In my gut I know I just barely escaped something . . . even if I’m alone here now. Adrenaline still snaps at my nerves as I walk up to the bookstore — a safe place to spend the night. I squeeze into the store through the gap between the metal rolling gate and the wall. I decide it’s good luck someone forgot to lock it properly, and nothing else.
There’s a bin of on-sale shirts nearby — the ones that endure an eternally reduced price for looking like they were designed for a knockoff SFU. I bundle up for the night, shrugging on a few extra-large shirts to trap heat. I peer further into the dark store, looking for a place to take shelter. Vague shapes of bookshelves and display stands form in the darkness.
“WHO ARE YOU?!” a disembodied voice demands, accusing me of existing.
I let out a sharp scream. I whirl around to find not a person, but instead, what I can only describe as the ghost of Karl Marx — glowing faintly, and floating just above the cash registers. The Marx ghost looks to be formed from SFU fog, dissipating at the edges. His expression is incredulous.
“I got trapped in the Maggie Benston Centre,” I mumble, acutely aware I’m standing in the dark, red shirts falling to my knees. “Wh–what exactly are you doing here?”
Marx-ghost gives me a solid ‘kids these days’ look before waving a ghost arm, trailed in mist. Strange multicoloured club lights flash on while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” performed by flutes, starts up over the speakers.
“I was nominated as the Patron Saint of SFU in 2009,” the ghost informs me. “Your institution has the highest number of liberal arts undergraduates citing me incorrectly in arguments every year. Additionally, there’s no place the oppressive bonds of capitalism hits the burdened hardest than this bookstore.” I nod like I’m trying to rake in participation points in a tutorial. “Makes sense.”
Rows upon rows of hundred-dollar textbooks lie like catacombs on the bottom floor under me. Ghost-Marx continues as I — encouraged by the mid-western steadiness of the “Simple Man” melody — grab one of those heinously overpriced snacks (something like five ethically salted almonds for $6.75) and start munching as if this was a treat I’d picked up at Bulk Barn.
“For instance, did you know a fraction of every student’s tuition exists from the assumption everyone will eventually steal something from this place?”
An old memory of deciding to not purchase a fancy pen I wanted so bad because I assumed I’d find a pencil on the ground on the way to lecture stings me to the core. The music swells and I get thrown off balance as if it was a real ocean wave. Club lights flash. Ghost-Marx’s voice raises above it all. “Aaron Burr lives on hidden in the lanyards! Bill Clinton vacations in the sportswear section! And at least one essay will focus on society’s transition to post-modernity —”
My eyes snap open. I sit up dumbly in my seat, wiping a line of drool from the corner of my mouth as my professor goes over the next midterm. In my clenched fist, I find the fanciest pen I’ve ever held.
