Dr. Geoffrey Wranger ended as an exclamation, a smoky tail erupting from a fiery point.
His screams rang from every brick in every building that surrounded the university's quadrangle, momentarily halting the flow of conversation among students moving between classes.
Dr. Wranger collapsed near the stone bench that sat at the edge of a Victorian rose garden, a gift from the Class of '23. A thick, sooty line marked his path from the Joseph and Catherine Stone Science Building to where he sprawled, the air above his form shimmering with heat.
A hand, shriveled and sticky, reached out and clawed convulsively as several students ran to give assistance. They stepped away from the heat and the hand, which fell to the ground and scrabbled at the hard concrete.
When Wranger looked up, still smoldering, he did so with eyes that had been melted away, eyelids soldered shut over empty holes. Blood oozed sluggishly from the ruin of his face, pulsed from skin that looked like a hot dog left too long on the grill.
By the time campus security arrived with the local fire department, several of the rose bushes nearest where he lay had burst into sputtering, rose-scented flame, which drifted across the campus, floating atop the oily, sweet odor of charred flesh.
The ambulance lurched to a halt, spilled out its attendants. When they rushed past me, Wranger was still alive.
"Show me," I heard him moan, a wisp of smoke curling up from his scorched mouth like an escaping soul. "I saw it."
As I turned, I saw Joe Middleton standing with one hand thrust deep into his pocket, a thick textbook gripped loosely in the other.
I saw, though I didn't think much of it then, that it was a chemistry text.
Wranger taught chemistry.
)
A college campus becomes the scene for a strange learning experience in sexuality. All too often, we look to others to define our image of ourself. Mostly what we get back, though, is what we want to see. But what if there were people who reflected us as we actually are. Could most people bear to see their own sexuality reflected back truthfully at them?
