Page 56
“Yes. Not at the college you attended, obviously, but yes, I spent a great many years teaching there. Decades, in fact.”
“And only recently took this job?”
“Correct,” he says, as if I’m a contestant on a game show who has just won a million dollars. “The previous Dean might be a better starting point for your questions. Or even Professor Wyldan, given that his ancestors started the town and most of the buildings in it. While I know about a…” he bristles, pursing his lips before schooling his features, “certain pastime up here, I can’t say that I am privy to any details.”
“Dean, can I be frank?”
“As long as I can be Fredrick,” he grins.
This cheesy dad-joke humor is so corny, a laugh bubbles free before I can dismiss it.
“Before the Larch, and I will not incriminate myself by confirming or denying my participation in the event, there was a sentence that caught my eye. The more I think about it, the more I remember something. About my parents.”
His brow knits with furtive concentration. Either he is desperate for me to tell him what’s on my mind, or he wants me out of his office at the earliest possible convenience.
“Among the Screaming Trees, does that mean anything to you? At all?”
“Aspen,” he begins with a similar tone to a disappointed child who Santa may not have visited, or it’s sloppy joes for dinner… again. “You brought this up the last time we had a similar discussion. I’m afraid it meant little to me then, and at risk of offending you, even less now. The idea that trees scream is a farcical one.”
“But Dean, I think it may hold a double meaning.”
His head cants to one side, the saggy skin of his jowls bunching as gravity pulls. “Go on…”
“Among the Screaming Trees might be some dark play on words for a primal hunt activity in the woods, similar to Wyldan’s Larch event. But I’d heard the term beforehand. When I was in Colorado…”
“Do tell,” he encourages, leaning forward in his leather recliner so much that it snaps back to straight.
“When I was little, Mom and Dad took me into the forest while they were researching. The trees didn’t scream; they sang.”
His eyes blow wide before his hand covers his mouth. “Edith Piaf? I was very partial to Tina Turner too, after she split from Ike, of course. Or Shirley Bassey, now she had a set of pipes on her.”
“Dean. The trees sang because of how the wind moved across indentations in the grooved bark. Malchoydian Pepperberry trees don’t scream; they sing. My parents took me as a baby and toddler, while Mom was still able, into the forest where they were growing undiscovered by anyone but my parents. Is it possible that they grow up here in the Wyldan Woods, too?”
“That would be another question for your professor and accommodation provider, Ms. Aldereyne.”
“Elijah, how well do you know the Wyldan Woods? If I asked you about the whereabouts of a particular species, would you be able to tell me with a level of certainty where it grew?”
The professor is sipping from a mug of steaming black coffee. His fitted white shirt bunches as he replaces the cup on his desk. I’ve never seen him in anything other than dark blues, charcoal, and his signature black. This man emits dark-side energy.
“Well, hello, Aspen. Please, do just barge in and make me stop what I’m doing to answer your question, using my first name, no less.”
The professor glares at me from the sanctuary of his desk, multiple tabs open on his monitor and papers scattered across his desk like Dr. Bonner had. To say I’ve never seen Professor Wyldan this unkempt is a lie. When he and Fox came back from the drugstore with my pain relief and period supplies to find me enjoying two cocks, his face had drained of color, only his mismatched eyes refused to look elsewhere. He wore an armor of desire, almost feral in format with heavy, labored breaths and hooded lids concealing his telltale anomaly. As I took Luk down my throat, my movements were limited, but peripheral vision allowed me enough. He and Fox were conflicted; enjoying the show but desperate to replace the other men with their own hard bodies. He jabs a finger at a button on his monitor, and the screen blackens. I guess there was sensitive information therein. This man!
“You can’t just barge in, Ms. Aldereyne. What if another student was in consultation with me, or a sensitive meeting was underway? Just because I extended my hospitality and offered my home as temporary accommodation does not give you the right to think we share a conspiracy of complicit rule breaking.”
“How many broken rules are we up to now? You’ve seen me spit-roasted on your living-room furniture. Did those cum stains come out? What’s one more to the long laundry list.”
“This is not a joke, Aspen.” His frustration simmers just below his skin.
“I’m not joking.”
He sighs, grasping the handle of his steaming brew and brings it back to his lips, slashed in a line of discontent.
“I believe Malchoydian Pepperberry grows in the Wyldan Woods, and I want you to show me where,” I say defiantly with my chin high and eyes blazing.
His hand trembles, sending a wave of molten, noir liquid onto his chest, the fabric gulping it up. “Fuck!”
For the second time in under a minute, the cup is replaced on the desk, drips still cascading down the side of the ceramic. Wyldan hurriedly removes paperwork before it can be marked with the evidence of his erring hand and sloshing brew. Nimble fingers begin unbuttoning his shirt. As each button slips from the casing, new golden skin is revealed, stretched taut over muscles honed and developed with care and consideration. Professor Wyldan doesn’t hold the brawny physique of a man dedicated to outdoor work or sporting pursuits, yet his torso ripples as he shrugs the stained shirt from his impressive shoulders. He balls it up into a fist, dabbing at the pinkened flesh in the center of his pectoral muscles. A scald.
