Author's Note: A far cry from the more abstract stuff. Other than that, the premise is pretty straight forward, and I kinda hit ya over the head with the foreshadowing, but when it works, it works.

The Chemical Room

“Um, professor—”

Kevin Durham stood in the doorway of the science storage closet. The closet itself was actually the size of a small classroom, but the ceiling was a little lower than most of the other rooms in the building, and much more dusty—ironic considering the intended use of the closet. Dilapidated metal and wood shelves lined the walls and formed rows in the middle of the room, lined with all sorts of various jars of chemicals, scales, trays of razors and scalpels, whole canisters filled with soap.

The white haired man stood at the far end of the room, busily running his hands over the various objects and every once in awhile picking up a canister or a different thing, holding it at eye level, scrutinizing it for a little bit, before putting it down and resuming his endless search.

He perked his head up when he heard Durham’s greeting, but did not turn around.

“Yes, Mister Durham?” His head went back down, and Kevin thought he was scrutinizing a large bucket of bones that was on that shelf.

“Um, well—did you get the email I sent you this morning?” He stepped inside, but just slightly. The room kind of frightened him.

“Ah, yes, most certainly I did.” The professor turned around and stared at him through a pair of safety goggles. “I looked up the site you referred to and, I’m sorry to say, it looks like you’re out of luck.” He revealed a see-through canister of something silver-ish in color and held it next to his head. “Can I interest you in some sodium?”

“Uh—Sodium? What would I do with that?”

He shrugged his shoulders and set the container back on the shelf. “I don’t know. I don’t care. Whatever you wanted.” He goes back to his search. “If you want, you can take some scalpels and razors too, it’s not like any of this stuff is mine.” He chuckled.

“Uh… oh…” Kevin shuffled his feet self consciously, looking around some more.

“Well, if you’ve got the time in you, I could use some help over here.” The professor is now several shelves down from where he was when Kevin entered the room. “Once I find the stuff I need, I’ll need some help lugging it all out to the car.”

“Alright.” Dropping his book bag by the door, Kevin started to walk over to where his professor was looking through chemicals. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for sulfur and potassium nitrate. The charcoal I already have.” The elderly man turned from a shelf and gave Kevin an unsettling stare. “You wouldn’t happen to have any, would you?”

“No. Sorry, Professor.” Kevin starts to look around at the various assorted items on each shelf. “None of these are labeled. How can you tell what’s what?”

“It’s easy when you’ve been working here long enough.” The reply is nonchalant. “And by the way, if you happen upon any acids—sulfuric and nitric, specifically—grab those, too.”

“Oh, ah, alright.”

The Professor made his way slowly but surely down the row of shelves up against the wall, and their search continued in what Kevin thought of as an uncomfortable silence. After a period, the Professor spoke up.

“Did you know that there are over a hundred and seventy thousand different species of butterflies and moths?” The question was spontaneous and, from what Kevin guessed, rhetoric.

“No I um, I didn’t.”

“It’s true. Over a hundred and seventy thousand different species. Think about that—that’s a lot of butterflies and moths! Truckloads, even. I could fill a room this size if I managed to collect just one specimen of each species.” He sighed in a funny way and went back to his work. “A lot of bugs.”

Kevin stared at him for a little while. “Yeah it… yeah it is.”

“And just think, of all those one hundred and seventy thousand different species, none of them are totally unique. Within each species, they’re all the same, no different, and their beauty to us is nothing more than function to them.” He picked up a canister. “Ah, potassium nitrate, found it.” The professor held it out for Kevin to take before continuing. “None of them realize anything, you know. They’re all just insects, individually, with garish colors and an inherent instinct toward luminescent preference. They only live for a few days or weeks, and then they’re dead and we’re none the wiser.”

“Oh…” Kevin could only stand there holding the jar whose label said ‘Potassium Nitrate’—one of the few jars with a label at all.

“Help me carry these out to the car.” Kevin didn’t realize he had gathered the rest of the materials. “Are you sure you couldn’t use some sodium? It blows up in water.”

“No… Uh, thanks though, Professor.”

“Suit yourself.” He handed the tray of stuff to Kevin, who placed the container of Potassium Nitrate inside and hefted it from the Professor.

As the older man followed Kevin out the door, he picked up Kevin’s bag for him and locked the door. “You know, when I was your age, I think I wasn’t too far off from the way you are now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Come on, the car’s just outside.”

“Alright. You can just, you know, drop the bag here in the hall. I’ll pick it up later.”

The Professor released the strap of the bag and let it thump onto the floor by the wall. “Someone might steal it.”

“They might, but I don’t really care.” Kevin followed the professor closely. “There—well, for the most part—uh, really isn’t anything important in there.”

“Still, they might steal it.”

“Well, it isn’t like I’d be able to stop them.”

The Professor shrugged, and held the door open for Kevin to walk into the concrete patio that had the older man’s decrepit looking Ford Tempo sitting on it. The man walked up and opened the trunk, gesturing for Kevin to start loading up the supplies.

“Durham, I want you to know something.”

Kevin placed the acids in the back and wedged them in place with the tray, making sure that the glass containers wouldn’t slide around too much. “What?”

“I don’t think it would be wise of you to come here tomorrow.” His voice had a strange calm to it.

“You don’t?” Kevin loaded the potassium nitrate next, and it was big enough to fit off to the side.

“No, I don’t. I think that something bad is going to happen, and I don’t want you involved.” He watched Kevin load up the last few chemicals.

“Like what?” Kevin’s speech was smoother when he was focusing on something, like sliding the sulfur in next to the Potassium Nitrate. The professor stayed silent for a while, until Kevin straightened up and held the tray in his hands. “I’ll slide this in front of the acids to prevent them from sliding all over the place.” He gestured to the trunk, “I mean, I did that already, but I had to take it out to make room for, you know, the uh, other stuff, um, potassium nitrate and sulfur.”

“That’s fine, Durham.” The Professor nodded and watched as Kevin did as he said he would. “Look, just humor an old man and skip some classes. You’ve had perfect attendance, haven’t you? It can’t hurt to miss a single day.”

The student straightened once more and looked at his teacher. “Well, if you’re that worried about it, I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

The older man nodded approvingly. After a brief second, he turned to the driver’s seat and got his keys out again. “Durham, you’ve been a great student, you know. A good kid. I mean it.” The door opened and he started to get in, still looking at Kevin. “Don’t forget that.”

“Um, alright Professor.”

“Really. I mean it.” He got into the car but the door was still open.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around then,” Kevin called, starting to back towards the building to retrieve his book bag.

He wasn’t from a vantage point to see the Professor’s tired frown as he closed the car door, and he wasn’t close enough to hear the Professor’s tired response.

“Probably not.”