Tuition Assistance

Pushing the wrench to free the rusted pipe one moment, the next, Jill jerks forward, the squeal of metal — pain explodes in her hand. White tiles dulled by age and lack of care blossom with bright red blotches.

“FUCK!”

Pulling back her shaking hand, a deep gash, oozing blood. She wraps the hand with a handkerchief; she always carries one. A lesson learned from her grandpa too long ago. “I don’t care what anyone says, always carry a hanky, it’s good for a million things from wiping your nose to wiping a tear.” He had said wiping a tear from a little girl’s face and cleaning the cut on her leg. Thanks, old man she thinks with a sad fondness. Tying a knot in the hanky wrapped around the cut, using her teeth and one hand.

The flashlight shows the old pipe disconnected, thick sludge mixed with hair and other awfulness drips from the hole, mixing with blood on the floor, her blood. Light glints off the cutter of hands, a piece of metal sticking out of the wall. “What hell?” Jill murmurs, angling her flashlight for a better look. The metal looks like the end of a knife blade, a blade decorated with exotic swirls and patterns, movement frozen in steel.

Jill hates her job but she’s good at it, thanks to her grandfather. She wants to teach while getting her MFA in Creative Writing, but the college didn’t have any openings for other positions except the lowest level maintenance worker. The pay sucks, the department manager acts like entry level workers can do all levels of maintenance jobs just fine. There is no future in the job but it has the one thing she needs, an employee discount on tuition.

Grabbing a small crowbar from her tool bag, Jill begins removing drywall from the area around the blade, quickly revealing a steel plate. More drywall ripped down reveals the plate to be part of a door, yellowish iron, pounded by time, forgotten. The blade is sticking out of the door, punched through from the other side. A ring recessed in the middle of the door begs Jill to pull on it. She has to know, she pulls, the door opens an inch—jammed! Part of the sink on one side and an ancient paper towel dispenser on the other bar her discovery. Good thing she brought her bigger crowbar.

Dripping sweat, heaving chest, grip loosens, the previous, “Demolition Day!” shrieking metal as the paper towel dispenser is pried from its decades long place, tossed on a pile of drywall, soon accompanied by the stained porcelain sink.

Driven by an aspiration she only feels while writing, she reaches for the handle, she must know what is on the other side. A loud crackle of static followed by a voice disturbs Jill’s focus.

“Hey Jill, you done with that sink in Eldora Hall? A lightbulb needs to be replaced in the Dean’s office.” James, her manager, says over the handheld radio.

The asshole’s voice shocks her out of her focus on the door. She lightly grips the ring, like the way she held her grandpa’s hand as a little girl, assured, comforted, protected. Not letting go, she surveys the wrecked bathroom. Chunks of drywall sit in water fed by a broken pipe that had been connected to a discarded sink older than her. The pipe she had been sent to unclog. The overhead light flickers as if to remind her she has other more mundane duties on campus. “Jill, you there, we got a situation here. I need you to get over to the dean’s office right away or it’s our asses.”

Surprisingly, the radio has been spared her destruction, clipped to a side pocket of her tool bag. The bag is in a safe and dry location, she doesn’t remember moving it but isn’t surprised. Her grandpa gave her that bag on her tenth birthday, it still held some of the tools he included in the gift. The bag was too big for her at that age, but he said she would grow into it, she did.

Forcing herself to let go of the handle, she reaches for the radio. Letting go hurts, like losing something precious. Again, she’s reminded of her grandpa, they took him away, his hand cold and stiff as if life not only ends but freezes in time, like a broken clock. She would have rather gone with him than live without. His voice filled her broken heart then as it does now, “Go on girl, you got a world to conquer, loves to love, stop pissing around and get doing.”

With a half smile, “James I’m busy over here, you gotta do it.” The shouting goes silent with the click of a button. Tossing the radio away, Jill cleans and puts away her tools, picks up the bag and opens the door.

The door swings into the bathroom easily now, pushing a tiny tsunami of dirty water ahead of it. A quote from some unknown author pops into Jill’s head as she looks at the scene before her. Fear is often the first step of courage.

Inside the opening, at her feet, lay dusty skeletal remains. Maybe human, maybe something else, Jill’s not experienced identifying skeletons. She had a tough time seeing the human in the mummies on display at an ancient Egyptian exhibit she had attended. Much less effort was made to make the thing in front of her recognizable.

It was a knife, a big one too. Cleanly implanted as if the door had been built around it. The handle is covered in dark leather straps, it doesn’t have a crossbar, but the end of the handle looks to be carved into the head of a dog or wolf. Hard to tell which since the carving is worn with age, by as many hands as years. The exposed part of the blade has similar but slightly different patterns than the part that bit her. Grabbing the knife’s handle sends a surge up her arm, into her heart and brain — she finally sees!

The knife slides silently from the door. The door slams shut with a bang, echoes rebound off walls in the distance and a ceiling lost in the darkness above. The knife is like no other tool she has ever held, and it is a tool, she knows that with certainty. The symbols on the blade, a message, different to each holder. A message of conquests, rebellions, destruction. A message of construction, peace, and providing. The holder chooses the message as much as the knife chooses the holder. Jill understands the knife chose her when it bit her, but she still does not know the message. That will come when it is time.

She notices a sheath for the knife on a rotted cord tied around the remains at her feet. The sheath untouched by time waits for its knife. Cutting the sheath free, she rejoins them and attaches them to the side pocket of her tool bag, a pocket no longer holding the radio, freed to hold her newest tool.

Shadows plague the distant walls, too dark to see through but she can still see, there are no shadows in total darkness. Light comes from somewhere, enough of it to show Jill that this is no room in Eldora Hall, though a hall it is, just empty — for now. Large granite blocks make up the walls, looking to be many tons each. The floor is a gray slate that seems to be one continuous piece as if it was poured into place. Jill has never seen slate so precisely laid. No seams mar the surface of the floor. Fear grips, she grips the knife, a nudge in her mind helps her walk forward. She could have tried the door, but she doesn’t, that is no longer her path. Forward, only forward.

The room is a hall, a throne made of stone sits at one end, a door the other. Using her flashlight, Jill sees wonderful things, amazing creatures all carved into the dark stone throne. Solid as a mountain it stans, free of dust, impervious to time. Another nudge, she approaches it, timid at first then bold. Touching one arm of the throne she knows what to do, she sits, the new queen.

A world, her world opens before her eyes. She sees it all, the keep she sits in, the rich lands surrounding it, the vast oceans and glacier covered mountains. The peoples throughout the world all turn to see, they know, the queen has returned!

#

Grinding, grunting, swearing. Soggy debris is pushed back by the door being opened.

“What the fuck?” James mumbles looking at the destroyed bathroom in Eldora Hall.

An empty room, feeling like it hadn’t had a visitor in decades. Flooded floor, a pile of drywall and a broken sink. The silent radio sits atop the wreckage, the only thing left by his missing worker. One wall has a large hole showing exposed pipes, past the exposed innards, the wall of the bathroom next door.