Chapter Text
Martin pushes the door to the classroom open, dragging the stepladder in behind him, flipping the switch for the lights back on, illuminating the cluttered walls.
He’s always conflicted when he cleans the classroom used for the entomology course. On one hand, it’s the most decorated room in the university, the walls are lined with bugs pinned and framed, splashing the white paint with nature's color. On the other hand, it means he needs to get on a stepladder to dust all of the said frames.
Martin drags the stepladder toward one of the walls, setting it up, before pulling a microfiber cloth from his pocket, and, begrudgingly, stepping up the small ladder, reaching to wipe off the shadow boxes full of insects.
He hasn’t met Professor Prentus yet, at least not formally. He thinks he’s passed her in the hall before, but he’s certain they haven’t exchanged more than a greeting. Her reputation, however, is something he’s quite familiar with.
From what he knows from overhearing the students, and from the run down Trevor gave him when he was first hired on, Professor Prentus is one of the more eccentric teachers working for The Magnus University. Not quite as eccentric as Professor Shelley, of course, but still on the stranger side of the current staff.
Not only does she decorate her classroom with hundreds of taxidermied bugs, but from stories Martin’s heard, she also has a history of bringing living ones into lectures, and letting them loose into the room full of students, berating them if a student harms it.
He shakes his head, dragging himself out of his thoughts as he moves the stepladder over. It’s not fair to judge her based on all of the rumors. She’s probably a little weird, but who isn’t? Martin himself insists on setting any spiders that find their way into his flat free instead of killing them, everyone has their little quirks.
He hasn’t even met the woman yet, he shouldn’t be having opinions on her because of what he hears secondhand, even if her choice of decor causes him more work.
Martin finishes dusting all the shadow boxes, nodding at his work, satisfied that it’s sufficiently less dusty. He grabs the stepladder, shutting it, the sound of metal hitting metal ringing through the empty room.
He drags it through the carpeted classroom, before picking it up as he reaches the hallway’s tiled floor, carrying it under his arm to avoid the noise.
He takes it back to his closet, leaning it against the wall and out of the way. He turns back to grab the mop trolley, ready to start working on the hallways, before he hesitates.
There’s a dryness in the back of Martin’s throat. It’s not something that’s abnormal, it’s just a signal his body is sending to tell him to drink more water.
But then the dryness starts to spread. It crawls it’s way all throughout his throat, climbing his neck, reaching into his mouth, leaving a bitter, earthy taste, sliding down, clawing towards his lungs.
He starts to cough, trying to clear his throat, before the cough starts to become more violent, as if his insides are pushing against each other, trying to escape through his mouth.
Martin doubles over, clutching his stomach with one arm, while his other hand tries to cover his mouth, trying to muffle the sudden coughing fit.
His eyes start to water, so he tries to wipe them with the back of his hand, inadvertently uncovering his mouth, and releasing a flow of a dark dry substance cascading out of his mouth.
Martin’s coughing continues for fifteen agonizing minutes, as he tries to dispel the rest of the dirt from his body, all of his limbs shaking, unnoticed tears streaming down his cheeks, until, finally, the coughing stops, and he’s able to get deep breaths of, albeit, dusty, air into his lungs.
He stares down at the pile of dirt at his feet, it seeming impossibly big. It seeming, frankly, completely impossible, absolutely absurd, that it was inside of him.
“What the hell?” He tries to murmur, but the words come out choked and raspy.
He can’t be dealing with this. He doesn’t know what it is, but he doesn’t have the time, and he can’t miss work. And besides, what would he even say? He coughed up an obscene amount of dirt? Magically? He’d sound insane.
And he isn’t crazy. That happened to him, he felt it, the dirt is still there.
Unless he’s started suffering from hallucinations? Sometimes lack of sleep can do that, and he hasn’t been sleeping well for months, or years, or, most accurately, most of his life. Could that be it?
Martin tries to steady his breathing, placing his hand against the wall, using it as support.
Whether it’s real or fake… It hardly matters. There’s nothing he can do about it either way. There’s no one he can tell, no fix, no way to even start trying to figure out what’s going on.
He’s helpless.
All he can do is grab the broom and sweep up the mess he created.
So that’s what Martin does. With shaking hands he reaches for the broom, cleaning the evidence of his sickness, or cleaning a spotless floor, or cleaning dirt that magically appeared in his throat. He doesn’t know which.