Laptop? Check. Backpack? Check. Pens? Check. Shirt?

  Dang it.

  Shawn threw open his closet, pulled out a shirt, a clean gray tee, and jammed it on quickly. He checked his watch, swearing, and ran for the door, grabbing up his backpack and laptop on his way out. He was late. Painfully so.

  Sprinting down the hall and nearly falling down the two flights of stairs, he ran for his bike, chained outside, and climbed on. Come on, Shawn! Get yourself together! Pedaling like crazy, he pulled up to the lecture hall, sparing barely a moment to chain his bike to the rack outside, and ran up the stairs, bursting through the door with all the grace of a drunk pig.

  Latelatelatelatelate...

  He barely avoided spinning out in the hall, but found his room, trying to open the door as quietly as possible, but it was impossible in the otherwise silent hall. The noise of the door opening, then slowly sliding closed before shutting with a final boom, echoed through the hall. Almost everyone's eyes were on the back of Shawn's head as he meekly walked to the back, slumping into a chair. After a beat, the professor continued with the lesson, explaining something about "dual-figure projections" or something like that.

  Shawn reached into his bag, pulling out his notebook and a black pen, clicking it and sketching the figure on the whiteboard. Almost like a combination between an H and a triangular F, it was very intricate, requiring a couple of attempts to get right. Shawn tried to focus on the lesson, but he was out of breath and his thoughts began to wander. I wonder why my alarm didn't ring this morning. What on earth is an angle-combinatory figure? I should really work out more. But the gym is so expensive! Wait, there's more angles than those? Why did she just write 70 degrees on the board?! I should probably sketch this. Man, I'm hungry!

  Breaking out of his thoughts and focusing on the board, he pressed the tip of his pen to the paper, drawing the next figure, which looked like if two demons tried to make up a connect the dots, but only with optical illusions. What the...? That's 60 degrees, and that's 50, but if that's 50, how is that one 95? This doesn't make any SENSE. I guess I'll just redraw it. So this line goes here, and that one here, and this one...here? Now those angles work together. But what about these? Ack.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Shawn finished the figure, staring at the angles for a minute. Noticing a small missing line segment, he slashed a line across two triangle tips, closing them. Suddenly, the figure seemed to flash with a strange turquoise, then quickly dulled back to black. Doing a double take, Shawn startled back in his chair, causing his neighbors to glance at him with disapproval. He slowly looked back down at his notebook, eyeing the figure. It was a flat black, very normal, if a bit geometrically intricate, figure. He leaned forwards again, mentally dismissing the flash as a weird angle of the lecture hall lights.

  But no sooner had he refocused on the lesson when the same turquoise flash, unmistakably coming from the figure he'd drawn, came again, nearly making him fall out of his chair. Wait. Shawn compared the figure to the one on the board, noticing a couple differences. His figure had two triangular "peaks," just like the professor's, but his were connected by an extra line he'd drawn in his haste. Multiple other lines were awkwardly or accidentally connected, differentiating his figure greatly.

  As he leaned in, the figure outlined in turquoise, causing that brief flash again. Jerking, his thumb slashed across the edge of the next page, drawing blood from his brand new paper cut.

  "Ah!" Shawn pressed his other thumb against the cut, muttering. "Great. Just what I needed." Blood beaded along his thumb, one small drop falling onto his paper. Suddenly, the figure flashed again, stronger this time, and he felt a deep pull behind his stomach. Grabbing his notebook, he stood up, saying, "Bathroom," by way of apology to the other students he pushed by, before lurching out into the hall.

  He barely made it three steps down the hall before the pull became a yank, almost but not quite painful, but making Shawn's world spin. He sank to his knees, the figure now pulsing a solid turquoise color. Another drop of blood fell from his thumb, falling towards the page. The moment it struck, the figure shone like blue fire, and the yank became an inexorable pull, forcing Shawn to crawl, painfully, towards the notebook on the floor. He screamed, his midsection seemingly tearing apart as his vision fractured into turquoise edged agony. The book burst into turquoise flames, which raced up his arms and suddenly he was pitching forwards, towards the figure, which now danced upon the page. The surface of the page rushed up at him, turquoise filling his rapidly fading vision as his body burned behind him.

  Then relief, sweet, dark, cool relief, spread from his hands all across his body, and he knew no more.