The broken, pothole-covered, dark murky waters surrounding University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Computer Science and Math building Avery Hall create a fog of doom and dread. It’s hard not to become frighteningly frozen solid by fear when the misty and furious gales come down from the dread prairie and into the parking lot.

Like Merry and Pippin from Lord of the Rings, the mysterious waters of the cracked road and the rain stained pillars of the back of Memorial Stadium call me forward into that deep night. Unlike Tolkien’s fantasy though, there is no tentacled monster in those depths calling for the ultimate and immaculate ring of power. The only evil here is ourselves.

I see the ugly rear end of Avery and let my wet mind wonder. I pondered the building’s history as I studied the red bricks discolored by the endless march of father time. Time, for being the sole force in the universe that drags us kicking and screaming into the future, is such a strange concept that it is as if we are fundamentally ill-equipped to understand it.

Overall this strange plane of existence located behind Avery Hall gave me a great hunger that was impossible to ignore. The deep caverns, the dark tunnels, the stained pillars, the murky waters, the potholes, the cracks in the concrete that hint at a dark underbelly tube. I was overpowered by my hunger, my will was no more, my life was forfeit, God has no more power over my pathetic soul.

I fell to the gloriously dirty and pebbled ground and a phrase escaped from my mouth, as if it had been stored in my nether regions and needed to escape by any means necessary. Every word required herculean effort, but also brought a strange release of magnitude I had never felt before.

“I…….must……eat………..ass”