It was a cold autumn night as a lone administrator worked valiantly on the 13th floor of Howe, trying to develop a Spring reopening plan that would benefit as many students as possible. Farvardin had left, and Attila was out picking up Bagels on the Hudson. The light of this lone administrator’s office creeped down the hallway, the sound of their typewriter desperately crying out into the darkness.
Struggling to find some way to sustain the Stevens budget despite the lack of income due to decreased campus housing, the vigor and intensity with which this administrator worked distracted them from the eerie sound of a shrill scraping noise coming from the floors below. Pausing for a moment to take a drink from their ecologically friendly reusable Stevens-branded thermos, the sound which was at first imperceptible grew just close enough to be noticeable.
Our kindly administrator, merely perplexed, walked out of their office to see if Attila had returned with the promised bagels; but had no luck in finding the friendly duck, nor any sign of their fellow colleagues. Even the great Professor Kevin Ryan, who could often be found late into the night strolling through the offices with a mask and a fedora to offer words of encouragement to his colleagues (both faculty and students) could nowhere be found.
However, the mysterious noise stopped as soon as it had started, and so, thinking nothing of it, our humble administrator returned to their desk to continue their painstaking administrative efforts. Yet it was not five minutes before the noise returned, even louder.
__screeeech___
Leaping from their desk, the administrator cried out in fright, “Farvardin!?” until they realized that the President had already left. But their fear did not subside until after a few moments when the noise slowly faded out of existence.
With their heart racing, the exhausted administrator sat down once more and took another sip from their Stevens-branded knick-knack (available at the Stevens bookstore, if anyone were on campus to access it). The administrator was now fraught with confusion and anxiety. They only had a moment to ponder the significance of the odd position in which they had been placed, before the noise resounded from the floor directly below their own. This time, the noise was accompanied by a gruesome whisper that the wind was only by chance unfortunate enough to carry to the appalled ears of the sweating and shivering administrator:
…
viipeee
…
Our unfortunate and bedraggled administrator was quaking in their boots (Stevens-branded, of course) as they attempted to prepare themselves for whatever was coming.
What should I do, and what is this thing that threatens me so? Perhaps I should run… No! That’s exactly what it would expect me to do. I should s-stay and fight, but I’m so afraid… What will happen if I get hurt? What if this whole time, I’ve really been a butterfly, dreaming an accursed nightmare? That’d be nice… unless I was a butterfly still stuck in high school! What if, even worse, the Yankees win the Super Bowl!? THE HORR-
The entirely logical train of thought of our astute administrator was abruptly interrupted by the ghastly emanation of demonic screeching coming from directly outside their window. With a sense of dreadful finality, and knowing that their days of both distributing and purchasing Stevens-branded memorabilia had come to an end, the complacent administrator turned to face whatever doom awaited them outside the thin veil of glass that had separated them from the unforgiving gales of the elements for so long.
As they stared through the transparent armor of the building, they heard;
“I’m the viper, and I’ve come to vipe your vindows!”
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