There are, in this world of ours, certain strange and mysterious places, where people are wont to disappear.  The Bermuda Triangle, Canada, Stonehenge, all occasionally devour people as a washing machine occasionally eats socks.  But one place that most people don’t know about is Blue Ridge Hall, where my senior year roommate Mike the 2^nd mysteriously disappeared.  As you may recall, my first roommate of the year, Wanna Be Rapper Mike left for better and angrier things halfway through first semester, and by second semester, they had found me a new roommate, also named Mike (if you find that to be confusing, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you’re not as confused as Mike ended up being).  Mike the 2^nd really bore no resemblence at all to Mike the 1^st, save for the fact that I’m writing about them, and that both of them were recently revealed to have been complicit in the Watergate scandal responsible for the end of the Nixon Administation (Concussion Mike and the Nixon Administration would, by the way, be a totally sweet name for a band). This, is his story.

 

            Mike was from somewhere, probably in Nova, but I’m not sure exactly where, so let’s just say he was from Tibet.  Now, Tibet is a grand place and all, but apparently the Sherpas who raised him never really explained a lot of things about the vast urban jungle of Harrisonburg to him, so he was quickly overwhelmed by all the bright shiny objects to be found so close at hand.  It started off well enough, he didn’t really like rap music, he was totally clear on the fact that he was, in actuality, white, and he seemed at least as socially inept as myself, so there was no real need to worry about walking in on him with a girl.  Alas, as events would soon unfold, it turned out that there was to be precious little chance of walking in and finding him in the room at all.

 

            Before we get into the cautionary tale proper, a quick anecdote: Wanna Be Rapper Mike had, while he still lived in the room, composed a voice mail message reflecting his unique class and unspeakable coolness.  It went a little like this: "Yo yo yo! M to the I to the K to the E isn’t in his crib right now, so leave him a message and he’ll holla back to ya boyyeeee!”  Also, imagine that this message was done in complete seriousness, it was how he talked and everything.  So anyways, when Mike 2: Revenge of Mike moved in, he naturally found this pre-existing message to be absolutely hilarious and decided to keep it.  Unfortunately for me, all his friends found it to be equally funny, and every night, at about the hour his friends would start to all get drunk and bored (4:30 in the afternoon), the phone would start ringing off the hook.  If I answered, all I got was a wastoid telling me to hang up so he could get Mike’s voice mail.  It was funny at first, then annoying, and then after Mike disappeared, it didn’t happen so much.

 

            Right then, on to the vanishing.  Now Mike, it turned out to be the case, spent all his time partying and hanging out at frats.  Either more considerate or merely less determined than my previous roommates though, when he went out late drinking and whoring, he’d simply spend the night at wherever it was be passed out for the night, and not come back until the next day.  At first.  This lifestyle, is seems, agreed so very much with him that he soon stared spending entire weekends away from the room, not dragging back in until Monday afternoon sometimes.  As time wore on, he was clearly sucked into a whirling vortex of wine, women, and song as I saw less and less of him.

 

            Eventually it got to the point where he’d only show up a couple of times a week to change and catch a shower, then head back out again to a life more busy and fraught with wonder than my own.  It was like that episode of Deep Space 9 where that planet kept phasing in and out of our space-time continuum, but every time they phased out, it took longer and longer for them to come back.  In time the mystery became more widespread.  People would occasionally call asking where he was, or the Hall Director would drop by with some papers or something and express some surprise that I hadn’t seen him in a week.

           

            It didn’t really down on me how very odd this all was, until one day at church, I casually remarked that it had been nearly a fortnight since I’d seen Mike, and everyone else was completely freaked out.  It was too late to worry though, and since no unrecognizable bodies had turned up in Newman Lake recently, I assumed he was merely off exploring higher planes of existence, or was simply perpetually plastered.  Some two days later, he returned at last.  “I’ll bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last month,” he said laconically.  I indicated that yes, I had rather noticed his absence of late.  He then told me that he had been at a party a couple of weeks ago and someone had boisterously pushed his head through a wall.  He had passed out in the frat house for three days or so, when somebody became concerned and took him to the hospital, where they discovered that he’d suffered a concussion and decided to keep him for a couple of weeks.  “I’m mostly better now,” he reassured me, “but I keep forgetting where everything is.  Have you seen my keys?”

 

            Later than afternoon he departed again, and never again did he darken the door of my room, as best I can reckon.  Sometimes I’d return from morning classes and think that I could subtly discern some trace that he had been there, a paper on the desk that looked out of place, or some nigh imperceptible shift in the massive and oddly-shaped heap of increasingly stank laundry on his bed.  Finals week came and went, and yet no sign appeared of him.  Moving out day rolled around, and though I stayed until the last hour, I could not espy him. 

 

Never did I hear of him again; and since the police never asked me any questions concerning his disappearance, I can only conclude that something more than meets the eye had transpired beneath my very nose.  It is, for instance, possible that he transcended his way to a higher plane, where, like some modern Prometheus, he lies forever chained to a cliff in punishment of his late dawdling with us mere mortals.  Or perhaps the Mother Ship came for him at last, carrying him back to his homeworld of Spanckulon 7 to regale the elders of his race with merry and ribald tales of the lives of the Earthmen.  Or maybe he just got wasted, flunked out, and came back the next day to collect all his junk.  Whichever it is, he remains forever a burning enigma to all the human race.  And if you’re out there somewhere reading this, Concussion Mike, I hope you found your keys.