Curses
Sigrid swallowed the last of their coffee as they entered the small classroom. It was a smaller class, only fourteen students, at eight in the morning. They couldn’t recall why they would do that to themselves.
“Bore Da, welcome to Cursed archaeological antiquities. I haven’t had enough caffeine for an 8 a.m., and I am so sorry I did this to us all, now,” They turned to the board, beginning to write, “There will be discussion boards and in-class discussion. You can repeat what you say here on there and vice versa. Mostly, it's just a grading tool to make sure you are all paying attention. There are no tests, and there will be one paper for the class on any cursed artifact, site, etcetera, etcetera. Any questions?”
They turned back to the class of still sleeping students, “So what constitutes haunted? There are many things in this world that people think are haunted that may or may not actually be haunted. I mean, personally, some people stay around for way longer than they should be.“ They paused, “It’s just something that happens, and whether or not they stay around corporeally seems to be a matter of someone’s opinion.” They waved their hand around near their ear, “so are their curses?” They asked the still-staring students, “Who is to say! I’m probably pretty fucking cursed!” they chuckled to themself before taking a deep breath. Too much thinking about that for this early in the morning.
“How about we just jump in?” They slumped against the podium, taking a right off of their right leg. “It’s going to be chapter 5. If you already bought the book, then turn to it. If not, don’t worry too much. Let’s start with… Otzi.”
A hand raised,
“Otzi?”
Sigrid looked at their list of students, ah, freshman. “Yes, the Ice man, he is a mummy roughly 5,300 years old. And is in immaculate condition. You can actually still see his tattoos. Backstabbed, shot in the back, didn’t die alone, one of our older murder cases, well,” They paused, “potentially a murder case; I wasn’t there bit too old for me.”
It was true. Otzi was over 3,000 years older than them.
“So multiple people involved in the recovery and study of Otzi have died. First was Rainer Henn. He was involved in the recovery and touched the body with his own hands when placing him in a body bag. He died in a crash in 1992.”
“How long after finding Otzi did he die?” A student asked.
“Ah, year? Ish? He was found in 1991.”
“Anyway, the next death was Kurt Fritz. He was one of the mountaineers involved in finding him Actually I believe he did find him it was on a vacation or something. He died on a mountain as the only one from his crew to perish in the avalanche and was followed closely by Rainer Hoelzl, who had filmed Otzi’s retrieval.”
A few students looked more awake, one or two even moving closer to the edge of their seats.
“Then Helmut Simon, who found Otzi on, I think, a vacation. Died in the same place as he found Otzi after a fall. One of the men on his rescue team died hours after his funeral. His name was ah,” They snapped their fingers, attempting to remember names, “Dieter Warnecke.”
“That’s like five people!” the freshman from earlier yelled. He quickly slumped into his chair and covered his face. Sigrid smiled, “Yes, but there are more.”
The chairs in the room squeaked against the polished tile floor as students adjusted how they sat.
“The last two didn’t believe in the curse. Konrad Spindler even joked that he would be next, and guess what he was because curses suck, and you should never tempt them. The final death was Tom Loy. He didn’t believe in the curse either.”
They counted on their hands, “That is all seven. But with that, remember Otzi was also on display for a while, and the people who saw him didn’t die because of him, to our knowledge.” They blinked, trying to think if there were actually any other deaths, “Yeah, they haven’t died, ah, also multiple researchers and the like. So, the discussion for the week, is it a curse or extremely bad luck?”
It was almost the end of class; Sigrid prayed for no questions. They made eye contact with Jerry, who was half asleep in the back corner. Jerry nodded slowly before mouthing the words, “I need coffee.” Sigrid nodded, “The discussion will be due on Friday midnight. Everyone, go nap.”
A laugh rippled through the room as students collected their things to leave. Jerry was the last to collect her things. “Doc? I need caffeine. A lot of it.”
“I do, too. I will call the student union and have the coffee ready before we arrive.”
Jerry nodded while Sigrid texted someone from their innumerable caffeine connections.
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“How was the 8 am? I didn’t know Doc did them.” Dick leaned back in his chair with his arms under his head, balancing a foot on his desk. His hair was green this week.
“I’m shocked, they needed more caffeine, but they got really caught up on how curses impact people individually and people being stuck here for way too long.”
“Huh, think it’s for the board?”
“Oh, maybe. You add it. I need a nap, and I have two hours ‘til class.”
Dick nodded, pulling up the online board that now had twenty graduate students from five departments collecting evidence for what the hell their professor was. He scrolled through the long list of possibilities before adding ‘Cursed?’ to the bottom of the list and highlighting it.
The group chat pinged,
8:55 am. Cursed is possible. Maybe I'll add their cursed antiquities class.