One of the flatter, more useful things, most agree, is Bowling Green State University. The school squats in the midst of the buried swamp, staying afloat via drainpipes and carefully planted sod. Thus an environment less hospitable than the moon is fitted with basketball courts and made to pump out businessmen and English teachers. Ohio learns the universal law: when a place is flooded with warm human bodies, everything else is generally expelled.

All that once was has been paved over or planted, but the people still remember their swamp. Come spring, when the world thaws and once again grows hospitable to unencumbered flesh, the more college-friendly local merchants come together. How to extort this warm weather for the greatest dollar amount? Their solution: the Black Swamp Rock Revival.

The affiliated station slips in promos between bursts of Eric Clapton and AC/DC, posters go up, and on the appointed day students and locals flock to the open field north of Bowling Green. Washed up rockers and student bands beat their instruments into submission, the concessions flooding with cash that could not be spent when the world was frozen. Everyone knows that the Black Swamp is not entirely defeated, and when the rain comes they simply press a little closer. What would the party be without the guest of honor?

Three days later the moisture remains, thin but ubiquitous, defeating umbrellas and making the earth a sponge. More than fog but less than rain, it clings. The tiles are branded "Nike" and "Reebok" as sodden soil moves indoors.

The weekend passes, and vapor has thickened to true precipitation, more visibly bound by gravity. Custodial Services suffers roughly 30% casualties, student employees having discovered what mud does to a restroom. Monday classes face even greater rates of attrition.

Wednesday night, the storm: with no warning, slow, fat drops turn to bullets. Several students wake as the wind hurls great fistfuls of rain against the walls. The next morning a young man with thinning hair loses his flat, black hat to the wind. Eight minutes reaching class, frigid beads driven like rivets into his scalp; he tries to block the assault with his hands and jacket, but the wind breaks through, parasitic globules leeching his heat. Biology 201 begins on time and he arrives two minutes later, tears hidden in the runoff, his face wet and red and hardly anyone bothering to think it’s the weather.

Friday there are no viable umbrellas; they have sold out and broken. As surface water rises over the following week, they set sail, torn fabric and broken ribs skimming along the surface like water spiders risen from the dead.

Two weeks pass, water rising. Around one o’clock on Thursday afternoon, a young man leaves the Student Union, heading across campus to his dorm. He passes the blue University pick-up, abandoned three days ago by a florid groundskeeper who had sloshed his way home in hip waders and a rubber poncho. The wheels on one side are anchored to the wide concrete path; the other side is two feet into the earth and slowly sinking. "Fuck U God" is keyed into the side-panel.

The student moves past the building that houses Education and Allied Professions. Beyond is a green space walled in by buildings, and on a bench near the center a young woman sits naked, her nipples tight as bird seed in the cold. To her left, her sodden, useless clothes have joined a drift of trash and squirrels covering a storm drain. No one looks at her for more than a moment. One young man, inspired, tears off his jacket and shirt, then continues on to class.

Friday morning, a young woman sits in the waiting room of Student Health Center while a volunteer binds her feet with treated gauze. The room is overflowing with patients, some coughing. Most are baring feet that are bled white and bloated like the earthworms that had littered the sidewalks weeks ago, before they were all crushed to paste. Here and there the skin is broken, in other places black spots bloom. Behind the reception desk, a nurse whispers to her colleague, "I’ve never seen so much fungus in my life."

That night, a man walking back to campus trips. His friends are still inside the bar, two blocks away. He hits his head, bleeds a little on the sidewalk, and drowns.

Saturday, a fault appears in one wall of angular Olscamp Hall.

Sunday morning, Timothy Erbach stands from beside the grave of his recently deceased partner, who was not so much buried as sunk in the infirm soil of the graveyard. He walks toward the fence, among the taller monuments. In the omnipresent muck, Timothy notes that the great stone phalluses are leaning, having lost interest in fucking God. Beyond the fence and across a street, modern Olscamp marks the boundary of BGSU’s campus. This face is multi-paned glass, and as he watches, small cracks star the surface. Atop the building, the skylight is a huge glass and metal pyramid. It drops several feet, the sound all but buried in the wind. Several dozen panes of breaking glass sound remarkably like a shriek. With a slow groan, Olscamp loses its integrity.

Monday morning, nine minutes before Philosophy 106, eight students sit in a cavernous lecture hall, waiting for class to begin.

Monday morning, three minutes after Philosophy 106 should have begun, four students sit. In the back row, one of them smokes a cigarette. Near the center, a freshman sobs loudly, as if in search of his mother’s breast. He knew when he saw the empty parking lot. He should never have come.

Thursday, Shatzel Hall breaks to pieces, having sunk slowly in several different directions. That afternoon, Conklin Hall’s foundation slips out from under it and the walls rain down like stacked cards when a door slams.

There is no one left on Wednesday to see the gray sky split and bleed blue. As the final tired prisms fall to earth, the effect is not so much a rainbow as an aurora. The campus is deep and black, reflecting back the shimmering, kaleidoscopic light. Soon, the days grow warm and blue sky dominates. Mosquitoes rise up out of the waters, swarming in numbers the swamp cannot yet support. Half sunken in the infirm soil, the groundskeeper’s truck germinates, becoming an island. In the subterranean offices of Hanna Hall, a fat frog sits atop a pile of molding papers and snags a hardened wad of gum with his tongue. He will die.