Day nine. The symbol that had been doodled onto student notebooks, magnet-ed onto refrigerator doors, dust drawn onto dirty cars next to ‘clean me!’ was spray-painted onto the town water tower.

Day ten, Mrs. Dawnson, widow and Sunday School teacher, called it the devil’s mark to anyone who would listen, including all listeners of the WQ2 morning talk show.

Pastor Frankfurt wasn’t so explicit, but, on day twelve, gave a sermon on the dangers of vandalism and false gods.

On day eighteen, Lana Hixby, proprietor of the Town Street New Age Shop, painted a spiral in the front window and made the six o’clock local news: “Children are in tune with the universe. It’s about taking our swirling inner turmoil and turning it into order.”

The reporter nods with an expression of fake seriousness and cuts back to the anchors, who make a pun and segue to the weather.

Aaron Blackwell, a tax accountant, told his wife: “It’s just the power of suggestion. Kids see other kids drawing it, then they see it on the news... of course it’s spreading.” Many across Briston County, across the state, and later  country share such reasonable thoughts, but reasonable thoughts don’t sell ads like CNN blasting the headline “Spiral Pandemic Sweeps the Nation” on day 32.

Melrose101 writes in the comment section: “Isn’t it kinda degrading to actual disease victims to compare a fad to a pandemic?” Liked and upvoted above this is TraciEatUrHeartOut: “A pandemic means world-wide. A pandemic can’t sweep a nation. Gawd.”

Day 55, Urban Outfitters sells an off-white t-shirt with a screen printed spiral on the front for $25.99.

Day 108, Thursday night’s prime crime procedural does a thinly veiled iteration of the spiral fad, except in their untimely aired production turns it into the symbol for a teen virginity losing cult.   

An LA street artist, a Manhattan viral marketer, and two dozen drunks sprinkled across the country claim to be the originator. In five years time a documentary maker will retrace the spread of the trend back to Briston County, where the spiral is still visible upon the water tower if you squint.

He doesn’t find this: day one, patient zero, Donny Brown doodling a spiral; he wasn’t much of an artist and stuck with smiley faces, sunshines, and other simple things. That day, a spiral was the simple thing. The canvas a sheet of notebook paper with abandoned notes on McCarthyism.

Cara from the desk in front showed him how to make the spiral spin like the opening to the Twilight Zone by holding a pencil point down the center and flicking the corner. A quarter of the students have made their own iterations by lunch time; anything to kick boredom out the school day.

In seventh period, Ms. Terry snapped, “I swear, the next spiral I see means detention…”