Quest Editor Mysteriously Disappears Following Crazed Editing Night
Warning: The following descriptions of the events of the night of April 19 might be distressing to some.
After loyally writing for the Quest for two years and being an editor for one, Madeleine Voth ‘25 has suddenly gone missing, and friends and family are speculating about her whereabouts.
This past Wednesday's editing night started like any other: Lots of work and not much time to get it done. However, it took a dark turn after an argument between the editors broke out. Layout editor Chloe Hsy recounted the whole incident with horror in her eyes: “Everyone just started screaming at each other. Cass was throwing things and talking incoherently about chess, Anie was chugging Red Bulls and throwing them at people, and Declan was nowhere to be found. At one point, Madeleine ended up crawling into the corner and just started sobbing…she was mumbling something about how this reminded her of her parents…how we needed to form a peace circle and work our problems out like the family therapist used to say...”
A peace circle was, indeed, never formed, and instead, things escalated further.
While still screaming at each other, Cass Biles and Anie Kotha furiously started tearing apart the Quest room, while Declan Bradley and Chloe Hsy looked on in horror. They tore things out of drawers until they came upon the ancient whip-its…whose year of origin is unknown…and took them, promptly collapsing onto the infamous sex couch, not to be roused for the rest of the night. In the midst of the chaos, Madeleine, as if possessed by a demon, began levitating in the air. Old issues of the Quest flew around her while she spoke in tongues. Much of it was incomprehensible, but she said something along the lines of: “Ajdiewphgjvsk…pay grades…uoqrwgheqw…staff dissatisfaction…fhwqorghr…Human Resources…” Following this, she collapsed onto the floor, only to utter one final word, “...Bilger”
Voth had previously expressed frustrations about her long working hours and the way in which she was treated by fellow editors. Lisa Sharakova, a close friend of Madeleine and self-proclaimed “Quest bestie,” said of Voth’s dissatisfaction, “She was always complaining about how Anie bullied her. At one point, she even had to seek out therapy for her trauma from the Quest, she used to tell me that when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the story spreadsheet…all of it was red…she would sometimes whisper…‘no draft received’, with a single tear rolling down her face.” Sharakova continued, “She would regularly come to me crying about editing night the day after. Usually, when she would tell me about it, she would fall asleep mid-sentence, and in a sleep-induced psychosis, utter things like, ‘we’re almost there guys!’ and, ‘Only a few more minutes and we’ll be done!’”
Chloe Hsy further recounted that the last time she saw Voth, through tears, Madeleine said that she was going out to smoke. “She shakily pulled out her pack of Marlboro lights and like a ghost, disappeared into the night, with only a cigarette between her lips and a trail of old Quest issues floating behind her. From that moment on, she has not been seen...that is…there have been no confirmed sightings of her.
While for legal reasons, no one who was present at the time of the incident can comment further, there is speculation about the whereabouts of Madeleine Voth: Unknown sources claim that she has escaped to Florence to embark on her semester abroad early. An anonymous source even claimed to have seen her sitting at a cafe in Florence, smoking a cigarette, sipping on a cappuccino, and reading the daily newspaper with one eye twitching. This, though, cannot be confirmed at this time.