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The Intellect, Integrity, and High Moral Character of the Pi Kappa Alpha Brothers
Meagan and I had been roommates since freshmen year. Both standing at 5’4” with long blonde hair and sharing nearly everything aside from Meagan’s general optimism, most people mistook us for sisters right out of the gate. It was only a matter of time before we were doing everything together, even syncing our classes to the same schedule and declaring the same major. We weren’t forcing the friendship, everything just seemed to fall in line naturally for us.
By our junior year, we had moved out of student housing and into a studio apartment near campus. We got jobs down the street, Meagan at the coffee shop and me at the college bar. Different work shifts meant different class schedules and we weren’t able to see each other as often. We made Tuesdays our designated “date night” and would go out to some local dive bar or brewery to catch up on the week.
About four weeks ago I arrived at our normal dive and placed two pints, still sweating, onto the tacky outdoor table. After ten minutes, I shot her a quick *“Where are you?”* text and waited. Another three minutes later, my phone pinged.
*“CU soon, I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”*
No sooner had I read the text when Meagan showed up on the arm of an Adonis of a man. She didn’t even look at me, her face tilted up toward him like a lovesick puppy. He made eye contact with me and smiled, taking off a hat with letters I understood to mean he was in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. “I’m Andy,” he said, scooping me up into a quick embrace, “you must Steph. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I rolled my eyes internally, holding my tongue before letting him know I hadn’t heard *anything* about him. “Nice meet you,” I sighed.
“We met at the coffee shop! He stayed until after my shift was up. Told me my hair was as eye-catching as my smile. As if anyone would notice my smile when he’s around. We haven’t been apart since.”
My eyebrow arched, “Oh? And how long ago was that?”
Andy shrugged good naturedly, “Sunday.”
The rest of the night was spent talking about Andy ad nauseum. While he tried to redirect the conversation to neutral ground, Meagan decided nothing was worth saying if it wasn’t glowing comments about Andy. In less than an hour I decided I’d had enough. “I’ve got to go. Between work and finals, I have next to no time to do anything else.”
Meagan nodded absently, still staring at Andy while waving goodbye to me. He stood up and gave me another quick hug before I headed out.
The next two weeks were a blur. I’d taken on extra shifts to help pay for next year’s tuition and spent the rest of the time studying like a madwoman. Meagan and I rarely saw one another during that time. We sometimes crossed paths at night, but she had little to say unless it was about her new guy.
It was Sunday night, and I had my first final the following morning. I hadn’t seen Meagan in three days. I worked an earlier shift at the bar and got home around 10 PM to an empty studio. I shrugged out of my grimy bar clothes and into a pair of sweats before chugging a glass of water and hopping into bed. At some point in the night, I heard our door open. I glanced at my watch, 3:33 in the morning. I groaned. “Meagan? What are you doing? Is everything alright?”
She had her back to me. I wasn’t sure what she was doing but her long hair spilled out past her shoulders in the moonlight, and it sounded like she was packing something. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “Everything is alright, just go back to sleep.” I suddenly couldn’t keep my eyes open; my head was back on the pillow by 3:34.
I woke up the next morning to bird song. I stretched and tried remembering the events of that morning. I glanced over at Meagan’s bed, but she wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. All of her stuff was gone, cleared out overnight. Alarmed, I jumped up and tried calling her phone, which immediately went to voicemail. I called friends, but no one had heard from her. I called Andy, but he said he hadn’t seen her since yesterday. I tried her parents who became alarmed once I explained she was gone and so were her things. We tried the police but were told we had to wait the typical 24 hours to report an adult who appeared to leave by choice. Even when we were able to file the report, it was clear we weren’t being taken seriously. At this point, it seemed like my best friend had packed up and started a new life somewhere else, somewhere that didn’t involve me.
I spent the next couple of weeks moping around, completely skipping my finals and cancelling my shifts at work. Half of the time I was angry with Meagan, we had been through so much for her to leave like that. Half of the time I was sad, lamenting the loss of someone who understood me so thoroughly. And sometimes I felt this inexplicable fear. This fear that even though I saw her pack her things and leave, she was somehow taken from me, taken from her family, against her will.
I had taken to drinking by noon most days. I was a twenty-one-year-old college student. I’d spent most of my time working and studying. I decided to “live my best life” and let loose for once. Plus, I didn’t want to deal with the loss of my best friend, something sobriety forced me to face.
On one of those days, I left the local dive and bumped into Andy. He gave me a sympathetic smile. “Hanging in there, Steph?”
“No.” I slurred, “No, I’m really not. What about you?”
He shrugged. “I really liked Meagan. She obviously didn’t feel the same. No point in letting the fact that she left me ruin my life.”
I gave him one of those smiles that everyone knows actually means *Hey, fuck you buddy* and started to walk away. He grabbed me by the shoulder before I could pass, his thumb brushing against my hair. “We’re having a party at the frat tonight. You should come. Friend to friend, you look like you could use a night out.”
I shrugged off his arm. “Sure, I’ll think about it.” I walked off muttering that there was no way in hell I would be caught at some idiot’s big dumb frat party.
Eight hours later, I found myself stumbling into some idiot’s big dumb frat party. I had done some soul searching and realized I was drunk. I was single. I was maybe ready to mingle, just a little, before running back home for some mint chip and Netflix.
The party was exactly what you would expect. Lots of dudes screaming bro at each other, chugging beer, and snorting what suspiciously looked like cocaine off the school’s more scantily dressed sorority sisters. I wandered through the house, waving at Andy who gave me the *one-minute* hand to let me know he wanted to talk. I suddenly decided it was all too much and started backing out the way I had come. But then something curious happened, a phone rang. A landline phone rang. Those old-fashioned landline phones with the rotary dial that you only see in your grandma’s attic or old movies.
In a drunken stupor, I decided to be the one to answer. An intentionally soft, effeminate voice spoke on the end of the line. It sounded like whoever was speaking was doing a caricature of what they thought a soft-spoken man would sound like.
“This is John Carver. Is Andy there?” I put the phone down. Somehow, I knew the caller’s name wasn’t John Carver. Just like I knew the voice he spoke with wasn’t his. Before I had a chance to process this, I felt a presence creep up behind me. I turned around to find Andy just inches away from me. “What are you doing with that?”
“Hm? Oh, uh, yeah. Someone is on the phone for you. John Carter? Juan Carver? Something like that.”
His entire demeanor changed. His eyes flashed with fear and the rise and fall of his chest told me his breath had quickened. He put his hands on my shoulders, thumbs digging in so deeply I knew there would be bruises in the morning, “I need you to tell me exactly what was said.”
I was suddenly very uncomfortable. Not just with his touch but with the seriousness of his question. I knew in that moment that whoever was on the phone was someone I didn’t want anything to do with. “I, I can’t remember,” I stuttered, fear preventing me from saying what I knew. But one look from him told me I needed to calm down and remember. “John Carver! He said it was John Carver and he wanted to know if you were there. He was really quiet, I had to strain to hear him.” Andy didn’t say a word to me. He immediately pulled out his phone and shut off the music screaming from the surround sound in the room. “Time to guys. Time to get the FUCK OUT. Cops are on their way!”
Some people got up to leave, others kind of milled about while figuring out what to do. It was then that the lights flickered and went out, bathing us in an eerie, half-moon light. The air abruptly changed, becoming thick with the sickly-sweet smell of death. The silence became deafening, the world quiet save for the screaming cry of tinnitus piercing through the otherwise noiseless veil.
All at once, the other Pi Kappa Alpha brothers were galvanized into action. Several tried to usher their friends or girlfriends out. Others just stopped moving entirely. They pulled their shirts over their eyes and went to the ground in the fetal position. The people who were just visiting stifled nervous giggles. Others, the ones who lived there, were frozen in terror. I fell into the latter group, despite being a visitor. I knew this wasn’t a prank. It wasn’t hazing. It was something real and dark and violent.
The sound came back all at once, but it wasn’t the sounds of the party or the street life beyond the home. It was the sound of something we had never heard but all knew. It was the sound of the monster underneath the bed, the sound of the dark when the flashlight runs out of batteries, the sound of the phone ringing to let you know a loved one was gone, taken in a violent manner – it was the sound of evil. I shut my eyes and remained frozen in place, having earlier decided to lie on the ground like the others. I felt the breeze of a door opening and knew something wicked was coming.
Then the first one was in. It was like a shadow of a human but larger and more oppressive. It walked in as if in a frenzy to get something done, the way my mother would walk in after work. She would rush in, drop her keys and purse in the bowl by the front door and head into the kitchen to get dinner going before dad got home. This thing moved the same way, invoked the same feelings. It felt benign as long as I stayed still and stayed quiet. I saw it moving in my periphery, heading to the table that held that night’s delights. With a sweep of its dark hand, all the booze, drugs, and what little bit of food that was left were swept off the table.
The door was thrown open a second time. It took every ounce of self-restraint I had to not react. An even larger figure than the first walked in. This one took its time. Slow, tongue out and eagerly tasting the horror that pervaded the room. A second smaller and crueler creature followed closely behind. I could feel it spread out, trying to reach all of us at once.
Somehow the collective room knew to stay quiet, knew not to move. We knew we needed to squeeze our eyes shut and pretend whatever was happening was just a bad dream. I was confident we all held the same belief when a small scream carried across the room. Whether she screamed out of fear or out of drunkenness, I’ll never know.
Faster than my brain could register, the two figures converged on a woman I had seen earlier in the night. She was one of those donning a bikini top and a coke necklace, confidently smiling at every man that crossed her path.
She didn’t deserve what happened.
Her screams, quiet at first, quickly became desperate and painful. She begged for help, but this night wasn’t one for bravery. None of us were going to save her. I watched as her body was stretched across the table. Body bent in a shape no body should be able to make. Her hands and feet arched past what was humanly possible and tied in knots below the tabletop, bones and tendons cracking like gunshots in the air as they were manipulated in a way I couldn’t conceive of. Her blonde hair splayed out like a cruel crown around her head, she wore a mask of pain on her face. When I thought her agony was nearing the end, when I thought no human body could endure that suffering without going into shock and dying, something worse happened.
They feasted.
They sat together like a family and consumed her alive. They made little smacking noises of pleasure, crunching and slurping while she continued screaming, playing together in unison like the world’s most savage symphony. I heard something plop to the ground and roll close to my face. An eye was inches away from me, full of fear and still blinking rapidly. The smallest creature, giggling, slithered across the floor and lay its face next to mine. Slowly, I watched as an oil slick tongue crawled across the floor to scoop up her still-moving eye, swallowing it whole. But it didn’t leave after, the tongue made its way up to my face, pausing just short of touching me. It was gleeful. I knew in that moment that if I so much as breathed, my fate would be even worse than the poor woman on the table. I sensed disappointment before the thing got up and went back to join the others.
And then it was over. They finished off their meal, a grotesque Norman Rockwell in the making, and left as quickly as they came. It felt like an eternity before anyone moved again. Andy started moving amongst everyone, hushed whispers to his brothers. I glanced over at the table, but nothing was left of what happened that night, just the party favors sprinkling the floor. The others started getting up, not wanting to acknowledge the truth of the night. Some cried, silent hiccups rocking their bodies. Others walked out stonily, still numb and in shock from the nightmare we had all shared. We knew we would never acknowledge this night again. No one would believe it. But worse than that, we knew that if we acknowledged it then we would make them real, make them an unavoidable part of our lives. So we all had to go home and pretend to sleep while the horror of that evening impacted all of our future decisions and hid in our nightmares.
I joined in the others in the slow shuffle out the door, devoid of all feelings that weren’t acute terror. I avoided making eye contact with anyone, eager to curl into my bed and cry until the sun came up. But as I was walking out, I heard something that gave me pause, something that made me realize Meagan hadn’t left me after all.
In a whispered but frenzied voice, I overheard Andy say, “I don’t understand, I just fed them two weeks ago.”
#entertainment
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Meagan and I had been roommates since freshmen year. Both standing at 5’4” with long blonde hair and sharing nearly everything aside from Meagan’s general optimism, most people mistook us for sisters right out of the gate. It was only a matter of time before we were doing everything together, even syncing our classes to the same schedule and declaring the same major. We weren’t forcing the friendship, everything just seemed to fall in line naturally for us.
By our junior year, we had moved out of student housing and into a studio apartment near campus. We got jobs down the street, Meagan at the coffee shop and me at the college bar. Different work shifts meant different class schedules and we weren’t able to see each other as often. We made Tuesdays our designated “date night” and would go out to some local dive bar or brewery to catch up on the week.
About four weeks ago I arrived at our normal dive and placed two pints, still sweating, onto the tacky outdoor table. After ten minutes, I shot her a quick *“Where are you?”* text and waited. Another three minutes later, my phone pinged.
*“CU soon, I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”*
No sooner had I read the text when Meagan showed up on the arm of an Adonis of a man. She didn’t even look at me, her face tilted up toward him like a lovesick puppy. He made eye contact with me and smiled, taking off a hat with letters I understood to mean he was in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. “I’m Andy,” he said, scooping me up into a quick embrace, “you must Steph. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I rolled my eyes internally, holding my tongue before letting him know I hadn’t heard *anything* about him. “Nice meet you,” I sighed.
“We met at the coffee shop! He stayed until after my shift was up. Told me my hair was as eye-catching as my smile. As if anyone would notice my smile when he’s around. We haven’t been apart since.”
My eyebrow arched, “Oh? And how long ago was that?”
Andy shrugged good naturedly, “Sunday.”
The rest of the night was spent talking about Andy ad nauseum. While he tried to redirect the conversation to neutral ground, Meagan decided nothing was worth saying if it wasn’t glowing comments about Andy. In less than an hour I decided I’d had enough. “I’ve got to go. Between work and finals, I have next to no time to do anything else.”
Meagan nodded absently, still staring at Andy while waving goodbye to me. He stood up and gave me another quick hug before I headed out.
The next two weeks were a blur. I’d taken on extra shifts to help pay for next year’s tuition and spent the rest of the time studying like a madwoman. Meagan and I rarely saw one another during that time. We sometimes crossed paths at night, but she had little to say unless it was about her new guy.
It was Sunday night, and I had my first final the following morning. I hadn’t seen Meagan in three days. I worked an earlier shift at the bar and got home around 10 PM to an empty studio. I shrugged out of my grimy bar clothes and into a pair of sweats before chugging a glass of water and hopping into bed. At some point in the night, I heard our door open. I glanced at my watch, 3:33 in the morning. I groaned. “Meagan? What are you doing? Is everything alright?”
She had her back to me. I wasn’t sure what she was doing but her long hair spilled out past her shoulders in the moonlight, and it sounded like she was packing something. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “Everything is alright, just go back to sleep.” I suddenly couldn’t keep my eyes open; my head was back on the pillow by 3:34.
I woke up the next morning to bird song. I stretched and tried remembering the events of that morning. I glanced over at Meagan’s bed, but she wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. All of her stuff was gone, cleared out overnight. Alarmed, I jumped up and tried calling her phone, which immediately went to voicemail. I called friends, but no one had heard from her. I called Andy, but he said he hadn’t seen her since yesterday. I tried her parents who became alarmed once I explained she was gone and so were her things. We tried the police but were told we had to wait the typical 24 hours to report an adult who appeared to leave by choice. Even when we were able to file the report, it was clear we weren’t being taken seriously. At this point, it seemed like my best friend had packed up and started a new life somewhere else, somewhere that didn’t involve me.
I spent the next couple of weeks moping around, completely skipping my finals and cancelling my shifts at work. Half of the time I was angry with Meagan, we had been through so much for her to leave like that. Half of the time I was sad, lamenting the loss of someone who understood me so thoroughly. And sometimes I felt this inexplicable fear. This fear that even though I saw her pack her things and leave, she was somehow taken from me, taken from her family, against her will.
I had taken to drinking by noon most days. I was a twenty-one-year-old college student. I’d spent most of my time working and studying. I decided to “live my best life” and let loose for once. Plus, I didn’t want to deal with the loss of my best friend, something sobriety forced me to face.
On one of those days, I left the local dive and bumped into Andy. He gave me a sympathetic smile. “Hanging in there, Steph?”
“No.” I slurred, “No, I’m really not. What about you?”
He shrugged. “I really liked Meagan. She obviously didn’t feel the same. No point in letting the fact that she left me ruin my life.”
I gave him one of those smiles that everyone knows actually means *Hey, fuck you buddy* and started to walk away. He grabbed me by the shoulder before I could pass, his thumb brushing against my hair. “We’re having a party at the frat tonight. You should come. Friend to friend, you look like you could use a night out.”
I shrugged off his arm. “Sure, I’ll think about it.” I walked off muttering that there was no way in hell I would be caught at some idiot’s big dumb frat party.
Eight hours later, I found myself stumbling into some idiot’s big dumb frat party. I had done some soul searching and realized I was drunk. I was single. I was maybe ready to mingle, just a little, before running back home for some mint chip and Netflix.
The party was exactly what you would expect. Lots of dudes screaming bro at each other, chugging beer, and snorting what suspiciously looked like cocaine off the school’s more scantily dressed sorority sisters. I wandered through the house, waving at Andy who gave me the *one-minute* hand to let me know he wanted to talk. I suddenly decided it was all too much and started backing out the way I had come. But then something curious happened, a phone rang. A landline phone rang. Those old-fashioned landline phones with the rotary dial that you only see in your grandma’s attic or old movies.
In a drunken stupor, I decided to be the one to answer. An intentionally soft, effeminate voice spoke on the end of the line. It sounded like whoever was speaking was doing a caricature of what they thought a soft-spoken man would sound like.
“This is John Carver. Is Andy there?” I put the phone down. Somehow, I knew the caller’s name wasn’t John Carver. Just like I knew the voice he spoke with wasn’t his. Before I had a chance to process this, I felt a presence creep up behind me. I turned around to find Andy just inches away from me. “What are you doing with that?”
“Hm? Oh, uh, yeah. Someone is on the phone for you. John Carter? Juan Carver? Something like that.”
His entire demeanor changed. His eyes flashed with fear and the rise and fall of his chest told me his breath had quickened. He put his hands on my shoulders, thumbs digging in so deeply I knew there would be bruises in the morning, “I need you to tell me exactly what was said.”
I was suddenly very uncomfortable. Not just with his touch but with the seriousness of his question. I knew in that moment that whoever was on the phone was someone I didn’t want anything to do with. “I, I can’t remember,” I stuttered, fear preventing me from saying what I knew. But one look from him told me I needed to calm down and remember. “John Carver! He said it was John Carver and he wanted to know if you were there. He was really quiet, I had to strain to hear him.” Andy didn’t say a word to me. He immediately pulled out his phone and shut off the music screaming from the surround sound in the room. “Time to guys. Time to get the FUCK OUT. Cops are on their way!”
Some people got up to leave, others kind of milled about while figuring out what to do. It was then that the lights flickered and went out, bathing us in an eerie, half-moon light. The air abruptly changed, becoming thick with the sickly-sweet smell of death. The silence became deafening, the world quiet save for the screaming cry of tinnitus piercing through the otherwise noiseless veil.
All at once, the other Pi Kappa Alpha brothers were galvanized into action. Several tried to usher their friends or girlfriends out. Others just stopped moving entirely. They pulled their shirts over their eyes and went to the ground in the fetal position. The people who were just visiting stifled nervous giggles. Others, the ones who lived there, were frozen in terror. I fell into the latter group, despite being a visitor. I knew this wasn’t a prank. It wasn’t hazing. It was something real and dark and violent.
The sound came back all at once, but it wasn’t the sounds of the party or the street life beyond the home. It was the sound of something we had never heard but all knew. It was the sound of the monster underneath the bed, the sound of the dark when the flashlight runs out of batteries, the sound of the phone ringing to let you know a loved one was gone, taken in a violent manner – it was the sound of evil. I shut my eyes and remained frozen in place, having earlier decided to lie on the ground like the others. I felt the breeze of a door opening and knew something wicked was coming.
Then the first one was in. It was like a shadow of a human but larger and more oppressive. It walked in as if in a frenzy to get something done, the way my mother would walk in after work. She would rush in, drop her keys and purse in the bowl by the front door and head into the kitchen to get dinner going before dad got home. This thing moved the same way, invoked the same feelings. It felt benign as long as I stayed still and stayed quiet. I saw it moving in my periphery, heading to the table that held that night’s delights. With a sweep of its dark hand, all the booze, drugs, and what little bit of food that was left were swept off the table.
The door was thrown open a second time. It took every ounce of self-restraint I had to not react. An even larger figure than the first walked in. This one took its time. Slow, tongue out and eagerly tasting the horror that pervaded the room. A second smaller and crueler creature followed closely behind. I could feel it spread out, trying to reach all of us at once.
Somehow the collective room knew to stay quiet, knew not to move. We knew we needed to squeeze our eyes shut and pretend whatever was happening was just a bad dream. I was confident we all held the same belief when a small scream carried across the room. Whether she screamed out of fear or out of drunkenness, I’ll never know.
Faster than my brain could register, the two figures converged on a woman I had seen earlier in the night. She was one of those donning a bikini top and a coke necklace, confidently smiling at every man that crossed her path.
She didn’t deserve what happened.
Her screams, quiet at first, quickly became desperate and painful. She begged for help, but this night wasn’t one for bravery. None of us were going to save her. I watched as her body was stretched across the table. Body bent in a shape no body should be able to make. Her hands and feet arched past what was humanly possible and tied in knots below the tabletop, bones and tendons cracking like gunshots in the air as they were manipulated in a way I couldn’t conceive of. Her blonde hair splayed out like a cruel crown around her head, she wore a mask of pain on her face. When I thought her agony was nearing the end, when I thought no human body could endure that suffering without going into shock and dying, something worse happened.
They feasted.
They sat together like a family and consumed her alive. They made little smacking noises of pleasure, crunching and slurping while she continued screaming, playing together in unison like the world’s most savage symphony. I heard something plop to the ground and roll close to my face. An eye was inches away from me, full of fear and still blinking rapidly. The smallest creature, giggling, slithered across the floor and lay its face next to mine. Slowly, I watched as an oil slick tongue crawled across the floor to scoop up her still-moving eye, swallowing it whole. But it didn’t leave after, the tongue made its way up to my face, pausing just short of touching me. It was gleeful. I knew in that moment that if I so much as breathed, my fate would be even worse than the poor woman on the table. I sensed disappointment before the thing got up and went back to join the others.
And then it was over. They finished off their meal, a grotesque Norman Rockwell in the making, and left as quickly as they came. It felt like an eternity before anyone moved again. Andy started moving amongst everyone, hushed whispers to his brothers. I glanced over at the table, but nothing was left of what happened that night, just the party favors sprinkling the floor. The others started getting up, not wanting to acknowledge the truth of the night. Some cried, silent hiccups rocking their bodies. Others walked out stonily, still numb and in shock from the nightmare we had all shared. We knew we would never acknowledge this night again. No one would believe it. But worse than that, we knew that if we acknowledged it then we would make them real, make them an unavoidable part of our lives. So we all had to go home and pretend to sleep while the horror of that evening impacted all of our future decisions and hid in our nightmares.
I joined in the others in the slow shuffle out the door, devoid of all feelings that weren’t acute terror. I avoided making eye contact with anyone, eager to curl into my bed and cry until the sun came up. But as I was walking out, I heard something that gave me pause, something that made me realize Meagan hadn’t left me after all.
In a whispered but frenzied voice, I overheard Andy say, “I don’t understand, I just fed them two weeks ago.”
#entertainment
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