Page 46 of Serpentine Valentine
She made a noise of sympathy in the back of her throat and made to reach for me again before catching herself. “I’m sorry I upset you.”
“You didn’t. I mean, it’s hardly your fault,” I assured on a flimsy laugh, dashing at my cheek as a tear rolled loose.
Her grin was self-deprecating. “I really fucked up this date, didn’t I?”
Another laugh, this one more genuine. “Honestly, I’m not in the best place to date anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s fair. I’d still love to be friends with you,” she suggested. “You’ve always intrigued me. A beautiful girl who skulks around campus with her nose buried in Homer or Socrates is a rare enough sight to draw the eye. I have a feeling your looks are the least of your charms.”
Oh.
But that one hurt. An arrow to one of the last soft spots behind my breastbone.
I hadn’t made a new friend in…too long. People had stopped even pretending to see me as more than a victim or a slut.
It was good to be seen for me. Wanted platonically.
It was something I’d yearned for in the secret recess of my soul my whole life.
“Yeah,” I agreed, and this time, real emotion clogged my throat. “Yeah, that would be nice. If you’ll excuse me for a second, I just need toclean up.” I gestured to my wet face and no doubt running mascara.
“Take your time,” Bryn said graciously. “Why don’t you get some fresh air, and I’ll order us some food? When you get back, I promise we’ll talk about pleasanter stuff.”
I smiled at her in thanks and slipped from the booth. Her eyes were hot on my back as I walked to the back and around the corner to the restroom. It was empty, so I didn’t hesitate to take the last stall. I opened the sanitary disposal container screwed to the wall and took out an airlocked plastic bag.
Inside, a black full-face snake mask, talon-tipped leather gloves, and my Hogue X-5 matte black tactical knife awaited me.
When I emerged from the bathroom and stalked out the emergency door into the back parking lot, Professor Morgan’s victim was nowhere in sight.
In her place walked a vengeful harpy on a crusade.
“A burnt child loves the fire.”
––Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lex
The Delta AlphaFraternity was housed in a colonial mansion at the far end of Greek Row at the western edge of campus. It wasn’t a prestigious frat for anything in particular, athletics or academics or hot guys.
But I hadn’t singled it out for its accomplishments.
When I’d decided to start this vigilante shit, I’d wondered how I would find predators on campus without some sort of system. I had Juno, who was an IT whiz and who frequently searched the dark web forums for conversations about brutality on campus, and Effie, who was so popular and warm, friends often flocked to confide in her. But it wasn’t exactly enough.
Then one day a few months after Halloween when the spring was thawing winter and making everything weep, I’d escaped the rain to duck into a little coffee shop in Richmond. Sipping a cup of Earl Grey, I’d noticed a few local young folks peruse thebulletin board at the front of the café. It seemed like an archaic way to spread news about things in the age of computers, but the corkboard was still littered with flyers for babysitters, music lessons, and tutors. I watched as someone ripped a tab off a poster for karate lessons, and I knew exactly how I’d get the insider information at Acheron when I returned.
I’d just ask.
The tips about Delta Alpha had come into my burner phone in a flurry. One, two, three…ten.
It seemed they had a reputation for drugging girls and sharing them in the basement of the frat house.
Two of the messages we’d received had even spoken about their assaults being filmed. They didn’t have proof, but they distinctly remembered a camera in their faces at different points in the horrific evening.
Upon further investigation, their claims seemed to have merit. Juno found a thread buried on Reddit that talked about Delta Alpha being a fraternity for “primal” men who were ready to take what they wanted. They spoke in ambiguous terms, but it was easy to discern that they used mythological terms as stand-ins for their true meanings.
Going “Greek” on someone was a fairly thin-veiled allusion to raping women. The Greek gods were known for raping mortals and goddesses alike. Poseidon with Demeter and Medusa, Zeus with Leda, Callisto, Europa, Antiope… The list went on.
So tonight, I’d done as the ancient Greek gods and these Delta Alpha predators did, and I’d assumed a different form to fuck with them.
