Jennifer was walking back from AP US Lit the afternoon her life changed forever. They had been reading Poe's short stories in class, and her mind was on The Masque of the Red Death and The Cask of Amontillado rather than other things. She was crossing the quad, books in her arms. She saw her friend Kate sitting on a bench, and she sat down next to her, sun shining overhead.
"Hey, Kate!" she said cheerfully. Kate was always a bit on the moody side, but she nonetheless said hello. "Man, Westin's gonna be the death of him, in need to annotate and write a one page report on all these stories by Monday!" It was Friday afternoon. Kate half-smiled and turned the other way. "Well, I guess you'd better get going..." Kate said indifferently. Puzzled by her friend's current mood, Jennifer got up and started her way across the quad again.
"HEADS UP!" a sudden voice shouted. A football was tossed though the air and hit Jennifer's pile of books, sending them flying and her to the ground. "Oh, geez, I'm SO sorry!" a guy in a red football jersey called, running over. "Here, let me help you with those..." he said, scooping up the books and giving them back to Jennifer. "Thanks..." she said, looking at the back of the guy's jersey. "...Hamilton." she said, laughing. "Oh, Hamilton's my last name. My first name is Kyle..." Kyle said, taking Jennifer's hand and shaking it. "Well, thanks for helping me with my books..." Jennifer said, feeling a little woozy. "Yeah... anytime..." Kyle said, shifting onto the other foot. "Well, see you around I guess.." he ran back towards his awaiting football buddies. Before he got there, he turned and winked at Jennifer, and she laughed and continued on her way.
The sun had gone behind the campus clock tower by the time Jennifer finally got back to her dorm. Her last class of the day and her dorm were at opposite ends of the campus, and it took at least ten minutes to get there. She pulled out her key and unlocked the door. "Erica! Reese!" she called out her roommate's names. "I'm not feeling like cooking tonight, let's..." she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the state of the living room.
The sofa and chairs were missing their cushions. They were lying on the floor, covered in dark stains. A broken beer bottle with blood dripping off the jagged end was laying the shards of the broken coffee table. On the kitchen counter, fifteen red solo cups lay on their sides or upright. Several bags of white powder lay on the counter next to the cups, some of them bust open. Beer covered the counter and was dripping and running down the cabinets underneath it. Jennifer could hear soft moaning coming from upstairs.
She dropped her books and backpack in shock and sprinted for the stairs. "REESE! ERICA!" she yelled, turning on the landing and running up the rest of the way. She stopped to listen and heard the crying coming from Reese's room. She pushed open the door and gasped in shock.
The room looked like it had been ransacked. The closet door was open along with all the drawers. Reese's pictures of her family had been thrown off the nightstand and lay on the floor, shattered in their frames. All the sheets except for the mattress cover had been pulled off, and there were several sticky white stains on that. She looked in the corner and saw Reese sitting there, crying. Her blue tank top had been torn down the middle, still intact from the chest down. "OH MY GOD REESE WHAT HAPPENED?" Jennifer cried, rushing towards her and helping her to her feet.
"They took turns..." was all Reese could say before she slumped into unconsciousness. Putting her arm around her, Jennifer half walked with/half dragged Jennifer down the stairs and out of their dorm to the campus nurse. Twenty agonizing minutes later, Jennifer waited outside the office while she could hear the nurse asking Reese questions.
"How many of them were there?"
"*sniff* Four or five. I don't know, I kind of passed out after the third one."
"Did you drink or eat anything an hour or so prior to the... incident?"
"Yeah. They came back to my place for beer. I drank a few more of them than I should have."
"Do remember anything about your... attackers?"
"Only a few details. One had a dog tattooed on his leg and asked if I wanted a bite of his bone. Another one had black hair, cause he was the first..."
Reese broke down into sobs again.
The nurse shut her binder and patted Reese on the back. "Don't worry, honey. It's 2016. We'll find the bastards." Reese seemed to take comfort in this, as she was out in a few minutes. "Hey, are you ok?" Jennifer asked as they were walking out of the medical building. "Yeah, I'm fine.." Reese said distantly, not sounding very fine at all. Reese had only one thing on her mind right now: rest and relaxation.
But Jennifer, who had been best friends with Reese since the third grade, had another thing on HER mind: revenge. As they walked through the sinking sunlight filled-quad back towards their dorm, Jennifer plotted carefully.