It wasn't my brightest moment, admittedly.
Standing almost naked in the basement of some decrepit old building with a bunch of strangers seemed more like asking to be butchered and buried under a thick layer of concrete down here in the darkness. They were the wolves and I was the sheep being led to slaughter. A black cloud hovered over us and it stood no chance of clearing any time soon.
"This is the first time I've seen a man go Au naturel." Ovid stands before me with yet another unlit cigarette balanced in one hand. "It's actually quite refreshing. But, while I admire your attempt at growing chest hair, you look like you've been nuked. Do you see this, John?" He calls out to John, who is affixing what appears to be a metal meat hook to a pipe that runs across the ceiling. "Isn't Dante just the most darling thing you've ever seen?"
"I'm sorry?" I reply, shielding my chest from view, "Are you actually going to tie me up or are you going to keep gawking at my nipples all night?"
There's a crash and a long string of curses when John drops the hook on top of his head.
"Lucky has the rope ready." Virgil appears beside us, a little breathless with what uncertainly appeared to either be an oncoming asthma attack from all the mold in the room or genuine excitement. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?" He asks me, eyebrows cocking, "The university has plenty of other clubs that you can join, not just ours."
"No," I reply, and we meet eyes. "I want to be here."
Or rather, I needed to be here after they'd created such a fuss over their secret poetry society. I highly doubted that the chess club or the political club would host an initiation down in a dripping wet basement, and I didn't want to be subjected to such normalcy. I wouldn't allow myself to follow in my father's footsteps, graduation be damned.
Lucan—or Lucky, as they seemed to call him—steps over with the rope. Little drips of rusty water stain the shoulders of the white dress shirt that he wore. "Your hands," he tells me. "Let me see them."
I offer him my hands and he quickly takes the rope and begins tying my wrists together.
"I won't tie the rope too tight," He explains while the others look on. "That might cut off your circulation as your weight pulls down on the rope. Your feet are going to be firmly planted on the ground, but you might get tired and need to lean forward. I used Homer as a test dummy a few times; we worked out all the kinks after he passed out a couple of times."
"Has anyone died doing this?" I ask him curiously, and his eyes flicker for just a moment in Virgil's direction before coming back to rest on me.
"Nope," he replies easily, "nobody's died that we know of."
"The way a Crow shook down on me," Beatrice says and sits cross-legged on a wooden desk as Lucky and I pass by her. "The dust of snow from a hemlock tree. Has given my heart a change of mood. And saved some part of a day I rued."
Virgil helps John and Lucky tie me to the meat hook hanging from the ceiling. I lift my arms, a rush of cold air stealing what warmth I had been harboring by keeping my hands tucked into my armpits. The ropes go up and I'm hooked all at once and dangling slightly, my toes scraping the filthy ground flecked with pebbles and pieces of dust.
"Huh." Lucky inspects my feet and touches his chin thoughtfully. "How tall are you?"
"He's dangling," John points out, his lips pursed in annoyance. "This wasn't part of the plan."
"He's shorter than I anticipated!" Lucky insists, "And we're running out of time! Virgil? Is this okay, or do I need to start over and make the rope longer? I have tennis practice with Beatrice in the morning. We're going to wear matching Ralph Lauren uniforms."
"It's fine!" I manage to grit out through my teeth, "I can handle hanging here for a few hours."
"He's kinky," Ovid speaks up, "He just looks like the type to enjoy fucked-up shit, doesn't he, fellows? Those gorgeous eyes behind those atrocious glasses are incapable of lying."
Virgil steps into view, holding a black blindfold, and studies my expression when he comes closer. He had long, curling eyelashes, and when he smiled, I noticed that his left front tooth was chipped in the corner, making me wonder why a rich man like him hadn't gotten it fixed right away. Pride, maybe? Arrogance?
"I'll see you in the morning, Dante Santiago." He tells me softly, and all at once, my world goes dark when he slides the blindfold down over my head and covers my eyes.
Their voices clamored around me for a good few minutes after that, with John and Beatrice arguing over whether they should have dinner in her dorm or his dorm, which was also my dorm that I had yet to move into. Then they begin to fade as they all walk away without so much as a goodbye or a second thought.
Virgil had been right, in a way.
My mind immediately wonders if this was some kind of sick prank, and I imagine the Poets laughing at me on the way back to their dorms for the night. To them, I was absolutely nothing—not a friend, not a lover. What was stopping them from telling everyone what they had done?
I dangle there in the darkness, shivering and jolting when cold drops of water splatter on my back and shoulders and roll down. The smell of the basement is musty, of rotting wood and something eggy, like sulfur. The minutes tick by, and I can feel them crawling along.
"Are you the son?"
Red lights bloom against the darkness, and rain comes down on the twisted heap of metal further down the road. I step out of my car and stare across at the two sheets lying at opposite ends of the freeway, and I know they're gone and that they've left me all alone.
"We're sorry. We did the best we could, but they were too far gone."
A step creaks softly.
At this point, I'm unsure of how many minutes or hours have passed, and my wrists feel like they're on fire, but I lift myself up in anticipation. "Hello?" I call out to whoever's there, "Virgil?"
The footsteps come to a stop, and then whoever it is comes over, feet splashing in the tiny puddles on the floor. They come so close that I can feel the warmth radiating off of them, my senses screaming to make sense of what is going on now. They don't say anything, but fabric rustles when they reach out and gently trace my jaw with one finger, then my lips.
"Wait," I tell them, heat blossoming under their touch. "Don't."
They quickly remove their hand.
"Who are you?" I ask them, "I thought this was supposed to be an initiation."
The person says nothing, and I wait so long for a response that I imagine they'd grown bored and left. Instead, the hands return to the ropes and the hook over my head, and I begin to fumble around a little. A chest bumps into mine, and an elbow smacks me in the nose. Then the ropes loosen, and my feet fall flat on the ground. I'm still tied, but I'm no longer struggling to hold myself up.
The figure begins to walk away, and the stairs creak once more under their weight, but I don't want them to go and the only thing I can think of are Ovid's words to me in the science room.
"One of you said you had sex here." I call to the stranger, "Is that part of the initiation?"
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