Possessed.
I want you to picture this, okay? You're a freshman in college. You've just gotten a tour of your dorm complex and you're ready to begin, you're ready to move in, and you want to start this new life. You want to start it badly. But then you've got me, tour guide extraordinaire, ready to really pull you in for the kill. I'm that bastard that always tries to scare the freshman shitless, knowing full well that at one point, I was there, too. Some helpless young kid, some little boy, lost and for the first time in my life, away from my parents. I was that kid, too, the one that's exactly like the kids I'm about to scare the crap out of. I can already pick out that one kid, the one who is exactly like I was. He'll be the first one crying and running out of the dorms, praying to hop on the next train back to Chicago, killing all of the dreams he'd been concocting at the time of his acceptance into this school.
Since the moment I picked him out, I've been watching him. He's the tiniest here, hiding in the back of the group all day. Now is the time that I instruct everyone else, including the runt, to follow me into one of the corner dorms of the boy's wing. We're all going to sit down together after a quick runaround of the small, square room, smashed like sardines on the floor, and I'm going to tell everyone a story.
"Are you ready? Everyone settled?" I asked, waiting for the stirring to stop. I sat at the head of the group, pulling out a chair from the desk and sitting backwards, leaning over the backboard. I waved my arm around and said, "These are the rooms you'll be living in with another roommate, and yes, they're all this small. All questions answered?"
I paused for a second, ignored a few small arms, and pointed at one kid in particular, twig-like and alone. "You there. Yes, you. Are you listening? Are you ready? I'm about to rewind a couple years back to the time when I was a freshman."
Insert a dramatic silence here where I hoped to raise some of their interest. I took a deep breath, cocked an eyebrow, and started.
"One night I was just lying in bed, not studying, not doing anything. By the way, you need to study here or you'll fail. I learned the hard way. Take it from me, I promise you.
"Anyway, right, back to the story. I'm lying there, my roommate isn't home so I'm by myself, and I hear all this commotion out in the hall. So I go outside, right? And I go up to this guy to find out what the hell is going on because there's a million kids piled in my hallway to the point where I can barely move. I mean, literally, I'd just opened my door and stuck my big toe outside of my room and already I'd run into three people. So I just asked the kid in front of me, I ask him 'What the fuck is going on, my friend?' and he tells me 'Dude, kid's freaking out in there. I don't even know' over his shoulder, barely turning his neck to me, straining to see over the crowded heads.
"A few doors down, there was an open entryway and kids were standing around it like half a foot, just staring in, eyes all wide and jaws all open like they were fishes in a tank. Someone started yelling to get some help, yelling that this kid was clawing at the walls. And that's when the screaming started," I looked around, meeting the eyes of a few kids. I had their attention.
"This scream was a loud ass scream at the top of whoever's lungs it was coming from. Whoever was in that room was the one doing it and he wasn't talking or anything, he was just screeching. Screeching with full lungs of air. I guess his eyes were shut most of the time, but when they were open, it was like he wasn't even there. And I'd assume that maybe he wasn't really there, what with all the hollering and scratching that was going on.
"His roommate was a mess. Anyone would be. You would be. Well, 'cept for me of course, 'cause I was there and nothing really effected me too much. But I mean, all of you, you'd freak the hell out if you found your roommate bouncing around, screeching like a blind goddamn bat, hands all rigor mortis with fingernails filling up with chips of paint from the walls. You'd probably think you were blazed off of something, which, by the way, let me remind you, is not allowed in these here dorms. Dry campus, they call it. Just thought I'd put that out there for any of you stoners," I found myself lecturing. At least I was kind of doing my job. A couple kids glanced sideways at each other. Some rolled their eyes. The rest looked anxious for me to continue.
They all began to murmur to each other quietly during the break from the story, so I told them all to shut up and continued on.
"Okay so back to this kid. He wouldn't calm down, he wouldn't stop screaming. Someone eventually managed to steer through the parade of kids and got the RA. I watched him faint right there on the spot when he got the chance to peer into the open room. Everyone started talking about that movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and everyone seemed to have seen that chick get possessed by some demon in her dorm room. Big fucking deal, right, when you've got the real live version right there a few doors down happening to some random dude? It made us all unlucky bastards in the back that much more eager to push our way up and see this crazy fucker first hand. I mean, it's not a movie, it's real life.
"And I see the skepticism on your faces. I'm not making this up. I was there, I saw it. I saw that RA pass out, right there, dead on the cold tile floor, half out in the hallway, half in the room. The demon-hosting guy just kept on screaming like his vocal chords were never going to give out, tearing up the walls, giving everyone this great show you know?"
Their eyes just kept getting wider. I was loving it.
"So they called 9-1-1. Yeah, I guess that's the only thing you can do in a situation like that. I mean, is there a number for 'twenty-four-hour exorcisms?' I don't think so. So then this ambulance shows up, right? It took at least a dozen or more cops to clear the hall because of all the chaos and I was trying to be all sneaky and stay in my dorm so I could see the whole thing unfold. But those cops? They're smarter than we want to think.
"They ushered us all out of the building, but not before we saw them grab the kid, all stiff and screaming still, and they dragged him down four flights of stairs. By the time I had made it outside, those pigs'd loaded the kid up, who hadn't taken one single goddamn breath, right into the back of the ambulance and they strapped him down before they drove away. His yelling had turned to chanting or some bullshit like that, maybe a mix of both. Either way it was louder than the sirens as the hoard of us watched he flashy lights disappear down the road."
A few of the kids began to shift on the hard floor. They were getting restless. Whatever. The kicker was on its way.
"So anyway," I furthered, glaring at the freshman with A.D.D., "we were told that this kid actually had to have a Priest called on him. I guess we kind of believed it because the story has stuck around and nothing's changed about it, it's all truth. And you can't tell me or anyone else that a hundred kids got together and were al like 'So this is how the story's going to go, okay? Got it? Great. We'll fool all the assholes and make the front page of the newspaper.'
"Which reminds me, this whole story was in our local newspaper. Yeah, right on the front page, all 'Student Possession on Campus' or whatever, which sounds kind of like we all got busted for stash or something, but I bet you can find that article in the archives and read it. 'Cause all of us, the ones who witnessed this crazy thing firsthand, we wanted to read what the article had to say to see where they'd lied and whatnot. But I mean, it's so much better to hear the stories in person and I can tell it better than that reporter, so don't even bother looking for it. He wasn't there, he doesn't know shit." I enforced the last part, the lie, because there was no newspaper and I can guarantee that one snarky kid is going to want to look this whole thing up.
I took a deep breath, pretending to be bored with the story and ready to be done telling it, then went on.
"So they call that Priest I mentioned, right? And apparently this guy tells everyone, including the kid who isn't even in his own mind, that there's this demon inside of him. Like, okay genius Holy man, who the fuck didn't figure that out by now? Did you really need to go to the hospital, stand by the bedside in that fluorescently white room and announce it like you're the first to think of that solution? Come on, right? You all agree with me, right? Give us a break. We're college kids, we're not stupid, you know? But it makes for a cool story I guess, to have some Priest show up at a hospital and be all 'This young man is indeed possessed by a demon of some sort, and I am going to exorcise that spirit after further interrogation.'
"What I'm saying now is, I don't know what 'further interrogation' meant, really, but the kid was exorcised that same day so I guess they didn't have to search real hard to realize the kid was pretty screwed."
One of the kids near the front lifted his arm and asked, without waiting for me to recognize him, "Where is the kid now?"
I snarled at him for interrupting, but answered because that's where my story was headed anyway.
"He was in that hospital for a couple months," I began. "The screaming had stopped and all of that. I guess that's right and swell, because it was some god-awful noise. Now, though, he's in some institution for kids who lose their minds over this or that, whatever, and no one knows where exactly this place is. They're afraid kids from school will come back and bring the whole thing on again. Something like that, you know, I don't know the details of what's up now, I only saw it then."
Some of the kids seemed to let this information settle. Others seemed especially concerned with the idea that the kid is still alive somewhere and that maybe it all really happened. But I wasn't done yet.
"I hope you all aren't scared of living here in these dorms now. Everyone seems to be afraid of being the next victim, you know, since this happened and all. I don't know though. I haven't seen anything like it since so I wouldn't be worried if I were you."
It's now that I pause, ready to bring the story to an end that I should be winning some sort of award for. I glance around the room, ruffle my hair lightly and say, "Oh, I forgot. I should let you know that we're in the same room all that shit happened in. See those marks on the wall right there? Yeah, those are from his bare hands. Creepy, right? But don't worry. As I said before, nothing's ever happened to me."
The majority of the room is uneasy now. Some kids look ready to head for the door and move onto the next phase of the tour - lunch. But it's not time for that. Not yet, anyway. It's time for my big acting debut. You see, that scrawny kid I pointed out before? The one that was me a few years back? He's going to be in my position some day, telling this story, getting his revenge for the time that he ran out of the room, crying for Mommy his freshman year. Because this? It's a tradition. It's a cycle.
I stiffen my body suddenly. A few kids that are closest to me gasp, caught off guard, and I roll my eyes up into the back of my skull. Small tremors start in my hands and work their way through my body 'til I'm shaking head to toe. I throw my head back, fall onto the floor and spazz out like no other. Some of the kids jump up and the majority scream.
As I thrash on the floor, kicking out my legs and knocking the chair over, the kid I singled out flies to his feet and scampers out of the room. Tears flow down his face and his body shakes with fear as the rest of the group backs away.
I try my hardest not to bust a gut laughing.