initiation

the devil is a manic pixie dream girl (short story)

film still from Ms. 45 (1981), directed by Abel Ferrara. photo credit: pinterest

my short story “initiation” was recently published in verdict magazine, a beautiful publication put together by lillian mottern and caeli kennedy. check out more at their insta: @verdictmag

though not intentionally a halloween story, this fun little piece i put together has all the hallowed elements: a full moon night, mysterious rituals, and a twist ending for the ultimate trick-or-treat experience.

on a basic level, it’s about killer sorority girls. on a deeper level, it’s about the male weaponization of the “manic pixie dream girl” trope and a group of women’s quest to reconquer this narrative. and on a visual level, the initial image that fixed itself in my mind and became the basis for this story—a house of nuns serenely sowing the land of their backyard—came from a real experience i had in college. during my senior year, my best friend lived in an off-campus house (with fellow sorority sisters, no less) which, unbeknownst to me at the time, neighbored a home of nuns. one day, we decided to go on a shrooms trip; before traversing into the woods next door to explore nature and expand our minds, as twenty-year-olds are apt to do, i was in the backyard, waiting for her, when i turned to my right and saw three nuns next door, shoveling soil.

the shrooms had hit faster than i’d expected, and i had to do a double take to ensure that what i was seeing was real. from my vantage point i couldn’t quite see the ground beneath them, and though reason told me they must have been digging a garden, the psychedelics in me whispered that perhaps it was something more sinister—like a grave. the image has always stuck with me; and this is how it proliferated on the page.

last thursday i had the opportunity to read an excerpt of my piece at the magazine launch party at molasses books in bushwick. check out the clip here, and the story below. enjoy ~

---

“Initiation”

I understood I was cast as an ensemble member in the production of life at an early age. The middle child hidden between an all-American eldest son revered by his mother and a troubled youngest daughter babied by her father; an average student, an average athlete, an average girl. In elementary school my third-grade teacher left me behind during a field trip to the aquarium; at middle school dances I stood on the wall in my sparkling dress while my friends got asked to dance, shyly, one by one. By the time I entered high school I’d accepted my fate, in fact I became an expert at camouflage; able to slip into being a shadow of a girl in order to collect others’ secrets like currency.

I was never late to school. I went to my sports practices and did my homework. I went to parties and even lost my virginity to Evan on the water polo team (I think he thought I was someone else). I went to prom with a friend’s boyfriend’s friend and took big group photos, fifteen sparkling couples, dresses and matching cummerbunds ranging in pantone shades like sherbert. I smiled wide in every picture. I danced with my date and even let him feel me up on the party bus on the way to the after-prom party. And that’s where the trouble really started.

I drank, a watermelon Four Loko of all things. “I feel so free,” I whispered to my prom date as he unceremoniously tried to coddle my A-cups, “so free.” And that was the end of the night, at least as memory served; but waking up the next morning to a horrible hangover and barrage of even more horrible texts proved I had, in fact, partied on. The most recent text was from Jennifer, a popular brunette ponytail and technically one of my closest friends.

I squinted blearily at the rotating screen, my stomach spinning along with it, and I knew I was going to be sick soon. Wiping the sweat from my upper lip, I read, surprisingly, “I’m gonna fucking ruin your life slut.”

I began to piece together the night before, slowly and then all at once realizing that I had unleashed every secret in my arsenal, firing off each superfluous grenade subconsciously. Nobody had been spared, and thanks to me, Jennifer had gone from having three boyfriends to zero.

But there was really nothing she could do: In a couple of weeks we would both be off to college, I to the state school, Jennifer to the elite, all-girls liberal arts college her parents last-minute decided would be best for her “personal and academic growth.” Once I got to college, I reasoned, she wouldn’t be able to get at me anymore.

I was wrong, naturally.

*

The state school was huge, at least five times my graduating class, and seemed like the perfect place for me to slip back into subtle anonymity; but it proved harder than I’d hoped. I had the icy disdain of wealthy suburbia, which so fascinated a school full of hometown hicks, smeared across my face, no matter how hard I tried to scrub it off with my foaming face wash in the co-ed bathroom.

Nothing worked. Everywhere I went, people noticed me; holding open the door as I straggled into lecture late; asking where I was from in haltingly imperfect language arts icebreakers; smiling in my face as I pushed dark sunglasses higher up my nose and hurried across the quad.

I was beginning to lose all hope of ever recovering my armor of anonymity as I drifted through the freshman activities fair with my roommate, attracting stares and even the occasional unsolicited, “Hello.”

“What are you thinking of trying?” she burbled beside me, “because I was looking at the list online and found so many cool ones. I was thinking a cappella, because I used to love to sing when I was younger, and what’s that movie that made a cappella, like, a thing?”

Her voice slid in and out of my ear. “Huh?”

“That movie,” she continued, “what’s it called…”

And then everything became muted around me; though my roommate remained rambling I could no longer follow her nonsensical train of thought; other kids calling out, trying to pocket club members like candy, also faded into the background. For I had found it. A beacon of light. A sign of hope.

I nearly fell to my knees in exaltation. The poster was perfect; four thin tan blonde girls, smiling cheesily at the camera and making angel wings with their palms like a gang sign for the pious. I couldn’t tell one apart from the other. It was perfect.

“I’m going to try that.” I pointed up at the poster advertising Panhellenic sorority recruitment.

But the rush process didn’t quite go to plan; in fact, by day two every sorority had dropped me, even the lame one that was known to take anybody. I looked up from the text sent to me by a syrupy sorry rho gam.

“How many houses do you have today?” My roommate was prattling on while she turned on the blazing lights of her makeup mirror. “Because I have four. My absolute favorite didn’t call me back but my second and third favorites did, so I’m not even mad. I wonder what kind of questions–”

“I got dropped,” I said.

“From which?” She was scrutinizing her pores.

“All.”

She whipped around so fast her ponytail slapped her primed and moisturized face. “Oh my God, what? What did you do?”

I was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you must’ve been blacklisted. I mean, that’s the only reason a girl can get dropped from all the houses on only the second day.”

“Blacklisted?”

She nodded vigorously while applying concealer, eyes once again locked on her own in the makeup mirror. “Like, someone on Panhellenic must be out to get you.”

That was how I found out that Jennifer’s older sister was the president of the entire Panhellenic council.

“I’m so sorry,” my roommate said, although she didn’t seem sorry in the slightest, in fact I knew she was happy to narrow down the competition even if only by one girl. Then she brightened, losing her painted-on pout. “But, hey. My older sister told me about this thing when she went to school here. Basically like an off-campus sorority. No one really knows much about it, except for its members I guess, but nobody really knows who they are, either.”

It sounded like the most covert camouflage a girl could get. My eyes lit up.

“How do I find them?”

*

A few days later, I found myself at the beginning of a bumpy country cul-de-sac at twilight, facing a circle of seven sad houses. The address I had been given was the furthest house on the street, sitting beside an ugly tangle of woods. I trudged along, kicking up dirt. As I got closer to my final destination, shadows caught my eye; three outlines shuddering around the side yard between the sorority house and its neighboring abode. I squinted into the waning sunlight. Could those be my new sisters? But as I stepped closer I saw three nuns instead, in full habits, serenely sowing the land; tills and shovels in hand, it appeared they were digging something—a garden, most likely, though I couldn’t help my mind from jumping immediately into a grave.

One of the nuns stood to swipe sweat from her brow, and I was surprised to see she couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me. But suddenly the slap of a swinging door broke me from my reverie; another outline appeared, this one on the front porch of the sorority house. I felt myself propelled forward and soon came face to face with a shadowy specter, the dimness of the room behind her doing nothing to help my vision. The door creaked open and I was blown inside with a simple, “Come in.”

“What’s your name?” The spirit was fluttering about now, not sounding sinister so much as sisterly, “are you a freshman? Fuck, we just got these new dimmer lights and I don’t know how the fuck to work them. Ah–” a blaze of bright ballooned in the corner of what I then saw was a living room, lived in, but cozily so; Persian rugs piled haphazardly atop one another like patchwork carpeting, a sunken suede green couch facing a weathered wooden bookcase bursting with tombs of every shape and size. And everywhere, lamps–ornate standing fixtures lurking in corners, Victorian shades on shaky side tables, Tiffany lights twinkling in tandem.

“Yeah, I fucking hate overhead lighting.” My eyes found my guide, finally visible. She stuck out her hand for a shake, each fingernail painted a different shade of blue: “I’m Zinnia.”

“Sara,” I said, although it came out more as a gasp–seeing Zinnia had taken my breath away. I had never seen someone like her; she was beautiful, sure, but more than that she was unique, from the shade of her eyes to the shape of her face, the sharp curl of her hair and soft curve of her lips. She was dressed simply enough but wore copious amounts of jewelry: Statement necklaces piled atop one another until their messages became jumbled and unclear; stacks of bangles resting on wrists, even curling up to an arm cuff on the right bicep; and, perhaps most notable of all, the small wrist watch she wore on her left ankle, folded over frilly sock that tucked into an innocent pair of Mary Janes.

“So,” Zinnia said, throwing herself on the couch and looking me up and down,“you want to join our sisterhood?”

“Um, yeah. I think so,” I said.

She continued to study me, shifting positions constantly, from pretzel legs to pigeon toes to unparalleled perches, like she was a bird about to shake out ruffled wing and take flight with a musical jangle at any moment.

“You might just make it,” she finally said.

“Make what?”

“Make it through initiation.”

I had heard enough initiation horror stories to understand what that might entail. But, as if she read my mind, Zinnia said, “We don’t do things like the other sororities. After all.” She paused for effect. “We’re a sisterhood.”

She raised a perfectly unplucked eyebrow. “So. Do you still want in?”

I didn’t quite know what I was agreeing to; all I knew was that if Zinnia was in, then so was I. She had that sort of effect. Forget drinking the Kool-Aid; I would make it myself.

I nodded, definitively this time. “I want in.”

Zinnia smiled at me, a ray from the sun shooting out of her chest and warming my heart as I basked under her approval; she was magnetic. “Well, you came just in time,” she said, “the final ceremony is gonna take place in two days. We usually don’t add any additional girls this late, but considering your initiative, plus the fact that I’m the new member coordinator of our e-board this year, I think we can make an exception.” She winked, I bloomed; I sprouted into the newest potential member of the sisterhood.

*

There was a full moon on the night of initiation. I walked along the crunchy road, spotlighted in silver. Every house on the street was dark, including the nuns’; nothing that signified any sign of life, and for a second I wondered if it was all a dream, or a test. But then I heard a “Psst!,” and the echo of a ghostly giggle, and I saw Zinnia step out into the streetlight, a leading lady entering stage right. A half moon of girls in white circled her, and as I approached I began to see that, despite differences in the girls’ hair, eye, and skin tones, they all shared one clarifying characteristic: Their benign blandness, highlighted even more so in matching white linen.

“Put this on,” Zinnia threw me my own frock, “quickly.”

I changed behind a tree, the cold catching on my skin. The six of us huddled together for warmth as Zinnia led us into the woods next to the house with nothing but the dappled moonlight and meager glow of her iPhone flashlight.

And then suddenly even that light was gone, and it was just me and the trees and the night.

“Hello?” one of my pledge sisters called out fearfully, and I was relieved to find I wasn’t alone. But then I felt something sail pass my shoulder, and I heard a shriek, then a rustle—and then, silence.

I waited for a beat.

“Uh, hello?” I called out cautiously. “Zinnia?”

As if summoned by my spell, the phantom came back to taunt me; tearing at my dress, my wrist; shrieking, I wrenched away and fled deeper into the woods.

Something was chasing me, but whatever it was seemed nearly out of steam; laborious breaths and a “Jesus, she’s fast,” floated to me through the undercurrent. After a few minutes I finally stopped, fully winded; I paused, listened; but heard nothing. I had escaped.

As my initial spook was settling, I realized too late that whatever had happened in those woods must have been a harmless prank, an initiation ritual meant to haze, but not harm. Embarrassed, I crunched through fallen leaves, wondering what I would tell my sisters when I returned back to the house, the woods eventually spitting me out into the overgrown backyard.

The faint sound of music fell from the ledge of the living room window. I slipped over to see what was going on, and peering in from the side a scene began to take shape: Blushing boys shuffling around the room with cups of jungle juice in hand and ill-fitting suits swamping shoulders; and girls, the five girls…I had to do a double take. They were the same girls who had entered the woods with me, that much could be said from their feet caked in mud and splattered across white linen; but other than that they were unrecognizable. Nothing much had changed outwardly, per se, but it was like something was glowing from within, coloring their cheeks and making it impossible to look away.

It was the ultimate manic pixie dream girl production, blown to epic proportions.

I watched as they began to pair off, the girls hand-picking their male pledges, the unlucky leftovers blushing with jealousy. One couple headed to the screen door that opened into the backyard; I dove behind a bush to keep cover.

“Shh!” I heard girlish giggling, filtered through the night sky, and then: “Come here, I want to show you something.”

“Wait—” Male mutterings, prickling with desire: “I just have to tell you, you’re, like, the coolest girl I’ve ever met.”

“Aw–” Breathed softly, “You’re sweet.”

And then silence, except for the occasional sigh or slight sucking sound; at that point I was waiting for an out, the moment when they would inevitably decide to just go up to a bedroom and do it. But then, after another pulsing sigh, I heard her giggling again: “Come on, please”–she drew out the last word, making it pretty.

And then they were in my line of sight, the girl leading the boy on tiptoes, her hair falling in her face, her dress dirty at the hem, laughing; and he, smiling with dopey devotion, eyes closed to everything but her, allowed himself to be dragged across backyard lines and over to the nuns’ garden, which stood silently at attention.

“Hey, are you sure we should be in here?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know, should we,” the girl replied, but it wasn’t a question, it was something silkier, and soon enough the two were kissing again, urgent and eager and emotionless.

I lost them within the oddly-shaped vegetables and strange flowers that glowed eerily in garden rows; and then, to my horror, the back door of the nuns’ heavenly home creaked open and two crept out, light on their feet, habits dragging in the dewy grass, a shovel in the hands of one, the other touting a rusty garden rake. As though nothing was out of the ordinary, the nuns began to dig.

The distinct shaft of a shovel dipping into dirt disrupted the noises of pleasure erupting from beneath the beds. I heard a mumbling male, “What the fuck?,” in a voice loopy with lust, followed by that girlish giggle.

And meanwhile, slowly, serenely, like they were preparing the sacrament, or some other holy rite, the sisters were shoveling dirt down into the beds, as if to bury both lovers alive; but no, I rubbed my eyes, I saw the hazy outline of the sister—sorority, not saintly—rising up, restraining something struggling below, and it dawned on me that perhaps only Adam wouldn’t be making it out of the garden of Eden that night.

The holy sister passed the shovel to the sorority sister. Careful to protect her bare feet, the sister raised the shovel and hit the soil with a resounding thump. Everything went silent.

She dropped the shovel.

One of the nuns bent to pick it up, wiping hands on habit.

“Congratulations,” the other nun said to the girl, “you made it through initiation.”

With a whoop and a shriek the newest sister ran home while I ran away, not looking back, not even once.

It turned out the sorority life just wasn’t for me, after all.