College

What started as a fun night, turned into survival,

What she thought was just a drink, turned into her body shaking and begging for peace

She can’t remember much but can still smell the beer stained floor and musty chunks from one can only imagine was dinner the night before,

Bleeding. Shaking. Trembling. But not crying. Just numb.

She was dancing with her best friend.

How is she alone on this floor?

She can hear the scratchy voices of hungover men on the other side of the door but she knows she’ll have to face them.

Slowly she starts to peel her naked body off the floor and finds her black pencil skirt and cheetah print blouse from the night before. Could this nightmare just end.

As she pulls her skirt up over her thighs she can feel the nail marks in her skin and the pain from bruising all over. But still has to face them. She looks in the rusted mirror and tries to clean up her smudged make up and feels their hands on her skin again. She remembers being thrown around and to the ground. And left there. Cold. Alone. Naked.

She shakes the thought and throws her top on, squinting through the pain of her banged up body, before unlocking the door that muscle memory must have locked when the boys walked out.

As she steps out of the dark hell into the brightest light she puts a smile on, throws up her finger and walks out the frat hell. They won’t take her power. She runs to her dorm, which seems like a decade away but is only a 5 minute walk, and crumbles into puddles on her floor.

College sure is fun.

Now she has to face them as she’s in class with them. Now she has to shower. Which means going into another bathroom. Willingly. In a dorm. So community showers.

She pulls herself back up and grabs her shower caddy. They aren’t taking her power.

As she approached the bathroom door her legs began to buckle and shake but she stood strong and threw the door open.

The big stall open with no one in sight, after all it was class time, she ran in and locked it tight letting the cold caress her skin as she slung her back against the metal stall door. Now just to get the shower in and get clean.

But what even was clean anymore? She scrubbed and scrubbed but couldn’t quite get to the deepest darkest parts. The parts that stung to touch. The bruising on her thighs and the scratches on her back. She felt it all. No longer numb. No longer riding the adrenaline high. She was alone. Like finally really alone. With her thoughts. The ones about the night before. She can feel their hands on her skin again and squeezes her eyes tight so shut you’d think they’d pop.

Clean enough, she grabs her robe, peaks out the door and halls ass back down to her room before locking it and then the deadbolt, as if she doesn’t have a roommate due back soon.

Shoot. Eta K would be back in any minute and would know something was wrong. But she should know. She left her there. Alone. Roofied. With frat boys. Probably assuming “she’s just drunk again”. But she should have noticed they only drank the one beer out of solo cups each. One nasty beer that had a terrible bite.

She has to believe something happened to her too because why else would she have left her like that. Why would she not have seen the signs and taken her back.

Who really was to blame here? We may never know.