Jeremy Mauser
Zack wasn’t there that night. He considered himself a member of the brotherhood, rather than a true brother. What he heard about that night confirmed his growing distance with the boys he’d once considered closer than family. He spent the next year reassuring his friends that he had “left” the brotherhood before that night, even if he still paid dues. Even if he, for the rest of his guilt-ridden life, would be considered an “honorable alumnus.”
Yosef took two too many hits off his bong before the ceremony, so he didn’t have much to tell the school officials in the days and weeks that followed. After the ceremony ended, before the excitement really started, he trudged up to his room, collapsed onto his bed, and slept for eleven hours. When he woke up, and asked what he missed, no one knew where to start.
Xavier would be remembered as the narc. Well, one of the narcs. His anonymous report and non-anonymous conversation with Dean of Students Celeste Periwinkle, whom his brothers had nicknamed “Pussy Wrinkle,” had nothing to do with the events of that night. But they did mean that when Pussy Wrinkle started to ask questions, she already knew some answers. Which meant she could sniff out some lies.
Wes thought the whole thing was funny. In the moment, at least. He asked Marty what was going on when the newest brothers, mere minutes into their brotherdom, placed a black bag over the Chapter President’s head, tied his wrists and ankles together with rope, and carried him out the back door. It’s a new tradition some of the guys wanted to start, Marty shouted into Wes’s ear. His breath rank with vodka and twice-reheated teriyaki chicken. Vinny’s idea, I think.
Vinny was a New Member Educator. In a previous semester, he would’ve been called a Pledgemaster, but some of the other guys hoped some light rebranding could shed some outdated traditions. Vinny believed, though he never told anyone, that it wasn’t their right to decide which traditions were outdated and which were kosher. For each tradition the other BINOs (brothers in name only) forced the group to abandon, he would add a new one. Which was why he handed Jacoby a black bag, some rope, and his final task as Pledge Class President.
Ulysses surprised his parents when he asked if he could rush a frat. His father insisted on telling him stories of when he rushed thirty years earlier; if Ulysses still wanted to rush, he could. He started with a story about being pelted with golf balls, another where rushes had to dip their balls in hot sauce if they weren’t willing to keep drinking. He said his pledge class had to run around campus in their underwear every morning, and one day, a cop asked them what they were doing, and they said pledging, and the cop laughed, told them to carry on. Ulysses shrugged. You went to a party school, he said. Dad, I go to a liberal arts college. You think they’d make me do the same shit as you? His father mumbled something that Ulysses didn’t understand.
Tariq wasn’t sure why, out of everyone in the brotherhood, they kidnapped the Chapter President. He wasn’t there when they had 5 a.m. workouts, he didn’t scream in their faces when they didn’t know every word of the Creed, and he was nothing but kind, albeit a bit serious. But whatever. The brothers had warned his pledge class how tough it would be to hang out as a full group once they weren’t forced to. This was one last rendezvous. One last way of bonding before they were absorbed into the brotherhood.
Stanislas thought it was quite waggish, the whole kidnapping ploy. The hazing was tamer than expected, and now, the boys could celebrate. All seven of them piled into an SUV that had enough seats for five. Seven plus the President. Stanislas sat on the end of the back row, the President’s feet pressed against his. The President horizontal on the floor. Stanislas didn’t sing along as the boys belted “Mr. Brightside,” mostly because he didn’t yet know these lyrics. Stanislas was a junior, the oldest rush-turned-pledge-turned-newly-minted-brother by several months, and as a result, he didn’t feel like a brother. No, he felt like an uncle, maybe an older cousin. Someone still elated to be part of the family. He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the window, savored the boyhood that rattled this vehicle. He opened his eyes when the guys stopped singing quite suddenly. The blue and red were obvious within half a second.
Ryan grabbed a drink with Tariq fifteen years later. Tariq was a criminal defense attorney in New York, and Ryan was in town for a civil engineering conference. As Ryan started the ritual he did with all of his brothers this far out of undergrad—teasing certain guys, laughing about how drunk they used to get, walking through memory after memory of party after party—he realized that Tariq was forcing a smile. Not speaking. His gaze lost in his drink. That was when Ryan realized that Tariq didn’t have any of these memories. His only memories were rush, the incident, and the cruelty that came between. Ryan apologized, shifted the conversation to who he was still in touch with. Tariq said he hadn’t thought of the fraternity in years, not until Ryan texted him out of the blue. Ryan chugged what remained of his beer, afraid to admit that, to this day, his only friends were fellow honorable alumni.
Ronaldo protested when the President was carried outside. Don’t be a pussy, Vinny said. Let them do this one last thing, Kurt chuckled. Ronaldo made eye contact with Alejandro as the group exited the house. He couldn’t decipher what those eyes wanted to communicate. Ronaldo returned to the basement, willed himself into another game of pong. Even then, some part of him knew he would live the rest of his life with regret.
Quinn wasn’t thinking about his three shots of tequila and three cups’ worth of beer he had consumed when he offered to drive. Looking back later, he was disturbed that no one asked how much he had drank, or suggested someone else drive, or pushed back against the whole “kidnapping” plot to begin with. Looking back even later, he thought it was ironic that he was the one telling everyone to shut up and stay calm as the cop walked toward the car. Because his heart had never palpitated so hard. His palms had never been so sweaty. His mind never so positive he was screwed.
Peter didn’t lie when the hearings started. He didn’t even withhold or obscure. Not a single brother thanked him when he, as treasurer, lifted the fraternity out of three thousand dollars of debt during his yearlong tenure. They complained about the higher dues, called him slurs. When the brotherhood felt pressure from every angle, he didn’t hide, or fight it. He told Dean Periwinkle everything she wanted to hear. And then some.
Oliver resigned from The College Periodical before they could ask him to step down as Investigative Editor. He knew the publication needed to report on the allegations. But he knew he couldn’t be involved. He had to decide between his loyalty to the fraternity, and his loyalty to exposing the truth. Despite his brothers’ pleas for him to disrupt any potential investigations, or even sever them entirely, he couldn’t get in the way. But he couldn’t contribute to them, either.
Naaman kept Fraternity Vice President on his resume because there wasn’t much else to name other than a 2.6 GPA and one semester as a Board Game Club general member, which entailed playing Sorry one Friday and Trouble the next before getting bored, meeting a couple brothers, and rushing. During an interview, a hiring manager said her friend’s daughter went to the same college, graduated the same year as him. Naaman smiled nervously, stared at his unsteady fingers. She asked whether he was involved in that one incident, and he shook his head, but he didn’t say no. He never heard back from the hiring manager. She didn’t even bother rejecting him.
Matthew was careful not to make eye contact with the officer. He was sandwiched between Jacoby and Alejandro, the President’s stomach heaving hard on his feet. He let the others talk when the officer asked if Quinn had been drinking, how many guys were sitting in the back, where they were going to and from. He sat there, unblinking, eager for the world around him to carry on. The situation didn’t feel real, therefore it couldn’t be real. Therefore it couldn’t have real world implications. Therefore, if he didn’t move, didn’t make a noise, he would survive.
Marty floated through the repercussions. He felt like his brothers rarely remembered him, and when they had a tragedy to answer for, no one expected him to say anything helpful or detrimental. He was present that night, but he floated through. He had been a brother for one semester, a semester where he didn’t think his brothers considered him a friend. After that night, he backed himself into obscurity, and no one seemed to notice. And, for the first time, he was grateful to be so forgettable.
Luke refused to answer a single question during his portion of the hearing. He was asked whether he attended the initiation ceremony on March 15, and he said he pleaded the Fifth. Pussy Wrinkle told him that didn’t apply here. He said he would sit there as long as they wanted him to, but he wouldn’t say a word about the fraternity. Pussy Wrinkle told him a lack of participation could affect his merit scholarship. Luke’s lips trembled, and he wanted to speak, but he couldn’t, because he refused to let Pussy Wrinkle see him cry.
Kurt was the first brother to receive a text about the guys getting pulled over. He was six cups into a game of pong when he read it, then read it again, then finally understood what was transpiring after a third read. He asked who was okay to drive, and no one offered. There was some degree of responsibility and accountability here. He swore at himself under his breath, found his keys, and invited the others to join if they wanted. He sprinted outside without anything on his mind other than a need to save his brothers.
Jacoby was by far the calmest person in the car, which meant he offered to answer the officer’s questions when Quinn collapsed into tears. But in a night rife with mistakes, this might have been the gravest mistake of all. If the officer hadn’t spoken with Jacoby, hadn’t asked the second row to roll down their window, he might not have noticed the body on the floor. Wrists tied, head bagged. He might not have asked the entire group to get out of the car. He might not have reached for his gun. When Jacoby looked back on this day, he blamed himself the most.
Isaiah kept silent and still when he heard the siren. As the Chapter President, he had been willing to be kidnapped unwillingly if it meant the pledges could burn off some steam, if they could form another formative memory. Something a little less traumatic than being shoved into a dark closet and scolded over nothing. He was optimistic that things would work out, because they always did, but when the group went silent, and the sirens announced themselves, and Alejandro blurted out to his brothers that he was undocumented, things started to feel a little different. Things might not work out this time. The officer asked his questions, Quinn and Jacoby answered some, and even though Isaiah couldn’t see through the black bag, he knew when he had been spotted. He was ready to tell the officer that it was okay, it was just an unfunny joke, and he was in on it, and he was nothing but safe and secure, but as the guys started to pile out of the car, he sensed some strange movement. Some sudden movement. It was Alejandro running away. The cop screamed, the boys pleaded. And Isaiah couldn’t see a thing. Even though he could have removed his black bag with minimal effort, could have asked someone to untie his wrists, he told himself that he was defenseless, and he listened to the pandemonium from the floor of the car. The pandemonium of the boys screaming, the officer shouting, a gun being discharged.
Harry thought that Kurt was driving too fast. He noticed that Kurt kept drifting out of his lane. He begged Kurt to slow down from the passenger seat, insisted that there was nothing they could do if a cop had in fact pulled the pledges over. But Kurt couldn’t hear him over the tremor of his intoxication. When Harry saw that the road curved, and Kurt’s steering didn’t curve with it, he didn’t think he was about to die. That wasn’t how these things worked. They had driven drunk before. They had made reckless decisions before. And these decisions never ended with death.
Guy did his best to sever the brotherhood from the actions of its individual members. Sure, the one car was exclusively filled with the seven pledges and the Chapter President. Sure, Kurt had received a text about the pledges getting pulled over right before he sprinted out of the house. But those were their individual decisions. The fraternity didn’t force anyone to do these things. His arguments almost worked for Dean Periwinkle. He almost convinced her to lessen the collective punishment. She said he would make a great attorney someday, and he barely stopped himself from smiling.
Garison was thirty years old when he told his husband he had been in a fraternity, forty when he first mentioned the incident. His husband listened in the darkness of their bedroom as Garison sifted through that night’s chaos. When Garison was done, neither of them said anything for a couple minutes. His husband asked where he had been when that all went down, and Garison said the roof, hanging with a couple friends. A couple brothers. He had come out to them a week earlier, and he was excited to come out to the entire brotherhood before the end of the semester. After the incident, though, there wasn’t much of a brotherhood to come out to. When he saw a brother on Instagram, it felt like a mirage from a past life. It was someone who knew an older version of him. The brotherhood was a relic that was almost special to him.
Frank was the only brother who survived the crash. He was seated behind Harry, almost sober in the backseat. He had no explanation for why he didn’t offer to drive. He thought two and a half beers had impaired him too much. If nothing else, he should have been sober enough to know not to step into that vehicle. When anyone talked about that night, he felt like they were coddling him. They villainized Kurt. They scolded the memory of Harry. They assured Frank he didn’t deserve any blame. He wasn’t sure how he wanted anyone to talk about that night, but he detested every word he heard, and read, and thought.
Evan had been named Alejandro’s big two weeks before he ran away. He tried to call Alejandro six times, left him four messages in the days that followed. If Alejandro didn’t reach out to him, he wouldn’t reach out to anyone in the fraternity. He wondered where he went, wondered whether he learned about the crash that demanded everyone’s attention even more than the kidnapping prank. He believed his brothers when they said the officer hadn’t shot him, that the officer hit a nearby tree but there was no way it had even grazed Alejandro. He believed them because he couldn’t fathom Alejandro’s lifeless body rotting away in those woods. Two days before the ceremony, Alejandro told Evan that he wanted to drop out of pledging, and Evan convinced him to stay. He had made it this far, and with a little more effort, he would finally be a brother. The weeks and weeks of brutality would be worth it. But Evan didn’t blame himself for anything that happened. There was no way he could’ve known. He was just doing his job as big.
Derek was the other New Member Educator. During his portion of the hearing, he stated that the brotherhood made many mistakes during this particular pledging process, but his goal was to gradually move the fraternity closer to their ideal outcome. He could only shed so many traditions at one time without revolt. If he had tried to stop hazing altogether, he would’ve been impeached. When asked what he would have done differently in hindsight, he said he would’ve rushed a different fraternity. One smart enough not to get caught.
Colt told Dean Pussy Wrinkle that during the first night of pledging, a senior brother would explain to the new pledge class that there were six frats on campus, but only one fraternity. They needed to hold themselves to a higher standard than the other guys. They needed to be not just better, but the best. Dean Periwinkle asked if he believed they had accomplished that. He thought it through, then nodded. They had, but it still wasn’t enough.
Brooks was the best pong player among his wife’s friend group’s husbands. When he reflected on the hours spent tossing balls into cups, laughed about the nights he got so drunk he couldn’t walk, he could mold the fraternity into whatever shape he wanted. Because his wife’s friends’ husbands didn’t know about the incident. They didn’t ask about how badly he had been hazed, how badly he hazed the guys who came after him. He twisted his stories, sanding their rough edges to the point of forgetting. He landed another ball in another cup.
Ben volunteered to serve as the chapter’s alumni advisor when their 10-year suspension ended. The first time he met the boys who wanted to restart the chapter, even though there were three other frats they could join, they asked what had actually happened that night. He said anything they heard was probably true. They asked if he was there, and he said he was with a small group of brothers, eating pizza and chugging boxed wine on the roof as all hell broke loose elsewhere. They asked what happened to the undocumented guy, and he said the alums didn’t like to talk about him. They asked if he had any regrets. Ben said he couldn’t think of any.
Ammad asked Dean Periwinkle if he could go off topic for a moment. She nodded. He examined the backs of his hands, then said that the semester of the incident, he was in a Renaissance literature class. They had just finished reading Paradise Lost, and his professor explained that John Milton invented the word “pandemonium.” Today it means something like mayhem, sure, but originally, it meant all angels, then all demons. It was the capital of Hell: the demon place. The place of Satan. It was built by the fallen angels. Where the infernal peers sat in council. Dean Periwinkle asked what Ammad was trying to say, and he shrugged. When I think about that night, Ammad said, and the weeks before, and the months and years before, the only word that comes to mind is pandemonium.
Alejandro: BINO. A tall tale. A cautionary tale of sorts. A memory. He was considered a brother for a fleeting moment. Maybe not brother, but at least a member of the brotherhood. But never an honorable alumnus. Hardly even an alumnus. He was a specter, an entity that brothers would feel in the house for years to come. Even when his name had been forgotten. Even as he built a life hundreds of miles from that house. Even as he built a life despite what happened in that house.
***
After Dean Periwinkle announced the 10-year suspension, she received a call from one of the chapter’s wealthiest alums, who demanded that she reverse the decision, or else he would cease his annual $5 million donations. She said her job had nothing to do with financial donations, and she would not be bribed or blackmailed. Two weeks later, the President of the College let her know about another school that was looking for a new Dean of Students. Celeste was happy with her current position, but she thanked the President for thinking of her. One week later, Celeste was fired for reasons that the College chose not to articulate.
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Jeremy Mauser is an Alabama-based, Pennsylvania-born MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. His prose, poetry, and everything in between are featured or forthcoming in Sonora Review, fifth wheel press, New Delta Review, The Bulb Region, and Eggplant Emoji, among other publications. He is an Assistant Fiction & Nonfiction Editor at Black Warrior Review, a Reader at The Masters Review, and a stand-up comic who can be found on Instagram @jeremymauserwrites and Bluesky @jeremymauser.bsky.social.