The Punishment Club

by D. A. Maddox

  It wasn’t that she wanted to be selected, she quickly reminded herself. The very prospect was supremely humiliating. Just knowing Peter had the power to do it was infuriating beyond words. This was not what Emma Jo had signed up for, learning about Hell Day and accepting that reality when she’d applied to Chesapeake. From all she’d heard from Mom and Dad—who were not so tight-lipped as most parents, knowing Emma Jo could keep a secret—any willful participation in conduct that breached the twelve Virtues of Innocence could land her in legal trouble.

  “Legal trouble at your age,” Dad had said, “is bad. We’ll leave it at that.”

  Emma Jo was not programmed for trouble. Trouble didn’t make sense. And, really, how hard was it to stay out of?

  On screen, Peter sat back in his chair, still shirtless and trying to smile. By the countdown in the corner of the screen, he’d finished with just over two minutes to pick someone. As per the rules of this “game,” Emma Jo hadn’t seen any of his actual run—which was kind of a shame, since others got to—but by the look on his face, he’d done what he had been supposed to do.

  Oh, was he ever red in the face. The blush went practically to his shoulders. His chest was right out there, too, even his—

  Those are nipples. Among primates, males and females both have them.

  They were nice, light-shaded like his hair. Pink and gold weren’t complementary colors, strictly speaking, but in this case they harmonized just fine.

  Emma Jo, stop. Put your goddamned eyes back in your goddamned head.

  She couldn’t help but stare. Apart from her brother—and you couldn’t really count brothers—she’d never seen anything quite like it. People wore clothes. It separated them from the animals. Even bumming around the sorority house, Emma Jo hadn’t dressed down further than elbow-length tees and knee-length sweats.

  On screen, Peter said, “Look, let me just apologize for this in advance. Nothing I can do. Sorry.”

  Emma Jo’s new friends crowded in close to witness the selection. There was no telling, when Peter first tapped the screen, who the soon-to-be damsel in distress was. On Peter’s screen, their icons could be in a whole different order. Funny, though—if they were symmetrical across the connection, it looked a lot like…

  The middle of the screen resolved into focus, and Emma Jo found herself staring back at herself, as though in a mirror.

  Theresa, Faye—everyone in the room with her—squealed in delighted surprise. On screen, nine other young women let out a collective breath of relief. It wasn’t them. They were spared for now.

  No. It’s me. Okay. Unexpected.

  Theresa at her left arm, Faye at her right. Emma Jo didn’t resist when she felt herself being pulled to her feet and out into the hall. They were so forceful, giggling the whole way. She had to jog to keep up, even as one of her sisters hurried ahead to the elevator. Her brain struggled to process what had just happened.

  Hey, maybe a redo? Give good old Peter a chance to rethink this?

  How they laughed at her, practically dragging her down the hall. What they saw in her face that was so funny, Emma Jo couldn’t guess. She didn’t feel like she was making a funny face. All she felt at present was the unwelcome grip of unwanted hands on her and the rough hallway carpeting against the bottoms of her feet, still in ankle socks. She hadn’t thought to put on shoes. She hadn’t thought she’d need them.

  “No,” she said, finding her voice suddenly weak, watching the elevator doors slide open like the jaws of a monster. “No. Hey—I can’t do this, okay?”

  “Sure you can,” Theresa said, going in, pulling her in after. “Come on, Emma Jo. Look at it this way: You’re done in ten minutes and no worries about Hell Day.”

  “This is wrong,” Emma Jo insisted as the doors closed back in on them, as the elevator started down. “It’s against the law! The Virtues of—”

  “Fuck the Virtues of Innocence,” said Faye. “It’ll be fine. It’s just freshman initiation. No one’s going to tell.”

  In terms of raw probability, Emma Jo thought, you can’t prove that.

  “Turn that frown upside down,” Faye admonished as the doors hissed back open. “Put on your brave face. There’s no getting out of it.”

  “But … people will see.”

  More laughter.

  “That’s kind of the point,” Theresa said.

  ****

  “You stay put now,” Toni said, running out into the hall in a rustle of sweatshirt and blue jeans. Then, calling back to her before shutting the door, “I’ll be back!”

  Duh, Cassidy thought. We’re roommates. And lucky me for that.

  On screen, Emma Jo’s portrait icon showed only her room, half of a small picture in a frame on the wall: A younger Emma Jo in a wetsuit, leaning over the rail of a ship and kissing a dolphin that had risen out of the water to greet her.

  Fervently, Cassidy hoped Emma Jo hadn’t seen the profound relief in her face. She hoped Emma Jo wasn’t too shy. She’d seemed pretty lively yesterday. Almost outgoing.

  Sure as hell looked shy, though. And horror-struck, when the girls in her room had taken her from in front of her computer and out into the hall.

  “Okay,” Peter said, “now I feel, like, really bad.”

  Yeah. That scene had unfolded quite a lot like a flippin’ kidnapping.

  The onscreen quietude, meanwhile, was … well, disquieting. It didn’t last.

  “Hey, man,” said Flo of the Top Row, “thanks for not, you know, picking me.”

  Several others followed her example. Really, it was annoying. Once again, Cassidy’s mouth ran half a step ahead of her brain, and she said, “Just let it go, Peter. You had to pick someone.”

  If I do get picked next, Cassidy thought, I’m going off-screen like he did, not like her.

  She sent up a prayer that Emma Jo would somehow find a way to laugh herself through it.

  Then, on reflection, she sent up a second that Toni and her stupid phone wouldn’t get them all busted.

  ****

  “Hey!” Emma Jo objected when their hands left her arms and went for her shorts—and right there at the open door. “Just wait a second!”

  “No time,” Theresa said, fumbling at the laces while Faye tugged at the top of the stretch band from behind. “You’re down to eight minutes, tops. Soon as you’re naked, you just run like lightning, you got me?”

  The lace unraveled in Theresa’s fingers. Emma Jo could see herself in the wall mirror, her deep blonde hair still in braids from class, eyes wide with a bizarre combination of disbelief and almost-acceptance. She held her hands clasped at the hem of her shirt, holding it down, as first her sweat shorts and then her panties puddled to the floor around her ankles. The little hairs on her legs seemed to rise up as Faye’s fingers had run down them, stripping her from the bottom down.

  Oh, she thought again, lips thinning to a single line. Just look at the color in your face now.

  “Nice legs, science major,” Faye said, standing from behind her and lifting her shirt as she went, baring her bottom to the room and the open elevator. An older student stood just outside of it and captured this nightmare on video. Was she live streaming?

  Oh, Jesus. No.

  Emma Jo still held her shirt down at the front. “Turn that off!”

  The woman at the elevator only laughed at her. Why not? Her ass was right out there.

  “Do you run?” Faye wanted to know.

  Still focused on my legs, I guess.

  “Bitch,” Emma Jo insisted, finding a fierceness in her voice that was a little surprising, “you either turn that damned thing off, or I will sabotage this stupid game for everyone.”

  “Fine,” the would-be videographer said, tapping the phone out of record mode and putting it in her pocket. “Some people. So serious.”

  Faye and Theresa drew her shirt up over her head, then down her front over the arms and off.

  “Tae Kwon Do,” Emma Jo said over her shoulder, hands crossed over her pu
ssy. “Back off.”

  Should’ve shaved this week, she thought, looking down at herself, unable to cover quite all of her mound.

  But she could run fast, too—and, even while covering up, she did.

  Cheers as she cleared the front porch of Alpha Chi. From behind her, her sorority sisters—even a pair of unknown roommates leaning past an open second-story window. Farther left, a small cluster gathered on the porch steps of neighboring Tri Sig, giggling, pointing, one of them bent over, howling with merriment and scandal.

  Class on Monday’s going to be fun, Emma Jo thought, surrendering her bouncing breasts to open view so she could keep her crotch covered.

  And ahead of her, standing out on the lawn where the Tree of Knowledge couldn’t spoil the view, no fewer than twelve Delta Kappa boys, clapping and whistling. Gawking.

  Brisk out tonight, she said to herself, nipples tightening under the breeze, which fate had conspired to put at her front. She nearly tripped over herself when her foot passed over a smooth stone. This would be a good night for a late hot chocolate.

  Her mind was grasping. She was, verily, putting on her “brave face,” as underneath the chill her blood burned hot with indignity. Emma Jo told her parents everything important in her life (female stuff exclusively to Mom), but she had a feeling she’d be keeping this episode to herself. Pledge stuff was supposed to be secret anyway.

  Closer. She was almost to the tree.

  “Nice tits!” one of the boys called out to her.

  Yeah? she thought. Okay. I’ll play.

  “Thanks!” she called back. “Last you’ll ever see of them, pencil dick!”

  She couldn’t help but be more than a little satisfied at the resultant uproar, especially from the boy’s frat brothers. She circled the tree once, twice…

  She had a thought, beginning her third circuit—

  Is it worth it?

  No, Emma Jo, this is dumb.

  Screw it.

  She finished the last circle by slapping the tree, then throwing her hands out in front of her to do a full cartwheel. Yep, there it is, right out there. She executed the move without a hitch. Then she ran backward for a few steps, both middle fingers raised in a salute to the boys of Delta Kappa Epsilon. “Kiss my ass, jerkoffs!”

  She turned from them, presenting that ass, hands returned to her lower middle, and finished the run normally.

  Theresa and Faye met her at the door with laughter and applause. They also had her clothes, which they gave back to her at once.

  She didn’t cry until she was alone in the elevator, fully dressed and with four minutes to spare. And she stopped by the time she was back in her own hall. There was one more thing to do. The smart thing, the rational thing, would have been to pick one of the brave-looking boys on screen. Best chance for a successful finish. After what she had just gone through, Emma Jo damn sure felt no obligation whatsoever to be put through Hell Day.

  The only problem was, after Peter had gone, she didn’t think there were any brave-looking boys left.

  ****

  Prisoner Profile: Buddy Ray Zimmer

  Transitional Inmate #203

  Freshman, Chesapeake University, Maryland Chapter

  Age: 18

  Height: 5’5”

  Weight: 140 lbs.

  Eye Color: brown

  Hair Color: black

  Study Focus: IT / Programming

  Prisoner Class: Convicted, Non-Penitent, Protective Custody

  Sentence: 2 Years

  Consent for Alternative Punitive Plan: Given

  Approval Status: Pending

  Crime: …

  ****

  Here we go, Buddy thought.

  When Emma Jo took her place in front of the computer screen, she was flushed in the face, a little bloodshot, but on the whole seemed a lot better off than she had the last time she’d been in frame. And Buddy understood.

  She’d done it. More importantly, she was done. She was back where she was supposed to be with a minute and a half to spare. Knowing what was coming was often enough harder than actually going through it.

  Buddy only wished he could believe that about Hell Day.

  “Gonna getcha,” that goon Kevin Carter had promised him. “You’ll see what happens when a pledge I didn’t vote for sneaks in to DKE. Oh, yeah. You’ll see, all right. Fuckin’ pussy. Gonna make you cry like the man pussy you are.”

  Buddy didn’t think of himself, particularly, as a “man pussy,” whatever those words meant to Kevin Carter. He was fit. He played a mean game of lacrosse, forward position, where the man pussies of Kevin’s perceived universe were likely to get run over and killed.

  “So, okay,” Emma Jo said, her voice a bit on the shaky side. A quick sniffle before continuing, “Here’s the thing…”

  But he was quiet, spoke generally only when necessary. He was “bookish,” to use his older brother’s term. Hair was a little shaggy. Clothes were a bit on the geek side, maybe, but he liked his golfer’s cap and anime tees. He liked the tweed jacket he’d bought for poetry readings. It was … in character for that kind of thing.

  “I don’t want to actually pick anyone for this,” Emma Jo said. Buddy was hardly listening at all. Really, he’d rather be on his book club website, which he ran under the name Alastair Drake and where he had 6,500 followers.

  Chesapeake University hadn’t been his first choice of college. And Delta Kappa Epsilon, the stomping grounds of his great and legendary older brother, Miles, was the last thing he wanted to be a part of. Especially now.

  No. Especially tomorrow. Tonight would be over soon enough.

  On screen, Emma Jo took a breath. “I’m just going to throw this out there.”

  That got his attention. Sounded like Emma Jo was about to play the role of subversive. Buddy could relate to that.

  Emma Jo, in a laughing, pleading tone of voice—and with thirty seconds left—said, “Any volunteers?”

  Until she’d started speaking, the Dare Dungeon had been abuzz with conversation. It had only half abated after that as she ignored first one question and then another. But now, nothing. Total dead air.

  Most of the other guys regarded their computer cam lenses in utter bafflement. What? Volunteer for streaking duty? By now, it sounded like there were dozens of students outside. Doubtless they’d been drawn forth, like a spreading virus, from his own roommate. Ernie Morse had ducked out of the room as soon as he found out what the dare was.

  Ernie Morse, who had defended him in the pledge vote. Buddy doubted very much he would be defended, again, from whatever Kevin Carter had in mind for him tomorrow.

  Guys were chuckling now, saying “No, thanks,” “Um, pass?” and “Bitch, you crazy.”

  That last kid—name of Jason—wow, dumb move.

  Yeah. Go ahead. Make her mad and see what happens.

  Only Buddy suddenly did not want that to happen. Suddenly, he knew what to do.

  ****

  “I’ll go,” said the brooding, intense boy in the lower right of the screen. “Go ahead and pick me.”

  Emma couldn’t help but shake her head—not in refusal, but in absolute surprise. This was the last kid she had expected to say yes. His cheeks were already darkening, his eyes glassy with resignation.

  Ten seconds.

  “Really?” she insisted. “Um. Let’s see, ah, Buddy? You sure?”

  He nodded, palmed an eye dry. “Yeah, I’ll take one for the team.”

  The other freshmen boys were, naturally, encouraging her to do it. And now she didn’t have a choice. Picking somebody else after he’d said that—well, that would be just evil.

  Nor did she have any time left.

  “All right,” she said to him. Then, addressing the others, “You guys owe him big time.”

  She clicked his icon.

  ****

  Buddy had no interest in the elevator. He wanted this over as soon as possible. Also, he didn’t want any jackasses—Kevin Carter, for instance—stealing h
is clothes as soon as he was through the front door. Coming out of his room, finding the elevator lights blinking down to floor two and not up, only cemented his decision.

  The walls in this place were thin. Even in the hall, he could hear the other guys in their rooms—particularly ones who were up and in front of their computers, off the hook for tonight but still very much on the hook for tomorrow—and even a faint hint of the action downstairs and outside. The frat and sorority houses on the quad were up late tonight.

  He took the hall at a run and went straight for the stairs. These were behind a door, like in hotels, and probably didn’t see much use except when there was a problem with the elevator. Buddy shut that door and leaned his back against it, kicking off his shoes so he could get his jeans off, then peeling off his shirt and dropping them on top. It would be over soon. His stuff would be safer here than with the Dekes of Chesapeake U.

  Weird, standing in a public stairwell in his underwear and socks. Somehow, putting his shoes back on made him only more conscious of the ridiculousness of it all. Muted voices echoed through the walls and in the stairwell, sound effects in a horror movie.

  Don’t think. Just do. And fast, like a shot at the goal.

  A couple of steadying breaths, then down with the shorts. Cool drywall against his ass. And down those stairs he went, three at a time—particularly fast across the door to floor two, because it was open—reckless in his need to be done with this. The final door (before the front one that led out to the porch) would open in front of everyone, but they would have no warning of his coming. By the time he shot through that, they wouldn’t be able to process what had happened until he was well on his way.

  From the front door to the tree and back. A few minutes of total exposure and public ridicule. Little time as possible for them to maximize on it.

  Hurtling into the common room, catching everyone completely by surprise, he couldn’t help but notice Ernie Morse by the record player with the tabletop speakers, evidently cuing something up for whoever the imminent arrival would be. A long scratch over vinyl caused several of the people in the room to cover their ears before noticing him. But notice him they did, when he still had half the floor to traverse, and the expected uproar filled his ears like damnation itself. He clutched at his privates.