Lenore

“DRINK MOTHER FUCKERS, DRINK MOTHER FUCKERS, DRINK!”

The noxiously artificial taste of blue raspberry slid down my throat with sickening sweetness. This was only my third drink of the evening, but I was already feeling pretty lit.

“Alright you, stupid pledges now it’s time for the main event.”

I gulped down the last remaining bits of my sugary swill before taking a deep breath. I just needed to make it through one more event and it would all be mine: the booze, the babes, the blow, everything.

“Since 1908 every Alpha Delta at the University of Virginia has been bathed in the blackness of the Raven.”

A burning belch worked its way up my esophagus.

“If you want to be a brother of the greatest fraternity this university has ever seen you too will undertake this haunting challenge.”

I swallowed it back.

“So, for tonight’s event each and every one of you will break into the Edgar Allan Poe room and recite his infamous poem, The Raven.”

I could feel my hips beginning to sway.

“Now sure this might not sound like a daunting task.”

I was hammered.

“But I promise you, it can be a fate worse than death itself.”

Shit, I was beyond hammered.

“For legend has it that the fateful few that utter this poem in the confines of his dorm room on All Hallows’ Eve will be cursed with a lifetime of pain, pestilence, and Poedom.”

I was on the precipice of blackout.

“But for those of you that fail this task an even worse fate will ensue: a lifetime appointment as a GDI!”

With this the basement erupted in a thunderous cheer as dozens of costumed brothers flooded the cramped space, dowsing us in beer showers and plumes of cigarette smoke. A single tingle ran down the length of my spine for this was it, the moment I had been waiting for.

I came to sometime later stumbling my way through grounds in the pitch dark. The illuminated dome of Jefferson’s Rotunda shone bright in the distance, guiding my drunken path. Next thing I knew I was standing amongst the dusty remains of one of literature’s greatest minds. A lone candle sat flickering in the middle of the room, revealing a centuries old text and bathing the space in an eerie ambiance. I staggered forward and stood before it. Drunken images of wild parties, hot blondes, and forever friendships flooded my mind. All I needed to do was recite a handful of flowery poetry and I would finally be an Alpha Delta, curse be damned. So, taking in one last deep breath, I started reading.

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door…”

I awoke the next morning in a blurry daze. My head felt like it was stuck in a vice and my stomach in a concrete mixer. I rolled over only to find a dried patch of vomit adorning my sheets.

“Holy shit,” I moaned. “What happened?”

I was no stranger to rough mornings, but this was something else entirely. This was the mother of all hangovers. I was just about to lay back down when my phone buzzed. It was a text from my dad. Before I even had the chance to check it though my screen lit up with an incoming call.

“Hello?” I moaned.

“Where the hell have you been?” His voice sounded rushed and panicky.

“Uh, the library,” I lied.

An uncomfortable silence filled the line.

“Dad?” I asked.

His breath quivered.

“It’s your mother.”

My blood ran cold.

“What about her?” I squeaked.

He took another torturously long pause.

“She’s dead.”

My heart stopped.

“Wha, wha, what?” I stammered.

My dad spent the next few minutes tearfully explaining that my mother had passed away in her sleep. He had tried to wake her for breakfast, but found that she was blue and cold as ice. The paramedics think she suffered a pulmonary embolism and peacefully slipped into a breathless slumber.

I arrived back home in Richmond nearly three hours later. There had been a bad wreck on the interstate which had delayed me by an hour or so, but I was finally home. Inside I found my sister, Mary, curled up on the couch crying hysterically. She had been especially close with my mother and was understandably taking her death extremely hard.

The rest of my afternoon passed by in a busy blur. I never knew how much work went into burying a loved one. You have to claim the body, fill out the proper paperwork, plan the funeral, etc. But right as I was leaving the funeral home my phone rang. It was Chelsea, my girlfriend’s roommate.

“What’s up Chels?”

They had been headed to Virginia Beach for a concert when I first called and delivered the grim news. I figured she was calling back to say they were finally headed home.

“Jack…” Her voice was shaky and cracked.

She didn’t have to say anything.

“I’m so sorry.”

I could tell simply by her inflection.

“Michelle is dead.”

The mangled mess that I had passed on my way home was in fact them. Chelsea had dozed off at the wheel, clipped a guardrail, and spun out into a tractor trailer. Apparently, the damage was so extensive that it took firefighters nearly two hours to cut Michelle from her final resting place.

I drove home in a mindless daze. My dad talked and talked and talked, but I didn’t hear a single word. All I could seem to do was focus on a quote I remembered reading in high school. One which just so happened to be written by the same lad whose dorm room I had desecrated the evening prior.

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

I hadn’t even had time to process my mother’s death, let alone Michelle’s, when we found her. Hanging by an extension cord in the downstairs bathroom was my baby sister. Hardly eighteen, she had so much left to live for. She was smart, she was beautiful, and she was set to play tennis at Virginia Tech next fall. But now she was nothing more than just another body I had to bury.

A few hours later the coroner finally left and I found myself engrossed in silence for the first time all afternoon. It was a deafening silence that filled me with a profound emptiness. One which was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my entire life. This silence was soon broken though as my phone buzzed.

“Your behavior last night was entirely unacceptable. Consider this an official notice that you have been dropped from the Alpha Delta pledge process.”

I probably would have laughed given the sheer absurdity of my luck, but my eternal emptiness left me feeling entirely indifferent. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t glad, I wasn’t sad, I was just nothing. So, with seemingly no other options, I grabbed a bottle of scotch from the cabinet and took a vomit inducing pull, hoping to feel something, anything. But to no surprise, I felt nothing. No fiery burn, no oaky aftertaste, nor any signs of the warming flush I had come to love.

Now I was never one to believe in ghosts and goblins and curses and calamities, but all of this got me thinking. What if there was actually some validity behind this supposed curse? I mean Poe had known nothing but death and emptiness his entire life and here I was, less than twenty-four hours after completing a supposed accursed ritual in his college dorm room on Halloween, experiencing a lifetime of loss in a matter of hours. It was almost too convenient of a coincidence.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, taking another hefty pull of the tasteless liquid. As coincidental as all of this might have been though, my mind was now an empty vat of nothingness. Meaning that I could care less about the source behind this accursed emptiness.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was met with a stately Raven standing before me. Usually, I would have been horrified to find an omen as menacing as this, but not now. Even when I looked deep into its lifeless eyes and caught a glimpse of my panicked mother gasping for air, my disemboweled girlfriend crying out in agony, and my sister’s thrashing feet, I felt as dull as an unsharpened pencil.

So, I did the only thing I knew how to. I drank and drank and drank. Hoping for what? I didn’t exactly know. All I knew was that feeling nothing was a whole heck of a lot worse than feeling everything. But after a few hours and God knows how many bottles later, things finally went black.

I awoke to a nauseating drumming in my head. Holding back hot vomit, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I was back in my own college dorm room.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

I no longer knew what to believe. Was I alive? Was I dead? Was I dreaming? Was I hallucinating? So, once again I did the only thing I knew how. I grabbed one of the dozens of dead soldiers that lined my nightstand and quickly tossed it back. The second the lukewarm beer hit my lips though a burst of queasiness shot through me, causing a mix of stomach acid and Budweiser to shoot out of my nose. My heart skipped a beat. I took another swig, not believing the first, and once again soaked my sheets in malty puke.

I had never been so relieved to vomit in my entire life. For not only did this mean that I could feel again, but also that the last twelve hours had likely been nothing more than a blackout induced nightmare. One which preyed on my deepest fears and subconscious anxieties. I sighed in relief. I might have felt like absolute garbage physically, but emotionally I was on top of the world.

I grabbed my phone, planning to call my mom, my girlfriend, and my sister so I could remind them just how much they meant to me. I knew that I had gotten my priorities twisted recently and wanted to get back to living a meaningful life that revolved around loving relationships and not non-stop partying. But before I could even begin dialing, a text from my dad came through.

“Please call me, it’s your mother…”