Seances and Sororities

Based on my true-life experience

Two words a typical high school girl becomes terrified to hear? I’ll give you a few seconds to guess.

 

No, it’s not, “S**t, cops!”

 

Neither is it, “It ripped!”

 

Nor is it, “He’s gay!”

 

In my own personal experience, the words that ensured panic, anxiety attacks, cold sweats, and hot flashes?

 

Rush week. 

 

Ever heard of a high school sorority? Imagine the most popular senior girls. Go ahead, close your eyes and envision the blonde hair, orange skin, and overly-bleached teeth. Bentley’s, Coach purses, and houses the size of Montana. Bulimia, anorexia, and valley-girl accents. A Bosch painting played out in real life. Dante’s seventh ring. A blazing fire-pit of Dolce & Gabanna and oversized sunglasses. This, ladies, is hostility and intimidation combined into their harshest forms.  Now envision yourself existing in enslavement. For one week, one atrociously horrifying week, you belong to two of these girls. Owned by two of the meanest, blondest, most bulimic b*****s known throughout the realms of teenage womanhood.

 

This is what happened to me. I thought I might never have lived to tell the tale, but here I am, sitting at my computer, the emotional scars of my social abuse burning onto the keystrokes as I delve into my scariest and most humiliating memories. All for the sake of a good story. And yes, it’s a good one.

 

I was fifteen, a smidge overweight, and more self-conscious than a bikinied elephant. The summer before my sophomore year, I was approached by one of the upcoming seniors. I was at my house, innocently eating a fudge popsicle while lamenting over my recent weight gain of 4 pounds, when I heard the inevitable ring of my doorbell. My time, I knew, had come.

 

Chelsea, my neighbor from across the street, was standing in my doorway, a sweet smile playing upon her plastic-like features. She had blazing red hair and a body reminiscent of my mom’s Swiffer WetJet. 

 

“Hi, Chelsea,” I said quietly, staring down at my toes, which looked grotesque. Every one of my features, I had discovered, had suddenly become repugnant and gross when compared to Chelsea, who looked a facsimile of some famed Russian model.

 

“Hello, Lindsey,” she said. “I guess you know why I’m here.”

 

And I preceded to feel like one of those crack hoes being confronted by the cops in a dingy hotel after a long year on the run and a baby on the way.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I heard you don’t want to rush for KAY this year.” Her angelic smirk contorted into a canvas of businesslike impassivity.

 

How did she know? I asked myself with a startled jolt. My body tensed up and I tried to get rid of the apologetic grimace that graced my features. “Well, I’m just not sure if I have time for it,” I reasoned. “I’m going to be quite busy this year with…” My voice trailed off, allowing her to raise an eyebrow in implied skepticism.

 

“Busy with… Leo Club? National Honor Society? Library Club?”

 

“I’m not in the Leo-”

 

“I can’t allow you to throw your last three years of high school away, Lindsey.” She scanned my body and threw her magnificent hair over her shoulder in a very Herbal Essences kind of way. “I only want you to rush because I care about you.”

 

And that was how it happened. I had been cornered into rushing, A) because you were indeed a loser throughout high school if you were not a member of KAY (the name of our sorority) and B) because I was terrorized by Chelsea’s distinct Satanic mannerisms. Even so, some people think that it’s just a week of humiliation. No big deal. After all, self-esteem mutilation was a small price to pay to be a member of KAY.

 

Rush Week had come without a dash of graciousness from Father Time. It had seemed that the clocks had speeded up considerably, and Monday morning had dawned upon the upcoming sophomores before we had a chance to brace ourselves.

 

The week proved to be survivable. The most memorable of my recollections being the moments where my fellow rushees and I were dressed up as dogs, collared, leashed, and forced to crawl on our hands and knees around Wal-Mart and bark at innocent shoppers.

 

Or perhaps the most potent memory was the night when the rushees were required to stay at their rusher’s house for a ‘sleepover’.

 

There were ten of us. We six rushees and our four respective rushers were confined to a single ‘household’ for a whole night. We were picked up from our houses at eight o’clock in the evening. My rusher, a member of the Barbie Doll Clone Army, was named Ashley. Ashley ushered me into her car, blindfolded me with a handkerchief, and told me if I complained I would be forced to engage in strenuous physical exercise. I kept my mouth shut as I sat in the back of Ashley’s car, waiting impatiently as she picked up my fellow prisoners. She told us we were meeting another group at our destination, which she continually refused to tell us the location. We drove for about twenty minutes, and when I was sure we were on the outskirts of town somewhere, we stopped.

 

Although I was still blinded by the handkerchief, I could sense the darkness looming around us. We each stumbled out of the car and were instructed to hold hands.  I could feel rocks crunching beneath my sandals as we were guided to the alleged and suspicious ‘destination’. Growing more and more impatient, I sighed as I itched to swat the mosquitoes buzzing on my bare calves.

 

“Okay,” Laci, another rusher, whispered dramatically. “You may remove your blindfolds.” We did.

 

I gasped softly as I realized were exactly we were. It was an old cemetery just outside of town. Nobody was buried here anymore. There weren’t any proper headstones, just wonky crosses with harshly hand-carved names and dates. An old iron fence snaked around a circular perimeter. The yellowing grass was surely dead. Weeds were poking out near the bases of the markers. Joeli, the girl to my right, was trembling in fear.

 

“This place,” Ashley announced, “is said to be the most haunted graveyard in Oklahoma.” She paused for dramatic effect. “This grave,” she indicated to a rather large, black cross in the center of the yard, “is none other than Byron Byrd, the first recorded mayor of our town. As you know, Mayor Byrd drowned in the tragic flood that claimed the lives of many of our ancestors.” She paused again, her dark eyes sweeping across our faces of terror. “Tonight,” she said, “we will summon him back among the living.”

 

Ashley disappeared into her backpack, which, I assumed, was equipped with dangerous objects of demonic origin; she emerged with several candles and some matches. She placed them in a small circle across the mayor’s grave. “Now,” she said, her work complete, “gather into a circle.” We did. “Put your blindfolds back on.” We did. "And chant these words:"

 

“Spirit of the past, emerge unto us from your resting place. We present you, Mayor Byrd, with gifts of life from death.”

 

We clutched each others’ hands, sitting silently in our circle around the candles.

 

I heard a shark intake of breath. “I said CHANT, for Christ's Sake!”

 

So we chanted, fearing Ashley’s wrath more than the demonic works of any dead spirit.

We chanted over and over, until our voices sounded dead themselves. My head was beginning to ring with the words. We repeated them so much that they didn’t even sound like words anymore.

 

“Stop,” whispered Laci serenely. “Listen.”

 

We waited with baited breath in the dark silence for at least a minute.

 

At last, one of us broke the silence. “Ashley,” began Jamie, an outspoken girl I’d known all my life. “You weren’t perhaps born from a jackal, right?” She’d said it in such serious tones, it was hard to tell whether she was joking or not.

 

We all rang out in tumultuous laughter as Ashley began to shout, “Shut up! SHUT UP!”

 

“I was just joking,” said Jamie carefully. “We all know you’re not the spawn of Satan.”

 

“No,” Ashley interjected distractedly. “All of you. Shut up and listen.”

 

Red and blue lights flashed incandescently from the sides of my blindfold. It was a stupid trick, I thought, making us believe we were about to be arrested for trespassing. They had probably purchased some colored lights and were trying to freak us out.

 

“Run,” said Ashley quietly.

 

I held my breath, listening for any sort of movement.

 

“Did you hear her?” whispered Laci. “RUN, D****T!”

 

I yanked off my blindfold and darted after the other two who were running toward a clearing of trees behind the old iron gate, glancing back for a moment. I indeed caught a glimpse of the cruiser, its blue and red lights flashing warningly. It took me a moment before I saw Joeli, helplessly running around with her blindfold still on. I doubled back and caught her by the shoulders.

 

“Joeli, you IDIOT!” I yelled in a hoarse whisper, yanking the blindfold off of her panic-stricken face in panicked desperation. “Hurry up!”

 

I seized her hand and dashed for the nearest cover, a huge bush nearing the entrance gate. I knew we could hide in the bushes without being seen if we hurried. We dived Olympic style into the bush, simultaneously discovering that rose bushes were a sort of poisoned honey. Pleasant, but dangerous. We sat in the bushes for nearly an hour, not daring to pull a thorn out of our throbbing skin wounds as we watched policemen patrol the cemetery, our eyes occasionally catching the glare of their flashlights.The car finally left, and we waited an additional fifteen minutes before heading to the clearing to find the others.

 

It was simultaneously the scariest and most hilarious moment of my life. It’s a memory that stands out in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. I can’t say much for the girls of KAY KLUB, and I can’t even give a more valid reason for rushing other than the fact that I stupidly wanted to be a member of the Barbie Doll Clone Army.

 

Although it oddly wasn’t the last time I had witnessed a séance in my life. Three years later, when I was finally a rusher, I had a sudden idea to kidnap my girls and rush them to the grave of Mayor Byron Byrd. I kind of have a feeling that Mayor Byrd has had a more exciting afterlife than any other person on the other side. 

 

Reviews

[kewlbluetiger]

Ha! What a great story. So well told. You have a wit for humor through descriptions that made me laugh-out-loud a few times. Especially in the beginning with the self characterizations. The people in your story really came to life for me. You kept the pace right without getting in bogged down, and kept it so funny and interesting I read it from top to bottom! Thanks for having the courage to share this slice of your life! I really enjoyed the read.

[An owl on the moon]

Very vivid, amazingly interesting story! Loved your descriptions and details that brought the cemetary to life... Great read!