Denizen Evil

Sometimes pivotal moments in history come with little fanfare.

Sherry Berkeley showed up outside Arakinem Community College with a coffee in hand on a Friday morning in late September. She was a petite blonde girl with soft hazel eyes. Despite being twenty-two and knocking on the door to twenty-three, she didn’t look a day over eighteen because of a mixture of good genes and an almost ritualistic level of exercise.

Even in late September, the August heat hadn’t gone away. The day would have highs of 92. She already had beads of sweat running from her hairline down the back of her neck.

No matter what the weather, Sherry wore her pink jacket and ill-fitting, baggy joggers. She would pass up vanity for comfort every day.

She crossed from the road, over a grassy yard, through a parking lot already filled with cars, three body styles past current and people getting ready for school.

Sherry heard someone screaming somewhere far off. She noticed it and glanced around, but nobody else reacted, so she pushed it into the background of her mind, where it could join the other strange and sometimes alarming sounds young adults made when newly unsupervised.

It was still early, but she could see people staggering around drunk from last night’s round of partying. She sighed, annoyed at the lack of decency. Her mom would have told her that it was

their life. Why are you so concerned with how other people live their lives? Couldn’t they at least keep it to the dorms?

She ruminated on these thoughts as she sipped gingerly to avoid burning herself with hot coffee.

Arakinem Community College was three buildings broken up by a courtyard. It was backdropped by the Loramie Mountains and was surrounded by thick woodlands. Its dorms were pushed back against the western woods.

The college was founded in 1985, and unlike the rest of the city of Arakinem, it wasn’t built in the Neo-Gothic style, reminiscent of New York City with a cozy woodland feel, but in a Colonial Craftsman style.

It was a corporate-sponsored college, and most of its students were affluent children of workers who came here after they graduated from high school. It was funded primarily through donations from the Apocrytech Corporation. Even Sherry Berkeley’s father, Milton Berkeley, worked in accounting for Apocrytech.

Sherry waved at security guard Winston Keith Austin. The seventy-year-old Vietnam veteran was a widower who’d been working here long before she arrived. He was always pleasant to speak to. He was armed, but the gun was never going to be fired.

She was going to cut through the administration building as a shortcut. But before she got there, she ran into Booker Mason.

He was manspreading across a bench outside. He wore his red letterman jacket even in the heat, and his shoulder-length hair was slicked back and greasy, just like his grin. He was a sleazy, nepo baby asshole.

“Hey, Sherry, you going to go out with me?”

The prospect trembled through her body, curling her shoulders inward, dragging down the corners of her mouth, and putting her breakfast on brief but serious notice.

With a flat little sigh, she said as if the conversation had already ended, “Still haven’t changed my mind.”

“Come on, you know you want to.”

As she was opening the administration building’s door, he called after her, “You’re passing up a good opportunity.”

She heard him mutter under his breath, “Fuck you too, bitch. Think you’re too good for me.”

She closed her eyes hard before opening them wide, thankful the door closed and blocked out the rest of his words.

She passed through the courtyard toward the building on the right.

Sherry walked into her morning class and found a spot on the far side of the cascading half-moon seating. Three long hours alternated between staring at the clock, hearing her mom’s voice as she scolded her for not paying attention, and trying to focus.

After her morning classes, Sherry passed Becky Cunningham in the hall with both hands braced against Heath Rutledge’s chest. She shoved hard, but the Fighting Coons quarterback barely rocked back. When he reached for her again, Becky slapped him hard, then struck him across the face again. The man wasn’t getting the hint.

He only grinned and moved closer.

“Help,” Becky called out. “Get him off of me.”

His bro-a-roni friends were standing behind him in a group, looking befuddled. They were all wearing red letterman jackets with black trim and gold lettering. Normally, the accessory came with shared brain dynamics, but this was throwing even that paradigm for a loop.

Jared Simpson was the first to speak up, “Hey, man, get off of her.”

He grabbed Heath’s shoulder, but Heath aggressively shoved him back.

Another one of his friends asked loud enough for Sherry to hear, “What’s wrong with him?”

Several students looked from the scene to one another before shaking their heads, dropping their gazes to the floor, and quickening their pace.

Sherry wasn’t sure why everyone looked so surprised. Football wasn’t exactly a sport filled with docile men. “Get a room,” she muttered, passing them in the hall.

Morning classes transitioned into daytime classes. The student body broke for lunch.

Sherry noticed the school was unusually quiet for that hour on a Friday. The cafeteria was nearly empty, briefly making her think she somehow had the time wrong or had missed a crucial memo.

When she stood and looked out the window toward the parking lot, she saw several classmates whose parents also worked at Apocrytech being picked up. Some, like Sherry’s family, never visited.

While she thought this, she continued to watch. As she continued to watch, she saw a fight break out in the distance. Then another. And another. In response, the parent-child pairs moved faster away from the building chaos. It was like their pants and the entire city were simultaneously on fire.

As Sherry walked back to class, the strangeness lingered in her mind.

A scream echoed through the eerily empty corridor, rattling Sherry and stopping her in her tracks. Ashley Primbrook came running around the corner, taking a ragged path down the hall in her direction without seeming to see Sherry at all. What looked like blood covered her face and body, scrapes marked her skin, and her clothes hung in tatters.

Sherry had only ever spoken to Ashley briefly; they ran in different circles. But she did know that Ashley was known for throwing ragers and coasting through classes. As an Arakinem cheerleader, she got away with more than most. Sherry also had heard her upbringing might have been rough, more upheaval than love and affection. It was a mystery how she ended up here.

When Sherry realized who she was looking at, her alarm dimmed slightly.

A crowd of curious faces emerged from nowhere almost instantly, circling her, asking questions and mumbling in astonishment. Backpacks slipped from shoulders. Shoes squeaked against the tile as more students pressed in. It was like the people had sprouted from the ground.

When the professors arrived, they broke up the crowd, waving students back and forcing a narrow path through the corridor. Winston, the security guard, had been called immediately, and he showed up almost as fast, one hand hovering near the firearm holstered below his belt.

The girl was led away on unsteady legs as gawkers craned their necks and stared at her exposed curves.

The men of this school were as pervy as the scene was tragic. Sherry thought back to the woman in the hall and then followed the dots to the scream she’d heard in the parking lot that morning.

But she discounted the idea because she doubted there was a connection. If something was going on, someone would have said something by now.

As Sherry stepped into Professor Fellbottom’s classroom, she got a text from her father.

This is an emergency. Return home immediately.