Chapter XIX: Simeon Grasso's Biggest Mistake

Simeon Grasso—the younger brother of our former vindictive landlord Nolan—pronounced his name like a bastardized version of Simon, wore designer glasses that magnified his eyeballs to gargantuan proportions, and had neither the physical prowess nor draconian attitude that made his brother such a cruel monster. Simeon acted tough, but I think he took himself way too seriously. Simeon reminded me of the person I used to be on the outside: a faithless follower who had never had any real responsibility and abandoned his responsibilities as soon as things got out of hand.

Papa Grasso had purposely put Simeon’s brother Nolan in charge of beating money out of the residents of the abandoned college because he knew that his youngest son was incapable of handling a task as simple as a shakedown. Simeon was not tough, but he was a great actor. He could mimic toughness from TV bad guys, and when he started following Nolan around campus, Simeon would often repeat Nolan’s ominous threats as if he were trying to upstage his big brother. It was a defense mechanism, of course. Simeon’s bark was bigger than his bite, and whenever he barked himself up the wrong tree, he could always count on his father and brother to come to his rescue.

The Grassos had made most of their money in real estate before the ill-fated Morgenthau deal. After that they only seemed to lose money. Papa Grasso owned everything from residential properties and factories to department stores and office buildings. When Simeon flunked out of college and came home with the intention of learning the family business, he was disappointed when his father said no. As far as Papa Grasso was concerned, the business would die with him. To keep Simeon from sitting on his ass in the family’s living room all day long, his father assigned him to be the general manager of a nightclub that he had acquired in a real estate deal.

Simeon was hungry for a chance to prove to his father that he could be useful to the company. In his defense, as soon as Simeon started running the Kobra Klub, business boomed. Long before Simeon owned the club—when I was still a high school reject—the Kobra Klub’s bouncers were among the strictest in the Tri-Towns. It didn’t matter much to my friends. There were always places where underage kids could drink, and the beer was usually cheaper.

Simeon was only 21 years old when his father gave him the rights to manage the Kobra Klub, and he packed the place to the gills every weekend by loading the guest list with his underage friends from high school and college. Any bouncer who denied entry to one of Simeon’s friends was quickly dismissed or publicly berated in front throngs of sexy young women in slinky black dresses.

Like me, Simeon had grown up in the wealthy suburban underbelly of the Tri-Towns and like me; his friends had been born into well-to-do families with plenty of money in the bank. The combination of easy access to booze, a thick bankroll and Simeon’s apathetic, anything-goes attitude turned the Kobra Klub into one of the hottest nightspots in town.

On a Saturday night at the Kobra Klub, only half of the patrons were of legal drinking age. Of course, the only way one could figure this out was to listen to banter in the ladies’ room about who the homecoming queen was sleeping with. The nightclub had a dozen private rooms and nooks where the only rules Simeon enforced were that the tab was paid in full and that the waitresses were tipped handsomely. Simeon made sure that his high rollers were taken care of. Any drug could be made available for the right price, bottles of the world’s most expensive champagne flowed like tap water and attractive young women who argued with the bouncer over the validity of their identification could easily get Simeon to admit them by presenting convincing oral arguments behind closed doors on the couch in his office.

That’s how Simeon had first met Eva, the blond bombshell that wasn’t even through her first year of high school by the time she started sneaking into the Kobra Klub.

The Grassos had lined enough pockets to keep Simeon out of trouble, but he continued to abuse that privilege. It was one thing to get Papa Grasso’s friends in the police department to look the other way when underage kids were caught drinking in Simeon’s club, but it was a completely different story when rival drug dealers were firing shots outside the club after an argument.

The real black eye was Eva. Simeon had met Eva while talking to friends outside the club on a chilly winter’s evening. As he conversed with his bouncers and double-checked his hand-written guest list, he felt a slender woman graze his left side. He turned to find Eva, who was perhaps the most gorgeous thing he had ever laid eyes upon. At the time, Eva was not yet drowning in her addictions and her face had not accumulated a multi-colored collage of bruises and abrasions. She was still the young girl who had won every beauty pageant that she had ever been in. She didn’t have an ounce of baby fat on her; she was 100% pure sexual muscle and she exuded a seductive confidence that was disarming even to Simeon’s tough-guy persona.

In a voice that was as innocent as the girl next-door; yet as dirty as a veteran call girl, Eva told Simeon that she knew that she was not on the guest list, but surely there had to be some way that she could get on the list. Simeon could have asked her for some ID to see that she was at least of legal consenting age to discuss the possibility of her entering his club, but Simeon had never been in a position to be this close to a fox like Eva. Opportunities like this were once-in-a-lifetime. He let her in without question. Thus began the cataclysmic tryst of Simeon and Eva.

At the time, Eva was perfect for Simeon. Not only did she legitimately find him attractive, but the girl was a spectacular attraction herself. After their initial meeting and rendezvous behind closed doors in Simeon’s office, Eva became a regular at the Kobra Klub on Friday and Saturday nights. Eva didn’t need to show ID when she approached the bouncers. Her face was as good as any legal document. She had been turning heads since before puberty, and she turned heads up and down the queue. She never had to wait in line; she just walked up to the bouncers and threw them little kisses as they lifted the velvet rope for her.

Simeon usually walked around the club with a few women on each arm, and Eva was always one of them. She could drink like an Irish longshoreman and her gorgeous little nose sucked up blow like a Texas tornado. At a certain point in the night Eva would hop up on the bar and start dancing to the thumbing bass and drums provided by the hottest DJs in the Tri-Towns. Her antics not only drew raucous cheers from the gaggle of meatheads that clamored for the young girl to show them her tits, but it got other girls to hop up on the bar and dance as well. The more the girls got wild, the more drinks the guys purchased for them. By the time the bartenders clanged on the bell for last call, the club was still pretty packed. The money was rolling right in.

At first, Eva was an attraction for everyone at the Kobra Klub to salivate over. It was all she ever wanted. Eva was starved for attention, and she was getting more attention that she had ever dreamt of while she danced in a drunken, cocaine-induced haze on the bar in Simeon’s club. After months and months of over-indulgence, Eva’s star began to fall, and once it picked up some steam, it came crashing down like a meteorite.

It started with little things like getting into catfights with other girls who were hanging around Simeon. Even though Eva had a couple of threesomes with Simeon and other women, she got very jealous whenever certain girls would throw themselves at him. She was known to throw a wild slap across the face of an unsuspecting hoochie, just so she would know who was boss. This created unnecessary tension in the club, and it was embarrassing for Simeon to have to explain to his customers who the unruly teenage bitch was. Eva was also known to pull ridiculous stunts including chugging $1,000 bottles of campaign like a beer bong at a frat party, flashing her bare chest at older patrons and offering to give head to anyone who could score her some speed.

It all unraveled during a bash one April night when Eva did way too much cocaine and passed out in the middle of the dance floor. Simeon was fucked. He and a friend sneaked Eva out a back door and took her to the local hospital, put her in a wheelchair and left her outside the emergency room. He knew that she was underage and that he could go to jail for letting her into his club and allowing her to do the drugs that she had done. Of course, he still assumed that Eva was around 18 or 19. There was no way he could have known that the queen of the Kobra Klub was only 16 years old.

To make matters worse Simeon returned home after that very long night at the club and hospital to find his brother Nolan—who had been missing for close to a week—stark naked, covered in grease and human waste, shivering from the cold, and so completely terrified by the ordeal that it would be months before he spoke a word to anybody.

Simeon had dodged a big bullet, but a smaller bullet had clipped him instead. A few concerned club-goers had called 911 when the girl passed out. He managed to escape with Eva, but the cops showed up anyway and wrote more than 100 tickets for underage drinking. The club was going to be closed down due to the massive amount of fines levied against it, as well as the fact that Simeon had made a ton of money and hadn’t reported a cent of it to the IRS. But it wasn’t so bad. He had lost his job at the club but found a new one when somebody had to fill his brother’s shoes over at Morgenthau.

As the summer wore on Eva pursued Simeon relentlessly after she had been kicked out of her parent’s house. She was desperate for his affection and he was the only one who could give her shelter and spare her from living with heathens down in the Tri-Towns. He would sleep with her from time to time, but he was becoming increasingly unhappy with her neediness, and a lot of these encounters usually ended with him threatening her with physical abuse. That summer, Simeon lost it when she asked him if she could move in with his family. The argument escalated and Simeon started hitting her. She started crying, and in an attempt to make him stop, she told him that she was pregnant. Simeon stopped, but became even more furious. She had known this for a couple of weeks. She didn’t tell him because she didn’t know where else to go or who to turn to. Somehow, this terrible man had become the only person that Eva could trust. She also revealed to him that she had lied to him about her age. She had just turned 17 years old. Within minutes, Simeon threw her in his car and proceeded to leave her in the Gardens at Morgenthau in the hope that she would disappear. Indeed, the Eva that Simeon had known did vanish. Without the drugs, without the violence, without the need for attention and sex, Eva had begun to see things clearly for the first time in many years. It was a sobering, heartbreaking realization, and it was necessary for her to move on.

She eventually found her protectors in people like The Steve, Willie and myself. Eva took a long time to get back on her feet, but when she did, we discovered that she was a good kid at heart and had been pulled in by the wrong crowd and allowed everything from social pressure to dissatisfaction with her perfectionist parents to corrupt her mind and send her into a fit of self-destruction.

When The Professor had died, Eva took it hard, even though she had known him for a very short time. She had only known him as a quiet old man who had been beaten so mercilessly that his voice barely rose above a whisper. Whenever she followed Grover up to his room to say hello, he always sent these condescending glares at Eva. The Professor hated the fact that so much wasted talent resided in the grime and hopelessness of Morgenthau, and it was obvious to me that it pained him to see something as beautiful as Eva wasting away here. Her presence no doubt added to the despair that drove him to take his own life.

When Grover and I told people about The Professor’s final exam, Eva took those words to heart. A lot of us had given up hope of ever escaping the abandoned campus and giving the real world another go, but the longer Eva stayed here, the more optimistic she seemed to get. The only thing that kept her from giving it another go in the outside world was Simeon.

Simeon did not know that we had taken Eva into our protective custody, and many efforts were made to make sure that she was not discovered when he came around looking for rent money. We hid her in closets and under old desks in the rooms of the residents who were always on time with their payments. But we knew that the day would come when she would be discovered.

On a Saturday morning in November, we woke up to find bright yellow notices on every door and window in every building on campus. Papa Grasso, Simeon and small group of contractors in blue hardhats had walked around campus since dawn placing these flyers on doors and talking ominously about which building was coming down first and where the new private communities would be constructed.

The notices read something like this:

EVICTION NOTICE: November 11. All buildings and structures on the Morgenthau University property must be evacuated by noon on November 11. Any persons found trespassing in these condemned structures will be arrested and charged with criminal trespassing. The police have been instructed to use K-9 dogs, electronic tasers and, if necessary, tear gas to remove any trespassers from these buildings. Please evacuate the premises immediately.

We had less than 24 hours until the only home some us had for over five years was to be destroyed. None of us had anywhere to go or anyone to stay with. If there had been hope, it was almost completely lost.

Simeon came marching along a half hour later as the cold November wind whipped through his leather jacket. He was walking with a conceited strut, as if he had been the one who had brokered this real estate deal, not his father. He was certainly thrilled to finally be ridding himself of the only responsibility he had, even if he was way more irresponsible than his brother.

He walked into the lobby of the Main Residence Hall and began shouting announcements that echoed the sentiments of the bright yellow flyers we had been reading all morning.

“Attention dirtbags!” he yelled from the lobby. His words echoed through the empty building and carried down the hallways. With our hearts sunken and our breathing low, we could hear every word. Even the maniacs in the basement had temporarily suspended their tortured screaming long enough to let him speak.

“You have until noon tomorrow to vacate the premises,” he said walking up the staircase to the second floor. “Anyone who remains here after that time will be considered a criminal trespasser on private property. You will be arrested.”

Simeon was strolling down the hallway towards Eva’s room, where she was curled up her terrified little ball, guarded from the doorway by The Steve, who was hell-bent on protecting her.

“Now,” Simeon continued in the hallway, “Some of you have been evicted before and you kept coming back. After tomorrow, armed guards will patrol this property every day and every night. Anyone found trespassing on the property after tomorrow will be shot on sight. Consider this your warning. We will not hesitate to kill you.”

In Eva’s room, the poor young girl began to hyperventilate. The Steve took his concentration off the approaching footsteps of Simeon and looked over at the girl who had constricted herself into a tight ball of fear. Her rapid breaths were quickly turning into fearful panting yelps. She hadn’t been this close to Simeon in close to six months. By now, she was getting further along in her pregnancy, and it was beginning to show on her tiny, malnourished body.

In the hallway, Simeon passed by Eva’s room before turning around and heading back to the stairs, but a slight sound stopped him. The tense silence of his speech had been interrupted by faint whimpers coming from behind the door that had previously belonged to Kendra—one that Simeon assumed had remained empty.

Being that he was an asshole, Simeon kicked the door wide open to find The Steve guarding Eva on a mattress in the corner of the room. She let out a scream when he barged in. The Steve quickly jumped to his feet, ready to defend Eva against this unmannered rich boy.

Simeon was not expecting to see Eva there. He had assumed that the addicts, maniacs and other evil things that lived in the woods had gobbled her up. She still had the goods on him, and apparently, she was still carrying his baby.

“You fucking bitch,” Simeon said under his breath. He then repeated it at an audible volume. “You fucking bitch. You thought you could get away from me didn’t you? Didn’t you!”

As Simeon moved menacingly towards her, The Steve moved forward to block his path. Simeon scoffed at the defensive maneuver by The Steve, one of the few residents at Morgenthau who he thought he could beat in a fight.

“What do you want, you fucking gook? Get out of my way!” The Steve offered up no rebuttal and refused to move away from Eva. Simeon took a step towards Eva, but the Steve gave him a quick shove that pushed him back a few steps. Simeon easily caught his balance and gave him a little chuckle, before he threw a moderately powerful sucker-punch that connected squarely with The Steve’s already cracked eyeglasses. The impact shattered what was left of his specs and sent him tumbling to the ground in a hail broken glass, blood and saliva.

While The Steve was on the ground, Simeon then turned his attention to Eva. Seeing what he had just done to her protector, she made a futile attempt to crawl away on her hands and knees, but Simeon quickly picked her up off the ground and slammed her against the wall of her room. She started screaming for him to let her go, but Simeon started yelling a slew of obscenities in an ugly mess of dialogue that I couldn’t make out. As she frantically tried to shake him off of her, Simeon made use of his free hand and delivered a series of crisp, bloodcurdling slaps.

In the past, Eva’s initial instinct against Simeon’s attacks was to curl into a fetal position and play dead. Suddenly, as Simeon levied serious backhands across her face, her budding maternal instincts kicked in and she switched her internal mechanisms from flight to fight. As Simeon wound his arm up for another blow, Eva lunged her head forward and slammed her big forehead on Simeon’s jaw, loosening a few of his front teeth. Simeon was temporarily stunned, but moments after the head butt, it was obvious that Eva had taken the bigger brunt, and she immediately slouched back against the wall.

Simeon came back even harder, and in a clumsy exchange, Eva tried to push him away from the wall. I don’t think Simeon meant to do what he did next; it was a passionate, angry scuffle. Eva had grabbed his hands and was pushing him back when a careless Simeon gave Eva a quick, stern knee-jab straight into Eva’s midsection. For the poor girl who was going through a rough time at Morgenthau on top of her sub-par pre-natal care, it was a terrible blow.

Eva immediately let out a yelp as if she were a Thanksgiving Day balloon that had been popped. She fell backwards and slowly collapsed against the wall while letting out a long crescendo of a squeal. Simeon stood over her with a shit-eating grin. He had not meant to inflict such a savage blow, but regardless of intent, Simeon seemed to be pleased with the result.

He leaned over to give her one more punch to the temple, but he suddenly froze, as if someone playing the action on TV had hit pause. From behind him rose The Steve, who despite being cut up by his shattered glasses had just stuck Simeon in the back with his brother’s Jaeger switchblade. It was the same blade that Nolan had tried to use when the addicts in the woods abducted him more than six months prior. We had all feared that the addicts had killed The Steve, but he had gone out there to join them. He led the crusade against Nolan, and he had kept Nolan’s shiny blade all to himself, a trophy of their revenge.

Now, he had just stabbed Nolan’s younger brother in the back while he attempted to hit a helpless young girl who lay injured on the floor. The Steve quickly pulled out the blade from Simeon’s back, causing a stunned gasp to escape from his suddenly pale face.

“Close your eyes,” said The Steve to Eva with fearless determination. Eva did as she was told, but heard the knife dive deep into Simeon’s back thrice more before she felt the wretched son of a bitch fall to the floor with a hearty thud.

In the hours that followed, nobody seemed to be too worried about the fact that one of our fellow residents had just murdered the son of the rightful owner of the property we lived on. Nobody was worried that The Steve, or any of us would be sent to jail. Nobody was worried that we had less than 24 hours to pack up our few belongings and head out into the looming winter with no place to stay and no money to start a new life. The only thing we cared about was Eva.

Simeon had kneed her right in the stomach, and the attack had hit her in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was bleeding when Grover and The Steve carried her down to the latrine where she continued to cry inside the damp chamber. Outside, every resident in the building waited to hear any news.

Grover still knew a lot about anatomy, and he was able to diagnose Eva’s condition pretty quickly. With the same frank and somber tone that Dr. Salisbury had spoken to him seven years earlier, Grover had to break the news to Eva.

“Eva, honey,” said Grover with a sigh. “I’m so sorry. You’ve had a miscarriage. You’ve lost your baby.” She did not take the news well, and let out a scream so savage, it even put a little bit of fear into the maniacs one floor below.

Chapter XVIII: The Snakes in the Quadrangle Get Even

Morgenthau was once blessed with the region’s finest academic faculty, a talented and dedicated student body as well as one of the most scenic landscapes in all of collegiate America. In the years after it closed, the college had become cursed with ruthless and vindictive landlords, an untalented and deviant homeless population and landscapes so overgrown and unkempt that an alumnus returning home would not even recognize the place.

It was not a place for people with a wide variety of phobias. Claustrophobics would feel very nervous in the cramped dorm rooms we were forced to inhabit. People with fears of heights would dread the walk up the steep, slippery, dark staircases. The spiders, rats, roaches, and tiny bloodsuckers would give nightmares to those with various vermin fears and the vast array of ghosts and monsters—both real and imagined—could stricken the most extroverted individual with agoraphobia.

But to top it off, Morgenthau’s quadrangle was infested with about two- or three- dozen snakes that were perhaps the most awful curse cast upon us. The snakes had been on campus longer than anyone except The Professor, and they seemed to assert a rightful ownership over the place. Their habitat rested in the quad’s jungle, but there was no place that they considered off limits. War had been waged against the slithery beasts for close to seven years, and just we thought the winter had cast them into oblivion, they would return every spring in seemingly greater numbers.

Like most of the bad things that plagued Morgenthau after its untimely demise, the infestation was the result of the Grasso’s buying the school from the board of trustees and the rapid slashing of programs and academic funding. Before the college started dipping into the red, the science building on the south side of the campus was conducting a series of investigations and experiments involving the venom of some poisonous snakes and how effective anti-venoms were in treating snakebites in both humans and animals.

Grover knew a couple biology majors during his time at Morgenthau, and when I asked him to explain the origin of the snakes, he wouldn’t shut up about it. His knowledge of human anatomy combined with a curiosity for the inner workings of other species had inspired him to sit in on a few lectures to learn more about the department’s experiments.

“What happens is that neurotoxins block action potential propagation through the myelin sheath of the neuron,” he said when I asked him why the young scientists were conducting their studies on poisonous snakes. My only reply was a dumbfounded expression.

Grover took a breath and continued. “Meaning,” he said, cutting to the chase. “That your synapses don’t fire.”

“So it stops the venom from doing it’s dirty work to a victim’s nervous system?” I asked thinking that I had figured it out. Grover shook his head in frustration.

“No, no, no, that’s what the toxin does,” he said. “The anti-venom opens the potassium channels to allow for the gradient of positive and negative ions to balance—hence—allowing the action potentials to fire. It binds to those areas.”

I let out a slight chuckle after he finished explaining it. I wondered how such a talented mind could be wasting away in an awful place like Morgenthau.

“Grover,” I said with a laugh, “You are a fountain of useless information.”

“Yes,” he replied, “and one day I might just save your life.”

Whether Grover’s friends in the science building were making any true progress in their research I never really found out. One thing was certain, they were working with a number of snakes and other kinds of animals and they needed a lot of money to keep the project up and running. The Grassos put a stop to that.

So many programs went under so fast, it was as if rogue U-Boats were torpedoing sailboats at a regatta. They pulled the rug out from underneath everybody, including professors and staff who lived at the college and were forcefully evicted.

One of them was Dr. Rahma Bolli, who had emigrated from India was emotionally invested in the department’s research after losing his cousin to a snakebite while traveling through his home country as a child. Unlike many other members of the faculty, Bolli had nowhere to go once his tenure at Morgenthau was up. He had no family on the east coast who he could stay with and he had no second job lined up after the school closed.

According to Grover, many residents believed the legend that Nolan, Simeon and their father set the snakes loose as an effort to intimidate residents and force any squatters to leave. However, according to Grover, Professor Bolli had attempted to save the animals, but he ended up accidentally setting them free. For whatever reason, the beasts managed to survive off the cute critters that lived in the woods later occupied by the addicts. Over time, they started coming over to the abandoned dorms because they feasted on small mice, rats and other vermin. As it was, the dorms had a bit of a rat problem because of all the food that was left outside by the residents.

Grover said that they didn’t really become a problem until the second winter he was there. Many of the snakes were not used to the cold temperatures in the northeast and they went wherever they could to stay warm. The warmest places, of course, were in the dorms where the new homeless population was living. According to Grover, it was not uncommon to return to a room and find a snake hiding out under the covers or between the wall and mattress.

Wherever the squatters moved, the snakes followed. When people started living under the bleachers in the fieldhouse, the slimy bastards moved in too. For the most part, wherever the snakes went, the residents fled. After Alistair moved to Morgenthau he did his best to invent little devices that would keep them out of the area, but none of them seemed to work.

After a few years or so, the snakes stopped coming into the dorms and stuck to their overgrown jungle, which had developed into its own ecosystem. They had enough food and space to live on their own and it was very clear that everything except the dorms was their territory. Despite the fact that a number of these beasts carried nervous system-killing venom, there were few cases I could remember of people dying from snakebites. Usually the drugs or the cold would kill them first.

I suppose that they truly were more afraid of us than we were of them, and that’s saying a lot because I’m fucking terrified of them. The snakes, much like the addicts, maniacs and ghosts served as a control for the real menaces on campus. Most of the crime and nastiness went down at night, and when you knew that there were some real creepy things roaming the pitch-black walkways, the tendency was to remain inside rather than to tempt fate.

However, not everybody who ended up at Morgenthau had the luxury of receiving an orientation like I got from Grover, Kendra and others. Like my run-in with the addicts in the woods one night after returning from the Tri-Towns, a few lessons had to be learned the hard way. Some people were just inexperienced and did not know the rules of engagement, especially when it came to the snakes, addicts and maniacs.

There were others who felt that they were above the law of the land. The Watcher, for instance, had been ordained with certain immunities by Nolan and Simeon, and as a result, he walked around the campus as if he were a demigod of some kind.

The Watcher didn’t act the slightest bit guilty about the murder of Kendra in the months following his vile act. In some ways, his handlers had rewarded him for finally getting rid of Kendra and beating The Professor into such a bloody pulp that he was practically catatonic. His shadow now stretched farther and more menacing than it had in the months before Kendra’s death. He was like the villain in some bad western—an outlaw that walked into town and caused the women and children to shutter the windows and take cover in the attic.

Whenever he reared his ugly head, the residents of the former college darted into their homes and hoped that he was not looking for them. As the summer following Kendra’s death wound on, Winston was falling deeper and deeper into his depression and his work was suffering. Winston was able to make rent by going down to the park in the Tri-Towns and painting caricatures of people for money. He brought a few of his lesser paintings down and put them on display on a park bench hoping that he could attract some buyers. He was very talented, and no one else in the area would charge as little as he did for work that was far superior.

However, without Kendra there to be his source of inspiration and therapy, Winston was not going down to the park, and he was not making enough money to live in his library residence with ghosts. He had been hiding in the library for week after the rent was due, and he had refused to leave the building knowing that The Watcher could be waiting around every corner.

By that point, Nolan had been scared stupid by The Steve and the other addicts in the woods, which meant that his younger brother Simeon would be coming around to collect rent from the residents. When Simeon came around to collect money, he would always ask us to pass along a threatening message to Winston. “Tell that crazy son of a bitch that he could run and he could hide,” said Simeon. “Eventually, he’s gonna have to pay the price. Everybody has to pay.”

On a humid night in August, The Watcher had been ordered to get payments from Winston or evict him forcibly. He paced around the building for an hour or so, knowing full well that the footsteps from his heavy boots would resonate as a terrifying rhythm. The Watcher could smell the blood in the water, and just as if he was hunting an animal that hid in a cave, he knew that it was only a matter of time before Winston had to emerge from the darkness and face the music.

Winston knew he was out there, and as he circled around the building for the sixth or seventh time, Winston snuck out through an emergency fire door and eluded the brute’s surveillance. He knew that he could hide out in the rubble of the fieldhouse until dawn. The Watcher might have been an evil monster, but eventually he had to sleep.

Watcher had no idea that Winston had skipped out of the library to go hide. In fact, as Winston headed towards the fieldhouse, the evil murderer heard a few crackling sounds and turned around in the opposite direction. Watcher followed the noises around to the front of the building and looked into the windows. Winston had left a few of his candles burning and his unfinished paintings were visible in the dim room. As The Watcher peered in, he thought he saw Winston’s shadow move past the light and towards the door. Eager to inflict some pain into something defenseless, The Watcher salivated the impending slaughter and moved towards the library’s entrance.

Watcher had been a bit spooked about the idea of encountering a ghost in the library, but his blood lust was insatiable. The hunger turned off any receptors of logic in his brain and turned him into a dedicated, uncontrollable machine. He wouldn’t stop until he got that which he craved.

He pushed the thick doors of the library open as if he kicking open a screen door. As he entered, he saw the shadow of his prey stop in its tracks and dart towards the rear of the library. The monster lunged forward, following the target. He followed the shadow into the library yelling his name. “Win-ston… Win-ston…”

As he searched for the painter, he kicked empty paint cans and threw chairs across the room, slamming them into the old furniture that was stacked high against the walls. He threw a chair into a pile of books and saw the figure dart back towards the rear of the library and the old typewriter stations. The Watcher followed the footsteps and stopped in frustration as they suddenly vanished. The Watcher hunched down in an attempt to sneak up on Winston, crouching to a height shorter than the top of the typing stations. He could hear heavy, panicked breathing around the corner. He had trapped his prey in a corner in the rear of the library and now he was ready to move in for the kill.

He slid around the corner with his fist cocked back, and swung it with force into thin air. There was nobody standing where The Watcher had heard the heavy, rapid respiration only moments before. He could feel the body heat and smell the fear of Winston. The presence was there, but now it had vanished.

A sudden loud noise stunned the brute and he dropped to the ground in a defensive panic. Every typewriter in the room—which had been without electricity for more than seven years—suddenly began typing at break-neck speed, slapping letters to blank pages with the speed of a machine gun. The noise set off a cacophony of clicks, pings and scratches. The Watcher covered his ears until the machines suddenly came to a screeching halt. As he stood up, an eerie silence filled the room. The heavy breathing he had heard moments before was gone, but a new sound could now be heard. Audible above the rapid, terrified thumps of his own black heart were long, deep breaths swooping across the cavernous main room of the library.

As the disembodied breaths continued, cold bursts of air came flowing through the room. The Watcher had been filled with bloodlust and anger, but suddenly, the evil monster was feeling an alien emotion creep up his spine—fear. He had always been in control, even when he was in prison. Now, he felt as though the entire world was spiraling out of control. To hell with Winston, he needed to get out of this awful place. He turned to run for the exit and stopped cold.

“Boo,” said Kendra’s pale, bloody ghost.

The Watcher screamed and ran in the other direction, crashing through chairs, desks, old paintings, books, boxes and broken glass. He ran towards the light, but every light was flanked by new visions of the countless people he murdered, raped and tortured.

“Do you like it when we watch?” they whispered in a ghostly unison.

He batted back and forth like a pinball in a haunted house arcade machine. He was spun around, bounced about and shot through the terrible sequences that he had been a part of. He could hear their screams for help and their terrified weeping. He could feel their agony and their perpetual fear. He tried to block out the noises, but they were overpowering. The ghosts had found their way inside his head.

Somehow, he found the exit and bolted through the doors and towards the Main Residence Hall. Inside the dorms, we had all heard him calling Winston’s name, and we had kept watch of the building with great worry, hoping that we would not hear Winston cry out in pain. When we heard The Watcher’s screams, we had assumed the worst. I, for one, was shocked to see the tall, bald monster rush out of the library screaming with a horror that he had never experienced in his life.

As I said earlier, not everybody at Morgenthau was given a proper orientation upon moving here, and The Watcher did not fully understand the new terrain of Morgenthau as well as he should. Had he received Grover’s welcome tour, he would have known not to go walking around the campus’ pathways at night, and he would certainly know never to take a shortcut through the tangled weeds in the quadrangle.

But The Watcher was not that bright. He sprinted out of the library and was looking over his shoulder to see if any of the ghosts and demons had chased him. Had he been looking forward and not backward, he may have noticed that he was about to step on one of Alistair’s pipes that he had carelessly left lying around. The Watcher stepped on the pipe in full stride and it tripped the beast, sending him flying face first into the jungle of weeds. He landed with a tremendous thump and opened up a man-shaped crater in the thick brush.

Before he opened his eyes, The Watcher was greeted by the most hideous sound that he could possibly imagine. He had landed in the comfortable nest of one of the snakes that inhabited the quadrangle, and his uninvited presence had drawn great ire from this slithering fiend. It let out a deep, angry hiss that we could hear all the way up in the main residence hall.

The last thing John Scuzzi ever saw was a big, angry snake swooping down at his face, delivering a half dozen savage blows and a tablespoon of fatal venom. He popped up from the attack and let out more terrifying screams, but the attack had already weakened him. He stumbled forward through the weeds and stepped on more snakes, getting bit on his ankles, hands, calves and forearms. He finally let out a shriek and collapsed into the center of the quadrangle where the hisses of the snakes would continue all night long.

In the dorms, a mix of horror and relief filled the residents of Morgenthau. We knew that we had just witnessed the end of The Watcher, and it set off a slew of emotions. His death was welcomed and quietly celebrated, but despite his bloody, awful departure from the ranks of the living, our thirst for revenge remained unquenched. Kendra was still dead and the grief in our hearts still choked all the happiness from our lives. We wanted to put his head on a pike out by the entrance to the campus to show Simeon that we too meant business, but his body was so deep in the quadrangle that it was never recovered.

Chapter XVII: The Alma Mater

Night was falling on the campus in more ways than one. On the eastern wall, a row of construction equipment had been set up, and it was only a matter of time before the big dozers broke through the perimeter and begin tearing down this once proud institution only to replace it with new structures that fit the economic mold of the new Tri-Towns.

On an early November evening, as the first chills of winter were beginning to blow in from the north, I sat outside the library with Winston and looked beyond the rubble of the Fieldhouse and past the crater where the campus lake once sat. A freight train was rolling through the county down towards the big city. The lights from the double locomotive slid from right to left, followed by a long procession of dark cars, backlit by the light pollution emanating from the suburban sprawl around us.

“Ghost train,” I muttered, but Winston was not amused. He had been very quiet all day, even when we walked down into the Tri-Towns and stole art supplies from really nice people down in the cultural district. Winston was always pretty weird, but there was something else on his mind, and he didn’t look comfortable keeping it inside him.

He let out a series of emotion-laden exhales and looked down at the ground. I looked over at him and knew immediately that he had seen something that had truly spooked him, despite his long history with spirits and apparitions.

“Kid,” he said with gruff and gravity, “If I told you that I saw something, can you promise me that you won’t tell anybody?” There was a good deal of fear in his voice. He had seen something that he was not supposed to see. I was more worried about hearing what this thing was than keeping a big secret.

“Okay, bu…”

“You can’t fucking tell anybody, got that?” Winston shot back with tense nerves.

“Alright, alright.” I said, trying to ease his mind. Winston tried to light a cigarette with his shaking hand and failed several times before I took the lighter from him and lit his butt while he sat. He took a tremendous drag and let out a monster cough followed by a few tiny aftershocks. He sniffled and let out one final exhale before turning to me.

“I think I saw Kendra last night.”

Suddenly, a chilly gust blew through the campus. It rattled through the trees and swirled around Winston and I. Bone shaking chills rolled up and down my spine and every hair on my body stood up. The wind carried with it an eerie presence. Winston looked around at the wind-swept trees as if he understood the gusts like another language.

“Don’t fuck with me man,” I said, frightened. “You wouldn’t say shit like that if you didn’t really see it.”

“You think I wanted to see that?” he said and took another drag. “You think I want to see any of this shit?” The wind had died down, in it’s wispy absence, and a low rumble from the freight train carried over the chilly night. I wanted to ask him so many things. I wanted to know the answers to so many questions, but there was no way to drag it out of Winston. Kendra had been the only person that he would open up to. The only other way to get to Winston was to feed him or give him smokes. I had neither.

I supposed that it didn’t hurt to try. “What did she say?” I asked. Winston needed a few minutes and a few more cigarettes I was able to drag it out of him.

Winston had always complained about the predictability of the specters that shared the library with him. Whenever something new happened, he usually took note of it. He had begun to notice some of these new tricks about a month or so after Eva had joined our company and shortly before The Watcher departed this world in a death that seemed fitting to those who he tormented for so long. At night, when Winston channeled the energy of the ghosts through his brushstrokes, he began to hear a faint whistle coming from somewhere up in the mezzanine. The ghostly whistles always blew the same tune—an old rag that didn’t sound much different than an old fight song his high school marching band used to play. The whistles would come and go throughout the night, getting louder whenever Winston’s creative juices hit a speed bump.

He had lived in the old Morgenthau library for more than five years and he had long ago found a manageable equilibrium with the ghosts. He didn’t mind the shadows and the squeaks and the footsteps. However, the whistling spirit was throwing a monkey wrench in his workflow and he could not concentrate.

Winston once told Kendra that at times when he was heavily focused on his work, he would get the feeling that there were a crowd of people standing behind him watching his ever move, totally transfixed by the gruff painter and his jerky motions. Every now and then, when the feeling became so overwhelming that it became a distraction, he would swing his neck around to peer over his shoulder and see a series of silhouettes quickly dissipate like the plumes of smoke blowing out of a city bus in first gear. Winston didn’t mind the ghosts, but if he were dead, he would rather be doing something more productive with his afterlife.

The whistles persisted all summer and well into the fall, especially after The Professor had died. In an attempt to break both his depression and an unnerving monotony that had begun to dry up his creative juices, Winston began experimenting with new canvases and paints. He had come upon a long piece of fabric in the rubble of the Fieldhouse a while back and he was storyboarding ideas on the floor of the library trying to think of what he would paint next.

He kept looking at his new canvas—a banner of some kind that stretched about 15 feet wide by three feet tall—but could come up with no promising ideas. As had been the case for roughly two and half months, whenever he found himself in a “painter’s block,” that god damn whistling came back in full force.

It was louder than it had ever been before, as if the whistler was blowing into a megaphone perched up in the mezzanine. Frustrated, Winston stared up into the darkness and lurched back when he saw a ghostly silhouette standing in front of the stained glass window. Winston had never seen a fully formed apparition before, they usually appeared as shadows or quick flickers of mass and matter. This figure had a head, arms and a torso, and if not for the railing of the mezzanine would probably have legs and feet as well. Winston stared in fear as he looked up at the silent shade hovering in the balcony. It appeared as a vague figure at first, but Winston immediately started picking out the figure’s attributes. The figure had big, puffy hair that blew with the wind and bounced with every step. The figure was slender, but wore long cloak and a thick upper-body garment.

Immediately, Winston recognized the high volume, curly hair and the old green bomber jacket. He noticed the long flowing skirt and when the ghost started whistling again, he noticed its accent.

It was the ghost of Kendra Keane.

“Ka-ka-ka-Kendra?” mustered a terrified Winston as he sat frozen in his cavernous studio. The ghost did not give an affirmative or a negative, but Winston knew the figure once it had taken its shape. It sat silent for a moment until the ghost’s whistle faded into a whispery voice that sang along to the same melody.

“As leaves fall in the commons, As roses bloom in spring, For friends never forgotten, For loves ever lasting, For honor, truth and valor, We stand up brave and proud, And wave the crimson flag and sing for Morgenthau…”

As the ghost sang the final line of the song, it moved out of the backlight of the stained glass window and into the shadows where it vanished into the darkness. Winston suddenly unfroze from his chair next to the canvas and bolted towards the mezzanine.

“Kendra!” he yelled, looking for another sign from the ghost, “Kendra!” She was gone. She had vanished from sight, but she was still there. She had never left.

It had to be Kendra’s spirit, it all added up. He knew that voice anywhere. He could still smell her hair, which he knew so well from leaning over her shoulders when he gave her painting lessons. He knew that her spirit was still in the library somewhere, but their inter-realm transmission had ceased.

“Then I started painting,” he told me the following night after a long description of the account with the ghost. “I painted until about eight o’clock this morning. I haven’t been that inspired since…” he trailed off thinking about the night he challenged the ghosts to a spirit vs. man free-for-all as he painted the great portrait of Kendra.

“Can I see it?” I asked him, only to immediately regret the request when I realized that he would make me follow him inside where the spirits were waiting to haunt both of us. Winston considered the request for a few moments and reluctantly accepted. He took his cigarette lighter and lit one of the many candles he kept handy and led me through the library’s thick, foreboding doors, through the deserted lobby, past the dusty reception desk and into his cluttered, yet cozy painting studio. I tried to remember what Winston had told me about the ghosts. I kept my confidence high. I tried not to be afraid of them. The thought of encountering Winston’s regular ghosts did not bother me. I was terrified of seeing Kendra.

We stopped in front of the bookcases that served as the backboard for Winston’s canvas. On this long piece of cloth stood a procession of faces and bodies carrying a banner and waving flags high. It looked like the scene out of a great battle march or the Macy’s Day parade. As I looked closer, I started to see individual faces pop out among the crowd. I could see The Professor and his trademark pipe and Irish knit cap, Alistair and his crazy eyes, The Steve and his cracked eyeglasses, Eva and her pregnant tummy, Big Willie clutching his shovel, a self portrait of Winston and his shaky hands, Grover and the elated smile he gave whenever somebody said hello to him, me wearing my filthy hoodie, a dozen shadowy addicts and maniacs, the snakes, the cherubic spirits of Hook Hands and Doobie floating on clouds of their own marijuana smoke, and the angel Kendra floating effortlessly above the crowd.

The faces of our closest associates at Morgenthau were marching with a bright banner that read the school’s name. It looked like the homecoming parade, but they were marching to no football game. The figures held fists high, appeared to be shouting or yelling different things. The crowd did not resemble an angry mob, but what struck me was the sense of unity and purpose that these faces portrayed. Never had the homeless residents Morgenthau been united under one banner. We all came from different backgrounds and had suffered a wide array of misfortunes, but the only emotion that had ever united us was grief. On Winston’s canvas, our faces beamed with confidence, dedication and determination. We seemed to be ready to take on anyone and anything the world had to throw at us with the same fearlessness that Kendra displayed when she sacrificed her life for the good of the campus.

I took a step back in awe. I searched for the words to tell Winston what I really felt. It was painted in his usual twisted style, but it was absolutely beautiful.

“It’s all of us,” I said quietly. Winston nodded. He was incredibly modest of his work, but even he knew that there was something very special about this painting and all of the people in it.

“What does it all mean?” I asked him as he peered over my shoulders and let out a disgusted sigh, probably at the sight of one of the annoying spirits that lingered around his residence.

“Fucked if I know,” he said flabbergasted. “I mean, it doesn’t even make sense to me.” He let out a disconcerted chuckle and then asked, “Want to see the weirdest part about it?” I nodded in agreement. Winston walked over to the canvas and untied two strings that affixed the long sheet of cloth to the bookcase. The canvas flipped over to reveal the opposite side of the banner. There, in crisp crimson, as if it had been washed yesterday, read “MORGENTHAU” in big white letters. An even bigger shock, it was the exact same banner that the parade of characters had been carrying in Winston’s mural the reverse side.

“Thing is, I didn’t even know that this thing was on the other side of this cloth,” he said. “But I painted it anyway. What are the odds of that?”

Then, as we stood in the great hall of the library, a soft, high-pitched melody floated over the sounds of the wind rustling through the naked trees and through the wispy jungle of weeds in the quadrangle. It could have been anybody’s whistle, but I have always believed that it was Kendra’s. It was the exact same tune that Winston had hummed for me. It was way too creepy for me, the faithless follower who did not believe in angels, demons, saviors and devils before I came face to face with all of them in Morgenthau. Like I had a few weeks earlier, I made a mad dash for the door and never looked back.

The tune haunted me for the next few days while an ominous feeling began to infiltrate the campus like never before. Something big was going to happen. Everyone could feel it. I had been walking around on brisk autumn days singing it to myself, trying to figure out what Kendra meant by it. On my way up the stairs back to my second floor room in the Main Residence Hall, I sang the melody with doo-doo-doo’s and la-la-la’s, listening to the notes echo off the old, slimy walls of the staircase. A flight above me, Grover was heading out, but he stopped and shot me puzzled look as he passed me on the steps.

“Wait, stop,” he told me with a little force. “How do you know that song?”

I wanted to know the same thing from him. “Have you been talking to Winston?” I asked Grover.

“No,” he said politely. “I haven’t seen him in a few days. But you have to tell me how do you know the alma mater?”

“Whose alma mater?” I replied, confused.

“No, no, no,” said Grover frustrated, “That song. It’s called an alma mater. It’s Morgenthau’s alma mater. It’s a fight song, the college’s national anthem, so to speak. They used to play it at basketball games and graduations.”

“No shit?” I said.

Grover would postpone his trip outside to take me up to The Professor’s room, which still contained his great multitude of papers, books and some of Kendra’s paintings. In an old yearbook that Grover had found while going through his things, he pointed out sheet music to a song called “Wave The Crimson,” which was attributed to an old Irish folk tune with lyrics written by H.G. Lowery, Class of ’55. Having sang in the choir back in his freshman year, Grover easily recited the song in perfect pitch, and then sang the soprano, alto and bass parts.

Grover again pressed me about how I had heard the song. I broke my promise to Winston and spilled the beans about Kendra’s ghost. Grover’s eyes welled up with tears and he bolted out the door, down the stairs and over to the library. He found an angry Winston, but no Kendra.

Chapter XVI: The Watcher and the Great Confrontation in the Rain

John Scuzzi was a ravenous, evil monster that plagued this world for more than 40 years before he was brought to his own ugly end. No one will ever know how many people he killed, how many women he violated or how many people he hurt, both directly and indirectly. The man had no soul. He had never held down a steady job before Nolan started paying him to collect the rents from deadbeat residents at Morgenthau. He had no purpose on this planet. It could be argued that he was a walking anti-purpose. He existed to end existence. He lived to kill.

The less you knew about him, the better. I knew very little. I knew he had been to prison and that it was in jail where he acquired his nickname. None of us really knew what it meant until Kendra was killed. I knew that he was incredibly dangerous, and he could be easily manipulated into doing terrible things. I knew he was extremely disciplined, but had moments of random savagery. I think he lashed out because he enjoyed being disciplined by his handlers. I knew that he was a predator, and that he preyed on the weak. He had no shame in hurting women, children or people who could not fight back. He was a bigger monster than Nolan and Simeon put together, he was scarier than the ghosts that lived with Winston in the library, and he was as slimy and disgusting as the snakes in the quadrangle.

I had moved to Morgenthau in the months after he had become designated as Nolan’s hired muscle. The Watcher had been installed into this position because Kendra had come along and had really began to tie things up for Nolan, who had been making some decent money for his family by collecting rent from rejects like us.

Kendra had come to Morgenthau with lofty aspirations of raising our destitute denizens from the hopelessness and unhappiness that bound us to the abandoned campus. When she first found out that we were being charged to live on the abandoned property by the Grasso family, she was livid. How could a bunch of money grubbing fiends like the Grassos try to turn a quick buck from people who had absolutely nothing? The folks who lived at Morgenthau had to do some really nasty things to make money sometime, and all of that dirty cash ended up in the thickly lined pockets of Giovanni Grasso and his two dog-faced sons.

Kendra had worked at for a slew of city outreach programs while at college, and she was well aware of laws on the books that protected squatters from slumlords. Legally, we were not allowed to be living on the private property, and all the Grassos ever had to do was call the cops and have us forcibly removed. On the other hand, because the area was not zoned for anything other than a college or farmland, the squatters could not legally be charged rent to live there.

When Kendra first moved to Morgenthau, she stayed on the second floor in a room later occupied by Eva after we found her shivering in the Gardens. When Nolan came out on one of his random monthly collections, he barged into her room and demanded the rent. Kendra said that she was a squatter, and that if he wanted her to leave, all he had to do was call the cops. Of course, if he called the cops, then he would have to explain why his family was running an illegal tenement in the abandoned campus.

Nolan grabbed her by the throat and demanded that she pay up, while gasping for air, she told the brutish bastard that she would see him in court. He simply threw her to the floor and muttered some insults and racial slurs on his way out.

Nolan thought her claims were bullshit and he believed that these junkies were not “squatters” with rights, he felt they had no rights under the law. The problem was that if the case did go to court, it would be a terrible black eye for the Grasso family, who continued to work their hardest to win votes in the county zoning board. If the county found out that they were running the slum, there was a good chance that it would sway the board to vote against their proposal.

As a result, he never asked Kendra for rent ever again, although The Professor secretly paid her share up until the time she was killed. Nevertheless, Kendra felt like she had beaten a monster like Nolan at his own game. Every new resident and every old resident heard about her plan, and gradually, over her first spring and summer, dozens of residents began to threaten Nolan about going to court or the press with claims that the family was running an illegal slum.

It got to the point that Nolan’s collections had virtually ceased about a year after Kendra had moved into Morgenthau. He could not keep kicking the asses of the druggies and deadbeats and he needed some desperate help.

It was the middle of June when Nolan went knocking on the door of the Fieldhouse and found a 6’4”, balding Neanderthal sleeping on a mat up in the bleachers. Nolan—who now came to campus packing brass knuckles and a Jaeger switchblade in case anything went wrong—had intended to shake the new resident down for some money. However, seeing his size, Nolan began to realize that he might not be able to subdue this ugly giant. Much to his surprise, The Watcher agreed to Nolan’s demands and told him that he would have the rent ready by the next month. He went about collecting his money by robbing other residents days before their rent was due.

The man was so formidable that Nolan would have not questioned him if he refused to pay, but his uncontested submission to Nolan’s demands began to spark other ideas. Winston hadn’t paid Nolan since Kendra had let him in on her free secrets a year earlier. Winston also hid out in the library at the beginning of the month, knowing that Nolan—having once encountered the ghosts in the building—refused to go in there. Nolan told The Watcher that if he could get Winston to pay up he would give him the keys to the inaccessible pump house on the north side of campus. It had no windows, one door, and a somewhat functional toilet and did not get overly hot or cold.

The Watcher did as he was told, and one night following soup at Grover’s, the brute caught up with Winston and beat him into submission, threatening to bite the fingers off his painting hand if he didn’t pay Nolan the back rent that he was owed. A few weeks later, Winston answered the door when Nolan came knocking and paid him a couple hundred dollars, and begged him to tell The Watcher to leave him alone.

By the end of the summer, the campus was gripped with fear knowing that no matter who they were or how diligently they had paid Nolan, there was no escaping The Watcher; and that there was no reasoning with him. The more and more Kendra heard about The Watcher’s terrorism, the angrier she got. Quietly through the fall and winter, she began formulating a plan to bring the misdeeds of the Grassos and The Watcher to light.

However, the surviving the winter seemed to prove even tougher than surviving a violent encounter with The Watcher. Bitter cold descended upon the campus in early November, and did not cease until an unseasonably warm night in March when Alistair burned the fieldhouse to the ground.

The winter was merciless. Many of the addicts and maniacs froze to death in the tunnels or the basement. The Professor was terribly sick for almost a month and would have died had he not begun cohabiting with Kendra, who provided just enough body heat for him to stave off the hypothermia.

In late December, a heavy blizzard rolled through the campus and dumped close to two feet of snow, buckling the roof of several buildings, including the Main Residence Hall, Science and the Fieldhouse. Alistair would later attribute the stress caused by the record snowfall as a necessary aid in his demolition of the old gymnasium months later. The arrangement of the buildings around the quad caused a thick drift to pile up near the entrance to the dorms, and for a good three weeks, nobody could get in or get out. This prevented The Watcher or Nolan for coming around for a few months, although we knew that they would come back eventually and that nobody would have any money to pay them when they did.

We did what we had to do survive. Grover continued to make his treks to the soup kitchen in order to return with sustenance, although the journeys left him cold and weak. His soup nights were godsends. We needed both soup for food and the cooking fire for some warmth. I spent a number of nights sleeping in the old common room where Alistair had built Grover a stove. The stove was rarely extinguished, and some people spent all day maintaining the fire in order to stay warm. I spent quite a few nights in Grover’s bed, mostly because I needed the warmth since the blizzard had broken the window in my room on the second floor. The winter would ultimately kill Hook Hands and Doobie, as well as countless others. Willie couldn’t even dig proper graves because the ground had frozen solid. By the time April came around and the coldest winter of our lives had ended, we foolishly thought that the worst was over.

By April, the snow had melted, and Nolan and The Watcher were able to come around looking for our rent. This time, they wanted the back rent for the months they took off due to the weather. Nobody had made any money during the winter. We couldn’t. There wasn’t anywhere to go and there was nothing to do. Neither Nolan nor The Watcher cared. It was all or nothing. Many wished that they had frozen to death.

I was happy to feel a warm, humid rain fall on an early April morning, not once thinking that 24 hours later I would be witness to one of the most disgusting acts of human cruelty ever perpetrated at Morgenthau. I had spent the morning hiding out in the alcove of the library with Winston, knowing that Nolan was afraid of the ghosts. By nightfall, I knew I had to go back to my room and face the music. I was able to slip through the front door and I climbed up into my room silently. I could hear Nolan and The Watcher talking to The Professor upstairs. The Professor was easily shaken down, especially when they threatened the well being of Kendra. He just insisted that she never find out about this arrangement. Much to the chagrin of The Professor, she had returned early from a visit to Grover, and overheard the transaction from outside the room. Kendra had been under the impression for close to a year that her threats to Nolan had been taken seriously, and that the shadow of her ultimatum had bought silence from their retribution. After shaking down The Professor, Kendra and her landlords crossed paths in the hallway. Nolan blew a sarcastic kiss at Kendra who shot back at him an ugly glare.

She was furious at The Professor for going behind her back and giving to the unreasonable and illegal demands of the Grasso family. Despite her arguments, The Professor was steadfast on the issue. She meant a whole lot to him, especially after she had kept him alive through the terrible winter that had just passed. The Professor hated the Grassos as much as anybody, but the last thing he wanted was for Kendra to get hurt by them. It wasn’t about the money. It wasn’t about the insult. She was worth every penny to him.

Kendra didn’t see it that way. It was such a terrible insult to her. She had fallen in love not only with The Professor, but with many other residents as well. She had helped nurse The Steve back to health when he was beaten within an inch of his life. She meant the world not only to me, but also to Willie, who had the biggest crush on her. She had helped Alistair kick the junk for more than two months, and she had found a way to connect to Winston, who only felt comfortable talking about his ghosts and demons with her. She meant everything to us and she felt the same way. We were worth whatever beating she might receive. And she knew that if she could somehow instill the confidence in us to stand up against these monsters, that we might be able to rise up not only in our situation at Morgenthau, but eventually out of that wretched place and into a real life in the real world.

She stormed out to follow Nolan back to his car and confront him once and for all. She walked fast, knowing The Professor would be slowed by the lingering limp I had given him a year earlier in the Tri-Towns. The Professor asked Willie to accompany him on his quest to restrain Kendra, but after Willie was uncooperative, The Professor begrudgingly ventured forth.

Outside, night had fallen and a hard, steady rain drenched Morgenthau. A few cracks of thunder could be heard in the distance as the winter’s cold air mass was finally being replaced by warm tropical air moving in from the south. An equally violent clash between forces of nature was about to take place down on the avenue that led to the entrance of the campus.

Kendra chased down Nolan in the rain as he walked underneath an umbrella towards his Land Rover. The Watcher followed at his side without the benefit of staying dry. He did not complain about the arrangement. Nolan was boss, if he wanted to stay out of the rain, that was the end of it.

Kendra finally got within an earshot and let out a loud yell at Nolan as he got close to the car.

“Get back here you son of a bitch!” she yelled at him. Nolan stopped and looked around to find Kendra looking more like a drenched cat. Her wild, curly hair stuck to the sides of her face as if she had just emerged from a patch of seaweed. She was filled with such vicious anger, but Nolan thought her appearance to more comical than intimidating.

“Kendra,” said Nolan with a chuckle, “You look lovely all soaking wet.”

Kendra continued, unfazed. “It’s over Nolan!” she yelled. “The threats, the rents, the violence! It’s over!”

Nolan was in no mood to continue discussing this in the rain and stepped forward to Kendra, almost poking the top of her head with his umbrella.

“Oh yeah,” said Nolan, menacingly, “And what is little old Kendra gonna do, huh? You don’t look like a lawyer. You look like some junkie gutter trash. They’ll take you as seriously as the crazy bitches that flash people in the subway station for money. Who in their wildest dreams would mistake you for a lawyer.”

“I know what’s illegal, you scumbag!” she yelled back. “You can’t make these people pay rent, and you sure as fuck can’t get that ugly monster to punch their faces in when people who have nothing to begin with can’t come up with a hundred bucks a month! We are human beings! We have rights!”

“Tell ‘em to go to the shelters!” Nolan quickly shot back. “They don’t got to live here. This ain’t no homeless shelter, bitch, and I ain’t no priest. You can make all the threats you want, but it’ll never do any good. You’re just a useless homeless bitch, and nobody’s ever gonna listen to you.”

“If they won’t listen to her, they’ll listen to me,” said the voice of The Professor as he emerged through the dark rain. Nolan quickly diverted his attention from Kendra to the limping old man. The Professor slowly walked up to Kendra, caught his breath and stared fearlessly into the eyes of Nolan and his puppet.

“You know damn well who I am, Nolan,” said a defiant Professor. “And you know that if I raise hell, it’ll fall right down on you and your father, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He was right. The Professor might not have done anything to preserve his friendships with people in power, but just like his homeless brethren, people still respected him. Dr. Salisbury in the Tri-Towns kept reaching out to him, despite the how rude The Professor was at their annual meetings. The county had refused to give the land over to the Grassos and the board would continue to do so until they were fired or usurped. There were deep loyalties to Morgenthau, and The Professor might have despised every single person at the campus, but they were his people. We were the student body, the class of no tomorrow, and it was all still worth fighting for.

“You’d better watch it old man,” warned Nolan. “Don’t think that I won’t have this big ape crush your god damn skull.”

“I’m not afraid of him!” yelled The Professor at full volume, so much that his bones shook to their core. “I’m not afraid of any of these lowlifes. And most importantly, I’m not afraid of you, Nolan, or your father, or your uncle or any one of your family’s cronies! You’ll never get another dime from me you fucking scoundrel!”

A furious scowl crawled across Nolan’s face as The Professor’s gusto had seemingly collected the fury of the elements, and his words carried the rain sideways and all over Nolan’s designer khakis. He felt insulted by the old man who had never shown any backbone, and paid his rent due to his own apathy and because it was more convenient that way. Kendra had corrupted everyone on campus, including The Professor. Nolan knew that something had to be done.

“You won’t have to…” said Nolan as he turned away and walked back to his jeep. He paused for a moment as he passed by The Watcher, who stood stoic in the rain in a tense state of readiness. “Kill them both,” he said calmly to the ex-con, as he beeped the alarm on his Land Rover and left the scene.

Kendra could have run. The Professor could have yelled for help. But they stood face to face with The Watcher with righteous hearts and courageous dignity. Watcher wasted no time. He hit Kendra first, knocking her down to the ground with a loud thump. The Professor tried to swing his cane at The Watcher, but the brutish monster caught the cane in mid-swing, twisted it out of his hands and swung it swiftly against The Professor’s right leg, easily cracking a bone and sending him to the ground. As The Professor hollered in pain, The Watcher kicked him in his midsection four or five times. The old man was in so much pain that he couldn’t even scream, letting out wheezing gasps and coughing up blood.

Kendra had fought to regain her balance and rushed over to do something to stop the attack on her closest friend and lover, but he was just too strong. She tried to choke the monster, but he elbowed her straight in the jaw and knocked out several teeth. As she fell back to the ground, she let out a squealing groan. Suddenly, The Watcher’s deep, dark urges, the ones that had landed him in prison for close to ten years became re-ignited. Kendra was vulnerable and nearly unconscious. As the blood started dripping from her mouth and nostrils, The Watcher felt his evil passions that prison had tried to kill suddenly awaken. He couldn’t help himself. Nobody could possibly stop him.

Kendra felt him climb on top of her and start to tear her clothes out from beneath his massive, stinking torso. She tried to muster a defense, but he quickly jammed his thick right hand under her chin and gripped her throat like an alligator’s jaws. She was choking on her own blood and teeth, and now this monster was cutting off the air to her brain.

Only four feet away, The Professor could see what was happening, but found that even with all the hate he had for Nolan, with all the love he had for Kendra and with all the fury and rage that had caused him to stand up against The Watcher, his body just did not have the strength to get up and stop what was happening. As The Watcher slowly choked the life out of Kendra, he stole her dignity in swift, gorging thrusts, making sure at all times that The Professor kept his eyes open.

“Yeah!” growled the monster, “I like it when you watch.”

When he was done, he pulled up his pants and stared at the Kendra’s dead body without remorse and with an air of accomplishment swirling around his head. He scampered off into through the rain back to the tiny shack he occupied on the other side of the campus. In the afterglow, he had forgotten to finish off The Professor.

The addicts, who had always been our faithful protectors and disciplinarians, had done nothing to stop the single most terrible act in the 80-year history of Morgenthau.

By midnight, Grover and I knew something was terribly wrong. We debated going out into the rain to see if they were okay, but we were afraid. We were afraid of the addicts and the snakes, of The Watcher and the maniacs. The Professor and Kendra did not fear any of them. Neither Grover nor I slept. At daybreak, a platoon of volunteers—including Grover, Alistair and myself—set out to search for them. I was the one who found the bodies. I couldn’t even yell for help. Kendra had nearly been torn to pieces, and both she and The Professor sat in puddles of rainwater that had been tainted red by their spilt blood. Somehow, The Professor was still alive, although he wished that The Watcher had just killed him. It would be another six months before he would finish the job himself.

Kendra died for us. The Professor had intended to do the same thing, but he suffered even worse pain and suffering by surviving. We all wanted desperately to rally around our fallen martyr, but it was just so hard. Kendra had been a source of a lot of the renewed feelings of faith and hope that had begun to permeate the residents. Suddenly, that source dried up. To make matters worse, Nolan returned the next day—with his younger brother Simeon in tow—to make it very clear that anyone who stepped out of line might fall victim to the same fate as Kendra and The Professor.

For a long time, it felt like Kendra had died for nothing. It was only after The Professor took his own life and the bulldozers started tearing down the college that Kendra’s sacrifice finally had meaning.

Chapter XV: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of Kendra Keane

Of all things, the friendship and courtship of The Professor and Kendra Keane began with a novelty pin affixed to the heavy winter coat Kendra wore to the soup kitchen on the night they met. The Professor had tried to find an empty table, but with the room packed, he sat across the table from Kendra in the first empty seat he could find.

Even though she appeared to be seconds away from completely breaking down into tears, The Professor did not feel a great desire to comfort the woman. It wasn’t really in his nature. Even if deep within his very guarded personality he did feel sorry for this woman, he wondered what difference his sympathy would make.

The Professor resumed eating his hot soup while occasionally looking over at the woman, making sure that she wasn’t going to lose it. He noticed that her puffy winter coat had a series of pins on them. Some were campaign slogans or had small symbols on them, but there was one that stuck out. A small white button was adorned with the nude backside of a cartoon character and read Life is short. Party Naked. The Professor chuckled when he read it.

“Life is short, party naked,” said The Professor, taking another sip of soup before speaking again. “Well, the mood in here isn’t really that festive, and it’s much too cold for going around naked.”

With that, Kendra slowly looked up from her desperate staring into the cooled bowl of soup below her. It almost looked like she had to hoist her head up with a crane, it seemed so heavy.

“Yeah,” she said with a heavy, sorrowful tone, “And life isn’t really that short.”

The Professor offered her a miniature chuckle and offered the closest thing to a smile that he had given off in a long time. Across the table, he noticed a small smirk escape through the side of her chapped lips.

“’Carter/Mondale ’80,’ a peace symbol, ‘No Blood For Oil.’ Now tell me, why do you have a ‘naked party’ button on the same jacket as those other ones?” It was a seemingly innocent question, but by the time Kendra conjured up the answer, a wave of memory and regret washed over her face, buckling her head, which once again hung down towards her soup.

She let out a melancholy sigh. “It was a gift from one of my students.”

Only a few years before meeting The Professor on that dreary late-winter’s eve, Kendra Keane had been Professor Keane, academic advisor and the chair of the Department of Race and Gender Studies at the State University of Vermont in Verciel. Although a few other professors taught classes within the department, Kendra was the heart and soul of the program. She had grown up in suburban Boston and went to Harvard where she wrote her thesis on African-American female identity in the 1980s.

Her essays were published in a few national magazines and helped to establish her as a respected voice within the academic community. Her articles helped her land a job teaching a class on Race and Gender at Verciel, and over the course of several years, she built interest and support for an accredited major based on her classes. By the mid-1990s, Kendra’s courses and classes had put Verciel State on the map. A successful educator and somewhat successful author with a nice house in the quiet college town, Kendra Keane was the personification of the American dream. What she never could have possibly dreamed was that everything would change the day she met Ben Kingston.

Kingston was the University President’s son, a fact that made her future relationship with The Professor all the more ironic. A child of interracial parents, Ben had read a number of Kendra’s articles while doing his undergraduate studies at Brown. He elected to go back to the college town where he grew up, just so that he could attend graduate school with Kendra.

She met Ben at a dinner with his father the night before the start of a new fall semester. In the beginning, Kendra found him charming and very intelligent, facts that did not surprise her after hearing about his accolades from his father. Ben had taken a year and a half off in-between high school and college and went on an expedition around the world before coming back to the states and beginning his studies at Brown. At the time they met, he was a very mature 26 while and Kendra was still quite beautiful, even at age 46. There were no sparks, no cheap flirting, no sly innuendos. They were simply teacher and student.

How it ended up developing into something more than that was still a mystery to her, she told The Professor. Of all things, she said it evolved out of a great mutual respect they had for each other. Ben had quoted Kendra rigorously in his bachelor’s thesis at Brown, and although he could have gone to graduate school anywhere, he purposely chose to come back to Verciel because of the famous Professor Kendra Keane.

On the other side of the podium, Kendra had become fond of Ben’s discussions and essays in her classes. When topics were brought up in her classes, Ben was always the first person with his hand raised, and even when the two disagreed, he offered informed and confident counterpoints. That, Kendra admitted, was what initially caused some of the attraction. Teachers’ pets were at the top of Kendra’s pet peeves, and the last thing she wanted from any of her students was her own rhetoric regurgitated back to her. She often gave higher marks to papers that argued against a topic rather than with it. In Ben she saw the man she had always been looking for. She was always looking for a man who shared her beliefs and interests, yet always kept an independent and righteous mind. She had always looked for confidence, rather than insecurity, especially when it came to her staunch feminist viewpoints. She had been attracted to both black men and white men, and Ben shared none of the traits that repulsed her about both. He was perfect. He was just too young. And after all, she thought, why would he be interested in an older woman like her anyway?

Kendra was way too busy to be burdened by the philosophical crisis regarding the feelings she had for Ben. She taught nine different classes, had more than 300 students and was working on a third book that was never published; she had no time to worry about the President’s son. She had been working on that third book for close to three years. The previous two had helped her gain respect within her field, but neither of them had sold well, and she was banking on the third one to finally raise her up out of debt. Her house in Verciel was gorgeous, but the university owned it, and they had sole discretion over who lived there. There was also the issue of a decade-old student loan bill that had been depleted, but not deleted.

The summertime brought peace, quiet, warm days and cool nights to the mountains of Vermont. What it did not bring was a substantial income. Kendra taught a few intensive summer courses, traveled and gave a few lectures, but she made the bulk of her state university salary from September to May. To offset some of her expenses, Kendra usually rented out the ground floor of her house to one or two quiet students who were summering in Verciel and wanted a better option than living on-campus. When she put up flyers like she did every May, she was surprised to receive a call from Ben Kingston.

He had been staying at the University President’s mansion in the hills on the outskirts of town, but he had grown frustrated with staying with his parents and had decided to live somewhere else in town while he completed his Masters. Kendra was delighted to have Ben as her summer houseguest. She needed the extra money to help her through the summer, and the idea of having such a pleasant young man like Ben living there seemed like a decent idea. After all, there was nothing going on between them.

For the first month of the summer, Kendra and Ben were like ships passing in the night. Ben tended bar down at a sud shack down in the valley and slept in late after Kendra had gone to work. Kendra got lonely in the summer. She missed her students and the overall human contact. She worked well with her colleagues, but their friendship didn’t extend further than the faculty parking lot. After a few weeks, she found herself listening for him to close the back door to the ground floor apartment every night around 3:30 when he had returned from the bar. Many times, she felt like going downstairs and talking with him for a while, just to give him some company.

Ben had been dating an actress named Scarlet in Providence, and every now and then, Kendra would hear a telephone conversation begin to deteriorate from the other side of the downstairs wall. Ben had passed up a number of opportunities to come up to Verciel and study in Kendra’s program. One of those opportunities included the opportunity to spend more time with his college sweetheart. By the fourth of July, Ben was working late into the night and his long telephone conversations gradually diminished into a somber silence.

On Independence Day, Ben was sitting in an armchair in Kendra’s backyard. Her backyard was on a hillside, and through a clearing of trees, one could barely spot the stands of the minor league baseball stadium where the fire department was setting off some fireworks. Kendra was going to go down to the stadium herself and watch the game, but for a number of reasons—primarily a great sense of boredom and longing for some company—she decided to go out into the backyard and spend some time with her tenant.

Ben’s mopey demeanor suddenly brightened when he saw Kendra emerge from the porch with two glasses and a chilled bottle of wine.

“You know, I always forget that I have this pretty view of downtown from the house up here,” she said and handed Ben a glass. “And I don’t want to deal with all those drunken kids driving down to the field tonight.”

Ben laughed and agreed as she poured him a drink. They started talking about the boring summer that had yet to materialize into anything more than humid mornings, afternoon clouds and a dreary evening rainstorm. The rain had held off that night, and the fog had lifted from the valley to the point that every streetlight glowed in a long, gridlocked pattern.

Kendra complained about her book, which had hit a stubborn roadblock. Ben complained about his ex-girlfriend, who was still a junior at Brown. Perhaps she was too young for him, he mused. It was the first time that Kendra even suspected that Ben was making some kind of pass at her.

The night drifted on as the sounds of the pep band blew up through the mountains, the bass drums and trombones were skewed by pockets of humidity, falling out of sync as the sound ricocheted off every building in town. The mosquitoes had feasted on Kendra and Ben before they too began to get drunk off their wine-tainted blood. They laughed about Ben’s dad and what he was like to grow up with. They exchanged sad stories about unrequited love and opportunities past. Kendra talked about the subject of her new book, which fascinated Ben and boosted Kendra’s ego, as she began to think that maybe this time she could write a best seller.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was their intense loneliness, maybe it was the cool breeze that blew the smell of gunpowder into her backyard or maybe it was the multi-colored explosions that lit up the valley and illuminated the green hills against the black night sky, but neither of them knew how it happened, just that it had happened and it was good. She had taken her eyes off the fireworks for a second and realized that Ben was staring at her instead of the display. She froze as their eyes met. She felt as indecisive and nervous as she had been the first time she kissed a boy in high school. As he put down his empty glass and slowly moved in to kiss her, a wave of emotions shot through her like the explosions in the sky down below. It felt so wrong, and so dirty to kiss one of her students, something she swore she would never do and always admonished. But she felt so unbelievably comfortable with Ben. He had always stuck out in her classes. He was 20 years her junior, but she had always secretly been attracted to the mature and confident way he presented himself. She knew it was wrong, but after her shock wore off, she kissed him back even harder. This was so good, but it was so bad. To make matters worse, he wasn’t just any student; he was the son of the President of the University. Maybe her life felt so drab and so colorless that she needed to do this incredibly reckless, incredibly irresponsible, incredibly spontaneous action in order to set off a spark in her life. Ben sure set a spark off alright. It burned brighter and hotter than any good thing that had ever happened in Kendra’s life.

She woke up the next morning to find Ben still asleep in her bed. It was a mistake, she knew that much. She quickly wrapped herself in the top sheet and walked bashfully over to her wardrobe to put on some clothes. When she closed the door and emerged somewhat descent, she found Ben checking her out from underneath her covers. While Kendra kept asking herself what the hell she was thinking, she saw Ben sporting playful midmorning smile that hinted that he was not the slightest bit ashamed of spending a night with the older woman.

“Good morning,” he said politely. Kendra paused a moment to gather herself. Wine or no wine, fireworks or no fireworks, great sex or no great sex, she had simply enjoyed spending time with the young man. She had not been with a man in close to three years and the harder she had worked; the less she had time to spend with her friends. She couldn’t continue this kind of relationship, but she couldn’t push Ben away. She was coming to the sad realization that she needed him.

“Would you like some breakfast?” asked a shy Kendra.

At breakfast Kendra uncomfortably addressed the subject of the previous night while Ben calmly and humbly agreed that the evening had been pleasant. Kendra tried to explain to Ben that their relationship had crossed into a dangerous territory, one that she was unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable with. Ben simply repeated his assertion that the night had been splendid and gave off the distinct impression that unlike Kendra, he didn’t see anything wrong with what had happened. Without resolution they finished breakfast, returned to their separate living quarters and resumed their lives.

The summer had finally arrived in full splendor and Kendra was in a thick writer’s block. Some nights she would stay up late in the evening until she heard Ben’s Explorer pull into the driveway. She cautiously went downstairs to knock on his door. She wanted to discuss the subject of her new book and about the impasse that she had come to. What she really wanted was to be held. Ben, of course, was always willing to reciprocate.

Following an evening spent together, Kendra rushed through her writers’ block like a mack truck plowing through a rusty gate. She could write for eight straight hours after spending an evening with Ben. She would often recite pages to him in bed, mystifying the young man with the fiercest theories and analysis that she had ever written before. By late August, the manuscript was practically finished. Had it not been for her post-orgasmic output, it might have taken her until Christmastime to finish the book. Without Ben, the book would have lacked the passion and spark that prevented her previous publications from becoming sensations.

The summer always ended in the mountains a little earlier than everywhere else. The cool winds of autumn began to blow into Verciel in late August, and with them came Kendra’s sad realization that her steamy romance with Ben would ultimately have to be cooled due to the upcoming semester.

She had no idea how Ben would take her autumnal rejection. It was one thing for her to be sleeping with one of her tenants. He had opted not to pay her rent for the month of August, instead, buying her a lovely necklace. But once school started, Kendra could not teach a student who might feel entitled to special privileges. He knew he had to move, but he did not believe that he had to pack their romance into a box as well.

Kendra made her big speech to him on the night before the new semester, one year to the date after she had first met this young man at her employer’s house for a family dinner. Nobody—not even Kendra or Ben’s closest friends, family or co-workers—knew about the romance. Ben took it exceptionally hard. He had expected that things would continue to develop for the two of them. He felt that there was a unique and special connection that the two shared. He was not prepared to give up without a fight, but he did so out of his respect for Kendra, and cleaned the final things out of his rented room before moving across town into a small one bedroom in the University Common. The only items he left behind were a few novelty pins that he had taken off his hoodie before a wash and then forgotten about.

Once the active class participant, Ben had become a silent statue in the rear of Kendra’s classroom. When they met eyes, he slid his focus down to his notebook, where it often seemed he was writing notes that did not pertain to the class at all. When Kendra invited him to come out and sit in on a lecture, he declined or simply stood her up. His papers—once masterful opinions that presented bold arguments backed up with research and reason—had reverted into the regurgitated jargon that Kendra loathed to read from her students.

Matters went from bad to worse in early November when Ben walked into Kendra’s class an hour late. It was his fifth absence in 15 classes. Other students were allotted only three unexcused absences before their grade was automatically turned into an F. When Kendra asked Ben to at least turn in an assignment due on that particular day, he said that he had not finished it.

In a rare display of anger, Professor Keane—as she was known professionally—lashed out at the student, telling him that his chronic lateness and failure to turn in work on time was unacceptable, and she would be forced to fail him for the semester. Needless to say, Ben was livid. He leapt up out of his chair and started calling Kendra’s performance unacceptable. The classroom, which always had a laid-back and mellow atmosphere, suddenly turned incredibly tense as Ben lit into Kendra. She had dealt with rude students before, but she suddenly felt a great sense of fear grip her. If Ben got too riled up, he might spill the beans about their relationship.

She changed her approach, “Ben, please just have a seat and we’ll talk about this after class, okay?” she said trying to contain the blaze before it got out of hand. But as an evil grin emerged across Ben’s face, she knew immediately that she was caught in the firestorm.

“Yeah, that’s just what you’d like, huh,” said a maniacal Ben, “Is that what you do, just lure these young boys into your bed and then fuck them over? Huh!”

“How dare you!” shot back Kendra. She tried to pass off the insult as bogus, but it was obvious from her mannerisms that she was more embarrassed and humiliated than angered and insulted.

“I can’t believe I wasted my whole summer with you… and to think that I thought I was in love with you!” he shouted as he picked up his sweater and speed walked to the door, slamming it on his way out.

Kendra stood in the center of the lecture hall, frozen and petrified. She could hear the whispers from her graduate degree candidates, but she knew that those whispers would only grow louder in chorus. One way or another, her career at Verciel State as she knew it was in jeopardy.

Verciel State was a small school and word traveled fast. Within a week of Ben’s tirade in the middle of Kendra’s classroom, the university launched an inquiry into the relationship between Kendra and one of her students. Kendra, who was tenured and was very well respected both at Verciel and elsewhere, was honest with the university’s Academic Committee and told them about the relationship between her and Ben. She admitted her guilt and called the affair a mistake as well as an isolated incident that had not happened before and would not happen again.

Originally, Kendra was forced into taking a semester-long, paid sabbatical. She was told that upon her return, she would resume her duties as chair of her department. The case was never supposed to become a national issue, but a student newspaper found out about the story through a source, and when they published a report, the story was blown out of proportion by a hungry news media obsessed with cases regarding teachers having affairs with students.

All of a sudden, Kendra Keane and her reputation were being smeared on national television shows as the media tried and convicted her in the court of public opinion. The story only lasted a week, but it killed a lifetime of work. Had the story never gone public, Kendra would have been able to come back to Verciel State and resume her teaching. Instead, she returned after her spring sabbatical and a summer off to find that her position as chair had been stripped away from her, and her courseload was cut in half. Her salary now reflected that of a low-level professor, and she was unable to afford the gorgeous house provided for her by the university. She was tenured, but they were going to try their hardest to make her leave.

After the incident, Kendra looked around for other work, but found that her reputation was irrevocably smeared by her infamy with Ben. She stayed at Verciel for another year and a half until Ben—who had since become a Professor at Verciel— published a new book that had completely ripped-off Kendra’s long delayed third manuscript. Ben’s thesis had copied entire chapters of Kendra’s work verbatim. To make matters worse, the Verciel University Press had published the book, and the book was going to be the cornerstone of a revamped Race and Gender Studies Department chaired by the newly ordained Dr. Ben Kingston.

Kendra quit her job in protest and took what was left of her life savings and sued Ben Kingston and the State University for plagiarizing her third book. With no evidence other than a few old sheets of white paper and a computer file that could have been altered anywhere, Kendra lost at trial when the judge claimed that she did not meet the burden of proof.

She ended up in the Tri-Towns living with a sister in a run-down roach motel on one of the poorest blocks in the city. She went to the soup kitchens because it was free and because her soul had been sucked so dry that she couldn’t feel any shame.

She met The Professor on that cold night in February and followed him back to Morgenthau with Grover. Morgenthau was a step down from her sister’s place, but it wasn’t such a big step. She would never gone to Morgenthau had it not been for the hospitality offered to her by Grover and the old man.

Her life had lacked meaning since Ben had robbed her of everything that she had in her life. When she saw the squalor of the people living at the abandoned campus, and realized all of the terrible things that its residents were subjected to by Nolan, Simeon and their father, she began a new quest.

The squat was illegal, and she was determined to bring the so-called landlords to justice. The drugs were destroying the minds and bodies of some of our friends, and she was determined to get them clean. The campus was overrun with dejection, desperation and destitution, and she was determined to show us that there was a way out and a brighter day ahead. She had lost everything, and came to us with nothing but her big heart and big dreams, hoping that by saving us, she might possibly redeem herself.

She died trying to show us how to live. Despite her undying faith in us, I don’t even think she could have imagined how her dreams would eventually come to fruition.