Sometime in the middle of a gray game day, I came-to with a pounding skull. I am walking in an alley between buildings on campus: leather soles scraping against the rough sidewalk. I can’t tell if I was just lying on the ground or walking the whole time, and I don’t know what’s just happened. The gray-orange sky is indicating either morning or evening.
I am at the Grove, I can tell, but the sounds of the stadium and the people are muffled. I can’t tell whether the game is about to start, or whether it’s hours away, or even where the Sun is in the sky.
All around me is the remnants of trash, cups, papers, boxes. My phone is dead, and in the distance next to the building, something catches my eye.
In the large dumpster, overflowing and spewing navy and red trash in the wind, skin color: stationary and protruding. My vision swirls but I have to walk closer and it comes into focus: There she is. She is.
My ears burn from internal heat and the fury of the Grove fades out. All I can hear is the throbbing of my own blood. With eyes wide open, and a face and body smashed and contorted in between rank, black trash bags, a girl in a navy blue dress has been stuck limply in the dumpster.
My mouth salivates with the anticipation of vomiting, but I can’t swallow because of the golf-ball size lump in my throat. I fall to my knees and begin to convulse but heave nothing. I stumble back up to my feet grasping the side of the dumpster. Closer, her face, bloodied and staring, fills me with nameless dread, and I want to scream but nothing comes out. I want to yell for help but I don’t. I want to get out of here but how did I even get here. I don’t yell. I don’t scream. I think I know her.
Following the walls with my hands for balance and direction, I see tents in front of me in the distance. I reach the end of the wall. A breeze hits me and I stop.
Breathe Jacob, breathe, breathe.
My heart rate cools and I look up as if looking for the first time. My vision stabilizes and I readjust my clothes and walk upright, putting on a good natured relaxed face.
Do I get the police? What if it wasn’t real? What if they think I am insane? What if I am crazy? How did I get so drunk today? How many beers? Four? Five? Ten? What did I do? I make the slow trek back.
***
Jacob, where have you been? Patrick yells to me from across the tent, and Tanner, drinking deeply from a red cup, adds shouting, “We thought we lost you, all of a sudden, just gone.”
I share an uneasy laugh with them but they notice nothing, I feel pale but they notice nothing, they hand me a cup with liquid in it but taste nothing, but relief, it comes, one after the other after the other until I feel comfortably unsure in my steps and the world around me brightens with jocularity and glosses into a soft dandelion haze.
Hours have passed and the day lies languidly under overcast skies, the lights of the stadium now blinding white against the still gray afternoon, and a light touch on my shoulder spins me around. Still tense? but I hide it from my face and a girl who I have never seen before is standing before me in a patch of trampled green, a navy blue dress, looks at me wide staring eyes, smiles, Can you pour me a mimosa, please, Jacob?
She knows my name.
I walk over to the cooler, she follows my steps. I am squatting next to the cooler about to open it and I look at her face and those wide staring eyes and suddenly my blood turns cold, my eyes water and throat swells with pure fear, the sky gets dark and her voice slows and lowers.
Open up the cooler, Jacob. Hesitantly, I crack open the cooler and a slight draft blows the hair across my face.
The liner is coated with sticky deep red and caked brown and the icy water swirls pink. I stick my hand in the ice to pull up the bottle of champagne and boney fingers wrap around my wrist. I snap a look back at her and her face is speckled with blood. She whispers in a hoarse deep voice, I know plenty about you, and what you’ve done, and what you will do now. I scream but no sound emerges and she inches closer, the grip pulls harder, pulling me into the bloodied ice bath, I attempt to look back at her but other fingers have grabbed onto my jacket, my neck, my hair, and my shoulders are inside the cooler and it is dark and cold fingers pull and I am screaming and I can’t get out, swallowing large amounts of water and I get one last look at her face which lengthens and contorts and she whispers again, I know what you’ve done Jacob, and she pushes me into the dark.
