Pledge

Chapter 1: Zach

The first meeting ended at 10:12 p.m. on a Tuesday, and everybody was already over it - perhaps nobody more so than Zach.

He was one of two dozen pledges comprising the incoming class of Kappa Rho, the top fraternity at Brookhart University. That's what they said, anyways. Truth be told, all twelve fraternities on campus called themselves 'the top frat.' The reality was Kappa Rho was solidly upper mid-table; not the most prestigious (that was Omega Omicron) but certainly not the least (that would have been Beta Tau).

This first meeting, or 'collective' as they called it, explained the general process. Over the semester, the pledges would be assigned weekly tasks consisting of varying levels of degradation. Every Friday would be an overnight 'experience' here, at the Kappa Rho house.

As Justin, the self-titled 'Pledge Daddy,' continued his monologue, Zach wondered what any sane person would: why the fuck had he listened to his brother and rushed?

Bodies flooding out of the room interrupted Zach's thoughts. The meeting must have been over, thankfully. The last piece of information he caught from Justin was that the first round of tasks was to be handed out next Monday. Zach was glad he had five more days of normalcy until then.

Zach was nearly out the door when Justin himself stepped in front of Zach, smiling with far too many teeth.

Justin pulled out a pen. "Zach, brother, do you vape?" Before he could answer, Justin was ripping a blinker six inches from Zach's face, practically blowing it down his throat.

"Not really."

He drew in another hit. "Don't sweat it, you've got time." Zach was quickly enveloped in another cloud, like a pilot trying to land in a storm. Except it smelled like raspberries.

"Listen, I've got big news for you, buddy." Zach's heart dropped; this could only be catastrophic. "You've been chosen for a special, first-of-its-kind pledge task." Somehow Zach's heart dropped lower - practically into the Earth's mantle.

"First off, I want you to know -" Justin paused for another rip. "- that I chose you personally for this. And between us, I'm the one that pushed your bid through to join this fraternity. You show great promise to be a great Kappa man."

Did he only have one adjective? Beyond the vocabulary, Zach wondered if this was some good-cop, bad-cop routine.

"So if you fuck this up, you're dead. Literally. And for good measure, you're finished at Brookhart. I'll make sure of that, fucking personally."

There it was. Threatened with death first, then expulsion after. Zach wasn't sure how that would really work in practice.

Justin peeked out toward either end of the hallway and shut the door. "The brothers on the new member leadership council, including myself, want to try out a different kind of task." Justin put the vape in his mouth like a cigarette, but never inhaled. "A single task."

Zach suddenly felt the pressure of being the only pledge in the room. "On - on top of the weekly ones? And the experiences?"

Justin's toothy smile returned, and he put on a voice that was apparently trying to be... seductive? "That's exactly the thing - you won't have to do any of that shit. One task, and you're a Kappa man for life." He finally pulled in a hit.

Zach couldn't get his words out fast enough. "What's the task?"

Justin laughed and pocketed his vape.