The Last Night of Pledges

Content Note: Contains mild profanity, alcohol use, sexual references, and fraternity hazing themes.

The fraternity house on Lincoln Street had once been a funeral home, which explained several things at once.

First: the basement smelled permanently of mildew, gasoline and something sweetly rotten.

Second: the upstairs bathroom emitted sounds at night suggestive of either faulty plumbing or unresolved spiritual issues.

Third: every pledge for the last fifteen years had become convinced there were tunnels beneath the house.

The tunnels supposedly led either to:

A.) the sorority across campus,

B.) underground Prohibition era chambers,

or,

C.) hell.

Opinions varied.

Tonight the house glowed warm against the late November snow. Music thudded faintly upstairs while the chapter room hummed with voices, beer cans cracked open and the exhausted delirium of college men awake too late to pretend they weren’t.

Six pledges sat cross-legged on the carpet in matching grey hoodies while initiated brothers occupied couches around them like kings being entertained by court jesters.

“Recite the founding fathers,” said Collins.

Collins was the Pledge Master. Nobody remembered his first name anymore, if he ever had one. He had the flattened emotional affect of a man who had once gotten too high during finals week and permanently left part of himself in another dimension.

Drew cleared his throat. “The Alpha founding fathers were Theodore Whiskey Jacobs, William H. Porter, and Ambrose Carlson.”

“No nicknames,” Collins said in a flat voice.

“That’s literally in The Book”

“The Book is wrong sometimes.”

A silence descended over the room, Morty looked physically ill. “You can’t say that about The Book,” he whispered.

Collins stared at Morty with exhausted hatred.

Morty adjusted his glasses nervously. He looked like someone who should’ve been excellent at pledging. Thin. Pale. Constantly trembling. Unfortunately he possessed the survival instincts of an especially curious rabbit,

Last month he’d asked the Risk Manager if “psychological warfare counted as hazing legally or technically." The Risk Manager had to sit down afterward.

“Again,” Collins chided.

Drew restarted.

Across from him, Westley quietly prayed nobody would ask him to recite anything next.

Westley had spent the semester lying about being from Connecticut because he thought it sounded better than Ohio. Specifically New Haven as it was the only Connecticut city he knew. Much to his dismay, one of the seniors was actually from New Haven and spent months tormenting hom over fake street names.

From the couch, Mayor sighed into his beer. The president, Reese, though naturally nobody called him Reese, was known universally as Mayor because he shook hands like he was running for office and somehow knew every person on campus.

Every fraternity possessed a sacred text no one respected until it was insulted aloud. Then suddenly everyone became constitutional experts.

“The Book” Waldo interrupted Drew’s third attempt in a loud voice “was written by drunk men in the seventies, we could update part of it?’

Waldo, himself was having this revelation eight beers deep and upside down on the couch, sunglasses glued to his face.

Nobody knew why he was called Waldo except that one day someone had yelled “Where the hell is Waldo?” during cleanup after a party and discovered him inside a bathtub.

“You ever notice” Martin said quietly, “every story in The Book ends with someone getting arrested, expelled, or married?”

“That’s brotherhood,” said DH7.

DH7’s actual name was Dylan Hughes, but freshman started calling him Double-Hoe Seven after he slept with a pair of identical twins. He dressed exclusively in black quarter-zips and owned cologne expensive enough to alter the emotional state of nearby women. Multiple at a time more often than not.

The pledges all looked towards him automatically.

“Name the sacred principles” he said to no one in particular.

“Bortherhood” the pledges started in union. “Leadership” “Service” “Social excellence”

“Next time don’t say it like a hostage video” Mayor muttered.

“We literally are a cult” Morty piped up excitedly, dodging an empty can from Collins.

Mayor’s eyes softened.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mayor replied smoothly. “A cult wouldn’t make you carry a canoe downtown at two in the morning”

Lost in thought was Tripod. Bad luck involving a ruptured pair of blue sweatpants and a lap dance at a mixer with a sorority had earned him a nickname prior to initiation.

Martin flicked his forehead.

“That canoe changed me biologically” Tripod said,

“It built character,” Collins pointed out.

“It built scoliosis of the shaft”

The room erupted in laughter. Even Collins flashed a rare smile.

And because omniscience permits truth where pride does not, it should be noted that every initiated brother laughing was remembering his own pledge semester with embarrassing fondness.

Not the screaming. Not the sleep deprivation. Not the humiliation tasks.

But this part.

The sitting together afterward. The exhaustion. The feeling that life had briefly simplified into something primitive and tribal and stupidly sincere.

Young men, historically, had crossed oceans and fought wars to avoid admitting they wanted companionship. Fraternities simply streamlined the process.

“The cemetery mission was worse,” Morty insisted.

“No,” Drew said immediately. “Walmart. Easily”

A chorus of agreement followed. Mayor pointed across the room.

“Brandon. Tell DH7 what happened”

Brandon groaned.

“No tell him”

Brandon rubbed his face. “The mission was to buy condoms, whipped cream, and a cucumber while dressed as Abraham Lincoln.”

“Classic” DH7 nodded solemnly.

“There was nothing classic about it”

“What happened?” Westley asked eagerly, despite having heard the story twelve times.

“This woman in line looked at the cucumber and went, “That’s ambitious Mr. President.”

The room collapsed. Waldo fell off the couch laughing.

“And then,” Brandon shouted over the noise, pointing at Drew, “this asshole abandoned me.”

“I panicked”

“You disappeared into gardening supplies”

“There were too many elderly people looking at us”

“You left me to die honorably”

“That’s what Lincoln would have wanted.” Drew concluded with a shrug.

Another wave of laughter crashed throughout the room.

Tripod had Martin in a headlock. Morty wheezed into his sleeves. Even Drew laughed hard enough to forget briefly, the strange ache sitting low in his stomach all night.

Because tomorrow the joke ended. Tomorrow they stopped being pledges.

Which sounded wonderful in theory.

Except somewhere along the semester, without anyone noticing exactly when, the humiliation had become routine. The routine became ritual. The ritual became attachment.

Tripod grinned through the laughter because he had wanted fraternity life since junior year of high school, though he would rather be waterboarded than admit that sincerely aloud.

Morty suddenly felt ill again, not because he feared initiation, but because he feared what happened after. The mandatory togetherness would end. People might stop knocking on his door at midnight.

Westley wondered whether becoming a brother would finally make him stop pretending to be cooler than he was.

And Drew, despite everything, found himself thinking about his father. Specifically, the way his father paused on the phone whenever Drew mentioned fraternity stuff, like he couldn’t decide whether he found it ridiculous or impressive.

Drew hated how badly he wanted it to be impressive.

“Alright,” Collins said finally.

“Enough reminiscing. Tomorrow’s initiation.”

The room quieted instinctively. Outside, snow drifted against the windows. The old house groaned around them,

“Give them advice?” Waldo asked.

Collins considered.

“Never hook up with someone whose roommate hates you”

“Never trust jungle juice,” Waldo added.

“Never date a recruitment chair,” DH7 said darkly.

“Never tell nationals anything“ Collins finished.

“That one’s genuinely important,” Mayor said.

Westley spoke, his voice cautious. One lingering question on his mind.

“Do we actually learn about the tunnels tomorrow?”

Silence

Several actives glanced at each other. Morty’s eyes went wide.

“There ARE tunnels” he deduced excitedly.

Collins lobbed another empty can at him.

“No.” Collins said immediately.

“There absolutely are,” Waldo countered, smiling devilishly.

The pledges stared like watching a black cat and golden retriever about to fight.

“There are not”

“Then what’s behind the basement freezer?”

“There’s nothing behind the freezer, Wal”

“Then why is there a lock?”

“Because your fatass already has the upstairs fridge”

DH7 took a long sip of beer.

“There’s a passage behind the composite wall” he said casually.

Every pledge froze.

Martin whispered, “Holy shit.”

Collins looked ready to commit homicide.

“There is no passage”

DH7 shrugged lazily. “Weird nobody's allowed to touch the composite from 1987 then.”

Mayor rubbed his temples.

The mythology of fraternity houses depended entirely on the male inability to distinguish between tradition and nonsense.

“Tommorw,” Collins continued louder, and for once his voice carried the edge of something almost emotional, "you become our brothers. Which means tonight’s the last night you guys are pledges under my watch.”

He paused.

“For what it’s worth, you’re a good group of kids.”

The room went strangely quiet.

Collins had wanted to be Pledge Master since he was a pledge himself. The job came with several perks: authority, selective immunity from cleanup duty, and the deeply satisfying ability to yell at pledges for crimes he himself had committed repeatedly.

But there was another part he would never admit aloud. That he believed in it. Not the chanting. Not the tasks. Not even The Book, most days. But the transformation.

Collins got to watch the boys over months. How they arrived selfish, nervous and trying to appear confident. Then slowly, through exhaustion and ritual and shared humiliation, they became honest with each other by accident.

He was strict because somebody had once done the same for him. And whether the pledges realized it or not, the closest thing he could give them was the chance to become that kind of family too.

Brandon, who transferred schools sophomore year after spending nearly six months isolating himself in his dorm room when the anxiety got bad.

Martin, who still checked people’s faces after every joke to make sure they were laughing with him and not at him.

Tripod, who called his mom every Sunday and deleted the calls from his recent history afterward so nobody would tease him.

Tripod broke the silence first.

“So hypothetically." He said carefully. “If someone dies during initiation"

“You won’t die,” Collins sighed, already sounding like himself again.

“Hypothetically” Tripod protested innocently.

Mayor pointed upward. “If anyone dies, nationals kills us before the police do.”

“That’s honestly beautiful,” Morty whispered. Collins chucked a pretzel at him, out of beer cans.

The room exploded again.

Later, after the conversation dissolved into overlapping arguments about tunnels, girls, and whether raccoons could theoretically rush a fraternity, Drew wandered into the kitchen for another beer.

DH7 stood there alone beneath the fluorescent lights.

The kitchen always looked strangely sad at night. Sticky countertops. Half-dead Christmas lights. A fridge covered in composites of smiling graduates already becoming strangers to the house.

“You almost dropped,” DH7 said.

Not a question.

Drew leaned against the counter. “Everybody almost drops,” he said a little too quickly.

DH7 just stared at him.

From the chapter room came a distant scream of “There is no tunnel under the bathroom!”

Drew laughed weakly at the noise. “Collins inform you?”

“Nope” DH7 opened the fridge. “You can tell”

The strange thing about DH7 was that people mistook ease for invincibility. Beautiful men especially suffered from this phenomenon. People assumed confidence arrived naturally to them, like height or good bone structure.

Omniscience, fortunately, allows access to truth.

Two years earlier DH7 had stood in this exact kitchen at three in the morning trying not to cry after calling his older brother to say he thought coming to college had been a mistake.

He would rather eat drywall than admit that aloud. So instead he said:

“You stayed”

“Yeah,” Drew replied.

“Good”

The conversation ended there because fraternity men communicated affection the way medieval knights probably did: indirectly, through insults, and on more than one occasion property damage.

When Drew returned to the chapter room, Tripod was passionately explaining why the tunnels were “symbolic of institutional repression,” despite not knowing what repression meant.

Snow pressed softly against the windows.

The old funeral-home walls creaked around them.

And though none of the boys understood it yet, though they would spend years pretending this period of life had been stupid and embarrassing and chemically concerning, nearly all of them would someday remember this night with painful clarity.

The warmth of the room. The noise. The terrible beer.

The feeling of standing at the edge of something ending before they understood it had already mattered.

Tomorrow they would walk blindfolded through initiation rituals older than any of them, recite sacred principles they barely understood, and emerge officially transformed into fraternity brothers.

But the real impossible mission waited outside Lincoln Street.

Becoming the kinds of men they kept pretending already to be.

And unlike pledging, nobody handed you The Book first.