Ah, time for a good night out! You’ve pregamed nicely, your friends are going to meet you up ahead, you’ve got passes everywhere. But wait—something’s different about Prospect tonight. Somehow it’s more sinister. Perhaps it’s the pale, lifeless cast of the streetlamps, or the fact that, looking back, 1879 Hall appears to have been replaced by a colossal, churning lake of lava and brimstone. Welcome to…
But you’re not going to let something as inconsequential as Satan’s unmistakable touch affect your night out. You’ve been waiting for this night all week, dammit! Every club is open! You might as well see if anything’s changed about them, no?
Charter
You weren’t planning to go to Charter tonight, but a large group of partiers passes you, headed in that direction, their waxy pallor and undead eyes not enough to hide the genuine, this-night-is-gonna-be-good enthusiasm crackling between them. So you join them, and you start the trek over. The group welcomes you with open arms, and there’s some great conversations going on, so it takes people a while to realize that, though you’ve long since left Cloister behind, Charter is no closer, the house sitting solitary on a peninsula in the lake of fire, and now on this narrow strip of land the heat makes it dry as a desert. Your throat parches. Manifesting in the distance is a shimmer, whether one of heat or water you cannot tell, but two others see it too, burst from the group and run toward it, ever toward it, closer and closer, until finally they are through it, the mirage bursting along with the last hopes of your companions, for Charter is further away than before somehow, the distance impossibly growing as the heat does the same…
You look at each other, and without a word spoken, a sort of mutual “fuck this”, you all turn around to head back—and with one step you find yourselves right by Cloister again, with Charter sitting beside it and the lava beyond.
Cloister
Your first step inside of Cloister feels like the last thousand. Instinctively, your legs adjust, and your movement pattern changes, falling into the familiar rhythm of your freshman year, a subtle shifting of weights and tolerances to allow for the inevitable sliding on the beer-slick floor. Your second step, though, is not what you expected. You plant your foot and you can’t lift it again. The beer reaches up and grabs your shoe in an iron grip. You can’t lift your leg. You can’t escape the pull. You struggle more and more, and suddenly you feel a wash of cold liquid in your sock. Somehow, improbably, your foot is sinking into the beer, into the very floor itself. You look around, more closely than you had before. Those aren’t discarded cups laid across the floor, but human bones, somehow partially sunken into the wet hardwood. The sound of Kesha wafts over from the dance floor. “It’s going down,” she sings. You feel a chill as you realize how right she is.
Tiger Inn
As usual, TI is packed to the rafters. But something’s different. This isn’t the normal “breathless sweaty-grindy college party” packed. This is “makeshift triage center after a horrible natural disaster” packed. The floor is almost completely covered in unresponsive, catatonic men and women. Confused, you make your way to the bar. You know the drill here. Chug one to get one, bro. You oblige. Thirty seconds later, you come up for air and look at your cup. Still as full as it was when the guy behind the bar handed it to you. He looks up from wiping the countertop and shakes his head in disapproval. Desperate, you try again, chugging until you can’t even breathe. Your stomach feels like you pumped it full of cold, fizzy lead. Still the amount of beer hasn’t budged. Panicking, you turn away, only to run into two bros who block your exit. You’re surrounded. Your only escape is the bottom of the bottomless cup.
Cap
Cap has always prided itself on being chill, but man oh man have they taken it to the extreme. The place, membership seemingly included, is covered in several inches of gleaming ice, a cold wind somehow blowing snow up from the basement, where the stairs are frozen glass-smooth, no doubt incredibly slippery. You do not attempt to get a beer, as you know there’s no way you’ll climb back up.
You stop briefly to ponder which theological interpretation this represents. Is this a case where Hell has literally frozen over? Or is it rather, as in the Divine Comedy, the ninth and lowest circle, frozen by its proximity to Lucifer himself? And, if so, what the heck sort of sins are being punished so harshly? And how does the fact that Cap used to be the most religious club on the Street tie into all this? All this is forgotten, however, when after less than a minute in the club, you notice your arms already turning blue. You hightail it out of there.
Cottage
With the place surprisingly quiet, you grab a beer and return upstairs. For a while, you just stand by the window, sipping your beer and basking in the light cast by the giant lake of lava in the backyard. Then, bored by how empty the club is, you decide to go up to the library, see if anything’s happening up there.
It hits you immediately when you walk in: the shrine to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cottage’s most famous member, is gone. What? Who would do that? You ask a member sitting in the corner. “Who?” she says. Another one lounging on the stairs says the same thing. Surprised, you look at the class pictures from the early 1900s, seeking anyone who might fit F. Scott’s profile. You find nothing, for in this realm, he and his work never existed. You try and dredge up the name of that book he wrote: The Frayed Fratboy? The Great Gatling Gun? The name seems to have slipped from your mind.
In any case, Cottage now has nothing to recommend it. You leave, disappointed.
Colonial
As you near the front door, the lights on the pillars flicker, stutter, blinking for several seconds before changing color from a washed-out yellow to the feeblest of pinks. You approach the bouncers and hold out your prox. They don’t respond. You wave your prox in front of the nearest one and he crumbles into a pile of dust, blowing away in the breeze. Peering in through the window, you see only blackness, shadows, cobwebs. Confused, you pull out your phone—was this really where you were going to meet your friends? But something is odd. It’s not the 29th! Why is your phone saying it’s the 29th? It was definitely showing the correct date before you got to Colonial. You look it again. The glowing 29 has changed to 22, then to 15, 8, 1, 25, 18, 11, 4. Confused, you open your phone’s calendar, and then it hits you:
Those are all Saturdays.
Ivy
Something about Ivy looks different. Maybe it’s the gigantic spear-wielding gargoyles to either side of the front door, or the fact that the twin chimneys are spewing a steady stream of fire. But now is not the time to worry about such matters. You’ve got yourself a pass and you told your friends you’d meet them inside. But just as you begin to make the turn in through the gate, a dude cuts in front of you and heads for the door—when, suddenly, the gargoyles spring to life and block the entrance with their spears.
“Oh, are we members-only tonight?” asks the guy, producing his prox. “Heck, given what happened last weekend, probably for the be—AAAAAAAUGH!”
Limply, he rises into the air, impaled on the end of one of the gargoyle’s pikes.
“YES. MEMBERS ONLY,” says the gargoyle. “GO AHEAD. YOU’RE GOOD.” The other gargoyle opens the door, revealing what looks like a bed of hot coals. The first gargoyle nonchalantly flicks its spear and deposits the body inside the building. The door closes while the chimney flames surge higher with a roar.
You get the fuck out of there.
Quad
You have no problem getting in, but something is different. The place is full up! A surprising change, and a refreshing one. You look around at your fellow Streetgoers. They look back, their eyes sad and despairing. You try and talk to a couple of them, but they’re morose and unresponsive. Man, there’s nothing to see here. You turn to leave. You walk through the front door…
And somehow find yourself next to the taps. You try again, but this time you end up in the coatroom. Panicking, you look for another way out. You try the door to the patio, but it just deposits you in the bathroom. On the dance floor, you look out at the downcast souls around you, and you understand. You can enter Quad any time you like, but you can never leave.
Cannon
No different from the regular version. Nothing to see here.
Tower
You wake up, groggy and unfocused. What—what happened? You handed the bouncer your prox, then there was a horrid, discordant screech, like an alarm, and the bouncers grabbed you by the shoulders, and now you’re…here. You look around. You’re in a small room walled in rough stone blocks. Iron bars block a window. Looking out, you see the lake of fire far, far below. For once, Tower is a proper tower.
“Psst. Hey.” It’s the gal in the cell across the way. “You want a drink?” You do. Oh my goodness, you do. “All you gotta do is make your way to the basement. Four thousand floors down. And avoid the guards.” A jingle; she tosses you a ring of heavy, archaic keys. You fiddle, fumble, and soon your door springs open. You leap out, and make your way towards a narrow spiral staircase—but as you do, a snake-headed jailor leaps out of a crevice, wielding a colossal meat cleaver. You have nowhere to run.
Terrace
Huh. The place seems fairly unchanged. The membership has adapted nicely to being in Hell: as you approach, you see some lighting blunts in a rivulet of magma. Over the roar of fire comes the unmistakable beat of “Smoke Weed Everyday (Rasmus Hedegaard Remix)”—a bit on-the-nose for Terrace, but fitting, you suppose.
“420 blaze it, motherfucker!” says a member as you enter. “If you don’t, I’mma 360 noscope you, n00b.” You spin around to face him, confused. He’s holding out a blunt, dead serious. Heh, not a bad joke. You grin, wait for his face to crack into a knowing smile. It doesn’t. Again he gestures, almost shoving the blunt in your face. Something’s wrong here. This is the familiar Terrace, but at the same time unsettlingly different. Grudgingly, you take the offer.
“Welcome to xXxT3rr4c3xXx,” says another Terran, and you suddenly realize what’s wrong: everything you’ve seen here has occurred without the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness. They believe in this shit.
Campus
It’s been an awful night. You’ve been beaten, bruised, and burned by demons, eaten alive by multiple creatures, imprisoned in non-Einsteinian space, and to top it all off, you lost a hookup to the Cloister floor. Exhausted, you head back to the corner of Washington and Prospect, only to notice a brilliant light pouring from the windows of Campus. Intrigued, you head for the entrance. Maybe there’ll be something here that’ll salvage this night. (Plus, you have no idea how to cross the flaming lake to get back to your room.) You poke your head in, and the light blinds you…
You come to your senses in a sea of white, a land of clouds. A gate inlaid in pearl and gold lays before you, and to either side singers are gathered, humming a warm melody. The nearest singer spots you.
“Welcome, friend,” she says. “Your troubles are over. Here there is peace and happiness. You can stay here until you are ready to return to the true Orange Bubble, uncorrupted by fire and evil. However, we must ask one thing of you in return.”
“What is that?” You ask. You’d do anything if it meant never returning to that awful place.
“We ask that you swear allegiance to us, and vow to abide by our way—the way of truth and light.”
“What way is that?”
“The way of the Anscombe Society,” she croons. “Here are the key principles. First—”
But you’ve already flung yourself from the cloud. Even Hell is better than this.
– AKS ’15. Illustrated by CSO ’15