Jay Hodgkins

1.
Event Horizon

Do now, ask forgiveness later. Jeff Buckley held that lesson close to his heart. More than a motto, an entire personal philosophy. Standing in the back of the seminar room, the first to finish his final exam, he listened to the sounds of pencil lead scurrying across paper and thought: That’s my secret sauce. Why my future is coming up roses, and these mid college seniors are just praying it all works out.

Jeff was waiting for his best friends to wrap up the exam. He loved his pair of try-hards, but the sad truth is he didn’t think they were different from the rest. Cogs in the wheel of a world meant to be driven by people like him. While Boner continued to drip sweat and furiously scribble notes, Amanda finally stood up and walked her test to the TA overseeing the exam. She turned and found Jeff’s eyes in the back of the room, but something stole her attention. The smile disintegrated from her face, replaced by cold steel. Jeff followed her glare just in time to see Murph, a Muppet-haired bro from prep school central casting, stash the sheet of paper he had flashed at Amanda into his coat pocket. They’re never going to learn, Jeff thought. Don’t fuck with us.

Imperious, Amanda walked down the aisle of desks — tall, strong yet elegant, eyes to the heavens — avoiding Murph’s attempt to diminish her with a mocking smile. He was engrossed enough in his cruelty, he didn’t notice Jeff sneaking up from behind, until Jeff snatched the hidden paper from his pocket. As Murph shouted in protest, Jeff unfolded the paper to reveal the word “FREAK” and a crudely drawn stick figure — a woman with a dick and balls descending between its stick legs.

“Is there a problem?” the TA said, standing up at her desk. Jeff flashed the drawing at Murph, a silent threat.

“No.” Murph scowled at Jeff.

“Good. Then quiet in the exam room. Mr. Buckley and Ms. Lopez, since you’re finished, you can wait outside.”

Amanda threw her arm around Jeff’s shoulder and kissed him on the cheek as she escorted him out. When Boner finally joined them outside in the hall, they fell into a joint embrace, jumping and cheering.

Of the forty-some-odd classes Jeff had taken at the university, this was his thirtieth with Amanda and Boner. Thirty exams together. Thirty pre-exam prep sessions cramming until their eyes crossed. They met late one night almost four years ago in the freshman cafe, each making a run at the last pre-made spicy tuna roll, aging poorly in its plastic shell. They decided to share, and the Shitty Sushi Study Society was born. An unbreakable study group alliance that had yielded 29 As for each of them so far. Number 30 incoming.

Jeff was ready to celebrate, and he wanted to remind them of the plan. “You got my message about tonight, right?” Jeff said.

Amanda rolled her eyes. “You sent a 500-word DM. Who writes that much?”

“If that’s a problem, let me just give you the TLDR. Meet at the quad; 10 p.m. We’re going into the U Tunnels.”

Boner frowned, raising his finger in protest, but was careful to avoid meeting Jeff’s eyes. Jeff at this level of hyperactive enthusiasm was like staring at the sun. “It’s illegal. We get caught, we might not graduate.”

The feeling of anxiety — panic constricting his chest, making it hard to breath — hadn’t ceased since Boner read Jeff’s DM the night prior. It wasn’t just that the university forbade students from skulking about in the underground tunnels that housed the steam pipes that delivered heat and hot water around campus. It’s that they were dark, cramped and hot. Everything that made Boner’s claustrophobia light up like a Christmas tree. There were few things in this world he’d rather do less. One, call his parents in Cambodia to tell them he wasn’t going to med school, then listen to his mother bark back Khmer at him in hysterics: “You listen to me, Prak Bona, you go to med school or you’ll bring shame to your entire community.” The second thing he’d rather do less: Say no to Jeff Buckley. So at least plunging into his literal nightmare by following Jeff’s lark underground would allow him to avoid both.

“Life’s full of risks. We’re going to be legends for this.” Jeff punched Boner in the shoulder, smiling as his friend rubbed the pain away. “No senior has walked the tunnels since before we were freshmen.”

“Yeah,” Amanda scoffed. “Because that Bankridge kid died down there.”

“Presumed dead.”

“He told his friends he was going down and they never found the body.”

“Regardless!” Jeff put his hand in the air, like a cop stopping traffic. “We’re going to bring the tradition back.”

Boner looked mildly concerned. His eyes shifted back and forth across the ground as his hands dug deeper into his pockets. Jeff sighed, which sufficed as the unspoken invitation for Boner to speak his mind.

“Tradition is to walk the tunnels alone, if you want to see your future. What happens if we don’t do it right?”

Amanda’s eyes rolled again. “That’s a stupid superstition, Bone. And there is no tradition. Hardly anyone even realizes the U Tunnels exist. It’s just Jeff’s excuse to do something new.” She put a finger in Jeff’s chest and poked. “Why he wants to spend the night after our last exam in some stank tunnel, I have no clue. I don’t even know if I’m coming. I might just go to bars.”

Jeff looked incredulous, but didn’t say a word in protest. He knew Amanda too well. Pushing her harder was never the way. That didn’t stop him from doubting if he should have, or asking Boner a thousand times that night if he thought she was going to show.

“You’re sure. She’s coming?” Jeff and Boner stood alone on the quad waiting for her, hugging themselves against the cold night. The clock tower rang 10 p.m., the appointed time to meet, yet there was no sign of her. Not until 11:02 p.m., as if she had calculated the perfect amount of time to inflict the perfect amount of suffering on her friend for his presumptuous planning, Amanda rolled into the quad on a rental scooter.

She took up a spot next to them to stare into the underground. A cast iron manhole cover was already pushed to the side in the grass. In its place, an inky black eye stared up at them. Three exuberant young faces, smiling with the irrational confidence of heroes before the conquest, peered down into the impenetrable darkness. Only graduation stood between these best friends and a fracturing — their move in different directions to the next stage of life. The steam swirling out of the abyss felt like an invitation to discover what came next. Everything was ahead. Everything was possible. Everything they could not see would fall in their favor. So they assumed.

Seen from the tunnel below, looking up through that black eye, their heads jutted over the manhole in a halo of blue light emitted from a campus emergency call box, like moons eclipsing Neptune. Behind them in the empty quad, the hands on the clock tower spun toward midnight.

“We’re actually doing this.” Jeff slung an arm around his best friends, the two people who had been with him through it all since freshman year. Everything was shaping up like he always dreamed. Get into an elite college, make friends to last a lifetime, crush it academically, land a fire first job. He was one week away from graduating magna cum laude. First, he, Amanda and Boner were going to check the box known as the college’s most forbidden tradition. It was dangerous. It was stupid. It was exciting. The very thought of university warnings about past students being hospitalized with burns from scalding, high-pressure jets of steam gave Jeff a thrill. Charles Bankridge was alone, and he was an overconfident, inbred rich kid to boot, only notable now for the freshman dorm named after his family. Jeff wasn’t worried about getting lost with his best friends by his side. When it came to passing tests, of any kind, they were undefeated.

“You’re so corny, Fuckley.” Amanda pushed Jeff’s arm off her shoulder and punched the offending limb. Her strength belied her feminine figure. She was Manuel Lopez when she met Jeff freshman year, and he and Boner were basically her only guy friends to stick with her through the transition. For that, they were both special, but Jeff was her ride or die forever. She loved him, even though every parameter and dimension related to love confused the shit out of her. He made her feel confident and cocky and loud, even if she was timid and scared of everything whenever he wasn’t around. Lorazepam in human form.

“Ow,” Jeff said. “Try hitting like a girl sometime.”

“No dice, white spice. You like weak bitches too much. I don’t want you getting confused.” Amanda grabbed Jeff’s injured arm and slung it back over her shoulder, shivering in the cold night air. Even in May, the leaves on the ancient trees lining the quad were only beginning to unfurl. The chill in the air hinted at another spring frost. Jeff’s warm body cut the cold and eased her nerves about the journey ahead — the metaphorical one after college, and the literal one immediately ahead down in that black void.

“Do you think the U stands for University or Underground?” Prak Bona, Boner to his friends, all two of them, both located there beside him, pointed his cell phone into the nothingness below and pushed the flashlight button. The feeble light penetrated only enough to reveal more nothing in every direction, a nothing more vast than he imagined possible. Where did the emptiness end? It wasn’t an encouraging first impression for Boner, who still deeply wished he could be anywhere else. He was no risk seeker and anything but a rule breaker. But Jeff had made it perfectly clear how important this was to him. One last adventure for the trio before graduation. Boner was not about to disappoint the two people who were the only reasons he survived what otherwise would’ve been four miserable years. If he didn’t have Jeff, he probably wouldn’t have anyone. He barely spoke English when he arrived on campus, but that didn’t bother Jeff. In fact, Jeff seemed to embrace the challenge, even learning a couple of crude jokes in Khmer. It didn’t matter that the American jokes didn’t make sense in Khmer; the fact that this tall, cool, white American went out of his way to include an awkward, acne-scarred, homesick Cambodian kid was everything. Jeff and Amanda were family. His only family other than his parents, who were back in Cambodia with more nightmares than their own family members left.

“Probably Unknown. The Unknown Tunnels, where Boner got lost forever, living out his days in darkness, eating rats.” Jeff snatched the phone from Boner and turned off the light. When Boner tried to take it back, Jeff held it away from him, dangling it over the abyss. “Would you be too chicken to go down if it’s the only way to get your celly back?”

Boner was the butt end of most of Jeff’s jokes, but it didn’t bother him. It was better to be a punchline than be alone. Besides, they had turned it into a schtick full of witty repartee as the years went by and Boner’s English improved.

“If I was any more chicken, I’d have to stir fry myself with lemongrass and galangal root.”

Jeff burst out laughing. Asian stereotype jokes were his favorite. He handed Boner back the phone. “Seriously. I love you guys. Thank you for doing this with me. We’re going to remember it forever. I promise.”

They all assumed it was true. Jeff, that it would be another choice memory of their hijinks, and that memories made the relationships. It was all about the memories. Boner, that he would never forget how afraid he was or how Jeff wouldn’t listen about his claustrophobia. He wanted to remember the lesson that, when he moved away, if he was lucky enough to make a new friend, he should try to set boundaries. Amanda, that she’d always remember how she knew everything would change tonight night. She was moving to California to work on the campaign of the first trans candidate for U.S. Senate. She’d be working 24/7. Her friendships with Jeff and Boner would fade. There’d be no one in her life who remembered Manuel. He’d be as good as dead.

The sound of hands and feet slapping rusted metal rungs echoed as they descended the ladder. It wasn’t as deep or as cavernous as they first thought, but it was somehow more dark. Aiming their cell phone flashlights down the tunnels, the ambient steam swirling about stymied their vision. Like driving with high beams in heavy fog. When they moved their lights across the walls, they discovered a rich tapestry of graffiti, decades in the making. Simple spray paint scribbles declaring Jack was here or that Brandon ♥ Stephanie to the more colorful, ACAB tags and dick drawings. So many dick drawings.

“Hey, look Amanda! This one’s for you.” Jeff panned his flashlight across her name graffitied on the wall in large block letters, then stepped back so the light could reveal the full message: AMANDA EATS COCK.

“You’re hilarious, Fuckley.”

Feet on wet concrete, Jeff looked straight up the ladder to their entrance into the underworld. It couldn’t have been more than 10 feet from the top of his head to the manhole cover he slid back in place before climbing down. In the darkness, he only knew it was there because of the ring of weak blue lights that shone through the vent holes in the cover.

“It’s hot as balls down here.” Jeff took off his worn leather jacket and dropped it on the wet concrete. In his white T-shirt, jeans and Nike’s, he looked like the new All-American boy in a 21st century Norman Rockwell. He swooped his disheveled hair back into place, Amanda and Boner still mesmerized by his easy cool after all these years.

“Hey. I got you that jacket for your birthday sophomore year,” Amanda complained.

“You got it at a thrift shop.”

“Vintage shop. Vintage. Big difference.”

“Then a little distress will make it more authentic. I’m not carrying it around. It’s way too fucking hot. You know I love it though, Manz.”

She does know. He wears it all the time, even when it’s cold — like, New England lose-an-eyeball-to-frostbite cold — when he needs way more jacket. It’s only that knowledge that keeps Amanda from punching him and reminding him for the one thousandth time not to call her Manz, his freshman year nickname for Manuel. The way he treasures that jacket, and the weight of the night, and the general fucking creepiness of the steam tunnel keeps her from starting another argument.

Like a puppy dog, Boner nearly whimpered when he saw the upset on Amanda’s face. Standing up to Jeff in any way, shape or form was an uncomfortable experience. One, he was basically Boner’s idol. Two, Jeff didn’t exactly take criticism well. But if Boner ever wanted Amanda to see him the way she saw Jeff, he needed to show some backbone sometime. Seeing her heartbreak at Jeff’s indifference to her feelings, Boner nervously stepped forward. Charlie Brown defending his sad Christmas tree.

“Don’t call her that. That’s a deadname, Jeff.”

Jeff rolled his eyes. “C'mon, you used to love it when I called you Manz. It works just as well for Amanda. Amanda thought about lecturing Jeff for the twentieth time about why he shouldn’t use deadnames and why being called Manz might be a bit problematic for a trans woman, but she couldn’t stand the thought of Jeff’s eyes glazing over while he mentally checked out.

“Just don’t leave the jacket down here. OK?” she said.

Boner turned left, then right, pointing his flashlight down each seemingly infinite direction as if one might be the right answer to break the tension. “Which way should we go?”

Jeff aimed his flashlight to his left. “I think that way crosses under the dining hall. How freaking sweet would it be if we could break into the kitchen and raid the ice cream freezer?”

As Jeff pointed his phone down the tunnel, the steam billowing through the beam of light suddenly began to vibrate. A deep, guttural sound rumbled down the passageway, rattling steam pipes, shaking loose beads of water that splattered to the ground.

Boner’s bottom lip began to quiver. “What is that?”

2.
The Long Dark

Amanda lifted her phone, adding her light to Boner’s and Jeff’s. Like an angry beast crawling out of its lair, the sound grew closer. And somehow sadder. A lament, echoing toward them.

“It must be some kind of equipment,” Jeff said.

“Maybe we should go that way instead.” Amanda flipped her light 180 degrees, pointing the other direction.

“Yeah,” Boner said. “Bars is that way. We wanted to do tunnels then go out, right?” Of course he was right. He was speaking Jeff’s language, calling back the plan Jeff had DM’d them two nights ago.

“Right,” Jeff said. “If we pop out of the sewer in front of the bars like freaking Ninja Turtles, we’ll be absolute legends.”

He strode into the darkness. Amanda couldn’t see him, but she could tell he was swaggering. She could hear it in the rhythm of his footsteps, splashing in puddles. The noise behind them, that animalistic moaning, began to recede, but Boner still stared back toward it like something was coming to eat him.