is your problem?” I bluntly ask, tired of his patronizing glare.
“My problem is that you’re a gullible idiot. There’s no such thing, asswipe. As I said, it’s an urban legend, which means it doesn’t exist, asshole,” he scolds as if I were an errant child.
“Well, excuse me for asking,” I snap, giving him the finger, pissed off at his holier-than-thou attitude.
“I don’t think it’s a legend,” Lincoln interjects before Colt has time for a comeback, pulling our full attention back to him.
“It is, Linc,” Colt replies soothingly, obviously thinking his cousin may have lost all rationality over the summer if he spent it looking up fairytales and urban legends.
Shit, I’m surprised it took him that long to lose his mind. I’ve been a fucking wreck since it happened, and they weren’t even my parents. I can only imagine what Lincoln must be dealing with.
“If such a thing existed, don’t you think we would be in it by now? I mean, look at us. Who better to recruit into such a hush-hush society—ruled by one-percenters—than us?” Colt jokes, trying to sway our solemn friend away from his madness.
“Actually, I’m going to play devil’s advocate on this one. None of us are the firstborns in our families, so technically we wouldn’t be invited to join,” Easton interrupts, giving his own non-committal smirk to Colt’s cold-fronted stare. “Just stating facts.” Easton shrugs, leaning back on the bed, his elbows keeping his torso up.
“You’re not helping, East,” Colt chides, his eyes yelling at him to shut the fuck up. Colt then turns over to Lincoln with a more sympathetic appearance, and hoping to bring his cousin to his senses, he tries to mitigate and says, “Listen to me, Linc. There is no such thing. The Society is just a story that college kids talk about in dark corners of libraries or drunk at frat parties, trying to add some excitement to campus life. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Unfortunately for all of us, Linc’s expression continues to be steadfast, bringing an uneasy chill to creep up my bones.
“Why? Why are you asking about The Society?” Colt queries unnervingly once again, his tone beginning to show some loss of his self-assured confidence.
“Because I think we just got our recruitment papers,” Lincoln proclaims, throwing an envelope that was tucked in his back pocket onto the bed.
All four of us look silently at the black envelope, sitting neatly on the mattress between Easton and me as if it were a bomb ready to explode.
“What the fuck is this?” Easton questions as he bravely picks it up, while I try to scoot my body as far as I can away from the cursed thing without dropping off the bed entirely.
As East examines the envelope, back and front, the first thing I notice is the unusual, red seal attached to the black paper. I can’t make out the design for sure, but if I had to guess, it looks like some sort of elaborate pentagram. The other thing that immediately captures my attention is how the seal has been broken, hinting that Lincoln already knows the contents of the envelope.
“Read it,” Lincoln orders coldly, and Colt, looking a little bit worse for wear, takes the necessary steps to join us on the bed so he can assess the contents with his own eyes.
Easton takes one more look at our troubled friend, who continues to keep his distance from the wretched thing. Linc’s vigilantly cautious demeanor is so unlike him, it even has Easton opening the envelope with care, worried it might contain a tripwire that could go off with the slightest miscalculated touch. Ever so carefully, East pulls out a folded, black stationery paper from the wax-sealed envelope. As he unfolds it, I catch a glimpse of gold lettering and the same familiar, red seal stamped at the bottom of the page.
Easton clears his throat before starting to read each word out loud. As his voice begins to crack with each sentence, so does my spirit. My mouth runs dry, and the fist that has been clutching my heart since this horrific nightmare began gives it another infernal squeeze, letting me know the worst is yet to come.
“This has got to be some sort of macabre joke,” Colt chokes out, ripping the letter from Easton’s trembling hands so he can have a read through of his own.
“I don’t find it particularly funny,” I snap back, getting up from my seat, franticly pacing the varnished wood floor as I usually do when