Graffiti Cave

“Are you coming to Graffiti Cave tonight for Anderson’s send-off?” Davis almost whispered, bumping my shoulder as he leaned in.

We were walking across campus together. My feet kept moving, but my mind stuttered after what he just said.

He wasn’t serious? But Davis never spoke in a quiet voice like that. System overload.

“Wait what? You can’t… you mean you’re actually going?” Couldn’t bring myself to whisper it back.

Graffiti Cave.

Davis’s dissertation was on euphemizing violence, working title: “It’s only Horseplay: Rape and Sexual Assault.” To get into this program he practically shoved his dick at the AdComm — I mean, submitted — the most offensively banal thesis. Graphic, obvious, ethically gray. It fit in though. “Initiation Rites Gone Wrong.”

My dissertation? No working title yet. Comparative cultural responses to genocide: memorials, commemoration, symbolism of death design. Something like that. One of the newest here, I wasn’t confident about my work yet, and kept tinkering with my opus.

Davis looked around. “Dead serious. Anderson said before he leaves has to see it for himself.”

“But… why not just Trivia? It’s Thursday, everyone there will want to say goodbye.”

He opened the door to the building, held it for me. “Lynn, cut the shit. You know you want to come. Plus, pretty sure Anderson will blow his brains out if he has to hear another undergrad team’s name.”

True. We all wanted to know about Graffiti Cave. It — and Professor SS himself — brought us here.

Was it real? Would we use all our degrees — the practical ones, none of our thinky/feely bullshit — to dig around, find out? Live to tell, or... live to know for certain?

All of us wanted to bear witness to the unbelievable.

“I just. It’s a full moon, I’m—”

“Lynn, you’re vaccinated, it’s not real dude.” He looked around behind us towards the campus again, scratching the back of his neck. “Look, we shouldn’t talk about this here, but I’ll fill you in off the radar. You’re coming. Why would you even be here otherwise?”

Our discussion and my glitching halted as we headed into the locker room. Couldn’t be late for Lab. Me especially; today I would get to torture the subjects.

I’d miss Anderson. He was the most sincere person I met here. He was transferring to an Ivy, going into linguistics instead. Anderson’s dissertation was on human language, and how our realities are violent because our language structures are. Another chicken/egg debate. His working title was “Constructive Negation in Violent Linguistic Systems: A Study in Semantic Absence.” Behind his back, we joked, calling it, “Dying for Nonviolence.” To his face, we told him it was a mouthful.

“Anderson, shouldn’t it be punchier?” I asked. “How SS favors titles?”

And he just sighed and said, “That’s the point, Smith.”

While I deposited my items into my locker, I heard it again. The sirens singing softly.

The throat is deep and the mouth is wide

Saw some things on the other side

***

Professor SS was his working title; his given name Arnold Sumanski-Suephrom (there's the mouthful). SS was a boulder of a man. Hard, round yet jagged, detached. Nobody ever saw him emote, and they said he wasn’t even vaccinated with that strain. It was his natural state, which, if true, was chilling.

He nearly got funding for the Department of Ritual Violence to have its own building and parking lot. But then, well, everyone knows what happened. Subject, verb, NDA. SS took a “sabbatical” for a few years after that, wrote another book (on group bonding and loyalty, in my opinion his best yet), and returned. Still a boulder of a man, just fallen, somehow volcanic. Demoted to the office across from the bathrooms in this brutalist hall, not at the top corner office of a glossy new building bearing his lifework’s name. Instead, his vision and ours for the future of our department were subjected to sun-shriveling deferment; a memorial never to be erected.

***

“Lynny, you ever seen anything like this?” my friend Shelly asked me years ago, sliding a contraband magazine towards me in the cafeteria. High school, thick Kentucky drawls, lord have mercy days of yore.

The article was about Dr. Sumanski-Suephrom, an expert at the time of hazing and dark-magic religious rituals. He’d studied pilots forcing their impressionable students to jump out of planes. Mid-flight. He’d even been in the jump seat observing the hazing on some runs.

This man’s work tilted the whole plane of my being, shifted things in their compartments.

“Shelly, where’d you find this?!”

“My brother and his friends saw a stranger with it. Can you imagine? I sure as hail can’t.”

Could I?

There I’d been. Raised in a religious household (a non-denominational song-and-dance with a heavy handed twang of Pentecostal), in that small town. I wasn’t exactly destined for much of much there.

Reading the article, I felt myself launched into the sky. Through clouds of magazine print and all my prior worldviews, descending at a breakneck speed. It happened right there. On a cafeteria bench, on some linoleum. My desire to join his secret society, before I even knew what that meant.

I heard it there first, the singing.

But you know me, I can't help myself

Now I've got something you have to see

My paradigm completely shifted.

***

The path to SS took hold of me. Revved my engine right out of suburbia, smack dab into academia programmed myself. I changed gears, I code-switched. Vaxxed up.

I wasn’t the only one. He developed a bit of a cult following. Back then I remember our pastor, working title Pastor Dan the Man, went to a retreat adjacent to SS’s work for a couple weeks. He returned resurrected, minus a finger and hell bent on implementing new pillars of consent among our fellowship. Ask before we taketh.

“People need to understand what they’re consenting to,” Pastor Dan the Man sermoned from his pulpit, hiding his hands. “This includes knowing potential risks, benefits, and alternatives involved.”

Amen.

***

When we enrolled, participating in a clinical trial of one 1730 vaccine – the empathy strain – was a prereq. I’d never been in a test group, but I wasn’t nervous (had already been boosted for nerves).

“Is there any chance we’d get the placebo, since this is still a trial?” One of us asked.

“Great question. Technically, we can’t answer that. But the reasons you’ve been selected for this group should make you feel confident you’ll receive the live vaccine and its immunity. Anything else?”

The science department had billions in funding after their connection to the success of the first rounds. While their partners in the private sector remained focused on vanity, these academics wanted to test more untapped potential. Like behavior. By the time I matriculated nearly all of the other vaccines before had worked with little to no side effects. It would have been my fifth 1730 vaccine. Some faculty in the program we’d heard had up to thirty, which was borderline inhumane. Behind their backs we’d joke they were holograms.

We had to do a lot to get here, and this was only the beginning.

I wasn’t the only female in the program. But I was the youngest, so my blood-letting protocol had been the first of its kind. They say Jackson, the oldest female (forty-or-fifty something? It’s so hard to say now with all these jabs everyone is getting) had been natural. Some said she even had a kid or two before, but sacrificed her family to be here. Her working title was, “Getting Jumped: Expectations of Illegal Activity and Humiliation in Street Gang Initiation.”

I still felt superstitious about the menstrual strains, the side effects. Probably on account of everything that had happened back home, and that I’d since studied.

Part of why I was reluctant to go to the cave; especially tonight.

***

“What is it that draws you to pursuing research about memorials?” SS asked me in our first meeting.

“Well,” I stumbled over my words. “I’m not as interested in the act, the motive. I’m more interested in what people look at afterward.”

“Because reckoning gives people meaning?” He asked. I couldn’t tell if he was challenging me or inquiring.

“Well, sure. But there’s another angle I’ve been wondering about. So after, say, a school shooting or a fatal hazing… Everyone is always looking at the students. Interviewing survivors, combing the histories of any involved or lost. And sure, people look at some of the parents, like Reed’s doing. But. Nobody is looking at the educators themselves at these institutions.” I stopped myself. Hesitated to make eye contact.

SS was a stone cold genius at turning things inside out, making them look at themselves, and putting them back together. Deformed but reborn.

I continued. “I haven’t worked out how it ties back to memorials. It’s just… an angle I’ve been exploring. Who is teaching, telling the stories, writing history, something along those lines.”

He shifts slightly, a boulder in a minor earthquake. “You’re not talking about memorials, Lynn. But you do seem to care about architecture. Not necessarily the construction of symbolic spaces made in retrospect, but the construction of, perhaps, the machine itself. That research, that can be done here, especially in the Lab.”

“Thank you for the feedback Professor. Like I said I’m—”

“But Lynn. In the Lab, none of you care what kind of stone someone would install in a park, or how deep they’d design a reflecting pool memorializing your experiments. You’re building a world in there, not statues. If you look beyond the subjects in the Lab towards the facilitators, consider their presence. Next time, ask yourself. When you’re inside, you look around, what do you see?”

They say Zimbardo and his Stanford Prison Experiment crawled so SS could run, could chase, could hunt.

***

A few hours after Lab, I was still in Meeting Room A with some of the others, working on new theories based on what had transpired.

There was Santiago, working title, “Ethical Constraints on Science in a Carnivorous Society” who was playing industrial rock music through his headphones we could make out if we strained.

And Reed, “Nature vs. Nurture: Juvenile Interpersonal Torture and Parental Groundlaying.” We called him “Local Reed” since his birth family – prior university employees – had lived only miles from here. Before the vaccines started.

And a few others too. “Bodies as Battlefields” Martin and “Soldierly Solidarity” Jones. Conrad was typing away over there as well. He always smelled like sulfur. The whole room, otherwise sterile, smelled like that. A side effect.

I felt my burner phone vibrate, and removed myself under the pretenses of using the bathroom.

Locked in a stall, I saw it was from Davis. I couldn’t view the image until solving three rounds of sliding puzzle captchas he programmed. Davis, our annoying provocateur. Three sets of disembodied images us non-robots had to slide into place revealing graphic BDSM scenes, authenticating our humanity. Of course.

Why did I fraternize with Davis? Probably our lowly status. His mental, mine circumstantial. People slid us into boxes too: that male, that female; will they, won’t they? (Will I ever tell? No way.)

The protected image was a photo of a handwritten letter:

Anderson’s at 19:00. Maurer has the van, we ride at 19:15. Don’t bring any tech, and demagnetize your implant before (or we’ll do it for you, just warning). Dress comfortably, running shoes (non-reflective!) best.

If anyone asks, we’re ditching trivia to meet Anderson’s sister OOT.

Stop worrying about the moon. You’ll be fine. Wear good shoes just in case.

You know what to do with this after you read it. I trust you. -JD

I destroyed it.

In the stall, the song was getting louder, drowning out the progress I’d been making with my lab notes. I needed to go home and get ready. System refresh.

***

“Is this how long it’s supposed to take?” I asked from inside the van, bracing myself over the bumpy terrain. Huddled in this vehicle without our phones or watches, the sense of time and place became mystic.

“Ly- Smith, yeah. We’re good. We’re almost there.” Davis said. Appreciated he called me by my surname in front of the others.

“It’ll feel faster on the otherside. Return Trip Effect,” Reed added.

I didn’t want to ask anything else. How’d Maurer, or Davis, know where we were going? To a place off the map, without any guidance? I felt unsettled, but remained silent.

I didn’t want to tell them why I really cared about the moon, nearly visible now outside the van’s sunroof.

Anderson spoke. “Hey I want to say, thanks for doing this guys. All I ever wanted was to see this place for myself. If I left before–”

“We get it man,” Davis interrupted, sparing Anderson. “Hey, I hope I find some remnants of those test tubes from the science professors.”

“Oh man, I just want to see if what they say about the walls is true,” Reed added.

We all did.

“Personally, I hope we catch some of those motherfuckers doing some crazy shit,” Maurer said. No inflection, still 1000 and 1400 on the wheel. He turned to look at us in the backseat. “But I also hope we don’t, if you know what I mean.”

We did.

***

I never told any of them I actually hadn’t had it. They would’ve never let me be here. Worried I’d jeopardize everything.

They just didn’t have scientific proof. Only theory.

I remember Shelly cried when she first told me.

“I’m just scared Lynny,” she whimpered. Lord have mercy, where were those five pillars then. Those earlier rounds of menstrual strains should have been preventative, not abortive.

Sure, you never hear about women in the stories or the studies. Good ol’ Stanford, no pregnable types let into that one. And it was tame. You don’t cut the shirts off the backs of lady pilots, you don’t stomp the scrotum of a brother-to-be with girlfriends watching, you don’t hear about moms pouring fire down each other's throats, carving letters into each other’s skin. Not lady-like at all, the stories.

But the thing is, they had it backwards. Women were the victims of the worst forms of torture that had been rendered. For us it had been expected, normalized. Perfectly natural. Men still couldn’t bear the brunt.

Ritualized Violence, period.

So I just had to know, if left to my natural ways, if I could. Bear it.

***

Maurer parked beneath an oak tree. Turned off the ignition, pointed to the woods ahead. “Gotta walk about a mile from here, and we should find it. Don’t forget where we parked if we get separated, alright now? I’m gonna tuck the key behind the front tire here.”

He opened his door. “Let’s go now. Anderson, this is it, my man.” I’d have figured Reed would take charge. We followed his lead, no questions asked. In Maurer we trusted.

So this part I kept to myself. The moon’s cycle? Like all women in a dangerous space, there was never a good time for my body to be sacrificed, but there certainly were bad times. To come to Graffiti Cave I’d have needed that vaccination. If legend has its way with me, it won’t be the same as with the others who walked through the woods tonight.

Hail Bloody Mary.

We went into the dark towards Graffiti Cave, twigs and fallen leaves crunching underfoot as we waited for our eyes to adjust.

***

In silence we walked. Together, alone with our thoughts.

How much will a professor sacrifice for tenure?

What have all of us sacrificed to be here?

Can any of you hear the song too?

If the rituals are becoming more sadistic, how far can they go?

When you’re inside, you look around, what do you see?

What happens to those who don’t survive at Graffiti Cave?

We may know, at the end of this walk.

***

In the dark, I started imagining us talking to each other.

“When we get there, will we be drawn in, like doomed sailors destined for our shipwreck?” Frozen, staring at the splattered walls covered in blood and bones, in spray paint and scalps and torture souvenirs from rituals past.

“Will you even want to turn around? See what's done to each other outside the cave?”

“If it happens, what strain will they turn us into?”

Subject, verb, MIA.

Would we all be swallowed by the cave? Hear the pebbles, the rocks, the stones, landing on impact all around us. Some earthquake or eruption.

Or, would only one of us be sacrificed tonight?

The throat is deep and the mouth is wide

Saw some things on the other side

Made me promise to never tell

But you know me, I can't help myself

Now I've got something you have to see

They put something inside of me

The smile is red and its eyes are black

I don't think I’ll be coming back

I swear as we got closer, I became telepathic of the others' thoughts. Asking themselves: “Looking at the cave’s walls, when we hear his voice echoing off the rock, if we turn around, will we see ourselves out there, the ones doing the violating onto the one being sacrificed?”

I knew we were getting closer. The volume in my head was booming.

And just like that, my mind’s eye adjusted. I became certain.

I hadn’t been invited.

I was being offered.

Like one of those girls from the cave’s origin story — the first whose names were graffitied in there. I hallucinated seeing Shelly’s name on the rocks, her insides rubbed on the walls. May she rest in peace.

And then our feet stopped crunching the ground beneath us, our outstretched hands and soles were now touching painted, wet stone.

I know they all heard it. Because in unison they looked up towards the sound too.

My name.