Chapter 5: The Aftermath

Chapter 5: The Aftermath

Alex walked back into the dorm on Sunday evening, the strap of his duffel bag digging into his shoulder. He’d spent two blissfully uneventful days at his parents’ house, fielding questions about his internship and enjoying home-cooked meals. But the entire weekend, a low-frequency hum of anticipation had thrummed beneath the surface of his thoughts. It was the feeling a scientist gets after initiating a long-term experiment, a mixture of anxiety and intense curiosity about the results.

The dorm was usually a pit of low-grade melancholy on Sunday nights, the air thick with the dread of the coming week. Tonight, it was different. It was quiet. Not just quiet, but oppressively so, like the stillness after a violent storm has passed, leaving a strange, ringing silence in its wake. The air itself felt thin, scrubbed clean of its usual boisterous energy.

His heart began to beat a steady, heavy rhythm against his ribs. He bypassed his own room and made a beeline for the communal kitchen. The desire to know was a physical craving, more potent than any hunger Chad had ever felt.

He pushed open the door. The fluorescent lights flickered on, illuminating the scene. At first glance, everything looked normal. But Alex’s eyes, trained to notice minute changes in his experiments, swept the room with forensic intensity.

The first sign: the box of Frosted O’s on the communal shelf. It was open, and from the lightness of the box as he lifted it, he could tell at least half its contents were gone. Success, stage one.

He moved to the refrigerator, his breath catching in his throat. He pulled the door open, the soft interior light spilling into the kitchen. The gallon of milk was there. But it was no longer full. It was three-quarters empty, the white liquid sloshing forlornly inside the plastic jug. Success, stage two.

His eyes scanned the countertops. The six-pack of free sodas was gone. Every last can. Success, stage three.

Finally, he checked his own shelf in the pantry. The bag of kettle-cooked jalapeño chips—the one that had served as the casus belli for this entire operation—had vanished completely. Not even an empty, folded bag left as a mocking trophy. Just an empty space.

A slow, electric hum of victory coursed through Alex’s veins. The bait had been taken. All of it. The trap had been sprung with spectacular, gluttonous efficiency. He hadn't seen a thing, hadn't heard a peep, yet the evidence of the event was undeniable. He had designed the experiment, and his test subject had performed perfectly.

But what were the results? The aftermath?

He got his first clue as he was walking back to his room. Maya, the quiet sophomore from 5B whose sandwich he’d seen Chad steal, was coming out of her room, a laundry basket propped on her hip. She saw Alex and her eyes widened slightly.

“Oh, hey, Alex. You were gone this weekend, right?” she asked, her voice hushed as if the walls themselves were still listening.

“Yeah, went to see my parents. Why? Did I miss something?” he asked, feigning casual ignorance.

Maya hugged her laundry basket closer. “Miss something? You missed World War Three in a five-foot radius. Friday night was… insane.”

Alex leaned against the wall, projecting an air of mild interest. “Oh yeah? What happened?”

“I don’t even know!” she whispered frantically. “Around eleven, I heard this scream. Not like a party scream, like a primal scream. From Chad’s room.” She shuddered at the memory. “Then more yelling. Sounded like his buddies were in there with him. Then came these sounds I can’t even describe… just horrible, wet, gagging noises. And someone was crying. Actually crying.”

Alex’s face remained a neutral mask, but inside, a triumphant grin was spreading. The milk and cereal combo, he thought. The opening salvo.

“The RA had to come down,” Maya continued, her voice dropping even lower. “Chad wouldn't open the door at first. When he finally did, his face was… it was the color of chalk. He just ran past the RA and locked himself in the communal bathroom. We could all hear the shower running for, like, an hour straight. His friends were freaking out, one of them kept yelling about his mouth being on fire and his lips swelling up.”

The soda cans, Alex deduced. The subtle, delayed-action sting of the painted rims.

“What about the chips?” Alex asked, unable to stop himself. “Did they say anything about chips?”

Maya looked at him, confused. “Chips? I don’t know. One of them, I think it was Kyle, kept shouting ‘Everything is poison!’ over and over again. The RA thought they’d gotten some bad weed brownies or something. He told them if they didn’t quiet down he was calling campus police. It was a total nightmare.”

‘Everything is poison.’ The phrase was music. It was the perfect, paranoid conclusion. Alex had turned Chad’s personal buffet into a house of horrors.

“Wow. That’s crazy,” Alex said, shaking his head with mock disbelief. “Hope they’re okay.”

“I don’t know if ‘okay’ is the right word,” Maya said, shifting her weight. “I saw Chad this morning. He looked like a ghost.”

Just as she said it, a door creaked open at the far end of the hall. It was Chad’s room.

And there he was.

The man who emerged was not the Chad Miller Alex knew. The arrogant swagger was gone, replaced by a slow, pained shuffle. The backwards cap was gone, revealing lank, unwashed hair. The tank top hung loosely on a frame that seemed somehow diminished. His face, usually ruddy with unearned confidence, was a pale, pasty grey. Dark circles pooled under his eyes, and his skin had a clammy sheen. He clutched a large plastic bottle of water like it was a life raft.

He didn’t see Alex at first. He took two shuffling steps down the hall, his movements tentative, like an animal testing the ground for traps. Then, his gaze lifted and met Alex’s.

For a split second, there was nothing. Just two students looking at each other in a hallway. Then, a flicker of something primal and terrified sparked in Chad’s eyes. It was the dawning recognition of a rabbit identifying the hawk circling overhead. He didn’t just see Alex, the quiet nerd from the lab. He saw the source of his misery. He saw the architect of his personal hell.

And then it happened. Chad flinched.

It was a small, almost imperceptible motion, but to Alex, it was as loud as a gunshot. A full-body recoil, a tightening of the shoulders, a slight widening of the eyes before he broke contact, ducking his head and staring at the floor. He abruptly changed direction, turning and practically scuttling towards the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall, desperate to escape Alex’s line of sight.

The king of the dorm, the enforcer of the ‘unwritten rule,’ had been dethroned. He wasn’t a bully anymore. He was prey.

Alex watched him go, a cold, profound satisfaction settling deep in his bones. He had never seen the explosion. He hadn't needed to. He could see the fallout in the hollowed-out look in Chad’s eyes, in the nervous whispers of his neighbors, and in the terrified flinch of a man who had finally, irrevocably, learned his lesson. The war was over. He had won.