Heller and Shannon: Phantom Images

Something was niggling and dancing just outside the range of Shannon’s conscious much like a phantom image at the very limits of her peripheral vision...only to disappear when she moved her eyes.

It annoyed her that she could not see what it was but she really had no other choice that to wait it out. It would either fade-away or present itself in its own, sweet time.

Meanwhile, her mind seemed to repeatedly dart off into strange, unrelated tangents.

One of the tangents was to replay one of the parties she had attended as a college senior. Unlike most of her fellow students, Shannon had attended Lansing Community College for two years before transferring to Michigan State. Restarting with a fresh grade point average and no history to dilute a bad semester, she had buckled down and been an exemplary student during her third year of college.

She had only loosened up and enjoyed the college social scene in her last semester as a senior.

The party that kept coming to mind was one where she was trying to shake the class bore, a hard-core communist named Costas. Costas was so hard-core the soft-socialists and SJWs avoided him like the plague.

In retrospect, Shannon wondered if he was autistic, he was so oblivious to social cues and so relentless in pushing his opinions.

It was Shannon’s luck that Costas set his sights on converting her to Pure Marxism that Friday night at the party.

She just wanted to have a few beers and unwind when Costas latched on to her like a lamprey.

Shannon quickly deduced that Costas hated rich kids and especially hated Frat boys. Costas spewed venomous opinions about them that were so outrageous as to be laughable. Shannon would have moved to a different corner or room if there had been any hope of shaking him.

Costas kept gesturing at the two “preppy” guys who were plying a freshmen coed with drinks.

“You know that Universities don’t exist to educate the masses, don’t you?” Costas asked rhetorically.

“I didn’t know that” Shannon replied as noncommittally as she could manage.

“Universities are microcosms of the larger society, designed so the elite can send their larvae to a safe place to hone their predatory skills” Costas pressed. “Paid for out of the public till, of course.”

Such talk made Shannon uncomfortable.

“You know they are both going to sleep with her, don’t you?” Costas asked.

“That is why some people go to parties” Shannon said, hoping he would just leave her along.

“She will be drunk and not able to give consent. Isn’t that called rape?...Isn’t that that what non-consensual sex is called?” Costas asked.

Now Shannon was really uncomfortable. She was a “townie” and a transfer. The preppy guys had been going to MSU for four, maybe five years. She was an outsider.

“Look around” Costas commanded. “How many of these girls would be happy to spend the night with those guys?”

Easily a third, probably more than half of the girls would have cheerfully bed either of those guys if they put the tiniest bit of effort into sweet talking them, Shannon thought.

“It is not about the sex” Costas said. “It is about practicing what they see as their elite, God-ordained position in the world.”

Shannon’s stomach turned. It must have been the beer on an empty stomach. That is all it could have been.

“Do you know why they didn’t pick you?” Costas asked.

Shannon did not want to know but kept silent.

“It is because you are too old. You are not innocent enough. That, and you live in town. That girl probably grew up in Alpena or Traverse City or Port Huron” Costas said.

“Her dad isn’t ever going to hear about what will happen tonight. He will never show up and give them a tune-up with a base-ball bat” Costas said. “They may be predators but they pick their victims with care. They never pick a victim where there is any risk to their own, precious skin.”

One of the other recurring images in her head was of a hunter calling in a turkey. She must have been in a room when a hunting show was airing on TV because she could see the blind and hear the hunter stroking the slate hen-call with the rod, talking in the amorous tom-turkey with declarations of her loneliness and her need for "love". Even if the tom had doubts, he could not not come.

The third scene was more recent. It was Slider’s face in the glow of the dying embers of the last campfire. She kept hearing him say “...all of the obvious targets are decoys…” “...you gotta swim upstream and snip the spine at the base of the skull, or at least go as far upstream as you can…”

It made for a very dark and disturbing mental stew.