“Easy, easy!” O’Connor held his hands up in a gesture of defeat as he plodded out into the muck. His shoes squelched through the mud, and rain splattered down upon the thin fabric of his sports jacket, chilling him in an instant. Six men, all sporting black ski masks, dragged O’Connor deeper into the woods, well away from the road. They were impeccably dressed in expensive suits, wool overcoats, and designer loafers. Apparently, none of them had anticipated a high-speed chase through the backwoods of upstate New York, let alone one that landed them in a soggy ditch on the side of the road.
“Bacchus, move the cars and kill the lights,” one man ordered, tossing a set of keys to one of his comrades. “All we need is for some busybody to drive past and pull over. And get his crap pile out of the mud. We’ll have to get rid of it.”
The other man—Bacchus, O’Connor could only assume—gave a little, two-fingered salute. “You got it, Pluto.”
The instructions bit at O’Connor’s nervous system. His pulse raced, but he tried to keep his voice steady and indifferent as he addressed the men around him. “Why the masks? I already know who you are, despite the ridiculous nicknames.”
“You know some of us,” the first man conceded with a nod. “You know me.” With a flourish, he removed his ski mask, shaking out his head of damp, freshly trimmed black hair. He grinned at O’Connor, displaying a perfectly maintained smile, and lowered himself into a mocking bow. “Pluto, ruler of the underworld, at your service.”
O’Connor said nothing, but rather stared at Pluto and the other men with poorly concealed contempt.
“Oh, come on, George,” said Pluto jovially. He patted the sopping shoulder of O’Connor’s sports coat. “You worked so hard to expose us. I was rather hoping our official introduction would merit a better reaction. I must say, I’m disappointed in you.”
“Where’s your favorite friend?” asked O’Connor. “What do you call her again? The Morrigan, is it?”
“She didn’t want to get her hands dirty,” Pluto answered. “Extended car chases and backwoods interrogations aren’t exactly in a lady’s pool of interests. Not usually, anyway.”
The other men chuckled, but O’Connor wasn’t amused. “What do you want from me?”
“Easy,” responded Pluto. “You. Silent.”
O’Connor shook his head. “It’s not going to happen. The things you’ve done—it’s not right.”
Pluto sighed, plucking his leather driving gloves from his hands one finger at a time. “Let me spell this out for you, George. You are a lowly history professor. I mean, what possibly possessed you to become a fucking teacher of all things? God, man, you’re not even tenured. We, in comparison, are a group of cultured, well-read individuals who contribute not only a wealth of knowledge to our little part of the world, but a wealth of, well, wealth to society. So tell me, why would anyone believe your poorly conceived accusations of us?”
“I have proof.”
“I’m sure you do, my good man,” said Pluto. He stepped forward so that he was nearly nose-to-nose with O’Connor. He lowered his voice. “But what makes you think you’ll be around long enough to present that proof to anyone of worth?”
Without warning, Pluto plunged his fist into O’Connor’s midsection. O’Connor doubled over with a grunt, and Pluto’s sycophants closed in around him. Two held O’Connor upright while the others delivered blow after blow to whatever part of his body was available.
“I can see the headlines of the student newspaper now,” Pluto called over the sound of the beating. “‘Beloved history professor George O’Connor mysteriously retires early.’” Pluto shook his head, laughing. “God, what a joke. You crack me up, George.”
But O’Connor wasn’t listening. He had already blacked out.
2
On Monday morning, I decided that I had no original thought. Of course, if I had voiced this out loud, there were a handful of people who might’ve disagreed. Wes McAllen, my longtime boyfriend, would be the first one to pipe in with a list of things I had accomplished, but to be fair, he was kind of obligated to continue boosting my morale. No, it was best to keep my thoughts of inadequacy to myself and instead focus on staying afloat in a sea of pre-graduation anxiety as the semester wore on. Unfortunately, staying afloat meant finally coming up with some sort of idea for my thesis. At this point, most of my classmates were already well on their way to completing their degrees. On the other hand, it looked like the only master’s degree I was ever going to earn would be in the practiced art of procrastination.
“Do it on the plague,” suggested Wes. He munched away at a piece of buttered toast, leaning over the kitchen sink in our small apartment to avoid getting crumbs on the front of his police uniform.
“No can do,” I said, tipping a pan of scrambled eggs and sausage into a wheat wrap. I ducked around Wes to rinse the steaming pan in cold water, and he planted a buttery kiss on my temple.
“Why not?” he asked. With his toast-free hand, he tried to wipe away the residue of his breakfast from my face but only succeeded in spreading bread crumbs through my hair. “Sorry.”
I shook out the crumbs as best as I could. “Someone did theirs on the plague last year. O’Connor wants something original.”
“You’re a history major,” Wes pointed out. “How are you supposed to come up with something original when every past event has already been picked apart by someone else?”
I bundled up my eggs and sausage in the wrap like a burrito. “Now you understand my dilemma. Do we have any cheddar cheese left?”
Wes polished off the last bite of toast, dusted his hands off over the sink, and opened the fridge. “Nope. Just the crappy cheese for the
