The Midnight Man
By Kevin Saito
Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved
"You're late," she called to him.
Milo closed the door behind him, careful to keep it from slamming. Outside, it was dark, cold and beginning to sprinkle. Thunder rumbled in the distance but sounded like it was growing closer by the minute. He figured that the storm wouldn't be long in coming. Milo shook the sprinkles off his coat and stepped into the large common area of the abandoned dormitory finding his friends already in their usual spots.
"Dude, we live in the same dorm, how did I beat you here by fifteen minutes?" Called Lance. "You need to rub one out first or something?"
"Sorry guys," Milo said. "Had to finish a couple of things and then had to wait for Reagins to clear our floor."
"I think Lance is right, our little Milo had to take care of a little... business first," Kyle said, pantomiming masturbation.
It brought a couple of laughs but most everybody rolled their eyes. Kyle wasn't nearly as funny as he thought he was. Milo took a seat on the tattered old couch next to Jordan Aimes, his girlfriend for the last six months. Across from him on an equally worn couch sat Lance and his girlfriend Kacey. In battered but functional wingback chairs to his right were Kyle and Stephanie who were most definitely not together and to the left in a matching set of old chairs were Gabriel and Ruby who couldn't decide whether they were together or not most of the time. Given that they were holding hands, it appeared that they currently were. A lantern sat atop a nicked and scarred coffee table in the center, casting them all in a strange orange flickering light but leaving everything beyond their circle cloaked in deep pools of shadow. Being in the old abandoned dorm gave Milo the creeps but not wanting to endure the endless ribbing from the guys about it, refrained from ever saying anything.
The six of them had become fast friends from the day their parents had dropped them off at the gates of the Kent-Ashford Preparatory Academy four years ago. The shared trauma of being sent off to boarding school so their parents could travel around the world pretending they didn't have children had served to bond them together. It wasn't long after they started at Kent-Ashford that they'd discovered Wallingford Hall, the abandoned dorm they were seated in, and had claimed it as their meeting spot. According to the school it was strictly off-limits but then so was being out of your dorm room past the nine p.m. curfew.
Wallingford Hall had been one of the male dorms until a fire had broken out in one of the upper floors more than ten years ago. It hadn't done all that much damage as far as Milo could see but the school had boarded up all of the windows, barred the doors and shut it down anyway. New Wallingford Hall, which was where Milo, Lance and Kyle had their rooms, had been built on the other side of campus. The school apparently couldn't yet decide what to do with old Wallingford and so it sat vacant and neglected. The guards that patrolled the grounds paid little attention to the old dorm so it was a perfect hangout spot for their small group.
"Okay so," Jordan announced. "I thought to mark the start of our senior year, and since it's a perfectly appropriate dark and stormy night, we'd play a little game."
"Spin the bottle?" Kyle asked.
"You so wish," Stephanie replied.
"You're right, I do wish," Kyle said. "I've always wanted to take a crack at ol' Milo."
"Why, you finally pop your blowup doll or something?" Gabriel asked.
"Unfortunately, she did pop," Kyle shot back. "And since your mom is out of town I'm sorta out of options."
