The Midnight City Social Hour

Ch2: Virgin Retard

Before Cat Girl lost her mind, she used to have this coherency that made her seem normal. For a short while. Tommy didn't remember much of it, but when he watched her watching the new recruit, he could remember.

It happened during a moment when he didn't have to work—whether he called in sick, or worked 'remotely', didn't matter—he could follow Cat Girl. She was stalking the recruit, a boy with brown hair. Through a college campus. Her black hair was tied by a blue string. There was a bag around her shoulder, over a plain white shirt and black shorts. The laces of her shoes were not tied.

The boy that she followed: he was just ahead of her, stumbling through a baying crowd of abrasive foot traffic. 

A few students looked Tommy up and down and snickered. Maybe taking note of his suit, or the black and purple bags under his eyes. Not that Tommy could care with all the question marks and exclamation points popping out of his ears.

A sign the drugs were wearing off. From his suitcoat pocket, from a bottle labelled 'Baby Aspirin', he took out a Buzz Pill and swallowed. No water. The heat that spread through his arms and legs, his fingers and toes, causing him to feel the bones just behind his face, made the world beautiful.

'Everything was going to be ok.'

Cat Girl was a wonderful girl trying to help a lonely boy. Everyone in the gang was trying to help the recruit. That's what they did. Sure they had an unconventional way of doing it, but they were good.

Deep down, that's what the pills told Tommy. He believed the pills. He swallowed them whenever the real world punched him in the face. Such as when Mini described the new recruit as 'The Virgin Retard'.

Cat Girl followed them into a food court on the right. Random assortments of restaurants served long lines of students. Leveled seating put tables and chairs just above the foot traffic. Tommy ordered a bagel with maple syrup cream cheese.

Tommy took a seat at the table Cat Girl was sitting at. She was drinking a smoothie of Kale, Spinach, Agave syrup, and other ingredients that made it green and fluffy. "The fluffiness comes from a lot of ice." She pushed the contents of the smoothie around with a straw.

"Why are you stalking this boy?" Tommy asked. "This isn't what you would normally be doing. Don't you go to school? Aren't you earning your doctorate?"

"I'm just bored is all." Cat Girl replied with that coherent manner she had when working with the gang.

"Bored enough to follow them through this mundane routine?"

"I just like them is all."

Tommy looked off at the new recruit, sitting a level below them in a common area near windows. He was eating Chinese food from a bowl. Sitting alone and thinking to himself. "How is the recruitment going to start?"

"It's about to begin."

"How will it begin?"

"He needs to lose his virginity."

"Vince told me he was already paying us." Tommy said.