Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Alice reaches the darkened Yard, feeling ill. She reaches the dining hall and makes herself a bowl of oatmeal. As she eats, her stomach feels strange, and she goes outside and throws up in the bushes. She assumes she has a stomach flu, as she feels sick and yet hungry. She sits on the curb and feels sorry for herself until a fellow student named Colin offers to help get her home.

It’s only a few blocks back to her dorm, but Alice struggles, feeling dazed and faint. She realizes she’s on the wrong side of the entrance to the dorm and tells Colin that she needs to go lie down, but he pins her against a tree and starts to kiss her against her will. Alice bites his lip until she draws blood then blacks out, coming back to consciousness in the dorm shower, fully dressed and covered in blood that she knows isn’t hers. She can’t remember how she got there.

She strips her clothes off and leaves them in a wet pile on the floor, then she scrubs herself. She has to steal a towel left hanging in the bathroom. She looks in the mirror and sees herself crying blood.