Pledge Night
An erotic horror short story
Dear readers, this is the opening salvo, but the rest of the story is coming in October 2026!
Tae stared down at the steps, the first step in particular. It was a reflection of the house itself. Old, weathered, the remnants of a withered leaf trapped forever in the crack in the oak planks. A sharp contrast to her new kicks, the six steps leading up to the front porch were bleached and graying. Cracked and on the verge of collapse. Painted by an age of decay and neglect.
That first step looked like a mistake, but this was pledge night, and she had to do it.
The place was what Tasha and Alice had said it was. The house was a veritable shithole, when it came right down to it. Uninhabited for generations. A blight on the edge of town. A cancerous sore the sleepy college town of Acosta refused to diagnose and treat. Why? Why had the old Stevenson home been allowed to fester just outside the town’s environs?
Because it was haunted, of course, and every town needs a haunted house.
“Come on, bitch,” said Alice, standing at the top of the sixth step, just under the sagging porch roof. She motioned with her flashlight, a rolled up sleeping bag tucked neatly under her other arm. “GLO awaits!”
Tae’s head lifted, her eyes taking in the old place up close and personal. She found Alice’s eager face under her shock of jet black hair and smiled back as she took in the view. Not of the house, but of Alice. The tattoos down her right arm like jagged glass fitted back together with cheap glue. Her usual black leather jacket over a mishmash of Wicca charms on leather tongs that fell between her breasts. Just a bikini top and a pair of cut-offs, and her usual black-on-black Chucks. A senior. A veteran of this place, the GLOs and Acosta. And the only girl who’d ever gotten her fingers inside Tae’s pussy.
Tae sighed, watched the hot little pre-med student turn on a dime and disappear into the shadows through the front door. What was on the other side of that hole? Alice, for one, and she’d already hinted at throwing her sleeping bag down next to Tae’s, maybe zipping them up together for warmth. The freshman bit her lip -- the idea of this white girl sucking on her fingers again and sliding them in -- fuck. Was that what this night was about, or was she just lucky?
Or maybe it was just the heat of the day making her delirious. It had been nearly a hundred, and there was no way this old house had AC, so she’d packed accordingly. A lite linen t-shirt and jean shorts and flips. She’d left the bra at home. And panties; who even bothered with them anymore? She looked around, her eyes casting up and down the dark road that went by the old house, a nod to the van Jenny had driven to get them all here, and then a shrug. This was her night, and if that meant Alice between her legs for the duration, maybe the creepiness of this whole thing wouldn’t get to her.
It was pledge night, after all, she reminded herself, trying to let the anxiety building flush itself out. Six weeks into her first semester at Acosta U, and heat or not, creepy ass house or not, a few bitches she didn’t like or not, this was the final night, the final step to acceptance into Gamma Lambda Omega, and she was ready to get her GLO on!
She was a legacy, after all. But she had to do it. No recommendations from her sister could get her through. No calls from her mother. Both of them GLO girls. Both of them graduates of Acosta, and both of them fearless. Women whose resumes were long and storied. Women who got shit done. And all of it started here, they’d said. At Acosta. With GLO. Right here at this creepy old fucking house.
“No way.”
“Way,” said Alice when she dropped her sleeping bag in the middle of the old house’s living room next to a dozen other girls doing the same. She looked at Tae. “Stay close and you’ll be okay. You’ll see.” She winked, and turned, watching the other girls setting up camp in the dark.
Flashlight beams played across the room, dust motes dancing in the rays of light as the ten pledges and their two pledge captains settled in. Giggles and grunts, someone humming a tune, phone notifications. The old house bustled with life a few times a year, Tasha had said. That’s how often they came back. It started so long ago that they didn’t even know when the first pledge night had taken place, but they did know that it was tradition, and it was freaky fun, so they’d made a thing of it some ten or so years ago. All the sisters, sleeping bags, snacks, booze, and the creepy sounds of the house shifting all around them, as if it was alive.
Tasha pressed something into Tae’s hand, startling her, and then the shadow of the one other black girl in the group passed by. It was a hard seltzer, ice cold, raspberry, and it would do. She preferred beer, but campus bitches liked seltzer. It would do. She cracked the top and tipped the can up to her lips, let the cool liquid spill in while she kicked her sleeping bag over and watched it unroll. Her backpack held any other supplies she’d need -- twizzlers, pretzels, a dozen tiny bottles of vodka in case someone brought juice, a change of clothes for the morning. And toilet paper. There was no way the old house had a working toilet, and she wasn’t going looking for it. If there was peeing to be done, Tasha had said to go out through the back door and piss in the yard.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” said Stephanie, the ruddy-faced redhead from the Midwest.
“Sha! Piss in the yard, bitch. No one stinks up our haunted house, ‘cept the ghosts who live here.” Tasha made a show of creepy hands and cackled. “Back door is right through the kitchen there.” She pointed. “It doesn’t even creak cause we oil it. Just use the buddy system, huh? Nobody walks outside alone. That’s a rule, pledges. Got it?”
There was a smattering of answers. Tae shrugged, but Alice leaned over and grabbed her hand. “I got you, buddy. Whatever you need,” she whispered, her lips brushing against Tae’s neck, and she felt her nipples harden. Oh, she needed a buddy alright, and someone was already volunteering. Just as soon as all the others were asleep.
Tae took another drag on the seltzer, set the empty down and grabbed another. The place gave her the creeps, but the thought of Alice rubbing up against her all night was giving her a totally different kind of feeling just now. All she needed was a few more seltzers and to hear some snoring from the other sleeping bags.
It didn’t take long. Empty seltzer cans cluttered the narrow spaces between girls. Their attempt at scaring each other with creepy tales devolved into a litany of stories about high school, boys who couldn’t find the clit and which fraternities to steer clear of if you didn’t want to get date raped. The whole time, Tae sat criss-cross apple sauce in her t-shirt and pj shorts, sipping seltzer with a little vodka thrown in for good measure. It was all good measure tonight -- she even laughed at the stories, if only because her head was buzzing, and Alice, who was sitting conspicuously close beside her with a blanket over her knees, had slipped her hand into Tae’s panties and had been teasing her clit for the better part of an hour.
All Tae wanted now was a little private time with Alice. She was dripping, her breathing heavy now from all the teasing, her eyes barely even able focus. She needed to cum. She needed to sleep -- fucking seltzers were doing her in. But all she wanted was Alice’s pretty mouth on her pussy. She’d passed around enough vodka. No one would hear them, right? No one. Not even the dead. If everyone would just go to sleep. Just go to…
Someone nudged her, and Tae blinked. Had she passed out? She wiped her eyes and squinted into the dark. A familiar face looked back.
“Come on, Tae. Get up,” said Alice, her voice low and quiet. “I wanna show you something.”
Had she missed it? Had they fucked and she’d just passed out? She ran her tongue over her dry lips, wondering how long she’d been out. Fucking seltzers.
“Now? It’s still dark. You gotta pee?” Her voice was raspy, and she cleared her throat into her pillow, hoping the noise of it wouldn’t wake the rest of the girls
Alice leaned in, shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. Come on. You gotta come see this. It’s wild. Shhh. Don’t wake anyone else.” Then Alice sat back and stood up. Tae could see that she was barefoot, still in her pjs. She stood there, foot tapping on the old wood, until Tae was up and wincing -- the sleeping bag wasn’t exactly rated as a mattress and the floor was hard as a rock.
“Where we going?”
“Come on,” said Alice, and she grabbed Tae’s hand and flicked on her flashlight, leaving a cluster of sleeping bags full of dozing college students behind.
Alice played the flashlight around as they crept off into the dark, deeper into the house’s guts and away from the wide living room and the single door that opened to the steps, concrete walk and street -- the way out. Whatever Alice wanted, Tae knew, it was going to be a little crazy, a little wild, a little dark. She’d watched the senior for weeks now after walking into the sorority house the first day on campus and declaring for the GLOs. It was what her sister told her to do -- Day One: go meet the GLO girls, go declare, go make a friend, and don’t say ‘no’. And she’d done it, after watching her sister rise through the ranks at her law firm year after year. It was like a family business. Get your high school diploma with honors, apply to Acosta, and go get your GLO on. Get fearless. She’d spent her entire life hearing it, and now she was creeping through an old, creepy house in the dark, her fingers neatly interlaced with a girl she’d just met and wanted so badly to fuck.
Tae was tired, but she wasn’t dead. This was that moment. She knew it. Sneak off away from the other girls, trade some spit and find a good place to get the hot little white girl’s pj bottoms off. She’d gotten a few winks, and now -- still a little tipsy -- she was wired for the thing she wanted most. And that thing was leading her through a doorway and along a hall. Into the darkness. Into her arms. Alice had spent the last three years visiting this house. She had something up her sleeve, and Tae was down for it.
They stopped, Alice turning, her flashlight beam playing across the floor, revealing the old oak beams, some polished toenails -- black for Alice, pink for Tae. “There’s nothing but the kitchen on down that way,” she said, her voice low, as if the rest of the girls were just there on the floor around them. “This door --,” and she played her light over a solid door with an old, bronze knob gone green with age, “goes to the basement.”
Tae’s heart shifted gears. “Oh, fuck you, bitch.” She eyed the doorknob, waited to see if Alice would reach for it. That was a solid no, nada, not a chance, right there. Haunted house was enough of a risk, but ain’t nobody going down in no basement -- legacy or not, sister and mother both fearless or not. Alice was just gonna have to play with her own pussy, if that’s what it was gonna take.
“No, no, baby girl. We don't go down there.” Her face was invisible in the gloom, the flashlight’s beam still trained on the doorknob, but Tae could hear the dread in her voice. “Nobody goes down there, Tae. I - I’ll tell ya later, after tonight maybe. No, not there.” The ray of light from the end of the flashlight flickered and wavered, and then Alice turned, bringing the flashlight around to a flight of stairs just past the door to the basement. “We’re going up.”
She tugged, but Tae tugged back, tamping down on the fear that was seeping into her veins. “Basement, no. But upstairs? Why?”
“It’s a haunted house, silly,” said the little brunette, and she leaned in, the flashlight playing across their toes again, Alice’s breasts pushing against Tae’s as she released her hand and pulled her in close. “I’ve been here a ton of times. It’s supposed to be scary. It is scary, but I got you, babe.” Lips, plump and soft, pressed against Tae’s neck, her jawline, her cheek, and then the kiss Tae had wanted all night. Alice’s breath on her lips. A little vodka-seltzer mix. Her warm tongue. Mouth opening.
Tae responded, leaned in, pressing against her favorite med student, the girl she’d met on Day One. Alice had been there, smiling, greeting the new pledges, overly nice at first and then more than nice. Was she flirting? Was this what it meant to shark the freshmen? Had she seen the new girl walk in and staked her claim in that moment? And yet, it had seemed like the simplest, most natural thing. Tae’s big eyes for campus, the fall colors in the tiny northeastern campus, the classic lines of the buildings, the sloping roof of the sorority house just like her sister described it -- they’d climb out on the roof at night and drink and watch the sun go down. It was a sorority tradition, among other things. And then the prettiest little med student, all perky tits and warm smiles and hands that made her feel welcome…and eventually wanted in ways she’s not expected.
Tae’s tongue danced with Alice's, and she felt the rush of the moment, the yearning she’d felt all night, remembering what Alice had hinted at -- a fun night that would welcome the pledges to the sorority officially, some silly ghost stories, according to tradition, and then some quiet time alone in an old empty house, something she would never forget.
Alice broke away and tugged on Tae’s hand again. “Let’s go. Let me show you. This house is, well, it’s all mood.”
The mood was unsettling, thought Tae. The stairs creaky, warped from decades of trampling feet. It was as if she could feel the footfalls in each one -- in the thousands of young men who went up and down in their day. How long ago? Alice had described it as more than decades, but said nothing more. The ride over wasn’t about history lessons. It was about a creepy night that would cement them as GLOs, as sisters, as kindred spirits in a house that may or may not be home to its own spirits.
It was a joke, and everyone laughed, but Tae was feeling less likely to laugh now. A wisp of something brushed by her at the top step, and she froze, feeling chills race down her arms. A hint of laughter turned her head. Her mind was playing tricks on her, of course. It was the vodka. It was the thought of that creepy basement. It was the blood rushing from her head to that place between her legs she wanted Alice to explore.
It was a mood alright, but not the mood she wanted to be in.
“Alice,” said Tae, tugging on the med student’s hand. She watched the warm fog of her breath dissipate in front of her eyes, then found Alice’s bright eyes staring back at her. “This house. I felt…” She didn’t know what to say. She shook her head when the senior nodded, flashlight splashing the wall with a warm yellow glow that lit up the hallway around them.
“Did you feel them?”
Tae took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp air. “Them. You said them.” She squeezed Alice’s hand, contemplating the stairs just behind them. The way down. Back to the sleeping girls.
Alice grinned, mischief in her blue eyes. “Them. I told you this place was haunted, Tae. You can feel them, can’t you?”
Tae swallowed. “Something. I felt…something. You felt it?”
“I did.” She leaned in, wrapping her arm around Tae’s waist, pulling her closer. “I sometimes see and hear them. It’s like the house remembers the boys. The frats.” She squeezed, leaned in, pressing the freshman against the wall. “Fearless, Tae. Remember? We’re GLOs, and we’re fucking fearless.” Alice’s lips danced just inches away, her warm breath inviting, the heat of their bodies expelling the chill in the air. “We’re fucking fearless, and you’re fucking hot,” she said, and then Alice pushed her lips against Tae’s. A brief kiss, a giggle, and then her eyes sparkling in the dancing flashlight beam as she spun around. “They’re here, Tae. Listen and watch,” she said, and she was off down the hallway.
The floor creaked underfoot, but Tae’s eyes were fixed on Alice, her heart racing, the sweat of her palm threatening her grip on the other’s hand as she was pulled forward.
Doors lined the long hall, some hanging open like sighs, others fallen like broken promises. Empty rooms brimming with dust and silence. A shadow at the window just at the edge of sight. A flicker, the lingering scent of a cigarette. Cluttered rooms teaming with furniture piled high. A broken set of bunk beds sagging beneath the invisible weight of a snore. A whiff of warm skin and cologne that tugged at Tae’s memory. A melody hummed near an empty desk, not quite music, not quite memory. A door creaking open, and just on the edge of vision, a young man in a turtleneck pushed his glasses higher on his nose and drifted past. The scratch of wool. A bite of fresh soap. And a laugh. Then, a door slam and footsteps rushing by, followed by laughing and a name. “Alex!” The brush of a wet, young body shrieking with glee, bare feet slapping the wooden floor along the length of the hallway. A life remembered, or still unfolding.
Tae spun, looking for Alex, but there was nothing save an image, like a memory, of a ruddy-face boy with red hair and a mischievous grin. She hadn’t seen him, but when she closed her eyes, she remembered -- as if he’d been there, but not.
“You saw that,” said Alice, and Tae nodded. “The house remembers, Tae. It remembers their lives, their joy, their world. The house remembers. Can’t you see it?”
Tae took a deep breath, trying to be afraid, but they’d made it to the last door at the end of the hallway, and nothing had happened. Just sounds. Smells. The whisper of voices. Then, Alice’s voice pulled her eyes open.
“We’re fearless, Tae. Remember,” she said, and she turned and licked her lips, lust in her eyes. “Fearless.” Then she turned the knob, and the door shuddered open. “Because the house remembers other things, too.”
The door swung open as if the dream itself had opened it. Behind them, the sounds of memory faded like breath on glass, leaving behind a silence so deep it pressed against Tae’s chest. The look in Alice’s eyes she’d seen before -- that night, when she’d pulled her into the laundry room to avoid prying eyes, her tongue exploring Tae’s mouth, her hands in Tae’s shirt and eventually in her shorts as the freshman leaned back against the washing machine breathless from the rush of need. Sucking on her fingers and then Tae’s tongue as Alice worked her fingers deep inside her pussy, each motion a promise of pleasures to come. Oh how she’d flirted and teased all night. A hint. A dare. A stolen kiss during a drinking game that was required by the rules but lingered longer than the rules dictated.
The beam of the flashlight played over the room revealing its sole occupant, a bare mattress in the middle of the floor that set Tae’s blood boiling. Fucking in the middle of a haunted house. All the sorority sisters fast asleep downstairs. Ghosts of boys long past guarding the entrance. Was this what it was to be fearless? Was this the gauntlet that her sister had let slip that one time? Or was there something else?
And yet it didn’t matter a wit as Alice pulled her forward towards the mattress and a night of bliss. A stolen kiss, and then this kinky ritual, leaving Tae wondering if there really were ghosts, if this really was a haunted house, or had Alice just slipped something into her drink? Did it matter? She was primed when they reached the mattress and Alice dropped the flashlight on the bed at their feet.
“Fearless, Tae,” she said, her face shrouded in darkness, but her voice warm and inviting and just a little…afraid.
The flashlight sputtered and died. Someone screamed as darkness swallowed them—complete, suffocating. Tae’s breath caught, her hands flailing for Alice but only finding air, and then the room changed. The shadows peeled back from the corners, unfurling like petals in reverse, and a new light bloomed—thin, cold, an unnatural glow that came from nowhere and everywhere.
Tae stood frozen as the world turned colorless, the temperature in the room rising like an inferno. The mattress throbbed with presence, shadows swirling around Alice. Not quite men, not quite ghosts—glimpses of hands and limbs, hints of memory, outlines formed from smoke and pain and passion. They pulled Alice down, and she didn’t resist. Her mouth parted in a gasp, her spine arched as ghostly fingers tore her shirt open, threads snapping like whispers. The shadows moved with hunger—methodical, unrelenting. Tae gaped, watching invisible fingers squeezing her friend’s breasts, pulling on her nipples just as her shorts were ripped away.
Tae’s scream caught in her throat. She turned and ran, but Alice’s voice sliced through the air behind her. “Tae—don’t go.”
Tae froze. The voice was wrong. Not pleading. Not afraid.
“Tae, please. Please.” It was wet with need.
She squeezed her eyes shut, Alice’s cries -- her moans washing over her, and when she looked back, she saw it all. Alice’s legs were spread, her shorts gone, her hips rising in rhythm with the pulsing shadows. They were inside her—though there was nothing solid to see. Only the reaction: Alice gasping, writhing, eyes fluttering. Her hands gripped the mattress, her knuckles bone-white, her lips parted in a moan that echoed through the room, as if the house itself shared in her pleasure.
Tae’s blood ran cold, then hot, then cold again. “No no no no no. Not this. I can’t.”
Alice’s eyes opened. They locked on Tae’s and she reached out as they fucked her. “You see them.” she whispered. “See them, Tae. With me.”
The shadows moved faster. Alice threw her head back, teeth bared, a cry of release breaking free as an orgasm rocked her lithe body. Tae stood at the door, unable to move, unsure if she wanted to. And then she took a step forward. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears like the footsteps on the old wooden stairs—those stairs she’d felt underfoot as if others had walked them with her. And maybe they had. How many times had Alice been here in her time at Acosta? How many times had she been in this room?
Alice groaned and rolled over, her eyes fluttering as she rocked on her hands and knees. She was no longer just a girl on a mattress. She was something else—a body bare, flushed and writhing, utterly consumed by pleasure as the shadows moved over her like lovers long lost and half-remembered. Her moans came in waves, deep and guttural, electric with ecstasy.
And then she looked at Tae again.
“Tae,” Alice said, voice low, velvety, aching with invitation. “With me, Tae. With me.”
Tae’s breath hitched. She could feel the heat in her own body—tight, pulsing, insistent. Arousal and fear had always sat next to each other in her chest. She thought of the night in the laundry room, the kiss, the ache, the rush of Alice’s fingers. The thrill of being caught. She thought of the whispers in the hallway, the touch of a ghost brushing by. It was all the same now: desire soaked in fear.
She told herself to run. To scream. But the house hummed with heat now, and Alice—no, not Alice, something more—was glowing with want. It wasn’t terror that filled Tae’s chest anymore. It was invitation. Her feet moved before her mind caught up.
The house sighed, boards creaking beneath her. The room pulsed with light, Alice’s moans echoing in the emptiness. As she reached the mattress, the shadows shifted, making space. Alice reached for her, eyes wide, lips parted in anticipation. Tae crawled onto the bed, meeting her face-to-face as her clothes fell away.
Alice's hands found her hips, and the shadows coiled around them,their bodies flush with heat and want. Cold fingers brushed her thighs, her waist, her breasts, but Tae didn’t flinch. She let herself feel. Every nerve alive, every heartbeat screaming yes. And then, the push between her legs, and she moaned her surrender into Alice’s mouth as the shadows began to fuck her. Their mouths met in a kiss that wasn’t soft—it was hungry. Their bodies pressed together as the room pulsed with memory and pleasure and something far older.
“I see you,” Alice whispered against her lips. “And now the house sees you too.”
Tae closed her eyes and let the fear go. Let her orgasm rise as she wrapped herself around her lover and let the house have her.
She was fearless.
The living room was quiet, the only sound bare feet whispering over old boards. Rows of sleeping bags dotted the floor just as they had been when the stories died away and the flashlights blinked off. A somber scene. Serene. As if the house had passed them by.
Had no one heard the noises from above, the frenzied fucking, their moans and gasps? Tae shuddered and squeezed Alice’s hand. What had just happened? And how could she ever look at her sister and mother the same again.
They’d know. She’d know.
And Alice--gorgeous, dangerous Alice -- had drawn her in, pulling her into what? An orgy? A ritual? The house’s memories? Tae would never forget how their bodies pressed together, how they came, the shadows riding them until they were spent and breathless. Until she’d rolled over and slipped her tongue into the brunette’s eager heat.
Alice didn’t just belong to the house anymore. Tae would share--she’d have to-- but she wanted Alice, too.
They stopped at the edge of the little camp, Tae’s head buzzed, her body still vibrating, her newest sisters asleep and her own sleeping bag—
She gasped. She looked at Alice, then back at her own sleeping bag.
There they were. Her and Alice. Bodies curled in sleep, untouched. Unmoved. As if they'd never left. As if they'd never gone upstairs.
As if none of it had happened. And yet…
Alice squeezed her hand, and Tae turned, her mouth half-formed in question, but Alice only smiled. “Don’t be scared,” she whispered. “This is the part they never tell you about.”
She leaned in, kissed Tae—soft, final, real. Her lips lingered like a secret. And then Alice stepped into herself.
One breath, a flicker of movement—like a memory—and the beautiful girl folded inward, into the sleeping form on the floor. Gone. Dreaming.
Tae stood frozen, heart in her throat, the night heavy on her skin. Had she…? But she couldn’t finish the sentence. It had been real, hadn’t it? It had. The stairs. The hallway. The boys. The room. That mattress. Alice moaning, reaching for her like something out of a dream. A fantasy. It had happened. It had.
She looked down at herself—her sleeping self—and suddenly it made sense. This was what her sister had meant. What her mother had hinted at. Fearless wasn’t about being brave. It was about becoming something more. A journey. Not a destination.
How many times had Alice entered that room? How many times had she come out and sunk down into herself, confident, free, fearless?
What power could the world hold over her now?
Tae sighed and knelt. Slid into her bag and into herself. As her head touched the pillow, the ceiling blurred. She closed her eyes. And fell—soft, slow, complete— into herself.
