Chapter #5The Bat Cave...erm, Dorm. by: H. M.   Vroom, screech!
You wake from your doze with a startle. The metro bus comes to a halt. Good timing, this is your stop. You lift your heavy rucksack from your lap, loosen your wings, and step out the door of the bus.
As the bus rumbles off, you glance around you. Even though it’s only 6 PM, it’s already dark out. You can understand why so many people escape New York in January. A few lazy flakes fall from the dark sky, casting flickers on lights as they pass by the street lamps.
You pop the stiff joints in your neck and trudge across the snow-dusted campus. Your dorm is about a five-minute walk, but when temperatures are this cold, it feels like fifty. Four buses and fifteen hundred miles removed from your family, and the cold only makes your departure just a little more bitter.
You pull out your key card as you approach your dorm. Pennington Hall’s concrete walls and brutalist design features only made the January evening colder and more foreboding. You slide your card through the reader and a metallic click indicates your permission to enter its brightly-lit lobby. Your leaf-shaped noise wrinkles and your eyes narrow as you enter the quiet, institutional-looking room. As a bat, you were not at all a fan of bright lights, but you could handle artificial ones better than natural light. If you were out in the sun for a long period, you’d need your sunglasses.
You step over to the elevator, hit the button, enter and press the button pad for floor 8. The doors close and as they close, you slump onto the interior railing. What a long day of travel it’s been.
The doors open and you lift yourself off the railing and into the carpeted hallway. In your eleven-story dorm, there were eight suites on each floor, four people each. The eighth floor gave nice views of the skyline, but that was about it. The windows barely opened and the rooftop was locked and banned. Not that it mattered a whole lot. Like avians, bat anthros had wings, but their human-like bone densities made flying impossible. They were however, convenient for gliding, acrobatics and Parkour. It’s why a lot of bats found work on night-shift construction crews.
With that in mind though, the vast majority of bats tended to be like you – pretty scrawny. Some older ones might sport an unbecoming pudge to go with their lean limbs. Once in a very great while, someone tapped into the genetic jackpot, typically by having a muscular species somewhere in the family tree, and ended up well-built or with lots of work, jacked. But that was extremely rare, and the last you checked, you had no horses, bulls, eagles or dragons in the family tree. Your dad was a fruit bat with a fox-like nose, and your mom has a tri-tipped leaf-nose like yours.
You get to your door and pull out a metal key. You can already hear talking inside. Sounds like the guys are in. You open the door with a heave, pushing your rucksack and your body forward into the soft light of the suite’s living room.
As you enter, the first thing you notice are three figures crouched by the TV. The frantic punching of buttons echoes throughout the room, as they work the plastic video game controllers in their hands.
“Cover me Rob, I’m gonna make a run for the Warthog,” says an enormous water deer, the TV giving his tusks a menacing gleam. At over 300 pounds, Corey was easily the biggest cervine you’ve ever known. You notice the way his arms fill out his Legend of Zelda tee shirt, threatening to turn it into a sleeveless. He says he’s bulking for bodybuilder competitions, but he seems to be growing into his own weight class.
A slim skink looks up from the screen, her yellow reptilian eyes reflecting the hall light. “Oh, hey Batsy, welcome back. How was the trip?”
You give her a weak smile as Corey bleats a quick “Hey Batsy.” No one ever called you by your first name. You’re not totally sure Corey’s girlfriend Emma even remembers what your first name is. “Long. How was your holiday, Em? How was it having Corey’s family in town?”
She returns to the screen. “Oh, alright. His brother is a freaking giant. So is his boyfriend. Like, 7 feet and 400-something pounds.”
The third figure, a sleek and athletic cougar, shoots you a quick glance. Rob turns back to the TV and smiles as he shoots at characters on-screen. “Hey B, welcome back. Yeah, they gave Cor something to aspire to.”
“You stayed here the whole winter break, Rob?” The buff cougar’s tongue sticks out as he tries some deft move in the game. He clears the room of enemies and cheers quietly at his accomplishment . “Yeah, my Mom and Dad are doing their couples’ retreat in Fiji, so I hung back here in New York.” Like you, neither Rob or Corey were from the area – Rob hailed from Toronto where his dad was a vice president of a major bank, and Corey’s family, originally from South Korea, lived out west.
“Is that Batsy McLeafnose?” Calls a voice from your room. You break into a reluctant though genuine smile. “Hey Logan.”
The chubby wolverine steps out of your shared bedroom. He claps a hand on your back. Both of you were pretty short guys, you 5’6”, Logan a diminutive 5’4”. It made Rob’s 6 feet and Corey’s 6’4” seem positively giant. “Hey bud, good to see ya.”
The wolverine leans up to your big ears. “Check your bed, B. Corey didn’t tell us his brother and his boyfriend were hornier than rabbits in heat. Thanks to that fucking kangaroo, I know why they have those signs saying no jacking it in the shower.”
“Aw, dude, really?” Corey gripes.
“Aw, dude,” Logan mocks. “Lemme tell you about that too B. I mean these guys were bros, just total bro-y broface brodouche brofag bros. Like, fuck, these guys probably keep Axe and Muscle Milk in business.”
“Shut up Logan, they were nice guys.”
“Fuck you Rob, don’t you have some roofies to pick up for your frat rush?”
“Eat shit man. I could get more tail in a week than your fat ass will ever get.”
“And yet you spank it in the showers after listening to Corey fuck Emma.”
You smirk widely. This is what you love and hate about Logan at the same time. Loud, vulgar, opinionated, short-tempered and politically incorrect, Logan often said things that other people wouldn’t, for better or worse. About the only person Logan spared from his verbal wrath was his dear mother out in Syosset. Heck, Logan had no qualms with calling himself a “fat Jewish bastard”, and would happily do it in public just to make everyone else squirm.
It seems like an odd cast of characters. Corey's a geeky, beefy bodybuilder (and the only one who ever seemed to get laid in this place), Rob's athletic and more fratty and bro-y, Logan's chubby and foul-mouthed, and you, a pensive, hard-working bat with some rough edges. Yet, the four of you are best friends. Rob refused to leave you guys for his fraternity’s townhouse, Corey was insistent that he and Emma find a place as close to the junior dorms as possible, and Logan, for all of his barbs, was fiercely loyal. Ever since the college roomed the four of you together at the start of freshman year, you’ve stuck together like glue, good times and bad. And Emma, she was the sardonic voice of reason – guys might think she’s just another pretty airhead, until she opens her mouth.
You go to drop your belongings off on your bed, the comforter doesn't look defiled, you’ll check the sheets later. You briefly turn towards your desk, glancing at Logan’s steroidal comic book posters before the wolverine appears in the doorway. “So Batsy, we’re thinking Tom’s Diner and popping in the Godfather, are you in?”
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