The Snake-Woman

So, night #3 of college. My class is ridiculously small (87 students), and we've gotten to the point by now that most of us are pretty good friends. Only the freshman class has arrived so far, other than the R2s (Resident Resources). The 87 of us plus most of the ten R2s all live in one building.

Anyway. Night #3. It was probably 11:30 or so. Many of us had finished watching Tangled not too long ago, and a few of us were left sitting around in the antelounge. (Like a lounge but less comfortable. The lounge on our floor had been used to play Mafia, and we didn't want to get up.)

Six-ish of us remained antelounging: five gents and a lady. Myself, Brooks, Evan, Kevin, Chaz, and Diana. One way or another, we gents, excepting only Chaz, wound up sitting on a bench, arm in arm, with an obscenely comfortable body pillow behind us and a blanket atop. We were the Bro Bench, or the Brench, for short. We were excitedly planning for future plans of the Brench's 11 AM meals (the Brench Brunch), and in particular the meal of the bro next to me (Brooks' Brench Brunch). Chaz and Diana were sitting off-sides.

Unexpectedly, Diana announced that she was going to test whether I was ticklish, and proceeded to test. I withstood it for a while, but in due time I succumbed, broke from the Brench, and launched a counterattack. Entirely unfazed, Diana, without missing a beat, stood up, grabbed our body pillow, and dashed out of the room.

The chase was on. The Brench reorganized itself, and we hobbled off into the actual lounge. The game of Mafia had long ended, and there were now only a few loungers remaining. Diana was nowhere to be seen, and the loungers evidently were on Diana's side. Somehow, she had used her feminine wiles to win them onto her side in the fifteen second advantage she held. This wasn't just a chase: it was a war.

We broke off and all ran in different directions. I ran down a hallway on the same floor in attempt to find the elusive Diana, only to find that I was followed by three of Diana's cronies. They grabbed me and took me to the ground. One took my blanket and ran; the other two tried to keep me in place. After a fair while I dashed back off to resume the chase.

After several minutes of stair-climbing, hall-running exercise, I returned to the lounge to see if any of her goonies would spill Diana's or the pillow's whereabouts. As it happened, one was a mole: I was advised to check the stairwell at the end of the hall.

I ran in and clambered up the stairs to find the rest of the Brench, detaining the fiend. Evidently, they were collectively catching their breath, but the Brench was clearly in control. I assisted in holding her down, but just as we began to interrogate her, she somehow slipped through our fingers and escaped. The Snake-Woman was off once more.

Running and stair-climbing abound. We were all working up a sweat by this point. Several minutes later, we got her at the back of another hallway, but this time, she was cornered. She was literally at the end of a hallway with a third-story window behind her and a wall to her side; on her other two sides, Brench Bros. The nearest stairwell was guarded by another Bro: she had no escape. The pillow was to be ours.

Suddenly, the Snake jumped up once more and continued her run. We chased her, only to find another goonie at the end of the hall, blocking our path. We overpowered him relatively quickly, and saw our prey climbing down the stairs back into the lounge whence we came. She stopped running and extended her olive branch: if we legitimately wanted the pillow back, it was ours. Evan, the pillow's owner, submitted, thus ending the chase. She showed us the pillow, which was in a little nook beside the hall past which I had run at least three times. (My blanket's captor was nowhere to be found, although he later returned to me my prize.) Even from that very night, legends were told of the elusive Snake-Woman who could escape from even the tightest hold.