The Bromwell Freshman Orientations had always been a curious affair; while the various scholarship students or those not associated with any alumni of note attended their services in one of the campus's vast auditoriums, the Legacies were taken aside one by one to be welcomed into their new home.
Tom Sloane stood in the Headmaster's office with the Dean of Students, Edmond Humphrey, and a TA from the Business Studies department on either side of him. Tom wore a robe of midnight blue, the hood down on his shoulders and hem pooled around his feet. The Headmaster was before him. In his hands was a steel rod.
"Are you ready," Headmaster Bradbury asked in his rich baritone and tilted his head at just the right angle so the candlelight caught in his grey-streaked black hair. "for your initiation, Thomas Angier Sloane?"
Grim-faced, Tom answered simply, "Yes."
The Headmaster nodded and handed the rod to the TA, who took it eagerly.
"Assume the position."
In solemn reverence, Tom hitched the robe up past his hips, bent at the waist and presented his bare ass as Dean Humphrey supported him. The dean's own robe was Elder Emerald and shot through with a thick ribbon of gold across the shoulders. The Headmaster, clad in robes of Prophet Violet, nodded to the TA in robes of Senior Brother Scarlet, who stepped forward in anticipation.
"Proceed."
Tom steeled himself for the legendary agony he had been hearing about his entire life as the cold metal came into contact with his flesh. A vicious grin on his ruggedly handsome face, the TA braced his shoulders and shoved with every ounce of upper body strength he possessed.
Tom's world exploded and he shrieked like a chorus of banshee in Saint Pat's Cathedral.
Laid up in a rotating hospital bed in the Cedars of Lawndale Intensive Care wing, Tom stared moodily down at his unresponsive toes and recalled what Headmaster Bradbury had told him after the overzealous Teacher's Assistant had rammed the Rod of Enlightenment up through his lower back, successfully severing his spinal column in the process.
"Well son, I guess you just weren't Bromwell material, after all."
PPMB "Wheelchair" Iron chef
8/07/08