The sound of thunder and the flash of lightning outside her window awoke Liora with a start. She didn't hate thunder and lightning, but it did put her into an inconvenient autopilot, moulded by years of bombs and people who wanted her dead. Her first instinct was to check on her daughter Avigail, her panic at seeing an empty bed abated by the waking remembrance that Avigail was now settled in to her dorms at Yale University, not far from their house but far enough it would be weird for Liora to go check on her.
It took some heavy breathing for Liora to relax. She went downstairs and sat on the sofa in the darkness, feeling she was once again on night lookout, guarding a family of one that was no longer there. Her ear cocked to the sound of the back door opening, and gripping her pistol tight her instincts kicked in. It was only a lucky flash of lightning illuminating a mascara streaked face that prevented her from shooting her daughter on reflex.
"Avigail! Why are you sneaking home? You're drenched, what happened?" Avigail's demeanour changed immediately, she had grown accustomed to her mother's worrying and was practiced in pretending everything was OK.
"Hi mum, sorry I didn't want to wake you, there's a party in my dorm tonight to celebrate those who made the cheerleading team, however I failed one of the tests so I didn't want to be involved." Liora knew that Avigail wanted desperately to make the cheerleading team, and her mothering instinct was to hug Avigail and make her feel better. But a different instinct was blaring like a siren in her brain, an instinct that told her there was more to the story than what she was being told, an instinct that had gotten her employment at her previous job but had also made her one of the few people to leave that job alive.
Liora comforted Abigale until she was asleep in her old room. The moment he daughter was taking the deep breaths of sleep, Liora's face turned to stone, she went to her room, dug out the burner phone she kept for these occasions and called an old friend.
"Liora, why are you calling at two in the morning?" A groggy voice asked.
"Noam, shut up and listen! I have a well-paying favour for you. I need to you to brick any smartphone within half a mile of the following coordinates that has filmed a video tonight and send me the videos." This was a standard damage control protocol that her friend had run several times when they worked together in the Mossad, Liora knew this was where her hunch was leading her.
Eventually she found a series of videos on a phone that gave her the truth of the matter.
...
"Hello bitch haze dot com, my name is Tara-Belle, head of the selection committee for the Yale University cheerleaders. Come with me and let's meet the meat." A blonde embodiment of pep turned the camera away from herself and towards the line of naked girls kneeling in a gym with their hands behind their heads. The camera only showed the line for a brief second before going to individual introductions, but Liora saw a flash of darker skin that filled her stomach with dread.
The camera focussed on each girl in turn, Tara-Belle and two other cheerleaders would aggressively ask them to introduce themselves before mocking and belittling them for a bit and moving on to the next one. Eventually Liora's heart dropped as she saw her daughter, her naked body kneeled in submission before the camera.
"Every squad has a firecracker but I guess we just found our bomb jacket, what's your name and why aren't you wearing a burka?" The peppy girl asked.
"My name is Avigail Freeman, I was born in Israel but have lived in America all my life. I'm not a Muslim." Avigail responded without looking the girl in the eye.
"Is that so?" Tara-Belle replied. "Well then we should clear that up shouldn't we?" Tara-Belle took out a big black marker, and on Avigail's body wrote in big letters.
"Not a terrorist." Then with a big grin on her face walked behind Avigail and wrote on her back. "Just a slut."
"What do you say?" She asked over the mocking laughter of the other cheerleaders.
"Thank you squad captain." Avigail responded.
Avigail did not feature in the rest of that video, Liora counted 8 girls all going through the same thing as her and there were several more videos on the phone. Liora decided to watch them all.
...
"Hey bitch haze dot com, it's your girl Destiny." A statuesque ebony girl now wielded the camera. "I got first dibs on the hazing challenges, so first we're going to see if our girls have the focus to be an elite cheerleader. The girls have to recreate the cheer they performed in auditions this morning, however this time they will be naked, they will have a dildo taped inside their pussy and have to hold another inside their mouth. And of course as we always perform to a crowd..." Destiny moved out of the way and assembled behind her was bleachers filled with football and basketball players.
One by one Destiny lead out the naked girls, making a big deal of removing the dildo from the previous girls pussy and sticking it in the next girls mouth, then duct taping the other dildo inside the poor waiting girl. A single tear crossed Liora's cheek as Avigail was lead out in front of the cheering crowd, her naked body blushing from head to toe while her face filled with stern determination.
"Alright everyone this is Avigail. She's a rare breed, a Middle Eastern slut. Let's give it up for her while she does a performance that would get her stoned back home." The racism was really starting to grate on Liora, but worse still was watching her baby girl perform her humiliating dance, her eyes bulging at the effort of keeping the dirty dildo in her mouth while the crowd leered at her. Avigail was certainly degraded but she was clearly doing a better job of hiding her humiliation than the other girls, clearly she took after her mother when it came to strength of resolve.
...
"Hey hey, it's Kandi here with the next haze for our girls." A petite Asian girl announced. "Now we know there are a lot of videos out there of girls answering the door naked to the pizza guy, but did you know you get a special offer if you collect?" Immediately she began rousing the naked freshers out of a nearby door. The group of naked girls emerged shivering in the night air, Kandi ordered them to line up and started marching them across the busy campus, leading them in a chant that grabbed everyone's attention.
"Who are you?" Kandi yelled.
"Wannabe cheer squad!" The girls would yell in unison.
"And who can use your holes?"
