It was early evening as the young woman strode across the college campus in long, athletic strides. Her trim body was well-toned from years of physical activities of all varieties, from dance classes to gymnastics to long-distance running. Currently, she was the captain of the cheerleading squad at the college, a role she had filled continually ever since her freshman year in high school. Now that she was in college, she felt herself a veteran in the role, a status she carried with pride. As she walked, she carried herself with the easy confidence of one who had always placed first in every crowd, and the arrogance of one who got where she is by stepping on all who happened to get in her way. Her thoughts extended no further nor deeper than her plans for the upcoming Saturday night, her mind untroubled by doubts or worries of any kind. Yet she had reason to be concerned, for unknown to her, she was being followed. Not that she could have known this, for the follower was unseen. Invisible. And this follower happened to be a most detested enemy.

Jenny followed Tiffany at a safe distance. Being barefoot as well as invisible, she made no sound as she walked, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, the soles of her feet were nearly raw from several days’ walking around barefoot on everything from gravel to asphalt to concrete. She was afraid that if she were to walk too fast, she might trip or stumble and make a noise of some kind, giving a clue to her presence. And that would never do. Because she was planning revenge on her enemy, which required the element of surprise.

Jenny had hated Tiffany ever since they were both 15, and the feeling was more than mutual. Tiffany was one of those individuals who derive pleasure from tormenting others, and Jenny had the misfortune to always be on the receiving end of these torments. For years Jenny had suffered the cruel teasing and practical jokes that Tiffany and her circle of friends habitually played on her, jokes that went beyond mere fun and good humor, and which were based on pure meanness. And for years, Jenny had longed for the chance to get even with her, to pay her back. And now that she was invisible, she at long last had that chance. And she was determined use it.

She followed Tiffany up the steps of the dormitory building, squeezing JUST BARELY through the door in time before it closed, and up the stairs into Tiffany’s dorm room. Tiffany threw her bag onto the bed and proceeded to undress to take a shower. She did so slowly, casually, without a care in the world…

Unknown to her, Jenny stood directly in front of her, not two feet away, waging an intense internal struggle with herself. The moment she had for years wished for was here at last. Jenny repeatedly tightened up her fists, trying to summon up the courage to actually do what she had long wanted to do: give Tiffany a good, solid bust in the chops and just beat the living daylights out of her. All the years of anger and resentment had built up in Jenny as she recalled Tiffany’s cruel torments: deliberately tripping Jenny and spraining her ankle, the itching powder in her bra, the red ants in her gym bag, and all the other things which were even worse. Yet the anger she felt was somehow insufficient for Jenny to act; something inside deep down inside held her back. She found herself in a frustrating predicament: she was finally in a position to take revenge on her most hated enemy…and she discovered that she just couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t bring herself to actually punch Tiffany out, however much she wanted to.

Come on, fist, come on, she silently pleaded with herself. Oh, nuts, she thought. This isn’t going to work. Finally she relaxed her hands, realizing that she just didn’t have it in her. Right now I wish I had your mean streak, Jenny thought as she regarded Tiffany with narrowed eyes. She tried to rationalize it, telling herself that she didn’t want to hurt her hand on Tiffany’s thick skull, but deep down inside, she knew the truth. Well Girl, she silently asked herself, what are you gonna do now? You gotta do something. I mean, just look at her. Look at that arrogant smirk. She’s so smug, so sure of herself. Ooo, how I’d love to wipe that self-assured smile off of her face…

Wait, that’s it! Jenny realized. Tiffany has always been the confident one, so self-assured, the one always in control. I wonder how she’d like it if something happened to her that she couldn’t control, something she couldn’t understand or explain… She would freak out, that’s what she would do. Jenny smiled invisibly. Tiffany Nelson scared witless. I’d love to see that, she thought. This may work out all right after all…

Tiffany slipped into a bathrobe, picked up a towel, washcloth and bottle of shampoo and left the room, walking down the hall towards the communal shower. Jenny followed behind, again maintaining a safe distance.

The hallway was almost deserted, as most of the girls studied silently in their rooms. A few of the rooms were empty, as some girls had night classes. All in all, it was a quiet night. Perfect, Jenny thought. Lovely night for a little poltergeist activity…

Tiffany entered the shower room, slipped out of her robe and stepped under the shower. She turned the water on, and the first frigid blast of water hit her with a shock, but it soon warmed up. Outside in the hall, Jenny went from room to room, looking for one in particular. At length she found it: the room occupied by that flaky artist, Vicky. Hmmm.. Don’t like her very much either. Jenny tried the doorknob; it was open. Carefully, quietly, she opened the door and looked inside. Vicky was hunched over the drawing board in the corner, her back to the door, with her headphones on, busily scribbling away at what appeared to be an amazingly realistic rendition of somebody’s barbed-wire collection. Where’s her art junk? Jenny wondered. Ah! There it is, in that open case on the floor in the corner, next to the drawing table. Jenny tiptoed over to the case, knelt down and looked through the contents. Let’s see, what has she got… Red? No, no… it’ll look too much like blood, don’t wanna be gross about it. Blue? How about blue? A tiny bottle containing a blue liquid floated up into the air, as Jenny examined its contents. No, this’s no good, there’s hardly any left. Wait a minute, I’ve got it! This is perfect! Another tiny bottle, similar to the first except containing a green liquid, floated up out of the case, across the room and out into the hall. Vicky looked up suddenly, looked around at the empty room, shrugged and went back to work.

Jenny carried the bottle of highly-concentrated green ink into the shower room. Damn, it’s beginning to fog up in here, she thought. I’d better make this fast, or all this steam will make me visible. She crept over to the shower stall, where Tiffany was currently lathering shampoo in her hair. Jenny took the stopper out of the ink bottle, stood on tiptoes, reaching up and holding the bottle just over Tiffany’s head, careful not to splash the indelible liquid onto herself. Little by little she tilted the bottle, until a thin little trickle of the dense, green fluid poured directly onto Tiffany’s scalp. It was such a tiny trickle that Tiffany never felt a thing, and with her eyes closed to keep the soap out, she never saw the numerous tiny little rivulets of greenish fluid cascading down her face, neck, shoulders and, eventually, her entire body. When the bottle was empty, Jenny quickly sneaked out of the shower room just as the steam was beginning to condense on her unseen form.

The air in the hall was cold on her after being in the warm, moist shower room, and she shivered as she returned the bottle to its case. Vicky looked up from her drawing board a second time, looked around her room again, shrugged and shook her head to herself, and again returned to work. The door opened and closed as Jenny walked back out to the hall, sat down on the floor outside the shower room and just waited…

Tiffany was now rinsing the shampoo out and only then did she begin to notice a peculiar sticky sensation. When the lather was rinsed clear, the stickiness remained and when Tiffany opened her eyes and saw the multitude of tiny green streaks all over her hands, arms, body, everywhere she looked, she let out a scream that could be heard on the street outside, three floors below and three blocks away. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!?!? WHAT IS THIS CRUD?!?!? She let out numerous other squalls, followed by profuse cursing, when she discovered the green color’s intransigence to washing with soap and water. She stormed out of the shower room, looking around to find the one responsible, screaming at the top of her lungs, demanding to know who the smart-ass was. A few heads emerged from doorways to see what all the commotion was, only to quickly disappear again once they caught sight of the screaming green creature in the hallway. Jenny chuckled softly to herself, then got up and headed back to Tiffany’s room. Act One completed, she thought. Now for Act Two.

When at length Tiffany returned to her room, after spending considerable (though futile) time and effort trying to rinse the green stain from her hair and skin, she was outraged, furious and completely bewildered all at the same time. She KNEW that someone had deliberately done this to her, but who? There was nobody around! Anywhere! There was no one in the hall, and those who were in their rooms were, if their reactions were anything to go by, just as shocked (if not more so) at Tiffany’s now-frightful appearance as Tiffany was herself. She walked over to the mirror and examined her ghastly appearance. With her hair still wet and with the green streaking running through it and down her face, she resembled a resident of the Black Lagoon. By now her fury was beginning to break down into hysteria. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw in the mirror the door of her closet slowly opening by itself.

She turned to look, and as she did so, her clothes began to sail out of the closet, one by one and fly straight towards her. The closet emptied itself of Tiffany’s entire wardrobe, one piece at a time, which continued to fly directly at her face. She screamed and tried to dodge out of the way, and duck into corners, but the clothes seemed intent on attacking her, no matter which way she turned.

When the closet was emptied, Tiffany’s personal belongings on the shelves and dresser of the room likewise flew up and sailed through the air. Some of these things sailed directly towards Tiffany, but most didn’t, seeming to follow a random pattern, most of them smashing against the walls. A few items floated about in roughly circular patterns, mere inches from Tiffany’s face, as though deliberately trying to scare her even more, before they too flew off in insane directions against the walls. Even Tiffany’s cheerleader pom-poms floated up from the corner where she kept them and shook themselves furiously in her face, accompanied by a frightening howling noise, like the wail of a banshee, the source of which Tiffany was unable to determine in her panicked state. Drawers were pulled out, the contents dumped over Tiffany’s head. Bottles of perfume and cologne floated up from Tiffany’s dresser, their caps twisted off, and proceeded to deposit their contents over Tiffany’s head and onto the clothes which now lay piled on the floor.

Finally Tiffany could take no more; she turned and ran out of the room as if the devil were after her, screaming, crying for help. She ran down the hallway, and heads emerged from doorways to see what the noise was all about NOW.

"My room is haunted!" she cried, "There’s a ghost in there, trashing all my stuff!!"

Needless to say, the other girls regarded this revelation with a fair degree of incredulity. Nevertheless, they followed Tiffany to her room to see just what the trouble was. And, needless to say, the moment other people entered the room, Jenny immediately ceased in her unseen activities. She smiled as she watched the expressions on the other girls’ faces as they examined the empty closet, the pile of perfume-soiled clothes on the floor, the multitude of small, broken personal items scattered around the room. And it was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud at Tiffany’s pathetic attempts to explain how and why her room got trashed, that NOBODY was throwing her clothes and other items around at her face, and that this nobody must’ve been the same nobody who dumped the green gunk over her head in the shower. The other girls listened quietly to all this, before they began to back away, with increasingly concerned looks on their faces, looks which seemed to suggest the belief that all that peroxide had finally sunk in and bleached Tiffany’s brains as well as her dark-rooted hair. Tiffany followed them into the hallway as they left her room, still trying in vain to convince them of the truth of what she had witnessed.

While she did so, Jenny plucked two pieces of clothing from the pile on the floor, a green and gold sweater and a short miniskirt in like colors, two of the few items to avoid getting soaked by the perfume. "And now, for the Big Finale." she said to herself, as she slipped into the skirt and sweater--the latter fitting a bit tight around her chest, she noted with pride.

Thus when Tiffany returned to her room moments later, she was confronted with the frightening sight of her own cheerleader uniform floating about the room, waving its empty sleeves and howling in the same banshee-like wail she had heard earlier. The empty sweater and skirt flew directly towards Tiffany, the empty sleeves waving menacingly in her face, chasing her about the room and out into the hall.

"TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT!! WHO’S THE ONE WE REALLY HATE!!
TIFFANY!! TIFFANY!! WITCH QUEEN!!" a ghostly voice wailed.

Tiffany fled down the hallway, screaming, the empty sweater and skirt immediately behind her, continuing to howl and laugh maniacally as it waved its sleeves. Most of the other girls by now no longer paid any attention to the noise out in the hall (other than to get annoyed at Tiffany for continuing to disturb them while they were trying to study), but a few curious heads poked out the doorway to see what the heck Tiffany was up to now. They then saw with their own eyes the frightening spectacle that would one day become part of college lore: the legend of the ghost cheerleader. A few of the braver souls gave chase to the spectral cheerleader as it chased Tiffany down the hall.

Here’s where I make my exit, thought Jenny, as she hastily slipped out of the sweater and skirt, tossing them aside as she ran. Her pursuers stopped dead in their tracks to stare dumfounded at the empty clothes lying limply on the ground. By now, other girls had started to show up, a few to try to comfort the now-hysterical Tiffany, who cowered in a corner, a few looked around as if to find some clue as to the whereabouts of the ghostly creature responsible for the disturbances, and a few continued to simply stare at the clothes on the ground. With so many people’s attention thus distracted, it was a simple matter for invisible Jenny to simply walk right past them, down the stairs and out the door. No one even noticed when the front door opened and closed by itself.

Jenny fairly skipped across the campus, oblivious to her sore feet. She was happy, she was gloriously, deliciously, deliriously HAPPY! She laughed with delight; as she passed people on their way to class, she patted people on their backs, pulled hats off and tossed them astray, pulled guys’ shirttails out, gave an occasional pinch here and there to cute guys she fancied. The recipients of her pranks looked around bewildered, wondering who had done them.

Inside the dormitory meanwhile, Tiffany began to calm down as she went through the slow, laborious process of cleaning up her room. As her terror began to subside, it was replaced by another emotion: anger. The more she thought about the evening’s events, the more convinced she became that, one way or other, she had been made the butt of a very elaborate practical joke. She didn’t know exactly HOW it was done, by what means these elaborate effects could have been accomplished, nor did she know WHO had done it, but she was positive that it was nothing supernatural. Regardless of how it was done, however, Tiffany had made up her mind that, some day, somehow, she would find out who was responsible…and make that person pay. Big time.