September 17 - The Retreat

Mikkelson waved them off, but they refilled his drink anyway. It had been that way for the last few rounds and all four of them--Mikkelson and his three superiors in the biochemistry department--were drunk to begin with. It was customary to haze the new professors of the biochemistry department and Mikkelson was no exception.
The men had booked the mountain lodge their university often used for team-building weekends and department retreats. And since they only had two nights to cram in a week's worth of drinking (and hazing), they hit the sauce hard from the beginning: a few doubles of 20-year-old Scotch apiece before dinner, six bottles of red and two of white with dinner, a bottle of brandy afterwards, followed by whisky.
Mikkelson pleaded with them to take it easy on him, that he had a low tolerance for alcohol, but once the party was in full swing, his entreaties only caused them to make him drink more. It had started out pleasantly, but by the end it was like a vicious fraternity hazing. Forced drinking, razzing, heckling, and more forced drinking. At two in the morning, they finally let him stumble to his room.
The next morning, after he didn't show up for breakfast, the other professors went to check on him. He was dead.
Whereupon they panicked.
Stories of the senior professors in their department hazing their subordinates were well-known. Any autopsy on Mikkelson would turn up an obscene blood alcohol content and from there it would be an easy jump to pinning his death on them. At the very least, they would be charged with involuntary manslaughter, possibly worse. There would be a trial, dismissal from the university, prison time.
Therefore, the men decided, telling the truth was out of the question.
That left a cover up as the only other option.
The men stashed the body in the bathtub and then filled it with ice and snow so it wouldn't decompose during the day.
That night they carried him out to the woods to feed him to the bears.
But they needed something to draw the bears to him with, so they stuffed his pockets with huckleberries and put a big bag of huckleberries next to him, as everybody in that area knew that bears were drawn to huckleberries like bees to honey.
They propped his body up against a tree. Then they smeared his face and hands with huckleberries, found a safe spot to sit and wait for a bear to come along, and fell asleep.
They woke up the next morning and the body was gone.
No signs of mastication. No blood, no bones, no nothing.
Not only that, but during the night none of them had heard anything bear-like. No grunts, snorts, or anything.
Hmm.
There was no body.
But there was also no evidence that the body had been eaten.
Hmm.
If the bear had eaten Mikkelson, wouldn't one of them had heard or seen something? Wouldn't there have been some proof other than the absence of the body?
But if the bear hadn't eaten him, then surely something had happened to him because he was dead when they put him down and when they woke up he was gone. And he couldn't have just walked away.
Right?
In the end they decided that something had eaten him, and so back they went to the cabin feeling 92% sure that Mikkelson was gone and wouldn't come back to haunt them, at least not in the murder rap sense.
And in that sense, they were right. There was no forensic evidence, no smoking guns, no other witnesses. They called the police on Sunday to report that Mikkelson was missing. He had gone out for a walk in the middle of the night and never come back. Didn't say where he was going, just left.
Shrugs all around when the police asked follow-up questions, and it was an easy story to keep straight because it was so simple.
The professors went back to their university and life returned to normal for them. They kept waiting for the axe to fall, but it never did. It seemed that they were going to get away with it.
It seemed like they were going to get off scot-free. However, there was one problem: Mikkelson hadn't actually died.
While pursuing his PhD, Mikkelson had done extensive field work in Haiti, doing research into the biochemical properties of local medicines used in voodoo rituals, most notably Quintrillim, the so-called zombie drug, which greatly slowed the heartbeat and breathing of those who took it causing them to appear to be dead. Although memories of what was happening to them while under the influence of Quintrillim would sometimes surface days, weeks, or even months later, (leading Mikkelson to speculate that people were aware of their surroundings on some level while on Quintrillim), while they were under the influence of Quintrillim, to most observers they would be dead.
They would regain consciousness several hours later to discover that they were on their feet (and in fact had been for hours) wandering around aimlessly like zombies. After a few more hours had passed, they would return to normal.
The clinical potential of Quintrillim was boundless. However, the use of Quintrillim that Mikkelson was most interested in was as an excellent hangover cure.
He had taken Quintrillim at the end of his epic drinking bout with the professors, but he had taken way too much of it. As a result, his every body function slowed to the point where it looked like he was dead, even to highly experienced scientists.
And he stayed that way until the middle of the next night. After the other three professors had fallen asleep, he had risen and started walking randomly, doing it so quietly that he didn't wake any of the others.
By the time the Quintrillim had worn off, he was a few miles away from their cabin and covered in huckleberries. And the memories of what had happened to him earlier in the weekend came bubbling up from his subconscious as soon as he started speculating on why he would be in the middle of the woods and covered with huckleberries, a known favorite of bears.
All the pieces fell together quickly for Mikkelson. His colleagues had meant for him to be mauled to death and eaten by bears.
Mikkelson was none too pleased.
He escaped into the woods and planned his revenge.
Murder was tempting, but he wasn't a violent man.
Scaring the hell out of them might be fun, but ultimately it wouldn't mean anything.
No.
Humiliation was the answer.
Knowing the other three professors all had savagely unorthodox sexual appetites, he contacted a high end dominatrix to set up a fetish orgy for his erstwhile superiors. The men were sent invitations from an "old friend" and Mikkelson peppered the invitations with enough clues and hints to turn trying to figure out who it was into a parlor game for them.
The trap was set, the men showed up, and the party proceeded.
At the end of the night, the dominatrix slipped the men Quintrillim and they went under. Then, Mikkelson and the dominatrix shaved their heads into mohawks, dressed them up in fetish wear and make-up, and dropped them off on the campus grounds, which is where they were discovered wandering around like zombies the next morning.
They were put on leave without pay pending an ethics and conduct investigation.
Mikkelson resurfaced a week later, and in his former colleagues' absence, was immediately promoted to head of the biochemistry department.
To this day, he continues the tradition of taking new professors to the cabin for a welcoming retreat, but the hazing rituals are long since finished. Now anytime anyone says they've had enough to drink, Mikkelson accepts that and offers them tea instead.