They say a bachelor party is a man’s last night of freedom—a final hurrah before the chains of marriage snap shut for good. Booze, strippers, bad decisions… you know the drill. It’s supposed to be the kind of night legends are made of, the one you vaguely recount to your grandkids in sanitized detail decades later. Unfortunately, that’s the Hollywood version. Most bachelor parties? They end up with cheap beer, a late-night rally at Applebee’s, and a hangover worthy of its own epic poem.

I figured last night would be no different. Just another night of male bonding and drunken amusement.

But I was wrong. So. Damn. Wrong.

Before I go any further, allow me to properly introduce myself. I’m Karlton Hayes. Yeah, I know—it’s not great. Just call me Karl. I’m 36 years old, sniffing at the door of middle age, though I like to think I’m aging better than some of my buddies. I teach creative writing at a small university in Virginia, which is code for “I deal with two dozen frat guys looking for an easy A.” I drive a Honda Civic, eat way too much fast food, and sometimes lie awake at night wondering where it all went wrong.

Physically? Well, I was something of an athlete once upon a time. Played linebacker in college—a solid Division I, too. But that was thirty pounds ago. These days, I’m 6’4” with a build that might’ve once been impressive but now has “dad bod” written all over it. Dirty blond hair that’s always a bit too messy and blue eyes that are bloodshot from late-night grading marathons. The kind of guy you’d pass on the street without a second glance.

But none of that really matters. Not anymore. Because that all went out the window when I woke up this morning surrounded by black-robed lunatics who, promptly and with enthusiasm, murdered me.

Let’s rewind a bit.

Yesterday started innocently enough. I flew into Vegas after a five-hour flight from D.C. By the time I landed, it was pushing 5 a.m., and I was already running on fumes. The flight had been fine, outside of a crying baby and a guy who snored like a chainsaw in the row behind me. I got maybe three hours of sleep, but I’d been awake for almost fifteen hours at that point, sorting through the paperwork for my divorce.

So, when I finally stepped out into the cool desert air, I was in no mood for Vegas nonsense. The strip, despite the hour, pulsed with neon lights and the hum of nightlife. People everywhere, laughing, stumbling, chasing whatever dreams they’d come here for. Me? I just wanted to find a bed and crash. I only had a few hours to sleep before my brother was supposed to pick me up from the hotel.

I checked into a decent enough place—nothing fancy like Caesar’s Palace, where we’d stay for the weekend—and crashed immediately. A few hours later, Erik, my little brother, showed up around noon.

Erik is five years younger and a few inches shorter, with the same dirty blond hair and blue eyes, though somehow he’s the handsome, successful version of me. He moved to L.A., started a tech company, sold it for a boatload of money, and came back east when our dad was diagnosed with stage-four liver cancer. After Dad passed, Erik headed back west and has been living like Bruce Wayne—minus the crime-fighting or brooding psychosis. Of course, all that bachelor glory ended when he met Kera, his fiancée. Beautiful, smart, and genuinely kind-hearted, she’s the kind of woman who could wrangle a guy like Erik.

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We grabbed some food, spent a few hours catching up downtown. It’d been a few months since we’d seen each other, but the last time was for our uncle’s funeral, and we hadn’t had the chance to actually hang out.

From there, we made our way to Caesar’s, where the rest of the crew for the bachelor party was waiting. All told, there were twelve of us: Erik and I, our twin cousins Jamie and Patrick, Kera’s little brother Miles, and seven of Erik’s friends from college and work.

After a few hours of shooting the shit and some casual drinking, we decided it was time to hit Vegas proper. And that’s where things went to shit.

All twelve of us crammed into the back of a limo outfitted with an over-stocked minibar and several mystery packages that I assumed contained some variety of narcotics. Just a guess, of course. You’d have to consult the coroner’s report to be sure.

Several hours—and one too many shots—later, I found myself on my knees at a shitty bar in front of a table covered with pills of every color. “Drug roulette,” Jamie slurred, waving his arms theatrically. “It's a game of chance.”

“Each of us takes a pill, waits for half an hour, and then has to make it back to the hotel by ourselves. No phones, no rides,” he declared with a proud sway. “Old-school navigation. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Erik began, noticeably less drunk than the rest of us. “I just want it on record that this is a terrible idea with at least a 95% chance of going horribly wrong.”

“Noted,” Jamie replied, nodding solemnly before picking a pill and popping it in his mouth. “Overruled.”

“Fuck it,” I grinned, reaching for a blue pill, “what’s the worst that can happen?” And with those legendary last words, I tossed it back with a shot of tequila.

That’s the last clear memory I have. Odds are I keeled over sometime after, but for all I know, I could’ve hung on till morning or choked in one of the Palace’s gorgeous porcelain toilets. Either way, I opened my eyes to a new kind of hell.

It was cold—the kind of cold that makes your nipples feel like they could cut granite—and smelled of mildew, not to mention it was pitch dark. The only light came from a brazier across the room, barely enough to illuminate the half-dozen cloaked figures around me, chanting in a guttural tone that sounded an awful lot like demonic summoning.

What the hell? Are these lunatics performing a ritual on me? I thought as panic surged and I tried to sit up, only to find my body wouldn’t respond. I was trapped inside my own skin, a helpless passenger.

“Ak’tu rak’t de!” The flames surged as their chanting grew louder. A chill gripped me, and I strained against whatever force held me, but nothing worked.

“Ta’k ru k’eth!” The chant reached a fever pitch, and a figure stepped forward, his skin milk-white and eyes blazing red with the expression of a zealot. In his hands was an ivory dagger, raised high as he approached.

I knew he was going to stab me, and I could do nothing but watch in silent horror.

With a final shout, the cultist plunged the dagger down, its cold blade piercing my chest.

A roar unlike any I’ve ever heard shook the room as the cultist’s final words echoed in my mind with sudden and perfect clarity. “Arise, O Father of Demons, Master of the Crimson Host, Lord of the Infernal Realm, and God of Chaos! Arise, Arkus, and reclaim what has been stolen!”

Pain flared as I felt consciousness slip away, plunging me into darkness.