Crystal breathed in the scent of sweat and perfume in the line of people at the door. She wore hot pants with a Pink Floyd t-shirt, barely any makeup and plain sneakers, all together it was relatively tame compared to what other girls were wearing, but of course it just made her stand out more. Everyone was more excited than usual, there was this… energy in the air that she couldn’t describe. A shiver went down her spine, she swore she heard something snap, but after checking, there were no wardrobe malfunctions that she could find.
Max, his girlfriend May, and Jon, a “mutual” friend, stood with her in line, each one as equally distracting. Max being tall and beaming, May being a small yet ferocious beauty, the look in her eye said, “mess with me or my man, I dare you”, and Jon being the dark-skinned joker who made everyone laugh. They were a bit late because of Jon doing community service after a professor caught him putting a vial of skunk urine in the computer labs air conditioner.
She shivered, “Hey, do you guys feel anything weird? I’m getting this feeling that something is, well, not right.”
Jon looked at her and shook his head, “Are you trying to get me back for that time I put a squirrel in your mailbox? I told you that it was meant for either your dad or your brother, I never saw you get the mail before and I already apologized a thousand times.”
Max and May looked at Jon accusingly, “Anyone would have trust issues for doing that, but I don’t feel anything weird. In fact, the atmosphere seems to be really hyped up,” Max said, observing the crowd ahead of them.
“She’s not wrong,” a low, gruff voice piped up behind them. “This place is not the safest place to be, especially tonight. Staying home and marathoning Game of Thrones or Rick and Morty sounds pretty good right about now.” A tall man, taller than even Max, with the right amount of bulk to go along with him, Crystal noted to herself, stood in line behind them. A dark-red leather jacket over a simple white t-shirt contrasted against a black beard, he wasn’t looking at them but rather scanned ahead of the crowd with his hands in his pockets, as if looking for someone with those calf-brown eyes.
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Max stepped forward, she could see that this was one of the first times in a while he had to actually look up at someone, “Do you mind?” he started, “Butting into a conversation is rude as shit. We’re here to have fun just like you so how about we don’t take this any further along than it has to okay buddy?” What the fuck? Max is… well he’s like that when it comes to May, but even considering that… Crystal flagged this in her head as another strange anomaly of the night.
Max smiled, but the stranger just looked at him and sighed, was that… pity? “I am here on business, not pleasure. If I was here for pleasure then that would be a very bad omen indeed,” Crystal shivered, not from the cold, or the weird feeling she was getting from Forsaken, but the similarity to the last words she heard from her mother. Before she died while investigating a murder at the local warehouse company, she had overheard her mother telling her boss something similar all those years ago, ‘Going for the business, not the pleasure. If there is pleasure to be found, then there is some deep shit going down’. The man looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, don’t worry, they don’t usually like loud places,” He said.
This time Jon piped in, “Being funny is MY thing tall boy, so how about yo-”
the man turned his gaze to Jon who stopped mid-sentence. “I wasn’t being funny,” and once again he turned his head to the crowd. Speechless, all they could do was turn and wait, listening to the bustling crowd.