Chapter One: Wild Night Out
Noah woke to screeching. He groaned, fumbling at his bedside table, trying to silence the unholy racket firing from his phone and directly into his abused ears.
Finally, his hand struck gold. Too late though: the drilling, persistent squall had already chased away the last vestiges of sleep.
He dragged the hateful object in front of red rimmed eyes. The front glass was cool and smooth as he jabbed a finger at it and swiped.
“What, dude? Its fucking 7:30,” he grumbled. A burst of laughter answered him.
“Yeah- 7:30 on a Friday, fucker!” His friend Jim was of the opinion that Fridays counted as public holidays.
“I’ve got work in an hour, the fuck do you want?”
“Chill! Hey, Matt’s got a thing on tonight, you down? It’s gonna be a big one!”
Noah sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. He’d known this call would be coming. Or a call like it, at least. They came every weekend.
Or they had been for the last year or so, anyway.
Noah had less than reputable friends. Came with the childhood he’d had. Bouncing around between foster homes, fighting and drinking and fucking and smoking, well before you were old enough for any of it, tended to endear oneself to certain types of people.
His friends were no angels. He wasn’t either.
A year ago he’d gotten sick of it. Sick of couch surfing and getting high. Sick of being hungry. Sick of hating everyone. Sick of hating himself.
He’d meet women, and they’d have fun, and they’d stick around for a while. Until they wised up and saw behind the curtain. He’d get a job, something shit, and fuck around until he stopped turning up or they fired him. Friends would use him until they couldn’t anymore, or he’d use them. Usually both.
He was good at it. Keeping up a veneer of normality. But he was sick of it. He wanted more than a facade. He’d wanted substance.
So he’d found a job. A good job.
In one of his first homes the dad had been a hoarder, had a few computers. Noah had taught himself a lot. It was easier to distract himself with screens than face the reality of his life. It was easy enough, to take those skills, to wriggle into his veneer of normality, and talk his way into an IT job.
It was going well. For the first time in his life he’d had no performance issues. He’d gotten himself a shitty little one bed place. He had a car. He was earning decent money. But that was the catch. In his friends group, money only meant one thing: drugs.
“Come on, man, what’d’ya say?”
Jim’s wheedling voice dripped through the speaker. Noah stared at the cool, reflective black of his phone screen. His feet felt too hot in his bed.
He had to stop this. It wasn’t helping him and it wasn’t helping his friends. He was dog-tired, all the time. Every week he had just a little less gusto for normality. Sooner or later, he’d start fucking up, lose his job. Or someone would OD.
Just say no, he thought. But he knew what his answer was, even though he hated himself for it.
“Okay,” he said.
“Yes! Fuck yeah! Okay, this is gonna be dope! I’ll come meet you at yours at 6, alright? Alright. But can you go meet D after work? We’re all chippin’ in, you can too, right?”
There it was. The hook. The one he’d known was coming.
We’ll get you back. Mike’s got 10, Jess gave 20, Urie’s got 15, Sam and Small’ve got 10… How much you got?
Noah could do the maths. Had done it hundreds of times now. He could put in as much as everyone else and they’d all have fun and be fiending again a few hours later. And they’d end up going back out, and he’d buy more, and it’d be a fucking hassle when he could’ve just gotten enough for everyone to get properly fucked up for the whole weekend to start with.
Some weeks everyone would actually pay him what they said they would. They were the best, but they were still bad. More often than not someone would have forgotten the cash. Or bought pizza or beer for everyone. Or just plain didn’t have it.
So like every weekend, he’d pay more than his share. He knew he was being taken advantage of, that he was transforming from a friend to a wallet. He knew they appreciated the extra. He knew they resented him for having more though, too. That they felt like he owed it to them. Like they were entitled to it.
Noah wasn’t sure what to do about it. He resented himself most of the time, too. And their lives hadn’t been any easier than his. He was supposed to help out, now that he had it better. Wasn’t he?
It didn’t matter. He’d taken the bait, and he’d known full well the hook was there.
“Yeah, okay. See you then, dude.” He paused. “Looking forward to it.”
“Yes! I knew you’d come through for us bro! You’re the fucking man, you know that! Some kind of, of fucking superstar, for real! Lemme call you back, I gotta tell Urie! Oh fuck, Mike’s gonna be so happy…” he trailed off, and the call ended with a synthetic click. The hum of his dinky refrigerator filled the new silence.
Noah slumped back onto his bed, defeated and victorious. He hated that he let himself be taken advantage of, but he loved his friends. He loved getting high too. He knew they weren’t good for him, but they were fun. What was life if it wasn’t fun?
He couldn’t blame his friends. It was his fault really. He was weak. If he was strong he’d just say no, wouldn’t he?
Disgust wormed around in his belly as he thought of how little money he’d have until payday. How he’d have to go without. How he’d have to ration his petrol, his food. Shame rained down lightly on the worm.
He sighed again. There was no point worrying about it now.
Cat’s out of the bag. I’ll just have to get high as fuck and forget about it, he thought derisively.
Just like that, excitement began bubbling in his navel, invigorating and insidious. It didn’t remove the disgust, the resentment, or the self-loathing, just made it easier to ignore it, but Noah didn’t care.
Anything was better than confronting it.
He dragged himself out of bed and into his tiny shower. He pulled on some presentable clothes. Jumped in his shitbox car and drove to work. He stopped on the way for a coffee and a bagel, of course. He’d need to eat well today. He probably wouldn’t eat again til Monday.
Noah chafed at his desk, as if it were a chain tethering him to boredom. He was Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a boulder. Sunlight poured through the window, slow and golden, rotating gradually around him as the day slipped by.
Coworkers stopped by, blathering inanities at him. Emails filed into his inbox in a steady trickle. Periodically he made his way to one coworker’s desk or another’s, regurgitating the same trite garbage that they vomited at him as he fixed their issues.
It all just seemed so …banal.
His heart gave a small thrill of excitement as his phone buzzed on the desk beside him. He tipped it towards him to check the message.
5. MEET AT THE MART AT 5.15.
The thrill rose to a thrum. He opened his messages with Jim.
D’S IN. MEETING AFTER WORK. SEE YOU AT 6.
He got an exuberant reply almost immediately. He knew Jim would be waiting around all day, hyping himself and everyone else up for the party. Hopefully he was taking care of logistics. If he was gonna shout drugs for all his friends the last thing he wanted to do was fuck around buying papers and lighters and straws.
If he got there and no one had thought ahead, he wasn’t going out again. Not like last time. Or the time before. Shame burned inside him.
Fuck it, he thought. Maybe I'll get some while I'm at Walmart, just in case.
His pride itched at the notion. Better than going back out again, he thought. Better than missing out. I’ll just get the supplies too. That way it doesn’t matter. That way we’re all ready.
Excitement swelled and swallowed the shame and disgust and resentment again. That particular soup was sour, but he’d had plenty of time to acquire a taste for it. As the clock drained away to five he drank deep of it. When he finally stepped out the door he felt like he was floating.
His shitbox putterred its way down the block on the way to meet with D. His window clattered in its frame as he bumped into the giant box store car park. The exhaust rattled as he pulled into a parking spot right at the back of the lot. The engine gave a sad clunk as he turned it off.
Noah fingered the cash in his wallet as he waited. He had plenty. He’d just been paid. He checked the time, 5:06. Right on cue, he heard perhaps the only car in the city in a worse condition than his own coming up the block.
He jumped out as D pulled up in the park next to him, his car giving a relieved sputter as it came to a stop. He hopped in the passenger side as the engine stalled and died.
“Sup Noah, what’s good?” D was a scrawny white dude who was constantly paranoid and tweaking and most definitely should not have been selling, but he always had good stuff and he was always in. Noah preferred not to think too hard about how he got his supply.
“Oh, you know, dude, yourself?” Noah fidgeted with a shirt button, keen to get the same old tired pleasantries over with already.
“Yeah man, you know how it goes.” D rummaged around underneath his seat and came up with a ratty bag. He fished around in it. “What you after?”
"Two eights, some molly, and ten tabs, if you've got them." The usual, more or less.
D pulled out small powder filled bags as Noah spoke, lining them up between his fingers. “Don’t worry bro, I got you, I got you.” He finished fossicking in the ratty backpack, pulling out a small square of cardboard, squinting at it before ripping a few pieces off, then sliding it into a new bag. “You need any weed?”
“Nah man, still got some from last time,” Noah said. They didn’t burn through it as fast these days now that they’d moved up to harder stuff.
“Cool, cool. Hey, you want any drip? Just got some in. It’s good shiiit…”
Noah hesitated. He’d heard about drip, the latest designer drug doing the rounds. Bit of a lucy, bit of a disso. Kind of like K, but weirder. Supposedly. He hadn’t tried any yet. Jim had done some a month or so ago and hadn’t stopped raving about it since.
“Yeah alright, how much for a bag?”
“200.”
“Bet.” D handed him a small bag of white powder. It had a faint purple sheen when Noah looked at it more closely.
“It’s good shit man, you won’t regret it,” D assured him. Noah nodded. D would say that regardless. He dapped him and got out of the car.
D’s car peeled out of the lot in a plume of smoke. The excitement in his stomach built to a fever pitch as he thought about how excited everyone else would be. He stuffed the goods in his glovebox and shot across the carpark and into the box store. He stocked up on lighters, papers, and straws and grabbed a couple bags of chips while he was in there for good measure.
He closed his car door with a sense of finality. He jammed his key in the ignition but froze before he turned it. His phone was ringing. Jim again.
“Jim, the fuck do you want?” Noah said happily.
“Hey, fuck you too! Just checking up to see how it’s all going…?” The anticipation in his voice was so close to naked need that it was embarrassing. If you hadn't been there yourself, of course.
“Got it,” he said simply. Several seconds of excited noises trumpeted from the phone.
“Yes! Fuck yes! We’re getting on! Tonight’s gonna be wild!” He crashed around for a few more moments before coming back to the phone, a little breathless. “Hey, Noah, you think you could grab some booze on the way?”
Noah paused. Anger struck an obtuse chord to his excitement. “What the fuck, Jim!? Get your own fucking booze!”
“Aw come on, man! Just this once. I’ll get you back when you get here alright -wait, hold on.” His voice became distant. “Small’s asking if you can get some for him too. And, wait-” Another interruption. “Yeah, Jess wants vodka.”
“-Jim. Jim!” Noah broke in. “Fuck no! I’m not doing it. Go to the liquor store now. You guys have heaps of time!”
“Aw come on, Noah!” Jim wheedled. “You’re already at the store, aren’t you? Come ooon, we’ll get you back! We’re good for it, you know we are!”
Noah didn’t know anything of the sort. In fact, he knew that if they were already whining for him to buy alcohol for him then he almost definitely wouldn’t be seeing any money for the rest of it.
Anger roiled in his gut. He needed to put a stop to it. It was getting worse. He berated himself for buying the drip.
And then just as suddenly as it had come, the fight went out of him, like a candle flame snuffed by a cold wind. Without the righteous anger buttressing him, Noah’s body slackened and he slumped in his seat.
Despair rose in him, and shame followed, nipping at his heels. He recoiled from the feeling, began repeating the same tired old affirmations, trying desperately to banish the awful feelings snaking into him.
With effort, he managed to drag excitement over the shame and disgust and despair, throwing it over them like a bright quilt tossed over a mouldy, stained couch.
“Yeah, alright,” he said at length. “You guys better get me back though.”
“Of course dude! Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you square. Hey, see you at 6, right?”
“Yeah, 6. See you then.”
Noah could hear the sounds of jubilation for a brief moment before he hung up. A final flash of anger flared in him and guttered out just as quick. He heaved another great sigh, climbed out of his shitty car, and wandered back into the store to buy booze.
He returned to his car with more alcohol than they’d asked for. He spent the drive home hoping everyone would be grateful, at least.
Noah parked in front of his place, a single story house connected on each side to its neighbours. The neighbourhood was decent. Not much crime, and the roads were in good repair. There was a strip mall a five minute drive away, and it only took him fifteen minutes to get to work. There was a big apartment block right across the street, which kinda sucked, but there was a park on either side of it, which was kind of nice. They let non-residents use the gym downstairs too. That was one habit he didn't want to fall out of, even if he no longer needed the gym for showers.
All in all, Noah was pretty happy to live there. He tried not to think too much about being homeless again.
He took a quick shower and changed into comfier clothes. He doubted they’d be going to any bars or clubs. Then he heated up some ramen, intent on lining his stomach with as much grease as possible in case he didn’t eat for two days. He grabbed a loose beer from his fridge to start him off.
He checked the time as he soldiered through the noodles. 5:30. Still half an hour. The drugs stared at him from the table, demanding his attention. He picked up the bag of drip.
The faint purple sheen shimmered gently in the dim light of the dusk. He had yet to turn on the lights. He popped the bag and sniffed it. It smelled odd: dusty and flat.
I could do a wee line now… A trill of anticipation fluttered through him at the thought. He stared at the bag a minute longer.
He made the decision. None of his friends would know, and they owed him anyway.
He tapped out a tiny pile on his rickety coffee table and scraped it into a line with a shitty swipe card he still had from one of his old jobs. The line was bigger than he intended. He wasn’t sorry in the least. He poked around in his wallet til he came up with an old straw.
He knelt before his coffee table, reverent.
Then he snorted it in one swift, practised motion.
Noah gasped, recoiling, pinching the bridge of his nose and blinking tears from his eyes as he sank back into his recliner.
He tipped his head back and took a deep breath, trying to relax his sinuses. His face felt like it was vibrating. His ceiling looked like it was vibrating. He couldn’t tell whether his ceiling was vibrating. The drip was good.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He grinned and laughed as the colours in the room shifted, deepening, and becoming more purple. Then his chair jolted. It felt like it’d dropped a foot. His hands gripped the armrests, white skin standing out along his knuckles.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins. Was it an earthquake? It definitely wasn’t the drugs. He tensed, readying to push himself to standing, but then cocked his head as he heard a faint, strange noise.
It was a grinding. No, a rumbling. Or was it both? As he listened it deepened, grew, enveloped him. It was a bass note being struck on some heavenly guitar, the synthetic screech of an alien spaceship landing, the purring of some primordial beast stirring from its slumber.
Noah watched as dust motes danced in the light of dusk sunbeams, strangely unafraid of the terrific, all-consuming noise. But why would dust be afraid? Should he be afraid? He wasn't.
The light was thin and insubstantial, cast in golden rays across the dim room. His vision twisted, and his mind with it, and suddenly it seemed he was a dust mote in a dusky sunbeam, teetering into the gloom like a toddler wandering into a forest.
The chair kept vibrating, and the house was vibrating, and Noah was vibrating, and everything was. His skin crawled with pins and needles, and they built and built, creeping up his back, building to a not-quite-painful crescendo at the base of his skull.
He gasped, and it felt like the last breath the world would take.
Or maybe the first.
For an instant, he became incandescent. And then all became black.
In the corner of the room, not unlike a dust mote itself, a ball of white light winked into existence.
~~~~~
Bass thumped and warbled, providing a melodic backdrop to the discordant sounds of city nightlife. Glass clinking, excited screeching and boisterous yelling, car horns and car doors, and the unending babble of hundreds of conversations all ran over one another like oil paints thrown in a bucket.
Greedy throats swallowed down alcohol to ward off the autumn chill, only to regurgitate plumes of vapour and smoke. Vacant eyes drifted through the crowds, the sluggish minds they were attached to lagging behind them. Pretension hung in the air like perfume. Animal natures lurked beneath it all, restrained, but only just. Inhibition was a thin leash here.
The sounds and smells and sights all crammed into a few blocks of tangled alleyways, bars sandwiched into every available inch of space and then some. It was a chaotic mess at the best of times. Fridays though? They were an entirely different beast.
Piper was already regretting allowing her friends to drag her out. This wasn’t her scene. She was crushed into an outdoor bar area adjoining one of the main alleyways. People flowed past in fits and spurts, stumbling and cackling on the other side of the railing. She couldn’t wait to go home. But she had been working hard lately, and she had just passed her second year exams. How else did a mid-twenties nursing student have fun? It wasn’t like she was into candle-making or knitting.
When your friends got all excited and invited you out and made a big production of everything you were supposed to just buy into the hype and go, right? Besides, she did have one hobby she could practise on a night out.
She liked to think of it as a hobby, anyway. It made it feel less like a crime.
She dragged her mind back into the moment, to the bald, brawny, boorish man leering at her from well within her personal space as he trotted out the usual shitty lines.
“-I told them no, though. Not enough money for me to make the sale,” he drawled, affecting nonchalance.
Piper made appropriate cooing noises at the large man. It was all his type ever wanted to hear really. She sipped at her drink and made eyes at him over the rim of the glass.
He’d spent the last twenty minutes telling her all about how awesome and rich and muscly and cool he was in every subtle and oblique way he could. Subtle if you were blind, and oblique if you were a bit slow, that is. Which, to be fair to the giant ham of a man, he probably thought she was.
Still, she ad libbed perfectly, making big round eyes at his allusions to his own impressiveness, and manoeuvred herself, bit by suggestive bit, closer and closer to him. His overly-sweet cologne didn’t quite cover the rank smell of his body odour. She endured it while he told her all about the security company he ran and how many other meatheads he employed. In a masterful display of shamelessness, he tweaked the lapel of the fine coat straining across his chest to draw attention to the brand on it while simultaneously letting his sleeve fall just enough to reveal a Rolex strapped about a beefy forearm.
Piper groaned internally. Of course the fuckface was a bouncer. But to Fuckface she said, “Omg that is, like, so cool! Could you get us into, like, any club here?”
Fuckface leaned back and gave her a little smirk. “Of course I could. All the bouncers on these doors work for me.” Piper let her eyes go wide and her mouth make a little moue of astonishment. Fuckface’s eyes trailed slowly up and down her body. “But I’d prefer to get into you.”
Piper giggled to cover her gag reflex.
“I want another drink,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and producing his wallet. He thumbed it open, flashing a frankly ridiculous amount of cash. He peeled off a few twenties. “Be a sweetheart and grab us one, will you?”
He handed her the cash. “Whiskey,” he said, pointing at her. Then he grabbed her hip and drew her close. His breath stank of spirits and mint as he breathed in her ear. “Get yourself another too. We’re gonna have some fun tonight.”
Piper doubted she’d ever heard a more revolting line dripping from a more revolting excuse of a person. And she'd done this plenty of times. But she smiled prettily and leaned close as he grabbed her and ran a sultry finger down his back.
“I can’t wait,” she said breathlessly, playing up her vocal fry. Then she gave a playful giggle and drained her drink, then tottered off to the bar. Fuckface leaned back against the wall behind him, a smug grin plastered on his face. His eyes tracked every woman that walked past down the alleyway.
Piper shuddered as she navigated the narrow entryway to the bar itself. She felt like she did when she left the room after handling a patient with an infectious disease. The situations probably weren't that different, now that she thought about it.
The music increased in volume until she couldn’t hear the people shouting at each other right next to her. People bumped into her, pressed against her, slid past. She wiggled, adept at this style of navigation, and flowed through the crowd like a fish.
Instead of heading for the bar, she made for the other side of the room. There, she squeezed through another crush at the side entrance until she found herself suddenly expelled like a pistachio shell rejected by a mouth.
Piper blinked, relishing the feeling of freedom that came with the return of her personal space. People streamed past in both directions, but she was no longer shoulder to shoulder. She looked up and down the alley, trying to decide which way to go. Which way had her friends gone? And did she want to go that way?
Eventually she chose right, and started walking. Vicious glee bubbled in her stomach as she thought of Fuckface waiting around for her. It boiled over into unadulterated excitement as she slipped his wallet out of her dress.
Stupid fuck, she hummed to herself as she discreetly removed the cash and slipped it into her bra. She knew lifting that dress would come in handy. Not only was it designer, but it had pockets. So much easier to get away with things. It was worth every second she'd spent befriending the snooty Karen who ran the store.
Shame budded in her gut but she crushed it before it could flower. Fuck her, she thought. And fuck that Fuckface. They had it coming. But did they?
She didn't need to steal. She’d only ever done it to feed her family, to help clothe them, to get them Christmas presents. She’d always hated doing it, even for them. It made her insanely anxious. Just less anxious than watching her siblings starve.
But no one was relying on her for it anymore. There was just her now. And she was still stealing.
And still telling herself she hated it.
She liked to think that it made her feel close to them again, like it was the old days, bad as they were. That was when she thought about it at all. She shook her head, trying to clear away the thoughts.
She slid Fuckface's empty wallet into a potted plant as she walked past. She needed the cash more than he did. There were thousands there -at least.
She thought about how long it would’ve fed her family for. Months, easily. It would feed her for even longer, now. She could put some towards her tuition, and she’d need some new sneakers soon. She was sure Chloe had mentioned being behind on rent, too. She decided to slip her some.
She was idly wondering whether she should have tried lifting Fuckface's Rolex too when an excited shriek broke her from her reverie. Within moments she was enclosed by a flock of drunk women.
"Piper! You fucking slut!” her friend Kira shouted, waving her arms at Piper like one of those parking lot tubemen. “Where were you! You went to meet what's-his-dick from Pharmacology, didn't you!? Or was it that beefcake from soccer?"
Piper automatically reeled off an appropriately scandalous answer. She was good at that: saying what people wanted to hear. Being what they expected her to be. She was so good at it that some days she didn't even know who she was.
She must have passed the test. "OMG just fuck one of them already and get it over with!" her little brunette friend Chloe screeched.
Their ringleader, June, who was blonder and taller and skinnier than Piper, grabbed her by the arm. "Come on, you slut! We're going to the Mezz!"
She started dragging Piper with her, and all the little ducklings dutifully trailed along in her wake.
Piper sighed internally. She couldn’t understand how the girls enjoyed this. She wondered why she even hung out with them. She levelled a mental glare at June’s sculpted back.
Still, she let herself be towed along. Better vapid friends than no friends. She marvelled at the sort of frivolous people that normal childhoods produced.
Piper had known moving to a college town would be an adjustment, in that she’d always felt out of place dealing with well-adjusted people. Extroverted or introverted, rich or poor, male or female, anyone who hadn’t grown up with the pressures she had always just seemed so… asinine.
Not that that made them bad people. They just seemed insubstantial. She couldn’t relate.
But she also couldn’t avoid society. It was too hard to come back when you strayed down that path. She’d seen it happen.
She figured if she had to participate, she may as well do something good. It was what her family would’ve wanted. Her siblings, anyway. She doubted her parents would give a fuck whether she studied nursing or not.
Not that she gave a fuck what they’d think about it.
Her boring, basic friends whooped and yelled nonsense as they flounced past the bouncers into Mezz. Piper gave one of them a wink and a grin as she passed.
Bass rolled over them as they entered. Dimness relieved only in bursts of synthetic light enveloped them. Shadowy figures flashed back and forth.
The beat began to creep inside her, and for once in her life, Piper found herself not wanting to be in control.
“Shots on me!” she screamed at her friends, throwing a hand in the air. Their answering cheer made her feel good. They weren’t so bad. When she was drunk, anyway.
She led them to the bar, taking over from June, and bought four shots of sambuca. Then another four of tequila. Not to be outdone, June bought them a round of everclear.
Piper was feeling good. Her head was spinning just enough. Her cheeks felt warm and her arms felt pleasantly numb. Her friends were here, and they suddenly didn’t seem quite so awful. Life didn’t seem quite so mundane, not when it was going this fast.
Fuck the world, Piper thought. She wanted to dance.
Moments or minutes or hours later she was spinning around the dancefloor. Shadows moved around her. People bumped into her. Danced with her. Her friends? They were there somewhere. She caught flashes of their faces nearby every so often. The music shook her body, invaded her mind. She was part of it. She was free.
Suddenly a stray thought struck her. How long had she been there? And why was time going so quick and so slow and so… weird?
Her mind spun in circles trying to catch up to her intuition. Why did she feel so drunk? She was definitely drunk, but she felt absolutely hammered. How?
Anger and fright mixed in her, a volatile storm. Fuck.
Her head whipped about, wild, as she tried to locate her friends. She found them, eventually, a few paces off. She took a step, opening her mouth to shout into June’s ear. The bass thumped. She looked past her. And outside, talking to the bouncers on the door, was Fuckface.
She had needed him to be a fool to rob him. It was easier that way. She didn’t feel as bad when she cast her marks as immoral. And he truly was a lech and a boor, and him trying to act smooth had only made him seem more foolish. But a bull will look strange if you put it in a sheep costume.
Fuckface looked mad. Furious. His eyes were black. All of a sudden he was no longer a harmless, muscly braggart. Now he looked like what he was: a vicious, calculating thug.
She had robbed him. Played him for a fool. And now he was stalking towards her through the dark.
Piper panicked. She cast about for her friends, and saw immediately that they had witnessed the silent exchange. But they’d taken the complete wrong conclusion from it. They hooted and whistled at her, calling at her to fuck him, castigating her for sneaking off to seduce some musclebound rich dude.
She turned and fled. The Mezz only had one entrance, but there were toilets. She pushed into a crowded back hallway, frantic, and shouldered her way into the women’s restroom. Her luck was in, and someone tottered out of a stall just as she burst into the room. The drunk girl gave her a strange look as she barged past and locked herself in the stall with shaking hands. Not a moment later she heard the door again, followed by indignant yelling.
“Hey, what the fuck are you doing, you creep!?”
“This is the ladies’! Get out!”
“You’ll get the FUCK out of here if you know what’s good for you!” Fuckface’s voice, followed by a meaty slap and a pained squeal. Piper let out an involuntary gasp and backed up against the toilet.
“You fucking psycho! You broke her nose! We’re gonna fucking sue you!”
“Get. OUT!” Was the only reply. The sound of the door closing again floated through the room. There was silence, of a sort. Music still hummed through the walls from the speakers. Several terrified sets of high breathing could be heard from the stalls. And one loud, low, angry huffing from outside them.
“If you don’t know who I am, then I want nothing to do with you. Leave. Now,” he growled.
There was a pregnant pause. Then a stall door quavered open.
“Go,” came the quiet command. The bathroom door swung again.
That started an exodus, and soon the bathroom was empty. Piper cringed as the sound of heavy, rage-filled breath squared up outside her stall.
“You fucking bitch,” he snarled at her. “You thought you could fucking rob me!? ME?!”
Suddenly, there was an explosion of noise. Her stall door shuddered and jolted in its frame as Fuckface pounded on it with his fists, cursing incoherently. Piper closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, pushed herself as far away from the door as she could, hoping this would all just stop.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck why did I drink so much why did I have to fucking rob him fuck why didn’t my stupid fucking friends see something was wrong fuckfuckFUCK!
Her head was swimming and her hands were shaking and her stomach was a pained knot of cold, sharp fear.
A bass note from the club suddenly distorted, grinding out unnaturally long. It trailed off, the note, the rest of the music, the sounds of dancing and drinking and debauchery too. Then true silence fell. Just for a heartbeat.
Then the same grinding, overwhelming loud bass note pounded through the air again.
It trailed off once more, but this time, as it did, a rumbling joined it, a crumbly, cascading sound like a cliffside collapsing into a lake, growing in volume, surging against her ears, shaking her body. Piper clapped her hands to her ears, sure that blood must be flowing between her fingers, running in rivulets to pool at her feet.
Piper’s body flashed cold, colder still, until it seemed her bones must be ice and her skin must be frost. Her eyes were still screwed shut, but the ground swam beneath her feet, upsetting her balance and her stomach both. Her stomach gave way before her legs did.
Crouched on the floor of the cubicle, her body ejected a stream of foulness far larger than it should have been able to contain. Hot, wet ejecta poured from her in an unending torrent. She felt like she was covered in it, like the entire bathroom should have filled, like she should have been swept away. Her stomach was an ocean of muck, emptying through her mouth.
And then as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
Piper blinked bleary eyes, her mind running over her physical condition like a tongue over a missing tooth. She felt better. Much better even. She was energised. Her head was clearer. Still was still tipsy, but not on the verge of passing out like she had been.
What the fuck was that? What the fuck did he drug me with? Was that drugs? It felt like a fucking earthquake.
She stood, expecting to find her legs shaky beneath her, and was surprised when they were sturdy. She noted the modest puddle of vomit at her feet, noticed that she had somehow managed not to get any on herself. She was glad that her shoes weren’t ruined. It had taken her a month to work up the courage to steal them.
She blinked, puzzled. How the fuck… A brief, horrifying memory of an ending stream of puke flashed through her mind. She recoiled from it. There was no way a human could possibly vomit that much. No way ten people could. A hundred even.
She noticed the pounding on the door had stopped. Then she noticed the music had stopped. There was no sound of a crowd, no bass, no talking, shouting, drinking, moving.
She looked around the stall, touching the walls, trying to assure herself of the certainty of the reality around her. The tiles felt smooth and cold under her shaking hands. She turned, and a warped, golden ball of light hung directly behind her.
She screamed and fumbled at the door to the stall, desperate to get away from the thing. After a frantic moment, she flung it open and then immediately jumped back in fright. Fuckface was slumped on the floor, unconscious.
She reached out and gingerly poked him with her toe, holding her breath. He remained still. She let out a deep breath. At that moment, he stirred, moaning, pawing at the ground about himself.
Another involuntary shriek escaped her and she rushed towards the door. She crashed through the corridor to the bar and burst onto the dancefloor.
There she stood, shocked, trying to take in everything in front of her.
People lay in untidy heaps, collapsed on the floor. Some stirred weakly, waking from whatever stupor they were in. Tables were tipped over, chairs strewn about. The lights flickered weakly.
What the fuck? What’s happening? Earthquake? A chemical weapon attack?
Her mind spun through possibilities but none of them made sense. The entire situation was utterly unreal. She looked up from the pile of bodies, and her mind went blank. Except for the stream of confused, panicked profanities.
There was a gaping hole where the front of the club was. Where there was once an entire wall, and a sectioned off outdoor area beyond, and another full block full of bars and clubs and people beyond that, now there was… a peaceful looking forest glade.
She couldn’t comprehend it. Fireflies danced in ethereal moonbeams. Flowers, halogen-vivid, swayed in a gentle breeze. The wall of the club was cut, as if by some heavenly razor, straight and thin and seemingly in an utterly random place.
It was as if some fantasy world had been poorly rendered into their own. As if some divine power had scooped a chunk of downtown away and replaced it, oh so carefully, with some alien landscape. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
A shout from the glade drew her attention. Piper found herself moving forward. She peered out at the glade. It was surrounded by behemoth trees, far taller than any she had ever seen, stretching off into the gloom. Off to both sides she could see where fairy light-strung alleys began again between trunks. There was another strangled grunt. She stepped cautiously around a deep green bush laden with softly glowing yellow berries.
One of the bouncers that had been working the door was grappling with a pale creature. It was humanoid, and much thinner than the brawny bouncer, but seemed to be holding its own in a direct contest of strength.
She caught a glimpse of metal between them, and the creature let out a vicious hiss. Then, suddenly, it collapsed to the ground. A pool of wetness gathered around it, shining darkly in the moonlight. She could see a pointed ear sticking through hair like burnished copper.
Is that a fucking elf? Have I gone completely insane?
The bouncer stood, holding the bizarre, elegant sword in front of him, looking at it with wide eyes as if he didnt know how it had gotten there. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” the man was muttering to himself desperately under his breath.
“Hello?” she called tentatively.
The bouncer jerked, turning to her. Then something else caught his attention. He began ducking around the place as if trying to avoid a swooping bird, flailing about himself with the elegant sword.
Piper recoiled from the wild length of steel, trying to put distance between them, trying to return to the bar, where at least some things were normal. She backed into something behind her.
A hand clamped around her mouth and arm.
“Got you, you fucking bitch,” Fuckface breathed in her ear. He spoke over top of her to the panicked bouncer. “William! What the fuck are you doing…?”