He stumbled down the street under the rosy sky and saw a door that reminded him he was looking for one. It was a bright red door in a blinding whitewashed wall and he thought he was supposed to go through it. He lurched up and pounded it with his forearm until it opened. There was someone in the doorway with a face that he couldn’t make out but knew he knew. He had been right. “Come in,” said the person and smiled. He stepped into the doorstep and almost went flying but then arms came out and steadied him. There were other people inside, a big tumble of voices that were laughing and the clinking of bottles. This was where he had been going. He muttered something to the person at the door and then he was in a big room where the voices were louder. There were lots of people there and some cheered and he knew he was where he should be. There was a big long brown table in the middle which he found with his leg with a big mess of glass and paper on it and he looked over the table and finally saw someone he could make out. It was Sarah who he had been to college with and he always liked her but they never fucked but this was the night. He tried to remember when college had been and it could have been last week or yesterday or ten years ago and he smiled instead. Sarah flashed it back and handed him something clear over the table. It was a long glass that he clasped in numb fingers and found the neck with his numb lips and drank something that could be going down his throat or down his shirt, who knew. He focused more and saw Ben and Donna and some other guys he knew and he was in Gary’s house. Old gang back together for the party. He felt the room swirl and knew he needed to sit. He found a chair and sat on it and it said “Hey, man!” and he jumped up and they all laughed. He took another swig and felt it go down the right side of his chest this time, and it cleared up his mind and he said “Sorry, too much before,” and they all laughed with him.

Someone came up behind. It was Gary and he had a chair for him to sit in. He fell into it and tried to put his glass on the table, but it fell over even though he put it up straight. It was okay because he was given another one and took another gulp.

In the laughing there were some guys saying stuff. He blinked and the three colours all made proper lines again and he saw Donna talking to Bev. “Wild,” she said. “The time we went every bar down Reynolds Street. Fucking smashed.” Someone in a jacket slid down off his chair but Gary went round and hauled him up and got a tub before the sick came up. He thought he should be able to smell it but he couldn’t. Then Gary gave Stuart a sip from his own glass and everyone roared. “Gone,” slurred Gerald. “Gonna die. Where we going?”

He was struggling to get another voice when others spoke up. “Here a while,” Gary was saying, the only one standing now. He doubled and focused on a single point again. “Looks like Harry’s enough.”

He remembered he was Harry and picked up his glass from the table and drank. Everyone cheered. His head was hurting. He felt sick. He needed to get past that stage and have fun so he gulped again.

He found himself bobbing off to the side and Gary put him back in his chair, so he watched some dude dealing cards to everyone across the table. He grasped his cards and made out the numbers and smiled because he won. He won another drink and grinned stupidly. He downed it in one. From out of the merry noise he sensed something wrong and looked over to the window where Gary was standing. Gary was casting his eye thoughtfully over the cracked plaster around the glass. He looked out the window at the rosy sky and sighed even though he was hosting the best party ever.

The party was only beginning. The cards were there again and this time Harry didn’t win but he had a drink anyway. His fingers were tingling now.

“It’s over. Fucking over and I thought it would be good but what do I do now,” Sarah was saying.

“Grads can do anything. Go and do something great,” Harry suggested helpfully. He could think of great things Sarah could do but decided it wasn’t time yet.

“Get pizza later,” Roy coughed. “Starving. Haven’t ate days.”

The room was slowing to a steady spin. He tried to look at Sarah again but found himself gazing past her at the wall where dirty black things were. It was puffy and blue rather than black. It was mould and disgusting. He screwed up his slack lips and revolved til he saw Gary. “Need look after,” he managed. “Adult.”

Gary laughed but there was no fun in his eyes. “I know. I’m gonna get evicted soon so I thought fuck it and let’s get trashed before I’m out.” He raised a bottle of something red and everyone roared and the cool liquid was freezing his stomach again.

“You seen the stash we got?” Stuart was smirking. He turned and stuck out an arm towards the kitchen where the door was lying next to a big patch of dust. Some of the shelves in the kitchen had come off and there was glass all over the place but there were still loads of bottles left over every surface. Red and blue and green and purple and it was gonna kill them.

“Anyone at work tomorrow?” shouted Roy over the chatter.

“No,” said Sarah. She winked at Harry, who felt nothing but empty.

“Nah,” he said.

“No,” said Stuart.

“Damn right I ain’t,” said Ben. They drank to that.

“Never again,” commented Ted, who Harry hadn’t been able to see up to that point because he was all the way over the living room.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“None of us are,” Gary said, stepping in. “So let’s get stuck in.”

They all cracked open new ones. Stuart did literally because he smashed his bottle against the table and burst open his hand. Everyone tutted and Ted ran to get a blanket to staunch the flow of red which was mingling with the red of the drink. There was a ring of pensive faces around the table now as if the red had reminded them of the heavy thing hanging over the wrecked room and the red thing was blood.

Harry stood up. His arms and legs weren’t numb any more. He saw everyone properly and knew all their names. They had all been at East College apart from Ron who had dropped out in the first year and become a caretaker at the school just down the road. He had been unemployed for three days now. He hadn’t seen the others for three days either. College had been shut for three days.

Something wet was brushing his leg. He had wobbled sideways into the wall opposite the window and the wall was soaking. He looked out of the window and the sky had gone grey.

Everyone else was either looking at their drinks in confusion or looking at Gary in shock. Their expressions were taut and miserable and a deep understanding overshadowed that shallow uncertainty.

“You got messed up,” Gary explained though the silence. “You got too messed up too quickly and I wanted you to be able to make a decision.”

Stuart gestured to the jumble of bottles with his badly bandaged hand. “What is this shit?”

“This shit,” began Gary tensely, motionless at the window, “is what I spent my last money on. Our last money. I hope it was worth it.”

There was a moment of nothing. “Neutrosol.” Ben’s whisper was barely audible above the chuckling drip that had started from somewhere in the hall. “To sober us up.” It wasn’t a question; Ben was bound for top grades in medicine. Had been.

People were beginning to groan. Arms reached for thighs and massaged furiously against the aching that had come with consciousness. Harry’s stomach thundered. He felt weak and he sat back down. He couldn’t think of food now, or drink, or the things that had happened; the blank buzzing horror of the present had smothered it all.

Stuart had rose from his seat and slammed his fist against the wall before Harry even registered movement. It crumbled into dust before him. He turned and looked at Gary. They all did.

Gary raised one hand. Outside, the darkness obscured whatever was sloshing around in the gutter. “You needed a chance to face this as adults. Now, I’ve given you it. I felt like I owed you that.” Stuart took a few shaky steps forward. Bev reached out and clutched at his shoulder.

“You weren’t wrong. About the stash.” Gary pointed out into the kitchen, and the blues and reds and greens were all still there amid the rot and the stink. “It’s all there, waiting for us. But I thought you should consider.” He didn’t finish, but they all knew what they should consider. Harry closed his hands into scrawny fists and tried to squeeze the colour and blur of the three days from his eyes. He was hungry, so hungry, but he could remember the takeaways they’d shared in this very room last year better than whatever followed the denial and then the despair and then the calm sadness of the last week of college. They sat listening to the patter and the sloshing from out there for some time, heads bowed, teeth grinding, minds turning.

Donna stirred and shivered from the head of the table. “So, how screwed are we? There has to be some hope.”

“Only yours,” muttered Ben.

They stretched and gazed around at the tendrils of mould as if awakening from a dream. It had to be, thought Harry. No-one could cope with this. It wasn’t real. But the sky was still grey. His mind was grey too, and the thoughts, the real ones that he should be following, the practical ones about home and his parents and what he could eat, jittered briefly and washed away.

Too much.

Bev was holding Stuart’s swollen hand now. There was still red on the table that no-one had bothered to clean up. “I have to get home,” she decided, without looking at anyone. “Something has to change.” She stood.

Harry wanted to stand too, but now his head was hurting too much.

“How will you get there?” Ben asked. Bev shrugged.

Sarah stood instead, shaking her legs to check they were still there. She raised her head reluctantly as if hoping she would never have to make it all the way. “Yeah,” she said to herself. She skirted the table and reached Bev. She looked around at them all, one by one, and her smile fought against the shadows playing on her round face. One of the lights had gone out. Harry smiled back. It didn’t really matter, did it?

“I’ve got things to do,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t be here any more.” She turned to Gary. “Thanks.”

Gary nodded. He was looking past her shoulder. Into the kitchen.

A hint of fear crossed her brow. “You coming?”

Gary smiled then, and the unashamed, unaffected radiance of it made Sarah take an involuntary step back. It was the first time he had smiled that night, Harry realised, and he smiled because it was all behind him. “Nah,” he said, grinning to the girls. “There’s that new movie I keep going on about that I still haven’t found the time to watch.” He was crossing towards the kitchen. He stepped over the mound of blankets splayed out across the threshold, reached to the counter with a twig-like arm, and plucked up a sizeable case of green. He crossed to the stairs on the far side of the room without looking at anyone. “Night.” The creak of ascending feet made Harry’s eyeballs burst with pain.

They all fell silent again, but this time, they watched carefully as Ben rose and entered the kitchen himself. His foot got caught in the blankets and he went quicker, maniacally, scraping up huge bundles of bottles with desperate strength. Two went rolling across the counter and shattered on the greasy linoleum, and they were all glad to block out the pattering for just one second as the shards scattered.

He returned to the table, and Bev and Sarah shrank away before him. They couldn’t be tempted again. The bottles fell by Stuart and he shoved on a few with a careless arm. The click of the opening tops drove the girls further into the hall.

Harry fought the pulsing heat of his body and turned to watch them go. His burning eyes met Sarah’s. They were so deep, so blue, and all he had ever wanted since he met her.

“Harry?” There was hope in her voice too.

Someone shoved cold glass against his arm. It was too much.

Wordlessly, he grasped the crimson bottle and gulped down a numbing draught and then two figures opened the door and crept out under the rosy sky.