AHDRS 3 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

The music bumped. The lights were dimmed, everyone was still dancing. I felt silly, liquor surging through my veins and all. A strobe light flashed, surreal. I'm at a social gathering, yet I'm acting anti-social? Fuck that, time to integrate. I whipped out my sack, everyone around me gasped, then I whipped out the mushrooms I'd been saving. Not the mushroom tip, just the shrooms.

“Ashley, let's make this party a classic night....”

She nodded. I liked that, she didn't have to talk all the damn time like some other girls. We went upstairs to the kitchen, the whole house was starting to smell like shit. Feces, vomit, piss, whatever. A quick glance over of the fridge scored us a gallon of Orange Juice to catalyze our trip. It's a vitamin C thing, you wouldn't get it cause I certainly don't. It's science.

The caps went down pretty easily; the stems, not so much. My mouth was numbed out, and I felt a body high rolling in like storm clouds over the Rockies. I got a tooth pick for Ash and I, and we got all the remnants out of the spaces between our teeth. In my opinion that shit is the number one detractor from mushrooms, besides shroom booms (horrible gas your body produces after digesting the shrooms). It's disgusting, but so is liquor. No one drinks because they like the taste of liquor, they drink because they have to!

We sat on the counters and talked, waiting for the drug to take effect. Once it did, we went back to the basement which was, by all means, completely changed. Can you say Alice down the rabbit hole? I wasn't scared, the flashing lights and roaring music soothed me. I felt as if I was one with the party. Ashley and I danced until we were one tangle of arms and legs and costumes. It was the costumes that freaked me out. Some kids faces looked hollow and dug out, other smiling faces were comically exaggerated. The room was breathing.

This went on for another thirty minutes. Beer in hand, I danced like an idiot. I could actually see the sound waves from the music vibrating through the air. When I was too tucked to continue dancing Ashley and I made small talk with the other guests. The boys were all playing beer pong now, except James. Earlier I had seen him take Kelly by the hand and walk her upstairs. We all know what that means.

Party, party, party. Get fucked up, get more fucked up. It all becomes so repetitive after a while. Partying is no way to constantly live your life. Constant bowls are no way to live your life. Drinking to excess...no way to live your life. I was on my podium, waxing philosophical to anyone who would listen. It was probably annoying a lot of people, because suddenly I had no friends. Not literally, but people were going out of their way to escape my rant. Don't give a fuck, never have, never will. I cracked another beer, drained it, and I asked Ashley if she'd like to go upstairs and get some water. I pocketed two more beers, took her by the hand, and lead her upstairs. You know what that means. Winkey face goes here... you know the drill.

The nurse slut who had been cashed on the couch was now lying on the floor. She'd thrown up, I could kinda smell it, probably had smelled it earlier in the kitchen while eating the mushrooms, but it didn't matter now. My focus was concentrating on a singular goal: DON'T FUCK UP. The mantra echoes in my mind which had apparently packed up and left planet Earth without so much as a “sayanora, sucker!”

Walls... breathing. Heart... pounding. Fingers.... lookin like some Tim Burton shit? I could no longer smell the stench, just perfume. I could tell I had reached my peak. At least I think I did. My insides felt like a calm sea, gently thrusting benevolent waters into the beach, before retreating back into my core. This may seem like the beginning of a weird water/sex metaphor, and it is. Almost. It's a drug metaphor, and be grateful you get that far, you tease of a reader. This isn't that kind of story.

Of course, bad luck befalls everyone. Some people may seem like they have everything, but that's superficial. Only that person knows their own trials and tribulations. But it certainly seemed like bad luck loves company, and I'm the best. Why did karma have to seek retribution on all the party goers? I do not know. I do know that she strikes hard, and has horrible timing.

Ashley and I were drinking the two beers and sitting in the chic-fuck room. We were laughing, kissing, enjoying the trip. Some kids left, some kids arrived. We cracked peanut gallery jokes about their costumes, whispered not-so-quietly to each other through cupped hands. I hated the room. I looked around, spit on the carpet, and thought about burning it down. But I didn't.

Coming off the peak sometimes is uncomfortable, but mine wasn't. After another thirty minutes of fucked up ecstasy I was finally experiencing some sobriety. Not much, just a little glimpse of sanity through the window shades to my soul. Ashley hadn't ate that much, I did, yet I was amused by the short trip.

Ashley was more sober than I, “How are you feeling? That was fun but how long were we gone?”

I checked my phone, the background was still twisted into an obscene vortex of color. “Shit, we were gone for almost an hour and a half! Let's go back down...”

But that's when I heard a scream. Or a moan. I couldn't tell what it was. Somebody having sex? Someone dying? Ashley had turned pasty, she heard it too. We looked at each other for a lingering second, a nice contrast to the whirlpool that was the last hour.

“You go downstairs and have fun, I'll go see what's going on upstairs, OK? I'll be back,” I promised. She looked concerned, but nodded and returned to the basement.

What was going on? I could smell again, and it was stanky! Ascending the stairs was like walking into an abandoned meat-packing facility. A feeling in my stomach gripped me, and I began a second peak in my trip. I had to catch my breath as the world around me began to break down again. I called for Tiffany, and then for James. No answers. I stumbled past a side room and heard moaning from inside. Typical.

I looked at myself in a hall mirror. No lights were on, but I became entranced by my own dark silhouette. I raised an arm, but my shadow did not. I danced, I jerked around like a gumpy epileptic Micheal Jackson, I made faces in the mirror, but no matter what action I performed in that lonely hallway my silhouette just stood in place. Maybe I was going crazy, but I shrugged it off, brushed my shoulders with my hand, and fixed my pumpkin hat. I grinned at myself. I'm just fucked up. I think I saw it grin back seconds later, or smirk, but maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Maybe I'm just fucked up.

I went to the master room in search of Tiffany. The door was ajar, I heard muffled moaning. Not the sex type. I turned on the lights, only to find that no one was in the room. But the sounds continued, now noticeably from the bathroom where I left Jon the Bunny. I walked into the room, and peaked my head through the door.

Blood. Everywhere, on the mirrors, walls, the door itself. The mirror had small red hand prints, the fingers trailing to the floor. I looked down. A mass of bloody white fur was hunched over something, snarling and moaning.

“Hey Jon, are you OK?” I tapped him on his shoulder, and he turned. At that instance I shit my soul out of my pumpkin costume. The “something” he was hunched over was Tiffany. Parts of her cheek, arm, and neck had been ripped away. By teeth. I focused on Jon. His teeth. He was enthusiastically chewing on a bloody strip of flesh.

His eyes....they were all pupil. No color. His skin was pasty, but not scared pasty. You could see his green and blue veins bulge from beneath. His costumed was soaked in blood, and he smelled dirty and rotten. He made eye contact. For the longest second of the night I stared into those hollow pupils, and I saw a flash movement in them. He lashed out at me. I slammed the door shut, and pressed my back into it at the same moment. I could hear howls and his teeth mashing behind the closed door. “Please just let me be fucked up!” I prayed over and over. I called Frank from my phone, but there was no answer. “HORRIBLE timing, bro,” I said as I desperately searched the room for a weapon. I pushed with all my strength against the door and smiled for the click of the door coming home to its frame.

Jon, what was Jon, was pounding on the door, hard. Real hard. I figured that whatever he had become he probably didn't possess enough brainpower to work the handle. They had a fireplace in the room, and I found a fire poker with some other fire tools. I picked it up, it had decent balance to it. The handle end was awkward in my hand, but the pokey end looked sharp enough. The room was still rhythmically breathing the scene in, and a tear rolled down my cheek. I fell to my knees, and put my face in my free hand. “I HOPE I'M JUST FUCKED UP!” I screamed. This is just a bad trip.

A snarl brought me back to reality. I looked up. Jon had opened the door, and stood before me heaving in and out. Hungry. He jumped, arms reaching for me. I fell backwards and drove the fire poker up with my eyes closed. I waited, waited to be eaten by this dirty rotten scoundrel. Nothing. I cracked my eyes, and saw that the poker was now firmly lodged into the forehead of Jon. His eyes were still fixed on me, but he was done fighting. His breathing had stopped. I kicked him off of me and dropped the poker. I began to sob. Blood covered my hands, my costume too. Smeared with blood, I rose.

I hurried over to the bathroom and picked up Tiffany's head. I checked her pulse, but it was gone. No more blood gushed from her wounds. I set her back down on the blood-soaked tile. I turned to leave, but stopped. I heard wheezing. I checked Tiffany again, and she was breathing. I was overjoyed! Until I checked her pupils. Dilated like Jon's. I closed the toilet, and sat down on the back of the seat which happened to be the only clean seat in the restroom. I waited.

As I sat there I began to think again. I was still tripping, this is unreal. It's not happening. This is real life, not a Robert Rodriguez movie. There's no such thing, there's no such thing. I felt like a child: helpless, vulnerable, scared. As you get older you outgrow your fear of the dark, fear of the boogieman. You outgrow these fears because you come to accept they aren't real. That was the route I was trying to take. Will this whole mess out of existence. If I don't believe, then how could it be real? Tiffany's breathing persisted, and although it was raspy her breathes came faster and faster. She smelled so foul, but it could have been the restroom itself. I waited.

Five minutes passed. Her eyes began to blink rapidly. I stood up and rushed to Jon's body. I dislodged the poker from his head by leveraging it with my foot. It had been four inches deep. I returned, positioned myself over Tiffany and held the fire poker above her head. Without warning she began seizuring. I jumped back, and waited. Tiffany's whole body stopped moving and contorted as if she was having a full body spasm. Her eyes stopped fluttering and focused on me. She roared, and I winced as I rammed the poker through her skull. I finished her off with a twist inside the skull. With two hands I pulled it out. I closed my friend's eyes. It hadn't even been more than a couple hours ago that she had been flirting with me, trying to get in my pants. Now she was dead.

My other friends flashed before my eyes. What about them? Were they safe? Fire poker in hand, I bolted into the hall. I turned the lights on, and halted. There was blood all over the hall. The door to the guestroom James and Kelly had occupied was especially splattered. Hand prints were smeared all over the doorknob. More blood lead down the stairs. Nike footprints. It was James, God, why didn't I see the door earlier? I had to see what was in the room.

My first knock pushed the door open. I hadn't noticed it wasn't closed. Light from the hall filled the room forcing the stench out into the hall. I got a waft, and gagged. Something from within snarled. I flipped the light by the door and cautiously tip-toed in.

Whatever was inside would not shut up. It snarled and growled and moaned and shrieked. The bedroom was a typical guestroom apart from the pools of sticky blood and the stank of shit and piss and death. It looked empty, but I knew better. I've seen a million zombie movies, folks, and momma didn't raise no fool. Zombie James and Zombie Kelly were in here. I raised the poker, keeping my guard up, and stepped around the bed.

There lay Kelly, pale and moaning, at the tail end of a growing pile of what looked like her own entrails. One of her arms had been gnawed to a stub halfway past her elbow, the other greedily tore handfuls of her intestine apart before shoveling them into her mashing mouth. The mushrooms did nothing to help me comprehend the situation at hand. I felt like my legs and torso had become the trunk of a tree. My feet stayed firmly rooted in place. Kelly continued to engorge herself on her guts, and I became nauseous as I watched flesh and bone exit her mutilated intestines only to be eaten again.

She stopped for a second, and sniffed the air. I tensed up, and tightened my grip on the poker. Kelly sniffed for a second longer. She violently whipped her head to look at me, blood and bile covering her face like some macabre bar-b-Que sauce after ribs. A supernatural scream of rage erupted from her desecrated mouth, and I ran. I ran into the hall, scared for my fucking life, and the half-being that had been Kelly rapidly crawled after me, roaring and snarling.

I tried to close the door on her too, but one of her arms jammed the doorway. It wriggle and writhed and clawed at me with an animalistic desire. I slammed the door, teary eyed. I opened the door and slammed it on that arm so many times that by the end the arm was only attached to the shoulder by a single tendon, yet she shrieked and moaned on. Once more, and it was severed. I opened the door. Kelly lay there, smelling like shit, and freaking out like a suburban housewife getting off Xanax. I raised the poker, and brought it down with stoic determination. She moved, so the iron shaft impaled her neck releasing a gush of stanky blood. The end was embedded in the wood floor between two planks. She gnashed her teeth and spit at me. Scared shitless, I locked the door from the inside and left Kelly's reanimated corpse staked to the ground.