HOUSE PARTY

A short story. I DONT EVEN KNOW ANYMORE

IT HAD BARELY GONE 9.30PM and little Jenny was already lying face down in a puddle of her own vomit. Jessica went upstairs to fetch her mum while the others crowded around like witnesses at a crime scene. Bobby Brown got out his iPod touch and took a picture of little Jenny’s limp body with the flash on.

“What the hell, perv!” shouted Juliet who knelt down on the floor beside little Jenny and began stroking loose strands of her sick slicked hair. Ayan went to the bathroom to get some water and a moist towelette. Gabriel offered to perform CPR, said he learnt how at windsurfing summer camp. Timothée Taylor hit a vape pen, flavour crème brûlée, then offered it to little Jenny who was still lying incapacitated on the floor all pale and pre-Raphaelite, Ophelia floating in chunks of semi-digested food.

“It’s no big deal. She’ll be fine,” Madeline called out over the blaring dubstep before snorting another line of coke off Bobby Brown’s iPod touch. She was wearing a sparkly sequin boob tube and feeling good because she was tipsy off blue vodka and Fanta orange and high on cocaine, plus earlier on Bobby Brown had told her she was the only girl in their year with real boobs.

Jessica came back downstairs with her mum, who turned on all the lights and told Timothée Taylor to turn down the dubstep. She was annoyed because little Jenny had been sick on a Scandinavian rug hand-knotted by members of the indigenous Sámi people that inhabit large parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Little Jenny, now stirring from her paralytic slumber, managed to slur out an apology to Jessica’s mum, promised her dad would pay for the dry-cleaning and mentioned her deep respect for the woven crafts tradition of indigenous peoples. Jessica’s mum said it was OK but told little Jenny she had emailed her mum who was now coming to pick her up.

Everyone agreed to slow down on the blue vodka and Fanta orange and cocaine because they didn’t want to be sent home like little Jenny. Jessica told people to help themselves to hummus and crudités to help sober up. Timothée Taylor complained, said he had no interest in eating carrot and celery sticks like a rabbit. He insulted Jessica’s party, said it was lame, especially compared to an underground rave in the sewers he had attended the weekend before last. The others ignored him and ate raw vegetables under the multi-coloured glow of rotating party lights.

John-Paul, Violet and Joshua Evrett were smoking Marlboro Reds in the garden and missed out on the whole episode with little Jenny and crudités as they were wrapped up in a debate about freedom, government and order. John-Paul kept bringing up Rousseau’s concept of social contract and pronouncing terms in the original French while Violet kept repeating the lines ‘gateway to oppression’ and ‘recipe for totalitarianism’. Joshua Evrett assumed the role of mediator and remained mostly silent.

“The social contract is nothing more than a gateway to oppression, a recipe for totalitarianism. We must strive for a utopian alternative—a system in which collective well-being is an intrinsic value. Eliminating austerity, coercion and hierarchy is the only way to create a truly free and just world, one where human potential for fairness and empathy can triumph once and for all,” Violet declared in an impassioned but also somewhat patronising tone.

“We live in a society,” John-Paul muttered angrily and under his breath since he knew it meant nothing. He hurled his cigarette butt at the floor, yanked open the sliding glass door and stormed inside. He slammed the door shut as he went.

Jessica had a firm word with John-Paul, told him not to slam the sliding glass door—it was not shatterproof despite the double glazing. She went outside to do the same with Violet and Joshua Evrett, told them to put the butts of their Marlboro Reds in the ashtray, not on the floor, and crucially not in the hydrangea beds—they were in the delicate, pre-flowering stage. Bobby Brown followed Jessica out into the garden. Madeline followed out Bobby Brown. Madeline had a crush on Bobby Brown but Bobby Brown had a crush on Jessica and didn’t know it was because her authoritarian disposition reminded him of his mother. Madeline asked Joshua Evrett for a Marlboro Red and Bobby Brown hit Timothée Taylor’s vape pen, flavour crème brûlée.

Together they all looked up at the smog that shrouded the stars in the night sky. An aeroplane flew past, fluorescent green indicators blinking through the darkness.

“Look! A shooting star!” Jessica shouted out with glee.

“Quick! Make a wish before it vanishes into oblivion,” squealed Violet.

“The fleeting appearance of a shooting star can symbolise the transient nature of existence, representing how everything, good or bad, is subject to change and will eventually fade and die,” she added before shutting her eyes tight and dedicating her wish to the plight of starving people in South Sudan, Somalia and Syria. Joshua Evrett proceeded to wish for his divorced parents to get back together. Jessica wished for puberty to bring her real boobs like Madeline’s. Madeline wished for a family holiday to a developing country with coconut trees and shimmering aquamarine waters. Bobby Brown didn’t make a wish because he thought it was gay, plus he was the only one who had seen the flickering light traversing the sky for what it truly was—a Boeing 737 operated by RyanAir.

Madeline affected an airy laugh and brushed her hand against Bobby Brown’s shoulder, employing the casual touch technique she had heard about online and seen enacted in a romantic comedy where the girl gets the guy but then realises she has feelings for the person who had been there all along. She hoped that at some point in the night, most likely later on when the mood was mellow and music had transitioned from dubstep to lo-fi ambient, they would end up alone together in a quiet, intimate corner of Jessica’s parents’ house. This would be the perfect opportunity for Bobby Brown to open up to her, tell her about his family, dog and early childhood memories. Maybe he would realise he felt safe and at this moment their eyes would meet in recognition and they would kiss. Maybe it would be special and the next day they would acknowledge the intimate moment by sending each other red hearts and yellow laughing faces via a third-party messaging app and the symbolism would convey a meaning beyond what language could have expressed.

At this point Bobby Brown randomly suggested they all have group sex like in Die Hard (1988). Joshua Evrett proceeded to inform him that group sex does not in any way feature in the plot of Die Hard (1988), that it is a film about a New York City police officer who tries to save his estranged wife and several others who are taken hostage by terrorists during a corporate Christmas party. Bobby Brown proceeded to call him gay, which made Joshua-Everett upset and everyone else uncomfortable.

An awkward silence was broken by the sound of Juliet’s face ricocheting off the sliding glass door as she failed to register the transparent barrier that stood between her and entry into the garden.

“I’m fine!” she gasped staggering backwards like a deer hit by a car. Her eyes blinked in dumb shock as a dark red glob began to well up around her left nostril. Gradually it oozed free, sliding down Jessica’s face and chin before landing a bloody polka dot on her stripy t-shirt. More globs dripped gradually falling faster and harder in fat clumps that splattered across the polished hardwood floor.

“Tilt your head back to stop the blood from going everywhere, from splattering across the polished hardwood floor!” Jessica yelped in a tight voice.

“No!” Violet protested urgently.

“Under no circumstances should one ever tilt their head back when experiencing a nosebleed, for it can cause blood to flow into the throat and stomach, leading to choking, nausea, or blood being inhaled into the lungs and subsequent death.”

Jessica went upstairs to fetch some paper towel leaving Juliet to bleed out like a sacrificial goat. Bobby Brown got out his iPod touch to take a picture because it was gross but beautiful, postmodern abject. Ayan went to retrieve the moist towelette. Jessica returned and mopped up the blood on her hands and knees. No one offered to help.

Madeline pulled out a mini digital camera, colour hot pink, and told Violet to take a picture, capture the moment. She instructed everyone to act natural but look like they were having the best time ever.

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” meditated Violet. Everyone told her to shut up and made gang signs and duck faces.

Madeline snatched the tiny camera back from Violet to make sure the moment had been captured from a flattering angle. Her fingers hit the wrong playback button and all of a sudden there was little Jenny—red eyed, whitewashed and pixelated. She was grinning like a psychopath and holding a giant bottle of blue vodka next to her head like a championship trophy. There was Bobby Brown mooning the camera. Timothée Taylor shotgunning a Strongbow, flavour Dark Fruits. Gabriel and Ayan looking like tweedle dee and dum with rosy cheeks and matching green and orange polo shirts. Madeline pressing her arms together slightly to accentuate her cleavage. Bobby Brown exposing himself to the camera again, showing pale butt-cheeks. Timothee Taylor pissing in the garden, on the hydrangeas. Everyone huddled together making gang signs and duck faces. Crips, bloods, westside. Squad goals.

For no apparent reason Timothée Taylor got out a can of red spray paint and tagged NO GODS NO MASTERS and a circle-A on the patio tiles of Jessica’s parents’ garden. It was as if this act moved something deep down and dark inside of everyone as for a short while things descended into chaos and anarchy. John-Paul started pounding out Debussy’s The Sunken Cathedral on Jessica’s parents’ baby grand piano. The chords rang out in dissonant harmony with the dubstep creating a sound that was cursed and demonic in nature. Everyone revelled in it and started downing more blue vodka without Fanta orange, snorting fat bumps of cocaine. Bobby Brown got a hold of the spray paint and tagged more circle-As on the patio tiles along with various random occult symbols and sigils. With remnants of Juliet’s nosebleed he rendered arcane shapes in blood on the polished hardwood floor.

The others went into the garden and started collecting twigs and branches to assemble a bonfire, ripping down branches of Jessica’s parents’ cherry blossom tree. Violet instructed everyone to arrange the smaller sticks in a cone shape with the tips pointing upwards and place the larger branches all around. The fire refused to light as the wood was damp and nobody had any outdoor skills, so they danced around the sticks, worshipped the invisible flames. Jesscia’s white fluffy dog padded downstairs to see what was going on and whimpered in fear at what she saw—the cursed red and bloody graffiti, all the intoxicated pubescent teens gathered round exalting a pile of sticks. Bobby Brown spotted Jessica’s dog and tried to feed her to the fire, the invisible flames. When it didn’t work he tried to make her eat cigarette butts, drink blue vodka and Fanta orange and sniff cocaine.

“Stop!” Jesscia cried out in shock-horror.

The dog’s name was Daisy named after Daisy Buchanan.

Soon enough they all got bored, disassembled the sticks and went back inside.

Timothée Taylor put on some lo-fi beats and Gabriel and Ayan found a way to stream epic fail compilations on Jessica’s parents’ smart TV. Given their altered states the beats seemed extra lo-fi, the fails doubly epic, and for a moment it was peace and love and all was well with the world. Madeline suggested they play a game of spin the bottle, end things on a high. Bobby Brown seconded the idea but suggested that instead of French kissing they all have group sex. Everyone decided once and for all that he was a sadistic pervert, that he would not be invited to the next house party—everyone expect for Madeline whose crush transcended the obvious sadism and had only suggested the game so they could kiss. They all spun the bottle anyway because peace and free love and YOLO.

The rules were simple: they would each take turns spinning the empty glass bottle of blue vodka. When the bottle stopped a-spinning, the person it pointed to was to be kissed, no ifs or buts or two ways about it—unless a boy landed on another boy in which case spin again because gay. One by one they went round in a circle performing the weird rite with the solemnity and reverence of Benedictine monks.

The equilibrium of the ceremony was rudely interrupted when it came to John-Paul. Instead of spinning the bottle normally like everyone else, with just enough force to make it rotate a couple times round, he did so like a maniac, sent it flying furiously across the room like a deadly boomerang. Rather than indicating with whom he should exchange saliva, the bottle glanced off the wall with a clang and knocked into a decorative side table sporting a large Pre-Columbian inspired ceramic urn. The table teered on the edge before collapsing. Down with it went the ceramic, falling to earth with a dramatic crash, shattering to dust and miniature fragments on the polished hardwood floor.

“Urgh whatever,” Jessica said flatly. She didn’t even care anymore.

“It is what it is.” They all agreed.

Violet suggested the shattered ceramic was a sign they should wrap things up, all go home. Everyone accepted she was probably right as usual, apart from Bobby Brown and Timothée Taylor who insisted the party wasn’t over, said they refused to leave before the break of dawn, the cockerel’s first crow.

“Sooner or later you’ll learn that all good things must come to an end,” Joshua Evrett declared in a magisterial tone that surprised everyone since he was usually timid and mostly silent and hadn’t uttered a word since Bobby Brown had called him gay. Juliet suggested they take one last picture, final squad photo all together since Jessica declared the party was officially over and threatened to call her mum if Bobby Brown and Timothée Taylor didn’t leave. They were all gang signs and duck faces for the camera one last time. YOLO.

It was the first house party of the rest of their lives.