The night --x wore his black Tims and tried to do no mischief of any kind his friend Kay called him up and said, “come to this party by Sherbourne Station with me.” And --x didn’t want to but he wanted very badly to see his friend so he said he’d go to that party at that shitty apartment by Sherbourne Station and that very night a forest grew.
And so they went, tumbling through the subway line and through street and park until they finally arrived at that shitty apartment by Sherbourne Station. And the place was already packed with faces both familiar and new.
“Here we are. Where the wild things are,” said Kay.
“That’s a weird fucking thing to say,” said --x.
“Whatever, let’s get wrecked,” said Kay and then immediately disappeared into the crowd even though --x had been looking forward to catching up.
But what else was he to do? He had a bag of booze and many other things and the forest in the apartment was so very dense; all those trees and vines and greenery, a perfect place to get shitfaced and dance the night away with monsters.
There were monsters of all kinds at the party. Like his friend Victoria, who --x walked in on in the washroom monster gobbling up some guy’s cock in only the way the most terrible monsters gobble things up, especially since Victoria’s monster boyfriend wasn’t at the party and obviously had no idea.
There was another monster that looked like Sydney Sweeney with those perpetually red and puffy I-just-finished-crying eyes and --x thought he had a chance with her even though she was only interested in the ketamine he had brought.
And another monster that looked like Hannibal from the show Hannibal, but actually nothing like him at all, it’s actually weird that he thought that, he was just wearing a suit for some reason.
But the bestest monster looked like Arnold from Hey Arnold his fucking head really was football shaped. He hoped it wasn’t a condition.
And --x wandered through the forest meeting monster after monster, slowly emptying the contents of his bag and no matter what monster he talked to, whether new or familiar, they’d only dance for just a second before the conversation turned awkward and uncomfortable. Some monsters he considered friends and though they downed shots together there really wasn’t much else to say to one another.
A hand on his shoulder grabbing him, and --x turned hoping that it was Kay, but it was not Kay, it was Victoria. She had finished her monster gobbling.
“--x I fucked up. Please don’t tell Steven what you saw in there.”
And of course, he wouldn’t, they were monster friends together, and monsters kept each other’s monster secrets. But fuck this forest, they should do some lines in the washroom and do some catching up, --x had come to bring the rumpus after all.
And Victoria thought that was oh so very nice, but the entire time they were in there she just rambled on about her life and problems, ignoring --x whenever he mentioned anything about himself and then he realized that conversations between the two of them always seemed to go that way and this rumpus fucking blows.
--x wanted to go home, but wanted to let Kay know since they came together. So, he asked around but apparently Kay had left with some girl almost an hour ago, and oh hey, look, there’s the girl that looks like Sydney Sweeney making out with some guy, at least she liked the ketamine.
So --x left the forest, tumbling through the subway line and through park and street until he finally arrived at his own shitty apartment that was nowhere near any station. He quickly changed and grabbed a beer from his bag, curling up into bed and pulling up a link on his laptop to some random episode of Friends. Laugh tracks are so underrated, thought --x, everything’s always funnier in a crowd.
And for just a moment, --x wished that real life rumpuses were more like scripted ones on television. Those always looked so much more fun.
Even hours in his bag, the beer was still cold.
Xavier Garcia is a writer/editor from Toronto, Canada. His short fiction work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies published by Fugitives & Futurists, Cold Signal, Planet Bizarro, hex, Apocalypse Confidential, and Filthy Loot. You can find him walking the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, or at twitter.com/xavier_agarcia.
Comments