They’re playing dress-up in someone else’s nightmare.
And that’s fine. I’m not here to educate. I’m here for the noise. For anything loud enough to drown out the voice that’s been getting harder and harder to ignore?—
You could stay. They want you to stay.
I kill my drink—third or fourth maybe—and the room starts to smear. The laser lights drag tails across my vision like someone’s smudging neon paint. The bass vibrates in my bones, rattling my teeth.
Someone jostles me hard, and half my drink splashes down my shirt. Normally, that’s where I might shove back and start a fight, but right now?
I just laugh.
Everything’s soft. Muffled. Beautifully meaningless.
Exactly what I wanted.
I get it now—why people live for this shit. If you pretend hard enough and pour enough poison in your bloodstream, it’s almost like being untouchable. Like problems can’t swim through this much fog.
Until the floor tilts.
Too far.
Too fast.
Heat crawls up my neck, thick and sticky. I fan myself with my free hand, frowning. Jesus, when did it get so hot in here? The air’s syrup-thick in my throat. I blink hard, trying to clear the blur, but everything stays fuzzy around the edges.
The music warps—underwater and far away—while my heartbeat climbs too.
Oh shit.
My skin’s on overdrive, every brush of fabric feeling too intense. I lift my hand to my head.
The walls are… moving. Breathing in and out like lungs.
What the fuck?
This isn’t just drunk. I’ve been drunk before. Smashed, even.
This is something else.
Somethingwrong.
The realization splashes like ice water through the warm haze.
The strobing lights jab needles into my eyes. My pulse hammers too fast, out of rhythm with the music.
Honey, what’d you take?That Mitski lyric loops in my head.What’d you take?
Nothing. I didn’t take anything. Just drinks from that guy at the counter, and?—
Oh fuck.
A hand grabs my ass—hard—and I spin, ready to break someone’s nose, but the movement sends the wholehouse lurching sideways. I catch myself on the wall, except the wall feels wrong—too soft or too hard or both at once.
“Easy there, baby.” The voice is warped, dragging up from the bottom of a well. There’s a guy in front of me—I don’t know him, can’t focus on him—but his grin stretches too wide. His face bends in ways faces shouldn’t bend. “Looking a little unsteady.”
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but my tongue’s a brick. My words come out slurred, incomprehensible even to me.
He laughs. The sound is morphed and ugly, echoing wrong in my skull.