Cold panic slices through the fake warmth in my veins.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
I know what this is. Not from personal experience—until right fucking now—but I’ve seen girls go under like this at parties back home. Too fast, too far to just be booze. I always tried to get them home or at least, away from everybody else and babysit them until I could find a DD.
One of these fucking fuckers spiked my fucking drink.
The thought detonates in my chest. My lungs lock up. I can’t breathe right.
And the worst part? I can already feel the trap closing in. My body’s slowing down, movements turning to molasses, while my brain speeds off in the opposite direction, thoughts racing and fragmenting.
Ha ha ha. Try to escape thinking about one trap for a night, run smack into another.
There’s a stranger in front of me with his hands getting closer.
Big house. Loud music. Nobody watching.
Nobody knows I’m here.
Nobody’s coming.
I am so completely fucked.
Move.
I have to move. Get out. Get somewhere safer, somewhere quieter. Somewhere that isn’t pressing in on me from every direction with faces that melt and reform like wax.
But my legs are assholes.
Every step is through thick, wet sand. The floor keeps shifting like a ship’s deck underneath me. People press against me, their faces distorting, smiles stretching into grotesque rubber-band Polaroids before snapping back.
I push. I shove.
My hands slide over slick arms and sequined dresses, and I can’t tell if the burning on my skin is from them or from something inside me trying to claw its way out.
The fog machine belches chemical death into my lungs. I taste the chemicals.Amthe chemicals.
Then—somehow—I’m standing outside.
How? No idea.
One second, I’m drowning in bodies, the next I’m gulping air under a sky strung with swaying fairy lights.
The cool breeze feels like needles against my overheated skin, but I could cry with relief. I gulp air like it can flush whatever’s in me right out.
The pool glows in front of me—too blue, toxic blue, aglowing wound carved into the night. I stare, and it stares back.
What the fuck did they give me?
Music drills into my skull from inside the house. The beat’s wrong now—off-tempo, jagged, like the world’s skipping frames.
Focus. I need to focus on something. Anything. The pool lights. The sound of water lapping. The smell of chlorine.
But it all keeps shifting, morphing. The pool light turns green. Purple. Splits into rainbow oil slicks writhing across the surface.
And then I see him.
A shape by the pool. Backlit by that blue that isn’t blue anymore. Still, not looking at me, looking down into the water like it holds secrets.