My coral pink lipstick is pristine but I’m in the bathroom touching it up anyway. Painstakingly outlining my lips in a nude-y brown shade and filling them in with a perfect pink color that pairs stunningly with my bright blue eyes. After a few layers of pink, enough so that my lips feel dryer than the air in this musty bathroom, I carefully apply my Lusciously-Lovely sparkly gloss. One layer, another layer. It’s, like, mesmerizing almost, watching the fluffy wand apply the buttery gloss to my full lips. It’s therapeutic, religious, spiritual. All else fades away and it is just me observing me, brushing the applicator back and forth in decisive, smooth strokes coating my lips in layers of sparkly shine. In the other room someone gasps, she either forgot to shave her armpits or take her birth control. I frown at my reflection, I wish I had a hairbrush, or some more mascara. My eyeshadow palette could have fit in my tiny purse, if only I had foregone my phone tonight. My lashes are drooping and my hands itch to brush my hair with my long-handled brush. To calm errant curls and sooth the wayward wisps of hair framing my face. At this stage of the party my hair resembles a host of yellow snakes stuck onto someone’s head. A teeming, writhing mass of pale, golden bodies. Wild.
I use the side of my finger to press my eyelashes to my eyelid, pseudo-curling them by holding them in this place for several minutes. I look around the dingy bathroom, my lukewarm hard seltzer sits menacingly on the toilet lid, daring me to take a drink. I like to play this game where I wait between drinks until it is almost unbearable, sobriety I mean, and then I take a sip. I study my reflection, wary blue eyes assessing sweaty curls plastered to my forehead. Immaculate black eyeliner frames my eyes, ending in sharp wings which elongate a rather unsettling stare. Some remnants of glittery eyeshadow remain, dusting my eyes in multicolored galaxies. The highlighter I meticulously applied to the high points of my face- cheekbones, tip of nose, eyebrow bones, and Cupid’s Bow, has melted into sweat, and oil and something a little bit sad. A tight black corset squeezes my waist and pushes up my cleavage garishly. My tight black pants are molded to my ass and thighs, sky-high heels lengthening my legs. I stare into my eyes until the pounding bass and vibrating floors dwindle away entirely and I am somewhere else. Far, far from here. I am a child again, I know nothing of makeup, of dressing slutty. Am I living a bad dream? When the world is quiet enough, when the gaudy yellow light hits the ceiling just right, I think I am. I wish I could find the spot where time is weakest, touch it, tear it to shreds, and wake up on the couch behind my parents where I crawled because I had a nightmare. It’s summer, see? The door is open and the lights are off. See? There’s a mosquito buzzing around. You’re fine, see? I am scared, to cast out my demons and lose all the best parts of myself. There is banging at the door, a gaggle of drunk girls fall over each other and I barely snatch my drink in time as one of them throws open the toilet lid and another one starts violently puking.
“Ohmygod you’re so druuunk, I can’t believe it,” a girl slurs.
The one vomiting pauses to look up and ask “Can someone pass me the coke? I really need a line.”
I take a sip of my drink and leave them to their deliberations.
Rejoining the party goes like this: Raucous laughter, penetrating music, people jumping up and down on the carpet floor of someone’s parents’ basement. Nothing can touch us here, where vivid colors dance amongst shadows and a light sheen covers this brackish wreck. We talk and sing and everything is beautiful. I am certain reality stands still here; time too. Here at our incidental gathering in the dark, dusty outskirts of this town, this lacking, torturous caul, where any and all joy goes to die and the only moments of reprieve are to be found here. So nowhere, really. The music ebbs and flows, slurs and jolts and the thumping songs melt sleepily, almost dreamily into one another. In this surge of bleary eyes and hungry souls, it seems I will be happy forever. A peculiar feeling, happiness, when I can’t feel the wind blowing through me, when I am not simply enduring. I think I won’t ever not be happy again.
Even now, it is as though someone has ripped off the pristine tablecloth and revealed the rotting, maggot infested table that lurked beneath. As though someone messily spilled juice on the couch but waited too long to clean it off, and the stain is still visible underneath. There is a smell of sweet rot, of dangerous inhibitions. The atmosphere hangs low here, a cloudy cloth, ill met by dim lights, ill fitting in all the wrong spots. A party of ghosts, a swarm of awkward bodies coated in a sickly false smelling air of sophistication, indistinguishable corpses.
Something grabs my attention, out back. Past the various people playing pong and doing keg stands. Past even the stoners and druggies shooting up snorting sniffing huffing smoking puffing. Past the couples who snuck away to hide behind the line of trees in the backyard. A light, beckoning. Perhaps it would be my reckoning. I giggle at my rhyme, wow I must be more fucked up than I thought. I giggle again.
I follow the light through trees and now I am far into the woods, the sounds of the party left in the silky summer air behind me. All of a sudden I am in a clearing and there is a being in front of me. I use the word “being” here to signify that this thing definitely was, although what it was exactly eluded me. Egregiously long, pale, spindly arms wrapped around me, resting lightly on my exposed shoulders and reaching around to my collarbones. For some reason I didn’t even feel the need to flee, perhaps some calming pheromone emanating from this other-worldly being. It had no face, no features I recognized. In fact if this explanation seems entirely underwhelming it is because I had no idea what I was looking at. I had read once, that when we finally made contact with aliens they would be like nothing we could ever imagine. All their “ships” and “gadgets” would be made of materials and substances we had never seen, could not even begin to conjure in the dark, deep recesses of our minds. And that is what was standing in front of me. Embracing me. I felt a sharp prick at the base of my neck, and then, voices. Thousands of voices, I could hear every branch I was standing on wailing, and every tree and every leaf and every animal and everything was shrieking. The noise was overwhelming, unbearable, the cacophony of life, screaming punishingly into my mind. No, not a cacophony I realized, but a Symphony. Orchestrated to sinister perfection. I fall to my knees, clutching my ears in agony, and then it is over.
Hello, do not be afraid.
What the fuck.
We have an offer for you. We have studied you, seen how you long and you yearn. Seen how you want more than what this world has to offer. And we are here to offer that to you.
Oh…ok? So, then, this is like a conversion thing? Or what?
Not quite. Come with us tonight, see nothing of your old life again, but we promise- you will know true happiness. True enlightenment. You will know things your human brethren have never known, see things you have been dreaming of your whole life.
We can grant you power the likes of which you’d never seen, make it so you never submit to another again.
I took a second to consider, though in truth I did not need one. I already knew what I wanted. I already knew I was destined for more than this world had to offer. It had always felt too one-dimensional to me, too boring. And what these creatures were offering me did not seem boring. No, it seemed to be the greatest adventure I’d ever have. I did not question their words, I did not have to. I felt a sense of peace and truth to their offer, as though somewhere inside me, some part of me knew what they said to be true. I had never experienced such steadfast trust in someone, my answer was clear.
Yes, I will come.
And so it will begin again.
I wake up in my bed, lazy sun filtering in through my window and curling up on my sheets. I sit up abruptly, looking around for the creatures from last night, for any sign of my new adventure. I find only last night’s coffee in my chipped, red mug, grounds peeking through the sorry brown liquid at the bottom. And my room, a mess from ransacking it for last night’s outfit. Everything is normal, not a thing out of place. Aside from me. In these moments, I breathe until the fear dissipates.
© 2025 [No Prompt Necessary]. All rights reserved.
Leave a Reply