The Party

“Thank you for helping me sort that out. The finance know-how runs heavy in the blood of your family. I’m sure your father is very proud of his son!” the bearded elderly man cheeses down on me.

I give my father’s old friend a polite smile and try to get away. “If you’ll excuse me sir,” I say. “I need to find my girlfriend before it gets close to countdown.”

“Oh right!” he laughs. “The kiss at midnight and all that yada yada,” he continues laughing and nodding his head up and down at me as he begins to walk off into the crowd. “I’ll speak with you later!” he yells back.

Finally some peace and quiet, well peace from conversation, not so much from music or crowd. I need to call Vivica I think to myself and I walk outside.

I go to my recent calls and tap her name at the top of the screen on my phone. It rings and as it rings I watch a man twirling flaming batons while running on stilts being chased by another on stilts throwing pies.

These people . . . What the hell, did they hire a circus?

The phone call ends with her voicemail saying:

“Hey it’s Vica! Leave me a message and I’ll get back to ya!” I smile every time I hear her adorable voicemail.

I dial back and a few rings in I get an answer, but there’s nothing said for the first few minutes.

“Hello?” I ask, nothing. “Hello, you there?”

There’s banging around, it sounds like I hear a woman’s voice but I can’t be sure.

“Hello?” I ask again.

“He- hel,” the voice slurs.

Did someone steal her phone? I know she said she wanted to open up, but I don’t think she would have gotten drunk beyond her limit.

“Vivica?”

“Al- I don’t kno-”

I hear a splash, “Vica?” I’m worried now. “Can you hear me, where are you? Vivica!”

There’s nothing on the other end just dead silence, what the fuck happened? All I can assume is the worst. What if some shit bag got a hold of her? I need to find her. I scan around and there are people for miles leading down to the green maze.

I hurry back inside and speed walk through the masked crowd and through the swinging door that leads to the kitchen. There’s women dancing on the bar drinking out of beer bongs, god what is this college? Aren’t some of these people too old to be getting this wild and crazy, we do have work tomorrow. By my surprise, I’ve recognized more of these exposed faces than I thought I would. One looks really familiar. . . In fact, I walk closer to him. Oh Scott!

“Scott!” I shout hurrying to him.

“Aye man,” he looks sweaty and he gives me a drunken smile. “Didn’t think I was gonna see you tonight man. Thought we were gonna have to recap at work or sumn’ like that man. . . Glad to see you man!” his voice booms.

The big guy starts with the drunk giggles, shit I don’t have time for this. “Scott I need your help, you sober enough to help me?”

His face scrunches up, he hates it when you bring up his sobriety while he’s drunk.

“It ruins the fun of being drunk. If I wanted to think about being sober, I wouldn’t drink and think about that shit all day long,” quote from Scott drunk at a bar a few nights ago, he said it a couple of months ago at a wedding, graduation bash I remember him saying the same thing, and probably at a couple more get togethers.

He usually gets pissy about it, but he’s not drunk enough to blow up right now. “What up?” he asks.

“I’m looking for Vivica, she was slurring on the phone then it cut out.”

“I aint seen her,” he replies thoughtfully.

He looks like he’s really trying to comprehend every word that I’m saying and it makes me feel better that he’s actually trying to pay attention, but how well is this dude really going get it?

“I want to hurry and find her in case something bad happens, I don’t know any of these people except you and Ben and Ben probably can’t fight. She sounded like she needed help and I don’t know if she’s just lost somewhere or if something’s gone wrong. I need you to come help me in case we need to kick some ass.”

That clears him right up, like a snap from hypnosis all drunkenness is wiped away and he looks at me very concerned.

“You think someone’s gonna try to attack her cuz she’s drunk? Let’s hurry up and find her.”

Scott really likes Vica, she doesn’t get offended like other girls when he makes a “bro” joke with me, ore even when the joke is to her at her dispense. She often jokes back with him when he picks on her for trivial stuff, saying things ten times more clever than him leaving a nice hot burn.

Also, it’s not that I don’t think I can hold my own in a fight, Scott’s just a lot more intimidating than I am. He towers over me even at 6'2 and his build is swollen with muscle. He used to play football as quarterback at our high school. Everyone thought that that’s as far as his talents went, but he and I both share a passion for numbers and calculating, that’s why we’re still best friends and work for the same company.

Scott follows me through the first level of the house while we look behind each and every door.

“We probably should check upstairs now, a lot of people been going up and down,” Scott points up to the staircase and he’s right.

We swindle our way over to the stairs and bumble up the stairs and when we get to the top the count down starts.

“Ten, nine, eight” everyone around us shouts.

Scott and I burst through the door that has smoke pouring out and it’s nothing but chaos. Naked men and women are in all corners of this room making out sloppily practically fucking and it gives me the chills because I’m getting a really bad feeling in my stomach. There’s a row of about five naked men yelling out at the top of their lungs the countdown while women are crouched down on the floor giving them blow jobs. What in the hell is happening?

“Seven, six, five!” people with their mouths free join in.

Scott grabs my arm, “there’s something weird happening over there.”

“Four, Three, Two!”

We plow our way through the naked group to see someone in all black, on all fours on the floor. A woman with red hair sachets her way over to the one in all black crouching down a small distance away in front of them.

“One, Happy New Year!”

The room erupts with excitement, corks and champagne fly spraying all over the place, noisemakers played loudly and gold confetti shoots around sticking to now wet naked bodies. I try to keep my eyes on the scene, but some giggling girl comes up and sprays me in the face with champagne. As I pull my tucked dress shirt up to wipe my face, Scott’s angry voice booms through the room cutting through the celebration.

“You! You bitch! What did you do to her? What the hell did you do!?”

I look to see Scott grabbing the one in all black and he tosses him off to the side into a glass table that breaks underneath the fall. My eyes fix on the girl lying on the floor, her top half is ripped open on her jumpsuit, my heart quickens and I rush over collapsing to my knees by her side. Her hair is strewn all over and she has a pained look upon her face. This is my Vica, I make a weird sound out of disbelief, seeing her like this and I reach down collecting her in my arms. Her body hangs like dead weight in my arms.

Scott’s about to chase the now running man in black followed by the long haired red head out of the room, but I don’t know if I should be alone if I find out they’ve done something horrifying to Vivica.

I yell for Scott over the noise of the oblivious animals who have resumed their celebration and we leave for the ER.