Short Story: Party at 17 Harrington Way

Shaun was sat grinding the weed and passing it to Hayden who was rolling it into joints and spliffs. Youtube was on the TV, roughly a quarter of the way through a two hour compilation of 4Chan memes. Louie was the only one watching. Harry sat on the room’s only comfy chair, looking inattentively at his phone, scrolling through Reddit posts on r/Drugs and r/Psychonaut and occasionally replying to messages.

The room, at least to someone who wasn’t used to it, smelled strongly of marijuana, even though they hadn’t smoked in here in weeks. Not since the landlord started turning up more often. They smoked in the garden now, or stood at the door if it was cold. They had all theorised on multiple occasions that the bud had now absorbed into the fabric of the carpet, the chairs and the sofa, and likely into the hair in their nostrils, and into their skin, meaning with every second they grew deeper into osmosis with the plant. The time was half six, crisp blue evening air covered the outside, and inside it was cold too - why they all had their jackets and coats on. Nothing was planned other than a nightlong continuation of this.

The four of them lived there, a barebones student house, with Bianca, a rarely-seen girl who seemed to disapprove of every aspect of their lifestyles. They hadn’t know her til they moved in. The weed being rolled was called Candy Bam Bam Haze, at least that’s what their dealer had labelled it - a 20 bag, hopefully enough to get them through the night.

‘Hayden, hurry up’ Harry said in a half-joking voice that parodied starvation.

‘Who says you’re even getting any?’ Hayden said.

Louie burst into hysterical laughter. The others turned to look at him (which he remained oblivious of) and Hayden said, ‘What?’

‘Oh it was on this video. You guys missed it.’

‘Is it worth rewinding for?’ Harry said.

‘I don’t know where the controller is’ Louie replied.

‘Next to you?’ Hayden said.

‘I didn’t put this on’ Louie said.

The two of them gave lazy glances round the room but couldn’t see it. Soon Hayden gave up: ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ve nearly rolled these.’

Harry asked (with delight), ‘The whole 20 bag?’

Hayden laughed, seeming to find even the idea he’d rolled the lot of it absurd. ‘No. I’ve rolled two joints, one spliff. The rest I’ll do later.’

‘Ughh no’ Harry wailed, his voice returning to a phase of childhood bossiness. ‘But once you’re stoned you’ll say “I’m too stoned to roll any more guys, someone else’ll have to do it.” And you know we’re all shit at rolling. Just do all of it now.’

‘But I wanna smoke now’ Hayden said.

Louie roared with childish laughter again and this time they all turned in time to see what was on screen. It was a recording of a zombie from Left 4 Dead that had glitched and was vibrating in and out of a wall. They all looked at each other. ‘Proper weird sense of humour you Louie’ Hayden said.

‘Am I the only one who finds this funny?’ Louie said through laughter.

‘Yes’ Hayden said, definite, and the others grinned.

Shaun sat observing the others. He was somewhat stoned, having smoked the remains of yesterday’s weed with Hayden a few hours before. While Hayden’s energy seemed to have returned since then, his mood building like a snowball into a height of extraversion, Shaun felt - as he always did while stoned - like he had closed in on himself, become a spirit-like observer who was no longer physically present. He was aware he hadn’t said anything in a long time. The others appeared to have been made more sociable by drugs; while drugs were, for him, tools for introspection. He sat in an analytical mood watching his friends in conversation as if they were a movie playing out before him. When he finished grinding he passed the grinder to Hayden who opened up another skin, lay it on the floor and sprinkled large helpings of green across it like it was grated cheese landing on nachos. He was taking Harry’s suggestion of rolling more despite having not verbally announced this.

Once he’d laid out a satisfactory (i.e. a large) amount of weed in this one he sprinkled in some bacci then placed a rolled up bit of a Merseyside train ticket on the end as a roach and licked one side and wrapped it together. Then he fished in his pocket for a lighter and burned the end of each of the four roaches.

‘What you doing?’ Harry said in a panic. ‘Don’t light them in here. We already agreed not to.’

‘I’m not. I saw it on a video the other day. You burn the end of the roach and it makes the smoke travel to your lungs faster.’

‘Fair play’ Harry said, calmer now. Then, speaking in a slightly different register of voice showing his next words were unrelated, said, ‘Candy Bam Bam isn’t on Leafley. I just checked. Lombard must have made it up.’ Lombard being their dealer.

‘He always fucking makes them up’ Louie said, not taking his eyes from the screen.

‘Leafley is American though’ Shaun said. ‘It could be real but they just haven’t put all the British weed on there.’ The others nodded and murmured in agreement.

Shaun had become entangled in a trail of thought to do with the difference between the drug users of his, and his parents, generations, mainly to do with how different the internet must have made things. He wasn’t sure if his dad had done drugs at this age, he’d wondered about it a lot recently, but if he had he must have had to go to a dealer’s house to get drugs. And would have likely had to show up unannounced at any time - or maybe the dealers had certain hours for people to come over. Shaun had never been to a dealer’s house and the practicalities of such an exchanged felt mysterious to him. All calls on landlines rather than mobile phones. No drug websites either like Erowid or Pill Report; doing a drug back then must have always been a surprise experience, going in blind with no research. Which was probably why so many drug related ‘accidents’ happened back then, or apparently did.

Hayden held up the joints triumphantly in one hand and said, ‘Should we go smoke?’

The others agreed and merriment bounded between them. Then the front door went - it was separated from the living room by a small landing. This was a common occurrence, with friends letting themselves in freely. Or, as they all dreaded, it could be Bianca. But in walked a guy and a girl, both looking a similar age to the four residents, that none of them remembered seeing before. The guy was confident and jovial and held a four-pack of lagers in one hand. He captured Hayden and Harry with his eyes, like they were old war veterans, and said, ‘How you doing lads? It’s nice to see yous. We the first ones here? I suppose it is a little early, ay?’

Hayden, already smirking a little from his perceived hilarity of the situation, replied, ‘Lad you sure you got the right house? I mean you’re welcome to join us but we’re not doing much but smoking tonight. And we don’t know ya?’

‘Do you boys not remember me?’ he said, still upbeat. ‘I met you guys last week. At Tundra. Yous gave me the address and said you were having a party Saturday night.’

Hayden and Harry looked at each other and intuited partial strands of memory forming in the other. ‘Oh shit’ Hayden said. ‘We were supposed to have a party tonight. But a lot of our mates cancelled, couldn’t get the time off work and that, so we called it off. We must have been too fucked to remember we invited anyone at Tundra.’

‘We probably forgot to tell quite a few people we cancelled’ Louie said.

‘I guess we’re having a party then. We’ll see who’s still available’ Harry said.

The guy lay his cans on the floor and took off his winter coat, laying that on the floor too, and slid down the wall next to Harry’s chair. Then to no one in particular he said, ‘I’m Erin, and this’ - he motioned to the girl who still hadn’t spoken or moved, ‘is… Alexa?’ To which she confirmed:

‘Yeah, Alexa.’ She joined Erin on the floor.

Erin produced a baggie of powder from his pocket and offered it to the room. ‘I had a few lines already. I thought this was gonna be a heavy gaff.’

‘Don’t worry lad’ Hayden said, nearing Erin to take a bump. ‘This house will be lit very soon.’ He snorted the powder off one of Erin’s keys. His head shot back as he inhaled. He turned to Harry, ‘We’ll need to find someone who can get us gear, though, Lombard is at a party til late tonight.’

‘I’ll give you the number of my guy. He does good stuff’ Erin said. He began scooping out more coke and held out the key expectantly. Louie, smiling at the offer, raised himself and went to indulge.

Shaun, who was averse to strangers when sober, felt even further removed from reality now that these newcomers had entered his home and, in only a couple of minutes, reorganised their night. He felt a little unsettled, having wanted to spend the night with only people he knew really well. These thoughts, amplified by the weed, sent him down a self-conscious spiral, not an uncommon destination for his psyche, in which he often wondered whether he was autistic, or if maybe his parents and teachers had failed to instill in him the social skills that everybody else were given. But his descent into the spiral was halted when Erin interrupted, ‘You want some, mate? It’s lemmo.’

‘Aye sure’ Shaun said and moved in for a bump. What Shaun often characterised in himself as awkwardness was interpreted by others - such as Erin here - as him being relaxed and ‘down for anything.’ It gave him the air of someone who wasn’t needy or desiring of anything.

Harry had a bump too and Erin offered one to Alexa but she declined - not saying so, only shaking her head. Erin snorted one himself.

The residents spent the next few minutes on their phones, telling everyone they could think of to come round. The responses were mixed: some people declined, others said they’d be straight over, others that they’d decide later on. Hayden got the dealer’s number off Erin. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked as he typed the number into his contacts.

‘I dunno the guy’s real name. We all call him the Witch Doctor.’

Hayden pictured his parents looking through his phone, for whatever reason, seeing the litany of weird drug dealer names stored on it.

Louie found the Playstation controller under a cushion on the settee and turned the video off. He scrolled through Youtube and eventually clicked on JAPANESE FIREWORK CHALLENGE with Filthy Frank, wanting to keep the level of weirdness high until it was time for music.

During the next hour anticipation seeped out of the walls. Everyone rushed around, acquiring people and drugs. Harry and Louie went to their rooms upstairs and put on nice clothes and expensive sprays. Hayden went into the kitchen to phone the Witch Doctor. Which left Shaun sat with Alexa and Erin; Erin, seemingly gripped by the coke’s guiding hands, talked super-fast. He’d already explained why the Arctic Monkeys’ earlier stuff was overrated while their newer stuff, although more challenging, was underrated and now he was talking about how The Terminator was the one 80s movie that needed remaking with modern special effects. Shaun was replying almost exclusively with ‘yes’ and ‘I see’ but since the girl wasn’t saying anything either he reasoned Erin must like quiet people.

Hayden came back in and announced he was meeting the Witch Doctor in 20 minutes and that Lombard may appear in the wee hours to smoke with them if anything was still happening. When everyone was back in the living room they organised themselves: Harry would go with Hayden to pick up, Shaun would go buy alcohol, and Louie would wait in the house to be there as people arrived. They all handed Hayden and Shaun money and listed what they wanted.

Before they left everyone went outside to the garden and smoked a blunt. There were only two seats, both fold-out chairs given to them by Louie’s mum; Erin and Alexa sat in them, the others standing round in a circle. They all noticed, except maybe Erin - although no one brought it to attention - that Alexa was inhaling impressively, maybe hazardously, deep lungfuls of weed.

As they all went silent Shaun said, to Alexa, ‘So do you get confused a lot thinking people are talking to you when they’re talking to their phones?’

Alex, taking it to be an entirely serious question, took a moment to think then answered, ‘No, I’ve never had that before.’

The silence that followed was more empty than the one that came before. Harry and Louie, looking at each other, started to giggle, snowballing into hysterical laughter, shaking their heads at Shaun. ‘What you going on about lad?’

Shaun looked confused and asked, ‘What?’ but this only made them laugh more.

Once the blunt was on the floor and stamped out Hayden looked at Harry: ‘Are we off then?’

‘Go on’ he confirmed and they headed back through the house and out the front door, Shaun leaving soon after.

Their destination was less than ten minutes away. They met the Witch Doctor at a tattered-looking pub near the train station called The Railway as these pubs always are, that Harry and Hayden had never been to. The inhabitants looked and acted exactly as the two young men had imagined they would. Each of them was a good deal more than Harry and Hayden’s combined age; the place was crammed.

Hayden met eyes with a boy who looked like he was in his mid-teens who seemed to be waiting for someone. They approached and the boy said, ‘You after gear?’ They said they were.

They followed him into the toilets where from his pocket he pulled out a thick cluster of baggies with what looked like a lifetime supply of pills and powders and greenery inside. The Witch Doctor began speaking, narrating his search through the baggies to find the right ones, and Harry and Hayden realised the boy was either a simpleton or severely drunk, possibly both, speaking in single syllables and making everything sound like a question.

‘DMT...no. E’s. Them’ins. Yous wan’ garries, right? Aye. Lucy. Got’cha. Wan’ hash?’

Eventually Hayden stood holding the three substances he’d asked for: acid, ecstasy and ketamine. He handed money to the boy, who didn’t bother counting it just shoved it into his coat pocket, and they left.

Shaun returned to the house with crates of booze carefully stacked atop one another to find a few people had already arrived. Their friend Karl had turned up with his girlfriend Sasha. So had Rick, who lived a few streets away. Jordy and Donnie, brothers, had turned up not knowing the original party had been cancelled. The door was perpetually open.

Harry and Hayden got back not long after eight. ‘Let’s get things started’ Hayden said to the room. Knowing it or not Hayden provided an important element to their friend group: his wish to always get a little more fucked up spurred on everyone else to want the same.

Louie was sat with Alexa on the floor, watching videos on his laptop on eFukt. They were watching one where Asian women had eels inserted into their vaginas through long see-through tubes by cloaked men. They were both making disgusted groans yet their eyes remained fixated on the screen.

The drinks Shaun had bought, along with bottles Harry brought down from his room, were stationed on the kitchen counter. Everyone was sat in the living room and the conversation was picking up. Erin offered out coke once again, this time only to the few nearest to him.

‘Acid?’ Hayden said, holding out the baggie to Louie and Shaun. They each took one tab and placed it under their tongues. Hayden put two in. The three of them smiled at each other, giddy for what was to come. Harry edged in, ‘Where’s mine, ay?’ and Hayden happily handed over a tab.

Alexa, still mostly mute but getting in the spirit, rummaged through her jean pockets and produced a handful of pills. ‘Valium’ she said as answer to Louie and Hayden’s quizzical looks. Then she took the can from Shaun’s hand, giving him a polite thank you and downed the lot she was holding.

‘Turn that shit off, lad’ Harry said, meaning eFukt. ‘We need music on.’

‘Oh shit yeah’ Louie said, having seemingly forgotten. ‘That’s why I brought my laptop down in the first place.’ Next to it sat his speakers. He plugged in, turned the videos off, put Spotify on and found his Rave playlist.

‘We should play a game’ Rick said.

‘I’ve got cards if we need ‘em’ Donnie said, pulling them from his pocket. He shuffled; the cards felt sticky with alcohol from the pre drinks he’d been at last night. ‘We should play Presidents and Arseholes.’

‘What is it?’ ‘How do you play?’ most of the room shouted back.

‘I’ll explain it’ he said and started dishing out cards, a deck for each person who wanted to play.

‘This isn’t gonna be complicated with loads of rules is it?’ Alexa said.

‘It’s a bit complicated but you’ll get it after a game’ Donnie said.

‘We should just play strip poker’ she said with a dumb smile. ‘Although I don’t know how to play poker.’

Everyone laughed but there was considerable interest in the room to take up her suggestion. A mood of spontaneity gripped them. ‘I don’t know how to play poker either’ Shaun said.

‘We’ll play strip higher-or-lower then’ Donnie announced, ‘Surely everyone knows how to play that?’ And he began collecting in the already-laid-out decks. Karl and Rick said they’d never played it before so Donnie explained the rules.

‘...so if you get it right you choose somebody to strip. Get it wrong and you strip.’

During the next hour or so the drugs started to kick in. Lights seemed brighter. Conversation became easier. A feeling of lunacy provided a connecting link between each person. Hayden had bought a lot more than he planned to take himself and began selling pills and ketamine to anyone interested. The pills were called Brain Eaters - they were bright yellow and carved into the shape of zombified faces. Harry, despite already having taken acid, took a full pill. Rick and Jordy both bought off Hayden as well.

Everyone was coming up at different times, but there was a synergy, a feeling of shared highness, so much it felt like even the house, the bricks in the walls and the doors and inanimate objects, were coming up too, sharing in the feeling. The acid bubbled: to Shaun the carpets were moving and the music gushing from the speakers pulsating. Those who had ingested pills started to feel dizzy, then giddy, then manic, like the small space the house provided was too narrow and rigid to contain the energy that was about to burst out of them.

Lots of people began to arrive. Laura and Kirsten, who the residents knew exclusively from nights out. Trev arrived and brought his whole flat, all having a skate-punk vibe to them: Ian, Mitch, Xanadu and Jazz. Iggy and Tyrone a bit after them. Connor too, and Israel, Harry, Dan, Jazz (a different), Chloe, Ali, Jonny, Sam, Brianne… too many people for anyone to keep up with. The living room and kitchen were packed, people spilling out into the garden and the landing. Someone new appeared every minute. Close friends and friends-of-friends. Shaun thought (finding it quite funny) some of the people here could be complete strangers who heard music and walked into the house and no one would realise - there were people here he didn’t recognise and just presumed they were friends of someone else. In the kitchen Hayden had ordered the ket and pills into baggies and was quick to make an offer to all new faces coming through the door.

The game of higher-or-lower continued; clothes were littering the floor. New arrivals walked in to the sight of topless men, women with only a bra and knickers on, and lots of feet and legs on display. Jordy, feeling, like he often did, that his brother was sucking up an unequal share of the room’s attention, was the only one to go all the way. He sat naked with his legs crossed, partially stoned, coked-up and tipsy. It was like a show of manliness seeing how long he could sit presenting his whole body to the room.

The garden was the designated  zone where people went when the house got too crazy for them: the sober nighttime air and peaceful silence in all directions had a calming effect. Outside the door a concrete path lead to a patch of grass that always had at least a couple people stood passing round a joint or two.

The outside world disappeared. For a few hours it seemed as though the whole universe was contained in that small house and that meditative garden.They were only here, only now.

People continued to arrived - most of them friends from uni. All rooms were crowded. Bedroom lights were on - they were visible from the garden - even though no one who lived there was upstairs. The residents, while very familiar with hosting by now, still couldn’t stop rating and comparing how each gathering at their home was going, and this one seemed like a success. Their job was done: the party was now playing on autopilot, chemicals pushing everyone from one moment to the next.

Seemingly without having been invited by anyone Ken and Clara walked into the living room - most people in the house hadn’t seen them in months. There had been no real reason for this, just that the circles Ken and Clara spent time in, and the big social circle made up of the people in the house, had begun to drift apart until one day they stopped crossing paths. Half the people in the room stood up to give them hugs, others yelling hellos. Clara looked at naked Jordy and they burst into laughter. Jordy called over, ‘I mean I’d get up and give you a hug but I’m sure you’d rather I didn’t.’

Shaun’s trip was feeling intense. He didn’t get up to give Clara a greeting but said hey as she approached. He felt overwhelmingly happy seeing her again. She looked for a space to sit and found one next to Shaun, having missed him too and not wanting to sit next to anyone she didn’t know. She looked into his eyes. ‘You’re wired’ she said.

‘No, but I am on acid.’

‘God what are you guys like.’ She’d experimented with drugs when she was close with the boys but aside from infrequent, spontaneous sessions of smoking weed she’d not touched anything in a while.

Ken didn’t sit but headed for the kitchen where Hayden and Rick (still topless from the game) were stood racking up lines. Hayden didn’t say hello, just offered a line, holding out a rolled up five pound note. ‘Oh if I have to then’ Ken said in a jokingly-coy voice. ‘What is it?’ he remembered to ask after taking the note.

Hayden cut off Rick who was going to answer. ‘You’ll have to take it and see.’

He arched his back to reach the kitchen counter and inhaled a chunky line. ‘Blood hell that’s strong’ he said, looking at them to see if they’d thought the same.

‘Snort water’ Rick said.

‘What?’ Hayden replied.

‘If you snort water it goes straight to the back of your throat.’ He walked to the sink, which was piled full with dirty dishes, and ran the cold tap. ‘Try it.’

Unsure whether he was being wound up Ken stared at the two men’s faces for signs they were messing around.

‘I’ll do it if you don’t believe me’ Rick said. He walked over to the counter, snorted another line, the last one that had been racked up, not bothering with the note, then moved to the still-running tap and let the water build in his hands which were held out biblically, and snorted it fast before it could escape. Ken copied. The water did seem to clear the passage of his nose. He felt the drip-back (the taste of the powder reaching his throat) straight away, whereas normally it would’ve taken minutes.

‘That tastes fucking horrible’ Ken said.

‘Well fuck, so it actually works?’ Hayden said.

After this the conversation went to the formalities of what they’d all been doing lately. Hayden said Ken should come hang out with them more often. Ken talked about how busy he was with work but that he’d try. Ken and Rick fitted into the category of ‘social drug users’: they showed up to the party, to the club, and let whatever drugs were there find a way into their systems. Whereas Hayden looked actively, even analytically, at how to continue getting fucked up. As if altering his mind with substances was a skill for him to master, the same way Jimi mastered the guitar. The news that snorting water would be a very slight aid to this felt like a nice addition. He couldn’t much feel the acid or weed, they’d been pushed to the back by the half a Brain Eater and few lines of ket he’d taken. The former didn’t seem like a waste though - it all added to the mental broth he had brewing.

The spatial makeup of the kitchen felt altered, elongated, and time - the very idea of it - had folded in on itself, had stopped making sense. Hayden felt a deep, almost sensual, love for everyone there, he felt it sober but moreso now. Each person had a glow to them. It was like they’d shed their skins, letting the everyday personas evaporate; the people inside were beautiful, all too fantastic to be working retail or herded into some dull lecture hall.

In the living room the card games had stopped. They’d never come to a definite end, had just been forgotten about as people got up to go to other rooms or edged into groups. The bass sounded like it was tearing the speakers. All the usual shit, the worries about what people thought of you, about tomorrow’s problems - that all fell away. It is surprisingly easy to forget, even for frequent drug  users, what the drugged out state feels like, but this only makes it better once the substances are taken and the individual can click back into place. As if one had finally returned to a distant land they remembered only from the romanticised reminiscences of a childhood visit.

Donnie and a now-clothed Jordy were playing Odds-On, where one dared the other to do something and if they both guessed the same ‘odds’ they’d have to do it. So far Jordy had downed vinegar, which he strangely enjoyed, and eaten through enough worcester sauce to make himself bloated; Donnie had walked up to Matt, a recent arrival, and grabbed him by the balls and said, ‘Hello beautiful.’ Matt, cool as ever, only looked him in the eyes and said, ‘I hope this is for a dare.’

Letisha, who was hovering between groups, asked if she could play. ‘We need to think of a good one for her’ Donnie said to Jordy.

‘Come on guys’ she said teasingly. ‘Go easy on me, I’m a girl.’

‘It’s 2019. Feminism has happened. No more of that shit allowed’ Jordy announced in his thick scouse drawl.

Someone from the other end of the room yelled ‘Meninism’ and the room broke out into woops and jeers. Letisha rolled her eyes.

‘I’ve got one’ Donnie said. ‘Odds-on you snort a line of charlie off someone’s arse cheeks.’

‘No way’ she said.

‘You’re playing now’ Jordy said. ‘You have to pick a number. Say ten if you really don’t want to do it.’

She kept saying twenty until they wore her down and she agreed to ten.

Jordy counted down from three then Donnie and Letisha shouted out their numbers. Both 7!

‘Aww no’ Letisha said. The brothers shouted out for volunteers. No one came forward but eventually Matt was chosen. The logistics of it were more awkward than anyone had imagined. He had to drop his pants, holding his arse out like a moony, while pulling up his jeans at the front, which wrapped tight into his thighs. His face was awkwardly dangling close to the floor to allow his arse, pale and skinny, to be upright enough to have a line fashioned across it, on the left cheek. They used Erin’s coke. Matt kept throwing out sarcastic comments: ‘Take your time love, it’s comfy doing this you know’ and, ‘There’s not cocaine here on the carpet, it’s me who’s got a bum deal not you.’

She did it, snorting it up through a tenner that was handed her. It was her first drug of the night, having not brought any. It was her first time on coke too. She felt a professional-lawyer-woman type of cool and asked if anyone had any more. Soon she’d been directed to the kitchen where she bought a gram off Hayden for £30. ‘How come I don’t get mate’s rates?’ she asked.

He lied: ‘That is mate’s rates. This isn’t the cheap stuff you see people snorting off the gent’s bogs. This is Russian cocaine.’ He wasn’t sure Russians ever made cocaine but she asked no more questions and got to snorting a line.

The dares in the living room were getting worse. Rick eyeballed a shot of vodka. He was, admittedly, happy to do it having eyeballed countless drinks before. Matt licked tequila off of Clara’s tits. He did it politely, not going near her nipples but sticking to exactly where the drink had landed. Hayden said he dared himself to do consecutive lines of coke, mandy and kenny; everyone was offering out keys to hand him. He snorted the lines and afterward his nose felt numb. He kept prodding it thinking it felt like a fake nose. He thought it likely he’d have a nose bleed by the end of the night.

The party continued like this for a while. People swapped rooms and groups and substances. Louie, who was sensitive to the effects of drugs, moreso than he let on, had been chatting to people in the kitchen. He imagined the room as a spaceship, charting out into the unknown, or an underwater submarine caught in stormy seas, swinging his body about like a ragdoll. Everybody’s faces were distorted: people usually looked insect-like when Louie took acid but this time the faces were in high definition. Everybody looked more mature, more primal - maybe this is what each of them would have looked like if they were alive thousands of years ago, a million even, as a gang of hunter-gatherers living out in the wilderness. He felt a deep satisfaction in their behaviour mimicking that of their ancestors.

The drinkers had started to slur their words. Even those usually restrained towards drugs, like Donnie, had begun to seek out substances. He announced to the room they should prank call someone’s work.

‘And say what?’ Letisha said. Her nose was numb too.

‘We’ll say there’s a bomb in the building’ Donnie said.

‘You can get arrested for that, you know’ Sasha said.

‘We can use a blocked number’ Jordy said. ‘Do it on my phone if you want. We always prank call people.’ He passed the phone to Donnie.

They decided to call the McDonald’s where Clara worked, in the next town over. Donnie straightened his spine, ready to give a performance. The music was turned down and everybody shushed. As soon as someone answered Donnie put on an Irish accent - a surprisingly good one, most of the room thought - and began, ‘Hello there, is this Ronald McDonald I’m speaking with?’

The others couldn’t hear the reply.

Louie and Shaun walked in the room, having just smoked a joint, and were immediately in hysterics at the sound of Donnie’s Irish. Donnie continued: ‘This is the IRA. We’re back in action. And you, my lucky Ronald, have been chosen as the sight of our returning act. There is a bomb in the building. It will detonate in exactly twenty minutes. The bomb’s a good bit of tech. It’ll have the whole street lit up. Enjoy.’ He hung up.

Most of the room looked at each other with disbelieving expressions, wondering if it was a prank too far, apart from Louie and Shaun who were nearly in tears of laughter. They continued for a few minutes, their laughter filling the room. They’d stop then catch each other’s eyes and start again. When they did eventually stop Clara said, jokingly, ‘You two finished?’

‘I think I might have pissed myself’ Louie said.

Hayden split his time between smoking in the garden, selling in the kitchen and retreating to his room upstairs with a few others to talk and do lines and recharge from the chaos below. He was there now with Rick, Abbey and Rhys. ‘Where the fuck is Harry?’ Hayden said. ‘I’ve not seen him in ages. Can someone go look for him?’ His wish to know where Harry was wasn’t concern for his welfare but a wish to do drugs with him, something which was always fun.

‘I’ll go take a look’ Abbey said and got up and left. The others remained sat and Hayden racked up some lines of ket on the desk. He’d gotten through roughly two thirds of this baggie. But he’d k-holed only once tonight - a disappointing turnout, he felt. The swirls on the old-fashioned wallpaper covering his room were spiralling and he was gurning bad enough to fear chewing through his lip. They had been talking hyper-fast about music and who the best live act currently going was. Hayden was saying Alt-J; Rick said Twenty One Pilots. The topic of conversation then transitioned to girls. ‘Would you fuck Abbey?’ Rhys said.

‘Yeah. But I’d have to hate fuck her’ Hayden said. ‘I mean, she’s fit, isn’t she? But she’s too normal, too… bland. You know what I mean? I’d need to hurt her while I fucked her just to make it interesting.’ Abbey entered as he was finishing this last sentence and both men laughed, unsure if she knew who they were talking about. She said:

‘Harry’s naked in the bathroom. He wants you to go speak to him,’ motioning to Hayden, who looked vibrantly intrigued by the situation. He put the baggie of ket into his back pocket and told the others they could share the last line he’d racked up, and headed for the bathroom.

It was true: Harry was in the shitter bollocko. John, a friend of a friend neither Hayden or Harry knew very well was leaving as Hayden entered; John looked like he’d just taken a very self-conscious piss and to Hayden he rolled his eyes and said, ‘I don’t fuckin’ know what he’s taken’ which Hayden ignored. He entered the bathroom, a tiny box of a room with a small shower, toilet and not much floor space, to find Harry sat behind the door. He was shaking and twitching a little. He sat cross-legged, looking manic and waiting for people to come in and talk; Hayden imagined him as a Shamanic sage, sat waiting for the villagers of their community to come seeking his mystical advice. ‘That guy really wasn’t good to talk to’ Harry said.

‘I love you lad, you good?’ Hayden asked. He put the toilet lid down and sat on in, not closing the door.

‘I’m good, I’m chillin’’ Harry said in a flat tone that seemed to aim at pushing away any concerns that he wasn’t okay. ‘Maybe I shoulda’ done that pill in halves instead of a full one.’

‘Plus you’ve dropped acid.’

‘Ah shit lad, I keep forgetting that’ Harry said.

‘Nothing to regret kiddo, it’s one of the best ideas you’ve ever had’ Hayden said with almost enough enthusiasm to push lightning bolts from his hands. ‘What you been experiencing, like?’

‘I can’t explain’ Harry said. ‘I just want to be really open with people. Have proper heart-to-hearts. You should get naked too. And shut the door.’

Hayden grinned then pulled his shirt off. He went to shut the door but Shaun and a very drunk Clara appeared. ‘Don’t’ she said. ‘I need a piss so bad. I think someone spiked me.’

‘No one spiked you you’re just a lightweight’ Shaun said. She did a high-pitched fake laugh and slapped his arm.

Hayden, wishing to mediate, said, ‘You can have a piss but I don’t think Harry is getting out.’ The two of them popped their heads round to see Harry.

‘Oh my god’ Clara said.

‘Guys come in and shut the door’ Harry beckoned.

‘What you guys doing in there?’ Shaun asked.

‘You need to come in and we can all have a heart to heart.’

‘Alright’ Shaun agreed.

‘I need a piss first then you guys can have your heart to heart.’

‘I can’t leave this room. And I don’t think I could get my clothes on in this state.’ Harry said this with such conviction Clara didn’t protest at all, only headed for the toilet and said:

‘Someone get the door.’ Once Shaun had stepped inside he closed it and Clara pulled down her knickers, which were pink Disney princess-themed ones.

Hayden and Shaun, best abled to observe the situation, looked at what was going on around them like absurdist theatre being enacted. The frequent drug abuser is, of course, a collector and connoisseur of weird moments, a creator of them too if the night isn’t providing its quota, although tonight the universe seemed to have it covered.

The sound of piss trickling down the toilet bowl echoed. ‘Can you guys talk about something’ Clara said. ‘I don’t want you all listening to me wee.’ She pissed for a while, this being her ‘breaking the seal.’ No one looked down at her vagina, or even knew if it was on show, but Shaun and Hayden both wondered if the other had taken a look.

Harry, seeing the situation in simple, almost childlike, terms took it as his duty to pick up the conversation at the lady’s request. ‘How’s the party been for you Shaun?’

‘It’s been good. I’m on acid and weed. Pretty off my head.’ Then, maybe feeling this wasn’t enough relative to the others in the room, added, ‘I’m pretty drunk too.’

‘Good man’ Harry said. ‘You trying to get with anyone?’

Was he trying to get with Clara? Possibly - he wasn’t sure. Not proactively at least. He was just going along with things. ‘No I’ve just been chattin’ shit to people all night to be honest.’

‘Clara’s a very attractive girl, you should try getting with her’ Harry said matter-of-factly, not trying to embarrass anyone, trying to set them up. Clara said:

‘Thanks Harry,’ giving no response to the other half of Harry’s sentence, a silence which Shaun felt as a physical presence left floating in the air. She’d finished pissing now and the urgency in her tone was gone. ‘You guys can strip and have your emotional chat now.’

‘No c’mon Clara, stay and join in’ Harry said.

‘I’m gonna need more to drink if that’s the case’ she said and pulled a mini bottle of Smirnoff from her handbag and started chugging.

Shaun took his top off and chucked it to the floor, then looked at Hayden, who said, ‘I guess down they go’ and both of them lowered their pants - jeans plus boxers at the same time, down in sync with one another, chucked them to the side and got their socks off too. They sat down on either side of Harry, Shaun on the door and Hayden on the shower door. Clara took another swig, a big one, winced and took her dress off, it sliding down easily, folding it over neatly on the floor. She then took her shoes and socks off, leaving only her Disney pants and a jet-black bra. She grinned and took both off. The boys all tried to stay gentlemanly but they couldn’t keep their eyes off her tits, which were a lot bigger than her clothing had always suggested. She lowered herself onto the floor in front of the toilet.

All four looked over each other’s bodies. It wasn’t an awkward nakedness, or even a sexual one. It was reality, at least one version of it, an honest showing of the gassy flesh bags they hid beneath clothing and makeup and civility most days. The smallness of the room pushed them close, sat in an inward facing square. ‘Do you still have MD?’ Harry asked Hayden, who nodded and fished the baggie out of his jeans, an untouched gram, and offered it Harry’s way.

‘I’m good lad I’m on a good level already lad’ Harry said fast.

Shaun and Clara both had a few keys and then Hayden took some himself. He left the baggie in the centre so everyone could continue to take from it.

The conversation flowed easily; Harry couldn’t stop speaking. The speed of his speech made some words incomprehensible but the outline of what he said was clear. He gave an explanation for why he’d broken up with his previous girlfriend, Tracey, two months before, which had seemed to everyone like it came out of nowhere and which Harry had been cryptic about at the time. ‘I mean, she’s a really nice person, you guys all know that, but I just couldn’t love her. Same with any girl I’ve ever dated. I just can’t feel love, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It got to the point where I saw a fit girl in a club and went and necked her and went back to hers and I shagged her because I wanted to see if I felt guilty at all and I didn’t, I shagged like three girls while I was still with Tracey after that and I just didn’t feel bad at all and I thought it would be best to break it off with her, for her own good. And you know’ - (he was addressing this mostly to Shaun, his arm around him, but with a voice that invited the whole room to listen) - ‘I’m not good at pulling girls. But I think I just have a problem with women emotionally, it’s like I feel completely blank to what they’re feeling, y’know? I pulled a girl at Tundra once while I was still with Tracey and she was blackout drunk and I was still pretty sober but I fucked her anyway, I mean she was into it, she fucked me again the next morning but I know I should feel bad about it but I don’t. It just makes relationships hard for me.’

Shaun didn’t feel wired and chatty, he felt inward and contemplative - the bathroom walls were trembling, his vision spotty and too-bright, and spiralling coloured shapes kept appearing at the centre of his vision. He put his arm around Harry and said all he could think to say, which were automatic positive-vibe platitudes: ‘That’s alright man, I understand. You’ll work through it eventually.’

Hayden, gurning and sweating slightly, spoke up: ‘That’s an issue. We’ve all got issues. People need to accept them to work through them, and you’ve already realised you’ve got an issue. Just think lad, you did the right thing breaking up with her, you did that with her in mind so you’re not completely oblivious to what she was feeling. That’s a start you can grow from.’

The response seemed to be therapeutic. Harry replied quickly: ‘That’s a really positive way of looking at it man. Thanks man. I just don’t even know where to begin sorting all that shit out.’

Someone banged on the door, followed by a voice no one in the room recognised. ‘You guys okay in there? I need to take a piss.’

An air of the friendly-everyman persona resurfaced in Harry, who shouted back, ‘Yeah we’re all good we’re just having a conversation. If you need a piss go in the back garden.’ This must have been enough because no reply came back.

As they resettled into solitude Hayden started up speaking. ‘Alright guys I know you might all think of me as quite a content person, always just wanting to have fun, but this isn’t who I was a few years ago. And I did something terrible. Let me explain. As a teenager I was a real loner. As you guys know I don’t get along with my family that well and I didn’t have any friends at this point; I went whole weeks where I’d not talk to anyone. I used to overdose on prescription pills in my room a lot. I did it really mindlessly but thinking back I think I was probably hoping I’d throw up and choke myself. I even wrote out a detailed plan about killing myself the summer after I finished college but I never did it, obviously, I didn’t have the guts. I still have the cut marks on my legs, they’re faint now but you can still see them here. Like shit man I was one troubled guy back then. I’d go around on my own at night putting through windows and pushing over gravestones. And then one night I saw this guy walking along minding his own business, he looked really camp and you know I’m not homophobic but for whatever reason I started yelling at him, calling him a faggot, saying he was spreading AIDs and shit like that. He started on me saying he was gonna break my neck so I punched him and we started fighting and I was just going for it smacking him and kicking him and he ended up lying there on the floor with blood all over him. He looked in a real bad way and I ran. I still don’t know what happened to him. I hope he was alright just stitched himself up but man he was unconscious when I left him I fucked him pretty bad for all I know I killed the guy. I’ve had it hanging over me ever since. I still have dreams where the police come in my room and find his dead body hidden under my bed.’

Clara, inserting herself into the conversation, said, ‘Did you not check the news the next day? If it was in your town then you’d have heard about it - that someone had been killed.’

‘I hid my head in the sand for weeks after. You know how my town is, inner-city, people getting stabbed and busted all the time. It wouldn’t have been big news someone getting beat to death in the street’ Hayden’s body looked tight and curled in on itself, unusual for him, like it had mounted defensive walls against incoming judgement. But he disliked silence and dour moods, so in effort to stop the whole room suffocating he said, ‘Also I’ve got a really small knob.’ The others chuckled. ‘It’s about four inches hard, maybe a little less.’ He opened his legs beckoning the others to look and see for themselves, which they did. Conversation picked up again, this time on the topic of their bodies. Clara pulled the skin of her vagina back and showed the others a scar, faded but still red enough to point to the pain it once must have caused, running down the inside of her vagina. She explained that as a teenager she’d had a fetish for masturbating with household objects. The scar was from a Hindu ornament her mum had. Harry continued on from this, revealing he had haemorrhoids, unloading a marathon of words on what it’s like to bleed from your arse as a teenager.

Clara interrupted this thankfully: ‘Can I tell you guys something personal?’ Harry quieted and the boys all nodded yes. ‘It’s really fucked up. But I want to tell you guys since you’re all telling things.’ She reached for the MD and keyed another hit before going on. ‘When I was 15 my little brother was 14 and he was really shit with girls. I mean he was like the number one most bullied kid in his year. He finally got a girlfriend but then she dumped him a week later for one of the boys who had been bullying him and it went round school she’d fucked this other kid but done nothing with him. I got really worried about him. He was getting depressed and for all I know he was going to off himself the way he was acting. So one day I said to cheer him up he could neck me for a bit, touch my boobs, and he did, and the next thing I know he’s fingering me and on top of me and we fucked. I liked it I’m not gonna lie. We never did it again. It was my first time too.’

Clara looked a little pale. She had become gradually more sober while telling the story, although still intoxicated. She went to swig the vodka but decided to leave it, feeling sick. For the first time she was able to clearly take in the fact she was naked, in a bathroom with three naked men, all on drugs - that she was miles from home, from her parents, from her brother she hadn’t seen in almost a year, in a situation she would never be able to coalesce with the calm family life she knew back there.

Hayden didn’t speak, thinking Shaun would want to be the one to calm her. But Shaun was made blank by difficult moments. He felt a response would require delicacy, which made him overthink until all possible approaches blurred in his head, preventing him choosing just one.

Instead Harry spoke up, saying it was okay, that she shouldn’t feel embarrassed telling them that. ‘Fucked up things happen to all of us when we’re young. It’s a weird time of life that you don’t have much control over. It’s something that happened to you years ago but who gives a fuck? Right?’ He directed this last word at the men either side of him who both agreed.

Clara eased up a little, colour returning to her face, and thanked them for being so nice about it.

‘Do you wanna speak now?’ Harry asked Shaun. ‘Y’know, to tell us something personal.’ Clara and Hayden advocated too, saying how good it felt to open up about things with people you love.

Shaun felt good; he loved everyone in the room and loved that they’d been so open. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. He felt embarrassed not having anything embarrassing to tell. He worried his silence would be taken as him judging them, or not trusting them enough to spill, but that wasn’t it at all.

‘I don’t know’ Shaun said.

Harry put his arm around Shaun again, ‘Come on man, there must be something from your past you want to share, that you want to get off your chest. We’ve all been telling each other things so it’s nothing to feel bad about.’

Shaun felt anxious, having nothing to tell. Surely that was a good thing - that he wasn’t always hauling around some entity from his past - but it didn’t feel like a good thing now.

‘Would you say you’re more of an open book?’ Harry said.

‘I’d say so’ Shaun replied, happy to take the way out provided to him. But something did come to him. Not a secret of personal anguish, it was something malicious. He didn’t want to say but his mouth was already saying it. ‘Remember your birthday party, first year of uni? he asked Harry.

Harry nodded. ‘Yeah man, that was sick. What about it?’

‘At that party I kissed your little sister. We were necking outside for ages when we went for a cig. I felt really bad about it man.’

Harry gave a vibrant laugh, one that could have only been genuine, and patted Shaun’s side saying, ‘That’s totally fine lad. That’s hilarious. My sister’s scatty, I feel sorry for you if anything.’

With that this strange ritual felt complete. They smiled to each other feeling giddy, their brains interweaving between dimensions, their own highness reflected by the highness visible on the others’ faces.

‘Should we got out then?’ Hayden asked eventually. The idea that there was a world outside those four walls was vaguely returning now. They put their clothes on, including Harry, who hadn’t taken a drug in a while and was in sight of the first glimmering rays of normality.

Hayden opened the door: outside the corridor was crammed with so many people it was hard to move. A lot were waiting to use the toilet. ‘Who the fuck are all you?’ Hayden asked.

A tall Asian man in a leather jacket that Hayden thought looked cool laughed and said, ‘Do you live here? Your mate asked us to come when Tundra closed.’

‘Which mate?’ Shaun said from behind the door.

‘I think her name was…’ he clicked his fingers as he thought, ‘Alice?’

‘Oh shit Alice is here’ Hayden said to no one in particular and made his way out, smoothly concaving his body to squeeze around the masses of people. The others came out soon after and, sticking together, made their way to Shaun’s room. Inside they found Rick rolling a joint. It was the only quiet, ambiently-lit room in the house, just what they needed. Harry didn’t put his socks back on but walked barefoot, in a contemplative, yet jovial, mood, looking like the caricature of a man who had just had a enlightening religious experience. ‘Oi oi boys, and lady’ Rick said upon their entrance.

‘Where’d you get weed?’ Shaun asked. ‘Is Lombard here already?’

‘Maybe but I’ve not seen him. I bought this off some guy downstairs. No idea who he was’ he laughed. ‘I think literally every person Alice invited back here has gear on them, y’know. The fucking buffet is open.’

‘Does Alice know them all?’ Shaun asked. He knew Alice, which made this a stupid question.

‘Fuck no’ Rick said. ‘When Tundra closed apparently she stood outside shouting ‘Gaffe at 17 Harrington Way, everyone invited’ and just led a crowd of them here.

Downstairs Hayden positioned himself at the centre of it all. The living room was filled mostly with people he didn’t know, all keying up and rolling up. A lone, coated man was doing a hefty bong hit - the man’s own bong, it seemed - on the sofa. Hayden found it too funny to intervene and tell him to go outside, even though he knew he should. The ceiling lights were off and Louie’s strobe lighting was on - sending green and blue lazer points out through the darkness. ‘Hayden, how you doing boyo?’ Erin said, materialising next to him to clap a hand on his shoulder.

‘I’m pretty damn good. And yourself?’

‘I want you to meet my mate JJ’ and he motioned to a man stood behind them. JJ was easily the tallest person in the house. He was wearing black leather with stitched symbols, like a biker. He had the air of someone who got into a lot of arguments and had few vulnerable, tender moments. They said hello to each other and JJ offered Hayden coke, which he accepted.

‘JJ’s a bouncer at Tundra’ Erin said.

‘Shit yeah I think I might have seen you before’ Hayden said while thinking about how much he hated the bouncers at Tundra.

‘If you go to Tundra a lot you will have.’

Hayden snorted from the key JJ was holding. ‘You get in many fights working there?’

‘Well I wouldn’t call them fights’ JJ said with a smug grin and smug eyes which looked over at Erin for confirmation. ‘You know the stairs at the entrance?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Someone’s messin’ around, I just pick em’ up and throw em’ down the stairs. I literally get to hoy em’ down’ and he did a throwing action.

Hayden wondered if this was true: those stairs were taller than a full flight of house-stairs and getting chucked down them could probably cause brain damage. Not that JJ didn’t have the look of someone who attempted to murder people by chucking them down stairs. ‘Wow that’s cool that lad’ Hayden said, not really caring if it sounded believable, giving a casual look around for someone to escape to. He saw Bianca - the silent housemate - in the kitchen laughing. ‘Will you guys excuse me for a second’ and off he went to her.

She was stood at the back of the kitchen talking loudly with Ken, Sasha and Alice. ‘Hayden’ she screamed when she saw him and went in for a hug.

‘Hello there’ he said, shocked by the size of her eyes. ‘How come you’re out here with everyone?’

‘Well I was in my room when I heard all the people coming in so I came out to see what was going on and everyone was giving me drinks and stuff and then I saw Ken who I recognised from the beginning of the year’ - she’s clearly off her fucking tits, Hayden thought - ‘and he was talking with your friend Lombard and he said I should try some ket and I did and I’ve never done a drug before apart from like paracetamol and stuff but I feel really fucking good now.’

‘That’s good, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself’ Hayden said. He imagined it’d been - and would continue to be - quite a ride to watch the loss of Bianca’s drug virginity unfold. But his happiness for her was genuine, not happiness over her taking drugs exactly, which, as he knew, was never an all-around positive addition to a person’s life, but that she was here talking, socialising, doing something she normally wouldn’t.

‘You say Lombard’s here?’ Hayden said. ‘You know where he is now?’

‘In the garden having a smoke’ Ken said.

Hayden made his way outside. Sure enough Lombard was there. He was a meek-looking man, a boy really, younger than all of them - when and how he got into drug dealing remained a mystery. They approached and hugged and Lombard offered him one of the biggest joints Hayden had ever seen. ‘Moonshine haze, top fuckin’ stuff this’ he said.

Hayden took it and enjoyed a long inhale. It tasted fresh.

‘So I’m guessing you’ve been told about the… situation?’ Lombard asked.

‘Situation? No?’ Hayden said.

‘Oh really? Well some kid took a pill and is schitzing out so we took him to that girl, the fit one in there, think Bianca’s her name, her room.’

The image of Lombard fucking Bianca vividly entered Hayden’s noggin. But, being a host, it seemed the right thing to go see what was going down. ‘I’ll be right back lad.’

He headed back through the kitchen into the living room where someone had put on loud German metal, everyone jumping round manic like a mosh pit. JJ was the most animated, drooping his arms down low and zagging round the room, what Hayden had only ever seen described as the ‘ket dance.’ It was easy for a man of his size because he pushed everyone else out the way. Hayden passed through into the corridor and opened the door to Bianca’s room. Louie, Matt, Jazz and Zoe were there, along with the kid, who Hayden didn’t recognise - he looked maybe a year younger than the rest of them. He was speaking frantically, dramatically, non-stop like he was reading a soliloquy from a script:

‘... but what even is a social convention? I’m here in this room, do I have the authority to be here without knowing the owner? In this case it appears that Bianca-girl deferred the authority to her friends which have allowed me to be in here. But how much is too much? Can I sit on the bed? Can I look through the drawers? There’s no guidebook, but maybe someone should write one if that’d be possible, it means it’s just left to intuition but there’s so many different options in every social situation maybe that’s the the cause of social anxiety getting locked between lots of different choices, but…’

Hayden broke in: ‘Hey lad I’m Hayden, Bianca won’t mind you sitting on the bed but you probably shouldn’t go through the drawers.’ The kid, hands twitching, continuing his pacing back and forward, changed the direction of his tirade:

‘You’re Hayden, people say you take lots of drugs and they worry about you but that you’re a good friend. I’ve not met you before but I’m in your house…’

‘It’s no good speaking to him, his brain is fried’ Louie said.

‘How come?’ Hayden asked.

‘He’d never taken ecstasy before’ Matt said. ‘So I gave him a pill, told him to bite it in half when he took it. I didn’t see but apparently he bit it in half then took both halves.’

‘Serotonin Syndrome I think it’s called, what he’s got’ Louie added.

‘But who is he? Did he come back with Alice?’

‘No he was here a little before that’ Zoe explained. ‘No one knows who he is. We’ve been asking everyone but he must have come on his own.’

‘Surely not’ Hayden said. ‘I guess he’ll just have to wait til he conks himself out. Poor guy. Sort of interesting to watch though.’

‘It wasn’t that interesting when he was being inappropriate with all the girls’ Jazz said. ‘He kept walking next to people and groping them but he kept speaking the whole time. He did it to me. He’s been going like this ages.’

‘An hour or two and he’ll ride it out’ Louie said.

‘Do we know his name at least?’

‘... My name? My name’s Cain. But what even is a name? It’s just a noise your parents assign you at birth before they even know who you really are and then it just sticks forever. And people think this noise defines you in some way but if you really think about it of course it doesn’t…’

The others looked at each other, quiet now, watching Cain like he was on TV.

The time was roughly half two. A time when most parties have an impending sense of the end looming over them. The drugs having run out, or down to a quantity that meant they were rationed, and the peaking of chemicals having long since past and now only ringing out in bodies like guitar feedback after the band has finished playing. But this night was different. The sudden influx of late-coming, drug-bringing guests kept the fire lit.

Lombard’s head was a blur - it always was: he’d smoked DMT earlier and had gotten through well over £80 of weed that day, along with some prescription pills. He couldn’t remember how long it’d been since he’d been sober. He couldn’t properly remember the feeling of sobriety at all. The events of this week all dissolved into the next, as if reality were just an ever-changing pattern visible in waves: this gaff, the last one, that night in Liverpool, smoking a bifta with his dad, travelling in the early hours of the morning dropping off gear in parks and lonely alleyways, who knows where he’d be next or how he’d end up there. But he didn’t care, each day he felt less conscious of it all; there was a time when he’d fought against it but that was futile and now he acquiesced to the dissolution. He put his jacket down on the sofa and went out for a smoke.

Outside he lit up a rollie packed with DMT. At first inhale the effects felt different from usual. An eeriness entered his senses, a feeling that the world around him was regressing backwards, that it was a sublime double of usual reality, an imposter. He smoked on hoping it would pass. The second inhale was worse. The colours that normally swarm from DMT were nowhere, replaced instead by an anhedonic greyness that coated everything. Some long buried part of the brain in charge of rational, self-preservatory thought told him to put out the rollie and try to sober up a little, but his hand was already pressing it to his mouth, his lungs already breathing it in. He smoked the whole thing, about seven or eight inhales, hoping each time that the next toke would return him to a high he was familiar with. But none of them did. Someone asked if he was alright - feeling the need to ask because Lombard’s face was droopy, pale, miserable - but the reply he gave was nonsensical. A garble of attempted words. He felt embarrassed and hurried through the house and out the door, heading vaguely in the direction of home.

His jacket remained on the sofa. Therein was enough drugs to make King Kong overdose. It went unnoticed for a little while, until two unknowns who’d ended up there through Alice’s shouting, took an interest. ‘I’m telling you it’s that dealer’s jacket and I saw him leave.’

‘We’ll if it is his jacket he’ll be coming back for it then.’

‘He’s been a while. Maybe he forgot it?’

‘Go take a look in it then if you feel that confident.’

‘I don’t. I’m just saying… if it is his imagine how much gear will be in there.’

‘He might have sold it all.’

‘And he might not have.’

‘Yeah and you’d get cut up if he came back and it was all gone.’

‘How would he know it’s me?’

‘Fine, go over there and take it then.’

To the last speaker’s surprise his friend walked over to the jacket and looked through the pockets. One baggie... two… three… a never ending supply! In his giddiness he handed out a baggie to every person that walked past. He was lanky and intoxicated and made no attempt at hiding what he was doing. To people who didn’t know whose jacket it was they presumed he was a dealer off his head and feeling generous. Even the people who did know were happy to take the drugs, not even voicing any protest, too twisted to think of anything beyond the substance in their hands.

The drugs spread out like a virus, reaching every room. Each person wielded their own private baggie, which they shared out on kitchen counters and bedroom desks; some substances were identifiable from appearance, others needed testing first. The boy who started it all emptied the jacket, keeping a good deal for himself.

Hayden, passing through the landing, was given a key of what he guessed was coke by a girl named Abbs. He was slowly piecing together where all the newfound drugs had come from but he, like his other housemates who had worked it out, was past the point of caring.

The surplus of supplies breathed a second life into the tatty-looking walls and the tatty-looking bodies it contained. People tripped, ketted, wired, coked and doped themselves.

Shaun found himself stood in the garden sharing a DMT rollie - the first time he’d ever taken the drug. After his first inhalation he saw colours and felt things indescribable in words. He spent a moment in deep contemplation then passed the joint back and headed inside to find Clara.

Few people there had ever been to a party where they’d peaked, sobered up then come up again. But this coming up had a different energy from the first time. Faces were scrunched up and twitching violently. Words were stuttered rabidly. Eyes suggested brains playing on automation. There was a craziness to everything being said. The house was dark now, the music quieter, awareness of waking the neighbours heightened (but only slightly), no one quite sure how to stop themselves. No one looked at phones - the civilised world was asleep now, or struggling through night shifts. On the border of highness waits delirium, grounded only by social awareness. The house was cold, giving those without coats a feeling of vulnerability, a feeling that they were taking part in a world their parents would have never wished for them, a world that made their adulthood undeniable.

Cain walked through the party looking spent, lost in his monologue like a sermon-giver in rapture. He announced to everyone who made eye contact to quiet down and listen to what he had to say. Some found this amusing, others annoying, few listened intently. ‘Death, death is the end’ he said. ‘There is nothing beyond death, only the nothingness that came before life. But we can’t know this really. We don’t understand death until we’re dead, and then it’s too late to experience it, which makes life itself a sort of paradox...’

Upstairs something else began to happen. It started in Louie’s bedroom where Shaun, Clara and a boy they’d just met called Shorty were sat talking. Shaun was rocking back and forth on Louie’s chair; all were finding it hard to stay on the same topic for more than a few sentences. Shaun liked this Shorty - who wasn’t very short, but not tall enough for the name to be ironic either - but he wished he would leave so him and Clara could be alone. There was an urgency to all of Shaun’s thoughts, early morning post-substance induced urgency that made him feel he had to realise all his fantasies and desires right now rather than leaving them to grow cobwebs on some dusty mental shelf.

Smoothly, not forcing anything, Shorty leaned forward and began kissing Clara. She was into it: she stuck her tongue inside his mouth and felt her nipples go hard. Shaun was wondering if he should leave, let them get down to what was inevitably going to happen, when Clara rubbed her hand up his leg, pressing on his dick. It was nice: a long overdue feeling, he felt. But his mind flooded with how the practicalities of this situation were going to work. Shorty noticed Clara’s stray hand but didn’t show any signs of caring. Soon Clara dragged Shaun by the belt onto the bed where her and Shorty were and they all started kissing.

Clara was the first to take her clothes off, the two boys soon copying, and they all centered on the bed where the boys got down to touching Clara, who groaned as loudly as if they were in an empty house. The bed became a factory of pirouetting limbs.

A little bit into this Alice entered the room. She interpreted the situation as one born purely of lust, not a sensitive encounter she was interrupting, and, like always, wanting to best what everyone else was doing she stripped off completely, putting her small, perky tits and shaved vagina on show and entered the bed to join in. Each guy ploughed one of the girls - Clara liked missionary; Alice prefered doggy - then swapped who they were giving it to. In between this the the girls necked and fingered each other while the guys grinded and wanked each other off.

Alex had left the door open and the noises coming out made it clear what was going on inside. (The groans were loud enough even a closed door wouldn’t have stopped this.) At first people laughed or looked round awkwardly, but soon desire spread to all of them. In their drugged up state it wasn’t hard to see these urges in one another’s eyes. People kissed and felt each other. The bedrooms were filled with couples - ‘couples’ created out of nothing but proximity - having sex, and when these soon filled up, pairs, threesomes, foursomes, started rutting on the floor and against the walls, on the kitchen counters and the sofa and even in the garden, where the warmth of an external body was easiest to appreciate.

Louie pressed Abbs face into the wall while he fucked her from behind; Hayden sat on the chair with Letisha bouncing on his dick - neither of them had ever much liked the other; Bianca was losing her virginity to JJ on the couch - he was very rough the way he pushed her onto the sofa and ripped her dress open. He didn’t try any foreplay, or lube up, just stuck his dick inside her. It was bigger than she’d expected. She started to cry as this hulk of a man pounded her into the leather. Eventually he lifted out of her, saw blood all over his dick, ignored this, and forcefully turned her over to fuck her doggy. She wailed in pain but her noise was lost in the groans of the house.

Cain, who had finally stopped talking and had been in Bianca’s room sipping water when the orgy started, didn’t join in. He just looked around confused and a little anxious, not even properly able to remember how he’d ended up at this gaff in the first place.

The atomised parties of sex joined together. No one knew who they were fucking. Gender, sexuality, none of it mattered. It was the only orgy anyone there had been to, other than JJ. Some of the sex got rough: people spat on and choked each other, pulled hair, bit into necks and tits and clits.

There were now seven people in Louie’s room having sex, not all on the bed. Shaun was being ridden by Alexa, who he didn’t find attractive but was enjoying it anyway. He was watching Clara be fisted by Matt on the other end of the bed. He felt strange watching, not because he was voyeuring - everyone had everything on show - but because he liked Clara, he’d realised it, or remembered it at least, viscerally for the first time this night, and here she was with a mutual friend of theirs with his whole hand, part of his arm, inside her, making her squeal with pleasure and pleasurable pain. He felt an emotion but it was too numbed to be able to tell what it was. Which meant it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.

Everyone began to climax and finish. Jizz was shot over chests and tummies, over the carpeting and up the walls. One could feel the tension in the house release, the atmosphere easing up, climaxing in synergy.

Afterwards, everyone sat naked. Few people spoke, just looked at each other with bloodshot eyes. There was no need for words. It was morning now, dull grey skies outside.

Someone shouted out, ‘We need food.’ Agreement echoed through all rooms in hearing distance.

Hayden, sat at the centre of the living room, replied, ‘Will anywhere be open at this time though?’

‘There’s gotta be somewhere. It’s just past six.’

With that note of hopefulness a small group of volunteers willing to go search for food assembled and had money passed to them with the goal of bringing back a banquet. None of this group, which had seven members, clothed themselves, and this went entirely unmentioned by anybody. They headed out into the world naked like prehistoric tribe people would have done.

Out the door they lurched through the streets, yelling out incomprehensible cannibalistic screams. The streets were cold and foggy and the only people were those in cars who slowed down to see what was going on then sped away when this group of demonic figures started running towards them.

A few streets from the house, nearing town centre, they saw a homeless man sat up in his sleeping bag looking uninterestedly out at the world. The tribe ran over and grabbed him by all sides. Some by the arms, others the legs, ripping him from his comfort into total confusion. He yelled for help and struggled with them; they replied by holding tighter and screeching at him as if speaking an alien dialect.

Primordial forces empowered them, running their bodies. By the time they returned to the street the house was on they were carrying the man above their heads like a coffin.

Once inside, one of the girls bashed his head in with a speaker. They worked together dismembering the limbs and cooking them, in a frying pan and the grill and in the oven. They lifted the barbecue from the cupboard, neglected since summer, and roasted an arm in the garden. The meat grazed, getting tender, and bits were passed around for everyone to eat.

Shaun and Hayden sat on the living room floor sharing a piece of foot and wondering what they’d think about things once the drugs wore off.