Survival Of The Fittest

((Abel Zelenovic continued from Party Freaks of Nature))

This party sucked. Some real fake-ass people here. Think you know your buddies and then... whoop! There they go thotting around some other dude soon as you leave the room... or would it be bro thotting? Brotting? It didn't matter.

Fuck Andy. Fuck Stepney. Fuck... uh... fuck... hmm. Well, preemptively fuck whoever was gonna abandon Abel next. He didn't need 'em. It was just gonna be me, myself, and I from now on.

Me, myself, I, and his little towel friend of course. Him and his best buddy, alone in this dining room offshooting the kitchen, sitting at this nice ass table on a chair with a pretty baller seat cushion.

He took another swig straight from the two-liter of RC Cola he swiped from the slim pickings in the kitchen followed up by another bite from one of the trays of mystery brownies left forgotten. They were light and sweet, but they didn't fill the void in his heart even after eating half of a tray by himself. They felt nostalgic; he definitely had these before but he couldn't place where. Regardless, they were his and his alone. Some rando junior tried to swipe a piece with their dirty mitts ten minutes ago, but a glare and some light snarling quickly took care of that.

He wiped his hands on the towel, the soft towel, his towel friend, his only friend.

His eyes felt so heavy all of a sudden. Maybe it'd be a good idea to rest them for a bit; just a couple of minutes. He propped his head up with an arm on the table, his eyes fixated on his brownie hoard before both of them slowly closed. The thumping music that was omnipresent moments ago slowly faded, and faded, and fazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Well this party was going pretty well all things considered.

((Sierra Cook continued from Peace...))

Even before her chance encounter with Julien, Sierra was having a pretty good time — which is to be expected as Mikki's parties were pretty much consistently good — but after spending some time with Julien, things really hit their stride for Sierra. She was in an amazing goddamn mood. Sex, booze, and partying will do that to a girl.

They didn't really do much afterwards, going their separate ways to continue to enjoy the rest of the party on the their own accord following their brief, but passionate, mingling. A bit of a shame Sierra felt, but it was still amusing to see Julien walk away unaware that he had put his shirt on inside out. She wondered if he ever realized his mistake after they left the bedroom?

Of course, she wasn't without her own wardrobe problems. Most notably she was now braless, which was a slight problem given she was wearing a loose tank top. She wasn't exactly sure where that went to, all she knew was that was going to be an interesting discovery for somebody tomorrow, and an even more awkward conversation with Forrest. This was a party with booze, there was probably going to be a lot of missing bras by the end of this and her's was just going to be another within a pile of lost articles of clothing.

That was something she'll worry about later. Right now she was trying to navigate the interdimensional palace of madness that was Forrest Quin's goddamn house. Seriously, this place was massive and it was already kinda hard to navigate sober, let alone drunk. Although that may just be the booze in her affecting her memory and pathfinding within this totally-not-Eldritch Location masquerading as a living space.

As she stumbled her way through the labyrinthine-like interior of the Quin residence, Sierra found herself entering the dinning room of the house. This wasn't exactly where she had intended to go but it was a start. First floor, but no sight of the booze to fill her little red plastic party cup.

She looked down towards the cup in her hand only to realize that she did not have it on her! She either dropped it on the way here or left it in the room!

Well she was already down here and she wasn't going to waste time trying to find her way back to where the cup was. She could just find more! But even within the haze of intoxication she was able to muster enough cognitive thought to realize that maybe, just maybe, she should stop drinking for the rest of the night if she was thinking she was walking around with a cheap plastic cup this whole time and really wasn't.

Speaking of being drunk, she spotted some sleeping at the dining room table with a two-liter of soda and a half-eaten tray of brownies. Likely the victim of drinking too much for their own good and passing out. A dangerous thing to do at a party with drunk and/or high teenagers that can and will fuck with you while you are unconscious. Even drunk, Sierra knew this was bad situation to find oneself in.

She took pity on him... whoever he was. He seemed familiar but she was honestly too drunk to recall his name.

Apple? Adele? Kane?

Something like that...

Slowly she moved her away over to the sleeping... guy in her class. Amber? No, that definitely wasn't it...

As she drew closer she placed a hand on his back and shook him a little.

"Hhheeeeyyy, yo, buddy..." She slurred. "You, uh, you 'ight?"

Abel did not stir. Sierra's prodding caused Abel's head to slip out of the cradle provided by his arm and hand. His head and arm freefell and plopped onto the table, right on the towel spread out in front of him.

(Mackenzie Baker continued from The Good Times Are Killing Me)

Mackenzie was not in the clearest of mindsets. She’d tried to do the right thing and all it got her was dirty looks and hurt feelings. She wanted to shout about the injustice of it all, but someone would just tell her to keep the noise down.

So it was time for the next best thing. Find a place to just grab a quick drink, chew on a few crackers, and then walk back into the party like nothing had happened. Because Kenzie was determined to have fun this evening and nothing would stop her.

Except maybe a dead body.

She didn’t know what to make of the scene before her. A 2-liter of soda and a tray of brownies. A figure seated at the table, collapsed onto a strategically placed towel that obscured his face. And looming above him...

Sierra Cook. Of course! She should have known! And caught right in the act! Was it the brownies, Sierra?

Actually, in all seriousness, the kid was pretty clearly snoring. You’d hear him all the way from the kitchen adjacent. But it was fun to let her imagination go wild now and then. She grinned widely as she pictured herself bursting through the door, arm outstretched in accusation. She’d make a darn good lawyer.

“Looks like someone partied too hard,” she observed as she walked very normally into the room. “At least he’s still breathing, right? How are you doing, Sierra?”

Was it freaky that she knew everyone’s names? Yeah, maybe, but in her defense, she’d had four years to do it in. Everyone needed a hobby, and hers was people. Even if people weren’t fond of her in return.

And with his head limply falling and landing on the table it had become very clear that he — Aaron? — was out like a light.

"Looks like someone partied too hard. At least he’s still breathing, right? How are you doing, Sierra?"

Sierra looked up to see that Mackenzie had entered the room. Unlike the guy sleeping at the table, she could actually remember Mackenzie's name by virtue of associating that purple hat of her's with her name. It was probably her most defining feature and that anyone even remotely familiar with her knew her hat. Once you noticed the hat the name of its owner just sort of came to even, even while drunk.

"Ooh, heeey," She slurred a bit. "I'm-I'm doin' good. Just came in 'n saw..."

Scott?

Steve?

Lucas?

Oh God... was he one of the Lucases?

Luci?

Lucoids?

What's the plural of 'Lucas'?

Either way, there were far too many of them at her school. Like, an infestation of the fuckers. There was that creepy manwhore, that drunk one, the hot female one, the sad one, the bondage one, the Facebook one, the drunk one... Now wait, she already thought of that one. Was he also the manwhore one? Which one liked movies?

While she was standing there, trying to recount the many guys who were named Lucas within her school she realized that she was talking to someone and she just went quiet to think of guys named Luke's Ass.

...Lucas. Guys named Lucas.

"Yeah, yeah, this- this guy here."

She stopped after that, forgetting what she was talking about in the first place. With that she turned her attention to the table again. She eyed the tray of brownies, which called to her with the siren song of chocolate goodness. Slowly she reached towards them...

As soon as Sierra got dangerously close to the brownies, Abel stopped snoring.

And breathing.




























Quite a few seconds later, he snored once again.

Yup, Sierra had a few too many as well. Not as many as this guy, but she was well on her way too. At this rate, the party would be seeing more emergency cases like the Mystery Man. Mackenzie tried craning around to get a better look at him, but she wasn't getting anything.

Then he stopped snoring

"Oh my gosh! Sierra? Something's wrong!"

Then he started snoring again.

"Oh. Never mind."

With Sierra going for the brownies, Mackenzie turned her attention to the man himself. Maybe what she was about to do was rude and/or a bit intrusive, but the question of his identity was burning in her mind. She had to know! She just had to! But how to do it...whoever this guy was, his hair was almost down to the scalp, so no chance of grabbing that. Maybe if she...

"I'm going to lean him back for a second. You know, to...check his breathing."

Easier said than done. Seemed like a regular high-backed dining room chair. No rollers or anything. She grabbed it near the top and pulled hard, straining with the force required, but to her amazement, it began to tip back.

Then it kept tipping, and if pulling him back was difficult, trying to hold the chair in place was proving impossible. Her knees buckled...At this rate, she was going to be smashed to jelly! She had to think fast...

"Sorry!" she cried as she shoved forward. The chair hung in place for a second, giving her the opportunity to duck sideways, then gravity reasserted itself and it came crashing down, occupant and all.

Oh, she realized. It was Abel Zelenovic. She hoped he was the forgiving sort.

"Woah."

[Bert Wren continued from The Mascara Snake.]

Someone had gone a little too nuts tonight. That was, of course, to be expected, and it was also to be expected that said person would be a little like Abel. A little bro-y, but mostly, not? She didn't know him too well, but for some reason she got that impression from him. Jeez, was he okay? There were a couple of gals standing around him, looking all concerned-like. Maybe he wasn't okay. He definitely wouldn't be the most okay after that fall.

She opened her mouth to say something else before noticing all the brownies on the table. She hadn't even had the chance to smoke any of her own weed yet. There was a joint between her fingers that she hadn't even had the chance to light. In the dark, she had gone looking for the moonies that came by her smoke room with Camilla, but hadn't been able to find them. There was some shouting in the backyard and what sounded like someone falling down, but there was no way that they had taken the plunge off of the roof, right? It could have happened, but she got the feeling that there'd be a lot less party in the air and a lot more holy-fuck-someone-just-almost-died, but maybe there were enough heads here that shit taking place wouldn't be noticed, fair?

Anyways, a brownie? Brownies sounded pretty good right now, even for their non-weed merits. Last time she did weed, she used a dab pen and barely got high. It wasn't a very memorable experience. Edibles did you in for a while, though. Like, a seriously long-ass time, as evidenced by Abel over here. Bert realized she wouldn't be much help in righting him or pulling him back up, but she wanted to get involved. Like, just in this whole scene. It was a happening, and there might be pot brownies involved. Most of what was in her was screaming at her to say something, anything, to jump in, even if she was having trouble finding the exact words.

"Sierra! Kenzie!" she said as she walked up to the other two girls, "Having fun tonight?"

Sierra's hand stopped short of the baked goods at the sound of the unconscious guy's sudden stop of snoring and breathing, taken a little aback by it. While she was startled by the suddenness of it, Mackenzie was outright freaking out... until he continued snoring once more.

That was odd...

Then Mackenzie came over to him and for some reason tried to lean him back. Something about his breathing? That was dumb. He was breathing right now.

She watched Mackenzie lean the chair back, hand still hovering over the brownies as she watched these events unfold. She watched as Mackenzie apologized, shoved the chair foward, ducked out of the way and then saw it all come crashing down back down.

Maybe it was because she was drunk but she was extremely confused about the events that just happened in front of her.

Shrugging it off, she continued to reach for the baked goods when another person had alerted her to their presence — one Bert Wren. Sierra has seen her around enough parties to point her out if she saw her. Which reminded her that she still didn't remember this guy's name sleeping at the table. Definitely started with an A...

"Yeah! Looooads of fun!" Sierra smiled at her with a toothy grin.

With that she turned her attention back to the treats and reached down to the brownie plate and took a hold of one of the chocolate squares.

With both the physical and metaphysical crash landing, Abel was now free from the sea of unconsciousness.

He groaned as he took stock of what the hell happened and pushed himself back upright. He looked at the fallen chair, at Mackenzie recoiling like she made the world's greatest mistake, at Bert looking as confused as Abel felt.

He looked at Sierra and her dirty mitts touching one of his prized chocolate treasures.

"Hey yo man, don't-" he yelled, immediately cut off by a rising pressure from the pits of his stomach. He gagged once. He gagged twice.

On the third gag he erupted. He held back as much as he could, but he spewed a little on the hardwood floor and on Bert's shoes.

Mackenzie could only give Bert a quick wave, Abel having taken most of her focus. She didn't know why Bert and Sierra were taking his fall so casually, since Mackenzie's own heart was still going a mile a minute. Bert had entered the room, had clearly seen the body, and just immediately launched into pleasantries. Sierra was even worse, taking a lunge for the brownies without a word of concern, not even a hint of shock or surprise.

But hey, if they weren't worried, maybe she was just overreacting. Abel was stirring, seemingly just annoyed, and everything was going to be fine. Absolutely nothing to be worried about.

Okay, those noises he was making weren't encouraging. Actually, no, they were VERY not encouraging.

"Abel, are you okay-HOLY CRAP!"

The vomit came sputtering out with barely a warning; not a whole lot, but Mackenzie ducked backwards anyway and raised her arms in panic. This was serious. No, worse than serious, this was a sheer disaster, even worse than someone jumping off a roof! Was this a concussion? She'd heard about people vomiting from a concussion. Oh jeez, this was all her fault! She was going to get sued! Her parents would kill her!

"Oh no, oh no no no!" she whimpered. She didn't know how to treat a concussion. Was there a test of some kind? Should she be shining a light in his face? Maybe raising two fingers?

She didn't do any of that. She just stood there and watched him be sick on the floor. She was okay with solving other people's problems, but she didn't know how to solve her own. She could only hope that the other two girls knew what to do.

Nice! The two were having a good time! This is great. Amazing party, really. Would be better with some cannabis. Like the stuff in those brownies? Or maybe she could finally light the joint that was between her fucking fingers, holy god, she'd need to scrubadubdub the gunk out of her knuckles before she got home. Sierra had the same idea, and went for a brownie, and Bert decided to close in on it too and grab one for herself because hey she didn't know better and and and—

The boy

spewed

chunks

all over

her

shoes.

She stood static for several moments. Her nice shoes. Her wear to the party to stunt on everyone shoes. Her I like to pretend sometimes that I have fuck you money and I do it by wearing these shoes. Her nice sneaker shoes. Coated, thickly, with yellow brown black red vomit. Her socks were soaked, too. Like being splashed by a car driving through a puddle of black mud on the side of the road. Like a car that had veered, careening, into said puddle.

To ruin her shoes.

Her mouth hung open until the smell hit her nose, and then it quickly closed.

Glancing up briefly at the ceiling and exhaling sharply—l'enfer, c'est les autres—Bert then looked down at Abel and laughed.

"Oh, someone's had too much tonight," she said, "I think I should confiscate some of these brownies, so you don't vomit up a fuckin' kidney."

She swiped a couple and held them in her free hand.

"Hey yo man, don't-"

Sierra froze in place as she heard sleeping guy's voice, saying something before he cut himself off. He started gagging and before she could ask if he was okay he blew the contents of his stomach out to the floor below. Sierra backed up from him, a little surprised at what just happened, with a brownie clutched within her delicate fingers.

Guess he had more than he could handle...

The guy — Abel was his name! Something she managed to catch Mackenzie saying before the contents of his stomach launched out — was a pretty pitiful sight to see. Watching him she felt a little nauseous, but looked away from the sight to resettled her stomach. It wasn't going easy though, alcohol plus witnessing something like that wasn't exactly great in avoiding the same fate as the newly christened Abel. And the smell was not helping.

Poor Bert caught the worst of it though. Probably the last thing she expected was to having some guy vomit all over her shoes.

...Well, actually that probably wasn't the last thing she expected. There were, like, a dozen other terrible things that could have happened. All of them probably objectively worse. But that wasn't relevant at the moment. Or so she thought. She was drunk but she wasn't sure and she wasn't nearly drunk enough to ask the room's opinion on specific puke related situation. Also, thinking about it didn't help her stomach either.

"Yo dude..." She muttered looking to Abel, her voice a little nasally as she tried to not breathe through her nose and inhale the foul scent of his bile. "You doin' alright?"

Alright, she had her fun. Abel was all sprawled on the ground, and people were going over to make sure he was okay, and, sure, Bert figured that was probably the right thing to do, but she needed to "clean off her shoes" (read; find somewhere to eat these brownies) and couldn't stick around for very long. She shrugged her shoulders and turned to leave the room. Maybe she'd find Camilla and check on how she was doing? Maybe she could have a brownie, or something.

Well, wherever she was, she was probably having a good time, if only because she wasn't in the puke room. With puke shoes.

Crossing through the doorway, Bert exited the room.

[Bert Wren continued elsewhere.]

The acid burned and lingered in Abel's throat, chunky bile dribbling down his chin. Bert grabbed a couple of brownies before leaving the room. How dare her! "Hey, don't-" he commanded, interrupted again by gagging. Followed by another round of vomiting in the same spot.

He fell back down on the floor with a groan, ignoring whatever Mackenzie and Sierra were going on about and passed out again.