The Party
By
Caleb Winterburn
When Robert got into his car on that cool September evening, he did not realize it would be the last time he ever did so. When he picked up his girlfriend and drove twenty minutes to his friend Jason’s house, he didn’t know this was the last party he would ever attend.
Suffice to say, if Robert had any awareness of what awaited him in the basement of that house, he would have been halfway across the state by now, headed to his parent’s place, and certainly not attending the party Jason’s wife had organized for that evening.
Oblivious of the danger, Robert had buttoned up his best party shirt, the one that did an adequate enough job hiding his burgeoning gut, and pulled on the only pair of jeans not in the wash.
He then texted Jason’s wife, Eve, that he was on his way. She messaged him back with a thumbs up, and Robert promptly deleted the conversation. It wouldn’t do for his girlfriend to find out he had been texting Eve. Sasha was the jealous type, Robert’s previous history with Jason’s wife notwithstanding. Plus, with everything happening in Jason’s life, Robert thought it best to tread carefully around his best friend.
“Ma, I’m outta here!” Robert yelled up the steps as he left his basement suite.
“Hon, remember to mow your grandmother’s lawn before you get back,” his mom replied from somewhere on the main floor above.
“Crap,” Robert muttered. He had forgotten about his promise. “Ok!” he called back. At twenty-six, he was getting too old for these kiddy chores. But all the other cousins had left town years ago, leaving Robert the sole inheritor of these mundane errands.
Silently he cursed himself for staying in his hometown while everyone else had the sense to get away from his family and make lives for themselves elsewhere. It wasn’t that Robert hated his parents and grandparents, they were just so ordinary, bone-dry and plain.
Enough of that, Robert thought, jumping into the dusty old car he drove. Tonight was about Jason.
Tires screeching, he drove down the block to where his girlfriend, Sasha, lived. Even his love life was far too close to home.
Pulling up, he honked the horn impatiently, they were late. Sasha poked her curly-haired head out of her front door and glared at Robert, before sauntering over to his parked car. She was beautiful even when angry, but Robert would say nothing of it, intent on keeping the young woman humble.
“You’re late,” Sasha greeted Robert, swinging into the low-slung passenger seat. “I hate this car,” she grumbled.
“Anything else?” Robert asked, peeling out, headed to Jason’s house.
“Hold on, I didn’t get my seatbelt on!” Sasha said angrily through the oversized wad of bubble gum in her cheek.
“You had to wear the leopard print,” Robert said, ignoring her indignation.
“It’s a party! These are my party pants, they’re in style again you know.”
“Not that kind of party,” Robert muttered. “We can’t stay long, apparently I gotta mow grandma’s lawn.”
“What a load of joy you are,” Sasha said, chewing loudly on her gum. “I mean, why are you even coming? We’re supposed to cheer Jason up, how are you gonna do that during the two minutes you’ll spend there?” She shook her head, “I don’t even know why that sweet man is your friend, he treats you like a brother, and you act like a stranger to him.”
“Hey, take it easy,” Robert replied sharply. But her words had struck a chord. He did take Jason for granted, Sasha wasn’t the first person to tell him he treated his friend badly. “I’m trying to change. I threw him this party, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t throw him nothing,” Sasha snorted. “Eve, god bless her, knows how to take care of her man.”
“Maybe you could learn a thing or two.”
Sasha punched Robert in the arm. Perhaps she meant to do so playfully, but Robert didn’t think that was the case, rubbing the sore spot on his shoulder.
They drove the rest of the way in tense silence, hard feelings filling the space between them.
Pulling up to Jason and Eve’s house, Sasha broke the sullen hush, “You didn’t even say anything about the cake I brought.”
Robert looked over at her lap in surprise, he hadn’t noticed the dessert Sasha brought with her. It was a badly decorated white layer cake. He shrugged and left the car.
Sasha huffed in frustration, getting out of the car and rounding on Robert.
“I spent all freaking afternoon on this cake! I had to look up on YouTube how to make fondant at home. Fondant, Robert!”
Robert shook his head at her, bewildered by her anger, frustrated that she asked so much of him.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “You could have done a better job decorating it.”
Sasha shrieked at him and threw the cake down onto the driveway. It landed facedown with an anti-climactic splat. She stood there, quivering, with her fists clenched, staring down at the ruined cake.
“Now why’d you go and do that?” Robert asked incredulously, but softened when he noticed fat tear drops falling from Sasha’s face to mingle with the frosting and multi-colored sprinkles below. “Hey - hey, look I’m sorry,” Robert said, approaching her and putting an arm around her shoulders.
Sasha pulled away from him violently, “I don’t know Robbie, I just can’t.”
She hastily wiped the tears from her eyes, took a breath to regain her composure, and marched up the front steps to Jason and Eve’s door. Robert took one last look at the mutilated cake before joining Sasha on the steps. It probably wouldn’t have even tasted good.
Sasha rang the doorbell, and they waited side-by-side on the steps for an eternity of uncomfortable seconds.
Why did she have to act so crazy? Robert thought. She had seemed so sweet when they first met a few years back, but since then it had just been emotions and yelling. He blew air out of his nose and looked down at his shoes, maybe it was time to finally cut Sasha loose and find a sweeter woman, one made only of sugar and honey, none of this spicy nonsense.
The door swung open, and there she was, Eve, all milky skin and green eyes. How on earth had a guy like Jason managed to marry a woman like her?
“Hey, guys, come in,” Eve said warmly, graciously ignoring Sasha’s smudged makeup and the dessert splattered across her driveway.
“Thanks Eve for welcoming us into your beautiful home,” Sasha said, giving the other woman a hug.
“It’s nothing, you guys are like family,” Eve replied, looking towards Robert.
But Robert brushed brusquely past his best friend’s wife.
“I need a beer,” he said.
Inside, several other couples were chatting and laughing amicably in the home’s spacious living room, accompanied by loud music. Robert ignored them and navigated to the kitchen instead, opening the fridge and helping himself to one of the beers within.
Popping the cap with his keychain, he lifted the precious liquid containing bottle to his lips and took one, two, three massive gulps of the life-saving beverage. That was better. Already he could feel the stress built-up from his interaction with Sasha loosening and melting from off his shoulders. It did nothing to dull the tiny ache in his heart, but that was a condition he had learned to live with long before he met Sasha.
Closing the fridge door, Robert was startled by the sudden appearance of his best friend.
“I have something to show you,” Jason said without preamble.
“Oh, hey there buddy,” Robert replied, taking another swig of beer. “Look, I can’t stay too long, I gotta help my grandma.”
“Rob,” Jason said intently. “I got something to show you, man.”
“Ok,” Robert replied. Jason’s intensity was beginning to scare him. Maybe losing his job had actually been the final blow that tipped the man over the edge.
Come to think of it, something serious must be going on with Jason. Robert couldn’t come up with another reason why Eve would allow him back into her house, especially after what he had told her last fall.
“Follow me,” Jason said, heading off down the narrow hall, away from the rest of the party.
Again, Robert wondered what Jason had that he didn’t. His best friend was shorter than he was, thicker around the edges, certainly not as intelligent. Why did Eve choose him?
Robert followed Jason down the basement steps. It was pitch black until Jason pulled on an old-fashioned string bulb to illuminate the subterranean laundry room. The basement itself was dingy and dark, a dusty, cracked concrete slab segregated by bare-framed plywood walls.
“What is it?” Robert asked, wanting to spend as little time as possible in the spider infested place.
“Through there, man,” Jason said, pointing at a door leading out of the small laundry room. “You’re not gonna believe it.” His silvery eyes glowed with barely contained excitement.
“You’re not gonna murder me?” Robert asked, with only partially mocked trepidation.
Jason laughed and gestured for Robert to follow him. He opened the creaky, peeling door, and ducked below some cables to enter the dark hall beyond. Picking up a flashlight left on a nearby ledge, Jason clicked it on and shined it on some semi-transparent polyurethane sheeting that had been hung down the hall as a makeshift partition from the room beyond.
“Lights don’t work here,” he whispered, explaining the need for a flashlight.
“Why are we whispering?” Robert asked at full volume, tired of whatever it was Jason was trying to do here.
Jason was urgently hushing him, but then thought for a moment, “You know, I don’t really know. Well maybe… Well you’ll see.”
He walked over to the polyurethane sheeting and cast one more excited look towards Robert before dramatically pulling back the plastic and shining his flashlight onto the floor beyond.
Onto nothing.
The floor was bare concrete with a small sewer drain. The walls were lined with rough shelving and cleaning products, illuminated by Jason’s wildly swinging flashlight, but there was nothing unusual within the room.
Robert stepped slowly past the plastic sheeting, drinking from his beer, and putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder.
“What were you gonna show me, buddy?” he asked, gulping down the last drops of refreshing nectar.
“I - I, uh,” Jason’s face was a rictus of emotion. First confusion, then fear, and finally something else, doubt maybe? “I, uh, I left it here. I found it in the acreage out back, beside some kind of wreck.”
“Found what?” Robert asked, feeling a sick sense of dread despite himself.
“He, uh, he was here,” Jason’s expression changed from fear to defeat as he realized something. “You know what Rob, there’s nothing here. I uh - I have something to tell you.”
“Yeah man?” Robert set down his empty beer bottle.
“I’m on medication, dude, I think it might have made me hallucinate something. After dad died, things were rough. But, uh, when I got laid off, things got dark, like real dark. So I talked to a doctor-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Robert interrupted. “You talked to a doctor because you were sad? Why didn’t you come to me, bro? You know, all you need is like some fresh air and stuff, I could have helped you with that!”
“Robbie, it was worse than that, I almost-”
“You know what the problem is?” Robert cut Jason off a second time.
“What, Rob?”
“You spend too much time down here!” Robert gestured around the dungeon-like basement. He guided Jason back to the better-lit laundry room, saying, “Come on up, let’s get you a beer, let’s get mingling with the others. You’ll feel better, trust me!”
“Oh - ok, Robbie,” Jason said, looking deflated. “You know, I think I gotta lie down for a second first. You have fun, I’m going upstairs for a quick sec.”
Robert shrugged and let his friend march back up the basement steps. Why was Jason being such a drag? You couldn’t let things get you down, you can’t spend your time moping around feeling sorry for yourself. That’s how you end up here, hallucinating things while your gorgeous wife throws you a pity party.
Robert shook his head in derision, alone in the basement, chuckling to himself. What had that loon thought was down here?
Something unseen clinked in the dark room beyond the plastic sheeting, making Robert almost jump out of his skin.
It was his beer bottle, he realized, hearing it roll on the concrete floor beyond. His heart rate slowed, it must have fallen from the shelf somehow. Regardless, Robert’s time in that dingy subterranean pit of despair had come to a close.
He turned and retreated up the basement steps, grateful no one was there to witness how quickly he climbed. He should tell Eve to clean that creepy pit up.
Striding across the main floor, again ignoring the other party-goers - despite Sasha’s urgent eye signals to engage with them - Robert headed to the kitchen for another beer.
Eve was there, washing up a few dishes from the appetizers she had served, the ones Robert and Sasha missed due to their tardiness. Seeing his opportunity, Robert closed the kitchen door and went to the fridge.
“I - uh, I wanted to talk to you, Eve,” he said when she gave him a curious look. He pulled out another bottle from the refrigerator, taking a swig before sitting down at a kitchenette table.
“And so you closed the door because?” Eve asked, putting down the dish she had been cleaning and wiping her hands. Robert shrugged, and she sighed, “Robbie, I know what you’re up to. I just let you back into this house. Sasha, is right out that door!”
Robert held up his hands placatingly, “Whoa, whoa, it’s not like that, I swear,” he lied. “Me and Sasha, we got a good thing going.”
“Ok, so what is it then?” Eve asked irritably, throwing a dish towel onto the kitchen counter.
“Well, I’m worried. I’m worried about you, I think Jason’s finally lost it.”
Eve rolled her eyes, “Oh, you’re worried about me, are you? So, what, should I leave him then Robbie? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No of course not!”
“Then what? I don’t have time for this.”
“I’m just saying,” Robert said, getting up from the kitchenette and taking a step towards Eve. “You don’t have to go through this alone, that's all.”
Eve shifted her back foot incrementally further away from Robert, though he didn’t notice the movement, nor the trapped expression she had begun to adopt.
“You ever need to talk, I’m here,” Robert continued, reaching out to take Eve’s hand. She tried to pull away, but his grip was strong.
“Rob,” Eve said. “This was a mistake, you have to go.”
But Robert drew closer.
“Letting you go was a mistake, Eve. I love you.”
He leaned in for a kiss, but Eve had enough of his antics. She wrenched her hand from his and slapped him hard across his face.
“Jason tried to kill himself!” she said, furious.
Robert staggered backwards, unsure of what stung more, his cheek, his friend’s attempted suicide, or Eve rebuffing his advances.
“Jason tried to kill himself with some pills,” Eve repeated angrily, pushing Robert hard in the sternum to accent her words. “I thought, hey, my husband could really use a buddy at this point, I should just swallow my pride and let Rob and Sash come over, surely he wouldn’t try anything with his girlfriend of three years by his side!”
Robert rubbed his reddened cheek, “Geez Eve, take it easy, I didn’t know!”
“It doesn’t matter what you know!” Eve said incredulously. “I am married, Rob. Does that mean nothing to you? Of course it doesn’t, because we’re right back to where we were last November with you declaring your undying love. Give it up Rob, the better man won, and I married him.”
“Better man?” Robert scoffed, pulling a long draught of his beer. “The guy’s a psycho, Eve. We had something special.”
Eve nodded her head knowingly, “Some friend, Rob. Psycho? He is ten times the man you are. And we never had anything special. I dated you because you have the sweetest, kindest family. I thought any guy who grew up in those circumstances must also be a sweet, kind man. Boy, was I wrong. I dropped you like the heavy stone you were as soon as I came to terms with leaving your family. Leaving you was the easy part.”
Utterly flummoxed, Robert stood rooted in place as Eve stomped over to the closed kitchen door.
She turned around for one last word, “I want you out of here, Rob. Leave Sasha here, I have to warn that sweet girl. You go, and you stay away from my Jason. I don’t ever want to see your stupid face again.”
Eve opened the door, and standing there, a vengeful storm cloud brimming with wrath, was Sasha, complete with balled up fists and a face red with rage. She turned and stormed off deeper into the house.
“Look what you did,” Robert said angrily to Eve, hurrying after Sasha.
Eve hung her head in tears after this latest indignity, sitting at the kitchenette to ponder her life’s choices.
Robert, of course, paid her sorrow no heed, he was already out of the kitchen shouting at Sasha to stop. Bewildered party guests quit their scattered conversations to watch the couple’s spat, unable to look away from a juicy confrontation.
Robert caught up to Sasha and sprinted a few steps ahead of her, blocking her way to the front door.
“Get out of my way, Robbie,” Sasha said through clenched teeth.
“Why?” Robert asked. “Where you gonna go? That’s my car out there? You gonna walk all night to get home in those heels?”
“Out of my way,” she replied, with a little more force.
“Make me,” Robert challenged.
Sasha stepped forward and gave him a sharp shove, knocking Robert back a step. Enraged, he pushed her back, probably harder than he had intended to, and she fell sprawling to the hardwood floor amidst the gasps of the anxious onlookers. Many tried to help her up, casting bitter glances towards Robert, but Sasha swatted them away and left the room, headed toward the basement.
“Crap,” Robert muttered, trying to ignore the judging eyes around him. “She pushed me first!” he said defensively, though he knew no one would give him a fair trial.
Grumbling to himself, Robert stalked towards Sasha, shrugging off the few guests who made lukewarm attempts to restrain him.
“Sasha, get back here. I’ll take you home,” he said, following her down the basement steps.
He could hear Eve calming the partygoers above, urging them to not get involved, to give the couple some privacy. He had just reached the bottom step, when Sasha leapt out at him, smacking him over the head with something hard. Robert grunted and fell to his knees, grabbing at her. She shrieked and dropped the two by four she had hit him with, fleeing further into the basement, down the dark hall Jason had taken Robert, and past the plastic sheeting.
Robert staggered to his feet, dazed. Something warm trickled down his neck. A quick touch confirmed it was blood, Sasha had broken his skin with her surprise attack.
“Ok,” Robert said thickly. “Maybe I deserved that. Come on, stop acting crazy, let’s go home.”
He was stumbling towards the plastic sheeting when he heard it, a low guttural moaning, the animalistic groan of someone too terrified to scream. Then it was gone, and there was only silence.
“S-Sasha,” Robert called out tentatively. “Look, I’m sorry I scared you, I want to explain. I don’t know what you heard, but me and Eve, it’s not like that-”
He paused as another sound came from beyond the plastic. His bottle, rolling across the floor.
“I can hear you, come out,” Robert called.
No answer. Not a sound.
“F-Fine,” Robert said, peering into the dark hall. Something about this place was making him feel incredibly uneasy. He had to get out of here. “Ok, I’ve had enough of your kiddy games, woman. I’m outta here Sash, find your own way home.”
Again there was no response, but Robert didn’t wait around for one, turning tail and fleeing up the stairs.
Eve was there to greet him.
“Where’s Sasha?” she asked, sounding alarmed.
“Relax,” Robert said. “I didn’t touch her, she’s the one who hit me over the head.”
He showed her his bloody fingers as proof.
Eve straightened out her black apron as a reflex, her usual grace disturbed by this unwanted guest.
“Rob, you are not leaving this house before I see Sasha.”
Robert was about to reply, when footsteps approached from below. Spinning around in sudden fear, he was relieved to see it was just Sasha.
“What the heck is your problem, woman?” Robert asked. “I called you, you wouldn’t answer.”
Sasha smiled up at Robert, “Come down here, love. Everything is ok, I’m sorry for what happened.”
Something about her grin was utterly revolting. Was it too wide? Yes, it was grotesquely large.
“Babe, what’s wrong, you’re acting weird,” Robert said.
Sasha’s smile grew bigger, “Nothing is wrong, my love, I will come to you.”
Robert and Eve exchanged worried glances.
“Maybe she hit her head,” Robert muttered, quickly climbing the remaining steps to get out of Sasha’s way. She was really starting to creep him out.
Sasha climbed the steps gingerly, her movements awkward. Her usually smooth skin appeared to ripple and crinkle as she moved, and always that demented grin remained plastered to her face. Up close, her clothes look torn and ragged in places, with specks of blood dotting the frayed cloth. She must have fallen.
“Take her to the hospital, Rob,” Eve said urgently.
Robert nodded absently, transfixed by his girlfriend’s movements. Something was not right. Eve gently helped the other woman up the last few steps, wincing in surprise as their skin touched.
“Hon, you’re freezing,” she said, dread and concern mixing thickly in her voice.
Sasha bobbed her head affirmatively, “But first, my shoe. Sweetie, I left it in the basement.”
Looking down, Robert confirmed her left foot was indeed bare.
“Ok,” he said, still unsure of what was happening, or what he should do.
Climbing down the steps, Robert noticed Jason had joined Eve and Sasha, a peculiarly silly grin splashed across his face. Robert shook his head, this place was a madhouse.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, Robert thought he heard Eve call out to him. Whirling around, he looked fearfully upwards. No one was there, Eve and Jason had apparently taken Sasha to another room.
Robert shuddered, what could be wrong with her? It didn’t matter. Get the shoe, get out. Once Sasha was safely in the hospital, that would be the end of things between them. It was finally time for Robert to skip town. Someone else could mow grandma’s lawn from now on.
A quick search of the laundry room proved fruitless. No shoe. She must have lost it in the other room when she had taken a spill, or whatever it was that had happened to her.
“Great,” Robert mumbled, shuffling towards the dark hall.
He squinted into the gloom, trying to spot the shoe. Not here, it was beyond the polyurethane barrier. Where was that flashlight Jason had used? There, Robert picked it up and thumbed it on.
The thrumming of distant music pulsing between the floors of the house abruptly stopped, and it became eerily quiet, oppressively so.
“Party’s over,” Robert said to himself, trying to ease his tightly coiled nerves.
Pointing the flashlight towards the plastic sheeting, Robert willed his leaden legs to shuffle forward.
There was a noise from behind him and up the stairwell, something between a grunt and a moan, sounding for only a brief moment.
His heart in his throat, Robert spun around to investigate, but no one was in sight. Light from the main floor above poured yellow and lurid to mix with the stairway’s gloom, but there was no sign of Eve, Jason or Sasha.
He took a step back towards the stairs and froze. More moaning. Something was definitely happening up there. Time to get the shoe and get out.
Robert turned back to the dark basement corridor, adrenaline and fear forming a heady cocktail within his veins, making him lurch unseemingly towards the plastic barrier. He swiped aside the flimsy sheeting and frantically waved his flashlight about the pitch-black room looking for Sasha’s shoe.
Something hard thudded into Robert’s foot and skittered across the concrete floor. He yelped and cast the light towards the alien object, forcefully backing into the rough shelving lining the walls so that the splintery wood dug into his spine. His flashlight caught a glint of rolling glass, slowly losing momentum as it came to a stop near the far wall. Robert breathed a huge sigh of relief, it was only his beer bottle from earlier.
Grinning to himself, and feeling quite silly for his childish fear, Robert walked over to the bottle and picked it up. It was sticky to the touch. Turning the bottle over, he at once dropped it, and the brown glass shattered on the hard floor, making a shockingly loud noise.
The bottle had been covered in blood.
Robert groaned, holding his soiled hand away from himself. The old fear crawled out from where he had stuffed it down within himself, clawing its way over his stomach, up over his heart and into his throat. Robert gagged, bitter acidic bile reaching threateningly over the top of his esophagus.
The shaking beam of his flashlight flittered over the broken remnants of the beer bottled and across the basement floor. There was more blood. Great splotches in some areas, droplets and spray patterns in others.
A sickly, mewling groan escaped Robert’s lips, and he turned to flee from the nightmarish room. But ahead, there was only darkness. The laundry room and upstairs lights had been extinguished, leaving only tarry blackness.
“Robert,” a voice said from the void beyond the plastic sheeting.
Robert darted the beam of his flashlight toward the barrier, but there was nothing he could see beyond the reflection of his own light. Faint from fear, he waited for the voice to say more, but there was only silence.
“S-Sasha?” Robert asked after a while, tears streaming down his face.
There was a shuffling and a rustling behind the sheeting, then a ghostly white hand pulled back the barrier, and a familiar figure stepped forward.
Robert sagged in relief, “Sasha, what the hell is going on?”
Sasha’s skin squirmed and swirled under the flashlight’s luminescent attention.
“Robert, don’t move,” she said, an impossibly large smile splitting her face, the corners of her mouth rippling their way up to her earlobes.
Robert sputtered in unutterable terror, backing away from the thing that looked like his girlfriend, but stopped moving, his feet mired in place by a sudden realization. Shaking and sweating, Robert stood completely still, now convinced he was not alone in the basement’s backroom.
Something croaked and clacked from behind him, making Robert moan in horror. With his light he glimpsed an incomprehensible figure, a collection of lanky claw-tipped limbs, mandibles, and tube-like appendages, all encased in a slimy carapace. Then, the flashlight was torn from his grasp and everything went black.
The inky silence that followed hung for a few terrifying seconds before Sasha’s voice fractured it.
“We’ll be taking your body now, goodbye Robert.”
Robert screamed, but no one was left to hear him.
Outside, the neighborhood darkened as the town’s residents sleepily turned in for the night, the passing of their last day alive going unnoticed.
On Jason and Eve’s driveway, the splattered remnants of a dessert baked with hope and naivety, and destroyed by disappointment and shame, were quietly being gathered and transported away by a host of fiery-colored ants, hiding the sugary morsels in a dark hive to feed their hungry, mindless horde.
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