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“Yo Mattbro, you brought the beer right dude?”
I nervously laughed, nodding affirmative as I set down the twelve pack on the table. Max gave me a thumbs up, but I ignored him in favor of looking towards the speaker.
When Max said he had met a new friend at the gym who was “totally cool”, I expected something like one of our classmates that I had previously seen interacting with him. Conifer was a rural ‘town’, and so it wasn’t like athletic individuals were in short supply.
Instead, the man who stood before me was six foot seven, probably two hundred and eighty pounds, and flashing me a strange sort of cocky yet disarming grin, bright eyes staring down at the beer with utter entrancement.
His name was “Chadly”, at least, that is what he said it was. I wasn’t actually sure if that was a name at all, but wasn’t about to try and correct him on it.
Even if he wasn’t actually the captain of the football team like his clothing would suggest, I wasn’t about to pick a fight with a man who looked like he bench pressed elephants. Even if I doubt he would actually bother to punch me.
“Damn nice dude!”
He turned to the rest of the party and bellowed like a foghorn, one hand holding the 12 pack into the air high like some trophy, the other…
Curling a 50 lb weight as if it was nothing but a feather. For a moment I tried to remember if I saw him bringing that in, but I quickly decided it wasn’t worth pondering.
“JOHNNY BOY BROUGHT THE BEER!”
A cheer resounded.
I cringed.
Lilly giggled from somewhere behind me.
“Come on…” I hissed “you gotta be embarrassed by this too, right?”
She shook her head, eyes flashing to mine then back across the room.
“No. I am not being given a silly nickname.”
I frowned.
“I bet you would be significantly less amused if Chadly was a girl.”
Her eyes narrowed, then returned to normal with a roll as she shifted to slightly face away from me.
“As if I would need to worry about you picking up a…”
She stopped for a moment, concentrating.
“Whatever exactly the girl version of a Chad is.”
Someone overheard us.
“A stacey. They are called a stacey, pretty rare type of female.”
It was… Marcus.
Ew.
If Chadly disturbed me in a strange, toxically positive and “brodacious” sort of way, Marcus was the opposite.
He was always just a little too close for comfort, always gave off an air of hidden foulness.
And he was staring directly at us.
Lilly crossed her arms and fumed.
“Thank you Marcus.”
He grinned, and something about it made my skin crawl.
I decided to place myself between him and my sister, causing said grin to vanish.
Weirdo.
A bolt of digital lightning thundered from the DJ’s keyboard, and before I could spend more time trying to figure out if Marcus or Chadly should receive my confused attention, heavy electronic dance music began to drown out the crowd.
At least for a moment, before the shuffling of feet from teenagers awkwardly trying to dance began to form a dull under layer to the shrill noise of synthetic beats.
Something touched me on the shoulder and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Hey John.”
It was Max.
“Yeah?”
He grinned a goofy smile.
“Thanks for letting us use your place for the party.”
I nodded halfheartedly.
“Haha, no problem, you know me, total party animal.”
He frowned slightly.
“And for letting me bring my friends over.”
I waved him off.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Mom isn’t going to be back in town for a few days, dad is off at work, there really is no trouble.”
He seemed to sense that it wasn’t really fine, pulling up a pair of chairs.
“What, none for me?”
Lilly coughed, before stepping away at his disapproving gaze.
“Fine, I will just stand then.”
She did so.
“Okay, I can something is bugging you. You are my friend, and I wanted this party to be fun for everyone, especially you.”
Max’s voice took on an earnest tone I rarely heard from him, eyes flashing to meet mine, concern evident on his face.
I sighed and glanced towards Lilly who looked away. She already knew the issue, and I didn’t particularly like it.
“Yeah…”
He made a guess. One that was entirely correct.
“It’s Sarah, right?”
I nodded.
“Yeah… I am just…”
He nodded solemnly.
“I know, I know. The accident hit her hard. You worried she isn’t here?”
For a moment, no one spoke.
“That she has gone crazy or something?”
His tone was joking, but the way his eyes locked onto mine told me we both weren’t so sure that was a joke of a concept.
“No, its just… I can’t imagine what she is going through. Losing both parents in a single night, it probably would have destroyed me.”
He smiled sadly.
“She is strong. I bet she will pull through.”
Lilly huffed.
“I… I am sorry for her. Between the friendship trouble and this, poor girl is really taking a beating I guess.”
I frowned. A day before the accident the two had apparently had a ‘talk’ about Sarah’s seeming interest in me in a less platonic fashion, one that had sent Lilly to me with a pep in her step and Sarah mildly bemused.
Max chuckled slightly.
“I really don’t think your attempts at playing guard dog did much, Lils.”
She whistled innocently.
“I guess…”
Then she matched eyes with Penny from across the room, who shied away with a bit of a blush.
My own eyes narrowed. That… something was going on here.
“But this isn’t the time for sad and or potentially incorrect statements.”
She moved for the dance floor. My jaw slackened in horror. She wasn’t trying what I thought she was, right?
“Its time to PARTY!”
Lilly howled like an animal and vanished into the crowd.
I nearly cursed.
Max laughed.
“And I thought she was the protective one. Can’t handle the idea of your lil sister out in the big dangerous world?”
I scowled.
“I am not worried about the world, I am worried about Marcus.”
He nodded solemnly.
“No, seriously, he is, just, like, it doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t. Feel right.”
Fuck.
This was not the time to sound like a goofus.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, but if you were actually paying attention to him, you would know he is stepping outside with Penny.”
For a moment I waited for the outburst. It never came.
“And… you are fine with that?”
Max shrugged.
“Sure!”
I continued to stare.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to ‘hit her up for some clown time?’”
He nodded as if this was not at all contradictory to his lack of reaction.
“Shouldn’t you be upset? Trying to defend your prize all macho like?”
He scoffed.
“Nah, I already have a partner.”
This…
“What? Since when?”
He smiled evilly.
“Since two hours ago! I am dating Chadley now.”
What the fuck?
“But… I didn’t, I thought you liked girls?”
Chadley swooped me, blew a kiss towards Max which he ‘caught’, and my blood turned to slush, eyes constricting into pinpricks as I started to realize with growing horror that this might not be an elaborate prank at all.
Max stood and took the hand of his apparent boyfriend, and the two vanished into the crowd leaving me alone with my thoughts.
For several minutes I sat there, wondering about a million and one things. Lilly, Sarah, the fact that I just realized that Penny’s facial expression when being half shoved outside by Marcus was the furthest thing from happy, the fact that apparently Max was gay all along.
Then it happened.
A loud, percussive bang from outside the house that caused the party to immediately go silent, digitized music now ominous and entirely unfitting for the scene of quiet dread that had swept the room.
Was that… a gunshot?
The door swung open, Penny stumbling in, tears in her eyes.
Someone rushed to try and help her, but the girl merely threw herself to the side and pressed up against a wall, hyperventilating.
Sarah walked in.
She was dressed in a red jacket, but that wasn’t the only red on her body, a dark crimson fluid dripping from her face as it contorted into a maniacal smile.
Clutched in one hand was a rifle, some kind of automatic one, barrel still smoking.
“HELLO FRIENDS!”
She cried, raising the gun one handed, causing a torrent of screams.
“IF YOU TRY TO RUN, I WILL MOW YOU DOWN LIKE PIGS!”
People stumbled over each other in terror as the crowd seemed to split between retreating further away from the gunman or cowering in place.
I blinked, horror striking me, desperately wishing I could wake from what was surely a nightmare.
“NOW, I HAVE COME FOR JUST ONE OF YOU, AND IF YOU DON’T GET IN MY WAY, I WON’T FILL YOU WITH HOLES LIKE OL’ MARCUS.”
One of us?
“JOHN! COME OUT, MY LOVE!”
For a moment I was taken aback utterly.
For another, I was half convinced Lilly would spring from the crowd and trying to defend me.
But as stillness descended upon the room and Sarah, eyes wild and ringed with exhaustion fixed upon me, I realized that this was both real and withou-
“HEY WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
Chadley and Max stumbled out from a closet, the latter obviously drunk, the former’s smiling as if he was excited to meet Sarah.
Then he locked eyes onto the gun, the blood, and his smile fell.
“WAIT, IS THAT A GUN? DO I KNOW YOU?”
Sarah cackled.
“YES IT IS, AND NO YOU WON’T!”
She raised the rifle.
“STOP!”
I yelled.
“PLEASE, I WILL GO WITH YOU, JUST, JUST DON’T HURT ANYONE!”
Tears began to stream down my face.
“EY JOHNNY, THIS BROAD MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE?”
What?
Chadley glanced around the room.
“ANYONE INVITE HER?”
There was no response. I was too wracked with confusion and fear to respond either.
Sarah began to walk towards me, smiling, entirely focused upon me with hungry eyes.
I secretly kinda wanted her to be into me, but not like this!
Chadley shifted, scratching his chin as his brow furrowed in thought. That didn’t help my mental state.
“Oh my love, let us leave this place with a BANG!”
Sarah ripped open her jacket, revealing a series of crude devices strapped to the inside, fuzes slinking out of metal canisters.
Were those… pipe bombs?
“YO, I DON’T THINK YOU WERE INVITED, YOU ARE GONNA HAVE TO LEAVE!”
Sarah turned to Chadley, who had crossed half the room to her without me or the psychopath seeming to notice.
Indeed, I didn’t actually remember seeing a flicker of motion out the corner of my eye, but that might have been stressed.
She hissed.
“Shut the fuck up. I invited myself, and I am going to invite the rest of you to heaven!”
She cackled like a hyena and took her eyes off him to grab at one of the pipebombs.
It was only for a moment, but a moment was all he needed.
“I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD BE HERE!”
Chadley moved like a bolt of thunder, arm swinging up to toss the dumbbell like a javelin. The black streak already crossed the distance when Sarah tried to raise her weapon, slamming into the rifle and turning it to splinters with a crack.
The girl hissed and howled, stepping back, clutching her ruined wrist, before glancing up with hatred in her eyes just in time to meet Chadley’s fist.
“GET THE FUCK OUT GIRL, YOU WEREN’T INVITED!”
She fell limply to the floor, arms splaying.
For a moment I thought it was over, that Max’s deranged boyfriend had saved the day.
Only for a moment.
Chadley jumped down onto his knees, straddling Sarah, raising brick like fists.
“GET THE FUCK OUT! YOU CAN’T CRASH MY PARTY, STOP MESSING WITH MY JOHNNY BRO!”
His voice boomed, loud enough to drown out the immense crack when his knuckles came down on Sarah’s face.
Once, then twice, then again and again and again.
Shards of teeth and bone began to fly, red pooling on the ground.
“THAT AIN’T COOL, GET THE FUCK OUT!”
Sarah had stopped moving thirty seconds ago, but Chadley kept swinging, and to my utter horror I realized his fists had begun to loudly crack against the floor itself.
“COME ON, YOU CAN’T JUST CRASH A PARTY BRO! YOU JUST CAN’T, THAT AIN’T RIGHT!”
He continued to howl for another ten seconds, the wooden flooring actually beginning to creak and groan as the assault continued.
Then he stood, brushing off chunks of brain matter and clumps of hair, wiping the barest slivers of sweat from his brow.
Chadley turned, and reached down for a discarded beer, then threw the entire thing back and crumbled the can with one fist into a near perfect sphere of deformed aluminum.
He tossed it backhanded across the room, landing perfectly in the miniature basketball net we had set up on the far wall.
With a grin that didn’t belong on someone who literally just beat a person to death with their bare hands, he pointed towards me and gave a thumbs up.
“THE BEERS STILL GOOD! JOHNSON REALLY CAME THROUGH WITH THE BEER DUDE, LETS PARTY!!!!!”
A cheer resounded throughout the room.
I gave up, rolled into a ball, and started crying.