I’m an omnivert, at least that’s what my friends have decided to call me. It’s not that I hate going out with my friends, but I would rather go, have fun, and be home by 6. Don’t get me wrong, there’s moments where I want to be a crazy 19-year-old and go out to parties and enjoy all the cliché things a 19-year-old does. However, they don’t last long before my inner grandma comes out and I’ve changed my mind. What I failed to realize before I decided on attending Demon Hill University, was that this was a party school, and that majority of the friends I met here, came for that reason. That’s not a deal breaker, but it does cause me to step out of my comfort zone if I want to hang with them. Which leads me to my current situation, Party City at 9 o’clock on a Friday night and I have work tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to manage getting off from work at 4pm and going to a frat party when all I really want to do is come home from work and shower. I’m staring at a Ketchup Bottle costume when something touches my shoulder.
“Jasmine…are you okay? You seem distracted,” Lydia said.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, just trying to make some sort of schedule in my head for how I’m going to manage everything tomorrow.”
“Jaz, if you don’t want to go to this party, then don’t. No one is going to be upset.”
Lydia doesn’t know that she is the only one who I let call me Jaz. She also doesn’t know that she is the main reason I want to go to this party, and I don’t plan to tell her. “No, I need to go, I need to be young, free, and all the other usual words you would use to describe 19-year-olds in college.” “You mean 19- and 20-year-olds, Lydia said.” “Oh yeah, my bad, I forgot, older woman.”
Lydia swings the costume she’s holding out to me, but I catch it before it can make contact with my arm. That’s when the rest of our group decides to join us. People are handing me costumes to try on (because I’m the only one without one) when the biggest frat from our school walks by. I’m looking at a sexy cop costume wondering who the hell gave me this when someone snaps me out my thoughts. “You guys getting ready for the party tomorrow night,” said one of the frat members. “Hell, yeah and I think Jasmine should be the cop to my robber,” Mike said.
All the frat guys started laughing, meanwhile I cringed so hard it felt like my spine snapped in half. I put all the costumes down and grabbed the Ketchup bottle costume off the ground where someone had thrown it and started making my way to the register. At least no one would find the Ketchup Bottle sexy. After dropping everyone off, I walked into my room and tried the costume on. I snapped a quick photo and sent it to Lydia, and then took a quick shower and went to bed.
I never thought the time would come for me to clock out from work and head back to campus. I knew today was going to be rough when I pulled up to work and people were waiting for us to open. It was so bad that I drove back to campus in silence, no music or nothing. I tossed my shit on the bed and opened my phone to 50 text messages. Talking about pre-gaming, costumes, and what time we are leaving tonight. I hit clear all and tossed my phone somewhere on to my bed. I fell flat on my bed and before I knew it, I was drifting off, but that’s when my bed started vibrating. After realizing it was my phone, I picked it up to realize it was Lydia texting me this time. I was excited to see her text me, so I responded.
“How was work today, Jaz?”
“It was the shift from hell. Too many customers and not enough employees.”
“People are so rude. At least you get to hang with some not-so-rude people tonight!”
“Yeah, I’m a little excited, but I’m also exhausted. I also have a weird feeling about tonight, but I have weird feelings all the time.”
“It’s okay Jaz, I’ll be there to listen to all your weird feelings.”
I hearted that last text Lydia sent me and started getting ready. I really did have a weird feeling about tonight, but it’s also not out of the norm for me to feel this way. I caught the elevator down to the lobby floor and walked outside to my group of friends. They were talking about how one of the frats canceled their Halloween party, which means something bad must have happened. I heard someone call my name and I turned around to see Lydia running towards me in a matching Mustard bottle costume. “Wait…I thought you were going to be a bunny, Lydia?” “I decided to go get the matching Mustard bottle costume to your Ketchup bottle today while you were at work! I thought it might help you enjoy tonight a little bit more,” Lydia said. She was correct, it did make me instantly feel happier and more excited about this party.
Once we stepped inside the temperature instantly rose 40 degrees. It was hot, sweaty, sticky, and there was this weird strobe light that was just cutting on and off constantly. Someone ended up pushing me into Mike and we just starting dancing. I decided to do a little turn, and by the time I came back around, Mike was gone. I felt no movement, I heard no voices, and I was a little freaked out at how easily he just vanished. But I brushed it off because it’s Mike, he does shit like this all the time. Lydia grabs my hand and pulls me towards her, and we start dancing together. At these parties we try and keep our friend group close because you never know what could happen. However, I started noticing that more and more of our group was slowly vanishing. I decided to text the group chat to see where everyone went, but I got nothing in response. Lydia suggested that they may have gone to the other room for some air, and they just can’t hear their phones. So, we went to check, but instead of finding our friends, we found a couple of people making out on a couch that I’m pretty sure needed to be burned.
I told Lydia that we needed to go knock on the door of Delta’s basement, maybe some of the frat members invited our friends down there, but when we went to knock, it was locked. Not only was it locked by the doorknob, but it had a second lock on it as well. That’s when the bad feeling in my stomach went from bad to extremely bad and I knew something was wrong. I was deep in thought when someone abruptly called my name. “Hey, your Jasmine, right? From Party City last night? I see you ditched the sexy cop outfit and decided to match with someone else. Did y’all wanna go inside?” I noticed the nametag on his handyman costume read “Jason” and just as I was about to respond with “No thank you, were good.” Lydia jumps in with “Yes, can we? Thank you!” As we are walking down the steps into the basement, I nudge Lydia and scream-whisper “Are you crazy? This is how you die in horror movies!” Lydias response was that we needed to find our friends and that this was the fastest way. I decided right then, that she was a better person than me because I was fully prepared to grab her hand and leave.
The deeper into the basement we got, the creepier it became and then suddenly it got pitch black. I just knew we had entered the trailer of the next “Wrong Turn” film and that the new generation of Cannibals was going to pop out any second. But what stood before me was even scarier in a way. It was my friend’s lifeless bodies, and the frat brothers who seemed like their lives had just begun. I looked around trying to memorize the setting when I noticed some Greek writing on the wall. I don’t know much Greek, but from what I pieced together, I knew it wasn’t good. Then simultaneously, all the frat brother’s eyes rolled back in their heads while staring straight up at the ceiling and chanting. The frat brothers started circling us and I started panicking only to realize I was sitting straight up in my bed, covered in sweat, with my alarm going off. I picked up my phone immediately and texted the group chat and told them that I wasn’t going to the Halloween frat party this weekend, or ever.