YOU TOO CAN BE A WASTE OF TIME | ✓

▬ 16: 00:00

               I need to get somewhere quiet. The incessant whirl of people around me who scream along to the music is nauseating and the fogged-up windows provide no respite. The room shrinks with each second.

It were a mistake coming to this party. I don't even like Jeremy. I thought I'd feel better around other people who can't tell what's the floor and what's the ceiling or remember what they did two minutes ago, but if owt, I've absorbed all their disorientation and now I'm worse than ever.

I shoulder through bulky music and sticky lighting, out of the living room and into the hall.

Fingers numbing with static, I screw open the red plastic cork of a bottle of Lidl vodka someone left unattended on the sofa table. Based on flavour, it might as well be nail varnish remover, the ten per cent of iced tea it's diluted with doing nowt to curtail the astringence.

Three people from year eleven I can't name block the base of the staircase. Two sit on the third step, one comforting the other, whilst the third remarks how we're not a week into January and they've already failed their new year's resolution to stop crying over useless boys.

I chug four mouthfuls as I clamber past them in search of a toilet. My fingers instinctively search the space below the handle but the keyhole is empty. I look up to find the hook and eye screwed into the wood and latch it.

Eyes shut, my forehead drops against the door. It's pitch dark and the party is reduced to a bass that shakes dust from the ceiling. Breathing becomes a little easier but my body is still operated by someone else.

What am I doing here?

What am I doing?

It always answers when summoned — Beewolf crawls from its nest behind my eyes. 

You're certainly making your parents proud with that anger. It's some sick irony that my hands curl into fists at my side. Don't you remember anything they taught you? Life is moral in harmony: you take and you give back. That's how Pachamama intended. But you're poisoned with rage, all you do is destroy.

I swat. It flies off with a buzz, lands somewhere in my hair and petrifies my body. Am I imagining it? Or do I actually feel it creeping toward my scalp?

You take, and you take, and you take. And you give... nothing.

I punch the light switch. Within a minute of darkness, my eyes have adjusted and the fluorescent lamps sear them. I clamp my free hand over my face and stagger two steps from the door, groaning as a migraine begins construction in my occipital lobe.

At least, the brightness chases Beewolf to the crevice beneath the bathtub's decorative panel that fails its only purpose, a blue enamel that's loose at the bottom and only makes the colour-clash toilet more hideous.

Unable to locate a steady surface in my half-blind state, I place the vodka onto the floor. Both hands free, I pull my hoodie over my head and tie it around my waist. Or try to. But my hands are numb and it slips into a pool at my feet as my stare fixates on the door.

Summat seeps from the keyhole. Black. And thick enough to crawl slowly down the mint green paint.

What the fuck?

Hand trembling, I reach my index toward it. I know I shouldn't touch it but the voice commanding me to is more powerful. Edge closer. My heart pulsates in my throat. Ringing rises in my ears the nearer I get.

I jerk my hand back at first touch. Shivers swarm up my arm with dozens of many-legged insects. Once recovered enough to inspect my finger, I find it sticky and the more I try to rub it off, the more it bloats.