This isn't weird.

Where's Millie?

 Having failed to find a man who could hold her interest for more than fifteen consecutive minutes, Tess finally took notice of Millie's disappearance from the party and began, very slightly, to worry. Attempts to call her were forwarded straight voicemail, so she resolved to do her detective work the old fashioned way—walking around bothering people. Unfortunately, few of the other guests had any idea who she was even talking about.

She found Dustin lounging in a patio chair on the balcony, and vaguely recognized him as someone she had seen talking to Millie earlier in the night. "Hey, you know Millie, right?" she asked as she walked up to him. "Have you seen her?"

"Yeah, she was hanging out on the couch with Ben about an hour ago." He looked her over with interest. "My name is Dustin, by the w—"

"Don't care." Tess turned on her heel and walked back inside, and at a loss for what else to do, wandered into the hallway and began opening doors indiscriminately. The first one was a bathroom, currently unoccupied. She checked behind the shower curtain, just to be sure. No Millie.

The second door was a closet. Bath towels, linens, a couple unmarked boxes. No Millie.

The next one opened to a small office. Two people of indeterminate gender were fondling one another on the desk. "Millie?" she called.

"No!" two deeply annoyed voices shouted back in unison.

"Sorry," she mumbled, and closed the door.

The search continued. Another door, another bathroom. Someone was doing a line of something off of the sink while another person hovered beside them, clearly antsy for their turn. She moved on without saying anything.

"This apartment is too fucking big," Tess grumbled. She opened up yet another door and stepped inside. This room took her by surprise. "What the fuck is this?" With a strong sense of being somewhere she wasn't supposed to be, she closed the door behind her. This room was larger than the others, and dark; the only light came from a series of large TV screens glowing on the far wall. There were eight of them, mounted in two rows. The flickering shadows they cast about the rest of the space were unsettling.

She took a few steps closer to see what they were playing. Black and white scenes of people shot from odd angles, some from up high, some from below, some from lopsided middle positions that didn't catch anyone's faces. She studied a screen in the lower right hand corner and realized that the scene was familiar. It was the balcony she had just been on—she recognized Dustin, struggling against the wind to light a hand rolled cigarette.

"Hello."

Yelping with surprise, Tess stumbled backwards. She was suddenly aware of the small figure seated primly in an office chair just a few feet away from her. He was in shadow, and she couldn't make out much of his face. "What the fuck?" She managed to steady herself—no easy task in her stilettos.

The voice that replied was toneless. "You're in my room."

It took a few seconds before the dots began to connect. "You—you're the camera guy, aren't you? You're Indigo. This is your party."

"That is correct."

"And you've just been sitting in here... watching us? Does anyone here know they're being filmed?"

"Some do." She saw his silhouette shrug. "Others do not."

"Dude, that's kinda fucked up."

Another shrug. "People attend parties to be seen," he responded.

"Wait a minute—" Tess eyed him suspiciously. "Is this some sort of, like, creepy voyeur kink sex thing?"

"No," he replied. "It's art."

Tess wasn't sure why she believed him, but she did. She turned back to the televisions and studied each of them one at a time. Three different angles of the living room, two of the kitchen, two of the balcony, one of the hall. She was relieved to ascertain that none of the bathrooms were under surveillance.

"Why are you here?" Indigo asked her.

"Oh shit!" Tess realized she had nearly forgotten the primary objective of her investigation. "Millie! I'm looking for Millie. You know her, right?"

"Rather well," he replied.

"Yeah, I guess she's over here a lot," Tess muttered with a hint of resentment. "Do you have any idea where she is?"

"There." Indigo pointed to an image of the empty hallway she had just been exploring—in particular, at a closed door at the very end.

"Ben's room. There are no cameras there. They entered together approximately... fifty-two minutes ago."

Tess looked over at Indigo sharply. "Do you think he—"

"No," Indigo snapped, as if she had just insulted him personally. The abrupt rebuke of her insinuation caught Tess off guard; it was the first time she had heard him speak with any inflection whatsoever. "Ben would never."

Tess looked away so he wouldn't see her roll her eyes. As hard as she was trying to force herself to like Ben, it still annoyed her to see how much everybody else seemed to.

"She looked ill," Indigo continued, resuming his monotone. "I'm reasonably certain he was escorting her to his bathroom to vomit."

"Right. That makes sense," Tess said, relieved. There was a moment of silence, then she pointed at one of the screens, nearly black but for a silvery glow in the corner and a shadowy figure occasionally moving in front of it. "Is that us?"

"Yes. That is us."

"So, you're filming yourself filming the guests at your own party, which you aren't actually attending?"

"That is accurate."

"Damn, birthday boy. You're a freak." She took off her heels. "I'm Tess. You wanna take a shot?"