Ashley ✓

Twenty-One | Hallucination

SOTC: Something To Believe In by Kesha

I slammed my fifth shot onto the table, tequila scalding my throat. I squeezed my palms against the liquor table's rims, my gasps becoming heaves— but it was when the sweat beads trickled down my forehead that the laughter poured from me.

I pushed myself away from the table, allowing the euphoria to consume me as I joined the mosh pit that had suddenly formed among the seeming millions of people. Along with the other girls as trashed as I was, I swung my hips to the echo of violent rap that could've broken the Mondelos thrust into the air by hands attached to tattooed arms, drenching the intoxicated individuals in a five foot radius.

Eventually, I stumbled out of the mosh pit and into the back to the couch; the one with the gangbangers. I snorted at their twisted faces as they gave my nasty looks before I trotted away.

"BITCH, WHAT THE FUCK?" a bathroom chick giving a lacrosse player a lap dance shouted at me when I snatched her red Solo cup from her hands.

"Yo, shawty!"

I whipped to my head to a tall, lean brunette with multiple piercings on his eyebrow as he said it.

"Hi, hot guy!" I exclaimed in response to this random guy I had never met before, shoving the cup right in his face. "Do you know what drink is this— this is?"

Hot Guy gingerly took the cup from me and tasted it before going, "It's just a Fireball in a cup."

I stuck my tongue out and pretended to gag, making Hot Guy chuckle.

"What's the name?" he asked me.

"My name is Ashley!" I shouted. "People think I'm a diagnosed sociopath and Juice WRLD died off semi-synthetic opioid medication and an alkaloid derived from morphine!"

He snorted. "Nice to meet you, Ashley."

"What's yoooour name?"

"I'm Joshua," he said, licking his teeth. "I'm the new basketball captain."

"COOL!" I shrieked over the music, making the girl only wearing those weird heart pasties cover her ears. Whispers began circulating all around me, either actual ones or ones as real as the multicolored blobs doing the Macarena above me.

"Are you Mustafa's new main bitch?" The question liquidated off of Hot Guy's tongue like the drink he just sipped would exit with his words.

I scoff. "Whydafuckerdoeseverydonethinkzat? I'm no-woah-budy's girl, thanks pour favor for asking!"

"Good for me," he said, his voice barely audible over the EDM.

Even in my intoxication, internal screams vibrated against my chest as my vision drank in the glitter in his eyes, each of the sparkles induced by the way his lips curved in a twisted way.

Then Hot Guy wasn't so hot anymore.

"Actually, I wanna go—" I started, beginning to teeter away before I was yanked back by the wrist.

"Not so fast. I just found the only person that's not obsessed with that dickhead."

"Let me the fuck go, you snake!" I exclaimed but his massive hand had only constricted around my wrist tighter as he pressed me against the wall.

"Wanna take this to a bedroom?"

"GO AWA—" My screeches had cut out as his lips consumed mine, my palm strikes to his chest drowning in the wake of the cranked up rap music.

Suddenly, he yelled as someone launched him away from me by his shirt with a yell, and curses erupted through the living room. My hands recoiled to my chest as I and the other spectators around me watched that someone strike his nose with a clenched fist before slamming him against the wall.

"When a girl says no, she fucking means it, Joshua," Mustafa stated before letting the guy slip off the wall.

Flashes of recording phones blinded me as Mustafa then grabbed me hand and stormed forward with a, "You're going home."

"GO TO HELL, MUFASA!" Joshua screeched, his palm clutching his nose for fear life. "I don't give a fuck if you dropped your ego or your hoes on they asses, but you betrayed your teammates— you left them without a captain, you pussy! We lost three straight games to Ridgeview High cause you wanna blow everyone up, you pessimistic shit—"

"What the— Mustafa!" I managed to exclaim louder than Joshua's fading speech as we went away from him and the people screaming and blaring their IPhone flashlights at us as we passed them.

"You're going home," he just repeated.

"BUT WHY?"

"Because someone called to tell me you were out of control and to fucking get you," he seethed as he dragged me out the door and off the short driveway.

I swear my brain had done a three sixty upon the words slipping from his mouth. "EXCUSE ME? How'd you know I was here— WHO TOLD YOU TO TAKE ME HOME?"

"Doesn't matter," he quickly deadpanned as he shoved me in the passenger's side of his car.

"MUSTAFA!" By the time my repetition of the word rattled my vocal cords, I was already struggling in my seatbelt and he was driving on the road.

"Be quiet the rest of the car ride," Mustafa ordered me. "I mean it."

"OKAY!" I made sure to screech.

"Ashley, I said be—" His exclamation cut out as a noise echoed throughout the backseat. "Oh shit."

"Holy fuck, what is that?" I cried out, stabbing my fingers into my ears to barely cease the horrid retch of crescendos taking form in what sounded like a screaming human— but this had no tellers of gender; this rack on the atmosphere was a high-pitched ear rape.

"Nothing, it's nothing. You're just hearing noises."

"THAT SHIT IS REAL!" I tried to shriek over it, but the sound only intensified.

Mustafa's jaw clenched harder, but in an emotion that induced his eyes to erratically shift and whisper curses.

"WHY ARE YOU CURSING? WHAT'S THAT SOUND?"

"Okay fine, I watched Joshua drug your drink and now you're hearing noises!" Mustafa retorted. "I just didn't wanna fucking scare you or some shit."

"If he gave me either benzodiazepines or ketamine, I wouldn't be able to fucking move right no— HOLY FRICK!" I cursed out as the ratchet sound broke the fourth wall with its own highest crescendo, shoving my fingers farther in my ears.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck—" Mustafa kept whispering, his chest heaving.

"OH MY GOD, I'M DYING!"

Maybe it had been that in my drunkest state I would've believed myself or that the sounds from the backseat had morphed into the catalyst for the landslide of my sheer terror— or maybe I accidentally dug two holes in my ears. Either way, my senses kicked into an inevitable overdrive.

Then, because either I fell into Wonderland according to a non-sober last thought or I had fainted, my world turned from stars to a cave-dark noir.