Night Like That (rewritten)

three

It was a truth universally acknowledged - when wildlife found its way to one's habitat, you burnt it down and made haste for a new one.

As she stood outside her apartment with nothing more on her back than the clothes she'd worn that morning, looking longingly at the window to her flat, she couldn't help but wonder where it had all gone wrong.

It could have possibly been at the most sinful time of day, the eve, they would call it, of her nineteenth birthday, and she had made the choice that led her to that exact predicament. She'd bought that peanut butter queencake instead of the chocolate frosted one. The moment she'd bit into it, she'd felt the world shift beneath her feet. Her worldview had changed, and she suddenly had ideas about politics, global warming, and the current state of television. She had also been taken aback by just how expensive everything had been at the food festival and thus decided to take on capitalism as well. These unseemingly unconnected series of events led her to taking her first step toward changing her life, and so she'd seen no problem in accepting the flat her parents got her as her very grown gift.

It could also be argued that it boiled down to the fact that she was not sure about having locked her doors that morning. Positively sure not her windows, as she liked coming in to fresh, cold, and biting air, but even then, she lived on the fifth floor. How the fuck would a snake get up there? Why did it skip all the houses about and wound up in her flat? She was not sure who she was supposed to fight, but at that specific moment, she would have taken on anyone. She would have not care for age nor creed - everyone was equal. She just needed to fight.

She was two parts annoyed at the fact that she could not sleep in that overpriced flat and that she'd actually need to ask for help. Chastity did not care for this. Something about it always felt like begging on one's knees, and she was not one for scrapping hers. She'd avoided needlessly rough games for that exact reason, thank you very much. But the longer she stood out there, looking toward her flat, hearing people chatter about, one rather loudly calling her a witch, she decided she ought to do something.

Key among the somethings were, looking through to booking an AirBnB, but with the recent bout of girls being terrorised and straight up killed, it made sense to avoid said places. Hotels were more or less the same. Only there was the added fear of infernal creatures like bedbugs. She could just phone home and go stay with her parents, but the thought had her shivering almost to the point of convulsing. She was at a low, but it wasn't that low yet. This then meant she was left with only one option.

Yes, it could be argued that their interactions had become something sort of ass since the previous weekend. It was even awkward as sin thinking about it, but they were sophisticated and mature adults. They knew worldly things like sleeping with one's best friend and having it mean absolutely nothing. They could pretend it away, she'd thought rather ceaselessly. She hadn't even delved deep into deducing why it seemed to take Ivy a goliath amount of time to answer trivial texts like, how'd you sleep last night?

Grown, that's what she thought before she groaned.

God, she thought, she really needed to make friends who were not Ivy. Having just one friend was biting her in the ass sooner than she had expected. That, she decided, was going to be her New Year's resolution. At twenty-eight, she was going to make a bunch of new friends so that her life didn't come off as sad and lonely. Besides, now that she'd had a brush with death, she needed to think about the population that would come to her funeral. She wanted there to be proper wailing and long eulogies that no one ever finished because they were wailing so badly. She needed to know that there was going to be at least one person who would faint and another who would fall to their knees as her casket was lowered. Then, she would not feel super embarrassed about dying when people were in the middle of living.

She decided enough was enough and dialled the other number that was in her favourites list, and did not go by 'Office'. It only took two rings before someone picked up.

"So," she started, "you wouldn't believe what has happened."

She could hear Ivy shuffle about on the other end of the phone. Idly, no, passingly, she wondered if she had been sleeping, and if so, was it the exact same way as she'd had at her place? "What happened?" This brought her back from her small moment of absurd weakness.

"A snake made its way to my flat, and now I am effectively homeless until they can assure me it and its family have not taken over everything that is mine. In this day and age," she said, dramatically, "I am being colonised."

A laughed echoed on the other side of the call. Had she always sounded so good? "Snakes are solitary creatures," Ivy said, just like everyone had told her, but she did not believe them. Until they could prove there were no more snakes in her flat, she was not going to stay there. "And you are not homeless. Just come over."

Countless times, Ivy had invited her like that. "Just come over," she'd say when Chastity had had one too many and could not look at her Uber app properly. Or when she was too tired to move from work to her flat because Ivy just lived closer to hers. Or when she did not feel like doing shopping and so there was no food in her house and she needed to bum off of someone. Or when her parents decided they wanted to see how their daughter was doing in the house, they liked to remind her they'd paid for, and she wanted to avoid them at all costs.

It was a request that usually came off the back of saving her from something, but this time... this time, it sounded completely different. And she was not sure if she was imagining it, but she could have sworn she'd heard a difference in tone when Ivy said it, but then again, it was Ivy.

Ivy was notorious for letting things roll off her back. She never held on to anything too long. She was cool in a way that Chastity always aspired for. It was one of the reasons why Chastity had accepted becoming friends with her in the first place. She always lived in the moment and never let anything shake her life up - unless she let it. She was so effortlessly present. Chastity could see her becoming a deity of the present just as easily. She could also visualise just how many people would go on to cry at her funeral, and it was a lot.

"Really?" she asked more out of the necessity to quell the mighty fluster that was growing within her and nothing more.

"Since when do you ask that?" Ivy choked on a small laugh. Chastity could not help the small smile that played on her lips. It had to mean that they really were fine. They were modern girls who were moving about modern problems like sleeping with one's best friend through modern solutions like avoiding the elephant in the room altogether.

"You're right," she said as she pulled the strap of her bag to have sit better on her shoulder. "I should have just come over. What was I thinking? See you in a few?"

"Yeah, sure." Ivy hung up first, and Chastity was left still staring at the window to her flat.

She was saved.