Hide Me Away | 2 June 2022

Frantically, I searched for the quick hiding spot.  Eyeing the closet, I chastised myself for the cliché.  Oh well.

BNR Response

I ducked my head so I could get underneath the cluttered and voluminous clothes, which appeared to be costumes of some kind based on all the fringe and leather, and shut the door inwards towards myself.  Dropping swiftly to my knees had really disoriented me – I had a momentary case of the spins.  I knew better than to do shots at my age, why had I succumbed to the peer pressure of taking those three Red Headed Sluts in rapid succession during Truth or Dare?  Jäger didn’t agree with me, and I had nothing to prove.  Damnit if I had a chip on my shoulder to demonstrate that I’m one of those women who’s always “game”.  I was thinking about maybe needing to rapidly find a toilet to sink my woozy head into when I heard footsteps enter the spare room that my closet inhabited.

I didn’t really have a great feeling about this party.  Aside from Randi, who knew a friend-of-a-friend of the host, and that rando creepy guy who mopped the Y, I knew no one here.  I’m all for “parlor games” and the like, but this group was taking it to the extreme.  I had only dodged throwing my keys into the fishbowl because my keys were in Randi’s glove compartment.  And I still couldn’t tell if playing up the whole “key party” angle was just a gag or if these weirdos were actually planning to swing.  The ax throwing at apples aloft people’s heads was dodgy at best, and ideally would have taken place before the open bar went into full swing a few hours prior.  Then there was the naked game of chicken in the pool, played with the interesting twist of all parties being fully blindfolded and with each “chicken” wielding a Cat o’ Nine Tails.  I got a distinctly seedy vibe from this whole crew.

My musings were interrupted once again by the sounds of people trying to find where I was hiding.  It was really pretty obvious, and it weirded me out that they were engaging in such Kabuki around the act of locating me.  It really gave me the icks that they were so into these games.  Honestly, between all the innuendo, the costumes and accoutrements, and the alcohol I had consumed, it was hard to tell real from make-believe.  I hiccuped, involuntarily as one does, and hear an immediate direction change of the seekers in the room.  There was no mistaking they knew where I was now, so why not just come and get me so we can get on with it?  They approached the door of the closet, and the doorknob turned a half a revolution then stopped.  

Boy, they were really doubling down on the whole drama factor.  Through the boozed-induced haze, I waffled between drunken irreverence and disoriented panic.  You ever get to a point when you’re dealing with an idiot where you say, “Fuck this noise, enough is enough!”  I was there.  The door suddenly opened, and I was confronted by not one, not two, but no less than seven masked and cloaked characters that rivaled those perverted goons from Eyes Wide Shut.  Two arms reached out for me and coaxed me from my position on the floor and out of the closet.  The room remained darkened, I could only make anything out because my eyes had fully adjusted to the pitch of the wardrobe.  Light reflected off the pool and the glow created an eerie moving mural on the walls and ceiling.

“Come with us, we’re all assembled in the sunken living room.”  I was told by one of the masked creeps, unable to tell who the owner of the instructions was.  Not letting go of my two hands, I was led as a prisoner in leg irons to the 60’s style shag-carpeted room.  More cloaked creeps were already seated in a circle, a empty wine bottle in the center.  I was led to sit in beside the bottle, and told we were going to play a less juvenile version of “Spin the Bottle” where I spun the vessel every turn.  I tried to casually get out of this enhanced exposure and attention, stating that I had work the next day and needed to find Randi.  My pleas were ignored, and the instructions were given again, this time in a yet more unyielding tone.  I was terrified at this point, unsure of what would happen if I tried to physically defy an entire gang and aware that their ability to overpower me might be worse than just playing this stupid kissing game.  I signed and picked up the bottle, spinning and landing on a person with a Venetian plague doctor’s bird-like mask.  I got up on all fours and approached the curved beak, leaning in for a kiss, humiliated by the pantomime.  Two hands clapped singularly and thunderously together and were followed by bellows of maniacal laughter.  “No, no, no, my dear girl,” the same echoing instructor laughed, “I’m afraid this next bit involves the bottle.”