Hate to Feel by Chandler Morrison

Author:Chandler Morrison [Morrison, Chandler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Elsie is standing by the enormous wet bar, sipping a martini and talking to some loser from the Collections department. She’s wearing a short white dress and a headband affixed with a halo, and her back is adorned with huge feathered wings that I suspect make it difficult to navigate through the crowd of assholes. The Collections guy is dressed like a pirate.

I gulp down the rest of my drink and walk over to her. My gait is steady and straight, which disappoints me; I should be drunker. Maybe then I would feel better.

She looks at me as I approach, and I can tell she isn’t drunk, either, and yet there is an air of joy and contentment about her. I can’t decide if I’m jealous or disgusted.

“Derek,” she says cheerfully, with a charmed smile. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Neither did I,” I mutter, looking down at the lush carpet.

“Huh?” she says, cocking her head a little to the side.

“Have you seen Jack?” I ask. “I...need to talk to him. I saw him earlier, but now I can’t find him.”

“Yeah, I was just talking to him like ten minutes ago.” She lowers her voice and says, “I think he’s high.”

“On what?”

She shrugs. The guy from Collections is now talking to some other girl I don’t recognize, and Elsie looks at him with a sort of jealous pang. Then she looks back at me and says, “Who knows? You know how he is.”

I nod. “Yes. I do. Listen, is there another bathroom here? The one over there has been occupied for the last twenty minutes by some guy who’s puking out his intestines, or something.”

She makes a face and says, “There’s, like, five bathrooms in this place. Try the one upstairs. Go up the steps and make a right, I think.”

“Thanks,” I say. She looks like she’s about to say something else, so I quickly turn and walk away.

The foyer is dark, and the stairway darker; I feel like a trespasser as I ascend them, my hand loosely trailing up the banister.

Something feels wrong.

The upstairs hallway is dark, too, but the light in the bathroom is on, and the door cracked. I approach it slowly, as if wading through mud, feeling like I’m trapped in a dream from which I desperately desire to awaken.

Because there are noises. Sounds so horribly unmistakable.

And, somehow, I know.

I know, because I’ve done this before.

In another time, another place, involving another girl, but it’s really all the same.

Déjà vu really isn’t quite the right way to put it, because this is so much worse than that, but it’s really the closest I can get to describing it.

I should turn around and go back downstairs, and leave this godawful party altogether.

It could be anyone. There are tons of people here. Any of them could be in that bathroom.

I should really just leave.

But I don’t. I trudge down the hall to stand silently before the partially open bathroom door.

Open enough for me to see.

And there it is.

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