It’s Halloweekend, Trav just dropped you off at the hill, and you have zero clue where you should go.
“Hey, Alpha Zeta Eta Beta is having a haunted house party,” says a voice next to you, but when you turn, no one is there. That was weird, you think. Whatever, I’ll check it out.
You open the door with a loud creakkkkkkkkk and enter the party. All of a sudden the aux is cut off – and then the speakers blast the most vile, soulless EDM you can think of. Everything is fourteen beats off and sounds like a small animal dying.
You’re about to ask the DJ to play literally anything else, when he says “You like it? I made this mix myself! Check me out on SoundCloud!” You frantically look around because there’s no way anyone actually likes this, but everyone is robotically dancing to the music like they’re hypnotized.
You try to enjoy yourself but you’re trapped by a couple aggressively making out right in front of you. No matter which way you move, their elbows keep jabbing into your shoulder blades with frightening precision.
You escape into the bathroom where some of the guys are holding a seance with an American Psycho poster as their Ouija Board. Frat gods, we humbly call upon you to send faunch, they chant in unison, and their eyes roll back into their heads. You stumble out of the bathroom, slipping on a container of 17-in-1 shampoo as you go.
The couple is now making out against the wall, flipping the light switch on and off in the process. You accidentally lock eyes with your freshman year situationship from across the room and he does that awkward head-nod of acknowledgement… except his head rotates 360 degrees and his eyes are glowing red.
You rub your eyes in disbelief – you don’t remember him being that demonic – but you’re interrupted by a “Hey, girl! Long time no see!” You whip around and it’s someone from your random freshman friend group that fell apart after half a semester.
“How have you been?” she says, violently hugging you with a smile frozen on her face. “We should totally catch up sometime! Okay, bye!”
Okay, that’s it. I need alcohol. You rummage through the bucket only to find one lonely lukewarm Busch floating in the rancid water.
Just then, your phone dings ominously. It’s a Canvas reminder that your discussion responses are due at 11:59pm. Shit, I completely forgot. You pull up Canvas on your phone and start frantically typing some gibberish that starts with “To add on to that…”
“Hey, are you doing Econ homework?” You look up and it’s a guy from your class who is currently shirtless. “If you need any help with that, my dad got me an internship at Goldman Sachs last summer, so I have a lot of firsthand experience. Now, if you ask me, I think this country should have complete laissez-faire capitalism under the basic policies of Reaganomics. Trickle-down theory, for instance, is actually largely misunderstood…”
You politely excuse yourself to get some fresh air.
“Nice haunted house party,” you say to one of the guys on the porch. “I’m genuinely terrified.”
“What haunted house party?” he says, confused. “This was just a normal party.”
A shiver runs down your spine and you book it to catch Trav, but the line is so long that it runs all the way down the hill. You run farther and farther, trying to reach the end of the line, but it just keeps going and going, off into the distance.
“LAST TRAV,” echoes in your head, and you wake up in a cold sweat. It was all just a bad dream… or was it?
– Anonymous
The Radish 