The brightness of the morning air assaulted Rob's bloodshot eyes. Each floating mote, a perfectly angled glittering mirror that shot beams of pain directly into his eyes, down through the optic nerve and into the depths of his misfiring brain. Everything had a double image and the difficulty of refining them sent needles of agony into the subterranean maze of his consciousness. Rob's face creased with the effort to see, and even under his sunglasses, his eyes watered.

He knew scientists could be hard drinkers, but they had taken it to a new level last night. To make it even worse, they had shifted the celebration over to the Frat house - those boys were walking talking definitions of Wild Abandonment.

Rob's foot missed the bottom step of the Kappa Sigma House, his knee coming down hard on the concrete lip. Pain seared his leg almost breaking through the hundred foot wall of his hangover. He sat down hard, a hand exploring the wound. He clenched his teeth tightly, biting back a girlish scream. A rip in his tweed pants revealed a flap of skin hanging and blood flowing in a thick warm rivulet down his leg. He tugged out his handkerchief and dabbed gently, soaking up the blood. It was soon evident that the blood wasn't going to stop by itself. It was an ugly wound. Carefully, he peeled the tape from the day-old cotton bandage at his wrist. It came away, still sticky, revealing a long thin scab where they had taken his blood for last night's experiment. He transferred the bandage to his knee and sat there
for a moment, gathering himself.

He was still drunk.

There was no way his body could have rid itself of all the alcohol he had so foolishly consumed.

Like his old professor always liked to say, Snockered to all hell.

It had started out innocently enough with a few bottles of champagne passed around - a tradition for the completion of any successful experiment. Each of them suddenly beknighted and shouting snippets of Nobel Prize speeches, proud to be the first and knowing that the world would never be the same.

Then Baxter had pulled a fifth of whiskey out of the bottom drawer of his desk. Rob had always suspected Baxter was an alky. Like Rob, however, Baxter was tenured and short of a disaster, both of their jobs were secure. He didn’t know how they finished the whiskey as fast as they did, but before they knew it, one of the student assistants, Steven, led them in a drunken parade to his Frat House . . . and that was the point where everything went a little fuzzy.

Rob's major problem was his wallet. He had already checked the office, but nothing was there except empty bottles of Brut and mounds of white paper cups. Confetti, Anna's insane idea, littered every surface of the laboratory including the raised marble pentagram in the middle of the room.

He remembered at the Frat House passing out a few of his cards to some nice young ladies who had inquired about possible positions under him. After that, he remembered absolutely nothing. In fact, he had no idea how he had gotten home. All he knew was he awoke naked and wearing someone's bra on his head like Mickey Mouse ear warmers.

Rob limped up the stairs, using the rail as his friend. Achieving the landing, he leaned on the doorbell. He heard it echo inside the house. After a minute, he tried the door.

The large oak door opened revealing a scene of incredible devastation. But from what Rob had heard, not an unusual one. At least a dozen chairs, two sofas and three tables were in different stages of destruction. He could see where they had been repaired many times before, and with a little tape, glue and some bubble gum they would be just as good as they were.

But the bodies . . .

They were everywhere laying like refuse along the beer soaked carpet and against the walls. They looked dead, but were probably just unconscious.

As Rob stepped between askew legs and splayed arms, he began to feel nauseous. The stench of body odor and gallons of spilled stale beer tickled his stomach, trying to cajole its contents forth.

"Steven!" He yelled not willing to dare the stairs to the second floor. The name echoed throughout the house.

Fuck it!

He began searching for himself between the bodies and on the grimy surfaces looking for the telltale sign of his brown wallet impossibly thick with forgotten business cards.

The room was illuminated by the shafts of light that filtered between the venetian blinds on the front windows. Even so, he had to squint into several shadowy corners, greeted only with more unconscious revelers. A table, miraculously standing, was totally covered with red plastic cups, each in different stages of emptiness. It merely added to the stench of alcohol abuse that permeated the very pores of the house. He finally turned around, his arms spread wide, realizing the impossibility of his search. He stabbed an angry look at the heavens and stopped cold.

His eyes met eyes.

. . . an unblinking set of blue orbs that followed him like a predator.

Unblinking and unnerving.

"God Damn," he said, breaking the deadness of the house. "What the hell is she doing here?" He spun toward the stairs, "Steven!"

"Yo, dude. Stop that yelling." A scrawny young man, long blond hair, greasy in a pony tail, descended the stairs. He scratched at his naked belly, a pink and yellow Hawaiian Mu Mu, covering his legs.

"Steven," said Rob, his voice breaking with fury and incredulity. "What is she doing here?"

The young man scratched his adolescent whiskers and looked at the woman taped to the ceiling. "Well, I remembered what you said about the sunlight. So, I taped her up there. You know, that stuff really works. I mean look at her, she's freakin' solid up there."

Rob followed Steven's gesture and indeed recognized the qualities of the duct tape. She was firmly affixed to the shadowy confines of the ceiling. She appeared comfortable between two heavy oak beams. Two perfect firm breasts peered out from between bands of the green tape. A hint of her pubic hair, as blonde as the hair on her head, tantalized the eyes before disappearing into another band of tape. All in all, it appeared six bands were enough to subdue and attach her to the ceiling.

Rob turned toward his assistant, eye's wide, mouth trying to form words that should never be said. "What I asked . . . ," it came out as a squeak. He took two deep breaths, his eyes a warning to Steven not to move, then tried again. "What I asked, my dear assistant, was what is our experiment doing here inside a Frat House on a Sunday morning taped to the ceiling."

Steven smiled, "Oh. That's easy, dude. See, the boys, they couldn't believe that we had a woman with a tail. I mean, they didn't understand succubus from city bus. So I made a bet with them. Shit, dude, I got seventy-eight bucks."

Rob's look indicated Steven should continue if he valued his life.

"If you want, I can split it with you. Seeing as how it was you that brought her and all."

Rob's frown fell several inches.

"So anyway, when they saw her, so naked and fine - that little cute tail of hers - they insisted on bringing her to the party. Show her off and all. I tried to explain to them about the whole demon thing, dude. You know, fire, brimstone, burning pits of hell? But they were thinking with their other heads."

Rob surveyed the room again, this time paying more attention to the bodies.

"So these people . . . all of them are . . ."

". . . dead as dog shit. Yep. You should have seen her. She was a fucking whirlwind once she broke out of her shackles. And that's another thing, we need to get our money back from that company. She broke them like they was paper. They're pretty useless if you ask me."

Rob toed a boy big enough to look like he played football with his pointed brown leather shoe. It was like pushing clay. A feeling began to expand in his chest. He identified it as panic mixed with nausea.

"You were right about the blood, though. She wouldn't touch me. Called me master and all that. Pretty cool, dude." Steven laughed to himself, the joke lost on Rob.

Rob looked up again, the succubus was staring at him, a thin smile now on her face. Needle-sharp teeth poked from her upper jaw, resting gently on her blood red lower lip. He heard several groans from behind him that made him spin around. The formerly dead partygoers began to stir as if they were doing nothing more than awaking from a rough night of revelry.

"And that's another thing. She told me that they would get un-dead sometime this morning. Said they were gonna repopulate the world or something . . . I wasn't paying much attention at that point. I was really tired."

Rob watched the kids begin to stand, certain that undead didn't mean the same thing as alive. The whites of their eyes were blackened with the effects of dried congealed blood. Their faces sagged oddly with lumpy torpid skin. Their movements were stiff and stumbling as if every movement was a fight against gravity and fate. Each one shuffled up to him and sniffed. Apparently satisfied, they moved off, eventually finding the door. They trailed out and down the stairs as if they already knew their destination.

He heard a ripping noise from above him and a heavy thud on the floor. Behind him, in the darkness of a corner, was the succubus, crouched like a great cat, tail whipping back and forth with pleasure.

"It has begun," came the multi-octave voice.

This was the kind of thing that could mess up tenure, he couldn't help but thinking.

END

PARTY GIRL
is Copyright 1998 by Weston Ochse and is published in feoamante.com / Feo Amante's Story Time with his permission.