LPfiction

Category Linkin Park

The Piss Off the Neighbors Party by malaiyas

Hey, guys! I don’t really know what this is. Just intended to be a fun little one-shot detailing some college partying. No real point to it beyond that. I hope you’ll enjoy this light-hearted piece and I hope you’ll share your thoughts with me. Enjoy! x


Brad cast a look around his crowded apartment with a satisfied grin, his eyes landing on an array of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. He’d pulled it off. The biggest party of the year was here and now, taking place in his unusually full apartment.


Loud music blasted through the three bedroom apartment he’d shared with his roommates. The heavy bass pulsed in his chest, acting as the pacemaker that propelled the alcohol he’d been consuming so diligently through his veins.


The lights were low, with strobe lights set up throughout the apartment, casting vivid colors on the clothes of the attendees, and intermittently creating vibrant, rippling waves on the ceiling. Brad was staring at a series of yellow waves, intensifying to neon green when he felt a hand on his shoulder.


“You did it!” Mike shouted to be heard over the music. Brad smiled broadly at his roommate, then gestured vaguely to the front door.


“Yeah! This should really piss off Jose!” Brad said, prompting a raucous laugh from Mike. The two promptly agreed that shots were in order, and happily swallowed down a big mouthful of tequila together. Brad grimaced, but Mike merely licked his lips and turned his gaze back to the myriad sweaty, dancing people that filled their apartment.


“Where’s Chester?” Mike asked loudly, drawing a shrug from Brad’s shoulders.


“At work, I think,” Brad replied, his voice cracking from all the yelling. Mike nodded, sipped his beer, and stalked off.


Brad found himself dancing with a pretty blonde girl he’d seen around campus before. The alcohol made him brazen as he danced closer, his body aligned at an awkward angle as he jutted his hips forward. Brad had never been much of a dancer, but in this moment, he didn’t care. He felt like the king of the world, what with the massive party taking place in his apartment.


She stopped dancing as his hips began bumping into hers, her brow furrowed in an expression that Brad could only describe as disgust.


“You have a beautiful smile,” Brad soldiered on, despite the fact that she had not presented him with a smile at any point throughout this interaction. He lifted his eyebrows twice in rapid succession, and admired her backside as she walked away from him.


Unfazed, Brad stumbled away, finding Mike as he crashed into his back awkwardly. He felt the heat of the tequila settle into his cheeks, and suddenly, it was as if his head was weightless. Mike turned to steady his friend, his laugh heard even over the sound of the music.


“You hammered already?” Mike pressed, the laughter still hanging on to his words.


“No!” Brad replied too quickly. “Let’s take another shot!”


Mike knew this was a mistake. Somewhere deep down, Brad knew this was a mistake, too. This did not stop either one of them from indulging in another shot of the gold liquid after clinking presumably dirty shot glasses together.


“Really, though, Brad. You should get some water,” Mike said, the sting of the tequila still fresh in his throat. Brad waved a hand dismissively.


“And you should get some ass!” Brad retorted, a look of pride dominating his expression as if he’d just uttered the world’s most clever words. He staggered into the kitchen then, figuring he’d leave Mike to ice that burn. Instead, Mike simply resumed the game of beer pong that Brad never knew he’d been playing.


As Brad entered the kitchen, a pungent, familiar smell coated his nostrils and curled heavily into the back of his throat. Marijuana. Brown eyes darted frantically about the kitchen, seeking the source of the aroma. Very soon, he knew, his whole apartment would be stained with the scent of the smoke.


Brad weaved through a sea of shoulders and elbows until he found what he sought, a small group of people gathered in a tight circle, sharing a freshly lit joint.


“Guys! You guys!” Brad shouted, until each member of the small group was looking at him. “I won’t even be mad that you lit this up in my apartment if you let me have some.”


Each of them looked at the other, before a silent, unanimous agreement was met. The young man holding the joint passed it to Brad, who immediately took a long drag of smoke into his lungs. He passed it off to someone else as he held the smoke in his lungs, exhaling only when he felt cloudiness settling into the grooves of his brain.


The joint circled them all twice more before Brad decided that three hits were sufficient. He thanked his nameless stoner friends and stalked away from them, now viewing the party through bloodshot eyes.


Brad lingered in the doorway, heels in the kitchen, toes in the living room. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, though a part of him knew it was the combination of weed and alcohol hindering his brain processes. Still, the people around him seemed to move only in flashes; as he looked around the room, he caught a glimpse of a girl talking through laughter, her smile broad with cheer in her eyes. A couple dancing far off moved slowly in his vision, though the music in his ears played in real time. This made them look especially odd to him. As his eyes slid to catch other faces, Brad was sure he could feel his eyes moving in their sockets.


“I can feel everything,” he said aloud to no one, and no one heard him over the combined sound of the loud music and the chatter of drunk people. His heart quickened, sending a rush of panic through his veins as his vision sharpened. Too sharp, it was too sharp. Every detail in the room stood out to him, as if someone had put the snapshots of his view into PhotoShop and turned the sharpness all the way up.


Brad felt a scream building in his chest as the room seemed to sway to and fro. He wrenched his eyes shut, trying to straighten the picture in his mind. When he opened them, he found that everything seemed that much more crooked. His sight had become a sort of whirlwind, and he tried to keep his feet planted where they were, even as his own field of vision seemed to swirl around him, as if his eyes were orbiting his head.


Strangers, strangers everywhere. But Mike. Where was Mike?


“Hey, man, move!” a guy shouted as he shoved past Brad, flattening him against the doorframe as he barreled into the kitchen. The shove sent the room spiraling out of control, and Brad feared with every ounce of his being that he was sure to go with it.


“Brad!” someone called to him, temporarily pulling Brad out of the spiral. His breath quickened again; it seemed to take so much effort for him just to look up. When he did, he caught Chester’s smiling face. Chester. Oh, Chester was home.


The smile was wiped from Chester’s face as he observed Brad, replaced entirely with concern. Chester leveled his hands on Brad’s shoulders, straightening his friend.


“Brad, look at me. Brad, hey, hey. Are you alright, man?” Chester pressed, trying to catch sight of Brad’s half-shut eyes. He lightly tapped Brad’s cheek, and when Brad looked at him vacantly, he knew something was amiss.


Chester, completely sober in a sea of fucked up people, led Brad over to the fire escape window. He wrenched the heavy window up, allowing the cool night air to hit their skin. It was a relief against the heat created by the many bodies in the apartment.


“Breathe, Brad,” Chester instructed, pushing Brad’s head out of the window. For Brad, it was a strange sensation, as all of the sounds of the party rang in his ears behind him, yet beyond the parameters of the window, the night was still. Both registered in his mind, and Brad decided he’d rather be closest to the stillness of the night.


He began to climb out of the window, awkward limbs everywhere until Chester had grabbed him by the waist.


“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Chester yelled, yanking him back in. The force on Brad’s stomach hadn’t settled well there.


“Escaping,” he replied thoughtfully, and Chester tightened his grip as they both went crashing to the floor.


Chester rubbed the back of his head as they sat up, a rueful expression on his face as he tried to palm the ache of the impact away. Brad sat by the window still, opening his eyes finally as he looked at the street down below.


They were three stories up. Brad felt the realization of this height settle into his stomach, where Chester’s arms had pressed moments earlier. As he looked down at the sidewalk, it seemed to come up at him and then fall away from him again. He heaved a dry, painful heave, and then he heaved again. Chester noticed the retches racking Brad’s body, so when Brad began to turn his head toward him, Chester was quick to redirect Brad’s head back out of the window.


A steady stream of purely liquid, yellow vomit slopped noisily forth from Brad’s mouth and cascaded down, out of the window. Both listened for the sickening sound of it slapping the pavement, but it never came. Confused, Chester looked out of the window, and instead saw the blonde top of a young woman, standing frozen with Brad’s vomit leaking down all angles of her head.


“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Chester hissed, grabbing Brad and pulling him back inside, inwardly praying that another wave of nausea wouldn’t overtake him.


Someone shut off the music just in time to hear her scream.


Chester scrambled away from the window, Brad in tow as everyone’s attention was drawn to the sound of the blood-curdling scream. With all eyes on them, Chester continued to struggle to lead Brad away from the confused eyes of all their attendees.


Mike made his way over to them, concern on his face as he saw Brad’s state. As he was about to open his mouth to ask what had happened, Chester yelled, “Help me!”


Both men draped one of Brad’s arms over their shoulders and limped him into his bedroom. Settling him into his bed had been a challenge, as Brad had supplied them with absolutely no help despite the fact that he was still conscious.


Chester placed a trash bin nearby and hoped Brad would have the presence of mind to use it. They both crouched down by Brad’s bedside.


“One of us should stay with him to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit,” Chester said, and Mike gave him a look that communicated everything. “Really?”


“Yeah, man, I’m drunk, too. Not on his level, but enough that when I lie down, I’ll be passed out,” Mike reasoned, and Chester rolled his eyes.


“I just fucking got home from work. I didn’t sign up for this shit,” he muttered with a dramatic sigh. “But I’ll do it, you fucking asshole.”


Mike grinned the sort of grin that one’s face is only capable of while inebriated and said, “You’re the best.”


“Yeah. Who turned off the music?”


“I did. Someone was pounding on the front door, so I shut off the music in case it was the cops.” Chester actually facepalmed. “What?”


“Did you hear that scream?”


“Everyone heard that scream,” Mike laughed, a little too hard. Chester couldn’t help but to laugh, too. “Why was she screaming like that?”


“Because Brad puked all over her. He leaned out the window…” Chester was cut off by his own laughter, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wrong place at the wrong time. I can’t believe it.”


Mike and Chester both were overtaken by the sort of laughter that put tears in their eyes and cramps in their stomachs. When they finally recovered from the absurdity of the whole situation, Chester looked over at Mike with sudden realization on his face.


“So who was at the door?” he asked, certain it couldn’t have been the police based on the fact that people didn’t immediately flood out of the door.


“It was Jose,” Mike replied nonchalantly. “Threatening to call the cops.”


“Of course it was,” Chester said, rolling his eyes. He glanced down at Brad, who had started to snore. “I guess he got his way. This was the ‘Piss Off the Neighbors’ party, after all.”


“He should have called it the ‘Piss Off Jose’ party. That was the whole point.”


“That guy is really fucking annoying,” Chester mumbled, then pushed himself to a stand. “Are all of those people still here?”


Chester ventured out to check. Everyone had vacated, and their front door had been left wide open. The apartment was a disaster area.


“We’re not getting our security deposit back,” Chester announced to Mike, looking at the floor. “There’s cranberry juice all over the fucking… my god, people are so disgusting. Those stains don’t come out for nothing.”


“We knew that would happen,” Mike replied as Chester went to shut and lock the front door.


“Brad is going to do most of the cleaning since this fucking party was his idea and also because I missed the fun parts.”


“You got to see him vomit on some girl’s head, though.”


“Oh, my god,” Chester laughed, shaking his head as he returned to his post by Brad’s bedside. “You should get some rest.”


“I’ll stay, too. But you get the first shift.”


Chester agreed, but the two stayed up all night together, talking and laughing. Watching over Brad became a joint venture.




Dawn rolled around, casting gentle rays of sun through the slits of the vertical blinds adorning Brad’s bedroom window. In the quiet of the early morning, Mike and Chester decided that it was time for them to get some sleep themselves. If Brad hadn’t gotten sick by now, surely he wasn’t going to.


Both retreated to their respective bedrooms, and a few hours passed before Brad was awake suspiciously early. He just about let out his own blood-curdling scream when he saw the state of their apartment.


“Oh my god, oh my god!” he yelled, immediately beginning to pick up discarded cups and dried up limes from the floor.


All the noise roused Mike and Chester, who clambered into the living room, sleep still heavy in their eyes.


“Brad, honestly, how are you awake right now?” Chester muttered, watching as his roommate frantically began cleaning their apartment.


“I don’t know,” he said, then paused. “You guys aren’t going to help me?”


“We helped you all last night,” Chester said, his brow furrowing. “We stayed up all night with you making sure you wouldn’t choke on your own vomit and die.”


“Yeah. Now it’s time for us to sleep. So be quiet.”


“Oh, that’s great,” Brad muttered as he resumed his frantic cleaning. “I really doubt we’ll be getting the security deposit back, you know.”


“The party was your idea because of your beef with Jose,” Mike retorted, glancing at Chester for back-up.


“You guys hate him, too!”


“We could have just as easily made all that noise without inviting all those people. Or put dog shit outside of his door or something,” Chester said, shaking his head. “I told you right from the start that we’d destroy our own apartment doing it like this. People are pigs.”


Brad sighed, nodding. “You were right, this was stupid.”


Chester turned to head back to bed, but stopped himself. Slowly, he turned to look back at Brad. “Do you remember vomiting all over that girl’s head?”


Brad’s eyes widened. “I did what?!”


Mike and Chester both experienced a laughing fit not unlike the first they’d shared the night prior.


“You’re going to have more to clean up than just this apartment if that girl’s a student here.”


Fin.

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