Killed over Avignon.

I'm drunk and surrounded by Michael Cera circa Juno clones and barely-dressed girls. My cowboy boots are just slightly too big and I trip over myself and opposing scantily-clad traffic as I walk up the steep, unstable stairs from the apartment basement to the ground floor in search of a seedy bathroom, the floor of which is covered in piss and vomit and - oh Christ, is that blood? is that a fucking tampon?- Lord knows what else. I wait in a line behind the Pope and roast in the Hellish humidity generated by hundreds of bodies rubbing up against each other.

I consider the number of people who are probably unknowingly contracting a disease or infection as yet another Michael Cera clone eases up behind me in the line. He attempts to Make Small Talk, which I can tell from the hesitation seeping out of his eyes like so many embarrassed tears that this is a feat requiring great effort on his part. I gratify him with response until the bathroom door opens and I realize I'm next as the Pope glides past me. 

As I leave the restroom, I nod to Michael Cera and scurry back into the basement to find myself alone in a sea of bunnies and ironic New Jersey kids dressed as guidos. The people I came with are gone.

Outside it is cool and smells of exhaust and vomit. It's better than the heat and sweat of the party house and I take a moment to feel some semblance of cleanliness in the crisp October air. I find a group of kids I don't know and ask if they are headed in the direction of Broad Street; they nod in the affirmative and I join their group, accepting gum from a boy I don't know dressed as Harry Potter. 

And suddenly, they are gone and I am on Broad Street with no one else in sight. The parties have not ended yet and this portion of the street is eerily devoid of life, save for the cars ad busses whizzing past, their lights blinding and dizzying in my drunken stupor. I get my bearings on campus, though I am barely hanging on to them, and stumble in the direction of the end of campus, to the two towers I've come to call home. 

Inside and safe on my floor, I encounter the people who abandoned me and fling questions only to be told it's my own fault. I return to my room and find the tiny, plastic case filled with guitar picks and two tabs of acid wrapped carefully in tin foil - I consider my ability to make this night better or, potentially, worse as I hear screaming outside my door. 

I throw open the door and a boy I have come to hate is standing with a boy I have learned not to trust are screaming lyrics at each other, the latter slumped against the wall across from me. I do not have any grasp of the situation until I realize I've suddenly cleared the three-foot gap between us and am yelling at the top of my voice, shoving him with a palm closer to the wall. Before I know what's happened, one of the boys from the floor is throwing me back in my room and dragging the other two away.

I sit on the floor and cry until five in the morning. The next day, I am a shell and hushed whispers succeed my every move. I become a ghost, remembered passively. I become the Dead Man in Yossarian's tent, gone before I'd ever been given the chance be there.