The doorbell rang with a weak chime, serving a cruel reminder to the owner of the porch of its sorry state. Some shuffling behind the door preceded a porch light being ignited, bringing a flash of colour to the violet and navy hues of the front yard, bathed only in moonlight. The door opened with another unhealthy, frozen creak, and Sean felt a rush of warm air. It carried the scent of sugar and beer, and the screen door opened with a clumsy clatter: the glass portion rattled, and the screen swung loosely in its ripped sections. Sean felt six hands grab him from behind the shoulders, and usher him into the house, where the smells got stronger, and the air felt warmer. In the living room, the chatter that was a slight humming from outside was now a hive of commotion. Electropop beat itself out of the speakers, and the dozen or so people engaged in conversation all directed their voices towards the entrance of the room, where Sean found himself removing his jacket. His shirt underneath embraced the warmth much more quickly than the jacket had, so Sean felt substantially warmer. His jeans still contained the trace of the outside cold, which he tried to remedy by running his hands up and down his outer thighs quickly. He felt his own voice, still stifled from the weather, squeak out of his throat, and in return heard a great deal of laughter and more laud chatter. The music began to fade into his peripheral hearing as he focused on the bottles and glasses in front of him. Arranged in a haphazard fashion, yet not strewn carelessly across the table, Sean began pouring various beverages into the nearest available coffee mug. It featured a faded and partially worn away illustration of the cast of Peanuts: Charlie Brown was wearing a Santa hat, Snoopy sported reindeer horns, and the rest of the cast adorned themselves in elfish clothing. Woodstock flitted about near the rim of the mug, tweeting his unintelligible scribbles down toward the others. When the mug was full, Sean searched for a piece of cutlery to mix its contents, but he found no such aid in his vicinity. Decks of playing cards sat neatly next to the bottles, and magazines littered the floor underneath the table, but no spoons, forks, knives, or sporks were visible. Sean resorted to using his finger, and shivered at the chilly drink. His finger had finally acclimated to the indoors, and the painful memory of the air outside made his digit cry in protest.
The first sip told Sean that the balance of ingredients was not right. To correct his mistake, Sean held his breath to avoid smelling his concoction, and took a large gulp. The lump of liquid slid down his throat almost effortlessly, but left an uncomfortably warm feeling in its tracks. Sean held a calm expression the entire time, and refilled the space in the mug he had just created with a different proportion of liquids. As the gulp reached his stomach, Sean felt the room tilt momentarily. It became increasingly apparent that his stomach felt empty, and resented his esophagus for allowing the contents it just had enter his digestive tract. The first sip of the new drink satisfied Sean’s palate significantly, so he shuffled over the thick carpeting towards the set of couches on the other end of the room. He chose a seat on a couch that sighed under his weight: the lines on the plaid upholstery scrunched to accommodate the new body, and Sean’s felt his neighbours’ cushions sink inward. The voices began responding to Sean’s in a much more rapid fashion, so that there was a near constant stream of voice in Sean’s ears. He extended his legs toward the source of the warmth – a crackling fire opposite the couch. Unlike before, Sean’s knees allowed his calves to swing forward without protest, and Sean appreciated the feeling of cotton rubbing on the sides of his toes as they wiggled in delight.
As the fire sputtered out the occasional ember onto the grate of the fireplace, Sean too felt his stomach growl in subtle distaste for its current occupation. Sean ignored this plea, and continued to sip his drink. A squealing voice from nearby made Sean exchange his mug with a wine glass with a plastic charm suctioned onto its base, a mason jar, and finally a mug featuring a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, with the words “Wish you were ici!” overlaid in a blaring font. Each glass brought a new flavour to Sean’s tongue, but none of them balanced the sweetness with the stinging warmth as well as Sean’s, so he reclaimed the Peanuts gang to sit in his lap, caressing the handle of the mug firmly. The mug now felt much lighter than it had before parting hands with Sean, so he returned to the table of bottles with a more elongated stride. He swallowed the remainder of the mug’s contents, and opened up several new bottles to create a new brew. He grabbed a pack of the playing cards from the table and returned to the couch with another shuffle, letting his feet drag along the way. When he returned to his cushion, his right hand brushed against the exposed shoulder of one of his neighbours, generating a small spark between their skin. The two withdrew instinctively, made brief eye contact, and the flow of voices slowly returned to Sean’s ears.
Remembering the pack of cards held tenaciously between the mug and his fingers, Sean opened the pack, producing a neat stack. He flipped through the deck quickly, estimating an appropriate number of cards, and began shuffling. The cards made a satisfying click as they released from his thumbs, landing softly on top of each other in quick succession. The slight breeze generated by the shuffling stirred the hair of the person sitting next to Sean’s legs on the carpet, and roused their attention to the goings-on in the adjacent lap. Several others began positioning themselves to face Sean, and he began sweeping cards towards each person facing him, in turn. With the deck depleted, each person began arranging their cards. Sean looked at his opponents, and saw them place cards that looked identical in seemingly random orders. Without knowing the values of each card, Sean could only see rectangles of intricate blue patterns fanning out slightly. Diamonds began pouring into the middle of the room in different values, followed by clubs, and finally spades. The player sitting opposite Sean immediately slapped a card to his forehead that portrayed a royal-looking man with a sword running apparently through his head. Sean slunk off the couch, forcing his knees onto the carpet as quickly as they would allow. As his palms slapped the carpet, he heard similar thumps and thuds from all the players around him. Breathing became more strained as every body in the room held itself in this awkward position, and after holding his place for some time, he felt his knees begin to tense. All voices went silent, and Sean was able to concentrate on the smell of his own breath for the first time. It carried sweetness, but also held the notes of the stinging warmth, and made him more aware of the texture of the carpet in front of him. It felt thicker to the touch on his hands than his feet, but every slight change in inclination of his head made the floor beneath him roll unnervingly. The change in perceived gravity escalated to the point that Sean’s knees could no longer take the pressure, and buckled. He lurched to his side, bowling into his neighbour, and felt their warmth against his momentarily. The voices broke out noisily, and Sean gazed up at the swimming ceiling to watch the light fixture dance across the open canvas. His view was interrupted by the card that had first thrown him to the ground: it was held so closely to his eyes that he had trouble focusing on anything but the heart shapes in two of the corners. The man was a bunch of lines, and what Sean knew to be a K in the other two corners looked more like a lopsided X. He felt two pairs of hands grab his own, and slid clumsily back onto the cushion. He soon rose, staggered over the table, and prepared another drink. This one’s taste resembled the first drink of the evening, but somehow seemed weaker. The sweetness wasn’t as intense, and Sean felt almost no esophageal warmth from drinking it, so he skewed the ratio of liquids to accommodate for this. He slowly shuffled back to the couches, and chose a new seat on the carpet. His vocal chords hummed in fuzzy approval of his position, and his ears opened up again to the flow of voices.
Sean repeated his pattern of spending time at the table, and tossing cards into the middle of the room a few more times, until the voices began to sound more distant. The room swelled and deflated slightly with each breath, and the background music resonated pleasantly. His breathing felt more laboured, and others showed similar experiences. The entire population of card players began to sway synchronously, and the tone to the voices became more soothing. The cards flowed more slowly, and when a player managed to connect the proper card with their forehead, Sean heard longer delays in thuds and thumps come from his neighbours. He glanced sideways at a player next to him, and recognized his soft facial features. He had gazed at that jaw line many times before, but in the warm light, it suddenly cast a new shadow that exposed his strong neck. His head slowly shifted to meet Sean’s eyes with his own dark brown irises. The hair that usually swept carefully across his forehead hung off his face, but maintained its regular shape, as if the hair had a shape it enjoyed, and simply embraced the forehead because it fit its contours nicely. Sean felt the floor tilt towards his neighbour, and he felt his neighbours’ arm open to welcome him. He felt a firm chest behind his upper back, and batted at the arm in front of him. He grabbed it, wrapped it around him, and turned to face his neighbour. Sean heard voices, but produced no voice in return, so his ears stopped following the flow of conversation. Sean in turn wrapped his arm around his neighbour, and pulled it toward him, sweeping his neighbour in as well. The smell of sweetness and stinging vanished with the outside voices, but the earthly eyes remained in focus. He heard a voice come from the neighbour, heard his own voice reverberate in the backs of his ears, and let his upper eyelids reacquaint themselves with his lower eyelids as he nudged his head forward.
Word count: 2,032
Total words so far: 29,035
Total words so far: 29,035
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