15. Men & Ghouls

Chapter fifteen

Men & Ghouls

L uckily, the party is only about five blocks away, which is very convenient. It means I should be able to make my way there and back tonight without any extra assistance. I'm still annoyed at Oliver for even suggesting that I needed help. I get why he might think I do, given that I’m living in a house full of demons, but I’m pretty sure I should be more scared of them than of going to a frat party.

As I get closer to the house, I can already hear the loud music thumping through the air. Cars are piling up on the street, and there are as many people outside as there are inside, I’m sure. The porch is crowded with laughing, chattering party-goers, and the lawn is littered with red Solo cups and groups of friends catching up.

I get a few whistles and hoots as I enter the doorway. Maybe I shouldn’t have put my hair up in a ponytail. The house is packed, and the warm, humid air smells of sweat, beer, and a hint of perfume. I try to navigate my way through the bustling crowd, but it’s getting really hard to move. I can’t see anybody I recognize. Well, I do recognize some people, but I don’t know any of them personally, not even by name.

“Amelia!” someone calls my name. I turn to see Nikki. I can’t believe she would even consider speaking to me after what she did to my guitar. “I heard you settled yourself into a frat house. Are you hiding some balls between those legs?” she sneers.

I’m not surprised to see at least two of the other sorority girls standing behind her, looking equally smug. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember their names. The room feels even smaller with their presence, and my annoyance bubbles up again. This night is going to be more challenging than I anticipated.

“Just a temporary situation till I find a permanent place to stay,” I reply.

“Well, you are technically still a member of our sorority, so you always have a bed with us instead of hanging around a bunch of smelly boys,” she retorts.

“I wouldn’t want my plane smell to get on you,” I say sarcastically. I can already tell that shouting all night is going to give me a headache, but with the music blaring, I don’t have a choice. As another sorority sister joins her, I finally recognize somebody. She’s the girl from the drama club who was annoyed that I got the Snow White role. Amanda, I think her name is.

“Don’t be such a skank. You can’t just spread your legs and hope that all the guys in that house will be happy to have you around all the time,” Nikki sneers.

“I do nothing of the sort,” I snap back.

“Oh please, I’d hate to imagine how many trains have traveled through your tunnel,” she taunts.

“None, if you must know!” I’m so mad, I feel like I could punch her right now, but I also don’t want to get kicked out of the party.

“Amelia!” Another voice calls behind me, and it’s Tyson.

“Oh, another one?” Nikki comments, “So tired of the frat guys that you've decided to go ahead and bang the entire football team too?”

“Come on Nikki, be nice.” Tyson says to her. She shoots us both an evil grin and turns around with her posse right behind her.

“Thank you, I'm sorry you had to hear that.” I say to Tyson.

“That's perfectly alright. She and the other sorority girls can be a bit of a handful sometimes. It's better just to take it with a grain of salt.” I'm pretty sure the term is a pinch of salt, but I'll let it slide.

“Well, thank you for the rescue anyway.”

“Absolutely a pleasure. Would you like anything to drink?”

“Pass me anything that's non-alcoholic.”

“One soda, coming up.” I end up finding a quiet spot near a corner wall while he disappears into the crowd. I can't believe someone's allowed to have so many people in a house. If someone were to shut the doors and close the windows, I'm sure we'd all fall into anarchy just from the smell. Another moment later, Tyson brings me back a drink.

“Thank you.” I say to him taking a sip.

“There's two other lounges upstairs on the second floor. I think they're a little bit quieter than down here, shall we?” I can see from up the stairwell that there is actually a lot of people upstairs, so I assume he's telling the truth. Nodding, he grabs my hand to guide me up the stairs. There seems to still be just as many people around here as they were downstairs. He keeps me close by his side as we find our way to what we assume was going to be spare seats, but ended up being taken quite quickly. “Follow me.” He then says guiding me down a hallway. We laugh a couple of times as we attempt to dodge people coming in and out of doors and bathrooms, but my laughter stop says he pulls me into a door and shuts it behind me quickly. “Busy out there.” He comments. In the room there are two other guys, did we walk in on something we weren't supposed to? They were both sitting on the bed pretty close to each other.

“Sorry, didn't mean to bother you.” I say instinctually.

“No bother, we were waiting for you.” One of them says to me. My brows furrow, why would they be waiting for me? Despite the loud noise that's coming from outside of the door, I can hear it click when Tyson locks it.

“What are you doing?”

“Just making sure we're not disturbed,” he smirks. His voice sounds distant, even though he’s standing right next to me. As I try to concentrate, I feel him pushing my shoulders backward, making me fall onto the bed.

“Just take another sip, you'll be fine,” he says. I look down at the drink in front of me and realize what he’s done. Dropping the drink, I try to get up quickly and push my way towards the door, but it’s impossible with both him and two other guys pulling me back down onto the bed. I have no other choice, so I scream for help, but one of their hands finds my face and muffles me quickly.

“If you don’t scream, it won’t hurt,” one of them says. I struggle as hard as I can, even trying to bite the hand covering my face, but I don’t succeed. I keep waving my hands around, but it only deters them marginally. I don't stop. I still try to scream, but I can't. Why is this happening to me? What did I do?

Tyson tries to keep my legs under control as he attempts to remove my pants. I hear my shirt tear as one of the guys pulls on the shoulder area roughly, but then I hear him scream. My legs are released, and I feel like I can finally move them. The hands holding down my shoulders are removed, and I try to stand up but fall to the ground. I’m still really dizzy and can’t understand what’s happening. I look around at the blurred faces and figures moving in the room. If my counting is correct, and I hope it is, there are four people in the room now, not just three. Did someone come to help me?

I try to get up and head to the door but fall again. Why can’t I concentrate? Why won’t my legs move? Using a nearby nightstand to steady myself, I stand up while hearing a lot of swearing and screaming. As my eyes slowly start to focus, I see the three guys pounding on someone, but he’s putting up quite a fight. He kicks one off, sending him flying to the other end of the room. I am in a state of shock. What did they put in my drink? This surely can't be real.

Another guy gets pushed into a nearby wall, and another is sucker-punched right in the face—Tyson, I think. The fourth figure comes towards me, and all I see are bright green eyes. He grabs my arm, and I try to scream again but stop when he says my name.

“Amelia, let’s go!” Oliver? What was he doing here? I don't resist as he drags me along through the house. I hear people shouting to us as we push through them and out towards the backyard where it's actually quite empty. Although I'm a little groggy, at least I'm now on my feet, but Oliver holding on to me is helping quite a bit. I think there are people shouting after us, so he drags me over to what looks like a garden shed. He pushes me in and closes the door behind us. From the outside, it looks like there would be enough room for both of us standing here, but there really wasn't. It was actually quite packed with a lot of things and a lot of items that were made for the garden. Standing there chest touching chest, I realized that this must be the worst possible situation for him to be in right now. I look up and see the pain in his eyes that he's suffering from, but this isn’t exactly a good situation for me either.

“What are you thinking about right now?” I ask him. He looks down at me and swallows, using his hands to pick up what's remaining of my shirt and trying to put it back on me properly. I think he’s undoing the knot on my shirt and buttoning it up as it is intended to be worn.

“You.” He states. “I'm just thinking about you.” I feel very dizzy. I also must be hallucinating because I know he didn't just say he was thinking about me. My heart's racing, but at least at the moment, with everything that's going on inside of my head at the moment, I don't feel as afraid of him anymore.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him grabbing onto my head with this little room as I have to move my arm.

“I've known Tyson for a little while. I know the type of guy he is and when I heard you were going to a frat party, I got worried. Things tend to happen to girls at those parties, and they can't seem to say anything about them afterwards. Looking at the state of you, I assume that was because of drugs.”

“I barely had two sips of that drink.”

“I guess it doesn't take much, but you're still with me at the moment. I assume much more would have knocked you out.” I want to cry. I can't believe I fell for it. I can't believe I always got tricked into being...used. I feel sick to my stomach, but I've also got to remember that there's someone else here with me, someone who is probably struggling a lot being this close to me.

“Thank you.” I say to him. I know we're in here because someone was looking for us, but I'm hoping that we can get out of here soon.

“Oliver? Amelia?” I hear voices calling our names, but they definitely don't seem hostile. They seem more familiar than that. Oliver goes to push on the door and we end up falling out a little bit, but still catching ourselves before we fall down completely. Then I realized that somebody else had caught me from falling, it’s Niles.

“Are you guys okay?” Hendrik asks, fear plastered all over his face.

“We’re fine. Mostly.” Oliver responds, looking over to me. “She had something in her drink though, so don't let her stand by herself.” As I look up and concentrate I can also see that Nolan and Richard are here too.

“Are you fucking insane?” Nolan shouts at Oliver. “You know we shouldn't be going out on our own and you decide to leave us a note saying you're headed to a frat party?”

“I only came to get Amelia. None of you were home yet.”

“So? How did you guys even end up locking yourself in a garden shed anyway? How long have you even been in there?”

“Just a few minutes.” I comment, hiccoughing along the way.

“You guys were stuck in that tiny shed for a few minutes and Oliver didn't have you for a snack?” Richard questions looking over at me and around my neck. “I mean, look at your clothes and you seem really groggy. Did you actually bite her dude?” He turns to Oliver who shoots him a wicked glare.

“I didn't bite her.”

“You want us to believe you are comfortable enough with being pressed up against her for a few minutes inside of a garden shed and you didn't proceed to bite her?” Niles questions.

I interject, “He really didn’t bite me. Give him some credit guys. He kind of saved me up there.”

“Saved you?” Nolan asks, turning and hearing a lot of questioning shouts from inside. “Never mind, let's just get back to the house and quickly.” As we went their way back to the front of the house, I can see people are starting to panic about something that's happening inside the house. I can only assure him that because of Oliver’s strength, that perhaps when he beat up the guys upstairs, they were in pretty bad shape when we left. We're better off escaping from the aftermath than sticking around.