by B. C. Palmer
“You say that now,” Serena said. “It’s always just a social call till the boys start getting naked and casting Cubert’s Vibration on their junk. The faster you start living a little, the more fun this whole year is going to be.”
I rolled my eyes at the back of her head.
“I can see that,” she crooned.
“Uh, sorry.” I hurried to catch up and walk beside her. How she marched so fast in those heels, I didn’t know. Magic had to be involved. Serena had used magic to do her hair, her makeup, to coordinate her outfit, even to make her teeth a little whiter.
Serena was an ‘illusionist’. Her specialty focus in magic was altering perception, and the way she explained it, “Basically I’m gonna be a smoking hot bitch until I die and the whole world is like one big D and P buffet.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said, winking at me. “I like your sass. So look, I’m not gonna stick with you the whole party because I have no idea what kind of party-girl you are, and I tend to rock it solo. So just remember that any time you want to change parties, you always take the door to your left. Your left, not the left side of the cabin. To go back, take the door on your right. And the one you walk through always locks. No going backwards. Maybe think of them like awesome stargates.”
“Different parties?” I asked, baffled.
She shrugged. “If I explained it now it would probably just fry your brain and you wouldn’t have any fun. Remember, it’s a magician party—there are no rules, and that includes shit like time and space. Oh, and, you know, use protection.”
I didn’t answer that, and there wouldn’t have been a point. We’d been together for about six hours so far, and what I had learned about Serena for sure was that when she said anything there was only about a sixty percent chance she was intentionally speaking to me. The other forty, it was possible she forgot I was even there.
We passed into the forest, and ultimately the path spit us out on the other side where, the moment we stepped foot beyond the last tree, the music tripled in volume. Bass vibrated through the cobblestones and into my bones from the air, and the sounds of howling, cheering voices were added to the mix. Serena took my hand and strolled up to the front door of a quaint little stucco cottage with a thatched roof. To one side there was a dial with seven colored panels on it, each with an intricate bit of writing that looked like a mix of complex geometry and equations written in a different language. She turned it all the way to the right, to a white panel, and looked back at me. “White is the main entrance. I’ll take you as far as green, and after that you’re on your own unless you wanna get nasty. Which I’m always down for.”
If she was actually propositioning me, I couldn’t tell—literally everything she said sounded like she was propositioning someone, or hell, something. “Sure, okay.”
Serena tugged the door open and ushered me into an impossible room.
I stared at the wide, deep party full of bodies that had to occupy a space at least three times the size of the cottage. “Holy shit,” I gasped. “It’s… how is it so much bigger on the inside?” I felt like I was in that British sci-fi show with the alien who always looked human.
“That’s what the VP asked when I pegged him,” Serena mused.
“VP?” I shook my head in disbelief. “What?”
Serena shrugged. “What? I’m an activist. So this is basically just the base-level party. Dancing, some booze, everyone keeps their clothes on. It’ll pretty much empty out in a few hours. This is the boring one. Follow me!”
She had to shout to be heard, but she turned to her left and waded through the crowd to a door and waved me after her as she passed through it.
The next room was the same size—in fact, it had three doors in the same places as before, and windows, and a bar. It was the same room but with a faint red glow to the light. There were people here dancing as well, but slower, and in one corner of the room there were sofas arranged around low tables where students draped over cushions and puffed on four-foot-tall hookahs. One of them exhaled a cloud of smoke while I watched. The smoke took on the shapes of pale ravens that dive-bombed another student. She swatted them away and breathed out smoke in the shape of a gaping demonic skull that rushed the boy who’d been irritating her.
“Keep moving, hot stuff,” Serena called from another door. This one should have led back outside, based on its position—it was the door we’d come through, but when she opened it and waved me on ahead of her, I emerged into a room that was lit with orange. In this room, there were more students tending the bar, and high-backed chairs had replaced the sofas. The students there sipped cocktails and had seemingly heated debates.
Serena snorted. “Nerd party. No, thank you. Wanna get off here?”
I tore my eyes away from a pair of students who looked like they were about to start fighting with fists. “Uh… I don’t think so.”
“Adventurous, I like it. So this next party—don’t freak out.”
I didn’t know how to promise not to freak out about something before I knew what it was, but I followed her through the next door, suspicious about the coy expression she tossed me as she went through it. The yellow room was a beach. An actual beach, complete with what looked like an ocean.
A nude beach.
Students everywhere were butt-naked, some of them making out on the sand, others lounging in the sun, some of them playing volleyball. This ‘room’ was much larger than the others, but rather than walls there were high stone cliffs. “Fuck me,” I gasped and laughed at the same time, my head starting to swim. “Is this… where is this?”
Serena strolled to a door in the cliffside. “Same place, different spectrum. There’s an illusionist somewhere in here probably about to shit themselves. Last year it was the moon. Before that it was a Victorian era bordello, though. That was kind of fun. Come on. Green is probably your speed, I’m guessing.”
The door in the side of the cliff opened into a green room, which was a garden party under the moon and stars. A wall of flowering trees replaced the beach cliffs, and people danced to slow, jazzy music on the main lawn. There were benches in wrought iron and wood and sometimes shaped from the trees themselves all around the edges of the party, where other students sat together talking, making out, and, in one case, painting one another’s faces.
Not that I didn’t mind a nice quiet party under the stars, but I took Serena’s words to suggest that I wasn’t down for an actual college party. I glowered at her. “This is my speed?”
She smirked and shrugged a shoulder. “It’s nice and breezy, and your sweater fits right in.”
“What’s in the next room?” I asked, and marched toward the door on our left—the door that had originally led into the red party—and pulled it open.
“Blue party,” Serena said, and urged me through, grinning wildly. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The blue party was a dance club playing slow, heavy music that pulsed like a heartbeat through the room. It was mostly men here. Mostly naked. And enjoying one another’s company in the carnal sense. All around, there were guys on their knees, sucking cock slowly or quickly, sometimes wearing a leash and sometimes wearing not even that. I had a sudden urge to cover my eyes but couldn’t stop looking over the room. My heart sped up a bit.
“Blue party,” Serena said, amused at my reaction apparently. “Get it?”
“I… yeah…”
“They only get more exciting from here,” she said. “Give you two guesses what the violet party is. Indigo’s a nice mix, though, and that’s next, so. If you’re down to party, follow me.”
I swallowed and reconsidered the green party, or even the red party. That looked fairly chill. “Um, I think… I think I’m gonna go back and get a drink somewhere else. The indigo part is…?”
“One big orgy,” Serena said. “Usually pretty good, too.”
Someone nearby moaned in a way that I was pretty sure meant they’d just come. “You, ah… go on without me, I think.”
>
“Sure,” Serena said. “If you change your mind… well, I’ll probably be elbow deep in the V and stuffed full of D, so probably don’t come find me but keep in mind the violet party is all V. If that’s your thing. Usually real classy, too.”
I tore my eyes away from three muscular bodies all pressed against a wall, heaving in sync with one another. “Have fun, I guess.”
Serena winked at me and sauntered away through the door to our left.
I turned around and opened the door behind me to go back the way I came. The door was locked.
“Shit,” I muttered, and then remembered what Serena had told me. The door to my left led to the next party, the door to my right went back. Setting aside for the moment how insane the whole situation was, I looked for the door opposite the one Serena had gone through. It was on the other end of the blue party room, which meant wading through a crowd of at least fifty-something grunting, groaning men in varying states of ecstasy.
I made my way through them, trying desperately not to stare and glad the light was so dim no one could see how red my face was. “Sorry,” I muttered as I picked my way around smiling faces and sleepy eyes. “Pardon me. Just gonna get past you. No, no, carry on. Oh, no thank you, I, um… I’m full.”
When I reached the door, my mouth was dry and my heart was pounding so fast I couldn’t tell if it was still beating. Next time Serena suggested I get off some crazy ride, I would take her advice. I opened the door and was greeted by a masquerade party in a deep bluish-purple room and the sounds of both men and women enjoying themselves much the same way. Not three yards from the door, one student had her legs spread wide as two other students, a boy and a girl, hiked her thighs over one shoulder each and were obviously very busy between them.
I backed up and shut the door. What the hell? That was the door to my right; I was absolutely certain of it. We’d come in, Serena had taken the door to our left, I had taken the door—wait, no. I had turned around, and faced the door we came through, the one that was locked. Which made the door she went through the door to my right. Fuck.
So which door did I go through now? I turned around to face the blue party, and spotted a door—to my right—on the far wall by the bar. It meant cutting almost diagonally through the throng of sweaty, mostly naked men. Movement near the ceiling caught my eye and I glanced up to see three men suspended in the air, in something more like a triquetra than a sixty-nine maneuver. I picked my way carefully around them so as not to go directly underneath. Just in case.
I made it most of the way there when a voice from the bar called my name. “Amelia?”
The chances that there was anyone else in this party named Amelia were pretty low, I judged, so it was someone for sure calling to me, specifically. I looked around and found Lucas waving me down. He was with Isaac, both of them with mostly empty drinks in their hands. They each shot what was left and put the cups on the counter. At least they were mostly dressed.
Both of them were shirtless, and I should have burst into flames for suddenly piecing together the fact that they were here, in the blue party, shirtless. Together. Because in the corner of my eye two men ground against one another in a dance that was very likely also more than just dancing and my imagination took that material and ran with it until I was wondering how the two of them kissed, and whether, like Serena said, they ever had anyone between them. Oh, god, did I want to be between them? I doubted it would be a terrible experience, and blushed even harder when I realized I had that thought.
Lucas reached me first, with Isaac just behind him. “Looking for the Indigo party? Or… the violet party?”
“No,” I squeaked. “No, I was, um… not. I’m trying to go backward, or even out, but the way the doors work is just… yeah. Um, so you two are… you’re here.”
Lucas’s grin spread slowly, and he leaned a bit to one side to nudge Isaac with his shoulder. “This is Isaac. Friend of mine.”
“Your boyfriend,” I said, half a question and half some kind of acknowledgement that I was cool with it. Trying to do both came out like I was choking myself.
Isaac laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that exactly. Pleased to meet you. You must be Amelia, right? Lucas told me about you. A little, anyway.”
My eyes narrowed. “Oh, did he?”
“Just that you were new here,” he said. “And that you passed your exam in record time. Five minutes to spare. Pretty good.”
I wasn’t flattered or anything—I smiled because you’re supposed to smile when you meet someone new, that’s all. “Um, well, I’ll let you two… I should go.”
“We’ll go with you,” Lucas said. “We got here a little early anyway and are pretty much partied out.”
A variety of images danced through my imagination about what exactly their night had been like. I had a hard time looking Lucas or Isaac directly in the eyes as it happened, and instead took a step back and gestured at the door. “I’ll follow you.”
Lucas chuckled, and leaned in. “That door is to your right. You better open it.”
“Oh,” I laughed. “Yeah, okay. Right. My right. Christ.”
I opened the door, and sure enough it was the green room on the other side. Lucas and Isaac followed me through and I realized I was sweating. I blamed the sweater…
With their help, which after that door was mostly just confirmation, we went back through the various rooms in reverse sequence until, finally, we reached the white room again.
“Fancy a drink?” Isaac asked.
I glanced at the bar. This, again, was a tamer sort of dance party but now that my head was spinning, I was sweaty, embarrassed, and honestly more than a little confused, I just wasn’t feeling it. “I think I could definitely use some kind of inebriation,” I admitted, “but, um… I don’t think I can stay here longer. Sort of like jumping in the deep end, you know?”
Lucas’s smile seemed genuine enough. “I do know. Well, let us walk you back then. Maybe we can grab a nightcap back at our room.”
“We’ve got contraband,” Isaac said, and waggled his eyebrows enticingly. My stomach twisted in the way it did when guys flirted with me. Isaac definitely was attractive in that posh way, with his dark hair framing his burnished sand-colored skin, and the devil-may-care grin on his lips.
They went through the door that led to the outside world, and when we’d walked a few yards from the cottage, I turned to look at it again, searching the sides for some kind of explanation. Mirrors or something. It looked pretty much like a regular cottage.
“So… how do they do it?” I asked.
Lucas and Isaac moved to stand on either side of me. Close. The faint smell of clean sweat tingled at my nose from their bodies, different from each of them. I folded my arms over my chest and tried not to pant. I knew some predators could smell fear, and I wondered if they picked up other scents. Not that I was turned on, of course. I was totally fine with two shirtless, very attractive men sandwiching me between them.
“It’s pretty complex,” Lucas said, pulling me from my thoughts. “New seniors set it up each year, a group of seven. Plato’s Spatial Prism. Not the Plato, or anything. It’s one space, but filtered through a special prism and anchored into different phases. The trick is actually in the navigation, each space is subjective which means navigation is subjective, so the cottage was built with four doors, one on each side, to keep things from getting all tangled up. Takes seven days, one phase for each day. It’s kind of a rite of passage before your senior year.”
“I still can’t quite make myself believe it,” I whispered. “Even after seeing it, I mean… it’s just impossible, isn’t it?”
“Impossible is what we do,” Isaac said. His voice made me want to shiver. “That’s magic for you.”
Lucas nudged me gently with his elbow. “Have to admit it’s pretty cool.”
I shook my head, trying to wrap my mind around what he’d said. Splitting one space into separate phases, all coexisting in the same time and space. It was a viol
ation of physics. It made my stomach queasy, though not in an entirely bad way. “That’s a word for it, I guess.”
“Come on,” Lucas urged. “There’s no shame in not being the partying type. We only really go to be seen. Kind of a thing after your freshman year.”
I walked with them back to the mansion and through the gates leading into the courtyard. By the time we made it to the south wing, I was yawning.
“So,” Isaac asked when we paused by the door there. “Coming back to our room for a little after-party? We’ll be up a while.”
Lucas’s eyes sparkled a bit in the moonlight. “Promise not to bite.”
“He never keeps his promises,” Isaac warned me, his voice dark velvet in my ear. “But he does bite very well.”
I stood speechless like an idiot. Serena just had a certain air of unstoppable sexuality about her—it was understandable I couldn’t always tell how serious she was. But these two were definitely propositioning me. My heart sped up again.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Oh, um. I don’t… I mean I’m pretty tired, so… not that I don’t—that is, you’re both… thanks, but I should…”
Isaac had rolled both his lips between his teeth and was fighting a smile. Lucas wasn’t trying at all. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe some other time. If you, you know, change your mind”—he pointed to my right hand—“you know how to find us. Like Isaac said: we’ll be up late.”
“Mm hmm,” I managed, and the two of them took a few steps backward, watching me, before they turned and strolled along the south wall toward the far end of the courtyard.
I exhaled slowly, and put my hand on the door handle to go in, but paused and looked their direction.
Two gorgeous men, and here I was dressed like a suburban housewife with a trashcan full of chardonnay bottles. What could they possibly have been thinking about me?
As I forced myself to open the door into the empty, darkened dining hall I found myself also wondering—why the hell had I turned them down?
