Try to Maintain the Stamina to Someone's House Party, Which is a Much More Mellow 'Wine Vibe' Than You, Stinking of Beer So Drastically That it's Possible to Get Drunk Off Just Inhaling You, Were Really Expecting

A Facebook "You Have An Event!" notification hits you at just the right time, when it feels like this bit of the pub is winding down, so you get a night bus over to the flat in question and pop in the nearest corner shop to buy as many cans as you can possibly carry (14, as it turns out). Whole deal where you ring the doorbell and nobody answers and, after five minutes of jabbing a buzzer, you have to make one of those weird phonecalls-through-Facebook phonecalls to get someone to let you in. “Oh,” your mate says, answering the door to you, steaming. “We didn’t… think you’d be coming.” How wrong they were. How wrong they were.

Normal house party protocol, here: you bundle into the kitchen to put the blue bags of cans you’ve bought, still in the bags, directly into the fridge. Then you hit the bathroom to have a 120-second piss. Only: something seems… off, a little? There was food in the fridge, not just pure alcohol. Nice food, as well: miniature mozzarella balls, artichoke hearts, an entire homemade cheesecake. The bathroom floor isn’t smeared with boot- and foot-prints, and someone hasn’t pulled the light switch fitting string out, and there’s actual nice hand soap here, and a lit candle. The hosts have… left their toothbrushes… in the bathroom? You strain your ears and listen at the door: there is not a single floor-filler being played, in any of the rooms. In fact, music only seems to be coming, uninterrupted, from a single, central room, and it’s classical. This is… you have made a mistake, here.