I frown. Most people use the Contact Us form for lost shit: purses, jackets, IDs. Last month someone left a prosthetic leg. Don’t know if they ever came back for it.
But this message… this one is different.
The text appears in real-time, like someone’s voice-to-text is struggling to keep up:
[Guest]:How woud you handle a stalker?
A pause. Then another line.
[Guest]:I don’t think I should ask it like that Sable.
Another.
[Guest]:You have to be more discreeet.
Then the final one.
[Guest]:We need a bitch gone. Yes?
I sit up straighter. Exhaustion gone.
What the fuck?
I stare at the words, my pulse kicking up a notch. The sloppy spelling, the phrasing—the whole thing has the energy of drunk texting.
Sable.
Or more likely her spitfire friend Demi.
I glance back at her social profile, at the picture Demi posted. Yeah, that’s the one who launched herself across the table, a damn banshee in full flight.
Could this be them? Were they talking about the blonde? The one I took out front?
Or someone else?
And how the hell would they know to contact me?
I don’t have an answer. But one thing is clear.
Tonight might be over, but whatever this is?
It’s just getting started.
The bottle of Chartreusethunksonto the coffee table, half-empty of its sickly yellowish-green contents and entirely regrettable. It’s bitter, medicinal; every sip clings to my tongue with the smoky sting of an apothecary cabinet gone up in flames. Truly, the highlight of the night will be examining my own ultraviolet vomit.
“I just need to know,” I say, blinking at the label, “who the hell takes shots of this?”
Demi, standing on my couch mid–Taylor Swift performance, grabs the bottle and raises it to eye level. “It’s alcohol,” she says, as if that justifies everything. “And we had nothing else.”
That part is true. My house offered one grim option: an ancient bottle of this liquid regret. Either my mother has no taste buds, an iron gut, or a secret recipe that transforms this herbal punishment into something drinkable.
Every time she visits, she shows up with a sack full of bottles and arms overflowing with rare liqueurs, obscure aperitifs, and spirits—each more offensive than the last; no sane person wouldwillingly keep them in their home. But her visits don’t end with just alcoholic presents. No—in fact, she turns my place into a makeshift bar for her experiments and constantly nudges me out of my comfort zone.
Although she knows I barely drink, she treats me like her personal blank canvas. Demi on the other hand, delights in whatever mom mixes for her. They both cackle into the early hours while I sit back and listen half-amused, half-resigned. But right now? My mother is not here.
Which means there is no one to make this swamp water remotely drinkable.
And yet, here we are.
