Homecoming
A Fragment
The T.V. screen, mounted above the fire place, played a short, looped animation featuring an old MTV logo from the late eighties or perhaps the early nineties, colors glowing, shifting, fading along the lines of the logo, retro synth wave accompanying the image, piped through a stereo system and out of speakers, which were installed in the ceiling above the couches and chairs.
Dick Klaxon’s homecoming party was entering its twenty-fourth hour, having started at 2 AM the previous day. He had become disoriented w/r/t time, having not slept since the flight home, and even then the flight wasn’t comfortable and hardly lended itself to restful sleep, the small jet having little room to stretch his legs out. They flew him straight home from the Fractal. They extricated him from the special anomaly with a swarm of light drones, which grabbed on to his arms, legs and clothing with insect precision, flew him out and away form danger. Upon arriving at his apartment, he had no time to situated, kick the shoes off, loosen the belt, before a cadre of everyone he knew — and even more that he didn’t — came to his doorstep offering three cheers and demanding they throw a party.
“No drinking for you, though,” said Chichi. She was right. Things got out of hand when he drank. Last time he drank he woke up behind the couch, front door wide open. A wasp had gotten inside. He wasn’t stung, but it had been a real nightmare shooing it out of the place.
“Someone roll a blunt for Mr. Hero,” Phil, his neighbor, said.
“No more,” says Klaxon, head between his knees, sitting on the love seat.
On the big couch, three giggling dropouts were busy inhaling Whip-Its straight from the canister at an alarming rate; in the kitchen, a crowd formed around the final match of the party’s seventh beer pong tournament; three women wearing cocktail dressing — women he’d never seen before — stood smoking inside, staring out the living room window; in the garage a rap battle was taking place around a gigantic hookah; several revelers were stooped over the guard railing on the patio, passed out from the devilish combination of beer-bong and traditional bong, taken in rapid succession; Klaxon, however, sat stoned next to Phil.
“You don’t look like a man who just saved the world,” said Phil.
“I don’t really feel like I did,” Klaxon said.
Just then a caravan of dancing party-goers bursted through the front door, each doing their own thing, led by a man riding on a unicycle, forties taped to each hand. They circumambulate the room, then exit the way they came in.
Chichi walks in, holding a beer. He was jealous for a moment, but let it pass.
