The Last House Party on Planet Earth

It was 2:13am - I checked my phone and winced at the glare - and this was surely the last house party on planet Earth.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, forming clouds above our heads. I could've sworn I spotted a cirrus or a nimbus. Maybe a cumulus. Were they even types of clouds? I don't know, I was drunk. I'd realised just how drunk I was when I'd headed to piss at about half eleven, and gave myself a wobbly pep talk in the downstairs loo while doing so. I'd laughed, finished up, and poured another drink. I was doing just fine.

Back then - yesterday, if you want to be dramatic about it - the party was only just coming to life. Parties are like those rare flowers that you wait for all week, then it gets to the day they bloom, and for a few short hours it's blossoming. Strangers are talking to each other (the ice well and truly broken), the drinks are flowing (there's no more ice for those either), and people have given up going out into the garden to smoke because the sun's gone and they don't want to freeze their proverbial tits off. Or literal tits, but I don't think it's that cold.

Might just be me.

Now, the party was post-bloom. The petals were rotting and falling off, the stem sagging, and most people had gone home. In the sitting room, the smell of cigarettes had now well and truly seeped into the soft furnishings - where, incidentally, Connor and Sophie were feeling each other up. They'd regret it in the morning, my sluggish brain thought. It can get nasty in there after a drink or seven.

I walked up to the patio doors and looked past the sunken eyes reflecting back at me, and scouted the garden. There were bottles strewn across the lawn, empty plastic cups on the patio, and utter darkness bathing it all. If this was a horror movie, that mischievous brain of mine suggested, someone would be hiding in the bushes, waiting to kill us all. I took another sip of my drink to shut it up.

Speaking of drink, we'd already run out about an hour earlier. In my cup was the last remnants of a particularly nasty dirty pint, mixed with a trickle of wine from the several bottles piled on the side, half a shot of vodka left behind from a drinking game, and something Puerta Rican that some knobhead had brought with him purely so he could tell everybody the story of how he'd bought it in duty free and it was 80% - the real stuff - and how he'd got mashed on it on holiday. Knobhead.

Connor and Sophie's slapping noises had grown louder and more tiresome at that point, so instead of standing and listening, I went to investigate where the faint womp womp womp of brostep was coming from. It sounded so faint, and yet I could feel it throbbing through the floor of the house. It might've been the booze. 

I ventured upstairs, past someone with head in hands contemplating their life or the state of the world or something, and wafted more smoke out of my face. This time, it was weed - I knew the smell anywhere. Down the corridor at the end of the stairs, a light pulsated from under the door. It was the only light on upstairs, and the music (and smoke) was definitely coming from there.

As I approached, I heard people laughing. The host and his friends, most likely. My hand froze half-way to the handle. If I were to open the door now, I thought, would I be interrupting? Would I be banished from the last of the party? Or worse...would the host realise the party was over?

I couldn't risk it. There was no way there was still another party going on anywhere else right now, and if the host called time on the festivities...he'd switch the lights on, usher everybody out of the door, and we'd all have to stumble blinking into the darkness outside. We'd have to go our separate ways, and finish the night alone.

I retracted my hand. I was ready to see this house party out until the bitter end, even though I knew so desperately that the end was approaching faster than I could anticipate. 

I heard the front door slam shut and panicked. I froze, looking at the bedroom door, waiting for a break in the laughter; waiting for the realisation to dawn that somebody had left and that we were now below minimum capacity for a party. Now it was just a 'gathering' or a 'hang out' - I didn't know these people well enough to stick around.

Sure, I tried to soothe myself, I've spoken to plenty of people tonight. I've got a few new friends on social media, I've taken a few selfies. Hell, I got everybody drunk with that game... I realised the thought wasn't very soothing at all.

At the top of the stairs, I saw that the guy who'd been contemplating life was gone. Maybe it was him who had left, leaving behind these ruins for the promise of sleep in his own comfortable bed. I considered taking his place on the stairs, waiting for a stranger to brush past me so that I might have the courage to leave my perch, open the door, and make the journey back to the empty flat that called to me. 

I took the step, but no strangers came past me. To my right, I could hear a few people having a tearful heart to heart in the kitchen. To my left, Connor and Sophie had put the TV on instead because Connor couldn't get it up ("Too much to drink," he said).

My eyes fixed themselves on the front door, wooden with those tiny windows fanning out at the top. I could see the paling blackness of the sky outside through the glass. Why, I wondered, am I so attached to this party? 

I looked down at the drink in my hand. It was a disgusting brown colour, with a strange green glow when the light hit the cheap plastic at the right angle. I'm not sure what I'd put in it to make that happen, but it was kinda cool. I told myself that I'd finish this drink and go. There was nothing else happening. This was the end of the night, the end of the line.

But then the feeling came back, darker than outside and totally without stars. It filled me up, drop by drop everyday, until at last it threatened to spill out as my liver did its job and my head cleared. Dawn would be along soon, sunlight bursting through the gloaming. There'd be the dry feeling in my mouth, and that awful moment where you stumble home and the birds are singing and you feel - really fucking feel - the transition from drunk to hungover.

Even then it would be too lonely to leave. Just me, walking through the streets without another living soul awake. They'd all be on the other side of the glass, sleeping, and I'd be the only person walking the Earth. At least, that's what it'd feel like. That's what it feels like.

Connor and Sophie were fighting now, and the tears were growing louder from the kitchen. The music upstairs had stopped and I heard movement above my head. Everybody was gearing up for the finale - the whimper that ended parties like these. I didn't want to go home, though. At home, I'm alone, and I can't sleep, and as I sit there doing absolutely fuck all in the dead of night; it feels like the world has ended.

Outside that door, I'd imagined that the world had ended. This really was the last party on planet Earth, and we were the survivors, clinging on at the very edge of the universe, waiting for the last star to go out.

Things started to go quiet around the house. Even the smoke had begun to fade, with the main culprit of the kitchen crying taking her cigarette out into the garden so she could cry some more, but in peace (and with a fag between her fingers while the first voice in a chorus of chirps took to the branches of a stage).

The end of the world had reached the party, swallowing its edges. I sighed. None of us were spared from the end of the night. I realised, then, that I should've left early with other people, rather than clinging on desperately. We could've faced the dark together; better that than traipse the realm of half-light drunk and alone.

I left my drink on a shelf in the entrance hall. I could hear Sophie and Connor back at it again, and the girls in the kitchen were fawning over one another and laughing. I didn't belong in either room. Nor did I belong here, alone in the hallway of a friend of a friend of a friend. I didn't say goodbye. What was the point?

The walk isn't a long one, but it's so quiet. We're in the suburbs, so it's easy to see the stars straining to watch from afar, separated by an ocean of nothing. Looking at it, I can't help but think of how small we are in the face of such galactic vastness. It makes the feeling worse, and I end up frowning to an audience of nobody. Luckily, there are no passers-by at this point in the morning to think I'm strange.

I put my key in the door and I'm home. At the end, the noise at the party wasn't riotous or even loud. And yet, I can hear the familiar ringing of silence in my ear. This is when things are at their worst; when the night quietens, I'm left with my own thoughts, as vast as the sky above. Stars and meteorites and whole planets come crashing into my brain all at once, and I can't sleep. It's already too bright outside to sleep.

I miss the party. At least I could see the end of the night - or maybe even the end of the world - out with some company. 

Shit company, sure. But it's better than being alone, isn't it?

Now I just have to wait for sleep.

And tomorrow - 

or maybe next weekend - 

I can see out the end of the world 

all over again, 

with a different crowd,

and a different catastrophe.

God, I'm tired.