The Good Pills

By Jacqueline Brace

She was already 4 drinks and 2.5 mystery pills in by the time she stumbled up to Club Nosfra2. Her party had called it a night about 40 minutes earlier, but her artificially uninhibited brain was hankering for some midnight mischief. She must have gotten one of the good pills in the mix she’d fished out of her friend’s ex-girlfriend’s FWB’s Monster High handbag, because the mountain of a bouncer guarding the door had massive stone wings folded behind him. Hallucinating already? She was in for a wild night.

Plastering on her patented please-let-me-in smile, she waltzes up to the statuesque bouncer and thrusts out the greasy fake some guy off Fiverr made her, batting her chunky falsies for good measure. He glances at it, then at her, and smirks.

“Have fun.” He hands back the ID and unclips the plum velvet rope, his eyes flashing devilish yellow as the tenacious party girl sweeps past.

Upon stepping into the club, her head immediately fills with a deliciously disorienting deviant haze. The speakers thump enchantingly erratic beats under indecipherable lyrics, the hovering cloud of mixed smoke rolling and swirling with the bass over the unbridled sea of dancers.

Claiming the sole open barstool, she catches the bartender’s glowing eye and points to the colorful, tasty-looking drink her hairy neighbor is nursing. Her gaze drifts over the enamored crowd while she awaits her confounding concoction, sliding between whizzing pixies and writhing fish women. It must have been a really good pill. The bartender slides her drink across the bar, a trail of sparkles pluming in its wake. The midnight mixologist says something about a tab, but as she starts to pat down her pockets, a hissing voice interrupts.

“Don’t worry about it, sssugar. You can put it on my tab.” A snake’s head dangles 6 inches from her ear, its scaled face twisted into an attempted smoulder. Its lithe black body undulates hypnotically behind it, extending from the snake-covered scalp of the woman to her right. 

The bewildered party girl meets its eyes. It takes a moment before she registers that there’s a snake beside her, and the snake just talked to her, at which point she turns away quickly. Vampires suck down pitchers of O-negative across the bar, cheered on by skantily-clad sirens doing hurricane shots and monstrous drunken shadows. A group of succubi cavorts with coy forest nymphs in the plushly-cushioned booth behind her. 

It’s not the drugs.

She abandons her drink and slithery suitor, tearing clumsily through the crowd of werewolves and assorted ghouls to the sanctuary of the lady’s room. Even in the dingy light, she can clearly make out the patchworked girl sitting on the sink as well as her translucent friend with a greying severed arm in one ghostly hand and threaded needle in the other.

“Hey, are you okay?” Sssugar spins around to see the snake woman from the bar. Her slithering seductress hangs his head bashfully. She opens her mouth, then closes it. 

“I’m sorry about Bill, he’s insufferable. I hope he didn’t freak you out too bad,” the gorgon continues. The only human in the room just stares, her drug-addled brain struggling to comprehend the scene before her. 

“You guys are… monsters?” she says timidly after a long moment of silence. The once-mythical women trade understanding glances and nod. They watch patiently as she processes some more.

“Do you guys have like… monster drugs?”