Ahh. A lovely sunset. Birds chirping-very distantly-in the background. A cooling, gentle breeze, like a tender hug from an old friend. Meanwhile, Keiko was terrified out of her mind. Yet try as she might, she couldn't get away fast enough.
"Please be gone, please-" She ran, she hid, she even climbed a dead electric fence, falling over the side and landing on top of an angry goat, who ran away before she could even apologize. The truth was, parties were never her thing, even before the world ended, but especially not now. In some ways, they were, in fact worse. "I don't want to die like this." Keiko almost started crying, but then she remembered she'd ruin her makeup and also she was pretty sure that if she let any tears fall, the limbless horror chasing after her would be able to smell them.
It wasn't every day someone got chased down by an inflatable doughnut at a rave in someone's backyard (in reality, the backyard actually belonged to several someones, but they had all died years ago and besides, the whole concept of property ownership had...transformed...after the dead starting eating people and something formless and beyond description crawled out of the Pacific Ocean and left only wordless, gibbering madness in its wake. Brr. Keiko thought about hiding under the bed in the master bedroom she spotted (or, at least that was what the room she saw through the open window of the building next to her looked like,) but the wings on her back probably wouldn't fit under there. Oh well, here goes nothing.
"Ow!-" As the window was open, Keiko crawled through it, landing on a cheap, mediocre-looking wooden floor, discovering that the room she fell into was, in fact, a master bedroom, though the bed was only a mattress on the floor with suspicious stains on it that made her skin crawl with unpleasant goosebumps. "Well, I'm still alive. I guess that's better than the alternative."
"I'd say so." Keiko turned to find a familiar but unexpected face looking at her-well, mostly below her neck, but knowing him, she expected that sort of reaction. "The front door was open, by the way."
Uh-"Oh, uh-haha, not sure how I missed that." Keiko laughed nervously, her eyes darting around the room. "Did you shut the door?" Aside from a rush of fear that her inflated pursuer was still chasing after her or, worse, had seen her enter the single-story experimental style ranch house through the window, Keiko was a bit confused as to why anyone would connect the front door of a house directly to the master bedroom. Very poor planning, in her opinion.
"Yeah, thought I'd dig around here for stuff, you never know what these weird rich fuckers hide in their houses. Sometimes it's just crap but occasionally you find some good shit." Joseph made plenty of use of the old, tried and true five-fingered discount pre-apocalypse but he enjoyed the fact that it was so much easier not to get caught post-apocalypse. Keiko could tell he wasn't paying attention, though-the way his eyes lingered on her proved it. "Nice outfit." Keiko would never have picked out something like it herself, but as it turned out, some parties had a dress code and when there were no other human beings-or any signs of them for at least a hundred miles, sometimes you just had to do what you had to do.
"Thanks." In truth, Keiko was hoping she might find something to change into when she wound up in the room. Being forced to wear a tiny sparkly back-less dress with a deep V-line that stopped a few inches above her bellybutton and a tiny flared hem that stopped about an inch above her ass, complete with glitter, sequins, and a tiny heart-shaped cut-out just below her belly-button was uncomfortable in multiple ways, and the fairy wings, thigh high stockings, and fuzzy platform shoes didn't help either (Keiko had chucked them off the moment she fell through the window, figuring they were more trouble than they were worth. "It's itchy though." Keiko spotted an open door leading to what looked like a bathroom (complete with a toilet, sink, and shower,) wracking her brain for any possible solutions to the plethora of problems staring her down at the moment. "I'm gonna fix my make-up, I'll be right back." Keiko excused herself, not even bothering to look back when she made her way to the bathroom.
Unfortunately, once she stepped inside, she looked up, finding that the bottom of the mirror was 5 inches above the top of her head. Tall people, they ruin so many houses-try as she might, Keiko couldn't reach the knob to lower the mirror (which just so happened to be located right below the mirror, which was still too tall for her to each even if she stood on her toes.) "Ugh, there should be a law that houses should be designed with input from people who are less than 6 feet tall." Oh, wait a minute-Keiko suddenly found herself eye-level with the mirror, her eyes widening when she realized who was holding her up. "Thanks-" wait a minute-Once the delayed reaction kicked in, Keiko found herself face to face with Joseph, who spun her around to face him, seating her on the sink counter.
"Makeup or not, you look pretty cute right now-didn't think you'd be one to wear something like this but it looks good on you."
"I didn't pick this out-it's part of the dress code." Joseph was supposed to be on a supply run, confirmed by the fact that he was still wearing his normal clothes (the party dress code for men involved furry mascot costumes,) but evidently, he had returned earlier than expected. "I'm not really a fan of dress codes, to be honest." Keiko didn't know why she even bothered telling him, his eyes never left her tits (or her ass) for longer than about 5 seconds ever since he saw her. Nope, he's not listening at all-Keiko confirmed it when she accidentally looked down and realized there was not, in fact, a gun in his pocket (he never used guns anyways, preferring more..creative...methods to deal with tricky situations.) "But I'm just glad I got out of there when I did, it's-uh-really boring." It was boring, but it was also terrifying, though Keiko saw no need to mention that last part.
"Hm, well, as long as we're here and as long as you don't want to go back, maybe we ought to squeeze in some quality time together, what do you think?" Keiko looked up-a mistake, she realized when it just wound up causing the light to hit her cleavage more directly, not sure what sort of direction things should be going in. There was no way in hell she was going back until she was no longer being stalked by some deranged being trapped inside an inflatable doughnut costume but also, having sex in someone else's bathroom made her feel all sorts of wrong and then some. Even if the original occupants of the house had been long dead, it was the principle of the matter, and Keiko was never one to abandon her principles just because it was convenient or just because her friend was eyeing her up like a five course meal after surviving a hunger strike, one hand resting on her thigh and the other on one side of her waist. "It doesn't look like anyone else's out here so might as well take advantage of the privacy."
"Uhm-well-if you weren't uh, invited to the party, maybe we could-" The rest of Keiko's sentence was cut off off by the sound of part of the ceiling caving in, Leila landing on the sink counter next to Keiko on one knee.
"I meant to do that." Leila groused at Joseph when he helped her down, Leila dusting herself off after he did so. "Anyways, how the hell'd you guys wind up here?" Leila turned to Joseph first. "Weren't you on a supply run?"
"Shit happened."
Fair enough-Leila turned her attention to Keiko, whose presence stood out far more than usual. "And call me crazy, but since when did you start expanding your fashion sense?" Leila didn't really mind what Keiko was wearing but the glitter and the sparkles were kind of distracting.
"Well, there's a party out in the backyard of that big mansion that used to belong to that governor what's his face, and uh-the dress code's uh-very specific."
"Yeah, didn't think you'd be the kind to wear that voluntarily." Leila gave Keiko a quick once-over. As far as boobs went, Keiko had a nice pair of them, but all the glitter and sparkles and sequins distracted from them enough to turn the revealing cut of the dress into something closer to appalling than appealing. "Hell, I wouldn't wear that voluntarily."
Some people really did get all the luck-as it turned out, having a social credit score of zero pre-apocalypse still mattered to some of the people who were still left after everything went to hell in a hand-basket and in the latest thinly-disguised disaster of a safe zone they stumbled across on their travels, people who had no social credit pre-apocalypse were either relegated to supply runs or hard labor, and thus did not, under any circumstances, received party invitations. "I never thought I'd say this, but maybe I should have been more anti-social before the world ended. Then at least my boobs wouldn't itch." As much as Keiko hated to admit it, the scratchy polyester was driving her insane and she knew Joseph and Leila weren't the type who would care if she was honest about it. "And my feet wouldn't hurt. And I wouldn't be stalked by some creep who wants me to become a doughnut with him."
"Oh, you mean the big round thing in the back? I stabbed it and it de-flated." Keiko swore she almost felt her eyes bulge out of her head when Leila informed her of the fate of the man with an unfortunate pastry obsession gone terribly wrong. "Don't worry, I didn't get any of the blood on me."
Uh-"Hey, well, as long as you're here, you wanna help?" Joseph had no shame and at times like these when his second brain was doing most of his thinking for him, very little patience or impulse control.
"How about we find somewhere with an intact ceiling-and no mattresses with weird stains on them?" Keiko figured someone had to interject a modicum of sanity here, and as always, she realized the task would have to fall to her because otherwise no one else would pick up the slack.
"Not sure how much it'll help but have this." Leila tossed a light blue hooded poncho at Keiko. "I found this on a corpse nearby, it folds up into a 2 inch cube when you fold it up a certain way."
"Thanks." Keiko slid it over her head, pursing her lips together slightly when Joseph pushed the hood back and pressed a kiss on her cheek.
"You look cute no matter what you wear, but if you want me to help you get out of it later, I won't complain."
"That's very generous of you," Keiko hated the way she got a stupid blush all over her face whenever either of her friends showed her the least amount of physical affection, but if it hadn't changed by now, Keiko figured it never would. "But let's get as far away from this party as possible and then see where things go from there."
"Yeah, before we all need to change clothes." Leila glanced at a pipe in the ceiling that just cracked, drawing Joseph and Keiko's attention to it just in the nick of time.