Girls’ Night

On balance, Simone didn’t really want to go to “Girls’ Night”. She wanted to be invited of course, and in fact she had been elated when Holly, bumping into her talking with Megan after English class, had indeed extended Megan’s invitation to her as well. To be invited to Girls’ Night, especially invited with such offhanded certainty as Holly had done- no chewing it over or cocking of the head, just a “oh and you must come too, Simone, hope to see you there!”- was one of the most validating things a cis girl had ever done for Simone. Yes, naturally, being invited to Girls’ Night was a spectacular and enervating occurrence.

Actually going was a different matter. Simone rather wished she had had some sort of believable excuse that she could use to graciously decline- something just about credible that made her seem cool but irretrievably clashed with the date. She wasn’t really sure what would have sufficed, since Holly was very cool and hot herself and seemed wise in the ways of the world in the manner that only a rich eighteen-year-old could possibly seem to a poorer and less hegemonically well-positioned eighteen-year-old. Perhaps some sort of exotic holiday, or an extracurricular task of great urgency given to her by some middling public figure or organisation that Holly and her retinue admired but did not follow the antics of closely enough to suspect deception.

She had not thought of anything in time.

Of the two and a half outfits Simone owned that were sufficiently feminine that she could bear to be seen in them, she had intended to wear the floral-patterned cream dress and translucent grey shrug combo that she always felt made her look the smartest, if indeed a bit grannyish. But it turned out that the shrug was in the wash. She didn’t have anything else that would go with the dress and cover her shoulders, and she didn’t like wearing the dress on its own because she fancied that with her broad shoulders bared it made her resemble nothing quite so much as a gigantic toddler. So out went that idea, and she settled back into the old faithful choice of leggings, skirt and long-sleeved t-shirt. All black, of course, apart from the skirt, which had polka dots all over it and which Simone always felt looked rather racy because of its sarong-like split despite knowing it was nothing of the sort by comparison to what the cis girls she saw every day wore.

Nice shoes in her size were, of course, out of the question; and Simone had quite some time ago resigned herself to the life of a boot girl. Her trusty pair of cherry red Doc Martens had been expensive to buy and painful to break in, but having done so she had shoes for all occasions that she didn’t feel too self-conscious about wearing. Nobody in the circles that would speak to her was so poncy as to sneer at a pair of Docs, even if it was a rather uninspired choice.

And so it was that when she finally ended up in the spacious living room of Holly’s palatial home at the allotted start time for Girls’ Night, Simone’s primary emotion was one of incredible self-consciousness that this was an outfit the night’s eponymous girls had in fact seen her wear many times before.

This was however soon replaced with the new primary emotion of abject confusion as she realised that one thing girls’ night appeared to have quite a lot of attending… were in fact boys.

There were boys everywhere, in fact. Seemingly attendant in similar if not superior numbers to the girls themselves and, it would appear, quite at home and not at all self-conscious about their presence. Quite a variety of young men filled her vision as well, from a variety of cliques that even the socially starved Simone felt reasonably confident in thinking did not make a habit of copying each other into their plans to crash parties.

Implying, of course, that they had been independently invited.

“Oh hey Simone!”

The sound of Megan’s voice stirred Simone from her bewildered concentration. “Oh, uh, hey Megan.”

“It’s really good you could make it.” Megan beamed. “These are always a lot of fun. Have you got a drink? I always find just the one pre-drink helps with my digestion a lot.”

What an odd thing to say. Simone thought.  She was about to ask Megan about the boys when she was violently clapped on the back by a hand much more boisterous than Megan’s, and the lightning streak of Holly’s blonde bob hove into left field view. From the look of the overcomplicated cocktail in her hand, Holly shared Megan’s mysterious drinking policy.

“Yooooo, Si-mone!” Holly sleazed. “Welcome to girls’ night! You excited?”

“Uh, kinda?” Simone shuffled uncomfortably. “But, um…” She leaned in to whisper before realising that the volume of the R&B track in the background would make that impossible. “What’s with all the boys?”

Holly raised an eyebrow. “Whaddya mean, what’s with all the boys?”

“Well, I mean I just assumed… like, it’s girls’ night, right? So by definition, there wouldn’t, you know… be any boys here.” Simone was vaguely aware out of the corner of her eye of the unmistakable figure of Michael Bletchley the swim team captain, who was being a little too wide and bombastic with his gestures in her direction to his friends and his ‘surreptitious’ use of words she could lip read the fa and tra syllables in.

“Wait… Simone, you’ve been to a girls’ night before, right? You know how this works?” Holly adopted an incredulous tone.

“Um… not really?” Simone said, flushing scarlet.

“Oh shit, right, because…” Holly trailed off and put her hands over her mouth. Megan clapped her hand over her eyes and took over for Holly.

“We’re so dumb, sorry Simone. I didn’t even think that of course you wouldn’t have been to one of these before.”

“Yeah like, total brain fart.” Holly looked apologetic. “Like no duh this makes no sense if you’ve never done one. We’ve been to so many, see, it’s like, second nature or something. But it totally tracks that you wouldn’t have had the chance.” She took a big sip of her drink in preparation of explaining.

“Anyway, we invited the boys. Probably got kinda greedy to be honest, but there you go. Like, this is girls’ night cause it’s for the girls, right, but to make that actually work you have to invite lots of boys as well.”

“Oh…” said Simone in a very small voice. So that’s it. She silently cursed her past self for being so easily tricked and setting her up for this abject humiliation.

Megan elbowed Holly sharply in the ribs, gestured with a grimace at Simone’s mournful expression and whispered something in her ear. Holly’s eyes lit up in alarm.

“Oh no no no Simone it’s not like that!” She protested. “You really are invited to girls’ night proper, with the rest of us! The boys don’t know that’s what it is, we just told them it was a house party. I promise you we’d never do that to you. Never ever!”

 Simone’s eyes widened. A childhood of deception and manipulation for her gullible nature had made her slow to trust after a perceived slight, but Holly did seem genuinely remorseful. She was about to ask another question when Holly’s smart watch gave a single shrill beep, attracting the attention of all three girls.

“Oh shit.” Holly exclaimed. “Two minutes to go time and we haven’t locked the doors. Fuck. Okay, I’ll get the front and side doors. Megan, you do the kitchen and utility doors. Simone, can you be a dear and lock the French window? Here’s the key.” She handed the bewildered trans girl a small steel key on a keyring.

“Uhhh… sure?” Simone ventured. “Why?”

“You’ll see! Holly called over her shoulder as she began wading through the assembled partygoers towards the front door. “Two minutes!”

Simone blinked, baffled, then shrugged and started making her own way toward the patio doors.

She’d been worried she’d be accosted, but nobody even really seemed to notice her passing them by. Most of the other partygoers were already loosely paired up; with loose clusters of girls talking, dancing or drinking with an equal or greater number of boys in their own little area of the room. It was easy enough to reach the patio doors and turn the key in each of the locks, shutting them up tight, with not much more than a passing glance from anyone else in the room.

Anyone, it immediately emerged, but Heidi Miller.

“Oh my god Simone!” The short plump band captain spread her arms in the universal I’d-hug-you-but-I’d-spill-my-drink gesture. “I didn’t expect to see you here! And participating, no less, well!” She gestured at the locked patio doors. “Good girl. We wouldn’t want any escaping. Still, bit of a quick turnaround for you, surely? Or wait… is that offensive? I’m sorry if it is. But no like maybe it’s really bad but I totally didn’t expect to see you here. Are you a plus one?”

“Um, Holly invited me actually.” Simone replied, mumbling a little. “I was there when she invited Megan and she just invited me as well.” She could feel the bewilderment setting back in. Escaping? What does she mean escaping? Did girls’ night entail the involvement of some sort of animal? She was about to open her mouth to ask Heidi to elaborate when an all-too-familiar shadow loomed over her.

“Well well.” Smirked Michael Bletchley. “Holly must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel if she’s letting in freaks like you to make up her numbers, Preston.”

Simone did not like and never had liked the peculiarly vicious tone and its aura of implicit misgendering that her surname assumed in Bletchley’s mouth. She watched as the verminous boy turned to Callum and Dane, his toady hangers-on, for validating laughter. Satisfied by their indulging him, he locked eyes with Simone again and continued: “Someone should really calm that girl down. Not every party has to be your biggest ever if it involves stooping to letting weirdo fa-“

“Actually Michael, Simone was invited by Holly personally.” Heidi butted in fiercely.  “And as someone who was privy to the early drafts of her male guest shortlist, I can say for sure that you were not. You’re only even here because Callum got in and Ruby Geller wheedled Holly into allowing plus ones. So why don’t you and your little rat friends fuck off and leave her alone?”

Michael visibly considered arguing the point, but just as he was about to say something, his attention was pulled away toward the sound system, which had just sharply faded out mid-song and now stood silent, no longer complimenting the general party ambience.

“Oh goody!” Heidi squeaked. “It’s starting!”

Neither Simone nor the boys had time to ask what exactly was starting before Holly appeared at the breakfast bar in front of the speakers with a microphone in her hand. The DJ (who Simone realised she recognised as Heidi Kerrigan- known as “Heidi In A Band” because of her membership of local prog rock outfit Infeasible Langoustine and not to be confused with Simone’s newfound knight in shining armour Heidi Miller, the critically distinct “Heidi In Band” because of her musical extracurricular focus at school) adjusted some levels on the board and gave Holly the ok sign. Responding in kind, Holly raised the microphone to her lips.

“Hey hey hey boys and girls but mostly girls you know what time it is, welcome to girls’ niiiiight!” she warbled. A cheer went up from the female portion of the room. Some of the boys cheered too, probably out of momentum, but most just looked a little confused.

“It’s time for the main event, girlies, so I hope you all brought your appetites! The doors are locked, there’s no way out, so it’s time to switch out the soundtrack for something a little more hardcore to get us in the mood, am I riiiiight?” Holly gestured towards the crowd with the microphone. The girls cheered much louder this time, and more of the boys did too, seemingly liking what they were hearing the more that was revealed about this strange new situation.

“Sounds good to me.” Holly pulled the microphone back to her own face. “Heidi In A Band, if you’d be so kind- play us a dinner bell!”

Heidi In A Band grinned and put her hands to her decks. The speakers began blaring out a song Simone didn’t recognise- some kind of techno-metal fusion, very fast paced, almost hardstyle-like.

Bewildered, Simone turned back to Heidi In Band and opened her mouth, just in time to watch the smaller girl’s eyes turn completely black, her irises and sclera seemingly swallowed up by all-encompassing pitch-black pupils. As Simone recoiled in horror, there was a revolting wet clicking noise and Heidi’s jaw distended further than Simone could ever have conceived as possible. Simone stumbled backwards, watching in rapt amazement and disgust as Heidi leapt onto Dane and, in a movement so smooth it looked almost fake, shoved his head into her enormous distended mouth.

Simone’s head snapped to her left as she heard the sound again, much louder this time, over the music. Every girl in the house was just like Heidi- their eyes pure black, their mouths distended in a revolting parody of anatomy that half-reminded Heidi of a scene from the back half of The Mummy. And they were all leaping onto the hapless, helpless boys, who themselves were by and large struck stiff and unable to prevent themselves being shoved into the girls’ grotesque maws.

Her system flushed out with adrenaline to (it seemed) no productive end, Simone could only watch dumbstruck and terrified as the girls around her, clambering almost spider-like as if they were apes or horrid movie monsters played by acrobats in clever costumes, easily overpowered the boys they attacked and stuffed them deeper and deeper down their throats. Dane’s wriggling feet were already disappearing past Heidi In Band’s lips, and she realised squinting into the gloom that Heidi In A Band was holding what appeared to be Jamie Coulter’s squirming thighs up in the air over the turntables with a strength that seemed superhuman, presumably so that he wouldn’t kick them and make the music skip.

The spell had evidently broken over some of the boys, who were now screaming and running towards the exits, including the patio door that Simone herself had locked. Simone almost wanted to run with them, but the singular focus of the girls’ horrifying feast seemed to instil in her an oddly particular form of fear, presumably unlike that that caught the boys’ minds. It suggested to her that although what was happening around her was something out of a nightmare, and her heart was pounding in her ears, she personally was in no danger, especially if she disaffiliated herself visibly from the young men around her. So instead she walked through the bizarre scene like the focal point of an artsy slow motion shot in a movie, ignoring the screams for help and slavering growls around her. Michael Bletchley himself made a break for it towards the kitchen and jostled her a little as he and a gaggle of other boys fought to try and open the back door.

When Simone had made a full circuit of the ground floor and got back to where she started, just like that, it was all over. Girls lay all around her with enormous, distended stomachs the size of the beanbag chairs many of them were sprawled over, their faces back to normal and holding expressions of indulgent contentment. Many of them were already beginning to fall asleep, or to break off into giggling whispered conversation as they canoodled with each other the best they could in ways that accommodated their gargantuan guts.

Simone surveyed the scene around her in a daze, her eyes wide and her mouth slack jawed. As she came out of her fugue-like trance, the full magnitude of what she had just witnessed hit her, and she was instantly struck with an abject terror of a greatness she had not felt for a very long time.

“Hey Simone.” Came Megan’s voice behind her.

Simone wheeled, panting in fear, to see Megan standing about three feet from her looking smug, sleepy, and… well-fed. Her stomach wasn’t as large as some of the others littered about, though Simone supposed that would be less dependent on Megan and more on the size of the adult human man that she had eaten.

“What the fuck.” She breathed, barely keeping the heady falsetto that was all she had thus far managed for voice training together as a wavering crack threatened to puncture it. “Megan what the fuck just happened I’m freaking out so bad please don’t hurt me…”

“Why would I hurt you, silly?” Megan raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You were invited to girls’ night. Girls don’t get hurt at girls’ night.”

“BUT APPARENTLY BOYS DO?!” Simone choked in disbelief. “What the actual shit was that, Megan? What are you? What the hell are all of you?”

“Uh, we’re girls?” Holly walked up, putting her head on one side. She too bore an impressively grotesque distended abdomen. “You know? Human women? Are you okay Simone? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

“Give her a break Holly.” Megan murmured. “I was just teasing her. She’s only just found out and I think it freaked her out a bit. You remember finding out, right? It’s a lot.”

“I mean…” Holly looked skeptical. “I was ten when I found out, and my mum showed me. I dunno if it’s quite the same as coming to girls’ night like, sight unseen.” She turned back to Simone. “Hey I’m real sorry about that by the way. Megan and I only realised you still didn’t know when you got here and by then it was kind of too late to do anything about it.”

“DIDN’T KNOW?” It was taking everything Simone had not to yell in terror in Holly’s face. “WHY WOULD YOU ASSUME I KNEW ABOUT THIS? I’M STILL NOT EVEN SURE WHAT IT IS I KNOW NOW!”

“Well like… everyone knows.” Holly said, a little defensively. “That is, girls know. Boys don’t. They could, but they don’t somehow.”

“What.” Simone was beginning to feel dizzy and had to steady herself against an arm of the sofa. “What are you talking about, Holly?”

“She means every girl is like this, Simone.” Megan was obviously getting a little impatient. “This is just something that girls do together. And boys just… never find out about it. They ought to. It’s not like it’s a real big secret, girls talk about it and write it down when and where we need to, but somehow boys just… never notice. It’s even legal. Every male law student has most probably read the statute that makes it okay for us to eat them like this and they just… haven’t absorbed it at all. Goes in one ear and out the other. Actually…” She turned to Holly. “Justine Graves was telling me that apparently it does get left off the bar exam, just in case. But frankly I’d love to see what would happen if they put it on. Would the boys like, answer the question without realising what they were doing? Would they ignore it completely and not understand what they lost points for? I think it’d be interesting.”

“Wait wait wait wait.” Simone shook her head like a wet dog trying to dislodge the nonsense it was being rapidly filled with. “So you mean to tell me that every girl, every single female human, eats entire boys whole in a way that presumably kills them on the regular as like a normal, natural thing, and men at large have every opportunity to find out that they do this without putting themselves in a situation where they’ll get eaten but they just… magically don’t?”

The two girls looked at each other, then turned back to Simone and nodded.

“Yep.” Said Megan.

“Pretty much.” Concurred Holly.

“You get that that’s insane, right?” Simone was almost hissing through her teeth at this point. “Like you understand that that cannot be fucking true? Even if I accept fucking anti-boy-noticing magic as real, which is an absolutely ridiculous premise to start from, but even then… why aren’t men going rapidly extinct? That is, if you’re eating them all the time and not getting eaten yourselves, the population should be mostly girls, right?”

“Well there’s way way more boys than girls.” Holly said very matter of factly. “You know, it all sort of balances out. It’s like nature, prey animals are much more common than predator ones.”

Simone’s head was spinning and she stumbled backwards into the sofa itself. Megan shot Holly a dirty look, which appeared to bewilder the rich girl.

“What?” Holly asked indignantly. Then recognition crossed her face and she turned to Simone.

“That’s, uh, that’s another thing boys don’t find out.” She said sheepishly. “They think it’s more or less 50-50.”

“You’re insane.” Simone whispered. “You’re both utterly fucking insane and given what I’m seeing right in front of me, so am I apparently. You have got to be aware of how completely deranged everything you are saying to me sounds.”

“Not really.” Megan mumbled. “I mean, I guess it’s pretty weird when you think about it, but we’ve known all of this for a really long time. I guess we’re not used to how it sounds to an adult we’re keeping around.”

“An adult you’re keeping around?” Simone wailed.

“Well yeah. I mean, lots of boys have found out, the only way boys can find out, but obviously we’ve… dealt with them.” Holly said.

“Dealt with who even?” Simone challenged her. “What boys have you even done this to before? I don’t remember anyone going missing. Name one, even.”

“Well…” Holly mused. “A few months back I ate Franklin, he was a tasty one.”

“…Who?”

“Franklin Jameson? Guy who taped a picture of a dog dick to Maria Nicks’ back that one time?”

“I don’t…” Simone frowned. Wait… that had happened. She distinctly remembered Maria finding out that Franklin had done it. Hell, she remembered Franklin himself now. He tormented her constantly with homophobic abuse back when she was an egg. How the hell had she forgotten he’d existed?

“What the fuck…” She breathed. “How…”

“Neat trick, isn’t it?” Megan smirked.

“Tell me another.” Simone asked urgently. “Tell me one of yours, Megan.”

“Ooh, what about Ryan Hargreaves?” Megan looked thoughtful. “He went down nice and smooth once I got him alone.”

“I don’t know who that is.” Simone released her held breath.

“You should. You had the most obvious crush on him three months ago. Sorry, by the way, but given what he tried to do when I got him alone and before I showed him what was going to happen to him, I think I probably did you a favour.”

Simone felt sick. Of course, she’d been absolutely gaga for Ryan back in the Spring, walking around in a daze because he’d been the one hot boy who’d actually been superficially supportive, in a sort of celebrity-endorsing-something-they-don’t-really-understand-at-a-book-signing kind of way. And here she’d stone forgotten about him just like that when… well, presumably when Megan ate him. Oh well, she’d kind of got over that by the time he must have disappeared anyway.

“It’s real.” She whispered. “It’s all real. I remember them…”

“Yeah.” Holly nodded sympathetically. “Sorry we didn’t tell you earlier, but we actually kinda wanted to see what would happen to you. We both sort of… forgot you’re trans. Like, that is… we didn’t forget forget, we just, um, kinda…”

“…forgot that it would be relevant.” Megan finished. “And when we realised we weren’t sure if we could tell you.”

“Well I’d sure as fuck have liked to be told a little bloody earlier!” Simone growled. “What exactly were you afraiooohhhhh… you mean you weren’t sure if you could tell me.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Megan smiled. “Like we didn’t know if you could know, but evidently you can.”

“But you didn’t know before.” Holly said. “And people must have told you. So I wonder what changed. Was it coming out? The hormones and stuff? Feels like this is an under-studied area for trans girls.”

“Well that at least sounds normal.” Simone muttered, and the two cis girls laughed a little nervously.

“But like…” Simone furrowed her brow in frustration. “What about the important boys? Greg Warden was here, I saw him. Did someone eat him? He was on track to be valedictorian, somebody at school is going to fucking notice!”

“No they won’t!” The two girls chorused.

“Nobody is going to notice who can’t figure out what happened, Simone!” Holly was giggling a little. “All the female staff will understand completely, and the male staff won’t even remember a time when Susie Green wasn’t the valedictorian hopeful.”

“Really?”

“YES!” Holly rolled her eyes. “I PROMISE you this is normal, it’s happened loads of times before and it’s always been fine, you’re just noticing for the first time now. It’s all okay, it’s taken care of. Don’t worry about it. There’s no need to freak out.”

“Holly!” Megan snapped before turning to Simone. “No but on that subject, seriously Simone, sorry for scaring you.” Megan put a gentle hand on Simone’s shoulder. “You’re our friend and we wanted you to have a good time.”

“I’m your friend?” Simone asked, a little incredulously.

“Sure!” Megan said brightly. “At least, you’re my friend for certain, and I think Holly thinks you’re cool, right? Cool enough to invite to girls’ night at least.”

Holly nodded enthusiastically.

Simone looked down at the two girls’ squirming, sloshing guts. This was too weird. It was too weird it was too weird it was too weird they killed people… but apparently all girls did? And they thought she was cool… and thought of themselves as her friends… could she… no, it was wrong… but if what they said was true, if this was something every woman in the world did, right under the noses of the men who apparently outnumbered them… who would she even report it to? Apparently men wouldn’t even register what she was saying, and women would know anyway and probably laugh at her…

“Okay, sure, whatever.” Simone properly sat down on the armrest behind her. “Every girl though?”

“Every girl.” Her friends chorused together.

“So is it like… I dunno, like a rite of passage, a sign of womanhood thing? The first time, I mean.”

“It can be.” Megan nodded.

“Yeah for sure.” Holly concurred. “I mean my mum didn’t really go in for it that way, but lots of people do. Oh shit! That reminds me! Back in a sec!”

Holly bustled off into the kitchen. Simone sat with her thoughts for a second, her head in her hands.

“Hey.” Megan’s voice was soft and sweet. “You okay? You managing?”

“Yeah…” Simone breathed. “Just about, I guess.”

“Sorry about Holly. I think she’s known so long she can’t really grasp how freaked out you’ve gotta be.”

“It’s just… it’s just a lot.” Simone chewed absent-mindedly.

“Yeah, I get it. Don’t worry. This was the big thing. Shouldn’t be many more surprises.” Megan sat down on the end table next to Simone. Her stomach growled and Simone thought she could briefly see a frantic handprint appear on its surface before disappearing again.

“Well thank fuck for that.” Simone giggled. “Though, I don’t know. I feel like I could have coped better if you were all like, space aliens or something. If all this were a little more… actually weird, instead of just a normal thing that apparently every boy knows nothing about. I really don’t like feeling like the dumbass who’s out of the loop who everyone’s laughing at, but I feel like here that was kind of unavoidable, you know?”

“Nobody was laughing at you, Simone.” Megan said seriously. “We all think you’re really brave and doing your damn best. And sometimes it’s sad that you can’t see it no matter how much we try. I think that’s why Holly invited you to be honest. But maybe as far as getting you places where we can show you you’re one of the girls go, this was the wrong one to start with.”

“Maybe.” Simone mused. “But I mean, apparently it’s this big foundational thing every girl does. Perhaps it’s the perfect one to start with.”

“Perhaps.” Megan smiled. Then a frown crossed her face. “Oh by the way, on that subject, please don’t feel pressured to do anything when Holly comes back. I think she’s just got a bit overexcited; you know how she is. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“What do you mean?” Megan asked, but it immediately became somewhat clear to her what Megan meant when the sound of struggling caught her attention from the kitchen door. Holly was returning, with a girl Simone vaguely recognised as someone called Betty (Beryl?). Between them, they were hauling the struggling, snarling, swearing form of Michael Bletchley.

“Hey Simone!” Holly called. “So yeah, as I was saying, speaking of rites of passage and womanhood and all that shit- you didn’t think we wouldn’t save you one, right?”

Megan caught Simone’s gaze with a firm stare. Simone nodded and turned to Holly as she and Betty (Bertha?) finally pulled Michael into position in front of her and kept him pinned to his knees with firm hands.

“I… oh Holly you shouldn’t have. I really couldn’t, honestly. Really. It’s… I mean, this is still all a bit too weird, and I ate before I came, cause I didn’t know… you know how it is. I just couldn’t. Thanks, but no thanks, you know?” She babbled, blurting out every polite refusal she could think of.

“Huh. Well I mean, if you’re sure.” Holly looked a little disappointed. “Maybe too much for just one night, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Simone smiled thinly.

There was a coughing laugh from around their knees. The girls looked down at the battered and bruised Michael cackling in that cruel, annoying way he had.

“Fucking perfect.” He spat. “What a night to find out every girl in town is an absolute fucking murderous alien freak or whatever, and then the one person who refuses, the only one who apparently has some fucking sense and ISN’T a little goblin weirdo or whatever, is the fucking troo-“

A wave of white hot fury poured into Simone’s veins, and the last things she experienced before she blacked out were all the colours in her vision inverting, and a sudden shooting pain directly beneath her ears accompanying the sound of an impossibly loud wet click.

Thankfully the events she would forget would not, when she was awoken at 9 in the morning by the sun peeking through the trees in Holly’s back garden and the patio glass, be particularly difficult to piece back together between her large (but now soft) distended gut and the proud and congratulatory expressions on the faces of her friends.