By [camouflaged person standing against wall: SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW]
Noah was sprawled on his bean bag, playing Silent Hill 4. This is how I’m spending Halloween, he thought. I have truly become an old man. He’d have loved to go to that lame party Tashi wanted to take him to, but he had already fought with her over it. There was no way he was wearing that stupid rabbit costume.
His phone buzzed. He paused the game. It was his mother calling from Kanpur. Kanpore, as he pronounced it.
‘What are you guys doing tonight?’
‘Nothing. We’re staying home.’
‘Don’t you have plans? It’s Halloween…’
‘We’re not in America, ma.’
Noah listened hard. Yes, there was music coming from downstairs. That was weird. What was Tashi up to?
‘It’s coming from the street. It’s some Hindu thing today. Karva Chauth or something.’
‘Noah, there’s no music on Karva Cha--’
‘Okay gotta go ma I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’
It was undoubtedly party music -- something off the Billboard 100 charts, just the kind of stupid stuff Tashi would pick. Her stupid friends are probably over, thought Noah, slipping on a pair of jeans. They’ll probably be wearing skimpy outfits, he mused, buttoning his shirt. I’ll, like, be the only guy there, he brooded, tousling his hair with his fingers. Who’d want to be a part of that? he asked himself as he skipped out of his bedroom and made his way down the stairs.
Tashi’s name meant ‘good fortune’. Her parents gave her that name because they really meant it - she was their entire world. Tashi loved her name. Most of her namesakes were male, but she didn’t mind it. If anything, it made her feel even more special.
Back home, everyone kissed the ground Tashi walked on. She loved herself. She was on everyone’s lips even if she had nothing to do with them: ‘tashi delek’ was a standard greeting where she came from. Now whenever she uttered the phrase by mistake, someone or the other would chime in with ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’
She was sure that Noah started that, actually. What a jerk. But she loved him.
Being royalty was fun and everything, but it got tiresome. Coming to India was like a breath of fresh air. Four years of boarding school in Rajasthan, and then she came packing to Bombay. She didn’t always call it that. When she first came here, it was Mumbai. Almost three years later, that name didn’t sit right on her tongue any longer - and Tashi was very particular about names.
Bombay had been exceptional to Tashi. It taught her a thing or two about how ‘real people’ lived. Back home, or even while at Rajasthan, the idea of smoking something that came from a grimy woman’s cleavage would have put Tashi off immediately. Bombay had made her far more tolerant.
Maybe that’s why I put up with Noah’s bullshit, she thought, staring morosely at her reflection in the mirror.
It was Halloween night. They were supposed to go to a party as Roger and Jessica Rabbit. Tashi had their costumes ready and everything. But there was just one tiny hitch in the plan -- she hadn’t consulted Noah about it at all.
It was not completely Tashi’s fault. It had been a couple of weeks since they had last had a proper conversation, and Noah usually went with what Tashi wanted anyway. Not this time. He threw a right old hissy fit.
‘You’re going to dress up like a hot piece of ass, and you want me to be a goofy piece of shit rabbit?’ said Noah. Tashi only smiled. At least he still thought she was a hot piece of ass, even when they hated each other’s guts.
‘You’re not even listening to me!’ Noah had cried like the sullen five-year-old he was in his heart. ‘I don’t know why we’re even doing this anymore!’
‘It’s convenient, that’s why,’ Tashi said quietly. Tashi and Noah each had their own rooms in a massive apartment. They had a spare room which they had both slept in, back when their relationship wasn’t so rocky. Plus they had a couple of extra rooms to spare. They had plenty of room to ignore each other. Convenient.
Suddenly, Tashi became aware of party music coming from the lower floor of their house. This wasn’t entirely unusual -- theirs was a party house. People often came over to make use of their immense lower floor. They didn’t mind -- Tashi and Noah usually sectioned off the upper floor so that they could have their space.
Noah had probably organised his own Halloween party. Without telling her, just as payback for the costumes. He probably had a no costume rule and was down there in nothing but a t-shirt and his dollar sign-spangled boxers. That boy, thought Tashi, pressing her fingers against her temples. Then, she had an idea.
Tashi raised her eyes and looked at the red gown and elbow-length gloves that were laid out on her bed. ‘Time to look like a hot piece of ass,’ she said to herself.
‘Woah’ said Noah, scoping the scene. The party was a lot bigger than he had expected. There were people milling about everywhere -- some really old people, too. Ew. Tashi’s annoying dyke friend was there with two of them. She tried to make conversation with him. He brushed her off.
He recognised many people in the crowd, including a close friend who knew where the spare key was hidden. That must be how they got in, thought Noah, because Tashi was nowhere in sight. She was probably out buying a sixteen-tier cake or something. My god, that girl really goes all out, he thought, grabbing a drink from the table. He was going to enjoy it alone, in his room, until some cool people decided to show up.
Tashi descended the stairs slowly, barricading them with a red rope behind her. She was immediately surrounded by people. ‘Great party!’ they said. ‘It’s not my party…’ she said. They talked over her. ‘Hey, someone ashed on your couch and burnt a hole in it,’ said someone else. Panic rose in Sophie’s throat. Noah, goddamnit, she thought.
Before she knew it, she was clearing plates, moving vases out of the way and pushing the furniture up against the wall. While she was on her way to the kitchen to throw a stack of used solo cups in the trash, she spotted Noah sitting on the counter, having an intense chat with Nasreen. He seemed so odd -- he would barely look at Tashi when they brushed past in each other in the morning, but here he was, with his eyes fixed on Nasreen, as if she was an angel from a Boticelli painting.
Tashi felt a burst of bitterness curdling in the pit of her stomach. It would have been okay if he were staring at Nasreen’s metal breasts -- she was used to that. But, no, his eyes were fixed on her face. All the pieces suddenly fell into place in Tashi’s mind.
Controlling her anger, she stalked off. Noah may have ruined her life, but she would not let him or his stupid guests destroy her home. She made her way upstairs to look for spare sheets to throw over the couches, when a broad chest obscured her vision, blocking her path.
She looked up and saw Harsh, her old boyfriend. They were together while she was at boarding school. He moved to Bombay to become an actor, and they remained friends. Noah liked him, too.
‘Harsh, hi!’ said Tashi. She went in for a hug, but stopped herself when she saw the hunger in his face. It was too late. Harsh pulled her into the hug with an unfamiliar intensity. His hands dug into her hips and he pushed himself onto her, nuzzling her neck. Tashi gasped. The only sex she had had in months was hate sex. She missed this.
Harsh pulled away slightly -- just enough so that he could look at her face (and down her dress). His hands were still on her hips, and he still had that mad look in his eyes. ‘You look fucking delectable,’ he said in his headiest voice.
‘Thanks,’ Tashi replied, still reeling.
‘I’ll see you around, Tash,’ he said with a wink, spinning on his heel.
Tash. He said it with the reverence of someone who meant ‘tashi delek’. Even with her push-up bra and her thigh-high slit, Tashi’s costume wasn’t the sexiest in the room by any means. But after the tryst with Harsh, she felt like the hottest girl in the house. The only thing Noah ever made her feel was frumpy and burdensome.
Noah found himself on his bean bag with an empty glass of rum next to him. ‘I know what to do,’ was his first thought.
He knew what to do. He had played this game before. He needed to find a hole to take him out of his room. His door was locked -- he knew that. That was part of the game. He had to find the hole, or he would be in there forever. And then the game would end.
He went to the bathroom. Wasn’t the hole supposed to show up next to the toilet? There was no hole, though. He went out again. His room had a big sliding window. Maybe that was the hole. He opened up the window and climbed out.
Noah was on the sixteenth floor of his building. He wasn’t very afraid, though. ‘My energy bar is full,’ he thought. ‘There aren’t enough demons here to suck out my energy. I can’t die yet.’
He grabbed onto the pipe that ran beside the window with one hand. Then with the other. His legs were dangling in the air for a split second, but those soon grabbed the pipe, too.
Slowly, Noah began to shimmy down the pipe. After some time, he reached the window below. It opened into the kitchen. Thankfully, it was wide open. A girl in a metal bikini was smoking a cigarette. When she spotted him, her eyes grew wide.
‘Get out of the way,’ said Noah, climbing sideways into the room with surprising dexterity.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ the girl asked.
Noah was sweating profusely. He sat on the kitchen counter for a while, catching his breath. ‘It seems so easy when you play it, but being inside the game is tough as hell,’ he said, looking earnestly at metal bikini girl.
‘What?’ asked the girl, blinking stupidly.
‘You’re Cynthia, aren’t you?’ asked Noah.
‘Nasreen,’ said the girl, her face hardening. ‘You’ve forgotten?’
‘No, of course not, I’ve played the game before,’ said Noah. ‘This seems like a dream to you, doesn’t it?’
‘A very bad dream, yes,’ said Nasreen, lighting another cigarette.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Noah, placing a hand on her shoulder. He meant it as a reassuring gesture, but he also used it to support himself as he climbed off the counter.
‘Gotta go,’ he said, and he jogged out the kitchen.
Tashi was in high spirits. Her smile didn’t even falter when Sophie came tugging at her sleeve to ask about the lack of waiters and DJ. Sophie was a lot of fun, but she was one of those girls. You know, the kind that asked ‘Where are the servers? Where’s the DJ? What kinda party is this?’
Thankfully, with Sophie, it was easy enough to steer the conversation back to boys. Adam was sulking in a corner. ‘I’d do him,’ said Tashi, reflexively tossing her bottle-red hair. She was surprised by her own coquettishness - she often discussed boys with Sophie, but this evening, she couldn’t help but feel as if she had crossed a point. She needed to get it on.
‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye started to play in Tashi’s head. At the very next moment, it also started to play on the speakers. Tashi looked around with her eyes narrowed, looking for that elusive DJ. Was he playing a trick on her?
But instead of the DJ, she found herself staring straight at Harsh, who of course was staring right back at her. He was by the stairs, undoing the red rope. He redid it behind him and hurried up the stairs.
Tashi waited for about fifteen seconds.
Noah walked around the party, too distracted by the sweet cotton forming in his mouth to interact with anyone. He resembled Richard Ashcroft in the Bittersweet Symphony video -- bumping into people without a care in the world. He thought he resembled -- nay, was -- Henry Townshend from Silent Hill 4. One thing was for certain - Noah D'Arcy was no longer in the building.
Suddenly, he stopped. A wave of recognition swept over his features. ‘Harry!’ he said, clapping Adam's back, lurching him forwards. Adam furrowed his brow. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
Noah's face clouded over just as suddenly as it had lit up. ‘Wait a second... You're not supposed to be here,’ he said.
‘Um,’ said Adam. ‘I received your invite…’
‘Harry's not in Silent Hill 4,’ Noah continued, as if he had heard nothing of what Adam had just said. Noah looked at Adam, his eyes filled with child-like concentration. They were dancing. Happy. A little crazy.
‘I’m not Harry,’ started Adam, ‘I'm A--…’
‘Jasper Gein, of course,’ said Noah. ‘I've played this game before. Hold up, I'm going to find your chocolate milk.’
Noah bumped around the room awkwardly, finally making his way to a side table that Tashi had pushed to a corner. He picked up a vase sitting on it and dumped the flowers on the floor. ‘Here’s your chocolate milk,’ he told Adam. ‘Give me my spade. Quick.’
Adam gave Noah a lamp stand. Noah didn’t know any better.
‘Be careful with that,’ Adam called.
But Noah was already gone.
‘Go first,’ said Tashi, hooking her bra up. Harsh nodded at her, his face still glowing with sweat. He pulled on his t-shirt and zipped up his pants. Then he grabbed her again.
‘See you soon,’ he mouthed against Tashi’s lips. She pushed him off and focused on slipping back into her dress.
She turned to the mirror to fix her hair and makeup, but when she looked at her reflection, she let out a loud gasp.
Mahek’s father was behind her, with his pants down his ankles.
‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?’ yelled Tashi, her face growing red with fury. ‘GET OUT!’
‘Shh,’ said Mr Lalwani. ‘I saw you with that hot model boy. I saw everything, Tashi… And now everyone will know. Unless…’
Tashi couldn’t breathe. She felt disgusted. She looked at the open window at the far end of her room and considered jumping out of it for a split second. Death would be better than this. She looked back at Mr Lalwani, coming towards her with his tongue flicking against his ugly, swollen lips. And that did it.
Tashi was not afraid of that pathetic excuse of a man. She was not about to let him lay a finger on her. She was stronger than him. She was fucking royalty.
Noah knew what he had to do next. He had played this game before. He needed to find that old guy in the cell of the water prison. An old guy passed Noah by at that instant - but he was not the right old guy. This guy was too tall and well-dressed. ‘Must be Richard Braintree,’ thought Noah. He was not important at this point of the game.
Then, it struck him. He had seen an old guy creeping upstairs a while ago. That’s where the water prison must be! thought Noah, jumping over the barricade and up the stairs. Noah pushed open a door and entered the walk-in closet. It was dark, but he could make out a demon plunging a weapon in the old man’s chest.
Noah scratched his head. He didn’t remember the old guy dying this way. He remembered him being drowned. Was this not Silent Hill 4 at all? Was it Silent Hill 5, and he was playing it all wrong?
In any case, he had to leave quickly, or the demon would come for him, too, and he would lose the game.
A blood-curdling scream rang through the house. Tashi dropped the tray of hors d'oeuvres she was holding and rushed upstairs. Noah’s ears perked up. ‘Cynthia’s dying!’ he said, and he ran towards it, too. But what they saw was something completely appalling.
In the centre of the crowd that had formed were Sophie and Mr Lalwani -- one dead, one as pale as the corpse she was costumed as.
Tashi and Noah met each other’s eyes. Instinctively, they ran towards each other and hugged.
The sight of the blood had snapped Noah out of his trip, and he was too shocked to react.
Tashi smiled as she buried her face into Noah’s chest. ‘Death would be better…’ she said.
‘Everything will be okay,’ said Tashi.
