Francesca saw the heatwave in the night air jumping in jittery movements. In her want for fantasy and adventure, she mentally described it as: like catching out the thin fabric between two worlds close to collapsing. The flittering of invisible curtains that threatened to expose a whole new and vibrant land far more interesting than her life. Where a hot supernatural woman was waiting for her in pearlescent armour and a crown fit for a powerful queen.

Francesca was wearing little to nothing and still felt hot. While she acknowledged the cool breeze was long gone, she blew it off as a hallucination from the suspicious-looking gummies she nicked from the buffet.

Her long legs dangled off the balcony edge over the party of twenty crashing into the pool. Water that was starting to bubble...

'Pfft. Rich people and their giant-arse Jacuzzis.' She looked around her for Katie, but she had lost both her friends much earlier in the night—both to the unprejudiced jaws of sexual activity. She was proud of her little harlots. Especially of me, her dear Lyra who she had worried about since the breakup and was about to worry that much more.

There was a scream of pain, and everyone jumped out of the pool as the water sizzled and popped. Francesca gripped the balcony's rail and leaned forward to see that everyone had leapt out for their lives. Some coming out red and raw. One unlucky man didn't make it and was cooking in this cannibal soup.

'Whaaaaat?' she slurred. It was all she could muster and her body was unwittingly infusing dread by the second.

This was a little harder to dismiss as a hallucination, and when the road split open eating up any cars and people in its wake, dark dots falling in vivid amber light oozing steam, Francesca could no longer ignore the tension building in her skull.

Volcanic rock surfaced and lava spat from the cracks that spread like roots of a tree reaching to strangle and swallow. Exposing the veins of the planet's body, it was horrible, it was beautiful, and Francesca was too bloody high to have a reasonable reaction to it.

'Ooooh nooo,' Francesca said rolling herself back onto the balcony, shaky from the drugs in her system. 'Noot good.'

Francesca stumbled downstairs to the party still lively and going on without a care. She crashed into a brick wall only to find the brick wall had a deep annoying voice and a nasty face attached.

'I don't know what she ever saw in you,' she said to Zan. Wiggled her pointer finger so close to his nose she nearly picked it. 'You're so ugly.'

He cocked his head to the side, looking ready to crush someone but simmered down to bite out. 'Where is she?'

'She's loong goone pinhead. Realised she was too good for your saggy arse.' Francesca prodded at her own chin. 'There was something important I needed to tell everyone...'

Zan ignored her ramblings and shook her by her shoulders. 'Where did Lyra go?'

'With Mr Hottie... Hot. Something hot. Oh, I just remembered! 'Scuse me.' Francesca pushed Zan's face away and rotated a few other dancers on the floor to get to the DJ booth. She pulled out some necessary plugs to halt the music and ripped the mic from the DJ's hand.

She cleared her throat at the booing. 'This is important! Shush!' She waved her hand around.

'Quiet, the goth girl is gonna speak!' some rando cheered from the back.

'Thank you,' she said. 'So, I have strong reasons to believe, ignoring the narcotics in my system, and the fact that I've had previous psychotic episodes in the past, that the world. Is. Ending.'

She felt the thrum of heartbeats of every individual in one great beat of a drum. The echo of it nearly knocked her back into the booth. Her audience was unimpressed.

'Get off the stage!'

'Someone's had a bit too much! Eh? HAHA.'

A screeching cry pierced the laughter. Every spine stiffened; it was a chiropractor's dream at how straight the postures had gotten when a chorus of terror erupted out in the street. Those from the pool slammed against the glass doors, they were blistering wrecks ready to expire from the shock. Most had.

All the heads in her audience snapped to attention and then comically snapped back to her.

'Now calm down!' a new voice said.

The drunken host, a young fair-haired man draped in undone kimono and silk red slacks took a spot on her stage. To her, he looked rather vague, a princely little show-off trying to prove he was hip and chill. He tried to snatch the mic off her and gave up as her knuckles burned around it.

He cleared his throat, and said in a squeaky voice, 'So long as you stay in these walls you won't get hurt. I've got a deal with a demon that keeps these grounds safe.'

Everyone was confused, even Francesca and when the black sky burned scarlet, she realised how unprepared she really was for the chaos of the end of existence.

Huh. How unexpected.

People running around in a crazy panic was of course anticipated. The toil in Francesca's gut was surprising. Did she—did she actually like living?

'The world is ending...' she whispered, before shouting into the mic. 'Holy fuck. The world is ending! Go find your loved ones!'

'No-no-no.' The host couldn't manage to pry off anyone one of her fingers, so his hands ended up cupping her own around the mic as he leaned down to say. 'You're safer here! We can party till the world ends... DJ play Britney Spears.'

The DJ had scampered off already.

Francesca's heart had never beat so fast, she thought about her friends, she thought her family. She hated her family! But the world was ending! It was confirmed by this idiot beside her.

She decided it was worth slapping him.

'Ow!' he rubbed the now tender spot on his head. 'What was that for?'

'I'm too hot to die!' her voice reached the far corners of the room as she boiled herself into a panic.

'Relax, little Wednesday.' The pretty man gripped her shoulders. He was a twink of a man, and she felt compelled to smack him up and resisted. 'You're safe here.'

'B-but... Lyra. What about my friend? She and that guy...'

The host flicked his golden fringe back. 'Oh, my friend? If she's with him she's probably living it up with the tops of hell,' he boasted. He pulled at the ends of his kimono. 'That'll be me soon.'

'What?' Francesca said rhetorically. She didn't want a real answer, no answer from this man was going to make any more sense to her but he got all flustered anyway.

'No, not romantically. I just want to be part of the court. I heard the parties a sick. I don't have a crush on my roommate or anything...'

Zan appeared like a dark furious smog and grabbed the host by the back of his neck to drag him down from the stage. Francesca wasn't sure what side she was rooting for and because of that cursed this host to make her side with a man she had strong disdain for.

She readily despised Zan and she was learning to hate this stranger just as much, therefore mentally cheered as Zan had the host in an arm lock, with the pretty man's face pressed into a glass table.

'What the fuck is going on?' Zan said.

'The world is ending! Duh!' she said.

'I don't believe it for a second.' Zan sneered down at the host rather than Francesca who was mildly offended at not being deemed threatening enough.

'Would everyone just relax? I'll get the music back on, we'll all drink and sing... We'll ignore the impending doom of the rest of the earth—' the host was cut off by Zan wringing his scrawny neck. It was comical to see his pretty eyes bulge out. Like squeezing a stress ball.

'Wait!' Francesca said. 'The tops of hell? Like demons and angels and God, hell?'

'Really, I don't appreciate this kind of treatment,' the host said through strangulation. Francesca flinched as a suggestive smile spread on his face. 'Not unless it's from friends and other hot consenting individuals...'

'Answer the question dipshit!' Francesca snapped.

'Well, I don't know about God or angels, but my friend said—'

They were all cut off by a blood-curdling howl that could split an ocean. Francesca ran to the windows. Hot flushes shuddered from her body at the fiery eyes that glared back.

A great beast—a sabre-toothed predator with fangs as red and glitzy as rubies, a body of soot and scales with fire rolling off its dark matted back—pawed with a long slender foot at the window expectantly.

~:*:~

The mansion seemed to have shrunken around Zan, Katie, and Francesca—who were the only guests that remained on the grounds. Everybody else seemed to want to test their chances out there while the earth gaped open for the sky.

It was sort of stunning, like a satanic painting Francesca would have saved as a screen saver. She tried not to stare outside too long, the lava looked particularly touchable, like hot red foam. It hadn't overcome the streets but she sensed a more malicious presence trying to rise through the fire.

Still, it could be the gummies.

The beast prowled around the pool outside like a bored pup, only fiery and angrier than any dog she had seen. The host was too nonchalant about it and poured everyone some wine, a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grand Cru.

Francesca thought it better to try and get sober again, so she declined the wine. Katie was dazed and confused but present enough to know that nothing was right outside these walls and Zan...

Well, he was...

Him.

'I'm sorry, who are you?' Katie said. Her wig long gone and her auburn wavy locks hanging in a loose bun that definitely had a certain someone running their hands through it. Good for her.

'Finally, someone asks!' the host laughed. No one found him funny, and he didn't seem to give a damn. 'My name is Corey Matthews. Lol. I know. Boy Meets World.'

'Huh?' Katie said. Francesca side-eyed her and shrugged. Zan couldn't care less, and the contempt was evident on his face.

'None of you have seen—never mind.' Corey flicked his robe back dramatically as he sat on the leather couch beside Francesca, arm draped behind her head. She didn't like his smile. It was sneaky, it was trying too hard, and she couldn't take it seriously. 'Looks like it might just be us for a while so why don't we play 21 questions or something?'

Francesca uncrossed her legs and crossed them away from him. 'Sure. Sweet. Fun. What is that thing outside?'

'That's my roommate's dog. He's a hellhound,' Corey said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Francesca envied that this was a normal occurrence for anybody, why couldn't she be that anybody? She surely dressed better for the role. 'He should be back soon. He's got this family thing. Rising the palace of hell to our realm and whatever.'

Zan snickered.

Katie snapped her head so quickly that Francesca thought it would snap off her neck. 'I don't see what's funny about this.'

'It's the guy Lyra was dancing with.' At the mention of Lyra Zan straightened up in his seat. Francesca turned to Corey. 'He's your housemate.'

'Yeah, he's great. Wish he'd pull his weight with the dishes though.'

Francesca dug her fingers into the head of the couch. 'Your housemate is a demon, and the earth is tearing itself apart. What makes you think we're safe here?'

Corey shrugged. 'He told me.'

Francesca's nostrils flared. 'And you're just taking his word for it.'

'We've been through a lot together,' Corey said.

All three of them were about to explode in a fit of rage, and the ringing of a doorbell made them all hold their breath.

Even Corey. 'Huh, looks like some guests realised there's nowhere to go. Excuse me, lovelies. Enjoy the wine.'

Corey left as swiftly as Katie moved from the chair to the couch next to Francesca. Katie took Francesca's trembling hands and her expression was sympathetic, she didn't understand that Francesca was trembling from pure rage.

'What do we do?' Katie said.

'We don't know that Lyra isn't okay... But she did run off with a complete stranger.'

'Who is a monster?''

'A demon,' Francesca said. She veered her attention to Zan expecting something, any kind of reaction. His lack of concern sent a rush of cold needles to rake through her nerves.

She shot up from the couch, arms limb at her sides and platform boots stomping on the shaggy carpet.

He didn't look up till her toes bumped into his. 'Can I help you?'

'No. But I'm going to try anyway,' she said.

A column of white light speared the centre of the room blowing Zan arse-over-tits off his chair. Francesca held her ground with her heavy boots only Katie was not so lucky.

Francesca spun around guarding her eyes as the light died down and a figure slowly materialised. Silver fingers extended out and opened palms up in a graceful manner as plumy wings stretched to the ceiling.

The being was androgynous. A roman nose, soft eyes, and a round delicate face. Silver-blonde hair cascaded down in moving waves down their back. Francesca's breath caught in her throat.

The majestic being pouted at the beast outside then smiled compassionately to the rest of the mortals beneath them. 'Rise up. Quickly. We have very little time to resolve this blip.'

'This blip?' Katie said. 'Is everyone insane?'

'Calm down,' Francesca said to her friend.

'Just a blip, just a little blip says the weird mirror person with feathers!' Katie clenched her skull, close to a psychotic break. 'What? What do you want?!'

'Please, calm yourselves.' The feathered-mirrored person embraced the air in an awkward air hug.

Zan clambered over the knocked-over chair like a sheepish dog and muttered a prayer in Greek as he bowed before the angel. 'Forgive me, forgive me for my sins.'

'Please,' the angel said losing patience. They gently lifted Zan's head by propping a slender finger under his chin. 'Your love may be in the arms of a devil, and not just any ancient monster... The son of the worst.'

Francesca and Katie eyed each other then glared at the horrendous sight of doe-eyed Zan, mesmerized by the angel and the angel dopey-eyed for Zan. It was an insincere portraiture that Francesca would happily set alight after vomiting generously on top of it.

'I bet she's so scared right now. Tormented,' Zan said. It was like he was romanticizing the idea that Lyra could be suffering endlessly, and he could swoop in on the back of this angel and be a hero.

It made the women sick to their stomachs.