A Night of Parties

This is a oneshot I wrote in the span of one evening. It's an idea I've had for a while, helped along with my own mishaps at school dances. I finally got to writing it after being hounded on whether or not I'm going to homecoming(I didn't, and it's passed now, thanks goodness). Either way, I hope you enjoy, and please review.

You can't stand it here. They're all nice, a big change from how they treated you before. It made no difference. Secretly, you hated change. You liked a safe certain place to be yourself.

You hop over to a corner of the room, willing your chord not to wrap around your neck, willing Master to come home for some reason early from vacation. You feel electricity shoot through you like quick heartbeats. But you aren't plugged in. The lights are too bright, the music too loud and bass thudding. You stare at the ground, dark and shadowed so close to the wall. It grounds you, and you tunnel vision. You fall through the ground, from the tool of your power button through your cone shade, down your gooseneck, freakishly long you realise, down, down into your rectangular base, filling with a mixture of lead and tar and you realise you weren't falling but were being glued to the ground. You blinked, eyes wide and glanced about.

You forced yourself to move, ripping yourself from the ground, the first clank of a hop ringing in your ears. You hurry, and you find yourself besides the new computer, dancing about joyously and smiling at you. You dig around and find a smile and dance around but it feels wrong, dancing with the wrong person, so you escape hastily.

Then it's next to the new phone of Robbies, speaking snobbishly of his being used nearly 24:7 and you can't help the envy. You hate the envy. You hate it's natural ways among appliances and wish it wasn't and that you could rid of it so you didn't feel sick and now he's bragging to you and calling you out so you retort without thinking.

"Well-well, how about getting to be Master's best friend AND being used by Robbie regularly? How about that?"

"I could end up like that." The phone is smiling smugly around his little home button.

You shake your head, wanting to bite with words but knowing you can't orchestrate any sentence intricate enough, especially without repeating yourself and you hate that too. So you shake your head and try to relax but he keeps jabbering and so you flee him too.

You find yourself in the bathroom. It's the only place the appliances don't enter. It was a safe haven. You could still hear the bass low, feel it through your base and neck, like being shocked and the effect nausea and numbness. Your clumsy climbing up to the bath tub and in, hiding behind the curtains within. There you realise you're trembling, and not because of the base and you give an exasperated sigh, fling your plug into the air and slide down a side of the tub, base briefly catching on the unplugged drain. The porcelain is cool, welcomed after the heat and stifling warmth of so many appliances in two rooms. You breath deep, sweet escape, the air thick and languid on your Tongue and you wish you weren't so lonely despite wanting to talk to no one downstairs.

That's when the females raspy voice filled the air. "The hell you doin in here? I'd give anything to be out there."

You flinched at the harsh wording, and can't find the will to stand. Still, you stutter a response.

"I-I... I don't like near everyone out there. I don't like their snobby ways. I don't like-"

"Hush. You're ruining my dreams. How can you be so sour?"

You bit your tongue, annoyance surging, and sloughing down so more of your gooseneck can feel the cold hardened clay supporting you. You wrong your own chord, then wipe your brow with your plug. You switch your light on and off, try to distract yourself. The sink, an old faucet with the voice of a lonely smoker is raving on about how nice a party with such high tech appliances would be. You're convinced the contrary, unable to ignore their snobby ways, your bad past with them, and unable to control the inferiority you feel when surrounded by them, like you'd be better off useless and broken, because maybe that's what you are.

You can't stand the sink, she'll never know. You force yourself up, exhausted, and you leave the room. You wrap your chord around your head as if to block out the music and make your way down the hall into Master's office. You climb yourself into his desk, to your assigned spot and soon grow devastated. Stressed as you are, you can't freeze, block out the world. With this realisation the music downstairs sounds just as loud all alone as you are. You bend your gooseneck, crouching down and wrapping your chord around your lampshade and press your plug between your eyes which you shut and just try to ignore. Escape. Flight. Find silence and be of your own and hide and feel control.

So determined were you you realised not the thin metal tapping the appliance code onto your head. It was the second time you noticed. You opened your eyes warily, staring down at the little red radio next to you. He rested his antenna on the top of the edge of your shade, and it was comforting, an anchor in your stormy sea, your haunted cave.

"You can't handle all the new appliances here either, huh?"

You nod, pouting, eyes wide. Your chord is cooling back around your neck, and his antenna moves, wedging in between your neck and chord and prying it free. You wrap your chord around his antenna tight instead, and he doesn't complain.

"You know, we've always been a duo for a reason, setting new expectations. Lewis and Clark! If you will! How about we explore yet again, embarking on our wild adventures! To the window!"

He hobbled off excitedly and you follow, panic no longer intense but still numbing you. Besides, you were still holding onto him. With his antenna he pried open the window, and you two quickly figured out a plan of escape. It should be noted that neither you nor the radio cared about a few more scratches here or there.

There was a rain gutter running down the house beside the window but a foot or two out, due to the roof veranda. You jumped, wrapping your neck around the gutter the same time radio jumped. You wrapped your chord around him and the gutter, and so you fell with less impact upon hitting the ground, surprised you were able to coordinate such an act in all your nervousness. You smiled for the first time that evening as the radio groaned.

You hopped off, the two of you abandoning the house in the dusky navy blue of the night. It was early still. You travelled in silence, happy to simply be in each other's company and no one else's. The barn looms near, and you can't see it, but you know if he could, Radio would be smiling. You are too. The damp grass and fresh air was open and free. You'd think you'd despise it too for your adventure all those years ago, but it had only proved that, with enough effort, the world and its nature was nothing to appliances, and as far as you know, ignoring the appliances on Mars, you and your gang are the only appliances to know such a fact.

You enter the barn, you pay your respect to the tortoise in its unit, healing from an invited foot. His response is slowly but kindly, and you both feel warm, and you finally start to truly relax. You wander about, and Radio crafts some devise of a game. It's a scavenger hunt to get to the upper loft, and you have to collect all the hidden treasures. By now you're closer to yourself, grinning and exclaiming.

"Really? How important are the treasures really?"

"Very. So you can't afford to lose them again, either!"

"Heeyyy... Why aren't you helping?" You quirked a brow, scratching at your power button, you don't remember when you stopped holding Radio's antenna during the walk here.

"I am helping! Just watch! Cold!"

And so proceeded the game of Hot or Cold Scavenger Hunt. It was the perfect way to unwind, getting to focus on objects and puzzles, and not allowing yourself to think of the party nearby. You searched long and hard, and the tortoise watched on in amusement when you got stuck, and Radio stayed patient and encouraging as ever. Finally, you had all the objects found, and you retrieved the last. A bent pin, a lost packaged bandaid, a rusting scalpel somehow behind the barn, and a small, cracked Yo-Yo, probably from one of the times Robbie visited in between veterinarian appointments.

You beamed at Radio's approval and he chuckled, gave you a medal of honour, and played some happy go lucky song from the oldies. He quirked his antenna, and you knew the question, and, happy and relaxed and with Radio, you complied. And so you approached and you danced. The two of you spun and hopped and laughed and you danced, hoed and antenna on each others backs and you enjoyed it. Your own, private party, designed exactly for the likes of you two, and so you danced and celebrated through the night, and when you grew tired, the two of you climbed to the loft, hugged, and you passed out on the hay beside each other, chord and antenna still intertwined.