This kind of shit really isn’t allowed anymore but we’re loving it.
She’s hammered and dancing in the middle of the dorm room, long brown hair, black eyeliner, one tit kinda hanging out, a perky pink nipple like the cherry on a sundae. The lace of her bra is blue, and the strap half off her shoulder, her midriff reveals a silver belly button piercing. Her face is mid but her body is fucking fire. She’s in her own world, maybe she’s on something, and her eyes are half-closed. We should be calling her friends or something but we’re watching her sing along to “Time After Time,” it’s some old song trending on TikTok.
Blacklight LEDs swallow everything in a glowing purple. There’s some shitty psychedelic poster on one wall, and our teeth glow blue like tombstones. Someone has filled empty liquor bottles with water, cracked open yellow highlighters, and dropped in the ink-soaked sponge so the whole bottle glows. We’re almost outta beer.
Who knows where her friends went, probably somewhere with less dudes and more liquor. My dick is pressing against my zipper and I’m trying not to get fully hard. She’s really going for it, grinding and turning. It reminds me of one of those spinning ballerinas from my little sister’s jewelry box, like, somehow we knew she’d be there.
One guy says, “This song’s retarded,” and we’re then we’re all so fucking bored until Becker heads over there, wriggling his ass, shimmying towards her, touching her hips, kissing her neck, shit we’re not really allowed to do anymore. They made us watch all these woke videos during COVID, the teacher staring at us on Zoom, some old-ass actor pretending to be in high school asking a girl if he could kiss her.
But jesus christ, now Becker’s kinda licking her nipple, pressing his pelvis into her, and she opens her eyes and smirks. I can’t believe she’s into it, but then she holds him back. Fuckin’ Beck is right back at it, grabbing her ass, pawing her tit, it’s fucking amazing. Two other guys stand right in front of the door. I see their boners, and I think, Who the fuck picked this fucking music?
The song ends and she stops, adjusts her top, tries to smooth her sticky brown hair back. She wipes her slick neck with her hand and brushes it off on her jeans. She’s leaning against the desk, kinda hiccupping and looking around. Her eyeshadow glows like crescent moons in the black light.
She goes for her back pocket to get her phone, but Becker snatches it. He clicks a few pics selfie-style, hand in the air, leaning over like they’re taking pics together, and then his bro River comes over out of nowhere and whips out his cock, shakes it in the foreground, cackling. Man, he has a huge cock, who the fuck has a cock like that? Fuck. And then River starts smacking her with it, on the leg and her ass, while Becker takes more pictures, and we all howl.
I do feel bad for her. I mean, her friends probably shouldn’t have left her here. The room is hot as balls and I want to leave, but there’s no fucking way I try to get by the guys at the door. I don’t even really know these dudes.
She tries to get her phone back from Beck, she puts her hand on her hip and kinda stamps her foot and says, “C’mon, you guys don’t be weird,” but he won’t quit, so she tries to be cute and pouts a little, and man, she reminds me of my little sister.
Then this guy Cooper, standing over near the door, starts to film with his phone, the bright light cutting a streak through the purple room. Cooper has two fake teeth that don’t glow in the blacklight. He lost them in a fight last year, so there’s these dark jack-o’-lantern spaces whenever he opens his mouth with this shit-eating grin. His long, scrawny arm keeps moving forward to film her up close.
The other guy near the door, Wyatt, changes the music with his phone. Suddenly it’s hardcore EDM and it’s so fucking loud that I feel it beating in my chest, this thud thud thud.
Now Wyatt’s next to her, the dude’s a fucking savage, pumping his arm in the air, bouncing and crashing into all of them. The girl loses her balance, and Wyatt grabs her around the waist. He turns her around, starts humping her ass, slides his hands into her pants. She grabs his wrist, tries to pull it out, then pushes him away. But Wyatt moves his hand to his pants, he’s stroking his dick, he’s rubbing one out, I guess.
I can only see her face by the light of his phone, lit from underneath like she’s telling a scary story, all chin and weird angles and big eyes, before the phone moves and she disappears into the dark again.
Cooper with the fake teeth comes to a dead stop and tells everyone to put their fucking phones away. Beck and River somehow get her shirt up so we can see both of her tits, hold onto her and kinda move her onto the bottom bunk. Then she’s laying down and one of them straddles her shoulders. It’s so dark now but I swear she opens her mouth on her own, so I figure it’s probably chill. I crane my neck and I can see both of those cherry-pink nipples. Someone has a fistful of her hair.
No one is breathing. No one can exhale. It’s just the music and shadows. It’s fucking crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it. Except I see she’s lost one of her shoes, the strappy heels she was dancing in, kicked under the bed. I think I hear her whimpering, or like sniffling, and goddamn it, she sounds like my little sister. So I lose my boner and crack open my last beer and wait for the whole thing to be fucking over already.
About the Author
Brigid M. Hughes is a writer from San Francisco whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Quiet Lightening, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Memoir Magazine. She was recently shortlisted for the 2025 New Flash Fiction Review prize. She holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco.
