Uninvited Guest

    There was a party, and Symon wasn’t invited.
    He’d had the vague idea that the party was hosted by a famous person. Something connected to the talent show? Symon wasn’t completely sure. But he’d heard the party was going to be fancy and elaborate, and there were going to be snacks. He’d never been to a fancy party, and he’d figured it would be interesting...and there were going to be snacks! So he had dressed himself in his nicest clothes and headed out to the party. Exciting!
    Then the fellow at the door had asked to see his invitation. Invitation? It turned out a curio couldn’t get into the party unless they had a piece of paper with their name on it that said “you’re invited!” or something like that. And the only way to get one was to be given one by the host. Symon had not been given an invitation. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

    Symon paced around the building, searching for another entrance. As he watched, a curio wheeled a stack of crates through an unmarked door. Aha! As soon as the door closed, Symon stepped forward, hurrying towards the door. He tried the handle, but it refused to move. Locked! Symon scowled and assessed the lock. Hmm...the vial of acid in his pocket wouldn’t do any good. It was strong enough to give any curio serious chemical burns, but would do nothing against metal. Symon wasn’t very good at lockpicking, but he’d done it a few times before. He fished around in his pockets: glass vials, half-eaten dried fruit, some poky bits of wire - perfect. Symon pulled out a couple of pieces of wire. They were stiff but could be bent, perfect for homemade lockpicks. He shaped the wires, then inserted them into the lock. It took several minutes of finagling and wiggling, but Symon finally unlocked the door. He opened it and ducked inside, closing the door softly behind him.

   Symon found himself in a bare hallway, dimly lit. Ahead of him, he could hear muffled voices. He walked down the hall towards the source of the voices: a door, with light streaming through the cracks. He paused with his hand over the handle. What if he got caught? What if someone realized he hadn’t been invited? He shook his head. Worst case scenario, he got kicked out of the building. That wasn’t the end of the world or anything. Symon quashed his fears and opened the door.

   Behind the door was a kitchen, white and gleaming. Curios bustled about, stacking finger food and drinks onto platters, preparing to serve them to the party guests. A tall curio, blue-furred and imposing, looked over at Symon.

   “Ah! You’re late. Get to work. These hors d'oeuvres won’t serve themselves, you know.”

   “What?” Symon blinked in confusion. 

   “Go on!” The blue-furred curio shoved a platter of abstractly shaped fruit slices into Symon’s hands. “Don’t keep the guests waiting.”

   Dazed, Symon nodded and followed another platter-carrying curio out another door. It was then that he realized the other curio was wearing a yellow waistcoat just like his own - in fact, all the waitstaff were dressed like him. Symon had successfully infiltrated the party...but not in the way he had intended.

   Symon wandered around the vast room, looking about in wonder. The ceiling hung high overhead, speckled with painted stars and constellations, and was supported by tall marble pillars. Elegant round tables draped with long white tablecloths stood scattered around the room, decorated with vases, and curios in fashionable and fancy clothing milled about between them. But it was the chandelier that really caught Symon’s attention. It hung from the ceiling above the stage, sparkling with hundreds, maybe thousands of what looked like crystals or glass, throwing the odd specks of rainbow light across faces and floor. Symon nearly walked into a table as he stared at it, catching himself just in time.

   It was almost better that Symon had ended up being assigned a job as waitstaff. He wouldn’t have known what to do at the party otherwise. Was he supposed to talk to people? Drink? Meander around the room? Eat snacks? He was already doing two of those, seeing as he stole snacks from his platter when he thought nobody was looking. And as for the other two, Symon wasn’t fond of them. He wasn’t very good at holding normal conversations, and he’d learned things about what alcohol could do to a curio that put him off it completely. So his unexpected job really was ideal. He might even get paid! No. Probably not. He’d have to exact his payment in snacks.

   All went well for about two hours. The fancy yellow curio who seemed to be in charge of the party came out onto the stage and said some words. Symon was given flutes of brightly colored drinks to serve to the guests. The tall glasses were harder to keep balanced than the piles of hors d'oeuvres he had been serving earlier, but if he walked slowly, he could manage it.  He offered the drinks to a pair of curios both patterned pink and yellow.  One wore a glittery pink and gold waistcoat, the other a white suit jacket and light pink bow-tie. The curio in the glittery waistcoat took a drink politely, but the white-jacketed one spoke up.

   “What’s in the drinks?”

   “What?”

   “Do you know the ingredients?” the curio in the white jacket repeated. “I’ve got a lot of allergies.”

   “Uh...I think it’s got alcohol in it. I don’t know anything else.” Symon shook his head. “Sorry?”

   The curio sighed. “I’ll have to pass, then. Thanks anyway.”

   Symon nodded and hurried off to go serve the remaining drinks to other curios who hopefully would not ask him questions he didn’t know the answers to.

   Something was horribly wrong. All throughout the room, curios were collapsing, shrieking in fear and pain and rage. Symon watched in horror as a young, handsome curio writhed on the ground as a horn sprouted from his eye and cracks splintered across his face. The curio’s body seemed to twist somehow beneath his expensive clothes, warping into something that was only sort of recognizable as what it had been before. Suddenly, the mutated curio rose to his feet with a growl and sprange at Symon, claws and teeth bared. Symon let out a shrill scream and ran, sprinting as far as he could from the horrifying beast, but the once-handsome curio wasn’t the only one of his kind. All around him, twisted curios roared and screamed, lashing out at Symon as he came close. Symon leapt onto the stage, scanning the chaos, searching for escape. There! The great front doors, the ones Symon had been barred from entering through, stood standing, but - oh no - others had gotten there first. They pulled at the doors, pushed at them, rattled the handles, but they couldn’t seem to open them. The doors must have been locked shut. Symon jumped down from the stage, feeling too exposed, and looked for another exit. Perhaps the door to the kitchen was still open. But the door was across the room, and Symon would have to fight his way through a crowd of panicked curios and terrifying monsters to get to it.

   A grey curio, covered in horns, howled and lunged at Symon. Symon yelled right back and pulled out the vial of acid in his pocket and flung it at the mutant curio’s face. The glass shattered, spraying corrosive liquid across his assailant’s face, and the creature screamed in pain, its face smoking as the acid ate into the skin. Symon took advantage of the distraction and bolted, seeking cover crouched behind a table. A few glasses, still full of sparkling colored drink, stood on the table, and on a whim, Symon took them. Perhaps he could analyze them later, see what had been in them to cause such a mess. He took deep breaths and muttered to himself.

   “I just need to get to the kitchen...”

   Symon was about to get up and run across the room when a figure reared in front of his face, roaring with hate. It was the same grey mutant, its face half-melted by acid, and it looked like it was back for revenge. Symon let out a small eep and backed into the tablecloth, hugging the glasses of poisoned drink. This was it! He was going to get eaten by an angry mutant curio monster.

   Whock! Something slammed into the creature’s face, sending it sprawling back onto the ground. A familiar curio, the one in the white suit jacket who’d asked about the drinks, crouched down in front of Symon, giving him a thumbs-up.

   “You okay?” she asked.

   “Yeah...I think so,” Symon said shakily, feeling a bit too faint to move. What was that phrase you said when someone did something nice for you? “Thank you.”

   “Come on,” the curio said. “We’ve got to get out of here. The main doors are locked from the outside. Do you know of an alternative exit?”

   Symon nodded. “There’s a back door through the kitchen. It might be unlocked...it’s at least worth a look.”

   “Good. I’m Lava.”

   “Symon.”

   “Let’s get going.” Lava stood up and picked up the bar stool she’d hit the mutant zombie with. Then she started across the room.

   “Right.” Symon got up and followed her, clutching at his drink glasses. He ducked as one of the monsters swiped at him and sped up. “Definitely looking forward to getting out of here!”

—

    Symon and Lava reached the kitchen without being horribly mauled to death by mutant curio zombies. Along the way, Lava had picked up her friend - Turuvi was her name, she’d said - and brought them along. This had been the most dangerous part of the journey. Turuvi seemed ill (Symon suspected they had gotten one of the poisoned drinks, though Lava insisted that Turuvi had dropped their drink and it was probably just food poisoning) and Lava had had to support them, which hindered her mutant curio zombie fighting capabilities. Symon wasn’t nearly as good of a fighter, and he’d gotten clawed in the left leg right before they’d made it to the kitchen door. Once everyone had made it inside, Lava slammed the door shut and lowered Turuvi to the ground, where they curled up into a ball of nausea and pain. Symon, too, was in pain, although it was a sharper, bloodier sort. He undid his vest, setting aside the flutes of tainted drink he had stored in it, and pulled off his shirt, wrapping it around his wounded leg. Blood soaked all too quickly through the makeshift bandage. 

   Lava shoved a heavy crate in front of the door, effectively barricading it. “All right. Is everyone...ohh boy. You didn’t tell me you got injured!”

   “It was just a minute ago! Things were hectic,” Symon protested, trying to ignore the searing pain in his leg.

   Lava came over and crouched down next to Symon. She poked at the blood-soaked shirt. “You’ve done this all wrong. You have to wrap it tighter - like this.” She pulled off the shirt, folded it around itself, then tied it tight around the wound. She slipped her finger under the bandage to make sure it wouldn’t cut off Symon’s circulation. “It’ll apply pressure, help stop the bleeding.”

   “Thanks,” Symon said weakly. He felt dizzy and faint, but he wasn’t sure if it was blood loss, adrenaline, or just the sight of his own blood.

   “Welcome. ‘Scuse me, I’ve gotta check on Turv.” Lava turned and started fussing over Turuvi, who was groaning miserably.

   A thought popped into Symon’s head. “Are you sure they should be in here with us? Most of the mutants were acting a bit like that before they transformed. They might...uh...turn. On us.”

   Lava’s head snapped around to face Symon. She glared with terrifying intensity. “Turuvi is fine. I told you. It’s food poisoning.”

   Turuvi finally spoke. “Might be...but I did have one of the drinks...haven’t mutated at all though...probably fine.” They uncurled and tried to sit up, then retched and curled back up.

   Lava murmured some reassuring words to Turuvi, then turned back to Symon. “What was in those drinks? Are you sure you don’t know anything about all this?”

   “I told you before! I don’t know!” Symon protested. “That’s why I grabbed these.” He gestured to the three glasses of brightly colored drink he had set aside. “I figured I might be able to learn something about them. Maybe I could even reverse-engineer an antidote.” This was unlikely. Symon wasn’t good at that sort of thing in the best of circumstances, and seeing as his lab was many days’ travel away in the Forest, he’d be surprised if he was even able to identify the substance that - no. The mutagen. That was the word. 

   Lava’s suspicious stare eased off a little. “You can do that?”

   “Well - maybe. I mean, biochemistry is my specialty, but I think I’d need access to a lab to get anything useful done...” Symon trailed off. “No. I probably can’t make an antidote. I’m sorry. We’ll just have to...hope it wears off...or something.” He fell silent. Symon had studied mutagenic chemicals in the past. Curios were particularly susceptible to all kinds of odd compounds that could trigger sudden physical changes in their appearance, from sprouting scales to growing extra tails. Symon had even heard tale of a particular type of Ancient technology, a sphere that projected constellations, that contained a liquid inside which when drunk could speckle a curio with glowing stars. Whatever had been added to the drinks, it was probably related - but he’d never heard of a mutagen so strongly affecting the mind. He suddenly remembered a rumor he’d heard about curios with the cracked skin mutation. He’d overheard a curio telling someone that people with cracked skin tended to have shifting, unpredictable personalities. Many of the mutant curio zombies outside had cracked skin. Was there a connection? Symon had no real way of knowing. But still, the similarities were eerie...

   “You said there was an exit back this way. Are we still going to try that?” Lava’s voice startled Symon back into reality.

   “What? Oh, yeah. Is...uh...” what’s their name again “Turuvi doing all right?”

   “She’s a bit better off than earlier, but - “ Lava broke off as Turuvi retched once more, vomiting brightly colored liquid and half-digested hors d'oeuvres onto the kitchen tile. “Oh boy.”

   “That might be good!” Symon pointed out. “Expelling toxins and all. You get the idea.”

   “Yeah, I know. Here, drink this.” Lava had gotten Turuvi a glass of water and was trying to get them to drink it. Their hands fumbled with the glass for a bit, and then they drank the whole thing in two desperate gulps. 

   “Okay,” they said, standing up and leaning against the counter. “I think I’ll be okay.”

   “Good. Great. Let’s get out of here,” Lava said, giving the pool of vomit a wide berth.

   “Wait a bit. I need to...uhhhhh, secure these,” Symon said, picking up the flutes of multicolored drink. “Thought I saw some corks around here.” He stood up, wincing as his leg throbbed with flaring pain, and started opening drawers and cabinets at random until he found a collection of corks, which varied wildly in size. Symon picked up one that looked to be about the right size and stuck it in the top of one of the glasses - nope, too small. He tried another - too big. Aha! This one fit firmly into the glass. Symon jammed it in as far as it would go, then upended the glass. The cork held, preventing even a drop of the mysterious liquid from escaping. Symon set the glass aside and proceeded to search for corks for the other two drinks.

   Something thudded against the barricaded kitchen door, and Lava gave it a nervous glance. “Maybe hurry it up a little? I think something - someone’s trying to get in.”

   “I’m trying!” Whoever had stored the corks had clearly just chucked them in without any sense of organization, and Symon was having difficulty finding the last cork he needed. “Here we are!” He squashed a cork into the last flute and scooped all three glasses up. “Okay, let’s get going.” He limped towards the other door and flung it open, revealing the hallway he’d come in through, though all the lights had gone out and it was quite dark. 

   “Go! Go!” Lava shouted as the kitchen door rattled on its hinges, opening a crack despite the heavy crate shoved up against it. She and Turuvi followed Symon out into the hall. Once everyone was through, she kicked the door shut, plunging the hallway into darkness. The trio raced down down the hall, any injuries or illnesses momentarily forgotten.

   “Ow!” In the darkness, Symon had accidentally ran into the door. “I’m okay! I think I found the door.” He pawed at the surface in front of him, searching for the doorknob. His fingers settled around something metallic and he tried the knob. No luck. “It’s locked!”

   “Damn,” Lava cursed. “I was afraid of that. Can you pick the lock? Maybe I can break it down.”

   “I did pick it before, from the other direction, but I had more light then and I think I lost my wires,” Symon admitted.

   “You what?” Turuvi broke in.

   “I picked the lock. Sneaked in, got mistaken for a waiter, now I’m stuck here like everyone else.” Symon waved a paw dismissively. “Okay. I’m backing up. See if you can break it down.”

   Lava was quiet for a few moments, possibly processing the fact that Symon had confessed to breaking and entering. He couldn’t see her face, but she said “Gotcha” and then a thump came from the direction of the door, so he supposed she had put it aside for the moment.

   “No luck?” Turuvi asked, sounding weary. 

   “Give me a bit, I’ve got this,” Lava insisted, slamming into the door again with an oof. “I don’t got this. Ow.”

   Symon turned his head warily in the direction of the kitchen. “If we can’t get out...should we be worried about whoever was trying to get in earlier?”

   “Quiet,” came Turuvi’s voice. All three went silent and listened. A minute later, they spoke. “I don’t hear anything.”

   “Should one of us go check?” Symon asked.

   “I’ll do it,” Lava volunteered. 

   Symon sighed silently in relief and sank to the ground.

   “Hey,” Turuvi said quietly. “Stay safe in there.”

   “I’ll be fine. Wait here.” Lava’s footsteps receded into the distance. Faint light spread into the hall as she opened the door, then turned and called, “No one’s here! I think they gave up.”

   “Oh, thank heavens.” Symon stretched out on the floor. “I’ll just stay here, if that’s okay? I can’t really do any more walking on this leg.”

   “You do you.” Turuvi eyed Symon with what might have been disappointed, then walked off to join Lava. 

   Symon closed his eyes, listening to the faint murmurs of quiet conversation between the two, and then, exhausted mentally and physically, he dropped off.

—

   Things got better after that. Some indeterminate amount of time later, Lava shook Symon awake, telling him that a rescue party had arrived. By this time, the city guard had largely subdued the mutant curios, and were trying to rescue the wounded. Symon had a deathly fear of hospitals and so, with an awkward sort of apology and thanks to Lava, he darted out of the club and into the city. First he’d find some dark quiet place to recover, and then he’d get to a lab. Something told him this night was just the beginning.