She pondered what horrors awaited her on the other side of that threshold. Alien beasts? Time warps? Smooth jazz? She couldn’t begin to guess. Except for the jazz. She could hear the muffled tones of easy-listening sax. That alone was almost enough to convince her to turn around and forget the whole thing.
Her monsters changed her mind. They were all so eager to party. She couldn’t pull the plug on the evening. Even eternal other-dimensional entities could get bored. Hanging around the apartment, playing cards and watching TV all day had to get old. And a gaggle of monsters in desperate need of a good time would probably be trouble in the long run.
She knocked. Stacey answered the door. She was hosting the horrid bat creature at the moment, and Diana was surprised at how readily she accepted this and annoyed at how unthreatening she found the misshapen hulking woman. Stacey-thing smiled as widely and friendlily as a mouthful of four-inch fangs would allow.
“Diana come to mixer,” she said in a guttural growl. “Diana bring friends.”
“Yes, I hope that’s okay.”
A hacking, wheezing racket shook Stacey-thing from deep within her spasming torso. It sounded painful and looked agonizing, and Diana assumed it was a convulsion before she figured out Stacey-thing was chortling with delight.
“More fun, more merry.”
“See? I told you they’d be cool with it.” Vom sniffed the air, even though he had no visible nostrils that Diana could see. But he didn’t have eyes either, and that never seemed to bother him. “Do I smell snickerdoodles?”
“Baked fresh,” said Stacey.
Murmuring approval and excitement, the monsters went inside.
Diana held up a loaf of misshapen banana bread. “I don’t have much baking experience,” she said by way of explanation and apology.
Stacey seized the offering and gobbled it down. “Banana bread good,” she said, spewing crumbs. “You come in now.”
Diana had expected the apartment to be a remnant from the fifties to fit with the Ozzie-and-Harriet style of harmless congeniality that Stacey and Peter so effortlessly embodied, but it was remarkably functional and modern. Everything was straight out of the upper end of a Pottery Barn catalogue. Except for the bizarre masquerade masks hanging all over the walls. They were all different shapes and colors, many with twisted and odd designs. S heof them had eyes in them that stared at her, following the action around the room. She pretended that was normal, and maybe it was at this point.
The party was dead. The only guests were Diana’s monsters, and they were crowded in the kitchen, devouring cookies and probably baking tins, silverware, and whatever else they could stuff in their mouths. Although Zap didn’t have a mouth, so how he was eating anything was a mystery she left unsolved.
“Guys, be careful,” she said.
“Oh, let them enjoy themselves,” said Peter, rising from the couch. He wore a festive Christmas sweater vest, and he was smoking a pipe.
“So glad you could make it.”
“Glad,” repeated Stacey-thing.
“Did I get the time wrong?” Diana asked. “I’m not early, am I?”
“No, as a matter of fact, you’re fashionably late.”
“Fashionably,” said Stacey-thing.
“And I see you brought a treat. You really shouldn’t have.”
Diana shrugged. “It’s not very good.”
“It smells absolutely delicious. Perhaps I’ll try a piece next time.”
Stacey-thing stuck out her long, blue tongue and let some of the slimy banana bread fall into her hand. She offered the soggy lump to Peter.
“Good,” she cooed.
“Thank you, dear, but I’m saving room for dinner.”
She licked her hand and fingers.
“Are people usually late to these things?” asked Diana.
“No, not usually,” said Peter. “Usually no one shows up. Except for Keith in Apartment Seven. Have you not met him yet? He’s a terrific fellow. Why, if he existed, I’d be tempted to set you two up. A single young lady could do a lot worse.”
Diana just nodded. Honestly, being set up on an imaginary blind date didn’t sound too bad. If it worked out, she could see herself with two imaginary kids and a fictional dog named Dusty. They’d summer in a floating condo and winter in Shangri-la, take vacations in a hybrid realm where Paris, Disneyland, and Atlantis all merged into one wondrous place. Sometimes she and Dusty the Wonder Dog would solve murders and uncover sinister Martian conspiracies.
The fantasy was running away with itself, but she indulged for a few more seconds.
“Is Keith not in the bathroom, dear?” asked Peter. “Him not sitting on couch last time I not see him,” said Stacey-thing, squinting as she turned her head in an awkward direction.
“Oh yes. There he isn’t.” Peter pointed to a spot, then pointed to another spot. “Or maybe how. not right there. Well, I know he’s not here somewhere. Why don’t you have a seat while I make you a drink? I should warn you. My martinis are legendary.”
Diana, locked in a rigid posture, sat on the sofa. She placed her hands on her knees. She tried to relax, but this idea hadn’t panned out. She hadn’t expected much, but this was promising to be the third or fourth most boring party she’d ever been to.
“Nice weather we’re having,” said someone nearby.
She glanced around but saw nobody. She looked to the nearest mask, and the bloodshot eyes looked back at her. “Did you say something?”
The eyes blinked, then rolled around in what she interpreted as a negative response. She was just guessing, but she assumed that if the eyes could talk, they would have just answered.
“How is the outside world?” asked the voice again. “Did they ever get around to impeaching Nixon?”
Peter was mixing a drink at the minibar while Stacey-thing was entertaining the other monsters in the kitchen. Diana couldn’t find the source of the voice, but she decided that she didn’t care either. It was just one more inexplicable event. She’d experienced plenty of those recently. Too many to even bother cataloguing at this point.
Stacey passed off hosting of the thing to Peter, who lumbered over with a martini glass delicately clutched in his giant claws. “You drink.”
“Thank you.” She took the glass and sipped it. It wasn’t bad, though she wasn’t much of a drinker and had never had a martini in her life, so she couldn’t tell if this one qualified as the stuff of legend.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Guests!” growled Peter-thing as he lurched to answer the knock.
“Never really a fan of martinis,” said Diana’s unseen conversationalist.
Zap floated over and had a seat in a recliner. The eyeball monster laid his tentacles on the armrests and leaned back. “Feels good to take a load off.”
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“I see the multiverse in ways your pathetic senses cannot fathom. If I’m looking in your direction, rest assured that I am not staring at you. I’m simply staring around you at something much more interesting, at levels of reality that you would find both awe-inspiring and psychosis-inducing.”
“If you’re staring at the universe, why does it tend to be the universe behind me?”
He blinked. She’d never seen him blink before. Given that his body was more or less one basketball-sized eye, it took longer than a standard blink. At least three times as long. This was still very fast, but noticeably long for a blink.
“The hubris,” he said. “The unapologetic egotism. Do you really think that with everything I can see, the worlds upon worlds that fall within my merest glance, that you, a speck of dust floating in a roiling sea of infinite possibilities, would be able to hold my interest for even the briefest, most fleeting of moments?”