The time read 3:16AM on her laptop, which also happened to be the only light source in the common area in the old 2-bedroom apartment she and her roommates rented together.
She should be asleep.
Why wasn't she asleep?
The printout papers and the idea journal Regina had scattered around the coffee table she couldn't even see in the dark told her exactly why she was awake in the middle of the night: university. Specifically, it was her senior thesis at FIT, where she was to make a special occasion outfit for the Senior Show in the spring.
Regina had just had her first meeting with her assigned mentor today—now yesterday—and while Elena Jill had been pretty positive of her ideas, Regina wasn't. And that was all that mattered as far as she was concerned.
Really, what was the point of making something she felt was mediocre when she could submit something great? Why settle if she was dissatisfied?
The woman knew she tended to have the classic bad traits of an artist. It was something she had long come to terms with though. That search for a vision and that passion to make the vision a reality was what drove her in life—what was wrong with that?
She was self-aware enough she tried to keep her moodiness and obsessive tendencies from affecting others.
Her roommates had cheered her on if they knew her tendencies or had tried to tell her to stop being so hard on herself (that had been Lucille). They had stayed with her until a few hours ago, complaining about the ghost they swore up and down haunted this apartment—Lolly the cat hissing at what looked like empty space was the last straw for them before they retreated to their bedrooms in a rush.
Talk about female solidarity, people. Regina rolled her eyes remembering how they had rushed off.
That had been around five hours ago. Now, the fashion design student was beginning to feel the exhaustion creep up on her and her mind wandering when she thought she made a breakthrough.
Seriously, why did this year's theme have to be something so annoying?
Internally grumbling, the twenty-one year old made sure her monitor wouldn't fall asleep—it was her only light source other than her phone—before getting up and walking toward the kitchen in the dark.
As for the apartment purportedly being haunted, it wasn't like Regina didn't believe in ghosts or that the apartment was NOT haunted. Rather, it was more like the woman didn't care whether it was haunted or not.
Who cared about a possible haunting as long as the "dirty things" were not harmful to her?
She only used the dim light of her unlocked phone to find the tea, emptying the tea ball strainer before refilling it, and she was soon walking slowly back to the living room once she got hot water from the dispenser.
Setting the mug down on the coaster, she glanced to her laptop and froze.
The window for ChatterBox was at the front.
ChatterBox on the desktop was not known to pop-up. And she hadn't even had ChatterBox open, as far as she remembered.
Narrowing her eyes, she glanced around herself suspiciously. Finding nothing—neither ghost nor human—Regina eventually shrugged and turned back to her laptop.
She frowned when she realized she was currently tabbed into a group she didn't recall being in before.
"... 'Demons Know How to Party'?" she muttered the group name to herself in confusion.
She read the messages rapidly flying past for understanding and just got more flabbergasted in return. What in the world were they talking about? Some movie?
Shaking her head, Regina recalled ChatterBox actually had a prompt if you were invited to a group chat, so she scrolled up the super active chat to look for her join message.
The university student wasn't really surprised by the way the chat was on fire, once she thought about it. The only reason she had ChatterBox was that it was a popular international messaging app that was available in all countries as long as one had internet. And she meant ALL countries—she first got the app to talk to her friends in Japan and Korea and started adding family from China once they realized she had ChatterBox.
It might be ass o'clock in the morning here but it was around lunchtime for Europe and afternoon for Asia.
Eventually, she found her join message and looked at the timestamps of the messages it was sandwiched between. Squinting in thought, the twenty-one year old figured she joined when she was in the kitchen.
…
Regina looked away and blindly gazed around the seemingly empty living room again, having lost her night vision from the dim light of the monitor.
Well. Maybe her roommates might be right about the apartment being haunted.
But messing around her laptop and having her join a random group chat? Was the ghost bored or something?
She skimmed through the message history for clues and soon figured out they must have missed her join message because it was smack dab in the middle of an argument between—she counted—two people with others heckling or agreeing and generally just encouraging the argument.
It was about the group name.
Death in the Afternoon had apparently changed the group name and Wren greatly disagreed with the sentiment.
The way they argued was weird though—specifically in the details. Most of the messages implied Death in the Afternoon was a demon, like the kind the group name mentioned. Not demon-like but a demon.
They were also mentioning stuff that happened centuries ago. Death in the Afternoon kept on replying "wasn't me" and that he was in some other location or "oh, right, that. That was fun, haha."
What in the world was happening in this chat?
Regina's brows were furrowed as she continued to read.
Did the ghost make her join a group of cultists? Neo-pagans? RPers?!
"Hey, why did you use my account. Use your own account," Regina was just about done for the night. Well, early morning.
Scrolling closer to the latest messages, she saw that she was finally mentioned. One of the ones not participating finally pointed out someone new joined.
Mayfaire joked, "You two must have scared them mute."
"What a time to join," laughed another.
Finally, one of the pair said something not related to the argument, which had somehow turned to the best methods for a party (it involved very bizarre rituals).
Wren: "@arsin Welcome! Please ignore the idiot."
The person with the cocktail name, Death in the Afternoon, also addressed her, "Hey newcomer, what do you think is better for an orgion? Midnight or full moon?"
Regina stared.
Almost automatically, she typed, "Why not both?"
And then she realized what she did—why did she reply to these strangers at all?! Did they just ask her what time would be the best to enact a sex ritual of all things? Worst of all, she answered before her brain caught up to her actions.
Maybe she should forget about that Earl Grey (which was, in all likelihood, over-steeped by this point) and sleep.
Death in the Afternoon laughed, "Hahaha, she got us there!"
"…" Wren had been rendered to ellipses.
HandsomeHunk (what is with that nickname) seemed to perk up. "She?"
…
Since she used ChatterBox to talk to people she only knew in real life, her profile picture was an actual picture of herself instead of how it was like with her public Instagram.
"Beauty!" HandsomeHunk exclaimed a moment later. "Is that you in your pfp? Are you single? Twenty-one is a good age."
Oh. That was why he had a nickname like HandsomeHunk.
Gatsby laughed. "Hey, HandsomeHunk, maybe they are really a man and that picture is his girlfriend."
"Or a male pretending to be female," Lady Spider returned slyly.
…
Should Regina feel harassed or weirded out? Maybe both?
Again, before she could reconsider, she replied before they could start accusing her of something else. "I'm female."
"Oh, dull," Circe replied.
HandsomeHunk: "Beauty! Are you really twenty-one?"
Lady Spider: "You don't ask a lady her age, boya."
HandsomeHunk: "Yeah, yeah, I know that! But I have to, considering this chat. I mean you are—"
Lady Spider sent an expressionless emoji and HandsomeHunk quickly changed his tune.
"You are a beautiful lady in her prime! Not a day over thirty—twenty-five!"
||Death in the Afternoon: lol
||Lady Spider: Hn.
||Lady Spider: Welcome, @arsin, it's nice to have another woman in this group.
||HandsomeGuy: 😭
||HandsomeGuy: Agreed tho
What the hell was going on.