The flashing strobe lights blinding me, the pounding bass in my ears, strangers' faces melting past in an ocean of dancing bodies, all of it spiralling around me, bolstering me around into a frenzy of sickening dizziness. My tired heart thudded and banged against my ribs; convulsing inside my chest, forcing the burning alcohol from my stomach with every violent, loud beat. It scaled further and further up my throat, until it reached my mouth. I felt myself gag in my raucous, fitful sleep. I bolted up.
There was silence for a second before my ears split open into a deafening ringing. My eyes were dry, sore and misty; I gagged again, it felt more solid than the first one. I was disorientated; I stumbled from where I had been sleeping, tripping on something as I did so. This wasn't my hotel room. I searched desperately for a door and fell into a bathroom. I immediately threw up into the toilet; streams of acidic, scorching alcohol heaving from my body. Tears teemed from my eyes. My nose was blocked, and my nostrils were stinging; I couldn't breathe.
Once the vomit slowed, I took several deep, desperate gulps of air. There was less spinning, the world seemed more stable. I rose slowly, leaving the mildly comforting coolness of the bathroom floor. I went back into the dark room I'd been in before. I'd been lying in a bed, and I wasn't alone; someone was under the covers.
I felt sick all over again, my knees started to give out and I found a chair in the corner of the room. I fell into it, it was soft and plush. Whose room was I in? Who was in that bed? What was I wearing? I looked down and saw I was in a t-shirt I didn't recognise; only my underwear was on my bottom half. My eyes were heavy, my heart was beating fast. I plunged into another doze filled with distorted, flitting memories of the night before.
I woke again with a start; I was still in the same place, though the room was lighter. I didn't know how much time had passed since I'd been sick. I heard the sound of a toilet flush, and my stomach dropped. The light in the bathroom clicked off, and the door started to open. I took a deep breath and sat up in the chair I was in; my spine was throbbing because of the position I'd been in.
'Ella?' I asked, trying to focus my eyes on the blurry figure before me. It was definitely her, though her face was bare now, her make up nowhere to be seen - she looked so different that I had to squint.
'Oh good, you're alive. Liam will be happy.' She sounded as nonchalant as she'd been the afternoon before.
'What... what happened last night?' I brought my knees to my chest, trying to cover my bare legs with my arms. 'Why am I here?'
She yawned and fell back into the bed we'd both been in. She was wearing a vest and shorts, then I realised the t-shirt I was wearing must have been hers. 'You came back to the Piazza last night. You remember that?'
'I... yes, I remember.'
I did remember turning up, I remembered texting Liam to tell him when I'd been in the taxi. He'd greeted Bradley and I at the entrance to the warehouse. I also remember the private bar upstairs being louder and busier than earlier on.
'You came in like a fucking whirlwind.' Ella was sniggering. 'You were acting so different, I thought you had an evil twin.'
'What happened to Bradley?'
'Oh, that creep has a name?' Ella sat up, reached for her bag next to the bed and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She offered me one, but I declined, feeling that tightness of nausea in my abdomen again.
'He's... not a creep.' But I felt a resistance against those words in my own head; an unsettling feeling of stress when I thought of him.
'Babe, he was... oh god. He was fucking all over you. And once he had some Charlie in him, Jesus.'
