Nutmeg

The sun’s vigilance had long since come to an end when the eager three commenced their revelry.  The party favor was consumed an hour preceding the climax of the night and they had spent the time leading up to that moment drowning in fermented decadence.  Empty bottles clad the antique table around which they congregated like a fluorescent flame attracting spellbound gnats. 

Despite their giddy drunkenness, the trio was not present in the spirits before them, but in the notion at the forefront of their minds that this was only a precursor to what would come.  The table’s centerpiece, a mere ceramic jar, occupied the focal point of their vision, for its contents would induce the pending occurrences they so fervently awaited.  At the onset of their gathering, the acquaintances had each removed and ingested two teaspoons of powdered spice from that jar.  Now, chemicals began to escape from their digestive tracts and swam through inebriated capillaries to the very source of cognition, mutating their perception with a gradual vengeance.   

First, the ceramic jar began to pulsate until it expanded to twice its girth.  As it remained stationary, all other household objects converged with the walls as the architectural borders closed in on their captives.  The metal vines of the chandelier above them morphed into lanky arms that ignited at the fingertips where small candles once existed and were engulfed by flame.  As though summoned from hell, the burning limbs extended towards the compacting ramparts, peeling characters from the artwork to form the cast of their demonic ball.  The fiery silhouettes danced around them with flailing appendages, enticing them with hissing aggravation.  At this moment the puppeteers appointed their first prey. 

The sweltering heat ensued by the hellish masquerade caused the imbibed liquor within his stomach to rapidly project from the only exit it recalled.  His acquaintances watched in horror as he spewed out his bones into the empty glasses and collapsed.  In desperation, they reached for the bodily fragments, split them in two, and wished for relief from this experience they instantly regretted.  They hastily clawed a passage through the riot of sprites towards the exit of the home and fled down the unavoidable paths their fates held in store.  They left their friend behind on his wooden pedestal for the observant demons to gawk at, so as not to equally fall victim to the hands that claimed him.