Chapter Thirty-seven: In Which There is a Party and Vod-fucking-ka

In the week that followed, everything was mostly chaos, and Jeff was glad for it. It gave he and Jack less reason to be together and kept his mind off of...it. After much wheedling and pleading and promising, he and Eyeless and Hoodie had managed to convince Slender to let them stay to see the other proxies off. They were still working on getting him to agree to let them help rescue the other thousand-some proxies, but Jeff figured he would come around. Maybe.

It wasn't their problem, Slender said. His job was done, he said. He had them. The other thousand meant nothing to him. The same couldn't be said for Jeff and his brothers. Slender was right— Jeff could agree with him, mostly. The other proxies really didn't concern them. But one of the proxies' major argument points was that so long as the EMFR existed, they were in danger. It needed to be destroyed. And it seemed like they had a kind of duty now. After discovering the horrors the other thousand were still being submitted to, and after experiencing a fraction of it themselves, it felt important to free the other proxies— the right way. Not like the EMFR wanted to do. To return them to their masters, to let them feel what they'd felt when they were reunited with Slender. It felt incredibly important. The biggest job, the one Slender hadn't given quite yet. But he would. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

As for the present, though, it was fast and harried. The masters that could be summoned were summoned, and the ones that weren't were tracked down by BEN, who declared he had jumped through enough phones, computers, and wires to last a lifetime and then some. During the first three days masters came and gathered their proxies. They were brought up to speed by Slender, Eyeless, and their own proxies. Then they were dismissed. Several chose to stay after hearing about the remaining burners. Maybe it was the same sense of duty settled on Jeff's shoulders that encouraged them to do so. Maybe it was for revenge. Jeff could agree with that, too. More than agree. But why they stayed didn't matter to him. It only mattered that they and their proxies were there to fight if they were needed.

The entire compound was on lookout for burners. They had scouts aboveground and guards belowground, all armed to the teeth. It was the fourth day of the week when one proxy shot another- purely accidental, but it had taken Eyeless two hours of surgery without anesthesia and a very angry master to repair the wound. Even aboveground, they could hear the proxy screaming for about ten minutes. And then Eyeless must have made a decision, because the proxy didn't scream anymore and she had a large lump on her head when Jeff saw her again.

He had to talk to Jack again on the eighth day. It wasn't willingly, not really, but when the thirteenth master was found and came to the compound, there was a celebration. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll BEN illegally downloaded onto the compound computers. There was a lot of alcohol, too. The classic beer, the classy red wine (one of the few alcoholic things Jeff could stand), the oldschool rum, and— if that all weren't bad enough— there was vodka. Vod-fucking-ka.

Now, Jeff didn't have anything against being drunk. He liked being drunk. He just didn't like getting drunk. He'd have to be drunk to get drunk. There was also the little-bitty fact that with mostly everyone drunk, the burners would have a easy job dispatching a good number of them. They kept about twenty proxies sober to guard the aboveground and the entrance, but the rest were essentially useless. It was good that the twenty they kept were powerful, and that would give them some strength, but it still annoyed Jeff. It was irresponsible.

Also, he hated the smell and taste of alcohol. Hated, loathed, despised. Everyone at the Mansion knew it— well, most everyone. Maybe not all the newbies. But the solution to this problem was fairly simple. Jeff stayed far, far away from the party, aboveground and close to the barn, which Slenderman had gathered all of their things out of (Jeff had his baby back.) Unfortunately, he'd been stuck between a rock and a hard place, and now he was stuck with Jack. But that was kind of okay, because Jack left him alone for the first few minutes— and then if he spoke, he spoke normally, and gradually Jeff relaxed.

Yeah, that lasted all of an hour. After that, Max happened. "— and then I teleported away, right, and I thought that was the end of that, but it wasn't. See, if I can't see where I'm teleporting, if I only have a vague idea, I can go pretty much anywhere within a ten mile radius. So I'd thought about going back to the cabin by the river, but I ended up teleporting right above the river, and I fall in and nearly drown before I can get out, because the water's distracting, you know, I couldn't think to teleport. And then when I was up on the bank there was this goose. This damn mean goose, and it chased me, and I was not in the mood and— "

"Hey, Jackie, Jeffy, wassup? You tellin' that goose story again, Jack?" Max was a sad specimen of human being. He was short and scrawny and weak and reminded Jeff of a chihuahua. Thought it was a big dog, yapped until it was bitten. His saving grace was his quick wit— which today, it appeared, had been drowned in vodka. Vod-fucking-ka. He stood to the side of Jeff and Jack, swaying on his feet and clutching a bottle of the damned stuff.

"Yeah," Jack said, grinning. "Like it so much you wanna listen again?"

"Nah," Max said. "Wanted to get outta there." He hooked his finger over his shoulder towards the cellar door. "Gettin' kind of intimate, you know what I mean?" He sat himself down between them and threw back another mouthful of vod-fucking-ka. The smell slithered into Jeff's nose, crawled up into his head and down his throat, burning and making the world spin and twist. He wanted it gone fucking gone. Max did not.

When Jeff grabbed for the bottle, Max jerked it out of his reach. "Woah, man, you want some just ask."

"Give it," Jeff growled.

"Jeff?" Jack asked.

"Man— " Max started.

He didn't finish. Jeff snagged for the bottle again, it was too much too close, and then it slipped out of Max's fingers and half into his and then Max cracked an elbow across his jaw and his teeth clicked together and his fingers loosened and the bottle tumbled over itself, splashing vodka onto their shirts. Jeff froze. He burned. "Aw, man— "

"Jeff, what the hell?" Jack asked, narrowing his eyes. White. White like skin. Bleached. Burned. Vodka. Burning. He was burning-

they were going to burn him