Turks Party 34

Turks Party 34 – The End
By: Zeng Li

AUTHOR’S VERY IMPORTANT NOTES: For the record, I have not written an all-new “Turk Party” fic since 2005. This is the final one I am going to write, and it’s actually been in the works for nearly 18 months now. It has always been planned to hold a double-meaning. Not only does it draw an end to the Turk Party series, but it also weaves in implications as to how I feel as a writer. See if you can figure it out. (“Other” characters named are Turks from FF7: Before Crisis.)

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It had been a while since the Shinra group got together off of company time to just hang out and loosen up. The rigors of the job made them not even miss their customary Friday night parties, but once their schedules freed up, it was inevitable to happen again one day.

Everyone felt great. A party was just what they needed to relax following a trying situation that had taken everyone from Midgar to Junon and to other parts of the world. Now, they were all back in Midgar. Reno took the extra cash he’d earned during his extended assignment and outfitted his townhouse with food, drink, and the most obnoxious music and stereo system he could threaten a clerk to sell him for below cost.

“Free booze!” Scarlet simply replied, pumping a fist into the air as Reno stopped by her office to remind her of the night’s coming party.

Reeve just grinned, pointing the tip of his screw driver at Reno with a wink, his other hands buried in the circuitry of some robotic work in progress. In the same room, Rafe was cleaning his twin hand guns and stated that with all the action recently in Junon, he’d love an evening to kick back and chill.

Rosalind declined the invitation, but Kira was more than happy to be invited. “See you there!” she waved as Reno moved on to invite more victims.

Rufus promised that he had a new method to cheat at billiards that would be harder to detect, and in response Rude promised to be there to catch him red-handed.

Samantha was more love-struck. “I haven’t spent much time with Rafe since he got back from Junon,” she said. “You don’t mind if we snuggle a little bit, do you?” Reno never minded snuggling and actually invited himself to join in if they wanted. Sam scowled, and Reno scampered off, leaving her wondering which of them he was hoping to snuggle with…the guy or the girl.

Damon looked forward to the party as well. Adrian agreed to be there, too, as long as Reno granted him amnesty from the sick and possibly perverse games that were a staple of the parties. Reno agreed since he was always kinder to his visually-challenged colleague.

“Hey, you’re my best buddy, right!?” Rodney said, grinning ear to ear. Reno’s eyes narrowed seductively for a moment before moving on to the last two potential victims on his standard guest list.

“Yo, Tseng!?” he said late in the day, walking into his boss’s office.

“I know…I heard…” Tseng replied plainly to the intrusion without even hearing an invite. Elena stood beside his desk presumably there on business.

“It’s just not a party without you,” Reno said.

“Evidentially…”

“Blondie…?”

“Anything to be with Tseng in a casual atmosphere,” she said, walking away from his desk as if her reason for visitation could wait.

It was all set. Just about everyone would be there and the Friday tradition seemed ready to rekindle into the unbridled mass of mayhem that only Reno could orchestrate.

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Twelve guests plus Reno made thirteen. There was enough food and drink for twice as many, which considering Scarlet was due to come, at least there was plenty of extra booze. Reno had even weaseled an extra hour to get ready by asking Tseng to let him leave work early.

He vacuumed the floors, not that it would matter by night’s end. He hastily ran the dishwasher so guests would have something to eat and drink from, about ten percent of which was likely to be broken by midnight. He finally got around to replacing the light bulb at the top of the stairs. Pizza delivery was pre-arranged to arrive at 8pm, and pay-per-view extreme wrestling had been ordered on the TV.

Nothing would go wrong this time. In fact, he hadn’t even had the time to think up a sick party game aimed at getting his boss naked, so the lucky bastard would finally have a night free of torment. Aside from a perpetual suspicion that Reno was up to something, that is.

He would win their trust again. Enough time had gone by, but prior memories were tough to erase. He’d lure them into a sense of security this time. After all, even he needed to unwind.

It was 6pm, and no one had arrived yet. Reno had amazingly gotten everything done that he needed to. For now, he sat on the sofa with his sock-covered feet up on the recently cleaned coffee table between bowls of chips and cheese doodles. His expectations drove off of the momentum of his hard work to get ready for the gathering. The TV was off, and the stereo simply laid in wait. Surely the neighbors were peering out their windows by now, for the scourge of the neighborhood had returned and it was Friday.

Fueled by his neighbors’ fear and the enthusiasm of his colleagues, Reno began not enjoying the seemingly long and silent wait for his guests to arrive.

Half past six. His arms were folded across his chest, the bowl of cheese doodles in his lap. He stared blankly at the wall in front of him and the dark television set.

Seven o’clock and something was wrong. Quarter past seven, he called to cancel the pizza delivery then debated which of the delinquents he’d call first from his speed-dial.

Thumb on the send button, he switched from Tseng to Reeve to Rodney, ultimately deciding to call none of them.

A single beer went missing from the refrigerator before Reno closed his eyes and fell asleep.

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Everyone would be held accountable for their crime although none would plead guilty to ruining what was supposed to be a fun and casual event.

“Sorry, Reno,” Scarlet said, still hung over the next morning. “I was already drunk and nearly passed out by the time I was supposed to go.”

Reeve picked at a bandage on his thumb. “Yeah…kind of got my finger stuck in the new robot’s mechanism and had to go to the E.R. for stitches,” he said, wincing slightly as his picking irritated the concealed wound.

“I really needed to relax,” Rafe told him when confronted. “Your parties…well…aren’t to relaxing, so I stayed home and chilled. I figured you wouldn’t miss me anyway.”

“I was just too tired,” Kira defended her absence. Samantha admitted that once she found out Rafe and Kira weren’t go, she wasn’t going to go either. In not so many words, she also confessed to having spent the night at Rafe’s place doing a form of relaxing on their own.

Rufus had a plausible out in that he’d been detained at the office thanks to the rigors of being vice president of Shinra. Rude, however, claimed he bailed once he found out Rufus wasn’t able to be there. He figured he was so quiet anyway that his absence would barely be felt above the usual degree of loudness and mayhem.

Damon claimed he had forgotten and made plans with someone else. It was a lame excuse, but inevitably someone was bound to come up with it.

“I got busy with other things and forgot,” Adrian said with a shrug. “It wasn’t that important to me anyway.” He was, at the least, honest…also very lucky that Reno didn’t like punching fellow colleague wearing glasses.

Rodney was a little shy when confronted. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re buddies, but I just figured you’d forgive me if I didn’t show. I had no idea anyone else other than Rosalind had bailed.” He was thus far the only one aside from Reeve that Reno felt like forgiving.

Tseng claimed to be a no-show because after all they’d recently been through, he really didn’t want to be victimized all night by sick games and ploys to make him strip. Elena, upon hearing that Tseng refused to go, decided not to go either. Although neither of them admitted to spending the night together, Reno automatically assumed they were guilty of doing just that no matter how much they denied it.

What made everything worse is that with so many accepted invitations, no one had the decency to call him and let him know they weren’t going to be there. Was it really so much to ask? A short phone call…? A text message…?

Each assuming that they were the only ones to bail out, no one found it important to let him know they weren’t coming. Everyone had something more important, so important in fact that common courtesy was too much for them to extend to the host.

Bitterly returning home that night, Reno looked over his living room, feeling the ghosts of parties long past. Their echoes would remain in the walls, possibly haunting the next tenant to live there some day. He would have to get used to the empty feeling, not only in his heart, but in his home. The living room was silent, no cracks of billiard balls. No darts striking the wooden target. No spilled beverages or stepped-on cheese doodles staining the carpet.

No nothing.

THE END