Explicit

You had no idea how long you’d been skulking around this place for. It could have been a few days just as easily as it could have been a few hours. Your brain’s capacity to process the passage of time had fallen by the wayside amid the constant switching from tense, methodical planning of every single step you were to make to instinctual dashes for survival in a desperate effort to get away from those, those things.

Joshua couldn't sleep. It was hot, the windows were open, even the one with no screen and he lay on top of his sheets and comforter. His eyes stared unblinkingly at the jungle of vines that hung down from the red foliage above. At least that's what it looked like from the dim glow from the streetlamp outside the window, but he knew what it really was, a curtain of coiled ribbons streaming down from the tied knots of large 18" red balloons that pressed against the ceiling. His thoughts shimmered back to this afternoon when the new lady from next door appeared at his doorstep.

SLAM

The door to Shannon's room flew open, rebounding against the wall with a loud report. She started, phone slipping through her fingers, and looked up from where she lounged on her bed. She was tall and slender, hair long and blonde, wearing a snug blue crop top with fashionably ripped jeans clinging to her hips and tight white socks on her feet.

"Don't you ever knock?" she said, staring at the girl standing in the doorway, shorter and dark-haired and grinning like an idiot.

Darren was a ripped 26-year-old guy. He was crazy about balloons. So much, he even tried inflating him self some times to become as close to being a balloon as possible. He tried it with a pump, water and even with air cylinders. That things he did so often, he'd even got some growth in his inflation. He could look like he was pregnant with twins and more. He owned a old theater that he made in to a living/party place for him and his friends. He loved to inflate large balloons with helium and let them fly to the very high ceilings.