The Love Party

Good Vibes Only

The bohemians gathered in an old cathedral-turned-event space, preparing for the annual Love Party, a tradition going back a solid six years. They lay draped across each other in heaps of thrifted clothes, faces all turned towards their de-facto preacher, who stood at the front, beneath a stained glass window framed by RGB led lights that pulsed between red and purple. He had grey hair pulled into a ponytail, legs covered in loose linen pants, chest bare but for a heavy assortment of beads and braided jewelry.

“Welcome to Love Party 2025,” he said, and the crowd hooted and clapped. He calmed them with a hand. “Before we get started, let's take a moment to ground ourselves into the earth, into connection with ourselves and each other. I want us all together to take three deep breaths. We’ll breathe in the positivity, and breathe out the negativity. Ready?” The room eagerly fell silent, except for the sound of lungs collectively breathing in the oxygen of positivity and exhaling the CO2 of negativity. An assistant near the back quietly cracked a window.

"My name is Solace," the man said, slowly opening his eyes as though he'd just woken up from a blissful dream. "I'd like to invite us all to drop into our heart energy as we set this sacred container tonight. As we move throughout the space, remember you are powerful co-creators. Your thoughts and intentions are manifestation tools. I'm excited to manifest high vibrational energy into the space with you tonight. Together, we'll create a beautiful field of integration. Take a deep breath and release any doubts or fears that no longer serve you. This is a space of transformation, where the old self can be gently released and your highest potential can emerge. Let's begin this journey together."

He paused. People began snapping their fingers and humming little moans of agreement.

Solace continued. "Tonight we'll start off with something a little different than past parties - we're going to ritually summon Love. Can I have my Guides stand, please?"

In the audience, about a dozen people stood up, holding cloth patchwork bags.

“The Guides will pass out samples of a sacred scent," Solace said, and the Guides began gingerly stepping between the human piles, giving small brown glass containers to outstretched hands.

Solace’s voice went on, deep and hypnotic. "Our very own Zephyr created this special love potion, out of blue lotus, damiana, palo santo, and rose. The blend also includes a rare wild-harvested white sage that comes from the high desert plateaus of New Mexico, gathered by indigenous elders who have maintained their tradition for generations. There's a QR code on the back of the bottles if you'd like to buy a full size. And no, don't - don't spray it yet!" Solace reprimanded the puffs of mist people started shooting into the air. More laughs.

The crowd's murmuring rose with the logistics of making sure everyone got a vial. To bring them back to center, Solace started humming, and everyone started humming in unison, until all voices and the fragments of their attention were caught up in it.

"Now, you'll repeat after me, and at the end we'll all spray the love potion into the air at the same time," said Solace. He shifted his stance into something a little bolder, and then he bellowed: "I call upon the spirit of love."

"I call upon the spirit of love", chanted the crowd.

"I open my heart like a door without a lock", said Solace.

"I open my heart like a door without a lock," said the crowd.

"Let this be the first breath of something new," said Solace, raising his vial up to signal people should get ready to spray.

"Let this be the first breath of something new," said the crowd, raising their vials.

"We drop in to light, love, and positivity", said Solace,

"We drop in to light, love, and positivity," said the crowd,

Solace's voice rose to a pitch. "We summon Love Itself!" he shouted, and misted his vial into the air.

"WE SUMMON LOVE ITSELF!" the crowd howled back. Spritzes of love potion choked the air, and people started laughing and hugging.

Solace beamed his dreamy smile at them again and let them settle down a bit. People were hooting with the ritual climax. He raised his hands. “Now that we have-"

A huge clap of strange thunder interrupted him, thudding through the walls of the building. It was made out of a roar, an earthquake, and the inverted sound of a train. Then, a second later, the wall behind Solace exploded open.

The stained glass shattered, chunks of concrete fell into clouds of dust, smashing the sound equipment and bringing the psychedelic drapery down with it. Solace lurched screaming into the crowd.

A giant creature slammed in through the opening, perhaps two stories tall. It was green and black and pearlescent, like the back of a scarab, and it had maybe a dozen limbs that shone wet with exposed muscle, and hundreds of eyes everywhere, glinting round out of each appendage, on its feet, clustered like flies on the strange blob area that might have been its head. Tentacles slammed up against either side of the walls. Everyone was screaming. It tore into the building like it was a cardboard box. There was an overwhelming smell of fresh greenery.

"I AM LOVE ITSELF,” said Love Itself, with a voice like tectonic plates colliding. “YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME. LET ME LOVE YOU.”

The perfume-soaked crowd lurched back in chaos, evidently uninterested in being loved. A tentacle lashed out, wrapped around the scrambling Solace, and yanked him back into… well not so much a mouth as a temporary opening, which gaped wide and then rolled shut around the man’s white linen robes. In the split second before he disappeared, his screams almost sounded like ecstasy.

It was mayhem. The room became clogged against a mass of fleeing bodies and fallen equipment, people tripping over the cushions on the floor. The tentacles of love kept snaking out, firmly embracing anyone they could find, and pulling them in. One of the guides was trapped behind a fallen speaker and was hurling the little glass vials at the beast. A resin incense burner had fallen onto a pile of dried flowers, and now a fire emanating patchouli smoke burned in one corner. Someone was trying to break a window with a didgeridoo.

Off to the side, bohemians were taking refuge in a converted kitchen-storage alcove adjoining the main hall. A dozen of Love’s eyes watched them from a busy tentacle.

“This is real low vibes, man,” a young man in a crocheted vest said, arms wrapped his girlfriend.

Zephyr - the aforementioned alchemist - threw her hands up. “Wait a minute - if Love is actually pretty low-vibe, maybe we can banish it with high vibes?”

And thus started a plan. Under Zephyr’s direction, they started scouring the equipment in the kitchen, collecting what they needed, trying to ignore the screams and sobs coming from Love’s direction. They painted peace signs on their foreheads using the blood of the fallen. A short, angry woman gathered up propane for the fire performance later, hooked it up to a leaf blower, and added palo santo for fuel. An older man found a bunch of white sage and began stuffing them into cardboard tubes to make smoke bombs. Zephyr started gathering singing bowls. A scrappy teenager in the corner meditating hard, trying to speedrun from Teal to Indigo.

They weren’t ready for the battle to begin, but then, they would never be. Love Itself was slowly rolling closer as it ate nonstop through the mass of bodies, both live and dead alike. Finally, one of its limbs - a five-jointed leg - came down hard directly in front of the refugee’s alcove. The eyes stared at them, each one at a different person.

“Om namah shivaya!” the refugees screamed, desperately. “Om namah shivaya!”

A woman in a tie-dye tunic began playing a djembe drum harder than anybody had ever played a djembe drum before. The ranged squad used rose quartz slingshots to pelt the monster, flinging the crystals above an assembled defensive unit that locked together in a group hug phalanx, chanting “no good, only light, no more darkness in our sight!” The man in the crocheted vest was frantically fondling his girlfriend. Free love was high vibe, right?

It seemed to… work? Love staggered a little under the onslaught of positivity. All of its eyes snapped towards them, and it abandoned the others.

The bohemians threw the white sage smoke bombs, and then the small angry woman came screaming out with her palo santo flamethrower, the propane tank strapped to her back, and the flames lashed around a tentacle.

Love Itself stumbled, and then the tentacle grabbed the woman and flamethrower entirely and ate them.

It was a distraction, and it worked. Zephyr and her core tactical team had surrounded Love Itself, spaced out in equal points. They held out their singing bowls - a makeshift universal oneness EMP - and played as loudly as they could.

Love Itself stumbled, lurched, stumbled again, unable to stand under the onslaught of frantically positive vibes. The air around it warped a little, and then it exploded in impossible brilliance.

And for half a moment, as the light washed over warriors, the bohemians saw the bodies of their consumed brethren in the belly of Love, held briefly in the air as the monster disintegrated. The forms shone with a terrible beauty, and their faces were awash with an utterly perfect peace.

But then Love and its consumed lovers were gone, leaving an empty space in the center of the circle of warriors. It was over. They hugged and laughed and cried a little among the pleasant carnage, the smell of blue lotus, damiana, palo santo, rose, and blood in their nostrils. The night air streamed in through the massive wound in the wall. They had fought with good vibes, they’d won with good vibes, and they would never love again.