The oysters were all beautifully placed between bits of crushed ice, with segments of lemon and green, fragrant herbs surrounding them, making the arrangement the center piece of the buffet spread.
Niki had taken care of everything himself well before the guests had a chance to notice him. Not that they would. For them the help was just a shadowy bunch of people that reacted to hand signals and retreated quietly when not needed.
He did not want to kill them or anything, he just wanted to make them a bit sick, so all their socials were tainted with the madness of the day. All their glittery, fake online personas to suffer at his own hand.
How had it got to this? It was stupid really, as most mindless things are.
At a different party, on another occasion, when the catering company Niki was working for had been employed to serve drinks and canapes, out of boredom or in need of a new gimmick, the group led by the Queen Bee herself, Skylar Jones, decided to take over the service from the catering staff, while being extremely rude and actually pretending they were helping out.
When he saw the clips online Niki felt sick to his stomach. They had made it look like the staff was overwhelmed and unable to cope and they, the golden children, had helped out by serving the guests.
It was ridiculous and offensive. They came out as heroes, when in fact, in the moment itself, they had been incredibly difficult and unpleasant to the staff who did not have any other option but to relinquish their trays or whatever they were doing to the bunch of impudent youths.
As expected they were found to be adorable, wonderful, showing how great this generation was. Reading the comments just made Niki even angrier. It all felt so unfair.
The person that had contracted them for the day only decided to pay half the money, as, they said, the catering staff had gotten help from the guests themselves, so did not deserve to be paid the full amount.
The catering manager did not dare dispute this, one bad review and they were done, so he just deducted the money from the staff who ended up being paid next to nothing after all the other expenses were covered.
Ever since that incident Niki had had it in for the entitled, lying youth, and made all sorts of plans to get even. But, when it came to the actual thing, it turned out to be a lot easier than any of his fantasies.
On Monday that week, the catering manager assembled all of them in the kitchen and advised that there will be an event in the same neighborhood as ‘the incident’ as it had come to be referred to, and that everybody needed to be on their best behavior, ready for anything out of the ordinary.
The staff did not dare to ask about pay, it was a too sensitive subject, but inside, they were all dreading working that party.
Niki did not share his plan to anyone, and was determined to be seen as little as possible among the staff, so as not to rise any suspicions in the ‘influencers’, as he had heard them using the term when referring to themselves.
It was a difficult moral dilemma, Niki knew that drugging the oysters would also reflect on the catering company, but he was hoping that the nature of the drug would make it more sensational than anything else, plus the catering manager deserved a bit of shaking up too.
Niki had gotten from one of his friends, a pharmacist by trade, but a drug dealer by vocation, a drug that his guy assured him would make anyone taking it go wild and act all crazy. Diligently Niki crushed the pills and added them to the seasoning of the largest oysters on the huge tray. The taste did not really make any difference as people just swallowed them with a bunch of lemon juice.
In the beginning nothing happened, all the oysters disappeared gulped down by the greedy youths. He heard them talk about how they only eat super foods and how oysters are the best and so on, Niki was just waiting for the real party to start.
He was not to wait long, because in the next half hour it was like some of the guests had gone mad, and what Niki loved the most was that their friends were filming them for their socials. Niki loved the irony that they were hurting themselves from within.
All the aura of golden children was shattered when the Queen Bee started to yell all sorts of insults at the staff while stripping her dress and unveiling underneath a strange corset contraption that seemed to suffocate her.
Other youths that kept saying that they do not have sex as they are keeping themselves had started to make out, quite explicitly, in plain view.
The gathering felt more like a frat party than like a stylish affair.
Niki watched it all and left right before some of the concerned parents had started to arrive.
Next day he looked up the names he knew and felt vindicated. The event for sure had revealed some of the true colors of the sanctimonious youth.
‘Revenge can sometimes be sweet and worth the effort.’, Niki thought while watching a clip of the wobbling Queen Bee yell at random people at the party, while only wearing her under clothes.