We don’t celebrate Halloween where I come from. My main exposure to it as a kid was through Western media, and while I didn’t fully understand it, I found the general aesthetic of the holiday pretty neat and wished to experience it someday.
Fast forward about fifteen years and I did end up moving to the US, albeit for more practical reasons. As a twenty-something woman, it was safe to say I had blown my chance at trick-or-treating, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get into the Halloween spirit in other ways. It just so happened that one of my coworkers was throwing a spooky-themed party at his house as a sort of impromptu team-building event. I admittedly had a thing for said coworker, so I was going regardless of the premise, but the fact that it was Halloween did boost my excitement up a notch.
As soon as I stepped through that door, I immediately realized how underdressed for the occasion I was. I didn’t expect people to go all out for a work event, but there was Bill from HR walking around in full mummy getup and Mary, our supervisor, strutting her stuff as a sexy witch. Meanwhile, there was I, dressed in an ordinary shirt and slacks and with my dumb little devil horns on, standing in the middle of it all like a sore thumb. I rarely feel socially awkward, but this was definitely one of those moments, especially since I was the “new girl” still trying to make an impression.
Thankfully the coworker I was interested in was too busy running back and forth from the kitchen to really pay me any special attention. I figured my best course of action was to just blend with the background and dip after an hour or two.
And then I saw him.
I’m not exaggerating when I say he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He wasn’t in costume either, but I don’t think it mattered in his case. He could’ve turned up in a tracksuit and flip flops and people would still want to be around him. He was tall, but not so tall that I felt intimidated walking up to him. His hair was brown with a reddish, mahogany tone and fell in long curls that accentuated his cheekbones. He had a short ginger beard that, when combined with his plaid shirt, made him look like he was about to whip out an acoustic guitar at any minute. If you told teenage me to design her ideal boyfriend, it’d literally just be him.
“Didn’t get the memo either, huh?” I asked with the most easy-going smile I could muster. I’d never approached anyone first before, but with him it just felt so natural, like it was the obvious thing to do.
He lifted his green eyes from the glowing screen of his phone and over to me. My chest fluttered when he smiled. It wasn’t love at first sight, no—that’d be understating it. It was something more baseline, primal, but just calling it lust wouldn’t have done it justice either. Imagine you’ve spent your entire existence walking on the ground, then one day the universe gives you the ability to fly. You’ve never had the desire to fly before. But now that you’ve experienced what it’s like to soar through the clouds, you can’t picture living without it.
“You think I normally dress like this?” He jokingly replied.
I couldn’t place his accent. Hispanic maybe? Definitely not what I expected, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.
We hit it off straight away. Never had a man, especially one I’d just met, made me feel so at ease in his company before. Even though I’d just learned his name, it felt like we were old classmates having a long-overdue reunion.
Oscar. It suited him.
Everything he did, everything he said, it just radiated this indescribable aura. It was captivating and, worse, hopelessly addictive. Every single time he acknowledged me, laughed at my jokes, or gave me a knowing wink, it just made me want him even more. And it was as if he knew. No, there were no ifs or buts about it—he definitely knew. He knew and he was using it against me, torturing me, seeing how far he could push me before I break. And break I did.
It was I who led him into the upstairs bathroom, away from my coworkers’ prying eyes. It was I who practically pinned him to the wall and locked our tongues together. His stubble against my chin, his dexterous hands down my back…
Euphoria in its most distilled form.
As I began unbuttoning his shirt, he abruptly grabbed my wrist with one hand and the other he placed between us. I protested with a series of exasperated whines, unable to even put my frustration into words. Thankfully, his salacious smirk assured me that this awful craving wouldn’t go unsated for much longer.
“Not here” He said “My place’s just down the block.”
“Right. Okay…” I breathlessly agreed.
I tried to sound playful, but my desperation was obvious. This was no longer a want; it was a need that was burning me from the inside out. I needed to feel him. To taste him. I felt like my heart was going to give out if I didn’t.
To my relief, the walk to his flat was indeed brisk. I had to physically hold myself back from jumping his bones while we were alone in the elevator. The first thing I noticed when we entered his apartment was all of the boxes scattered about the place. Either he was in the process of relocating or preparing to do so, but I figured we could save that conversation for our pillow talk later. Talking about his living situation was the last thing on my mind at the time.
As soon as we crossed the threshold of his bedroom, our dynamic instantly shifted. It seemed as though Oscar had left his whole calm and reserved act at the door. He assertively pushed me onto the bed and positioned himself above me. His breath melted my skin, but his lips were quick to cool it. His fingertips were like branding irons as he worked his way down to my thighs, marking every inch of me as his own. My mind went blank. Pain and pleasure mixed together in a forbidden cocktail from which I greedily drank every last drop. Livestock—that’s all I was. That’s all I was ever meant to be. A part of me subconsciously knew that I was about to die, but I didn’t care. What was the point of living if I’d never experience such ecstasy again?
Suddenly, his doorbell rang, scattering the haze clouding my thoughts for a short while. I looked down and saw the mop of unruly reddish locks pull back from between my legs. He groaned loudly in annoyance:
“Shit. The old bag downstairs must’ve called the cops again ‘cause of the noise. Stay put. I’ll be right back.”
He threw a bathrobe on and exited the room, gently closing the door behind himself, almost as if he was trying to hide me. I flopped back against the now thoroughly soaked mattress. My vision spun and my entire body still ached with desire. Through the wall, I could hear Oscar and a sterner, deeper voice exchanging words. How long was this going to take?
Against Oscar’s request, I slid out of bed and staggered towards the ivory door that appeared to lead to a bathroom. I felt like I was being boiled alive in my own sweat; I needed to find a way to cool off, at least until he came back to finish what he’d started. On my way there, however, something else caught my attention.
I couldn’t help but notice that the door to the closet was sticking out in a weird way, kind of like it was being pushed from the inside by something heavy. Must be the typical guy thing of piling all their junk in one place. My dad was guilty of the same. I still remember the time when my parents took away my drawing tablet as a punishment because I flunked geography. I tried to sneak into their room while they were asleep and steal it, only to end up buried beneath an avalanche of clothes and sports memorabilia when I opened dad’s side of their shared wardrobe.
Still, I didn’t have anything better to occupy me, and Oscar was taking his sweet time chatting up the officer. Any distraction from the throbbing heat coursing throughout my lower half was a welcomed one.
I approached the bulging door, picking my bra up on the way there and tossing it back on the bed. The door was one of those fancy slidey ones. As my warm palm met the cold handle, I began to register a strange noise emanating from the other side. It was slow and rhythmic—almost whispery, in a way. I pressed my ear to the wooden surface, closed my eyes and listened. It sounded like…
Breathing?
There was no way. Surely not. But what else could it have been? A hissing pipe, maybe? Do pipes run through closets? I steadied my own breathing, grabbed the handle more firmly and decided to just rip the proverbial band-aid off. If I was wrong, the worst thing that could’ve happened is that I would’ve totally killed the mood and then had to pitch in to help Oscar clean up the mess.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t.
Two whole goddamn bodies came tumbling forth from the closet. One belonged to a man and the other to a woman. At least, as far as I could tell. They were so shriveled that it was difficult to discern, reduced to little more than skeletons wrapped in a sheet of skin. It was as if all traces of moisture had been completely drained from them.
The man was lifeless. I watched in horror as blood pooled beneath his skull and over the vinyl flooring. I would’ve assumed the woman dead too, at first, but then she began to stir. She tried and tried to get to her knees, but kept slipping. I wanted to help. I really did. I was just so fucking terrified; I couldn’t move a muscle. Finally, she succumbed to her frailty and collapsed back onto the floor, where she continued flailing her useless limbs in a pitiful display of helplessness.
What did that fuck do to them? Was he… about to do the same thing to me? The thought caused my throat to contract. Shock became panic and that’s when the rush of adrenaline kicked in. My body was telling me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get my ass moving, I’d wind up exactly like them. I crouched down beside the two bodies, frantically rummaging through the pile of discarded clothes. My phone had to be in there somewhere. It had to be. A modicum of relief washed over me when I finally found the pocket where it was hiding and managed to fish it out.
Before I could stand back up, the shriveled woman suddenly lunged at me, grabbing me by the ankle. My first instinct was to pull away, but her grip held surprisingly strong, despite the horrible pop that came from her shoulder.
Her face was difficult to look at. It was so gaunt that I could actually see the shape of her teeth through her cheeks. She placed the finger of her other hand to what remained of her lips. Then, she pointed towards the bottom drawer of the nightstand. With tears welling up in my eyes from fear, I gave a nod and gingerly opened it. In it was a gun.
I clutched it against my bare chest, feeling its weight, then checked the magazine. It had all its rounds. I pushed it back in with shaking hands, pulled the slide, and finally released the safety. One of the first things I did when I came to the US was visit my local shooting range. It was just for fun; I never thought I’d actually have to put what I learned there into practice.
A part of me still couldn’t believe that this was really fucking happening.
Pistol in one hand and my phone in the other, I was finally allowed to rise to my feet. Standing on the opposite side of the bed that separated us was the sick son of a bitch himself. He didn’t say anything, didn’t reprimand me. His expression was one of mild annoyance, as if I were some cockroach that had crawled out of his drain.
“Look, I just called the cops…” I bluffed, waving my phone around while concealing the loaded firearm behind my back. I figured there was no point in escalating tensions any more than they already were. “ If I were you, I’d leave now before they come back.”
No reaction, not even a mocking smirk. He just stood there like a mannequin, his face half-illuminated by the arrangement of LED lights on the wall.
“Okay. I get it. You probably want to clean this mess up before they show up. I’ll just go and leave you to it then, yeah?”
Carefully, with the gun still pressed to my lower back, I circled around the bed while maintaining eye contact. As I got about halfway over to his side, however, his entire head suddenly began to spasm. His body stayed perfectly still, but his head kept jerking back and forth, as if he was trying to snap his own neck. I screamed as what looked to be two horns emerged from his eye sockets. The gleaming, bony projections extended forward and then coiled against his skull, scraping against the side of it before looping back around, this time with shreds of his own hair and flesh hanging from their pointed tips.
I shut my eyes and blindly ran past the horrifying scene, bursting out into the living room and making a beeline for the front door. Of course, it was locked. Tears streaming down my face, I started throwing my whole body against it in complete panic, but, unsurprisingly, my 100 lbs ass didn’t even make a dent. I cried and shrieked for help at the top of my lungs. If the neighbors had a problem with my moaning before, there was no way they couldn’t hear me now. That cop had to be on his way back. The question was, would I’ve survived long enough for it to matter?
There was a wet chuckle from the living room behind me. I snapped back around, gun pointed straight. That thing, that monster, was standing between the couch and the TV, fully in the nude. There was an oozing slit stretching from its naval base to its pubic area. It giggled as it held it open. From it slipped out what I can only describe as a long, fleshy, pulsating tendril, at the disgusting end of which was something resembling a giant hypodermic needle. So that’s what it did to them…
I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth, grabbed the pistol with both hands and opened fire. The first bullet hit the couch, the second grazed the edges of the wall, but the rest found their mark, landing straight in its chest and causing it to stagger. I fired again and again, the recoil of each shot rattling every single bone in my arms. I’m not sure how many rounds I let fly before I finally stopped to inspect the damage.
That monstrosity, or demon, or whatever the hell it was, was gone. No body, no traces of blood—just gone. But…how? I had my sights set on it the entire time. Did it magically poof away while I blinked or something? I slowly made my way to the center of the living room. Silence—nothing but the ringing in my ears. I then noticed the alternating red and blue lights coming from the window and jogged over to check. There were several police vehicles parked on the street upfront. Fucking finally. I pressed my forehead to the glass. Was it over? It had to be over, right? Sure, I would’ve had a lot of explaining to do, but at least I was alive.
My phone buzzed. I looked down at its cracked screen. There was a text message from a number I didn’t recognize:
“Can’t wait for our second date C:”