Requiem for a NaNo that Nearly Was
So,merry_fates is having a Halloween contest, and here's my entry, finally. Jury is still out on whether or not it fails epic, but it was kind of fun to write. Except when it really, really wasn't. Enjoy anyway, if you want.
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Ives throws his bag of popcorn down in disgust, the Sharpies on his belt jingling. “You win.”
Ash smiles sweetly as somebody else is murdered onscreen. “I am the king, Art Boy. The king.”
We’re midway through Ives and Ash’s annual Halloween competition for Lamest Horror Movie Ever. Ives’ entry Werewolves of Woodstock had been respectable, but it was no match for the eye-scorching lameness that was Thirteen Letters.
The doorbell rings and I grudgingly get up, kicking cats off my lap and I grabbing the half-empty bowl of Snickers bars.
Answering the door was my responsibility, obviously, because it was my house. For some reason we always hung out at my place, even though the couches were lumpy and the TV was staticky and the porch wasn’t heated and the cats hated nearly everyone except me.
All three of the little boys at the door were about five, and all three were dressed as Spider-Man.
“What are you?” one of them asks as I hand out the candy.
I glance down and up again, from ballerina flats to skinny jeans to ratty grey sweater to t-shirt. None of us were in costume, Ash having ditched her “ironic” cardboard box and foil robot costume a couple hours earlier due to her inability to sit down in it.
“I’m the girl with the candy,” I say, dropping some into his pillowcase.
“You missed six and a half murders,” Ives summarizes when I get back.
“You can be half murdered?” I ask.
“You so can,” Ash says. “You can be beaten half to death.”
“Okay.” One of the things you never, ever did was argue with Ash about hypothetical topics. Especially vampires.
The sheer lack of logic would take years off your life.
The doorbell rings again before five more murders pass and I get up yet again.
There’s two people on the doorstep this time, a boy and a girl. The girl is in some gothic fairy getup: corset and flared skirt and combat boots with tattered purple wings. The guy wears a long military coat and matching hat, tipped across his forehead at an angle that covers one eye.
“Hey,” the girl says cheerily. “You going to the party?”
“What party?” Ash asks, and I startle as I realize she’s come up behind me.
“The one at Addams Park tonight,” the girl states, twirling a strand of obviously dyed black hair.
“No, we’re not,” I say, because that’s what you tell random strangers who invite you places.
Ash completely ignores me. “Of course we are,” she says in the tone that speaks for everyone.
“No,” I repeat, “we aren’t.”
“Invitation’s open,” the girl says. “Come one and come all for Halloween fun.”
“Cool,” Ash says, and I drag her aside.
“Are you seriously turning down a graveyard rave?” Ash asks before I could get to my strangers-are-dangerous lecture. “A graveyard rave on Halloween?”
“Yes,” I say. “I am. You know what raves are? Raves are breaking and entering. For stupid parties.”
“Halloween graveyard rave,” Ash repeats, sing-song.
“Eighteen ways to get arrested,” I emphasize. “Not to mention the fact I don’t advocated literally dancing on people’s graves.”
“Don’t you want to have fun?” she asks, going for the death blow of my argument’s doom. “C’mon, Sun… Don’t be boring. It’ll be awesome. Fun! No boring!”
Bitch.
“I’m only coming to make sure you don’t die,” I say, and she grins.
I was hoping Ives would put his foot down, because neither of us could argue with the Owner of the Car, but he only shrugs when I explain it.
“C’mon,” I argue quietly as Ash talks to the duo at the door. “If you say no, we’ll have majority.”
Ives rolls his eyes. “When has that ever stopped her?”
“Well,” I sigh. “Guess we’ll have to miss the riveting ending.”
“Bet everyone dies,” Ives predicts as he presses pause.
Once upon a time Ives’ car actually had a fully functionally stereo, but that time was long gone. The previous owner-his older brother-had at some point felt like listening to the Rolling Stones, and even a crowbar had proved ineffective in getting the ancient tape deck to ever open again.
This is all a very bad idea, I think as ‘Gimme Shelter’ fades into ‘Love in Vain’ and we park beside the cemetery gate. A broken chain hangs from one side like some not-so-festive streamers.
At first, the graveyard seems empty.
Oh great, I think, they really have lured us here to murder us and steal the car.
Then I see the crowd and wonder how I ever could have missed them. The cemetery is on a hill and the entire crown is teeming with people.
I get out of the car reluctantly, partially because I hadn’t thought to bring anything warm to wear.
Ash had already gone, so Ives and I head up the hill slowly, weaving between gravestones. There was a stereo up there, playing some all-bass dance track through the graveyard at high volume.
“Why am I here?” I ask Ives rhetorically. “I hate parties like this. I want nothing less than to be at this party. I want to be at home in pajamas with candy. But I’m here.”
“You’re here because you’re irrationally loyal,” Ives suggests.
I sigh. “Indeed.” The downside of having been best friends with Ash since about the third grade was that I’d feel too guilty to actually abandon her.
“Why are you here?” I wasn’t entirely sure Ash even knew Ives’ real name, even though we’d known each other since freshman year.
She still called him ‘Art Boy’, because he’d been ‘that kid who eats lunch in the art room.’ Then Ash had started dating his friend Kirk… and that was a long and complicated series of events for which I was still serving detentions, but we still hung out with Ives.
“Obviously, I hang around for you,” he says with a smile.
We reach the edge of the crowd, and Ives perches on top of a tombstone even though he’s slightly too tall, knees bending as he balances cautiously. I’m too superstitious to be that at home on someone’s grave, so I just stand, arms loosely crossed, at the edge of the crowd.
A guy approaches a minute or so later, my age and dressed in ratty trousers, blazer, and a hat that could only be described as a cap.
“Hey,” he says with a smile. It takes me just over a second to realize he’s talking to me. “My name’s Ezra.”
“Sun,” I say shortly.
“I’m Ives,” Ives says from our left.
“You guys go to school around here?” Ezra asks, speaking exclusively to me in a rather disconcerting way.
“We go to Athens,” I respond reluctantly. Athens High School had a bit of an odd reputation around here, mostly because of our crazy principal who was fond of shouting things like “Beat Sparta!” and “Crush Crete!” at pep rallies, like he didn’t actually know we were just a high school and not an ancient Greek city-state.
Ezra doesn’t say anything, and his blank expression made me wonder if he has any idea what I’m talking about.
“You want something to drink?” he asks, raising a plastic cup. I halfheartedly try to determine its contents, but it’s too dark to see.
“No thanks,” I say, because politeness was a virtue, dammit. Something creeps me out about Ezra, the kind of thing you can’t really articulate, just a shiver of Bad Idea down your spine.
Ezra holds out his arm to me as the song changes, elbow bent crookedly outwards.
“Want to dance?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say, because politeness, no matter how irrationally someone freaked you out.
“Oh, c’mon,” he says, taking another step forward.
Okay, screw the ‘thanks’. Some people just don’t respect the politeness.
“No,” I repeat.
“Hey-” he protests.
“I think that was no,” Ives says.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Ezra challenges. They both look ridiculously stubborn.
The only thing less fun than being stuck at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at was getting into a fight at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at.
“Calm,” I advocate, raising both hands, and like most rational suggestions, it’s completely ignored.
Ezra starts to say something, protesting loudly, and then Corinne and the silent guy appear. I wonder vaguely how they walked here so fast.
“No fighting,” Corinne says. “No disturbing the party.”
“We weren’t,” I say in a tone that hopefully makes it retroactively true. “We were leaving. Right?”
Ives doesn’t respond. He’s busy staring at the silent guy with a look of pure horror.
“Out,” Corinne says. “Both of you.” But she’s not looking at Ezra or me. She just watches the look on Ives’ face.
“C’mon,” I say, grabbing Ives’ arm. He freezes for a moment before walking with me.
I catch a glimpse of the silent guy as we leave the graveyard, and there’s a funny trick of the light. His eyes are in shadow, and they seem like empty sockets in a bleached white skull.
I shiver a little as we go back through the gate.
“You ever see things?” Ives asks. There’s nowhere to sit by the graveyard, so we’re on the hood of his parked car and the metal is freezing.
“Technically, I’m seeing things right now,” I say, but I know what he means.
“I used to,” he says. “When I was little. Weird things where you turn your head and it doesn’t go away.”
That kind of thing never happened to me. “Maybe it’s an artist thing.”
He gives me a smirking smile. “Am I an artist because I see things differently or do I see things differently because I’m an artist?”
“I don’t know,” I say, falling back on the hood and looking up at the stars. The moon’s a crescent. “I never know anything.”
He starts to say something and then stops. “Have you ever been afraid of something you can’t see?”
That I understand. “Yes,” I say. “All the time.”
We hear a scream from inside the graveyard and exchange a look. This was the kind of thing that happened when Ash was unsupervised. We reach the gate at the same time.
Inside, the party’s not exactly the same as I remembered it being. Because for some reason, I remembered the crowd being human.
Now, not really. Or maybe they had been human once, because that’s where skeletons came from, right?
Maybe that hadn’t been such a trick of the light, actually.
Ash was the one screaming, and it took us a second to see her, but luckily she wasn’t getting eaten. Really, seeing skeletons walking around was a perfectly good reason to scream.
“Ash!” I yelled, and we pulled her out by her elbows.
No one tried to follow, because apparently they weren’t concerned with us. The skeletons just kept dancing.
I’d never been quite as afraid as in that moment, to the ridiculous degree where I practically detached.
Ash takes a deep breath at the gate and then screams again.
“STOP!” Ives tells her, slamming a hand on his forehead.
“What-” she starts shouting, but I cut her off.
“Let’s get back to that movie.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Ives says.
And we get back in the car with the Rolling Stones, and we drive back to the unheated porch and we press play.
As Ives predicted, everyone died in the end.
.
................
Ives throws his bag of popcorn down in disgust, the Sharpies on his belt jingling. “You win.”
Ash smiles sweetly as somebody else is murdered onscreen. “I am the king, Art Boy. The king.”
We’re midway through Ives and Ash’s annual Halloween competition for Lamest Horror Movie Ever. Ives’ entry Werewolves of Woodstock had been respectable, but it was no match for the eye-scorching lameness that was Thirteen Letters.
The doorbell rings and I grudgingly get up, kicking cats off my lap and I grabbing the half-empty bowl of Snickers bars.
Answering the door was my responsibility, obviously, because it was my house. For some reason we always hung out at my place, even though the couches were lumpy and the TV was staticky and the porch wasn’t heated and the cats hated nearly everyone except me.
All three of the little boys at the door were about five, and all three were dressed as Spider-Man.
“What are you?” one of them asks as I hand out the candy.
I glance down and up again, from ballerina flats to skinny jeans to ratty grey sweater to t-shirt. None of us were in costume, Ash having ditched her “ironic” cardboard box and foil robot costume a couple hours earlier due to her inability to sit down in it.
“I’m the girl with the candy,” I say, dropping some into his pillowcase.
“You missed six and a half murders,” Ives summarizes when I get back.
“You can be half murdered?” I ask.
“You so can,” Ash says. “You can be beaten half to death.”
“Okay.” One of the things you never, ever did was argue with Ash about hypothetical topics. Especially vampires.
The sheer lack of logic would take years off your life.
The doorbell rings again before five more murders pass and I get up yet again.
There’s two people on the doorstep this time, a boy and a girl. The girl is in some gothic fairy getup: corset and flared skirt and combat boots with tattered purple wings. The guy wears a long military coat and matching hat, tipped across his forehead at an angle that covers one eye.
“Hey,” the girl says cheerily. “You going to the party?”
“What party?” Ash asks, and I startle as I realize she’s come up behind me.
“The one at Addams Park tonight,” the girl states, twirling a strand of obviously dyed black hair.
“No, we’re not,” I say, because that’s what you tell random strangers who invite you places.
Ash completely ignores me. “Of course we are,” she says in the tone that speaks for everyone.
“No,” I repeat, “we aren’t.”
“Invitation’s open,” the girl says. “Come one and come all for Halloween fun.”
“Cool,” Ash says, and I drag her aside.
“Are you seriously turning down a graveyard rave?” Ash asks before I could get to my strangers-are-dangerous lecture. “A graveyard rave on Halloween?”
“Yes,” I say. “I am. You know what raves are? Raves are breaking and entering. For stupid parties.”
“Halloween graveyard rave,” Ash repeats, sing-song.
“Eighteen ways to get arrested,” I emphasize. “Not to mention the fact I don’t advocated literally dancing on people’s graves.”
“Don’t you want to have fun?” she asks, going for the death blow of my argument’s doom. “C’mon, Sun… Don’t be boring. It’ll be awesome. Fun! No boring!”
Bitch.
“I’m only coming to make sure you don’t die,” I say, and she grins.
I was hoping Ives would put his foot down, because neither of us could argue with the Owner of the Car, but he only shrugs when I explain it.
“C’mon,” I argue quietly as Ash talks to the duo at the door. “If you say no, we’ll have majority.”
Ives rolls his eyes. “When has that ever stopped her?”
“Well,” I sigh. “Guess we’ll have to miss the riveting ending.”
“Bet everyone dies,” Ives predicts as he presses pause.
Once upon a time Ives’ car actually had a fully functionally stereo, but that time was long gone. The previous owner-his older brother-had at some point felt like listening to the Rolling Stones, and even a crowbar had proved ineffective in getting the ancient tape deck to ever open again.
This is all a very bad idea, I think as ‘Gimme Shelter’ fades into ‘Love in Vain’ and we park beside the cemetery gate. A broken chain hangs from one side like some not-so-festive streamers.
At first, the graveyard seems empty.
Oh great, I think, they really have lured us here to murder us and steal the car.
Then I see the crowd and wonder how I ever could have missed them. The cemetery is on a hill and the entire crown is teeming with people.
I get out of the car reluctantly, partially because I hadn’t thought to bring anything warm to wear.
Ash had already gone, so Ives and I head up the hill slowly, weaving between gravestones. There was a stereo up there, playing some all-bass dance track through the graveyard at high volume.
“Why am I here?” I ask Ives rhetorically. “I hate parties like this. I want nothing less than to be at this party. I want to be at home in pajamas with candy. But I’m here.”
“You’re here because you’re irrationally loyal,” Ives suggests.
I sigh. “Indeed.” The downside of having been best friends with Ash since about the third grade was that I’d feel too guilty to actually abandon her.
“Why are you here?” I wasn’t entirely sure Ash even knew Ives’ real name, even though we’d known each other since freshman year.
She still called him ‘Art Boy’, because he’d been ‘that kid who eats lunch in the art room.’ Then Ash had started dating his friend Kirk… and that was a long and complicated series of events for which I was still serving detentions, but we still hung out with Ives.
“Obviously, I hang around for you,” he says with a smile.
We reach the edge of the crowd, and Ives perches on top of a tombstone even though he’s slightly too tall, knees bending as he balances cautiously. I’m too superstitious to be that at home on someone’s grave, so I just stand, arms loosely crossed, at the edge of the crowd.
A guy approaches a minute or so later, my age and dressed in ratty trousers, blazer, and a hat that could only be described as a cap.
“Hey,” he says with a smile. It takes me just over a second to realize he’s talking to me. “My name’s Ezra.”
“Sun,” I say shortly.
“I’m Ives,” Ives says from our left.
“You guys go to school around here?” Ezra asks, speaking exclusively to me in a rather disconcerting way.
“We go to Athens,” I respond reluctantly. Athens High School had a bit of an odd reputation around here, mostly because of our crazy principal who was fond of shouting things like “Beat Sparta!” and “Crush Crete!” at pep rallies, like he didn’t actually know we were just a high school and not an ancient Greek city-state.
Ezra doesn’t say anything, and his blank expression made me wonder if he has any idea what I’m talking about.
“You want something to drink?” he asks, raising a plastic cup. I halfheartedly try to determine its contents, but it’s too dark to see.
“No thanks,” I say, because politeness was a virtue, dammit. Something creeps me out about Ezra, the kind of thing you can’t really articulate, just a shiver of Bad Idea down your spine.
Ezra holds out his arm to me as the song changes, elbow bent crookedly outwards.
“Want to dance?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say, because politeness, no matter how irrationally someone freaked you out.
“Oh, c’mon,” he says, taking another step forward.
Okay, screw the ‘thanks’. Some people just don’t respect the politeness.
“No,” I repeat.
“Hey-” he protests.
“I think that was no,” Ives says.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Ezra challenges. They both look ridiculously stubborn.
The only thing less fun than being stuck at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at was getting into a fight at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at.
“Calm,” I advocate, raising both hands, and like most rational suggestions, it’s completely ignored.
Ezra starts to say something, protesting loudly, and then Corinne and the silent guy appear. I wonder vaguely how they walked here so fast.
“No fighting,” Corinne says. “No disturbing the party.”
“We weren’t,” I say in a tone that hopefully makes it retroactively true. “We were leaving. Right?”
Ives doesn’t respond. He’s busy staring at the silent guy with a look of pure horror.
“Out,” Corinne says. “Both of you.” But she’s not looking at Ezra or me. She just watches the look on Ives’ face.
“C’mon,” I say, grabbing Ives’ arm. He freezes for a moment before walking with me.
I catch a glimpse of the silent guy as we leave the graveyard, and there’s a funny trick of the light. His eyes are in shadow, and they seem like empty sockets in a bleached white skull.
I shiver a little as we go back through the gate.
“You ever see things?” Ives asks. There’s nowhere to sit by the graveyard, so we’re on the hood of his parked car and the metal is freezing.
“Technically, I’m seeing things right now,” I say, but I know what he means.
“I used to,” he says. “When I was little. Weird things where you turn your head and it doesn’t go away.”
That kind of thing never happened to me. “Maybe it’s an artist thing.”
He gives me a smirking smile. “Am I an artist because I see things differently or do I see things differently because I’m an artist?”
“I don’t know,” I say, falling back on the hood and looking up at the stars. The moon’s a crescent. “I never know anything.”
He starts to say something and then stops. “Have you ever been afraid of something you can’t see?”
That I understand. “Yes,” I say. “All the time.”
We hear a scream from inside the graveyard and exchange a look. This was the kind of thing that happened when Ash was unsupervised. We reach the gate at the same time.
Inside, the party’s not exactly the same as I remembered it being. Because for some reason, I remembered the crowd being human.
Now, not really. Or maybe they had been human once, because that’s where skeletons came from, right?
Maybe that hadn’t been such a trick of the light, actually.
Ash was the one screaming, and it took us a second to see her, but luckily she wasn’t getting eaten. Really, seeing skeletons walking around was a perfectly good reason to scream.
“Ash!” I yelled, and we pulled her out by her elbows.
No one tried to follow, because apparently they weren’t concerned with us. The skeletons just kept dancing.
I’d never been quite as afraid as in that moment, to the ridiculous degree where I practically detached.
Ash takes a deep breath at the gate and then screams again.
“STOP!” Ives tells her, slamming a hand on his forehead.
“What-” she starts shouting, but I cut her off.
“Let’s get back to that movie.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Ives says.
And we get back in the car with the Rolling Stones, and we drive back to the unheated porch and we press play.
As Ives predicted, everyone died in the end.
.