#Hognose Snake Halloweenfest 2021

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 28: bury the ones who would bury your gays

By chrysalizzm (@chrysalizzm on tumblr, chrysalizzm on AO3) CW: Attempted physical abuse (non-detailed), implied homophobia (non-detailed), implied transphobia (non-detailed), gore, body horror.

You have to understand: their mouth was so beautiful.

We met in middle school. They were the only person who didn’t look at me like everyone else, and it was comforting - when you’re a seventh grader, see, and your parents don’t know enough to care about what you’re wearing to class, and everyone is full of ugly secondhand thoughts, you don’t get to pick and choose. I got lucky. I know other people didn’t.

It was a confusing time as it was. “Gay” was still a stone to throw, and you were getting off easy if nobody picked on you for wearing pink, let alone the name your mother had given you. I was wearing both when they met me for the first time, sitting alone at the peanut-allergy table the outcasts sat at. Me, pockmarked with acne, in cropped black hair and a plain pink shirt; them, a shimmery shadow picking out the curiosity in their eyes, all too ethereally beautiful to be real.

I know you think I’m being dramatic. I swear, I’m not. You - you know how kids are. Or - well, I’m not making excuses for the kid I was. The point is that I knew then and there what love at first sight was supposed to be, and they were nice when no one else was. People always underestimate how big that is.

You should also probably know that I was miserable. My parents were… they liked to walk and talk like they were these big, progressive people. Mom skipped church with the other gossipy Korean mothers because she liked acting like she was above organized religion when she still prayed before dinner, and dad was a stay-at-home parent, reading recipes out of a laminated cookbook twenty years old and pointing out that the world would only get harder from there if I mentioned how hard my schoolwork was. I thought they cared. I thought they cared for a very long time, because… they didn’t say anything, you know? You read all these horrible things on the Internet about boys who get beaten up for trying makeup, and girls who get kicked out for kissing other girls, and people who never get to tell the world the truth about who they really are, and you get scared, and you stop trying. Sometimes you never even start trying. You cut up all the skirts you bought from Goodwill and bury the treacherous thoughts about long curly hair and prepare to live life as the quiet compsci major with a wife and two kids you know your parents vaguely expect.

I’m going off on a tangent. Sorry. What I was saying was that they were important. They were interested in me. In me, some awkward kid trying to grow out of her own skin and make something beautiful from it. They had their pick out of anybody in the school; it’s not like our neighborhood was big, and news travels fast. Nobody even knew where they lived, because I was the only person they talked to, and I never asked because I think they didn’t want to answer.

So yeah - we grew up together. It was all… very natural. It’s like - you know what a soulmate is? ...I see you do. That’s what it’s like. We just fit, even if we didn’t talk about our families or our homes. They probably knew I didn’t know what to think of mine, and I didn’t like talking about the way my parents’ eyes glazed when I talked about letting my hair grow out, so why should I ask someone else? No, we found common ground in clubs, classes, favorite poets, favorite sandwiches, favorite places to sit quietly in after school when neither of us wanted to go home. We spent practically every year attached at the hip. Nobody saw us going anywhere without the other at school, and that made it easier for us to become ourselves. What’s the word? Metamorphosize. It was easier to - to walk out of the chrysalis.

My hair got longer. Theirs got shorter. They’d help me with makeup, making my eyelashes longer, my lips redder, even when I got embarrassed. They let me borrow their pretty hair clips, their big flowy skirts, and I gave them my cargo shorts, my button-downs, everything that made me feel less of myself and made them feel more like a person. That’s exactly what they said - “I feel like a person.” It’s a - it’s a very poetic way to think. Monumental. That’s what I thought.

I applied to a couple schools but ended up staying close, at a community college. I didn’t have enough money - my parents didn’t like me going out for a part-time when I was still in high school, and they said I should pay for school myself and get used to the rigor - but it ended up being okay, because they attended the same one, and it was just the same as high school, us sticking as close as we could despite the conflicting schedules, even though we always had to go home at the end of the day. We were really growing into ourselves by then. It was good to see. I think both of us were a lot happier than we used to be. Even back in middle school, when they were the most popular person because they looked like they’d stepped out of a fairy tale, they always looked a little lost. I realize that now, looking back. I didn’t notice then. I wonder what it would have been like if I’d known.

This, um… and then, um… it got ugly. It got bad.

I had this routine. Like, I had it all written down in my Notes app and everything. A checklist for the house. My parents didn’t say anything about the hair, but I was still… there was still a little fear about them knowing. It’s all those stories. They get to you. So I had, like… a little tester sample of cologne in my glove compartment so they didn’t know I went out with perfume, and I had a little coin bag where I kept my jewelry. Things like that.

My dad found me wearing a skirt.

I got careless, I guess. I was so happy, and I got careless because of it. I realized, then, that I was right to be scared, when I saw the look on my dad’s face.

He and my mom sat me at the kitchen table. I couldn’t talk; I was so scared. They were saying all kinds of - of horrible things, absolutely shitty things, about how - you know. Insults. Slurs, because they didn’t know they were slurs, but people say them anyway. They asked if I was gay. That’s literally as far as they got. They couldn’t even bear the thought that I might be anything but their son, and I couldn’t - I just couldn’t open my fucking mouth. I thought I was going to die. At one point, my mom got up, and she was shouting at me. She was yelling about why I wasn’t answering her, and she got up, and she was going to hit me, and my dad was doing to let her.

They broke her arm before she so much as touched me.

I don’t know how they knew where I was, or how they got in. Does it matter? I saw all the bones in my mom’s wrist tear out of place, and she started screaming her head off, and my dad jumped to his feet, and he was a foot taller than them, but they were smiling, and they looked bigger than I’d ever seen them, somehow, and their smile, their teeth -

I sat there at the table, with my heart in my throat, as my best friend bit my dad’s head off his shoulders.

I don’t know how to describe it. They were - it was like seeing them superimposed onto themself, like a bad Photoshop job. Their head didn’t change shape or anything. They reached out and yanked my dad close with their hands and unhinged their jaw and a thousand needlepoint teeth, or primordial ooze, something dark and inky and hungry, it all just - came crashing down on his head, and it sounded like running on a gravel road, all crunchy. The smell of blood got all over the kitchen.

My mom, she saw my dad’s body roll on the dining table, and she started screaming louder. I could barely tell what she was saying. It must not have been important, because they started reeling her in by the ankles to my side so that I could see her up close. Her hair was black and sticky with the blood dripping off the table, and she wasn’t even crying, she was busy shrieking about the police. My best friend looked at my mom, and then they looked at me. Their lips were cherry red. Their hair was damp, and it clung to their face; distantly, I could hear thunder cracking outside. They must have run to my house, for me, even though it was storming.

The thought comforted me. I wasn’t scared. I was never scared, even once, and when they tore my mom’s arm off her shoulder, I didn’t flinch. I think that reassured them, because the next time they opened their mouth, it was to wrench my mother’s head from her neck.

“Are you scared?” they asked me after. Just to make sure.

My hands were slippery. My skirt was turning red and warm and blood was drying under my fingernails. I let them hug me anyway, because I knew they wanted to. “No,” I said, and then I kissed them, there, under the flickering LED lights, surrounded by gore and the smell of broken, unspoken promises.

...Don’t look at me like that. If they hadn’t done that, my mom would have hit me, and then my dad would have hit me too. They liked to do things as a couple. I don’t think this would have been any different.

...You believe me? Wow. You’re the first officer that took that story at face value. Everyone else said - oh. Well, I mean… yes, I know the others are dead. I was there, you know.

Um, sorry. I got off track. They’re - they’ll be here soon, I think. They don’t like all this. All the - all the others, and you, and how everyone keeps trying to - to interrogate me. They don’t like it when - when I get anxious. They want me to be happy. They’re the first person to ever want me to be happy.

...Don’t you dare say they’re not a person. They are. If they’re not a person, why did they promise to keep me safe? Why do they keep their promises? Why do they love me? They’re more a person than you, or any of the people in your fucking department, or my fucking parents who never learned how to love me - !

Oh. Hi, babe. Hi.

No, he didn’t say anything important. The same as all the other ones. Is he - is that it?

Holy shit. Shit, we did it - you did it. You’re amazing, you know that? I don’t say it enough. I realized while I was talking to him. You’re amazing. Brilliant. Showstopping. Stunning, even -

Okay, okay, I’ll stop!

But still. Thank you. I don’t say that enough either. Thank you.

What do you mean, “What for?” For loving me, dumbass!

…

...I know.

Thank you. I love you, too.

About the Author: Chrysalizzm is a fanwriter from the US.

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 2: Returning Home

By Meridies (meridies on ao3) CW: (Non-Explicit) sexual content, referenced death, drowning, suicide mention (breif), alcohol mention Sarah and I sat down for drinks on the second day of fall. The tavern was quiet, but the darkness was loud. I was drinking a beer, a man’s drink. Sarah had fruit juice in front of her. She had asked for something with no alcohol.

“I’m trying to be sober,” she explained. “I spent four weeks in rehab this summer, you know.”

I felt bad, then, for asking her out for drinks, but we hadn’t seen each other in months. I set my beer down and asked her how she was doing.

“Better. I think getting clean was good for me— I’m working at the library downtown now. And I’m seeing someone.”

“Who?”

A syrupy smile. “Charlie. You remember Charlie Davenport?”

I couldn’t remember a thing about Charlie Davenport, but Sarah was enthralled, so I asked, “Is he nice?”

“I think he wants to sleep with me,” she said. “We went swimming down by Craig’s Point last week, and he…”

But I stopped listening. Craig’s Point was the lake by the quarry. Someone had drowned there last year, and it was the town’s biggest scandal for a week until Elsie Bates was caught slipping out of William Hogg’s house in a little lacy thing during the dead of night. But the kid— Frank— was still dead, long after the town had forgotten about him.

I interrupted her. “I thought the lake was still closed off?”

“He pressured me into skinny dipping.” Sarah hadn’t heard me. “I thought I was going to sleep with him, but I’ll see him next week, so maybe…”

I remembered watching the boats haul hooks through the water until they dragged up Frank’s body. He was bloated and stiff. I wanted to feel what his skin felt like after it had absorbed all that water, but I never got close. No one touched him except for the paramedics, who told us all to back away.

Sarah waved a hand in front of my face. “Hello? Anyone home?”

“Someone died in that lake,” I said, “You shouldn’t have gone swimming there.”

She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t really give a damn.”

Well, I did. “It’s disrespectful to his memory.”

Frank had been in my algebra class in sophomore year, a burly guy with shoulders like logs and eyes set into his face like whorls of wood. The night after his death was announced, I had stared at my ceiling in darkness and thought about how much water he must have drunk before he died. He must have been drunk on it.

“They say he killed himself,” Sarah said nonchalantly.

The thought made me nauseous. “Maybe he fell.”

“Rough way to go.” She sipped at the dregs of her drink. “See, this is the problem with staying in one place— you’re so obsessed with history. You need to learn how to let things go.”

I wondered why Sarah refused to admit to the power of the water. She had to know it, better than anyone.

Sarah grew tired of my moping and hauled me up by the arm, muttering something about history under her breath. “Exposure therapy,” she said, “We’re going swimming.”

I could hear the lapping of the lake before I saw it through the sparse trees, black as ink. The horizon stretched and faded into night mist. Sarah stripped her shoes, her jacket from her skin, and looked back at me.

“Valerie,” she said, voice a knife’s edge, “You’re not really scared, are you?”

I pulled my sweater off, unhooked my bra, and slid down my pants. Sarah was half naked, gooseflesh rising. I could see the paleness of her chest beneath the distorted water.

“Giardia,” I blurted. “Legionnaires Disease.”

“Conspiracy theories,” she teased. “Come under with me.”

I kept my mouth closed underwater. I could feel the water sliding fingers up my legs, to my thighs, to the quiet spaces inside me that had a breath of their own. Sarah struck out from the shore. She was grinning, hair damp. I took a deep breath and plunged beside her.

-

Two nights later I found myself with Eli, an acquaintance from many years ago who had just returned from the Peace Corps in Ukraine. We had no reason to see each other except for sex, which we had in his bed, his kitchen counter, and then on the creased sofa in front of the television. He looked up at me and said baby, you’re so good, you’re so good for me, and I thought, all men are the same.

I finished washing up in the bathroom. We drank beers together in silence while watching a sordid American drama, and then it was time to leave. No, thank you, I will drive myself home. Yes, I’m fine. I’ll see you later, I will, I promise.

I could feel the places Eli had touched me, his hands and fingers moving inside of my body. Something deep and lonely inside me ached as I drove, and without realizing, I found myself taking the left turn when the right led home— taking me to the waterside. The thing that breathed and pulsed had no voice, so I spoke for it.

“Is anyone there?”

The quarry remained silent.

“Give me a sign,” I said. “I’ll return if you do.”

Sarah told me I was obsessed with history, that I needed to learn how to let things go. But I felt my body responding to the water the same way it had responded with Eli. I thought that Frank was the first and last good man I had ever slept with, and I owed him something I could never give.

After his body was found, his parents had moved out of town. But I heard them speak about the incident only once. He was a sweet boy. Bring him home. Bring him home to us. Their house now stood empty at the corner of Fletcher Avenue and Second Street.

That night I thought about Frank, the blue of his lips. I tasted the quarry water in my teeth, felt Eli’s palms in between my legs. Baby, you’re so good. So good for me.

-

Frank died three summers ago; that was the summer I first had sex with a woman, her tongue underneath mine, in the bathhouse of the community pool. I slept around after Charlotte left for college. I tasted more tongues, more women, and naturally, I tasted more men.

“A girl is supposed to sleep around,” Sarah reassured me, after the first pregnancy scare. “Stick with women if you’re so concerned.”

Before looking at the result of the pregnancy test, I stared at myself in the mirror and thought about what I would name the unborn thing in my stomach. It would have been the size of a cherry at that point, and I was embarrassed to admit that I did not know who would have fathered it. But the test was negative, and I felt a sick, swooping sense of relief.

Autumn swelled and ripened into full bloom after I slept with Eli, and cold weather encroached upon the edges of town. The first rainfall happened. I cracked my windows open to breathe the sweet, thick air into my lungs. Water slipped inside my home with slim fingers, running in rivulets down my walls. When the storm ended, I saw the marks it left behind, white against dark dust.

And I dreamed about him, the night after the rainfall vanished.

He was rising, dripping, from the lake. Leathery and stiff and slick with black slime, more viscous than oil. Gills opened and closed at his neck. They were at the spot where I had wanted to be kissed once, before any man or woman had touched me. Frank stood, staring at me with filmy eyes. I stared back in silence.

He wanted something, I realized. This was the sign I had asked for a week ago. What he wanted was for me to return.

-

I did not tell Sarah about the afternoons I spent at the lakeside of Craig’s Point during the long month of October. Besides, she and Charlie Davenport were together more often than not. I heard about her comings and goings from other people. Eli asked to see me again; I did not answer.

I thought about Frank the more I was at the lake. We had never been particularly close; he knew my name, and I knew he was good at algebra. But he had gotten to know my body in a way no one else had— intimately, viscerally. It was the week before his body was found. He had grabbed my arm as school let out and said one word: please.

I was young, but I understood what he was asking for. I was only slightly ashamed to say that I had no qualms. He was inexperienced, and so was I, both messy and complicated. But he was a good man.

I still thought about that please from time to time. What he was really asking for, and what I had failed to give. Please, please, please.

As the sun was setting that evening, I heard a squeaking in the woods. It was high-pitched, and I followed the sound to its source. I nearly stepped right on it. Someone had skinned a squirrel alive and pinned it to the ground. The thing was still writhing. I stared half in awe, half in disgust at the twitching, red-white sinew which never should have seen sunlight.

It would have been kind to kill it, but all I could do was stare in sick misery and slowly back away. When I was by the lakeshore, I could not hear its sounds anymore. All I could hear was the water.

“Did you do that?” I asked out loud. No one responded, but I imagined that I heard Frank’s voice. Please.

“There are better ways to get my attention.” The water slithered towards me, mouth open and hungry. “I keep returning, like I said I would.”

I imagined him then beneath the surface of the water, eyelids slitted and covered with a thin film. He might have blinked at me; he might have reached a hand out to touch my skin. He might have wrapped a hand around my ankle, tugged until I followed him into the depths.

The sky was smeared with orange. When I went back to my car, the squirrel had gone silent.

-

Sarah wanted to have drinks with me again another night. This time she had ordered something with alcohol, peach schnapps and fruit juice. She didn’t seem concerned by the slip-up.

“Charlie and I had sex,” she proclaimed, “I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages. Where have you been?”

“Thinking,” I answered.

She reached out. “Where have you been for the last week? I went to your house but you weren’t there. It isn’t smart to leave all your windows open, you know.”

“I’ve been at the lake.” Before her expression had the chance to shift, I blurted, “Sarah, do you believe in ghosts?”

Her hand tightened around the glass. She set it down slowly, tenderly. “No,” she said, but it was a reflexive response. “I thought I saw one once, but I’ve never seen anything else like it, and I know I’ll never see him again.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw him the night I went to the hospital,” she began. “I was half dead, dying on the floor. But I opened my eyes to see a man standing over me. His skin was blacker than ink, and his eyes were white spots inside his head. I knew at once that he was death, and he was going to take me with him. He put his hand right here, right on my shoulder, and the other hand at my waist. He touched me— everywhere. And we danced, while I was dying.” Sarah turned and faced me. “I woke up in the hospital and asked about him, but no one had ever seen someone like that, and the doctor said that I must have hallucinated. But it was real. Realer than anything I’ll ever know.”

Then she laughed, high and bitter. “It’s okay if you don’t believe me. No one ever does.”

And at once, I wanted to ask her about who she really was, beneath it all. Beneath Charlie Davenport’s touch and his pick-up truck and the layers of skin she put on each day. Beneath the alcoholic drinks and the man who had danced with her while she drank herself to death and that cold, frightened look in her eyes. I wanted to peel back her skin, to see the ugly, squirming parts of her that curled away from sunlight.

“I believe you,” I said. Something in my voice must have made her believe me, too.

She rolled her glass around beneath the yellow tavern lights. “I wonder if I’ll see him the next time I’m close to death.”

“Sarah,” I said uneasily, “You should stop drinking.”

“I will,” she said, “I know I’ve got to. It’s the poison, you see. I’ve got to bleed the poison out.”

“Sarah, you’re not making any sense.”

“You and history,” she said dizzily, “You and your fear. You’ll be stuck with it forever unless you suck the venom out. I’ve got to bleed the poison from my veins. And you need to cut the rotten flesh out to heal the rest.”

-

Frank was waiting for me at the quarry. I was stumbling, half drunk. Sarah’s words echoed in my head. She had said it only once, yet it was burned into me.

“You’re here,” I said, “I knew you would be.”

He blinked at me. I pulled my jacket off, my shirt, every inch of clothing. It was cold, intimate. He watched me from the water. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, in my gut. It rang through me like a distant call.

“I’m here,” I said, “I’m here.”

His skin was slippery and bloated beneath my fingers, stiff to the touch, like I had imagined it would be. His fingers were webbed and translucent. When I drew my hand back, the same plasticky, taut skin was between my fingers as well.

I knew what Frank needed, what his body needed. I thought about touching my lips to the gills that pressed open and shut on the side of his neck. He needed something only I could give to him, and it was something that had been given to me many times over, slick and drenched in warmth. That writhing, slimy thing that resides in the tender part of a soul. Frank needed someone to come home to him. I would create that home.

“I’m dead,” I said. I knew it was the way to offer myself to him. “I’m rotting inside. Just like you.”

Frank’s face floated beneath me, drained and still. I stood and did not move as the swollen, slippery skin crawled up my legs, covered my thighs, and breached my body until we were both those awful dark things that crawl in the depths, serpents, reptiles, together.

Please, I thought. I could feel my own pulse ringing through the stone. The quarry breathed for me. It spoke with his voice. Cut the rotten flesh from my skin. Let me come home to you. Please.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Meridies is a 19 year old writer from California currently studying creative writing. They enjoy knitted sweaters, pumpkin carving, and swimming in potentially haunted lakes. They are very excited to be part of Snake’s Halloween Fest!

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 22: Listen Closely

By waxflowerwoes CW: Drowning

The first wave licked her legs with a cold tongue. The ones that followed did not reach quite as high. Anneliese stood in the ocean, the wet sand swallowing her slowly.

She held her camera close to her body. Only the lens peeked out of her jacket. Staring out at the horizon were three eyes. Anneliese’s own two— brown and tired— and the camera’s one— endlessly awake. Together, they watched the waves crash and spray. The sky above them was gray. The ocean was black.

White shells poked out of the sand around her. As a child, she would go to this very beach to collect them. They were all white and round, one half of a sea creature’s armor and ribbed like the yarn of her sweater. Anneliese didn’t even spare them a glance now. The wonders beneath her feet could scarcely compete with the terror before her.

There were eyes in the ocean. And they were watching her. Underneath the roar of churning waves, she heard whispers.

Listen…

Listen closely…

Something snapped behind Anneliese. With much effort, she ripped her eyes away from the ocean. A cold chill lingered in her spine. She studied the black cliff face. It was a bowl holding the beach, the sheer walls rising on all sides until they sloped down into the water. Tufts of wiry grass poked up from the top of the cliff. The wan headlight of Anneliese’s car watched over her from above.

Nothing was there. Nothing could have snapped, save perhaps a rock falling from above. Anneliese looked back out to sea. Perhaps it was an echo…

The cold water washed over her feet hundreds of times, leaving them numb and inches deep in the thick sand. Looking through the viewfinder in her camera, Anneliese saw nothing. Nothing, nothing, but she felt something.

Finally, she shivered. Her spine was ice, her nerves threading her muscles and skin like sleet. Her legs were trees uprooted from the coarse sediment. Feeling was slow to return, but the scuttles of sand crabs lightly tickled Anneliese’s soles. The hike— or rather, climb— to her car was slow. She had plenty of time to scratch her fingers and toes on the cliff face. Sparse white veins ran through the black rocks, much like the caps of waves in the sea. Every divet and mark on the rock was an eye to her, hungering after her as she hoisted herself to her car.

The car was unlocked. She didn’t care enough to close the door. The upholstery was ripped in some places and stained in several others. Anneliese got in the car. Her shoes sat in the passenger seat along with the keys. She turned the car on, the dull sound competed in vain with the roar of the ocean. The headlights did nothing to brighten the gray world.

There was still no warmth in her body when she drove home. There was still no warmth when she laid down to sleep. Anneliese was empty.

Her pillow was stone, her blanket almost nonexistent. In the darkness she heard the echo of the ocean in her ear, a phantom sound that never ceased. She itched to feel the dark sand under her feet, she missed how it ripped around her ankles in the cold, forceful surf. She longed to search for those unseen eyes and hear those silent words.

Listen…

Listen closely…

Anneliese ripped off her blanket. She couldn’t sleep. Her head was filled with crashes and rasping whispers. She climbed in her car again— it whined and seemed to protest against going out into the night. She didn’t care for the hunk of metal’s pitiful feelings. She didn’t care about the house’s door left ajar in her wake. She didn’t care for the old camera sitting on the table, forgotten.

All Anneliese cared for was getting back to the beach.

She sped down the rough seaside road, her eyes half glued to the churning mass to her left. It was beautiful, it was powerful, it was—

It was close.

Instinctively, Anneliese spun the car’s wheel furiously to keep it from launching off the cliff. She pumped the brakes, jolting her forward. Every movement from the seat of her car to the edge of the cliff was blocky and stiff. There was no grace in her limbs, neither was there a doubt in her mind.

Her fingers gripped the edge of the rocks in front of her. She was crouching on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the ocean. Her ocean.

Mine.

The descent to the beach was clumsy. Her feet scraped the jagged rock face as she half-slipped, half-stumbled to the dark sand. She didn’t even wince when the salt of the water splashed into the open wound. It stung greatly, but Anneliese was numb to it.

The waves curled around her pajama clad legs. The foam was colored red as it washed back out. She breathed in deeply, savoring the smell on her tongue. Her head was filled with real sounds and real sights, not empty dreams and hollow memories. The feeling of being watched had also returned. With her next exhalation, she took another step further into the water, searching for the eyes hidden under the surf.

Deeper and deeper, the fragile frame of a human walked willingly into the waves. Her body tried to rebel, it found the water too cold and the current too strong. But Anneliese walked anyway. She was pulled by the eyes and the whispers of the depths.

Again she heard the voice.

Listen. Listen, my love…

Her eyes stayed open for far too long considering the salty spray bombarding them. She searched for the being watching her. The only thought in her mind was of the creature.

And what was that creature? Was it even really there? What did it possess that enticed this lonely girl so fully?

The water was up to her chin now. She kept walking, eyes ahead with the stiffness of stone. Her feet were too numb to feel the limbs grabbing at her ankles.

Her mouth was under the water. It was then that she smiled. With a wide grin, Anneliese let out a gasp. She saw it! She saw the red eyes, as red as her own in the saline, glowing beneath the white caps of the waves. The bubbles of her breath floated to the surface, caressing her cheeks as her face kissed air for the last time.

The ocean was pulling and pushing her, as if it was conflicted about letting her drown. Does it let this fragile human lose herself to the depths? What a silly question! The ocean is water. It does not think.

It let her convulse in the water, inhaling fluid and flailing her arms as she was dragged down.

It let the creature grin with teeth sharper than a shark’s, preparing to feast on a meal long awaited.

It let Anneliese be eaten by the siren.

About the Author:

Hello! i'm waxflowerwoes, a student writer. i hope you enjoy the story! i love writing tension and atmosphere, so halloween-y type stuff is super fun!

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 3: See No Evil

By Roz (@RozeyLand on Twitter) CW: Gore, eyes, paranoia

We are walking to class. We walk to class every day. It’s cold and the wind is stinging our face. As we walk, we glance into the windows, our hair looks good today, but we look quite tired.

We check again in the next window. We see a wide gaping mouth, skin pulled tight, bulging eyes. She’s screaming, either in pain or fear.

We look away, we keep walking, we go to class.

We get the bus home.

We need to walk to class, we’ve missed the bus today. We just won’t look. Everything is fine. Everything is fine, because we won’t look at the window and so we won’t see her.

It’s the window of the next house. We take a deep breath, walk steady, head facing the road until we’ve made it past. There’s a car parked in the street. We can see the house in the car window’s reflection.

It’s only for a second but we see her. Is she angry? Does she know we didn’t want to look? We’re frozen. We stare into her red and itching eyes, tear tracks snake down from her eyes and nose and congeal at her chin. We look for as long as we can bare and then we run home, gasping for breath. We lock the door behind us.

We don’t go to class anymore. We can’t, it’s too risky.

We spend our time in the house. It’s okay. It’s a little boring. We go downstairs to fetch dinner. We don’t stay long; there are windows downstairs that don’t have curtains. We take the food upstairs to eat it. It’s good soup.

The mirror is facing towards us. We look very tired. Our gaze blurs for a moment, and it’s her. It’s her in the mirror and she’s leaning forward. We grab the mirror and smash it against the side of the wardrobe. The shatter is the loudest thing we’ve heard in weeks.

We begin to feel blood, sticky and warm, seeping through our fingers. There is something sharp in our hand. We ignore it and get on the bed, scrambling to face away from the mess on the floor.

We look down. The sheets are creased and stained with great crimson blotches.

In the darker crevices of the sheets, I can see her looking. She’s here. Oh god! She’s screaming. We’re sorry! We can’t do anything please, pleasestop screaming!

We close our eyes. It’s okay. It’s okay, we’re safe. We’re safe if we don’t open our eyes.

They’ll work out I’m here eventually. They’ll send someone, paramedics or police. They’ll make us open our eyes. They can’t make us. We won’t.

Our hand knocks something on the bedside table, the clanging sound makes us jump. It’s the spoon and bowl from dinner.

We take the spoon and drag the rounded back over our closed eyelid. It feels unnatural and cold. We rest it at the outer corner, tucked underneath the brow bone, and open the eyelid. We grip the handle and try to stop our hand from shaking, we breathe.

We dig up into the orbital socket. We can feel our teeth grinding at the pain, then the taste of copper filling our mouth, we should have got something to bite. We lever the spoon upwards ever so slightly and feel a pressure. With a suctioning sound our eye unroots, we force it forwards and with a sickly pop it comes free. We reach to catch it with our other hand.

We feel sick. We need to finish it. Quickly we move on to the other eye. Our movements are getting sloppy. We move quickly this time. We don’t hesitate adding pressure, another wet pop and the second joins the first.

The pain will come. When the optic nerves are severed the pain will come. The sticky feeling on our palm is disgusting. We’re scared.

We don’t have a knife. Shit.

Light is filtering through the eyes. Bright lines slicing across our vision mix with waves of pulsing spots.

In the shapes we see her. An open mouth, a twisted face, a silent scream.

She’s here. She’s in our eyes. She’s in our eyes.

We grip hard and pull. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ About the Author: Roz is a 21 year old student from the UK. They are quite new to writing and they hope you enjoyed their little horror story. They are very excited to be included in this project with so many talented creators and to get to celebrate the spooky vibes of October!

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 21: All Hallows Eve

By Spoop (GasStationSushi on AO3) CW: Death, Unreality

A young girl's eyes fluttered open and shut as she exhaled in pain while leaning over the bathroom counter. She accidently had stuck herself in the eye with a mascara spoolie she had stolen from her mother. She had been attempting to put on some form of makeup on her eyes so you did see some details to separate it from the hundreds of other tablecloth ghosts that would be all over the town tonight. Following the stabbing of her right eye however, she gave up instead glaring at the beginning of red irritation forming in the white of her eye. She placed a cotton ball under the water coming from the sink and began to slowly dab away at her eye.

Her attempt to help her eye was cut off by her phone vibrating on the other side of the marble sink. Holding up the cotton ball to her eye she checked her messages with one arm, nearly dropping her phone into the sink.

It was a long series of texts from a friend who had wanted to meet up during the evening. She sighed as she placed the cotton ball down on the sink and began to check her messages with one of her eyes squeezed shut.

---

Ramona: heyyyy piper just letting you know I might be running late,,, im not that late just wanted to let you know so you dont think I ditched you lol

---

Piper took a deep breath before sighing and holding the cotton ball to her eye again. She might as well use this time to go and wander around the neighborhood. She left the bathroom and wandered back into her room grabbing the old sheet she had cut holes into and pulling it over the green sundress she was wearing.

---

Me: hey it's cool I'll start without you and meet you at the spot we agreed on k

---

Ramona sent only a thumbs up in reply and with that Piper made her way out of her apartment and into the neighborhood behind the complex

---

The evening had been going surprisingly well. Piper made out with surprisingly a lot of larger pieces of candy. Surprising given how much older she was compared to every other person running around the neighborhood. She was the only teenager in sight.

It was kinda funny how much she towered over all of the smaller fire fighters, reapers, and monsters that would beat her to each of the doors. The night wore on longer and Piper made her way farther and farther into the neighborhood taking a bunch of twists and turns.

Eventually she made it to the empty lot she was supposed to wait for her friend at. It was once a house lot but was now an old decrepit building that was barely standing in the shape of a house.

Piper sat down on the front steps as she waited for her friend to drive up to the front of the house. She sat down on the creaking front steps and began to munch on the candy she had gathered through the night. Painstakingly she pulled the pieces under her sheet to eat them due to how cold it had gotten. It really wasn't a smart idea to have worn only a sundress under her costume. Piper couldn't even remember why she had put it on that morning.

She quickly finished her entire bucket of candy when she noticed her friends old pick up truck speeding down the road. It peeled into the driveway stopping barely just in front of the steps Piper sat on. Piper stood up confused and squinting at the bright headlights as she began to make her way toward the driver's side door of the car in front of her.

"Yo, I know you barely passed driver's ed Ramona, but at the very least you could learn how to brake correctly," Piper grumbled at the driver's side window.

Maybe it was because of how dark it was but she couldn't see her friend inside of the car. Maybe Ramona's dad had gotten the windows tinted or something?

Piper stood in front of the window silently as she watched the window slowly roll down. As the window slowly groaned she noticed the entire inside of the car was inky black other than two large round yellow eyes staring back at her.

"Uhh Ramona I thought you were going as a witch? What's with the weird mask?" She chucked to herself clearly uncomfortable.

The eyes didn't break their long stare up back at Piper as Piper shuffled her feet in the dirt patch that was the drive way of the old house's yard.

Slowly she heard a click as the door of the car slowly opened as the inky black that filled the inside of the car slowly poured out of the car. Piper jumped back to her horror as the liquid black slowly formed a tall figure with the two glowing eyes being the only feature of where its face would be. The figure slowly reached out its hands toward Piper as she screamed and bolted up the steps toward the front porch of the house.

The inky figure moved surprisingly fast up the steps, the large pool of black sludge that made up its form made shaped similar to that of two wobbly legs as it began to scale the steps after Piper.

Piper screamed in horror again hoping one of the people in the neighborhood would hear her when she noticed that none of the lights were on in the neighborhood, not even the street lights.

She slammed through the door to the old house attempting to get away but only taking a few steps into the house, she fell through the floor into the basement and watched as the house around her caved in and fell down on top of her as she screamed in pain from the fall.

~~~

Piper's eyes fluttered open and shut as she exhaled in pain while leaning over the bathroom counter. She had been daydreaming and wasn't paying attention to what she had been doing. Her wandering thoughts had startled her while she applied mascara. She took out a cotton ball and began to hold it up to her eye as she watched her inky black tears stream down her face.

She shivered as she thought back to the creature her brain had made up as she played through her thoughts of how her evening would go.

Piper glanced down to her phone in time to catch it buzzing. Ramona had texted her just like she expected her to.

---

Ramona: hey dude you need to stop day dreaming or whatever because I'm going to leave without you k lol

Ramona: I'll meet you on the way over there k

---

Piper looked at the clock in the top left corner of her screen and cursed as she realized she was running late. She quickly threw her ghost costume over her as began to run out of her apartment while texting her friend an apology.

Usually the neighborhood had more people in it one Halloween by this time. In fact Piper noted that there were no kids wandering around the neighborhood and no lights on. Weird but she shrugged it off as nothing too important.

Piper ran down the middle of the road as she felt her phone vibrate in her dress pocket. She pulled it from under her sheet she was wearing thinking it was a response from Ramona when instead it was a voice text from an unknown number.

Piper stopped in the middle of the road and stared down at her phone puzzled. She hit the play audio button when a cacophony of distorted radio fuzz leaked from her phone speaker.

In the middle of the garbled audio she could make out a voice. It was entirely soulless sounding only like an old text to speech program. She could barely make out the words, "Listen…. Carefully…. I'll only…. Say this… Once."

The message ended with only that fragment of a sentence only for another to be sent right afterward in a voice that sounded like a human whispering between sobs.

"Wake up."

Piper snapped her head up to see the same inky black figure with only glowing yellow standing staring at her just a bit further down the road.

She felt her heart drop to her stomach as she froze with fear. The figure was still standing perfectly in front of her in the middle of the road. Piper remained frozen in place as the figure began to move its sludge legs toward her. It took huge steps, seeming to move like a high speed monster you would see in a nightmare.

Piper managed to unfreeze her legs and turn around to run when she caught a glimpse of a pick up truck only mere feet in back of her of her moving at a high. She let out a high scream as the truck's fast speed made contact with her body, throwing her back in the direction of the sludge.

~~~

Piper's eyes fluttered open and shut as she exhaled in pain while leaning over the bathroom counter. She shuddered while gripping her eye in pain while gasping for breath. She couldn't have been day dreaming that was too real. How could you daydream inside of a daydream. It made no sense. And what was worse was that thing. It didn't hurt her per say but just being near it caused her to die.

Everything felt thick going through her mind as she felt a dull buzzing. She looked up from the sink to see her reflection in the mirror. Behind her reflection was again a tall figure made a sludge with its two large yellow eyes staring directly at her from in the mirror. Unemotional and threatening.

Piper felt the little bit of breath she had in her lungs hitch in her chest as she stared unblinking back at it. Slowly she grabbed a hair brush from off the counter and raised it above her head aiming for the creature in the mirror. She threw it and the mirror shattered around her as her vision turned to inky black.

~~~

Piper opened one of her eyes but couldn't open the other. She could hear weak but steady beeping coming from a heart rate monitor somewhere in the room with her. She felt a dull ache radiating through the entire top half of her body and could feel nothing from the bottom half.

Her entire mind felt thick and hazy as she attempted to look around the room with blurry vision. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a tall black figure slowly inching its way near her. Before stopping right next to hear just barely out of her peripheral vision.

She could hear the heart rate monitor near her quickly pick up speed as she felt a creeping anxiety filling her entire body. She watched as the figure took a blurry shape that she thought was an arm and slowly brought it towards hers.

She wanted to kick or move but she couldn't move; she could only watch in silent horror as the figure… held her hand. Suddenly her brain in it's hazy state began to feel warm and light.

With this a few images floated in Piper's brain: her leaving her apartment that evening, her waiting for Ramona to come get her, Piper eventually leaving the same when she came sever hours clearly upset that Ramona was running way later than she said, and then a picture of her getting slammed by a random pickup truck from behind.

Piper let out a shaky sigh as she realized what happened and where she was. Also realizing what the figure that was chasing her actually was. She sighed as the figure moved to be in the center of her vision.

The creature made of black sludge was no longer threatening; instead it looked rather melancholy as it stared back at her from above.

Piper shut her eyes again and listened as the heart monitor slowly stopped as the black sludge covered her entirely. The last thing she heard was a high pitch noise from the heart monitor as what little feeling left her body.

About the Author:

Spoop is a 19 year old author with no life and an internet addiction /j