This summer, I took a fiction writing class. I posted a few of the short stories that came from this class back when I was still taking it. They were more in the vein of “flash fiction,” and you can read them HERE. This story, however, grew a little longer. It’s still short, but it took me longer to write, and I knew it would require some revision, so I set it aside until I had time to mess with it. I’ve now done that and, since it takes place on Halloween, I figured the time was right to get it posted.
For this prompt, we were given a few minutes and told to make a list of every story we could think of. The stories could be from any medium: books, movies, shows, songs, family lore, even that one story that Chad tells at every party. My list was bonkers, which was kind of fun. I won’t type out every single one but it went something like: God of War: Ragnarok, The Hobbit, When my sister’s skort got stuck on the tree, Indian in the Cupboard, Saga, Fauntelroy Pretensington (yes, my favorite character from THIS
classic), Spreading Grandpa’s ashes, No Country for Old Men, Octopuses Garden…on and on the list goes.Then we were told to either pick one story and write a retelling of it, or pick multiple stories to retell and adapt into one. I liked the idea of combining several stories and picked the following from my list:
“It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” - Charles Schulz
Spoiler alert…but we all know this one, right? Linus, convinced the Great Pumpkin is real and determined to prove as much to his friends, spends the night in the pumpkin patch. At some point, he thinks he spots the silhouette of the Great Pumpkin and faints. Turns out it was just Snoopy.
“Gloom” - Djo
Djo is a newer artist and has quickly become one of my absolute favorites. Oh, and his real name is Joe Keery. You know, the guy who plays Steve Harrington on Stranger Things (another great Halloween-esque story). The lyrics to “Gloom” are quite hilarious at times. If you want to fully understand this story, I suggest you follow this footnote and at least scan the last few verses real quick.1 Also, for your own good: listen to Djo.
A family story I was told where Uncle So-and-so would beat the hell out of Aunt Whoever upstairs in the family farmhouse. This was many decades ago, and everyone knew it was happening, but it was “their business,” so nothing was done about it.
I can’t remember who told me this story, and while I know the location, I also don’t remember exactly who it was about—I’m not just protecting identities of the deceased here. Regardless, this story was chilling when I heard it. One, I cannot fathom physical abuse. Two, I would lose my god-damned mind if I were in a house hearing it happen. Three, “their business”? I get it, these were different times, but still. Horror fiction generally doesn’t scare me. This story did.
So, with my stories selected, I got to work, and if that combination doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will. However, it is a touchy one, considering we have elements of humor and the absolute worst of humanity tied into one story. I believe that’s called Dark Humor, or something like that, but let me be clear: while there is humor alongside darkness in this story, the darkness itself is not funny. If this doesn’t bother you, and you can handle depictions of spousal abuse, let’s get into it.
In case you skipped the preamble, please be aware that this story is somewhat graphic and depicts spousal abuse.
The Great Gloom Assault
Lana’s house is decked the fuck out, holy shit! I thought we were just handing candy out to Trick or Treaters and then telling scary stories in the pumpkin patch, but this is legit. There’s a bunch of gravestones in the front yard, a hay bale on the porch with a huge Jack O’ Lantern on it, skeletons flanking the door, and what looks like an ajar casket with red-lit fog rolling out of it.
“Are you high already?” Lana asks, nearly as soon as the door is fully open. Her blonde hair—not a wig—looks amazing, and her devil costume is…pretty sexy? That’s new.
“Course. Have been for half an hour.” I giggle and try to re-poof the left shoulder of my Cinderella dress, even though I no longer feel all that great about my costume choice. It still looks flat, so I try again.
“I better catch up then.” Lana runs back into the house, leaving me to enter on my own.
I’ve never actually been here before. The house stinks, kinda. Like, not bad or rotten, but there’s something sour to it. The lights are amber, almost red, even, so the whole place feels darker than it should. Weird. I linger just inside the door and return to working on my shoulder puff thingy.
The doorbell clangs so loudly that I jump. A muffled “Trick or treat!” pushes through the door I just closed behind me. I stand, expecting someone who lives here to come hand out candy, but nobody does. My eyes sweep slowly across the living room, sliding from one slat of dark wall panelling to the next. They reach the door to the stairs, a small dining alcove…
The doorbell rings again, and “I hear Lana’s mom say. “Gail, can you get that?”
My vision slides right. There her head is, just as permed as ever, poking out of the kitchen. I didn’t even realize there was a doorway over there…
Wait, I’ve never been here before, and now I’m the one handing out candy?
I trace the area around me and find an unopened bag of mixed treats on the floor. I open the door first so the kids know I’m working on it, and struggle the bag open.
“Here you go,” I say and offer one piece to each of them.
As soon as they have skittered away, Lana is back with a smoking joint perched on her lip.
I gasp and whisper the air back out. “Your mom is right in the kitchen!”
“I know.” Lana’s voice is muffled.
“We’re sixteen!”
“Yep. You want some?”
I look at the thing dancing on her lip and shake my head. No, I don’t think I’ll be needing any more of that.
She shrugs and falls back into the brown plaid couch. After another long pull on the joint, she leans forward and lets it rest on the ashtray, which sits on an orange coffee table. Is the table really that orange, or is it just the light?
The doorbell rings again. Lana is on her phone. I stare at her for a minute, but when it’s clear she’s not going to do anything about it, I grab the bag and hand out a few more pieces of candy.
“So when do we go out to the pumpkin patch?” I ask.
“When the guys get here.”
Guys?
And that’s when I hear it: a man’s muffled yelling, upstairs, out of sight.
I swallow and look towards the doorway to the stairs.
Again. And this time it sounds like “Get back here,” and then there is a slapping sound followed by scuffling.
My heart is hammering so hard that I’m not sure if it’s that or me whipping my head to look at Lana that causes my Cinderella wig to jiggle in place. But Lana isn’t looking at me. She’s not looking at anything. Her eyes are closed, and she is lounging back so far on the couch that she may as well be lying flat. She’s facing the ceiling and...did she rub some oil on her boobs? Spray something there? Every inch that isn’t covered by glistening red devil pleather is...well, it’s also glistening. What the fuck?
I can’t ask the question I want to ask, so I quiver out a lame, “Who else did you invite to this…party?”
“Gavin. Shane. Brock.”
All boys? “When are they coming?”
“I don’t know. Whenever.” Lana lurches upright and retrieves the joint.
She’s pulling the smoke deep deep into her lungs when her mom comes into the room. “Oh, thank God,” Mrs. Stevens says and flops onto the couch next to Lana. “Hand it over.”
Lana does, and Mrs. Stevens holds it the exact same way as her daughter (I suppose it’s the other way around): the joint between her middle and ring finger, like a cigarette, once removed.
A muffled shout followed by a clear “What the fuck!?” and the commotion upstairs is back, followed by a mammoth thunk and a trickle of dust from the ceiling. I look at Lana and her mom on the couch, but the falling dust is my only indication that this might be the first time…..well…..this has happened.
“Don’t!”
thump
“Ever!”
thump
“Do that again!”
thump, scrrrthump, thump
My eyes are wider than I would like, and if I weren’t so high, I’m sure there would be tears in them. Finally, I find my voice.
“Mrs. Stevens,” I start.
“My brother—cough—and sister-in-law.” And because that doesn’t seem to be enough, “They’re living here for a bit.”
“Was he...?” I ask.
Mrs. Stevens is coughing again, so Lana says, “Yep.”
Is that Lana’s new word? Yep?
“Why don’t you....” I trail off. Why don’t they what?
“It’s their business.” Lana’s mom again.
Oh?
“Not ours.”
Oh.
“Gail.”
I realize the doorbell is ringing, has been ringing. I get up and throw a handful of candy onto the sidewalk. The kids whirl around and scramble for it.
“Again!?” I hear from upstairs, followed by a bellow and a house-rending crash. Before I even know what I’m hearing, a bald man, red with rage and knuckles dripping, storms down the stairs, through the room, and out the front door. I swing around and follow his path, stifling a yell with a palm as he shoves a little goblin off the sidewalk leading to the house.
He fades into the gloom, and what replaces him is.
Gavin. Shane. Brock.
Before they can even see my wig, my stupid shoulder puffs, I slam the door and turn back to the almost empty room. “I have to go. My dog’s expecting me,” I pronounce. In spite of everything, I giggle. My dog’s expecting me? What the hell?
Lana shoots up from the couch. Her devil horns almost fly off, and she pulls them back into place. “You can’t! The boys!” And then more confusedly, “Why?”
I sigh and try something more real, less frantic. “My eyes are dry as hell,” I say, calmly, “I’m ready to go.” Then I add for good measure, “And there’s my dog.”
“Aren’t your parents home, handing out candy? Your dog is fine. I’ll get you some eye drops.”
Lana heads upstairs as if someone wasn’t just beaten half to death up there. Confused, I sit down on the couch, as far from Lana’s mom as I can get, she on the left, I on the right. Still, she reaches across the middle cushion expanse and offers me the joint.
Well?
I’m coughing when Lana comes back down. The weed hit her—I can tell by the way she stops on the last stair and looks around with a floating head before coming into the room. Apparently, that’s what happens up there. Things hit.
She comes toward me and starts to laugh for no reason. “You are smoking?! I thought you had dry eyes?”
Oh yeah, I forgot I said that. I giggle again and take the drops.
“You might want to go up there,” Lana says to her mom. “It was a bad one.”
Lana’s mom sighs. “Give me that,” she says and reaches across to take the joint from my limply lolling hand. She takes a huge drag and sets it back in the ashtray. Then she is gone.
A loud knock on the door.
“Trick or Treaters knock like that?” Lana asks.
My eyes go wide. “The boys!”
“What?”
“They’re out there! Why didn’t they come in yet?”
“What?!”
“I saw them when your...when your uncle went outside.”
“Ohmygodohmygod...” Lana straightens her horns, then looks down at her shiny chest and rubs the tops of her boobs. Then she does it again, but more slowly, and lets them jiggle back into place. She laughs.
Yep, she definitely put some shit on there.
“You look like you want to get laid.” The words are out before I realize I’m saying them.
“Good,” Lana says and surges to the door like a wave searching for land.
Suddenly, they are in the room with us.
Gavin. Shane. Brock.
Why the hell did she invite them? I thought this was a girl’s thing? And of all the boys...
Gavin? Shane? Brock?
“Oh…hey, Gail. Didn’t realize you would be here.” It’s Shane. He’s Dracula, but only with a cape and pants. No shirt.
“Sa—“ I was about to say “same” but…what? I thought this was a girl’s thing, and he didn’t even know I was going to be here?
Gavin—Solid Snake, with similarly rippling muscles—and Brock—black pants, black wife-beater, black Batman mask—both laugh.
My mind races. “Why did it take you so long to come in?” I ask, tugging at my dress like I want it off—not because I want to be naked but because I want it off.
Shane says, “Oh, that guy that came out was wondering why we were here. He was kinda weird about it. I said we were invited because, haa-haa, vampires can’t get in without an invitation.” He winks at Lana. Winks! What the fuck?!
“He looked wild.” Brock. “Is he Mr. Jekyll or something?”
“No, he’s my uncle.”
I laugh, but Lana looks hard at me, so I try to stop.
“Ok, let’s head out back!” Lana says, bright as a fucking streetlight on GO. She grabs the still-smoldering joint from the ashtray, ushers the boys to the back of the house, and says, “That door, straight ahead.”
“Lana,” I say as the door creaks open and the boys file out, “What is going on? I thought we were telling scary stories?”
“In that?” Lana asks.
I tug at my dress again, hating it. I open my mouth to say who knows what, but she continues.
“I’m gonna get laid.”
“What?” I nearly yell.
Drugs? Yes.
This? No.
“Why did you invite three of them? And me, for that matter? They didn’t even know I was coming!”
“Well, one of them will fuck me—Shane, most likely—and then I figure if there are two of them left, one of them has to give you a go, even if you are wearing...”
She trails off. Probably because my eyes don’t look so bright and Cinderelly at this point.
“I hate this temperature,” I say, and fluff the front of my dress for some air. “I’m ready to go.”
“No, pleeeeassseeee! It will be funnnn!” And then she adds, “I have blankets!” Because apparently blankets are fun-makers.
What the hell is she even talking about? I giggle.
Before I know it, Lana is at the back door and grabbing said blankets from atop the washer next to it. I don’t know what else to do, so I follow her.
I’m walking out to the rest of them, standing in a patch of disturbed dirt, when I realize... “Where are the pumpkins?”
Lana laughs. It’s a ridiculous laugh. A fucking ridiculous laugh that I’ve never heard before. It’s not hers! It may be coming from her throat, but at least half of it belongs to the boys.
“They’re on the front porch, Cinderelly! You rode in on the other one, right?”
They all laugh.
“Let’s tell scary stories!” she continues.
And so we do.
There is one about an axe murderer. You know the one where he’s on the loose and happens to come upon…….five teenagers in an empty pumpkin patch!
There’s the spiral stairway in the middle of the woods.
There’s the dog who sleeps under the bed and licks his owner’s hand every night, but...gasp!…the owner finds the dog dead in the tub in the morning, despite being licked during the night, and written in blood is “Humans can lick too!”
“You guys have heard of the Mesick Murderer, right?” Shane.
“Which one?” Brock asks and devolves into laughter. The other two follow along, but they don’t know what the fuck he is talking about any more than I do. The laughs are all for show, for Lana’s glossy tits.
“Boys, there is only one,” Shane’s voice grows serious.
Brock and Gavin let their laughs trickle away to nothing, uncertain about the best approach to getting laid. They clearly had a better idea of the plan for the night than I did.
“Three girls were living together over by the Manistee River. One of them gets a boyfriend, a real stud like me.” He flexes a bicep, Lana giggles, and the rest of us roll our eyes. “But that’s where the similarities stop. Pretty soon, she’s bringing him home every night, and they are fucking twice as often…okay, maybe there are more similarities.” He snickers.
Lana writhes within her devil costume. FOR REAL.
“But one night, the other two girls begin to hear thumps upstairs, but like, not the usual kind of thumps.’ He smirks. “These sound harder, and there are muffled shouts. Thump. Thump.” Shane says as he beats his bare chest like an ape, but the next thump I hear isn’t from him.
Thump. Thump. From the house. “You fucking bitch!”
I’m shaking as I turn toward the house, and this time, there are visuals to accompany the demonic soundtrack. A light—some sort of fucking spotlight or some shit—must be behind the brawling couple and the upstairs rear window because we are getting the ghastliest of shadow plays on the thin curtains. There are no hand-bunnies or quacking ducks there.
“What the fuck?” Shane is the first to find his voice
“It’s just my aunt and uncle,” Lana offers. “We try not to intrude.” She sounds anxious, but I don’t think it’s because of what we are all witnessing; it’s because she can tell the boys are spooked. “Come on, Shane, what happened next?”
“Owww! How dare!” A roar from the house followed by the most bone-chilling screams I’ve ever heard.
Brock says, “Guys, let’s get out of here. This is fucked up.”
Without a word, they are all on their way, skirting wide around the house as if its gutter downspouts were mouths that might bite.
“No, guys! Come on!” Lana sounds like she’s about to cry. “I brought blankets! We can...”
But they are gone. And now Lana really is crying. And the bellows and the screams are still emanating from the house.
“These people stress me out. I’m ready to go,” I say just loud enough for Lana to hear.
“No!” She shrieks. “Not you too!”
“Why?! Why can they up and leave, but I have to stay?!” I’m yelling now. “I’m growing quite unwell! I’m ready to go!”
“You didn’t have a problem with it when you knew the boys were coming!”
“I never knew they were coming! No fucking idea, Lana!”
“Well, you liked it at least!” She yells this, but suddenly sounds uncertain.
“I never liked it!” I screech. “I belong on the road, so GOODBYE!”
Lana’s sobs diminish as I walk away. When I reach the road, shaking, I can still see her horns, rising above the desolate pumpkin patch like an open field goal.
And now I’m ready to go
I’m sick of hanging out and now I’m ready to go
I told you that our friendship couldn’t handle much more
But then you went behind my back to settle the score
So goodbye
Farewell
Go fuck your mother
Go fuck yourself
And so I walk out the door
Your insults don’t affect me with my favorite coat on
I know my hair looked good in the bathroom at the bar
Turns out I left my wallet at the bathroom bar
That’s life
That’s death
Your girlfriend scares me
She’s got bad breath
Take off my shirt and socks I’m ready to go
Wash out my hair dye and I’m ready to go
Remove my shirt and tie, I’m ready to go
Undress you with my eyes, I’m ready to go
I measure up to you, I’m ready to go
I smoked my cigarettes, I’m ready to go
My eyes are dry as hell, I’m ready to go
My back is giving out, I’m ready to go
I need to walk my dog, I’m ready to go
My dog’s expecting me, I’m ready to go
I hate this temperature, I’m ready to go
This music sucks to me, I’m ready to go
Oh, yeah
These people stress me out, I’m ready to go
I’m growing quite unwell, I’m ready to go
I hate this city yes I’m ready to go
Oh, no
I never liked it I belong on the road
So, goodbye
Damn. Great juxtaposition--I felt both the teenage whimsy and the mounting dread of what was happening right overhead. Bravo
Wow!!! It’s incredible how you captured the voice of a 16 year old girl. This was my brand of spooky - there’s nothing more ominous and unsettling than people trying to normalize abuse. And it used to be so common - still is, in some families!
Looking forward to reading more!