Chapter 32 Vale
Vale
Halloween.
The one day of the year the monsters get to show their true selves to the world, hidden by the comfort of rubber masks and grotesque make-up that more accurately reflects what lies beneath than any disguise worn the rest of the year.
They prowl and they lurk, stalk and smirk, their skin chapped with fake blood that they pretend is real, and carrying a conscience as weak as they allow it to be.
It’s empowering—vindicating—embracing the idea of being a monster.
For some, I suppose it’s a mere escape. A night to make-believe that the world is full of magic and wonder. Where battles are fought gallantly, for the greater good, rather than by the inner demons that plague our dreams.
But for some of us, it’s freedom. A night where the chains keeping our inner beasts are slackened just enough to give a taste of what it could be like every day, if we wanted such a thing.
A night where we don’t fight monsters but become them.
We become the terror.
And it makes me wonder, as I take in my group of friends and the surrounding people slowly making their way through the dark, dank labyrinth, just how many of us are holding back our true nature.
How many of us are there, truly, hanging on by a mere thread, waiting for an excuse to use this brief reprieve to fully break free?
They say the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest on All Hallows’ Eve. But what about the veil between our nature and conditioning?
My mouth ticks up. If they only knew…
Down here, the jump scares should be the least of their worries.
The dead the least of their concerns.
The real monster is the one that walks amongst them, with a smile as rubber as the one he wears the rest of the year.
“Fuck!” Casey yelps, stumbling into me, when a clown pops up out of nowhere, getting all up in my best friend’s face. Thea cackles, only to screech a second later when some tall, lanky junior dressed as Freddy Krueger comes up behind her, knives clawing through the air.
In the cage nearest me, someone dressed in a gorilla suit thrashes around, banging his fists on his cage. I roll my eyes.
Two of the Alicias scurry toward the nearest opening, dragging Thea along with them, waving impatiently for us to follow.
Adjusting my hood, my fingers bump the small black prosthetic horns I let Alicia Graves cake on me, and I resist the urge to scratch at my cheeks.
It’s her birthday, and she’s all about this shit.
So, just like last year when we were the ones running this show, rather than get her a normal gift, Fletch roped all of us seniors on the team into being her practice dummies.
Unlike my friends who have their entire faces stained red, I insisted on something more subtle.
So she smudged black makeup around my eyes to make them appear sunken in, did some kind of shadowy magic to sharpen my cheekbones and jawline, and forced all-black contacts on me.
My eyes are already bordering on black as it is, but these cover most of my sclera too, making them look—and I quote—“all the more demonic.”
She did a good job. Can’t deny that. Not just with me, but the others too. They all voted on an angels and demons theme this year. I didn’t care either way, so I just went with whatever the majority wanted.
Whereas we guys are dressed head to toe in all black, the girls are dressed in skimpy white two-pieces with wings strapped to their back.
And instead of prosthetic horns glued to their foreheads, they’ve got haloes poking up from some kind of clear headpiece.
Silvery white make-up is smeared over just about every inch of their exposed skin, making them practically glow in the dark.
Hanging back to take up the rear, I get stuck behind Alicia as we’re forced into a single-file line by the narrowing makeshift hallway made up of metallic paneling on either side of us.
It’s hotter than it normally is down here, thanks to the tightly pressed bodies and heat radiating from the lights, and I can feel sweat gathering around my hairline and the back of my neck where it’s hidden under my hood.
The flashing strobe lights staccato our movements like we’re in a stop motion film, drawing even more attention to the snow-white angel wings in front of me. And not for the first time tonight, images of Aston in a similar get-up invade my mind.
Naked and bent over for me, his tight little ass flushing pink from the unforgiving smacks of my palm. Wearing nothing but those wings as he begged for my cock. His own swinging under him, rock hard, uncut, leaking, and so sweetly deprived.
What a picture we’d make now…the shadowy devil fucking his greedy little angel. Making him squirm and sob and scream for mercy as I took what I wanted, never letting up.
The hallway curves, opening up into the Chamber of Mirrors. This is just one of several entrances into this room, done purposefully to make it all the more disorienting as we’re bombarded by the clash of reflections coming from every which way.
We’d already been through here earlier, and I hear one of the guys groan, realizing we got turned around. Not hard to do down here, even on a normal day. Pulling out my flask, I take two searing gulps of Johnny Walker as I shuffle along dutifully.
It’s just as I hear one of the girls say, “Over here!” that I feel it—the hair prickling along the back of my neck, telling me I’m being watched.
Jaw clenching, I slow my steps to a stop, my friends momentarily forgotten. Movement in my periphery catches my attention, and I tilt my head, flitting a look through the corner of my eye. Only to catch sight of my reflections facing off. Nothing more.
And yet…
Something tells me that’s not what I saw.
And certainly not what I feel pulling the air taut with tension.
Not the bad kind, no, not necessarily. Though, I suppose it would depend on who you ask. The average person would probably call it dread. Their hearts would start racing, their breaths growing shallow. A cold sweat would pebble their skin, and their stomachs might churn.
But for me, the tension is just that—tension. A rubber band stretching and stretching, not unlike how I feel on the field in that split second before the snap.
“You coming, Riviera?” Casey calls out from a few feet ahead, yanking me from my thoughts.
“Yep,” I say matter-of-factly, keeping my body language loose and relaxed.
An infinite sea of reflections bounce off us as I join him and the others. There’s a flash of billowing black fabric, disappearing as quickly as it came thanks to the flashing lights.
A short huff of laughter leaves my nose. What the hell is he up to now? I wonder silently, more curious than anything.
With the exception of our phone call the other night, Aston’s been uncharacteristically subdued since the lockdown.
I knew better than to hope though, and he proved just how futile that would’ve been when he called me Thursday night, acting like his usual annoying, weird self.
As if me flipping my shit on him that day in the locker room and then giving him the cold shoulder, even when trapped together during that lockdown, was neither here nor there. Just a little kink in his plan.
And you stayed on the phone and humored him, why?
Deep down, I know the answer, and it has everything to do with why I’m not surprised in the least he’s here tonight. That he’s been waiting for me. Watching from the shadows.
What he’s got planned outside of stalking me…what he hopes to achieve…
Well, that remains to be seen.
Be it the whiskey coursing hotly through my veins, loosening the restraints in my mind I’d normally cling to, or the fact it’s Halloween, and we’re in an underground mine swarming with people calling upon their more primal urges—even if it’s just in jest; a night to escape the shackles of humanity and right and wrong, and pretend their self-awareness isn’t a cage keeping them from giving into their more base, animalistic instincts…
Whatever it is, I find myself sinking into it. The energy—electric and intoxicating, brimming with piqued interest. It calls to me—calls to that bottomless nothing inside me. Feeding that slow-building fury of want.
To consume.
To destroy.
To feel something.
Anything other than insufferable boredom, if only for a night.
The lights flicker in time with my steps. Screams fill the cavernous maze, interlaced with the deep, heady, pulse-pounding music playing from the next room’s speakers.
All the while as I migrate from one room into another, I’m acutely aware of the eyes boring into my back. The soundless steps trailing after mine, clinging to the shadows left in my wake like breadcrumbs.
Grotesque shapes fracture in and out, dancing off the glittering black walls, and I take stock of where I am, slowing down, hanging back.
There, I think, eying the looming cardboard cut-out of a gnarled tree up ahead to my right.
I wait for my friends to turn the corner, and quickly, stealthily slip behind the decoration into one of the many abandoned, off-limits tunnels down here.
Taking care to step around the various scattered bricks and rocks and other debris.
The flickering lights fade, slowly giving way to total darkness.
It’s been a while since I’ve explored the mines. Back when Quentin first moved us to Crowley, I had a hard time sleeping. And drawing wasn’t really doing it for me anymore. So, I often snuck out at night, spending the early hours of morning exploring my new surroundings.
Being that Crowley was once a booming industrial town before agriculture took over, there was an endless supply of challenges for me to tackle. Places to conquer.
I’d memorized all the ways I could get in and out undetected, should someone catch me trespassing. Just as I’d memorized the layout of the mines beyond the area that is considered stable, where they do occasional tours and the annual Tunnel of Horror.
Reckless? Probably. As I got older I risked it less and less.