Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It’s days later that I find myself standing in the bathroom with the light off so Tiffany can’t do her small, judgmental thing—my face lit only by the jack-o’-lantern on the counter.
He’s a smug little bastard—triangle eyes, a mouth full of pointy teeth I gave him—and he makes my reflection look like the ghost who won.
Steam curls up from the shower and silver-fogs the mirror; no make up, face pale, and also slightly deranged.
It’s quiet for the first time in a couple weeks. Not the house. Me. I’m quiet.
The fog machine in the living room is still puffing like an asthmatic dragon.
The guys are in the other room arguing with the playlist and losing, which is a domestic opera I never expected to enjoy so much.
Bonehead insists on more drums, Skully whines that the synth is too cheerful, and Marrow recites sonnet fragments in between rewinding tracks like a bored DJ of doom.
In the quiet of my head, something paces inside me.
Why do I keep moving? Why do I cram every second with sugar and knives and jokes?
Because busy is a spell. Because if I stop, the whispers get loud—the one that says clock, the one that says window, the one that says don’t count on forever.
Because I want this season—this exact, ridiculous Halloween with these exact, ridiculous men—to be perfect, perfect, perfect, a shrine so bright it blinds the future.
Maybe it’s the only one I ever get like this.
Maybe fate is a bad sport who hates happy girls with haunted houses.
How much time is left? A week?
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
This morning I was admiring Marrow’s throat while he swallowed—like I wanted to bite there and hang a “do not resuscitate” sign—when he…
flickered. Just a breath. Like the light shifted and I could see straight through him: skin, then candle, then bone.
An x-ray made of moonlight and dread. I told myself I imagined it.
But I don’t hallucinate warnings; I collect them.
I can’t stop. I can’t pause. Because then…I can’t breathe.
It’s the exact reason I’m avoiding Tiffany.
That bitch would never let me avoid anything for this long.
She’s smug and confrontational. And frankly, she is the kind of friend who lives in a world where problems are puzzles and puzzles have answers like talk it out or breathe.
Breathe. As if inhaling can hold back the outline of everything falling apart.
Tiffany would make a spreadsheet for my ghost problems. She'd bring herbal tea and try to therapize me with Pinterest quotes, and I’d want to drink bleach just to spite her.
So I hide with a pumpkin and a mirror and the fog curling like a lazy cat. Alone, but not alone. I can hear the muffled laughter through the walls—music and conversation—and it makes the silence feel like a thing I misplaced.
It feels like a thing with teeth.
My hands are busy because my head is a riot.
I trim a dried petal from the wreath on the back of the bathroom door and then glue it back because perfection is a lie I keep convincing myself with craft glue.
I draw tiny moons behind my ear and then smudge them so they look like forbidden constellations that remember me.
I open the medicine cabinet and close it again as if the right ingredient will present itself mid-shelf.
Every human movement I make is an incantation: post-it note, double-knot, check the lighter, count the candles by threes.
When I was a kid I used to think time was a polite thing: it knocked, gave you five minutes, then left.
Now time is a vulture that lingers on the porch, waiting for me to blink and then taking two heartbeats for lunch.
The closer Halloween gets, the better I am at pretending the vulture is a decorative crow.
I put glitter on its wings and call it vintage.
Sometimes I catch myself mid-thought thinking, “okay, October, this is insane,” and then something bright and private and very true answers back: “No, it’s very sane.
You’re making it sacred. You’re doing the only thing you know how: you’re keeping a promise to yourself.
” Lucid as a blade. Crazy as a carnival mirror.
That’s me, both at once, like a coin spinning on its edge that refuses to tip.
Marrow talks about the ache of being unfinished, the way a sentence feels when it’s missing its punctuation.
He’d say it softly, like a confession or poetry.
Now I think that ache is contagious. I breathe it in and make crafts with it.
Bonehead says I do too much, which could be an insult if he owned many adjectives.
Skully calls my rituals unbranded performance art and then steals the glitter.
They mock me enough to make it okay to be afraid.
I tip the pumpkin and the battery light inside hisses.
He flickers like an old man’s ticker and for a second the triangles look like tiny, conspiratorial eyes.
I tell myself not to listen to the whisper; then I write it down, because handwriting makes thoughts heavier and therefore more real.
The whisper says: window. The whisper says: midnight.
The whisper says: thin, thin, thin. It says my name in a tone I’ve never heard from anyone who was still breathing.
The paper says: You are not unraveling, you are accessorizing. Clocks are liars. Pumpkins are eternal. Smile wider. Everything sparkles, nothing hurts. Halloween forever. Teeth are just smiles wearing armor. Keep moving.
Do I believe the whisper or the paper? Both. Of course both. I am a girl who collects contradictions like sequins: they scratch and they shine.
A memory bites down on me—small, bright, toothy—like a jawbreaker. I was nine, crouched behind the couch while my father stormed the room with a knife. He really thought he could pin me like a butterfly. He missed. I laughed so hard he got angrier. I’m still here. He’s not.
I told myself then that pretending would save me.
Pretend you are brave, pretend you are not crying, pretend the house will not notice it is empty inside. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Now I pretend on a bigger scale: this is not fear, it’s ritual. This is not panic, it’s preparation. This is not loneliness, it’s curating an audience of the dead.
I do my makeup like I’m sewing a mouth shut.
Liner sharp enough to file glass, then I smudge it with my thumb until it looks like a bruise I earned on purpose.
I scrub at my lips until the skin protests and the pencil bleeds into ragged lines, and then I laugh—because even the things that hurt me are dressed up as pretty.
The mirror smirks back, equally guilty, and for a second we’re conspirators in a very tidy little crime.
Down the hall, I can hear the muffled clink of a bottle and the thunk of something heavy being dropped—Bonehead redecorating with furniture like it’s a sport; Marrow practicing the perfect phrase to make my chest ache; Skully rearranging the speakers to make the bass feel like an earthquake we can cuddle through.
They are terrible partners and also my perfect chorus.
I love them the way someone loves a burning house they are not yet ready to leave.
Sometimes the lucid voice in me—the one that can name things plainly—whispers practical things: call the florist, make sure the spare candles are in the hall, check Marrow’s jacket for the receipt.
Other times that same voice says, in a calm, almost clinical tone, “You are not safe” and I record that too, because documentation is control.
I’m allergic to surprises the way some people are allergic to pollen: they cause swelling and bad ideas.
The line between sane and insane is a ribbon I like to tie into ridiculous bows.
I am aware of the bow at all times. I can say out loud: “Okay, this is a little much,” even as I glue an eyelash to a skeleton plush and whisper a bedtime song to it.
Awareness is not protection. Awareness is a torch.
It shows you the path you’re choosing to walk—glitter, knife, candle—and then applauds when you step forward.
Sometimes I picture the moment the window closes for good.
I picture a clock dropping into a puddle and breaking into a hundred tiny clocks who all have different minutes.
I picture the three of them standing in the doorway, made of bone and bad jokes, looking like the end of a parade you didn’t want to watch but can’t look away from anyway.
My chest tightens and the breath that comes out tastes like pennies and cinnamon.
I am not ready.
I give the pumpkin a final, petulant nudge.
He glares. I grin at myself in the fogged glass.
I’m losing my mind, yet I’m more lucid than I’ve ever been.
It’s a new kind of clarity: a manic microscope that sees each worrying, glowing detail and decides to embroider around it.
The part of me that is certain pulls the noise into a shape that looks like love, obsession, and ritual; the part of me that is unstable rearranges all the cushions so the sofa can act like a coffin.
And when the whispers say, again—so softly now I almost miss it—they’re gonna leave you, I laugh, a little short and brittle, and I say back, because we are negotiating now: “Then I’ll make forever small enough to carry in my pocket.
Or I’ll glue it to a postcard and frame it by the mantel.
Or I’ll do the only thing I know how: I’ll make a night so bright and loud that the future has no choice but to look. ”
That is the plan. That is the prayer. That is the madness dressed in tulle.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The door creaks. Bonehead’s knuckles tap against it like he’s not sure if he’s knocking or warning the wood. “October?” His voice is lower than usual, missing its stupid grin. That alone is enough to make my stomach jolt.
“I’m busy,” I sing-song, which is the truth and a lie in one corset.
“You sound weird,” Skully says, closer now. He leans against the doorframe, I can hear it—the lazy scrape of bone or denim, the shrug that comes with sarcasm. “Weirder than usual, which is saying something.”
“Give her space,” Marrow murmurs, and of course he sounds like velvet over knives. But then he adds, softer: “Beloved, you’ve been gone a long time. Even the ghosts are louder than you.”
I laugh, sharp and tinny, like the kind of sound that sets off car alarms. “Look at you three. My little intervention committee. Should I come out so you can form a circle and read me affirmations?”
Bonehead doesn’t laugh. “Just wanna see your face.”
That lands like a fist in my ribs. Because if he sees my face right now—pale, cracked, eyeliner twitchy as a heartbeat—he’ll know something’s pacing in me, hungry and impatient. He’ll know I’m not winning the game I keep insisting I invented.
“Later,” I tell them, bright as candy. “When I’m prettier.”
Silence. Then Skully, unusually gentle: “You don’t gotta be pretty to us. You just gotta be alive in the room.”
I press my forehead to the mirror until the glass fogs, and grin at my reflection like I can bite the worry out of the air. “Alive, check. Room, check. Glitter, double check. Everything else? Decorative.”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The silence outside the bathroom door feels crowded.
They haven’t moved far; I can feel them hovering like vultures with better cheekbones.
Bonehead’s weight shifts on the floorboards, heavy as guilt.
Skully sighs like he’s about to make a joke and then swallows it instead.
Marrow’s shadow lingers under the crack like a question mark.
I force my face back together. Concealer over the pallor, glitter sharp enough to blind, eyeliner wings redrawn until they look like weapons instead of warnings.
My mouth blooms red again—painted, deliberate, too wide.
I catch a flicker in the glass, bone beneath skin, gone before I can name it.
My head replaying my fear of Marrow fading like a bad rerun. I smile and wait for it to steady.
Perfect.
I open the door like nothing happened, leaning on the frame with my grin turned all the way up. “What?” I ask. “Did I die in there? Is that the worry? Spoiler: if I did, I’d haunt hotter than this. Remember, Final Girl rewrite. I refuse to die before Act Four.”
Bonehead’s brows knit, but he tries to hide it with a shrug. Skully mutters, “You’re acting…off-brand,” like I’m a faulty t-shirt. Marrow just looks at me, eyes too soft, like he can see through the paint.
I clap my hands, sharp and loud, cutting off whatever they’re about to say. “Guess what? Field trip, boys. Haunted corn maze tonight. Fog, lanterns, teenage screams, possible abduction by scarecrows—romantic as hell. Get your boots.”
Skully blinks. “That’s—random. I thought we were doing more scary movies tonight.”
“Random is my cardio,” I snap back, already sweeping down the hall like I invented purpose. “Now move it. I demand ambiance.”
Bonehead perks up like a Labrador that’s learned a new word. “ambiance,” he repeats, already stomping toward the door. “I like ambiance.”
“Of course you do,” Skully says, but his eyes keep checking my face like he’s looking for typos. “Do we need…supplies? Flares? Garlic? A therapist?”
“Hot cider,” I decide. “And a flashlight that looks like it could double as a murder weapon. Or a dildo. We’re committing to the bit.”
Marrow tilts his head, soft horror in lace. “If we are to wander a labyrinth, I would prefer to do so with a hand to hold.”
“Great news,” I chirp, breezing past him and stealing his scarf, looping it around my throat like armor. “I have two.” I wiggle my fingers, painted and steady enough, and don’t mention how cold they suddenly feel.
We move. Coats from hooks, keys from bowls, Bonehead trying to shove both arms into one sleeve like a toddler with a vendetta. Skully pockets three lighters and an attitude. Marrow gathers me with his eyes the way other men gather umbrellas—like something weather could ruin.
At the threshold, Bonehead blocks the door with his giant body. His version of subtle: “You sure you’re okay?”
“Define okay,” I say, standing on tiptoe to boop his nose with a fingertip. “Does my eyeliner look like a threat? That’s my baseline.”
He squints. “You look…loud.”
“Perfect,” I say, and blow past him into the bruised-purple evening.