Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Breathe, baby,” Skully brushes his knuckles down my jaw, and I snap out of it, smiling the softest smile I have ever smiled in my life, doing as he says.
“Sorry,” I murmur before continuing to apply makeup over his features, following the lines of bones already glowing through his skin. It’s like a stencil for our skeleton make-up. I suppose it makes it easier.
The guys fucked me into a coma last night. For so long, over and over, ensuring I eventually passed out. But now? It’s Halloween night, and I don’t think I’ve ever been sad on Halloween before. This is it. The end. One last hurrah before they return from whence they came.
Fuck me. I’m just a mess today.
Black paint fills the hollows of his cheekbones, stark against the white base I’ve already smeared over him.
The others were easy—Bonehead’s big dumb face was practically made for cartoon skull lines, and Marrow sat so perfectly still I could’ve sworn he’d been practicing in crypts his whole unlife.
But Skully? Skully fidgets. Skully smirks.
Skully breathes like he’s trying to fog the brush on purpose.
He grins, teeth flashing against the skeletal paint I’ve already done. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Afraid I’m too pretty to be scary?”
“You were never scary,” I shoot back, dabbing a dark shadow under his eye socket, “just obnoxious. Like if eyeliner learned how to talk.”
Bonehead laughs from where he’s sprawled on the couch, paint already dry on his chest in bold, crooked white ribs.
He keeps flexing to make the bones dance.
Marrow, fully dressed and dignified as ever, ignores him, sitting tall by the window with his long fingers folded in his lap, black coat draped like a cathedral.
“Hold still,” I scold, thumb pressing under Skully’s jaw to steady him.
My own skeleton paint itches faintly—white base, black hollows, delicate little cracks feathered down my neck.
I wanted to look like something dead and kissed by starlight.
The mirror told me I succeeded. The boys told me I was perfect. Both are true.
It’s the last time I’ll be getting us ready together. The thought hits me like a cold finger up the spine. Last.
My hand trembles. I correct it with a joke before anyone notices. “If you smudge this, I’ll kill you and then bring you back just to fix it again.”
“Hot,” Skully mutters, but his eyes soften. He must feel the shake in my fingers, because he doesn’t move, not even to flick the lighter I know is hidden in his pocket.
The night is waiting. Halloween itself is waiting. But right now, in this little bubble, it’s just me painting skulls on the faces of the monsters I love.
And if that’s not tragic poetry, I don’t know what is.
I finish the black around Skully’s eyes, brush bristles scratching faintly over skin that feels too warm, too alive for what he really is. He watches me the whole time, smirk tugging, but I see it—the softness he tries to hide behind the sarcasm.
“Done,” I whisper, sitting back on my heels.
He tilts his head, checks himself in the mirror propped on the coffee table. “Damn,” he mutters, baring his teeth. “You make me look like a rock star who crawled out of his own grave. Ten out of ten. Would haunt again.”
I grin even as my throat tries to close. “You’re welcome. Please leave a five-star review on Yelp: Would let her paint my doom face again.”
He flicks his gaze back to me, that sharp, cutting look he gets when he’s about to see through me. I shove at his shoulder before he can say anything serious.
“Go join the bone parade.” I wave him toward Bonehead, who’s still flexing in the corner like a child who just discovered biceps. His paint is smudged now, ribs warped from too much movement, but he doesn’t care.
“Look, October!” Bonehead bellows, stretching his arms overhead. “Dancing skeleton! Smash skeleton! Sexy berserker king skeleton!”
I laugh so hard my chest hurts. “God help me, you’re all three.”
Marrow rises with the grace of a man called to court.
His paint is immaculate—of course it is.
Fine white lines crawl over his face and throat like delicate cracks in porcelain, black shading hollowing his eyes into something beautiful and terrible.
He looks like he walked out of a mausoleum in perfect dark kingly order. He always does.
“Ready?” he asks, voice velvet deep, like a bell tolling.
I press my hands to my thighs, smearing paint onto my dress without meaning to. My reflection in the dark window flashes back at me: skeletal, glitter tucked in the cracks like starlight caught in bone. Ready.
No. Not ready. Never ready.
I force a grin anyway, snapping my teeth. “Hell yes, we’re ready. This is it, boys. The big one. The final scream. Tonight we don’t just trick or treat—we out-trick death and out-treat despair.”
Bonehead cheers, a booming roar that rattles the picture frames. Skully laughs, sharp and jagged. Marrow inclines his head, solemn as a vow.
There’s something buzzing under my skin. Something reckless. Something desperate.
I can’t just let them go. I won’t.
The sadness keeps creeping in, trying to gnaw at the edges of my grin, but I shove it back with theatrics.
I spin in the center of the room, arms wide, dress flaring, slit flashing my lacy black underwear.
“Look at us! The unholy skeleton squad. Death’s royal court.
The final boss of every suburban mom who thought October was just a month. ”
Bonehead claps like a child at fireworks. “We win Halloween!”
“Correction,” I say, planting my fists on my hips. “We are Halloween.”
For a moment, it works. For a moment, I believe it.
The clock is still ticking under my ribs, whispering the truth about endings, but I drown it out with my boys’ laughter, with the sight of their painted faces glowing in the dim light.
This chapter, this night—it’s mine to write. And I’m not writing it as a tragedy. Not tonight.
Bonehead barrels toward the front door like a linebacker about to sack the trick-or-treaters, already crowing, “Smash Halloween!”
“Wait!” I shout, hand flying up like I’m stopping a train. He halts mid-step, blinking at me with paint-smudged confusion. Skully snickers, Marrow arches a perfect brow, but I…I don’t move.
Because the house looks different tonight.
It’s still my house—my haunted Barbie Dreamhouse of fake cobwebs and glitter skulls, every inch dripping in orange lights and plastic bones.
The fog machine wheezes from its corner like an asthmatic ghoul.
The kitchen door still bears the fucked up, scarlet frosting letters of HELL’S KITCHEN.
Every corner is crowded with my little monsters: plush skeletons, Dollar Tree ghosts, thrift-store candlesticks.
It’s a ridiculous shrine to Halloween, and it’s mine.
But tonight, it feels like it’s looking back at me.
I swallow hard, paint-stained fingers tightening on the strap of my little coffin-shaped purse. “Huh,” I say, voice too bright. “Would you look at that. Haunted house looks extra haunted tonight.”
Skully leans against the wall, already reaching for his lighter. “That’s because you’re staring at it like it’s about to write you a goodbye letter.”
I laugh, too sharp. “What can I say? I’ve got separation anxiety. Don’t judge me.”
My gaze drifts to the couch where Bonehead first fell asleep like a crime scene chalk outline, to the hallway where Marrow once recited poetry to my wall of obituaries, to the kitchen still smeared with cookie carnage. Every memory hangs like cobwebs—fragile, sticky, impossible to brush off.
Marrow steps to my side, his hand light at the small of my back. “The walls have witnessed joy,” he murmurs. “They will hold it, even when we cannot.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, blinking fast. “Leave it to you to make drywall sound romantic.”
But he’s not wrong. The walls have seen everything.
And if this is the last time they’ll see us all together, I want them to remember me smiling.
I bare my teeth at the living room like a feral jack-o’-lantern.
“Alright, house. We’re off to inflict mayhem.
Don’t wait up. Detective Clawson, you’re in charge. ”
Wherever that bugger wandered off to.
Bonehead whoops, nearly shaking the door off its hinges in his excitement. Skully flicks his lighter open-shut-open, watching me with that look that says he knows exactly what I’m not saying. Marrow’s hand steadies me as I step forward, dress swishing, skeleton paint itching on my skin.
We don’t make it a block before Bonehead gets distracted.
Some poor bastard down the street went all in on a haunted yard setup—fake fog curling over tombstones, an inflatable grim reaper swaying drunkenly in the breeze, and one of those motion-activated zombies that pops out of a coffin when you walk by.
I can see the orange extension cord snaking across the lawn like an exposed vein, and before I can even think don’t you dare, Bonehead’s already stomping up the driveway.
“Target smash!” he roars, his painted chest glowing white bones under the streetlights.
The zombie springs to life, shrieking in a prerecorded growl. Bonehead shrieks louder, throws his arms wide, and body-checks the thing back into its coffin. Plastic limbs scatter across the grass. The fog machine wheezes in horror.
“Bonehead!” I scream, but it’s not reprimand—it’s laughter. Too big, too sharp, it scrapes my throat raw.
Kids nearby cheer like they just saw a kaiju battle. Someone shouts, “Hell yeah!” Teenagers film on their phones. Bonehead bows, proud as a gladiator, and holds up the zombie’s severed arm like a trophy.
“Winner!” he crows.
Skully is dying. Actually dying, folded over, wheezing between smokes. “Jesus Christ, you big dumb legend. That was a lawn prop, not a demon.”
Bonehead blinks at him, still holding the arm aloft. “Same thing.”