Chapter 24 #2
Meanwhile, Marrow just…sighs. Long-suffering. Patient. He adjusts his coat like he isn’t marching with absolute chaos incarnate and murmurs, “I did warn you he cannot pass a challenge unbroken.”
I’m doubled over, clutching my stomach, face paint cracking as I howl. I wipe tears away with the back of my hand, streaking black across my cheek. “God, I love us. We’re the nightmare neighbors. This is it. This is our villain origin story.”
Bonehead tosses the arm like a bouquet; three kids dive for it and one runs screaming down the street with their prize. Skully flicks his lighter. Marrow leans close to me, voice velvet sharp: “We have drawn first blood, beloved.”
“Plastic and machine oil,” I correct, still giggling. “But it counts.”
And then we’re running—all four of us—like kids ourselves, half-drunk on the chaos, painted skeletons tearing down the sidewalk while porch lights blink and jack-o’-lanterns leer.
I hitch a ride on Bonehead’s back, my dress flying, my laughter mixing with the shouts of trick-or-treaters.
Skully jogs alongside, grinning through his smoke, calling out insults at people’s decorations.
Marrow keeps pace with a grace that shouldn’t look this good next to so much destruction, his hand brushing mine every few steps like a tether.
Trick-or-treating just for kids? I think not.
And if you disagree…well, I do love the tricks part, and I brought supplies.
We hit the next block like a skeleton cavalry charge, leaving kids to scatter at the sight of us like we’re the final boss of Halloween. Which we are. Obviously.
I’m still clinging to Bonehead’s back, shrieking war cries between fits of laughter, when I spot it: a house with its porch light off. The cardinal sin. No pumpkins, no skeletons, no candy bowl. Just beige siding and a wreath that looks like it got lost on its way to Easter.
“Oh, hell no,” I hiss, sliding off Bonehead’s shoulders like a demon dismounting its warhorse. “This house thinks it can skip Halloween.”
Skully’s grin cuts sharp in the glow of his lighter. “Someone didn’t read the script.”
Marrow tilts his head, all solemn, paint gleaming like porcelain cracks. “To deny the ritual of the season is to invite the void.”
“Exactly!” I clap my hands, glitter dusting into the night. “Boys, it’s time.”
Bonehead bounces on his heels like a kid about to play tee-ball. “Smash?”
“Not yet,” I croon, fishing into my coffin-shaped purse. I rattle out a carton of eggs like a magician pulling doves. “First, we trick.”
The boys gather close, conspiratorial, and for one wild second we’re a gang planning a heist. Skully snatches an egg, spins it in his fingers like a coin. “Ladies and gentlemen, the defense calls Exhibit A: a yolk to the face.”
Marrow, ever the poet, cradles his egg like a relic. “A fragile vessel of life, soon to burst in glorious ruin.”
Bonehead doesn’t even wait for orders. He chucks his egg so hard it splatters against the garage door with a sound like a gunshot.
Kids across the street cheer. Someone shouts, “Get ‘em!” and suddenly we’re leading a full-blown egg war, children pelting the beige house like a firing squad while I shriek encouragement.
“This is Halloween! This is Halloween!” I scream-sing, hurling one of my own. It hits the wreath dead-center, dripping yolk like holy ichor. “And now, this is justice!”
Skully doubles over, cackling, paint cracking at the corners of his mouth. “I can’t believe you weaponized children.”
“Believe it, baby,” I shout back, hair sticking to my sweaty forehead. “Tonight, we are chaos.”
Bonehead roars, grabs a roll of toilet paper from my purse and launches it into the nearest tree. White streamers unfurl like ghostly banners. Marrow tosses his roll with surgical precision, draping it over the roof like a sacrificial veil.
By the time we’re done, the beige house is dripping in eggs and shrouded in tissue, transformed from suburban disappointment into a mummy masterpiece of vengeance.
I stand in the middle of the street, chest heaving, makeup smudged. My boys flanking me, kids chanting like we’re folk heroes. The night hums with fire and sugar, with laughter and rot.
And under it all, I feel the tick of the clock, steady and cruel.
But not yet. Not yet.
We march away from the beige house in triumph, a mob of giggling kids trailing behind us like we’re the Pied Pipers of Mischief. Bonehead has egg yolk splattered across his chest, but instead of wiping it off, he smears two bright yellow handprints over his painted ribs and beams at me.
“Pretty?” he asks.
“Disgusting,” I tell him—right before I grab his jaw and bite his lip in full view of everyone in the street. He groans, hands crushing my hips, spinning me until my back hits a lamppost. Kids scream like they’ve just seen Freddy Krueger make out with his final girl. They’re not wrong.
Skully plucks me off Bonehead like he’s rescuing a stolen toy. “Alright, King Kong,” he drawls, smoke curling out of his smirk. Then he kisses me, fast and filthy, our paint smearing together. My knees go soft, but his hand is already in my hair, tugging, grounding me.
I shove him back with a laugh, staggering into Marrow, who simply bows his head and presses his lips to my throat. His tongue flicks against the line of black paint down my neck, tender as worship. “The night is watching,” he murmurs, “but I would desecrate altars to taste you whole.”
“Jesus Christ,” I gasp, half-laughing, half-melting, while Bonehead rips me back against him and growls, “Mine!”
Skully shoves his shoulder. “You can’t just call dibs, bone-for-brains.”
“Can too,” Bonehead snaps, already palming my ass like it’s a prize pumpkin.
“Children present,” Marrow chides—but his hand is sliding down my thigh all the same, gloved fingers teasing the slit of my dress.
We stumble down the block like that: a rolling love-quad disguised as a skeleton parade.
I throw candy at kids with one hand and claw at Skully’s hair with the other.
Bonehead keeps lifting me clean off the ground every time he gets excited, which is often, which means I keep squealing into his mouth between kisses.
Marrow takes every chance to catch my wrist, dragging my palm to his chest like he wants me to memorize his heartbeat before it fades.
One house has the audacity to hand out raisins. Raisins.
I boo so loud the porch lights flicker. Skully steals the whole bowl and dumps it straight into the storm drain. Bonehead yoinks the doormat for good measure. Marrow just cocks his head and kisses me so hard the raisins could rot for eternity and I wouldn’t care.
I don’t know what I’m higher on: sugar, sin, or the ticking clock under my ribs.
Probably all three.
The night unspools like film stock set on fire. Every street is ours. Every porch light, every candy bowl, every screaming teenager is just set dressing for our skeleton apocalypse.
We egg a dentist’s house until it drips yolk like plague.
Bonehead tears down a seven-foot inflatable spider and rides it through the cul-de-sac like a rodeo champ while kids shriek and chase.
Skully hacks a speaker system at a family friendly haunted yard, replacing the spooky soundtrack with heavy metal, then makes out with me against the shed while parents scream.
Marrow, the elegant bastard that he is, drapes toilet paper over an entire maple tree until it looks like a shrouded corpse. Then he pulls me into the shadow of its branches and whispers, “If I must haunt eternity, I pray it is always like this,” right before sliding his tongue between my teeth.
Every kiss smears paint, every grab leaves fingerprints, every stolen touch makes the chaos blaze hotter.
Bonehead lifts me onto his shoulders to snatch full candy bowls off porches.
I toss fun-sized Snickers into the mob of children following us like offerings to our cult.
Skully graffiti-tags a garage door with his lighter soot: a crooked heart, my initials carved inside.
Marrow pockets a plastic skull decoration and solemnly declares it a memento mori of suburbia.
By the time we hit the last block, we’re drunk on sugar and destruction, our faces smeared into monstrous versions of the skeletons we painted earlier.
Bonehead’s ribs are half handprints, half chocolate stains.
Skully’s jaw is a mess of lipstick and black smudge.
Marrow’s careful lines are cracked from sweat and kisses, but his eyes glow like he’s still king of this ruined carnival.
And me? I’m a mess in stilettos, crown tilted, dress torn, paint streaked. My coffin purse is bursting with stolen candy, eggs, and one unfortunate doorknob Bonehead decided belonged to us now.
We’re laughing so hard we can’t breathe, running feral down the middle of the street, the air sharp with burning leaves and distant screams. Kids cheer. Adults glare. Porch lights wink out one by one as if the neighborhood itself is surrendering.
Halloween is ours.
But we keep going.
We stagger, laughing, kissing, touching, stealing more from each other than we ever stole from the neighborhood.
Bonehead hoists me piggyback until I beg him to stop before I puke candy corn all over his paint.
Skully keeps grabbing my wrist, claiming my pulse point.
Marrow keeps brushing his fingers along my spine like he’s memorizing vertebrae for an elegy.
And then…
The laughter hiccups to a halt.
We’ve reached it.
The cemetery.