VELVETEEN vs. The Melancholy of Autumn #2
“Fuck all you people and the horses you rode in on,” muttered Velveteen, and started for the front door.
It was locked. The doorknob was shaped like a grinning jack-o’-lantern.
Velveteen narrowed her eyes and reached out with her mind, ordering the object to do her bidding.
Its smile widened. The lock clicked; the knob turned; the door swung open.
Velveteen stepped out onto the porch, and was wearily unsurprised to see that the house opened onto a graveyard filled with listing, moss-encrusted tombstones.
Hailey and Scaredy were there, using a fallen tomb door as a picnic table.
Their meal seemed to consist entirely of candy, Halloween-frosted cupcakes, and apple cider.
Hailey was the first to notice her. The Halloween teen turned and grinned, showing teeth that were too white for someone on an all-candy diet and too sharp for someone who didn’t mean any harm. “There you are,” she said, voice smug. “I knew you’d find your way out.”
“Pardon my French, but what the fuck are you talking about?” Velveteen folded her arms. “It’s not a maze in there.”
“Because someone didn’t want it to be,” said Scaredy.
He looked like a little boy in a one-piece cat costume, the sort of kid who would swarm down the sidewalks on October thirty-first, pillowcase in hand and sugar on his mind.
Only looking closer would reveal that the costume didn’t come off, and that his eyes were cat-slit and calculating. “Look behind you.”
Velveteen didn’t move. “What are you playing at?”
“We’re not playing at anything,” said Hailey. “You’re here voluntarily this time, remember? We don’t have to play games with you. We can just show you what we’ve got, and trust that you’ll see us for the superior season. Now take a look behind you.”
Velveteen turned.
The house was, as expected, towering and terrible, painted in peeling black paint and studded with cracked and broken windows, like blind eyes staring out on the uncaring world.
But…when Velveteen squinted, she could see how all those attributes came together to form a single scowling face. The house had a face. And that meant…
“It’s mine,” breathed Velveteen.
“It is,” said Hailey. “It has a face. So does everything inside it, from the furniture on down. If you’ve ever wanted to play out some demented Beauty and the Beast enchanted castle fantasy, this is the place to do it.
Everything here will do what you say. So when you wanted the house to let you out, it made itself simpler to make you happy. ”
“Wow.” Velveteen turned to face the pair. “I’m not that easy to buy, you know. A house of faces isn’t enough to get you on my good side.”
“Maybe not, but I’m sure it can’t hurt,” said Hailey. “We want you to be happy and comfortable. We’re not going to turn you into snow or make you sleep in a meadow, or any of that bullshit. We’re going to show you that you’re part of the team.”
Velveteen raised an eyebrow. She gestured to herself with one hand before saying, in the slow and careful tone of someone who was fighting very fucking hard not to lose her temper, “You turned me into a possessed Raggedy Ann doll from hell. That doesn’t say ‘part of the team.’ That says ‘still your plaything.’”
“That says ‘trying to protect you,’” corrected Hailey.
There was an odd tone in her voice. It took Velveteen a moment to realize what it was: kindness.
The normally sarcastic, frequently cruel teen was trying her very best to sound kind.
“That says ‘Halloween transforms everyone who enters one way or another.’ Didn’t anyone bother to tell you why you kept changing? ”
“No,” said Velveteen.
“The Seasonal Lands are alive,” said Hailey. “Not in the ‘treat the Earth like a living thing’ animist nonsense sense—”
“It’s not nonsense,” said Velveteen, stung.
“—but in the literal, factual, no-bullshit ‘this is a living organism’ sense,” continued Hailey, as if Vel hadn’t spoken.
“You are standing in the gut of one of the biggest creatures in existence. People like me and Scaredy, and maybe you if you take the job, we’re the immune system.
We’re what keeps bad shit from getting in here and wreaking havoc.
That’s why the Seasonal Lands call and claim people.
Because they need to be protected, or they’ll die. ”
“That’s not what Santa said. Or Persephone.
” Velveteen struggled to keep her voice level.
She was so tired. No matter what she did, no matter how far she went, it felt like there was always one more contradictory story to listen to, one more impossible mountain to climb. “Nobody’s mentioned this but you.”
“Because whatever’s true for them isn’t necessarily true for me; not in the details,” said Hailey.
“You’re standing in the middle of a metaphor.
It’s going to be self-contradictory from time to time, because that’s how symbols work.
Think of the Seasonal Lands as monsters or memories or whatever.
The fact remains that everything that enters here has to change. ”
“You didn’t,” snapped Velveteen.
Hailey’s face fell. “I am the teen witch guardian protector of the season, because I haven’t been able to find anyone to take my place,” she said, voice going low and tight, throbbing like the beat of a tell-tale heart.
“I am the cool kid who still likes trick-or-treat, the one who tempts you to leave the sidewalk and come on an adventure through the graveyards and the alleyways. I am safe scares in the shadow of the Halloween tree. Do you really think I didn’t have to change?
Do you really think I didn’t have to pay? ”
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” said Scaredy, selecting another cupcake from the pile and turning it over in his gloved paw like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “I hope you have a strong stomach.”
“What?” asked Velveteen. Her attention flickered to him. Only for a moment.
More than long enough for Hailey to undo the ties on her blouse, and pick up the knife.
“Well?” she snapped, bringing Velveteen’s head whipping around. The Halloween girl was standing there with black bra and pale skin exposed, holding the point of a wicked-looking carving knife against her stomach. She gave Velveteen a challenging look. “You really think I didn’t have to change?”
Velveteen’s eyes widened. “Hailey, put down the knife,” she said.
“You know, I could have done what Santa did,” said Hailey.
“I could have found some sweet little thing with candy corn teeth and hair like corn silk and ordered them to become your best friend. I could have wooed you with all the sweetest, brightest parts of the holiday, and hid the things I knew you wouldn’t want to see until it was too late.
Because there is a point of no return, bunny-girl.
There’s a point past which it doesn’t matter if you accept the holiday, because the holiday will have fully accepted you.
You’ll be digested and remade, and your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. ”
She didn’t pause long enough for Velveteen to say anything. She just rammed the knife into her stomach, sliding it home until the handle formed a seal against the skin of her stomach. She grimaced.
“Fuck, that stings,” she said, and pulled the knife out, opening a gaping tear in her abdomen.
Leaves poured out. Autumn leaves, in gold and red and orange; all the colors of harvest, all the colors of the flame.
They were mixed with cornhusks and fresh green pumpkin vines, like intestines.
They fell at her feet as she looked defiantly at Velveteen, expression challenging the other woman to say a single word.
Velveteen blinked. Velveteen didn’t say a damn thing.
“I didn’t realize at first what was happening, because Halloween took me as I was: flesh and blood and ambition like a flame,” said Hailey.
“I still bled when I skinned my knees or bumped my nose—until the day I didn’t.
Until the day there was just a sweet trickle of maple sap.
My skin still feels like skin, because every pretty lure has to fool the fishes, but my bones?
My flesh? That’s all long gone to dust, replaced by whatever pretty bits of the season were lying around.
Everything changes. You change so dramatically because right now, you’re a tourist. Transforming you like this protects you. ”
Velveteen opened her mouth, intending to protest. What came out was, “Didn’t it hurt?”
“It would have, if I hadn’t come willingly,” said Hailey.
“I wanted this. The big difference between vampire stories and zombie stories is whether the person wanted to be bitten. I wanted the bite. I wanted to live forever in the space between seasons, and never get old, and never go back. I made my choice. But it would have happened either way. Willing victim or kidnapped hostage, the change would have come.”
“I didn’t change,” said Scaredy. He looked calmly at Velveteen, and his eyes were a sea of silent screams. “I was born here, like Trick and Treat. Like your friend Jacqueline. What the seasons make, they don’t have to transform, because we’re already suited to living in a place that isn’t real.
Hailey, though, she was a human girl when she came to Halloween.
She had something she could lose, and so she lost it. ”
“You had something you could lose too,” snapped Hailey. “Don’t forget that.”
To Velveteen’s surprise, Scaredy Cat laughed.
“I lost it the second the season started shopping for my replacement,” he said.
“I was already half-dwindled by the time you got here. You never saw me at my best. I was the monster in every closet and the nightmare under every bed. You were the face of a kinder, gentler Halloween, and now the season’s trying to bring in something even kinder and gentler than you.
It’s all rolling with the times. My day will come again, and then I’ll devour each and every sorry one of you. ”