Chapter 27
Later that night, after I feed Arachnodesiac and company, I go out with Felix on our annual trick-or-treat run.
He's dressed up as a zombie Templar Knight from Tombs of the Blind Dead, an old Spanish film he really likes.
He wears a frayed, hooded medieval cassock with a mummified skull mask.
As we retreat from a house that rejected us for being too old, I tell him about the found footage–themed horror short contest.
“All we have to do is make our own version of The Blair Witch Project,” I say.
“I never saw that one,” Felix tells me, and I gasp dramatically. So that will be our movie to watch tonight.
On our way home, tallying up the modest amount of candy we were given by adults who took pity on two seventeen-year-old trick-or-treaters, we pass by Roland's house. He's peeking out his window like a haunted recluse.
“Not sure how it's possible, but Roland Greenway has gotten even weirder,” Felix says.
“Maybe we should ask him to come out and hang with us,” I say, but Felix blows a raspberry.
“Because taking him to a movie was already so successful,” he says.
Meanwhile, at home, Dinah and Clint have turned the garage into some meth lab where they're creating a pill to sell on their podcast, inspired by Dinah's encounter with the Elvis guy.
Since they're holed up in the garage, Felix and I get to watch the movie in the living room.
It's a creepy story, but hard to take too seriously when you're in a room full of Santa Clauses and a KISS coffin.
The entire thing is three people with an old camcorder recording themselves screaming and running in the woods.
“We could make this type of movie in our sleep,” I say.
“You're telling me people actually thought this movie was real? Like actual humans with functioning brains?” Felix rolls his eyes.
“That's both sad and exactly the kind of mass hysteria I aspire to create.”
“You want to go out into the woods and scream and run from a witch?”
“Not a witch. We could have our own twist. Something uniquely Texan,” I say.
“Tombs of the Blind Dead with Texas Rangers instead of Templar Knights?”
“Nah. Too ambitious,” I respond.
Felix snaps his fingers. “Candyman, except it's Mrs. Wetherly, and when you say her name in the mirror five times she appears behind you and says something racist.”
I laugh so hard I knock over my candy bucket. Felix could slice a rock in perfect halves with his wit. He's the funniest guy I've ever met, and he doesn't even try.
He's sitting real close to me. I stop laughing and look straight at him. His eyes shift, looking into mine with his cute smile.
“Felix, I…” I say, moving my hand toward his.
“GAH!” Felix falls back away from me, his candy spilling all over the ground. Great, I barely made a move and already freaked him out.
Except he's looking at the window, where the snarling face of a hairy monster peers in. The monster peels its face off, revealing Clint.
“Got you!” He's wheezing through his laughter.
He goes around to the back door and enters the living room.
“You shoulda seen your friend,” he says, holding out a plate of orange-and-black brownies to us. “Have some of our cursed candied concoctions, boys!”
I pass. Felix takes one.
“Are you drunk right now?” I ask.
“No, sir! Whiskey Clint is officially on the wagon! I haven't had one drink since I started living with y'all. I don't need any of my senses dulled when I got a lady like your aunt in my bed.”
“Cool. I think I'm late for my appointment with the cannon that's going to shoot me into a volcano. Goodnight!” I say before pushing him out of the room.
We continue where we left off with the movie, and I try to situate myself closer to Felix again. It's fine. He's staying all night, so I don't have to rush this. But he starts to get this weird look on his face and rubs his stomach.
“Oh no,” he says, and flees to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
I knock and ask if he's okay. He yells something about the brownie. I scream for Clint, who rushes in with Dinah.
“What was in that brownie you gave him?”
Clint looks at Dinah with smug satisfaction. “It's working.”
“Wait. Are you using us as guinea pigs for your pill that you just invented today? I'm calling an ambulance,” I say, pulling out my phone.
“No need, no need!” Dinah says. “It's just the laxatives I stole from the retirement home mixed with Clint's POWWOW! pills. It'll pass.”
“Pow-what?” Felix shouts from the bathroom.
“You idiots poisoned my best friend?” I shout, my hands ready to grab one of their throats.
“We had a real eureka moment today. Meet our new product, Plutonium Cactus,” Clint says, holding up a red-and-blue pill capsule.
“It's based on the ancient Chinese principle of the yin-yang,” Dinah says, “where the yin is your feminine side and the yang is your masculine side. Plutonium Cactus helps you expel the yin and replenishes your yang.”
“Not to mention your wang.” Clint winks at me like he's a comedic genius. He pulls out a centerfold of a nude woman and slides it under my bathroom door.
“You feeling any manlier yet?” Dinah asks Felix. “We figured we'd test the pill on y'all since you need it more than anybody.”
I frantically seize a box of antidiarrheal pills from the medicine cabinet in our kitchen and hand them to Felix through the bathroom door. Ten minutes later, he lurches out of the bathroom like he's seen hell and tells me he's going back home instead of staying the rest of the night.
I was so close to kissing Felix. And those idiots blew it.