A woman dashed across an empty alleyway with a figure in a mask trailing close behind her. Her feet sank deep into the snow that was brown from trash and leftover fumes from cars. The darkness of the night cloaked her vision, causing her to stumble over the snow and into garbage.
The woman continued to run forward, only to be met with a brick wall that cut off all of her hopes to escape. Seeing the brick wall, the woman whipped her body around to face the person in a hippo mask.
"Who are you? Why are you doing this!?" the woman screamed out, shaking as she backed up further against the brick wall.
The masked man slowly walked up to her, raising a knife, that shone in the moonlight, high into the air. He quickly plunged it down, giving us the first kill of this novel.
Haaah...why'd I have to get a generic slasher novel?
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Xavion bared his teeth, staring at the bloodstained beautiful face that reflected back at him through the mirror. With one hand he grabbed a container of glue, using the other to spread the glue onto a fang-like tooth prop before he placed it on his tooth. He glanced at the cape beside him, throwing it over his shoulders, completing the ingenious vampire costume that he prepared for Halloween. He picked up his phone, snapping a few pictures of himself, flaunting off his muscles that strained against his costume, which could only be the result of years of training at a gym. He sent the pictures to the group chat, immersing himself in the well-deserved compliments that his friends sent his way. He tucked his phone into his pants, sauntering out of his front door only to flinch back inside his apartment after a cold gust of wind blew through his clothes and bit into his skin. He begrudgingly grabbed a neon blue coat, his only coat, that completely contrasted against his costume and hid.
"I hate Chicago sometimes, If I lived in a warmer state like Florida I'd never have to deal with things like this" Xavion muttered, hugging his coat onto his body as he trudged through the calf-high snow on his way to the bus stop.
Reaching the bus stop, Xavion continued to curse about the weather and lamented over the fact that he had to wear a coat over his costume that took him so long to prepare. Too enveloped in his own thoughts, he didn't even notice a shadow that was slowly creeping up behind him.
"Xavion!" a young man, wearing a werewolf costume, who looked to be in his early twenties came up behind Xavion and tackled him into a hug. "Why are you just staring into space? You gotta keep your guard up or else someone like me will take advantage of you."The young man smirked, poking his boney finger into Xavion's chest.
"Killion. Get off of me." Xavion tried shrugging Killion off of him, annoyed by the antics of his best friend. In response, Killion only hugged him tighter, wrapping his legs around Xavion in a way that wouldn't allow Xavion to shake him off easily.
Xavion's eyes twitched as he glared at the octopus that was clinging to his side. His nose scrunched up at the stench that was seeping out of Killion's body. "Are you high right now?"
Killion paused, climbing off of Xavion's body before he grabbed his tattered shirt and sniffed at it. "When am I not high? I took a shower before I put on my costume. I didn't know that I still smelled like weed. Should I go back and take another shower?"
"It's too late for that now the bus is already here" Xavion sighed as he grabbed Killion's arm, dragging him onto the bus.
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Stepping out of the bus, Xavion peered up at the place where all of this mental trauma, that haunted him for so long, occurred. It used to be an old amusement park with boring rides that were so rusted you could see the tape the staff put down in an attempt to make it look better than it actually was. Eight years ago it was shut down due to an incident that resulted in a person's death. This year they fixed up all of the rides and reopened for Halloween. The eerie towering metal fences were a new addition to the carnival that only made the place seem even darker. His chest tightened as a cold chill ran up his spine making him shiver.
'Why did I ever come back to this place?' Xavion released a long sigh as he thought about his idiotic decision to go back to a place that he knew another person had died at. He should've gone to a Halloween party like a normal college student. Then maybe what's about to happen would've never happened in the first place.
"Wow...They completely revamped this place." Killion stared at the new carnival rides with sparkles in his eyes. He ran up to the ticket booth to get tickets for himself and Xavion from a man in a hippo mask.
"Xavion! Killion!" a young woman dressed up as a detective, rushed up to the ticket booth where Xavion and Killion were, flailing her arms wildly. She frowned at them as four more people followed up behind her. "I thought we were gonna meet up at the bus stop. How come you didn't wait for us?"
"You guys were taking too long so we went ahead without you" Xavion glanced down at the girl with who he had just become friends with a few months ago.
"Yeah, you were taking too long Naima...Should've got here faster." Killion reiterated, walking back to the group with the tickets, smirking at Naima while she glared at him.
"You guys should stop fighting, we're gonna get kicked out before we even manage to get on one ride."A person dressed up as a ghost, noted, stepping back a little bit to give them room in case they wanted to fight.
"Cassius...What are you wearing? This is it. You hyped this costume up for weeks and this is the best you could come up with." Xavion looked at Cassius, whose uncreative ghost costume was a dingy, dusty, dirty-looking white sheet with two holes poked out of it.
"That's what I said" piped up Darius, a pathetic, groveling waste of precious oxygen, who was dressed up as a king, fitting for his arrogant personality. His crooked teeth caked with plaque were pulled back to form the ugliest grin a human has ever made to this day.
"Where are Neveah and Karver?" Xavion questioned, looking back at Naima who had Cassius trapped in a headlock.
"They said they were gonna meet us inside, at the haunted house," Naima answered, releasing Cassius from her grip.
"Ok, let's go meet them." Xavion walked inside the carnival, beckoning for the others to hurry up and follow him.
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"Do we have to go in there?" Cassius's eyes widened at the broken-down house decorated with plastic spiders, fake corpses, and spiderwebs. He winced at the sounds of screams that came from inside, quite literally shaking in his boots.
Ignoring Cassius's whimpering, Xavion stepped forward to meet Neveah, who was standing by the entrance to the haunted house. She was apparently texting something important to someone as she was tapping her screen pretty fast. "Where's Karver?"
"He chickened out last minute and decided to wait for us by the exit " Neveah didn't even look up from her phone as she responded to Xavion's question.
"Ah that's good, I'll just go wait with him by the exit." Sweat rolled down Cassius's back as he attempted to run around the mansion to where the exit is. Cassius flinched as two hands grabbed his shirt. He slowly turned around to look at the smirking faces of Killion and Naima.
"Nah you're not backing out of this one, you're coming with us," Killion said as he, with the help of Naima, dragged Cassius into the haunted house.
"NOOO!! Help me! SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP ME!!!" Cassius screamed out, struggling against the hands that were dragging him inside.
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"Haha! This is the best haunted house I've been to in a while." Darius laughed grotesquely as he used his Dorito-crusted phone to take pictures of all the actors and decorations.
"Did you hear about the murder that happened recently?" Neveah asked looking around the haunted mansion, not reacting to any of the scares because she's not the type to fear the cliche things that the workers set up.
"Do you have to talk about a murder right now!?" Cassius whisper-yelled clinging to the wall with droplets of water appearing from the corners of his eyes.
"Yeah I did, her husband probably killed her for the insurance money, or because he had an affair partner that he wanted to be with more or maybe it was someone who had a vendetta against her or…" Naima rambled on and on about who she thought was the culprit for the murder and what she thought the reason would be for her murder.
"It's rather unfortunate ain't it...that woman was killed for no reason at all, the police couldn't even find the murderer." Xavion gave out a standard answer that anyone would give, not interested in the topic at hand.
"It's not that sad, everyone has to die eventually, your safety in this world is not guaranteed. Truth is you'll never know if you'll get killed..." Neveah's eyes drifted off towards the others in the group. "Or if someone close to you might get killed."
Silence fell over the group, no one knew what to say after hearing Neveah's words. Everyone started to look at each other, waiting for someone to say something...anything.
BAM
A door that they'd already passed was suddenly kicked down and a masked man holding a chainsaw in his hand came out. Cassius whipped his head around only to come face to face with the masked man, who lifted his chainsaw high into the air. He squeaked before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he collapsed on the ground.
"Cassius...CASSIUS!!" The group surrounded Cassius's limp body, shaking him in an attempt to get him to wake up.
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The group was forced to use an emergency exit to leave the haunted house. Once Cassius had woken up, Neveah let him lean against her and they walked off to get water and to find someplace to sit. Darius and Killion went off towards the food stalls to get something to eat. Leaving Xavion, Naima, and Karver, who were walking to the newest ride, on their own. Xavion had been friends with Karver since childhood but they stopped talking in high school. It wasn't like they had a big argument, they just fell off. This is the first time Xavion had met up with Karver in years, so the atmosphere was a bit awkward.
"So, Xavion…I have a question for you," Karver spoke up, breaking the silence between the two. The grim reaper costume that he was wearing seemed a bit too thin for the weather that they were in.
Xavion turned his head to look at Karver who was walking beside him. Karver looked up to meet his eyes, his shoulders tensed up, and he breathed out a long sigh before talking again.
"What do you think that true freedom is?" Karver stopped looking at Xavion and focused his eyes on the ground, unconsciously holding his breath.
Xavion's eyebrow quirked up at Karver's odd question that seemingly came out of nowhere. He looked up at the sky as he thought about what his reply would be.
"I guess…" Xavion paused, looking at Karver before continuing on to say. "It would mean that you'd be able to do anything you want without being restricted by someone or something else."
Karver's shoulders relaxed and he grinned up at Xavion. Naima redirected the conversation, talking about the rides that she wanted to go on that day.
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The three had finally reached the first ride, there was a large crowd surrounding the ride, cheering on a shirtless man at the top of the ride. The man was waving his arms around in the air, urging the crowd to be louder.
"If he manages to ski all the way down this slide without falling once then he will get this!" A robotic voice boomed out as a man in a slow loris mask held a gigantic boar plushie into the air while pointing at the ride.
The ride was a steep slide covered in a mixture of snow and ice. You'd be given skis and had to maintain balance and not fall on the way down the slide in order to get the prize. It's not like the author forgot about the setting and was about to put in a surfboard waterslide ride... :)
The man put on the skis and started sliding down the ride.
"This is where our fun starts, huh?" Karver absentmindedly remarked, his eyes were opened wide as if he didn't want to miss anything.
Xavion glanced down at him, quickly looking back up as the man's neck made contact with something invisible.
SLASH
The man's head came flying off as his body flopped down the side of the slide. His head landed softly into the snow, right at the feet of a woman who was standing at the front of the crowd. There was a slight pause before chaos erupted as people in the back of the crowd started screaming.
Xavion looked towards the source of the screams and saw a person in a polar bear mask using a hatchet to hack away at the people standing in the crowd. He heroically leaped forward, gripping the arms of Naima and Karver, and started running away to look for a place to hide.
"Wha-What the fuck was that!?" Naima shouted, running desperately towards the entrance to the carnival. She was shivering because of the cold but she was shaking even more now because she had just seen people get murdered.
"I've seen videos of people dying on gore sites but I've never seen something like THAT," Karver murmured, dazedly looking at the snow that was on the ground.
Xavion wanted to reply to her but his words were caught in his throat. It's been like that ever since childhood, he becomes unable to speak if he finds himself in a stressful situation. He just closed his mouth and focused on running, looking around to make sure that nothing was coming after them.
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Staring at the electrocuted bodies in front of the tall metal fence, the group paused to catch their breath thinking about their next move.
'ThisisitthisistheendI'mgonnadieIdon'twanttodieidthishowhefelt?' a dull pain formed inside of Xavion's skull as he struggled to breathe. He dry-heaved and tears streamed down his face as quick and heavy as a waterfall.
"XAVION!" roared Karver, who looked at Xavion with traces of disgust and shock on his face. "Is this it!? This is all it takes for you to break down?"
Karver's voice brought Xavion out of his thoughts, Xavion took a deep breath and stood up straight. 'He's right, if I don't calm down right now, I'll die for sure.'
"Guys listen up." a shaky voice called out, bringing their attention to Naima who was pointing at the iron gate. "An electric fence this big and this far away from town would require a generator to function. We just need to find the generator and turn it off."
Naima looked the fence up and down, feeling proud as she just came up with the most logical way to get them out of their current situation. There seemed to be a white glow that shined behind her making her stand out only for it to shatter apart as she let out the dumbest sentence that would make any horror movie fan cringe.
"We should split up to find the generator. Since there are only 3 of us Xavion can go to the right, Karver can go to the left and I can search around here in case we missed something." Naima's tone became increasingly serious and she grabbed the shoulders of Karver and Xavion bringing them into a circle. "And if we find nothing in any of those places then the haunted house in the back is the only place that the generator can be."
Xavion and Karver nodded at Naima's suggestion before they headed off towards their destination searching place.
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Xavion collapsed on the snow at the area that they said that they would meet up at. He pounded at the snow with his fists and hunched over to tuck his head between his legs.
"Are you serious!? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!" The cold bit into Xavion's fingers, making him shiver. "We couldn't find the generator! We couldn't find a different way out! We didn't even manage to get a glimpse of the masked fuckers who've been hunting us down!"
"At least you found us," Killion let out a weak smile in an attempt to lighten the mood, jerking his thumb at Darius.
"At least I found you?" Xavion repeated mockingly. "We have no idea where Cassius or Neveah is. Karver hasn't made it back yet either. They were all probably killed! Has the gravity of the situation not hit you yet!?"
"We still have hope! You guys still haven't checked the haunted house yet right?!" Killion pleaded with Xavion, helping him off of the floor. "If we can't find the generator anywhere else it must be there."
Xavion stumbled a few times whilst getting up, tired from running around to find the generator. He wrapped his arm around Killion, leaning against him for support.
"Wait before we go to the haunted house I have something important I need to tell you guys." Naima made sure everyone was listening to her before continuing, "I think that there are 3 or 4 of those masked killers."
"You saw them?" Darius asked in one of the few moments he'll ever get dialogue in this short story due to how repulsive he is.
"No, but I had a chance to examine the bodies. Some bodies had stab wounds that are too shallow to have come from the polar bear that was using that hatchet. Some people were placed into traps likely caused by the person in the loris mask and there were blow darts in some of the bodies which could be caused by the loris mask but it could also be from a different killer." Naima explained, thinking back to the injuries that she'd discovered on the corpses.
The astonished group stared at Naima, who proved herself to be the person with the best detective skills out of anyone there., which is why she could only be reduced to the role of cannon fodder.
"So all we have to do is look out for 4 people? That's easy." Killion smirked at the rest of the people in the group.
"4 people with weapons," stressed Xavion, sighing at Killion's laid-back behavior.
Having caught his breath, Xavion and the rest of the group headed off towards the haunted house.
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"That was way too easy." Xavion and Killion muttered in unison, looking at the generator that was in the basement of the haunted house. Killion giggled at the fact that they were so in sync, nudging Xavion's arm with his elbow.
The group had split up yet again, leaving Darius to guard the entrance. The rest had split up inside the haunted house and Killion had been the one to find the generator.
"At least we found it," said Naima, fiddling with the generator successfully turning it off. She turned around, heading back up the stairs with Xavion and Killion in tow. "Now we just have to run like hell before they come here and turn the generator back on."
Seeing the front door of the haunted house, Naima's pace quickened, hoping to get out of there as fast as possible.
'Still, this is all far too convenient, the generator wasn't hidden and we didn't see a single killer since the initial outbreak.' Xavion rubbed his temples in thought, 'It's almost as if this-'
"AHHHHHH!!!" The front door suddenly slammed open, Darius's cowardly screams roared throughout the house. He ran at the group and the cause of his screams revealed itself to be a person in a hippo mask, holding a knife in their hands.
Time seemed to slow down as Darius used his grimy hands to grab the person at the front of the group, Naima. Darius shoved Naima towards the guy in the hippo mask, Naima's eyes widened and she locked eyes with Xavion who reached out to her in desperation. She opened her mouth but before she had a chance to scream, the person in the hippo mask drove their knife into her skull.
Xavion froze, watching as the killer struggled to get the knife out of Naima's skull. Looking to where Darius was, he watched as Darius ran further into the house. He finally snapped out of that daze as Killion yanked him in the direction of the back door. "XAVION RUN! SNAP OUT OF IT!!!"
Xavion's heart thumped in his chest as he ran after Killion. Reaching the back door, Killion gripped the doorknob, using his entire body's weight to slam the door open. Xavion looked behind him, noticing that the person in the hippo mask had removed the knife from Naima's skull and was now just standing still, staring at them.
CRUNCH
A sudden sickening sound of something breaking brought Xavion's attention to Killion, who was now sprawled out on the ground, clutching his leg. Xavion unconsciously looked at Killion's leg, first noticing that Killion's hands were now coated in blood, then realizing that Killion had stepped onto a bear trap that had been concealed in the snow.
"Ah! Haa haa." Strangely, Killion didn't scream, he just closed his eyes tightly and started taking deep breaths.
"Ki-ack! Ah." Xavion' attempted to speak but he couldn't seem to get any words out. His ears started ringing and his vision got blurry as he stumbled over the snow to Killion to help him pry the bear trap off.
"XAVION! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Killion's voice cracked at the volume that he screamed at.
Xavion turned his head around yet again, noticing that the guy in the hippo mask was now standing directly behind him. He quickly moves to the side, tripping over his own feet and landing harshly into the floor below. The person in the hippo mask switched his attention from Xavion to Killion who had no way to escape. Xavion sprang to his feet, getting ready to defend his best friend but hesitated to move after the person in the polar bear mask slowly strolled out of the back door.
"Just leave! There's no point in the both of us dying! So just go!" Killion curled up in pain as the person in the hippo mask walked closer to him.
Xavion took one step back, took another step back, and as the person in the polar bear mask started going in his direction, he ran away. He ran away hearing his best friend curse his would-be killer out. He ran away as those screams came to an abrupt stop. He ran away despite tears clogging up his vision, rendering him unable to see. He ran away as mucus built up in his throat, making it hard for him to breathe.
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Clang
Xavion's fingers wrapped around the iron fence and he shook the locked gate twice.
'One of those masked killers probably has the key.' Xavion thought about how long it would take him to climb over the fence. 'It wouldn't be that hard to climb the fence, all I have to do is get out and call the cops.'
He placed his foot onto the fence, tilted his head back, and gazed at the sky. Heat built up inside his chest and traveled up towards his head. He pushed himself off of the fence, stomping his foot into the snow. 'I can't.'
'By the time the police get here, those masked people will probably be gone. I can't let them escape like that. I have to get revenge for Killion, Cassius, and Karver. Every single one of them will die by my hands. It's not like it'd be my first time killing a person.' With this new determination, Xavion faced away from the gate, hell-bent on getting revenge for his dead friends.
The soft sounds of footsteps caused Xavion to snap his head to the right. It was a person in a sloth mask who, after catching his attention, started to hobble away, obviously leading him into a trap.
Xavion, too immersed in his thirst for revenge, didn't pick up on this detail. He quickly caught up with the man in the sloth mask, tackling him to the ground. Heavy punches started to rain down upon the guy in the sloth mask as the guy in the sloth mask tried desperately to catch Xavion's hands to no avail.
"So you made the right choice after all." A familiar voice brought Xavion out of his daze and he looked up, noticing that he was surrounded by all of the masked people.
"Wait...you're-" Xavion didn't get a chance to say another word as the masked people started to unmask themselves one by one. The guy in the hippo mask removed his mask revealing the face of Karver. The guy in the loris mask proved himself to be Cassius and the girl in the polar bear mask tuned out to be Neveah.
Xavion's breath got caught in his throat as he had a flashback to how the guy in the sloth mask was limping. He ripped the sloth mask off of the person he was sitting on, confirming his suspicions as he gazed down at the face of Killion.
"Wha-why...Why!?" Xavion's body shook as his voice got progressively louder and louder.
"Freedom." Karver answered, smiling down sweetly at the heart-broken man. "A person should have the right to do whatever they want as long as their strong or smart enough to do so. I want to send this beautiful country into total anarchy to achieve my goal of freedom. Plus, I've been getting bored of living a simple life everyday."
"That's not a reason to kill so many innocent people!" Xavion protested, getting off of Killion.
"That's easy fo you to say! You got to beat your own father to death in front of everybody!" Cassius screamed out, glowering at Xavion. "You even got off scot free cuz you were only 12 at the time."
"I didn't mean to kill him! He was hurting my mom! What else did you expect me to do!" Xavion desperately tried to defend the crime he committed 8 years ago in this very carnival.
"You didn't mean to kill him." Killion mocked in a low voice. "Did you forget that I was there? I will never be able to forget the shit-eating grin that was plastered on your face at that time."
Killion looked Xavion dead in his eyes, "You got to remove trash from this planet so it should only be fair that others should be allowed to do so as well. But that's not how the world works, you could even get life in jail if you killed someone as lowly as a human trafficker."
Xavion weirdly found logic in their argument, but the moral code that society had instilled in him since birth made him refrain from saying that he agreed with him.
"Xavion, you're the coolest person I've ever met solely because you're the first person I've ever met who's developed a determination to kill at a young age. So, I'll give you a chance." Karver said, stepping aside so that Xavion could see Darius. Karver tossed a metal bat and a bear mask onto the floor in front of Xavions feet. "You're a smart guy so you should already know what your choices are."
"Please don't kill me, I don't want to die." Darius sobbed, saying the same thing that Naima thought right before she was killed.
Xavion started at Darius, looked at the metal bat, looked up at his friends, before looking at Darius again. Countless thoughts ran rampant inside of Xavions mind and he finally comes to terms with what he must do next.
What decision did Xavion make? Who knows? All I know is that this story has come to an end before his decision will ever be revealed. Well, it was fun narrating this story but all good things must come to an end eventually. Buh Bye.
