Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #11

Skinsuit

by CycleLunar

Chris, a college student with violent intrusive thoughts, has begun strongly identifying with certain types of horror movie slashers. This escalates on meeting Andrea, a peer in literature class he finds himself both attracted to and deeply jealous of. Simultaneously fascinated and utterly terrified by the seeming inevitability that he will act on his darkest impulses and murder his new friend, Chris nevertheless accepts Andrea's invitation to a Halloween party.

 

There’s a pretty girl in my world literature class. I’m supposed to be studying the “brotherly” love between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, but I find myself once again studying her, breaking her down line by line, piece by piece, for closer examination. Her hair, shoulder length, is dyed a spring green - her natural brunette only just beginning to show at the roots. As she raises her hand to make a contribution to the discussion, I can see more green on her nails. It’s darker, more forest-y, serving as both compliment and contrast to her hair’s vibrancy. The polish is showing its age as well, chipped and cracked with signs of use. There’s an overwhelming punkish DIY-ness to her whole look. She has a steel ring and two studs in her left ear, her right ear matching but with another stud added on top. Though I can’t see it from where I am, behind her and to her right, I know she has a rod pierced through her left eyebrow. She’s wearing black jeans with black boots and a sleeveless black t-shirt over the peeking-out straps of a purple-maroon sports bra. There’s a tattoo of a mother deer with her child on her forearm, which really ties the aesthetic together. She’s a nature goddess, bound in metal and modernity. Two intersecting and competing images, layered over what is - whether through make-up, quality care, or pure luck - absolutely flawless skin.

Skin I’d very much like to wear.

The professor called on a different student. With the quick flick of the girl’s dark eyeliner-rimmed eyes, it’s clear her peripheral vision caught me staring. I’d hoped this day would never come. She never stopped, never looked directly at me, turning her attention instead to her notebook. I never wanted her to see me, to notice this thing creeping on her. 

Or, who knows? It’s possible my inability to look away was an expression of concern. The part of me that wanted her to stay safe hoped she would notice, and would know, primally and instinctually, to stay away.

I’ve always been a psycho. That is, in the Hitchcockian rather than the DSM sense of the word. The movie monster, not an actual human. I grew up watching Buffalo Bill and Leatherface and Angela Baker and knew in my horrified soul that I was the one on the screen. One day I’d wind up standing shoulder-to-shoulder alongside them. Another name on the family tree of stories descended from the pop culture lies and exaggeration of Ed Gein. The only thing, as of now, separating me from my siblings was my first victim.

And, right as class ended, that green-haired, future missing person jump-scared me out of my dissociative state with a quick but gentle rap on the desk. “Hey, were you looking to talk to me about something?”

“Sorry,” I coughed a bit as I spoke, pushing past the phlegm that had built in my throat through lack of use. This was the worst-case scenario. Actual confrontation. But I could handle it, like I’d rehearsed. “I was just thinking that your hair is really cool. Do you style it yourself?”

“Oh god, is it that obvious?” She asked, pulling a strand forward so she could see it.

“I mean, I wouldn’t know if it was you or a salon,” I said, with a smile that I desperately wanted to appear natural. “I just asked ‘cause I was wondering how hard it is? I’ve been thinking about dyeing mine orange or something for Halloween.”

“Eh.” She shrugged. “Dyeing it isn’t hard, but actually trying to keep it looking good after can be kind of a pain in the ass.” 

She picked her, again contrastingly, bright pink backpack up off the floor. “Mind if we walk and talk? I’ve only got an hour until my next class and I’d really like to eat lunch anywhere but the student center.”

“Sure.”

The rest of the class shuffled past us out the door, and I pulled myself closer to my desk, closer to her, to make room for their exit. I couldn’t believe this girl still wanted to talk to me. I’d expected some moment - some misplaced word or expression or lack thereof - to betray the thoughts in my head. The conversation would awkwardly peter out, if it didn’t end with outright disgust. She’d leave me alone. 

Instead, she walked around the table, and waited for me to leave my seat and take my messenger bag off the floor. She stood within inches of me. I tried not to notice the pleasant, if artificial, woodsy-ness of her perfume. So much about her took me straight there - to the bear-trap laden and bloodsoaked woods that would inevitably be the sight of our final confrontation. Was she my first victim or my final girl? I needed to get that straight. No, I needed to stop thinking about this at all. I couldn’t think about how awesome she looked, how inspiring. How cute her ass was in those jeans or how deeply that filled me with envy. These weren’t normal thoughts, they were the kind that lead you to your face and name on the evening news. To her face hidden in a closed-casket funeral months after the incident.

Within two steps we walked out the door of our little pop-up building classroom and into the heavy stink of fresh mud. It had stopped raining only a couple hours ago, a product of a sudden cold front that had cut through the increasingly frequent unseasonable heat. The grass beside the sidewalk had flooded. The concrete was slick with water and grime. And though now I could feel the chill biting at my fingers, and we could both see our breath, neither of us had either the foresight or desire to have brought jackets.

“Name’s Andrea, by the way,” she said, picking up the conversation I’d let drop. “I guess you might have already known that from class, but to be honest I can’t remember your name for the life of me.” 

I had remembered hers. Of course I had, it’s what creepy stalker-killers do, learn and obsess. Unfortunately I was now obliged to offer my name back. “It’s not super memorable. Chris.”

“Gotcha. Well, Chris, let me give you some hair care advice. I know I never do it, but I strongly recommend going to a salon the first time you dye your hair. They can help give you a much better sense of what you’re looking for. You’re not one of those guys who gets weird about seeing a stylist cause it’s for girls or whatever, right?”

I wouldn’t know. I’d come to attend university here from a much smaller town. The only person who’d ever cut my hair was my father’s friend Buck, who displayed his hunting trophies at his barber shop far more prominently than he showed any skill with scissors or a comb. I hated that store and that man, and hadn’t gone to get my hair trimmed since moving away. Currently, my hair rested in its socially-acceptable too-low ponytail.

I said, “Nah, it wouldn’t bother me.”

“Though…” she trailed off, reaching up, around and behind my head. I nearly jumped back, recoiling at the thought of her touching me in any way. She couldn’t. She mustn’t. 

However, she stopped just short of making contact. “You mind?”

Dutifully, I shook my head no. Above all else, I had to appear normal. 

She plucked a strand of my hair. There was a moment of brief, light pain, then a sinking of heart-pulsing, deathly dread. I’d never be able to compensate for the crime of having any part of me in contact with any part of her. She’d be right to never forgive me.

Both looking closely at the hair and holding it close for me to look at, her face far too close to mine, she said, “So, you should know ahead of time that your hair is really thin and really light. It’s gonna absorb any color you put in it like a sponge. You said you were thinking about dyeing it just for Halloween? Like, for a week or so?” 

I nodded, unsure what else to do.

“You might want to sit on it, then? Obviously, I mean, do whatever you want. I’m just giving you a heads up that there’s a chance that even a Party City spray-on temp dye could wind up lingering with you for months. If I were you, I’d leave it alone until I had an idea I was really into.”

“Eh,” I said, stepping back. “In that case, I might not bother. It sounded fun to do for Halloween, but I definitely don’t want to have to explain it to my parents when I see them this Christmas.” 

“Okay, to that, I say, ‘fuck it, you don’t ever gotta explain anything to anyone.’” Andrea gave this adorable, devilish little smile, one to fill my stomach with the deepest envy. “Now I kinda want you to do it, just so you can tell me about the looks on their faces.”

The proper thing to do would be to smile back, but I didn’t yet know how. It’d been a chronic issue. To compensate, sometimes I would try to practice smiling in the mirror. Every attempt looked wrong. The soft grins were distant, the teeth-baring, vicious. Any muscle movement in my lips existed in a spectrum of fakey to maniacal. I could see the slow zoom, hear the dramatic music, on the photo negative of every picture that captured me. If I could, I’d burn every image of me. Leave behind no evidence that I was ever anywhere.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

By now we’d trudged through the little section of campus and made it to the muddied parking lot. Fortunately for me, the dorms were at an odd angle from the campus itself, and I was far from the only student choosing to slide across the muddy parking lot instead of taking the sidewalk all the way around. I had some sort of excuse for having followed this woman all the way to her car.

Without breaking her stride, she threw her backpack into the back of an old two-seater pickup. Her truck was bright red, except in the places where the paint had flaked off or been overtaken by the rust emanating from around the wheel wells. Even from the back, I could see a crack running along the length of the windshield. Whether this was a hand-me-down or a fixer-upper, it somehow seemed like the exact kind of car she would drive. The truck bed had surely filled with water from the rain before. Throwing her bag back there was a careless act, but one she committed with pure confidence. How did someone just casually get to be both this cute and this cool? It wasn’t fair.

“Hey, before I head out, are you actually doing anything for Halloween?” She asked, digging her keys out of her pockets and fiddling with them to get them inside her truck’s lock.

For once, I felt I could answer honestly. “I was probably gonna stay in my dorm and watch every Hellraiser movie.”

“Oh sick,” she said, finally popping the door open like she’d just broken into her own car. “That sounds way more fun than what I’m doing. My roommate talked me into going to this costume party her boyfriend’s having at his house. I was about to try and talk you into coming along.”

College parties weren’t my brand of horror. I never saw myself in the Shape. I preferred Pamela’s arrow pierced through Kevin Bacon’s neck to her son’s act of dipping heads in vats of liquid nitrogen. Many horror icons took that form - the unstoppable force of blood and brutality. They had no finesse in their crushed skulls and severed limbs, instead carrying with them cold, unfeeling power. In my mind there are two kinds of slashers, the ones you would and the ones you will never see cry. I’m in the former camp for certain, and my kind is not the kind you frequently see bursting down the door and ramming a machete through your screaming highschool boyfriend’s gullet.

“Although,” she continued, turning to me with that grin again, mischief in her eyeliner-widened eyes. “I’d consider being open to you talking me into dorm room movie night instead. Especially if I get to be there for the third movie, it was always my favorite.”

That option was completely untenable. Her alone in a room with me doesn’t end any other way than me peeling the flesh off the back of her unconscious body and stringing it up to dry on a coat hanger. The fact alone that I could picture myself doing that - that the image of me carving away the skin from the clinging, viscous, red sinew played in my head like a Lucio Fulci gore shot - was all the proof I needed to know that I could never be trusted. 

I replied, perhaps with the pace of my words a bit too quick, “Actually, I’m still pretty new around here. A party might be a good way to meet some people.”

She shrugged as she hopped in the truck. “Suit yourself. Bring some DVDs though, maybe we can find a way to put them on and I’ll have something to do other than get drunk and get hit on all night.”

“Actually, uh, I’ve got all my movies torrented.”

“Even better!”

I started walking away as she shut her car door, only for her to back up just a few feet and crank her window down. She said, “Hey, I forgot to mention, the party’s off campus. Do you have a car?”

Fuck, there went my “oops, we didn’t plan well enough” excuse for getting out of this. I shook my head no.

“No worries, meet up with me here and I’ll pick you up at like ten. See you then, you know, if I don’t run into you before that.”

She drove away, leaving me with nothing but a tremble in my hands that felt like fate.

By the time I made it back to my dorm, I had already started crying. I hated that about myself almost more than anything else. That mounting pressure, welling within me. My body nothing more than a casing for bomb. Future shrapnel in the guise of gore, destined to go off in the fiery triumphant moment when the evil is defeated. I was lucky to not have been assigned a roommate, and they were lucky not to have me. At least alone, I could vent some of the pressure through tears.

It was hard to place an exact reason why I’d started crying, though to some degree, it was all I did. Random demonstrations of mounting instability. Warning signs. I guess that’s why something as simple as this invitation was enough to break me. I knew that I'd break again, irreparably. I cried for a long time, my back against the door, tears streaming down my folded arms. As inevitable as it seemed, I didn’t want this pre-complete-insanity stage of my life to end. To have the crimes in my thoughts exposed to the world. But the timer had been set.

Through the haze in my eyes, I looked at the digital clock across my meager room. Blue lights showed me the time, and, smaller, the date. October 25th.

Bitterly, despite my tears, I couldn’t resist that maniacal smile creeping across my face. Or the song building in my throat. “~Six more days ‘til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…~”

 

………………………….

 

The blade of my knife twisted and bounced off the back of my hand, the handle falling into my grasp, the weapon sharpened and at the ready. With barely a moment to pause, I swung the handle back out again, folding the blade up, tight and concealed. I’d practiced this motion from before I’d even held a proper knife in my hands. My first had been a comb, a gift for me from an uncle who had evidently seen the evil dwelling in my eyes and had chosen to harbor rather than stifle it. The motion had long since stopped being something to practice for future use and started becoming an idle activity to make use of my perpetually shaky hands. Something to do as I waited. It was 9:50 now. I had ten minutes of relatively normal life remaining.

Happy, Happy Halloween.

I sprung the knife open again. Light from the lamp beside my bed caught the blade, shining a pink light in my eyes. The story of this weapon was nothing special. I’d picked it up from a gas station, one that also sold bongs and some truly fantastic breakfast burritos. The knife called to me from the checkout line. The steel itself was described on the placard as rainbow, though in practice it was predominately bright pink, gradient-ed soft blue right at the edge. The two halves of the handle, in contrast, were jet black, and nearly completely concealed the colors of the knife when folded. I don’t know if this made for an iconic signature weapon. The make felt cheap and flimsy. The colors turned it somewhat gimmicky. I couldn’t even bring myself to refer to it as a balisong, the cutesy term butterfly knife feeling so much more true to its essence as it danced across my hands.

The judgment in the eyes of the bearded old former trucker behind that register will always remain with me. I told him, in desperation, that it was for my girlfriend. He just smirked. When the true crime documentary film crew follows my wake, they will find at least one man who won’t say that he “never would have seen this coming.”

It had reached and passed ten o’clock during my grim reminiscing. I folded up the blade once more, and picked up my hoodie - solid black with the Videodrome movie poster printed on the chest - from its resting place on the back of my desk chair. The cold air had remained with us since the day she and I first spoke, the temperature dropping a steady few degrees day by day. The first thing I saw as I stepped outside was my own breath. I didn’t see her truck. In only a few minutes of looking around, I felt my ears turning red and my fingers growing stiff. I pulled up the hood, placed my hands in my pocket. Inside that pocket, I had everything I needed with me. My phone, my keys, my hard drive.

And the knife. I’d taken it with me.

Idiot. Creep. Killer. If you’d just left it folded on your nightstand, there would be no chance for this to be an issue. If you’d never bought the thing, if you’d never learned how to use it, if you’d just for one fucking second acted like a normal - 

*honk honk*

My soul tightened and twisted my stomach. I nearly retched. Her rusty truck pulled up beside me, and she motioned for me to come in. I obliged. Opening the door and crawling on top of the foam exposed through the torn-up faux leather, a horrible mix of scents assailed me. Her car smelled like she’d run over a skunk last week and tried to cover that by emptying out a bottle of febreeze. In fact, the whole seat felt slightly damp. The hot air blasting through the vents, while welcome, only amplified the smell.

“Hey, sorry I was a bit late. Getting these hair extensions to stay in was a bitch.” As she spoke, she ran her fingers through her now-waist-length green hair. 

The extensions looked cheap and plastic-y, their slightly flatter color making a clear demarcation near the base of her neck, where her natural hair ended. She wore a sleeveless, white turtleneck sweater and a black skirt that doubtlessly left her arms and legs freezing cold. Stranger still, she had three fingers on her left hand wrapped in bandage tape.

“You bring your movies?” She asked.

I stopped reaching for the seat belt in order to fumble around in my pockets. Once I made extra sure I had the right object, I pulled out my hard drive and waved it at her.

“Nice.” 

As she spoke, one of the extensions slid slightly down on her head. Apparently feeling the movement, she reached to the back of her head to clip it back in. Before I could ask about her appearance, she asked about mine. “I see you decided not to try dying your hair?”

“Nah, it seemed like too much work for something I wasn’t sure of. Plus it’d ruin my guy-who-owns-too-much-horror-merch costume.” I tried not to stammer as I cracked a joke, but I think I failed. In truth, I never really liked dressing up for Halloween. Every option for a costume that even slightly appealed to me seemed one step closer to showing my true nature, and I couldn’t do that. It would frighten people.

“I don’t think I could go a Halloween without dressing up.” She said, disengaging the parking brake and throwing the stick-shift into the 1 position. “It’s my favorite part.”

“Who are you dressed as, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Don’t mind it at all. Buuuuut…” She tapped her bandaged fingers on the steering wheel. “Do you watch any anime?”

“Not much. I’m not, like, opposed to watching anime, but all I’ve ever really checked out was the first season or so of Attack on Titan. Didn’t really grab me.” I liked this kind of conversation. It let me keep things simple and honest. 

“Hmmm. See, I was about to tell you, but now I’m thinking you’re the kind of guy who’d like this show, so I don’t want to give any spoilers. And, like, if I explain my costume it might give a bit too much away.”

I nodded. Unfortunately, she’d prompted me for my first lie of the night. “You should show it to me sometime.”

She smiled, bright like the plastic jack o'lanterns that the university had placed on the street corner by the library - our exit to campus and entrance to the rest of our night. “I’d like that.”

I stared for a good long while out the window as we drove. I’d expected to see… more. More skeletons scattered on lawns among more tombstones, waiting on motion-activation to jump out at more trick-or-treater’s. Instead there were miles of empty streetlight suburbia. Dark multi-bedroom houses, underneath a starless night sky, interrupted on occasion by the lights on gas stations and Methodist churches and Taco Bells. If not for the occasional inflatable giant spider, and one child I saw dressed as whichever ninja turtle the purple one is, I might not have even been able to recognize this as Halloween.

“I thiiiink we’re only a couple miles away now?” said the stunningly beautiful and impressive woman who’s presence I’d stupidly been ignoring. “Sorry. I drove over here a few days ago but it was kind of further away than I remembered.”

“Oh, no worries.” I’d been too quiet for too long, and knew I needed an explanation. “It’s just… Like, this is actually the first college party I’ve been to? I’m not really sure what to expect.”

She shrugged. “From my experience, drinking, mostly. But not like movie frat-party drinking? Whatever that is when you turn that dial down from eleven to like a six.”

I guess I could picture what that meant. Or I at least nodded along as if I could. It ultimately didn’t matter what the party was actually like. What was important right now is that I could carry a conversation like people could. I looked at her again, my attention once again drawn to the doe and fawn nestled together on her arm. “That’s a really cute tattoo.” 

Her eyes widened slightly as she looked into mine, and I knew that I’d just fucked up. My transition was too sudden. I’d ruined the cadence of talking. Or maybe I wasn’t supposed to say cute. 

After a moment, though, her gaze softened, and she spoke with a stage-whispered breathiness, “You’re right. It is.”

That did little to assuage the pressure of tears beginning to well under my eyes. Don’t cry. Please don’t, there’s no reason to. 

“S-sorry.” I managed to mutter.

“Oh.” She reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder, and gently shoved me. “Don’t worry about it. It’s kinda dumb, honestly.” 

She took her hand off me and placed it back on the wheel before continuing. “I’m not actually that big of a fan of it, if I’m being real with myself. My big sister and I got arm tattoos together back in high school, and in hindsight, I think I picked this one ‘cause I knew she would like it more than because I did? I’ve actually been thinking about getting it covered up, but I haven’t really settled on any designs for that yet.”

I thought for a moment about saying that it would be a shame to see it go, but held my tongue. As much as I liked it, as much as that sick part of me wanted to see that beautiful artwork torn off and sewn on my own arm, it didn’t seem like my place to comment on what she wanted to do with her skin.

“We’re here, by the way.”

She parked us on the sidewalk, across from a line of other cars. The sort of… tenor of this neighborhood had changed dramatically from the ones we’d previously passed through. While before we’d been looking at lines of single-story, small yard and chainlink-fence houses, we’d now entered a section of the suburbs that had been both far more and far less engineered. Only five homes rested on this cul-de-sac, in two identical-except-for-brick-color styles. They each had yards the size of small farms, though nothing but short-cut grass and neatly trimmed hedges had been allowed to grow. The houses themselves were multi-bedroom, multi-story, and the grey one across the street was visibly filled with a multitude of people I now had to force myself to meet.

We exited the warmth and unpleasantness of my victim-in-waiting’s truck, back into the cold fall air. Along the way to the grey McMansion, we passed the Hulk in an inflated muscle-suit, sitting on a metal bench and draining the contents of a Solo cup. None of us paid the other much mind. Andrea opened the door without knocking, but stopped at the entranceway, leaving me just enough room to walk in beside her.

It was loud in here. Upbeat music that I didn’t recognize played through a speaker system in the adjacent living room, and while it wasn’t overbearing, its combination with the several simultaneous conversations happening among the other partygoers hurt my ears. I pulled the hood up over my head, hoping to have any barrier between the sound and me. The guests themselves weren’t any less overwhelming, with their mix of Lokis and Luigis with generic grim reapers and sexy devils. The walls were decorated like every old person’s house - crosses and family photos and stitchings that didn’t say “bless this mess” but might as well have. All of this was contained within a soft orange lighting. I wasn’t sure whether or not that part had been set up for Halloween. As much as I could never see myself carving up the walls and guests with a chainsaw, I couldn’t really deny the appeal. 

“If you want to set up some movies, they’ve got this whole home theater upstairs. They’ve even got a projector and shit.” My companion reached into the pocket on her skirt and pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer, I guess to cleanse herself of having touched the door handle. “You wanna try to figure out how to play stuff on that while I go grab us some drinks?” 

I nodded. She turned and headed away, while I trudged upstairs, dragging my broke-kid shoes on the carpeted steps the whole way.

Both the home theater and its projector proved to already be occupied. There were twelve chairs total in the darkened room, in six sets of two. A couple about my age, one wearing a baseball cap with a skull on it and the other not dressed in any particular way, sat in the front row, passing an acrid smelling vape pen back and forth. I arrived in the theater to a shower of screams and gore. On both the big screen and on the laptop I found wired to the projector, I watched the woodchipper scene from Tucker and Dale with a grin. Skull-cap turned around gave me that head-tilt of acknowledgement. I returned it before taking my seat as far away from them as possible. 

Two deaths later, Andrea still hadn’t arrived with drinks. My hand reached into my pocket to grab my knife. I snatched that errant hand with the other. She must have gotten wise in the car. My silence and tremors spoke louder than any raving. She finally saw me as the creep and weirdo I am. Ditched me at a party with a couple dozen other potential victims. And, honestly, good for her. 

No, only a short time had passed. She’d said she had friends at this party - her roommate and someone else. It was very possible that she’d simply run into them. She’d be here any minute now. I refused to let myself grab and flick my knife, instead slaking my thirst for motion by drumming the fingers of my left hand on the wrist of my right.

 By the time credits rolled, my wrist felt tender. She really had ditched me here. I trembled. The hypothetical fears of my own murderous capabilities sank into the concrete fear of how the fuck do I get back home? I trudged back down the stairs, pulling my phone out of my pocket and dreading the inevitable expense of a late-night Uber back to campus. As soon as I opened the door, however, I saw her rusty red pickup, still parked across the road. I nearly turned around to go back inside, but the sight of bright green in her window kept me walking towards the car.

“Andrea?” I asked, raising my voice to a volume she could hopefully hear. There was no movement in the truck, a fact that made my stomach sink more and more with each step forward, for every step made her body more visible. 

She was there, in the driver’s seat. Her head lolled over and held upright by counter-pressure of the window, her green hair clinging to and spreading across the glass like decorative cobwebs.

I ran across the asphalt of the parking lot, and rapped my knuckles against the window. Over and over. My hands kept separated from her head by mere millimeters. No response. Fuck. Fuck. I pulled at the handle, but the truck was locked. I banged against the window harder.

Suddenly and finally, signs of life. Consciousness rose out of her abdomen, its motion dragging her head and arms behind it like a zombie rising from the background to tear apart its unsuspecting prey. Eventually her eyes rolled to the front of her head and focused on mine.

“Oh hey, it’s you.” She mumbled, her words slurring. “Hey, friend.”

“Andrea, are you alright?” I asked, tugging pointlessly on the door handle again. 

“Yeah. Well. Yeah, I’m alright.” She tried and failed to smile. “Oh god. Sorry I was about to ditch you or whatever.”

“I don’t give a shit about that. What happened? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

“What?” She nearly shouted in surprise, the first sign of having any true lucidity that I’d seen. “No, dude, it’s just like… god, this is stupid. When I went to get drinks, I went ahead and downed one. Then, like, several. ‘Cause I’m a complete fucking dipshit and I can’t ever stop myself from making another fucking bad decision.”

She paused for a moment, groaning and clasping her forehead in her hands. “Then, dipshit me is like oh I’m not feeling good, I should go home, and it takes me until I get in here for me to realize that I’m way too drunk to drive. So I just blacked out.”

“Want me to drive you home?” I offered.

She looked at me again through the window, a sideways glance not full of any malice or spite, yet nevertheless put me back in my place. That’s right. I was a danger to her, and that wasn’t the kind of question I was supposed to ask.

“Or… or I could- ”

“No. No, that sounds great to me. I’ll be glad if you’re the only person I embarrass myself in front of tonight.” She reached over and unlocked the door, then began the process of rolling herself over into the passenger’s seat.

The inside of her car smelled just as wet as earlier, this time with the added overpowering bready and boozy layers of cheap only drank to get drunk beer. For all that, Andrea’s paled complexion and slowed movements didn’t read to me as intoxicated so much as sickly. Her hands snagged against her hair extensions as she moved across the seats, tearing a chunk of them out of her hair. She threw them against the back window, muttering something about “these fucking things,” as I hoisted myself into the driver’s seat.

When I’d buckled myself in, I found myself confronted with a new issue.

“Uh, do you think you could give me the basics on how to drive a stick?” I asked.

“Fuck me.” Andrea mumbled, returning her head to her hands. “Just like, press the left pedal when you turn the key to fire up the car. Then, when we start rolling, do it again to put us in first. We’ll just stay in first. Be easier on my stomach, anyway.”

On my first attempt, I succeeded only in making the truck make a ton of noise and suddenly lurch forward. Andrea lurched as well, turning the crank to roll down the window as fast as she could.

“S-sor-”

“Don’t be.” She commanded, her voice choked in the back of her throat.

It took a few more tries to get the car rolling, and from there it took more to actually get it driving. Soon enough, though, we’d successfully left the party we’d only just arrived at. I took a left turn at the exit to this bougie suburb. From there, my memory of how to get back to campus failed me. I kept driving anyway, waiting on the hope of a red light to give me the chance to get my bearings.

Andrea’s head now rested on the ledge where the passenger window used to be. Her hair, in its different lengths and different greens, blew in every direction both inside and outside the car. She seemed to be unconscious again already. She looked so weakened. She looked so pretty. I rolled down my window as well, letting the cold night air circulate in and around the both of us.

We rolled up to the red light, which was situated on its own, a single light hung on a single wire at a crossroads so barren I couldn’t even find signage. I must have been wrong about even that first turn, for it seemed we were getting further away from civilization. It was instinct. The dark places fit for ghastly deeds, drawing me closer. The street lights had vanished. No stars or moon could be seen in the sky. Andrea breathed deep, and slow. The red light, the headlights, and the glow of the dashboard made all the light to see by. My hand reached into my pocket, and my fingertips brushed against the metal of my folded blade. 

The light turned green. I didn’t let off the brake. 

“Light’s green.” Andrea spoke up, causing me to jump in my seat. Apparently she had been conscious after all. 

“I know.” I said, pulling out my phone and waving it at her. “I’m getting directions.”

“Right, okay. Well, take a left here. Then a right at the Taco Bell.” She mumbled.

I spun the wheel and drove on, following her instructions. No point in keeping her waiting.

For a brief moment, we drove under a cover of trees, before suddenly and all too abruptly finding ourselves thrust back into the light of modern suburban development. Where the lights were always on and advertising something, where every inch of the surrounding outlet shops and fast-casual eateries had security cameras that threatened to watch you. My arms tightened with a tense relief. This was a habitat of familiar restraint, like being back in my cage at the zoo. Here, in the environment I’d always known, if I couldn’t be tamed then I could at least be captured.

When we passed that Taco Bell, she spoke up again. “It’s still Halloween, right?”

“Yeah?” I didn’t have a clue where she was going with this.

“If you still wanna hang out, I know this really creepy place on campus. It’s like, abandoned and shit. Could be spooky. Or fun.”

I found myself glaring at her, trying to pierce through the hair that had fallen over her face while she kept her head half-outside the window. How could she be this reckless? This stupid, to not only find herself here but invite me for more? Fucking care about yourself.  

She must have felt it, or got tired of my silence. Slowly, she lifted up her head. Her eyes met mine, and my heart dropped. For the first time, I saw past the goddess and the eyeliner and into the underlying death wish.

“I’m taking you home, Andrea.”

“That’s cool, too. When we get there, do you wanna watch something?” She smiled, closing her eyes a bit too purposefully. She knew what I had seen.

“No. I’m dropping you off. I’m leaving your truck there, too. I’ll find my own way back.”

“You can’t-” I saw her reel back to continue, to curse me. Instead, those words died in her throat, and with a hand rushing to her mouth, she said, “oh fuck. Oh fuck. Pull over. Now.”

She didn’t need to ask twice. I hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road, accidentally scraping the rubber of her tires against the curb. She didn’t have time to care. She flung open the door and rolled out of the truck and onto her knees. I killed the engine.

Something ephemeral told me it was time. Right here, on this curb. The fateful moment. She’d never be weaker than now. I saw myself opening the door, felt my fingertips trace and cut themselves across the rusty hood of her truck. She would breathe deep and puke on the sidewalk. When she sucked in air again, it would be her last breath. I would be there, my hands or my knife on her neck, my grunts or screams or apologies whispered in her ear as the last thing she heard. Her body thrown into the bed of her own truck. I’d wipe the blood off my hands with a rag, start the engine back up, and drive away. Now was the narrative culmination of a night and a lifetime.

Yet, in reality, I couldn’t move from my seat. When I heard her suck in that breath and splatter the contents of her stomach across the concrete, my own stomach churned. My hands gripped to the wheel, so tight I thought they’d bruise. She breathed in again and said fuck. She puked again and said sorry. I sat still, my eyes fixed on the deep, pulsing motion of her back. Only a single thought crossed my mind. I really hoped she would be okay.

The splattering soon gave way to dry heaving. Then gasping, then silence. She wiped the bile from her lips, crawled back inside the truck, and closed the door. “I’m sorry.”

“No worries.” My hand trembled as I pried it from the wheel and felt around for the shift. “How do you start this thing again?”

“Give me a minute.” She gasped. She stuck her hand in the pocket of her skirt, and pulled out her bottle of hand sanitizer.

Looking at her now - despite the vile slime still oozing from the corner of her mouth, despite the half-gone-half-barely-hanging-on plastic hair extensions, despite the increasingly evident and familiar self-hate and the shittiness of her car - I still felt envious. I still wanted that hair. I wanted to look that good when that disheveled. I wanted that skirt with pockets. But they were all hers. My moment to act had passed, and despite myself, we were both still here. We both still would be. Whatever it was that lay within me, whatever it desired, it ultimately couldn’t bring itself to take it away from her.

I cranked the engine. This Halloween would end like any other - with sleep. We’d both go home. I’d drop off her and her car, then catch a bus or walk back to the dorm. I’d throw this knife away, try to lay the dark thoughts and horrors of murder to rest. Try to find myself in whatever new fantasies would surely surface in their absence.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, pouring vast amounts of the sanitizer on her hands.

“Like I said, it’s no trouble.” I lied.

“No.” 

And in an instant, her hands were pressed against my face. I tried to scream, but found no air. My mouth and throat and sinuses filled with chemical smell, sweet and burning. My neck failed to support the weight of my skull. Darkness burrowed into my eyes through the back of my brainstem, and for a moment, I was gone.

 

………………………….

 

Consciousness returned and left again, leaving me with nothing but memories of sickness and motion. I remember my head bouncing against the metal truck bed, my hand resting on the sharp edge of chipped paint. Next I felt pressure under my arms and dead grass bristling against my ankles. Then I found myself on my back, resting on something rigid and cold. Full awareness would not return until later, with a sharp inhaled breath, a bleach stench, and the brightest lights I’d ever seen.

The haze of my newly awakened vision focused in on the form of Andrea, standing over me like the reaper himself. Her hair extensions were fully removed, her eyeliner cracked and peeling, her face utterly calm and expressionless. She held in her hands a bag of something, which she casually threw behind her as soon as her eyes locked with mine.

“You should have worn a costume tonight.” She spoke calmly, but with a chilling gravel. “If you had, I might have never recognized you.”

Instinctually, I tried to lift myself up, but I quickly encountered resistance. I knew that I would. From the moment I awoke, I knew the scene I was in. Arms and legs strapped to a table. About to be torn apart.

“Andr-” I began to speak, but her hand grasped my face and pinched my lips together, painfully. 

“No.” She commanded, and I understood. We would not be using that name any more. She moved away from the table, and my head turned to follow. I could see her walk over to the far wall and crouch down to pick something up, though my vision became obscured by my own arm, pinned as it was above my head. Whatever she was looking for, it made a metallic clacking that echoed around the room. 

The room itself was quite something. If there was a visible door, I certainly couldn’t find it anywhere within my head’s limited range of motion. The lights hung much lower than the rest of the high ceiling, suspended at the end of solid black rods. Yet by far the most striking feature was the material that covered the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The whole room was solid chrome, polished to a mirror shine. The bright lights bounced off the floor and reflected back, only to bounce off the roof to the floor again - caught in a grid of infinite expansion though dimming with iterative distance, like the eternal chaos of the stars themselves had been captured and brought to rigid order. To my right, in the flesh, I could see my captor. I could also see her to my left and my front, surrounding me at various angles and degrees of clarity.

Most importantly, glaring beyond the bright lights to the roof above, I could see myself. Blurry and quivering. Good. I felt the twitching of my lips trying to form a smile, and the tears threatening to spill from under my eyes. If I was destined to die in an ironic twist of fate, due punishment for the crimes I had dreamed of committing, at least that bastard reflection would go too. I couldn’t wait to see the suffering in my own eyes.

I decided to ask, less out of genuine curiosity and more to test if I was allowed to speak, “Where are we?” 

“Do you like it?” My killer asked in return, twirling something thin in their hands. “Personally, I think it’s the worst room in mankind’s history. And it happens to be located on our own university’s campus. I can’t claim to know its original purpose, but I do know that the building we’re in is abandoned. Isolated. The sole product of a planned expansion that the college never quite found the funds to finish. Close enough for convenience, and far enough away that no one will ever come to save you.”

My captor strode over towards me in long, slow steps. But they didn’t look at me, instead past me, at their own reflection. “It’s a very fitting stage for the performance we’re about to put on together. I’ve been in a place like this before. In the bathroom at the church where we held my sister’s funeral, they kept two mirrors across from each other. I stared into those mirrors for a long time. At my reddened face and smeared veneer, the tear stains on the black dress I’d worn because I was told to wear it. At my body and beyond my body. At the very back of my infinitely repeating reflection - I finally saw myself.”

They stood over me again now. With a single motion, head and eyes moving as one, it looked into my soul. I stared at the black void of its irises, seeing in them my reflection with far more clarity than in the ceiling above. It spoke. “I’m sorry to say, Chris, that the name you knew me by was simply a part of the disguise I was born into. The role I leaned into as much as I could for as long as I could take. But I can’t take it anymore. My real name is unpronounceable to either of our human tongues, but it hardly matters. By the time we are finished here, you will know the essential truth…”

At that he - between our reflections I knew, wordlessly, that he was an it and it was a he and both and neither simultaneously - pulled out a knife. An obsidian scalpel, looking to the untrained eye like nothing more than a pen but to me like a blade of practiced care and precision. It was clean, sophisticated. Iconic. 

“...I am a demon.”

My heart raced in terror, eyes widened in adulation. Holy shit. How fucked up was it that, even in this position, he found new ways to impress me?

“Why me?” I asked, words escaping though I had hardly any breath.

“I caught you staring,” was its cold reply.

Then, my next question, whispered so quietly I could hardly hear myself. “What are you going to do to me?”

He poked my chest with the blade, the tiniest little pricking causing the tiniest little pain. “I’m going to cut off your skin and wear it.”

Oh my god. 

Oh my god. This was destiny.

The demon spun his knife, idly twisting it like a toy. I tried ignoring the blood rushing to my face and the place I most despise. That wasn’t right, or normal. A disgusting physical reaction of a disgusting mind. I deserved this punishment. I was a freak, and a weirdo, and… how could I even pretend to hide it anymore? The demon before me wasn’t, and I’d always been envious of it. These were the last few minutes of my life. Might as well live them unburdened.

I started crying.

The dam fully burst forth, years of tense pressure and hatred pouring out in hard, painful sobs. I cried until I couldn’t breathe. I cried so hard I thought I’d choke before the demon had the chance to end me.

For its part, the demon simply waited until the worst of the tears had subsided. Then his hand clasped my head, palm on my forehead and fingers in my hair. Whether or not it had meant it this way, the touch, the way his hand rested on me, felt soothing to my mind. It said, “Please, Chris. Try to die with some dignity.”

Then he slowly leaned down and gently licked the tears from my face.

At that, before I even had the chance to catch myself, I snorted and said, “God, you’re so fucking hot.”

The demon’s eyes widened. Slowly, tongue still extended, it raised itself back up. The demon folded his tongue back into its mouth and flashed that grin I’d always known him to have. It laughed, deep and sinister. “Cute, Chris. But if that was your attempt to appeal to the remnants of humanity that you surely know must reside somewhere within me, then you should know it was rather misguided. Complimenting this body will get you nowhere.”

“I’m not talking about the body, you dork.” If my hands could move, I’d have rushed to cover my mouth, shocked as I was by my own audacity. As it was, I couldn’t stop myself from speaking freely. “I mean, yeah, it’s sexy. But the demon is moreso. I’m really honored I got the chance to meet you.”

The demon rolled its head, as though it lacked the ability to roll its eyes independently. “Chris-”

“STOP FUCKING CALLING ME THAT!” I screamed, and at that the demon jumped. “I hate that fucking name. If you’re going to torture me to death, fine, but I’d prefer to have you playing piano with the tendons in my wrist over you constantly calling me that name while you keep stalling.”

The demon visibly bristled. “I am not stalling.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re here to show me your true self, right?” I rolled my neck, resting it against my shoulder and creating a satisfying pop in my spine. “You’re honestly trying to tell me that hovering over me and expositing is better than just starting, leaving me with nothing but ignorance and agony? You’ve already denied yourself the sadistic satisfaction of getting to ignore me as my pleas for mercy collapse into nothing but the repeated question of why, why me? What have you been waiting on?”

The demon opened its mouth. To retort, to snarl. But it had nothing. No response but an actual answer could be as honest. 

Eventually, he lifted himself up and fully stood upright before turning and sitting on the few inches of clearance between me and the end of the table. “Narrative justification, I suppose. Or nerve in its absence. The… type of demon that I am is not so much a force of reckless malice but one of due retribution. When I saw the way you stared at me, I assumed you were hiding something dark. I thought you would reveal that to me on Halloween. No such event ever happened. Instead you spent the whole night being a caring, but awkward, nerd. Honestly, embarrassingly, I didn’t know what else to do but proceed regardless.”

I smiled wide, the first time in my memory I’d let anyone see that maniacal grin. “If that’s what you want, I can provide it for you. Free my left arm and I can show you.”

The demon grinned back at me. “Now, my dear victim, you know I can’t do that.”

“Come ooooooon, it’s only one arm,” I whined. “Besides, if you can’t have your justification, wouldn’t it be more fun to have some risk?”

He didn’t move. The way the demon’s reflective eyes stared back at me reminded me that I had to be honest with it in kind. I said, “I’m glad I got to meet you, demon. Please, as a last request, meet me too.”

Cautiously, deliberately, the demon laid across me. With careful movements, it loosened the strap on my left wrist.

I jerked my arm free and scrambled to my pocket. The demon jumped and grabbed for his blade. In a flash of pink, I had my knife against the demon’s neck, just as it had its scalpel held against mine. We stayed there, breathing deep. Knives held a single wrist-flick away from death. Trapped together. 

“This whole night, I’ve wanted nothing more than to skin you too.” I giggled. Wildly. It was the first time in my life I’d ever allowed anyone to see it. “I’m a total psycho.”

After a moment, it was the demon’s turn to laugh. His laughter was deep and unforgivably evil. It was choked and strained, like dying. It swung with the rhythm of music. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t help but try to harmonize with it. My maniacal cackles joined with its, and though I was nervous my voice couldn’t, I think my contribution complimented his.

Soon, my arm and my knife both fell away. I’d started crying again from the laughter, and used my knife arm to wipe away my tears. I knew what I’d done, for I’d done it deliberately. I’d set the demon free. “Go on then, you already won. Your plan was better. I never had the will to execute mine.”

But the slashing of my throat that I’d expected never came. The demon’s knife moved only slightly, trembling against my jugular. I tapped his blade with my own, and a pleasant metallic ring echoed through the room. 

“Come on,” I pleaded. “Take your prize, I don’t even want it. I hate the coarseness of its touch against my brain. I hate its smell. I hate the way it makes me feel like a monster for wanting anything that I’ve ever craved. Get rid of it for me. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Yet still death did not come. I closed my eyes and waited. Nothing. I opened my eyes and gasped. The demon above me was horrified. 

Anything but that. 

It again slid across me, and let loose the strap on my right arm.

“What are you doing?” I asked as though I couldn’t tell. In response, the demon stood. It walked around the table and removed my ankle restraints.

“Please.” Tears started streaming down my face, pooling in and dampening my hoodie as I sat up. “I’m sorry I said anything. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I’m… I’m sorry I pulled a knife on you. I’m sorry I said what I’d been thinking. Please pretend like I hadn’t said anything. Please pretend I’d just been unconscious this whole time, that I’d been a creep towards you before. Please. Just please don’t go.”

“I…” He trailed off. From the end of the cold steel table, those reflective eyes now showed me the worst things it could. I saw myself, recognition, and pity.

“As a demon,” it spoke, turning away from me, a quiver in its voice betraying its earlier bluster, “I’m not capable of doing favors.”

Now, lacking the confidence of its earlier gait, the demon rushed across the room and scooped his bright pink backpack from its resting place on the floor. In a moment, I knew it would be out of this room, back into his truck. Leaving me with nothing but a cold walk back to my dorm for yet another night of lonely crying. We’d see each other in class soon after, both knowing something about the other that we’d never, ever say. Then we’d part, and never speak, never act in earnest for the rest of our lives.

No. I had to try something. Offer something to prevent that fate. I wouldn’t know how to live with this unfinished.

“Maybe, then, it doesn’t have to be a favor? Favors are too one-sided, too selfish for a psycho like me to ask for anyway. Instead, I’d like to ask you…” I pressed my thumb against the dull end of my knife, using the leverage to flick one half of the knife handle on the table. A clack echoed through the room. I did it, over and over, keeping a steady drumbeat. The demon, for his part, paused his frantic rush towards the now all-too visible door.

“As a demon, do you like making deals?”

It didn’t move at first, instead keeping its body braced to run. Yet slowly, it relaxed. The bag dropped back down to the floor, the metallic clanging of its contents filling the room with noise like the fallen bell of a cathedral. For a brief moment, before the sound faded, it matched my rhythm perfectly.

It breathed in, long and slow, and all the power in his presence returned. “I’m listening.”

“I propose a fair and equal trade. One to set us both free.” I tore at my shirt, stretching it down, and circled a patch of bare skin with my blade. “A piece of my flesh for a piece of yours.”

“That’s… psychotic,” It replied, the evil grin returning. Mischief and death flowed back into its eyes, a turn that was sudden but unbelievably welcome. “It would be slow and painful. Absolutely miserable.”

In a few strides, he had returned to my side. It leaned low and whispered in my ear, “I love it. We’re going to do it. And we’re going to start right now.”

“Aren’t we supposed to think it over? Make sure we’re not being impulsive?” I teased.

“Don’t make suggestions to a demon that you can’t follow through.” He clasped the back of my head. “I’ve planned this night this every moment since I found myself. I relish the opportunity to see it through.”

I giggled again. Giggling felt so wonderful. So evil, so natural. “I’ve wanted this ever since I was born.”

He pressed the cold obsidian on the side of my face, and I felt pain, then warmth trickling down my face.

“It’s my pick first.” It growled. “And I’m taking this chin.”

That was a kind gesture, a starting place I had long wished to see go. I decided to be kind in turn. I took hold of the wrist that held the blade, gently traced my hand up his arm. I tapped my fingers lightly on the ink of the doe and her fawn.

“I’d like this tattoo.”

The demon didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Deal.”

The cut deepened. And I screamed.

 

…

 

We’ve been at it a long while now.

We lie there together, on the floor of the chrome room, winded and reveling in our mutual exhaustion. I’m not sure if hours, or days, or years have passed. Whether we’ve stayed rooted here or left and returned hardly matters because for so long and through so much agony this has been the only place that meant anything. The mirror finish of the floor and walls is tarnished, stained brown and red with the excess of our work, but the reflection of the ceiling shows how we lay. My body is on its back, arms and legs and breasts splayed open. Beside it sleeps the demon, peacefully on its side, draped only in my former skin. The fingers of our outstretched hands rest intertwined. Two serene and damaged things, in a grotesque place, surviving because and in spite of the nightmares we found ourselves through. As I look up at this exhibit of patchwork art, I know that neither one is me. But I care so deeply for the one I now possess.

The work was long, and difficult, and excruciating, pushing just to the brink of unbearable. And, though we’ve placed our knives down, we’ve not yet been granted the mercy of that work being over. The polish on these nails is all but gone. My hair has grown roots and the dye has faded. There are stitches in my throat, scars on my forehead. Memories of pain, screaming, blood and tears and all the comfort we gave each other to get through it. Each bit of my surface seems to have taken on a different complexion and texture than the last. In some ways I’m not sure what I am anymore. If I’m a killer, or a zombie. A creature or just a girl. There may not even be an answer. The bruising, the wounds, and the scarring will need time, attention, and care. Healing can wait. Now’s not the time for that. It’s time to rest.

I fell asleep soon after. A hard, dreaming sleep. Looking up at, and underneath the gaze, of two monsters I’ve deeply grown to love.

 

Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #11

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