Halloween.

Once, one of his favourite days of the year. It was a day of candy, of costumes, and... well, he’d never minded a little bit of horror, and he honestly kinda enjoyed the aesthetic. It was a day of adrenaline and fun; nothing else could put a smile on his face quite like Halloween could.

But... things had changed. Time had marched on. And now that he was fifteen, a freshman in high school... Josh Holliday was too old to put on a silly costume, too old to trick-or-treat. All he really had left was to watch some Halloween-themed movies later that night, and maybe steal some candy from the basket he was supposed to be giving to trick-or-treaters. Wow! What a little rascal!

He felt... depressed. Empty. 

Where were all the other guys? Well, he guessed they had different stuff they were into nowadays. Going to Halloween parties, really scary haunted houses, and such? It wasn’t like he was invited to any of that, though. Nor would he have been that interested, really. Wearing a scary costume and trying to freak people out was just... not something he was interested in. Nor was partying with a bunch of guys. Ugh.

Which left him, again, as the only one home, trying to study for an upcoming test. Which also left him awfully distracted, due to the continual requirement of giving candy to anyone that rang the doorbell.

And that’s not to say Josh hadn’t tried to do something interesting for Halloween, either! Unfortunately, most of his ideas involved a lot of time and energy — time and energy he did not have — putting together costumes for video game or movie characters he was interested in. The real problem was that most of the characters he was interested in were... well, girls. And he was not. Which meant all those costumes would require way more effort to... you know. Make him not look like a guy. And even if he did do a good enough job at that...

“You want to dress up as what?” his mother had exclaimed when he’d asked for help, the expression on her face strained and confused. 

“Th-the Violet Witch,” he’d repeated, his apprehension at asking her for help quickly morphing into dread. “She’s... uhh... a character in an anime.”

His mum had stared at him for a moment, before starting to chuckle. “Hah, hah. Very funny, Josh. You know, you really had me thinking you were serious for a moment.”

“I... I was...” he’d mumbled, looking away.

She frowned. “You’re nearly an adult, son. Why do you even want to dress up at all, let alone as a woman?”

“I... I just—”

Shaking her head, his mother sighed. “You shouldn’t even be watching anime. It’s a bad influence, putting these weird ideas in your head. Sweetie, just be normal for once and dress up as some monster from a horror movie or something, okay?”

Josh grimaced. Why had things changed so much? He remembered back when he was little, when costumes were meant to be silly or cute. Why did he have to be a monster now? Why couldn’t he be cute again? “I don’t... want to dress up as a monster.”

“Well, if you’re not planning on going out for Halloween, then, you can always watch the house and hand out candy,” his mother had said with a note of finality, turning away to the kitchen. “You can use the downtime to study. Heaven knows you need it if you want to get into anything better than a community college.”

His choice had been made very clear: Dress up as something that made sense, or don’t dress up at all.

If only...

The doorbell rang, and Josh realised he’d been staring listlessly at his notes for the past ten minutes. Sighing, he stood up, and grabbed the basket of candy.

“Trick-or-treat!” sang a chorus of two older girls and a couple younger kids.

“Hi Christy, Whitney,” he said, opening the door and trying not to sound too dejected. They were both in his grade, and their costumes were cute, which made his tummy feel... tight. The costumes were also incredibly simple. Christy had whiskers drawn with face paint and a cat-ear headband, and Whitney had a headband with demon horns and was wearing a red dress. That was... it. And it didn’t look like they were embarrassed to be out trick-or-treating or anything. 

Forcibly dismissing the thoughts in his head and the bile in his throat, his eyes drifted down to the younger kids. “Who’re the two little ones, then?”

“Hi Josh!” Christy said. “This is my sister Lia and Whitney’s brother Ben. They’re cute, aren’t they?”

“Oh, definitely,” he gave her a smile, one that wasn’t even strained. “Cute enough to deserve two candies, I’d say!” He held down the basket so they could take them.

“Are we cute enough to take two candies, too?” Whitney giggled, doing a little pose and winking.

Josh choked on his saliva. “Uhh...... Yeah. Sure. I guess. Happy Halloween.”

And then, just like that, the four of them were leaving. “Thanks, Josh! See you at school!” Christy said.

“Y-yeah...” he murmured, and then he was back in his house, sitting down at his computer, staring blankly at the screen again.

It... wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. Why did they get to trick-or-treat still? Why was it normal for them? And why did they have to put like, near-zero effort into costumes, when no matter what work he put in, it would be silly and embarrassing?

It wasn’t fair.

He wanted to dress up. He wanted to be called cu—

Beeboop! A text notification interrupted his thoughts suddenly, and he sighed. If that wasn’t his mother, he would be surprised. 

It was his mother, and he was not surprised.

“You’d better be studying, Joshua, and not watching that perverse trash again! There’s no such thing as a lawyer like that!!!”

Thanks for the reminder, mother, he thought to himself, and sighed again. He wished he was watching his ‘perverse trash.’ At least then he’d be able to escape out of his own head for a while... pretend he was someone else...

There was a knock at the door.

Exasperated, Josh stood up, grabbing the candy basket again. He braced himself, just in case it was even more cute girls around his age, just in case he’d be feeling even more jealousy. Swallowing, he then walked around the corner into the entryway, and opened the door.

Of course. Three cute girls. He should have figured. At least they seemed to put more effort into their costumes... 

On the left was a very tall girl with black hair and red highlights, holding a skateboard; she looked like some kind of 90s skater girl, almost, with those excessively baggy pants and the long windbreaker. On the right was a girl with extremely long, straight, white hair, in a very, very goth outfit; so many layers of black and fishnetting and different textures that it was hard to even parse. And then, in the middle, there was a girl with extravagantly curled blonde hair, wearing a complex and unwieldy-looking, shoulderless, lime green Victorian dress... and also combat boots.

They all stood there for a while, staring. That was it. Just staring. And of the three girls standing there, none of them said the magic words. Not a single trick-or-treat. Confused, Josh looked between them, and they stared at him.

Finally he shrugged and held out the basket of candy. A couple of them glanced down at it, but the one in front, in the Victorian dress, just kept staring directly at him. He shifted uncomfortably, wanting to be... anywhere else, anything else. “H-happy Halloween?”

“This one looks so juicy,” the girl to the left giggled, and Josh glanced at her. She was grinning, and he couldn’t help but notice just how pointy her teeth were. Was that... part of her costume? What did pointy teeth have to do with the 90s skater girl look?

“See? Exactly what we were looking for,” said the girl in front, hands on her hips. “I knew we’d find one.”

“A-are you going to... take it, then?” Josh said, holding the basket up for her.

“Yes,” said the goth girl to the right, her voice quiet and gravelly, a grimace on her features.

The girl in the middle pushed the basket back down. “It’s so nice of you not to fight,” she chuckled, fingers covering her mouth. Was she trying to be, like... a noble villainess from an anime or something? Was that why she was wearing that Victorian dress? Her laugh even sounded like an ‘ohoho’...

He shook his head, trying to instead parse what she was talking about. It was nice of him not to fight? Fight them? “I mean... Why would I? You’re meant to take the candy.”

“Because we’re here for you, not for candy,” the girl on the right huffed. Wait... what?

The villainess put a hand on her shoulder. “Ignore it, it will be alright. Let’s go home.” 

A strip of light appeared on her forehead, and then the forehead of the girl on either side. And then... the strip of light opened, and on all of them was... an extra eye, and all the eyes were glowing.

And then on the girl in front, two more eyes opened on her forehead, one on each cheek, and even one on each shoulder.

“What the f—”

C R A C K

The basket of candy crashed to the concrete, chocolate and candy flying every which way. 

And as the sugar dust settled... not a soul remained.

👁👁👁👁👁👁👁

Josh Holliday was falling backwards, falling away from everything he’d ever known, every aspect of his tiny, mortal, human life.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was even looking at anymore. It was like a kaleidoscope of colour — mostly oranges, reds, blacks, and whites — and eventually, as the image distorted ever more, spiralling into incomprehensibility as he fell further and further away, he realised that it had been the front of his house, and now...

Well, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing was even real, anymore.

And then dark tendrils snaked into the kaleidoscope, obscuring the incomprehensible image even further, dimming what around him he could even still see... Until the image was gone in entirety.

For a moment... Everything was dark. Everything was quiet. Josh couldn’t even tell if he was still falling.

And then... little, twinkling, pinpricks of light... haunting greens, deep purples, ghostly blues... And just barely, around the pinpricks of light, he could make out huge tendrils of dark all around him. 

Before he had a chance to understand what he was seeing, however, something wrapped around his midsection and yanked him down. Suddenly he was falling far faster, his arms and legs flailing out behind him, wind roaring in his ears, the clinking sound of glass all around.

As his consciousness threatened to wane, as his vision began to blur... he recognised that he was surrounded by tentacles, and the twinkling lights were eyes.

Thump!

The air was very suddenly knocked out of him, and his eyes flinched shut. 

He laid there for a moment, choking in a laboured breath, and then another, and another. Only then did he finally feel able to move. 

The only movement he made, however, was to reopen his eyes. 

Josh Holliday found himself staring up at a quickly-closing hole in reality, tendrils of dark escaping into it before it winked out of existence. All of those tendrils, all of that weird stuff... it was gone. 

What was that? Some kind of weird hallucination? 

No. No, because while he was looking up at a beautiful night sky, it wasn’t his night sky. It was... too colourful. Was that... the northern lights? No... it was... the colours were in and around the stars themselves... Nebulae? 

He sat up slowly, still staring at the sky. There were... two moons. One small, and bright red, the other rather large, a pale blue.

He... probably wasn’t dreaming, right? He remembered his whole day, he remembered being depressed, trying to study for ages, being jealous... And it wasn’t like he’d lost consciousness at any point from there to here. Not even in the... creepy tentacle space tunnel.

A crunching noise of footsteps on grass approached from his side. 

“Ah, there you are, extraplanar,” said the villainess with a chuckle. She was the girl who’d only just before had... a lot of eyes. Like... a lot. Like, why did anything need that many eyes? What was she, some kind of eldritch horror villainess? With her sidekicks, the eldritch horror goth girl and the eldritch horror skater girl?

...She didn’t have that many eyes anymore, though. She was back down to just... Well. Three. 

Yeaaaahhh... Josh was still scared of her.

“I’m... I’m sorry, umm... miss...?” he said, trying to be polite in case she decided to... eat him or turn him inside out or something. “Where am I?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

But before she had a moment to answer, the skater girl spoke up first. “The campus of █̵̨̨̛̛̤̯͎̫͚̭͉̠̥͎̈́́̍̏̀̓̅͘̕͜█̴̧͍͓̔͋̒͐͑́͗͋͛̃̕͜͠█̷̧̛̛͖̳̱̩̰͈̺͍͓̺̦̓̐͛̚͠█̶̥̝͇̭̱̤̤̖̼̮͇̦͑̐́͛́█̸̪͓̜͎͚͈̯̖͉̈́̓̍̆͛͒̈́̆̾█, of course,” she said. Somehow. 

He stared at her for a moment. “What...” That had to have been pure gibberish. How did she even say it with only one tongue? It sounded like at least three people pronouncing things simultaneously. 

Well... he supposed all of these girls did have like, way too many eyes, sometimes? So maybe sometimes they had additional tongues, too.

The villainess sighed and shook her head. “Most people just call it Oculum.”

“Why’d you give it away, Ulisa?” the skater girl complained, pouting. “I wanted to scare the extraplanar.”

“We’d scare it better just by opening all our eyes again, Ludi, you absolute chaos oddling,” Ulisa rolled her (currently) three eyes. Then she turned back to Josh, blinking at him owlishly. “But as it stands... I am far too tired for that. As it turns out, ultraplanar travel is... exhausting,” she grumbled. “Especially dragging along a deadweight like...” she trailed off, gesturing at all of him. “...that. Without my  E N O R M O U S  power...” she hummed, “it would’ve been stuck in the ultraplanar cosmos for all eternity.”

Wait. Did she just... how did she say that word so that all the letters were bold and italic and separated from one another? In speech? 

Josh wasn’t sure whether to be scared, or bothered about being considered useless... So instead, he was both. “Wh-why did you all bring me here in the first place?” he stammered, forcing himself up to his feet, and almost immediately falling right back down because the gravity felt weird and he was very dizzy. “If I’m... such a deadweight.”

“Extra credit,” a third, gravelly voice said from behind him, and he jumped.

The goth girl was standing there, eyes half-closed, a grimace across her features.

“Extra... credit,” he repeated.

“Indeed,” she confirmed, then yawned.

“A-alright then,” he said, and couldn’t help but start giggling at the absurdity of it. After everything that had happened already... that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Not the creepy tentacle space tunnel, or the frankly ridiculous number of eyes, or the bizarre and incomprehensible things they could do with their speech.

Extra credit...