Shane ed. - A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre - Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

“She is intense,” Logan whispered in Ashley’s ear.

“The twenty-ninth is a day of chaos. It’s when the fabric of reality between our world and…well, I’ll say ‘other’ worlds, is at its weakest. It’s when things can communicate with us, if we try. That’s the legend, anyway. That all it takes is as much as a wave from one of us and something other than us will be able to see us. And maybe…just maybe…it will be able to wave back,” Stephanie said, letting her eyes pass over each of them.

“And by ‘something’ you mean…?” Logan said.

Stephanie gave a slight shrug that seemed at odds with her knowing smile. “Let’s find out.” She reached into her brown bag and pulled out four small mirrors. “Who wants to say hi?”

“Do it!” Ashley said, pushing Logan.

“Huh?” Logan said. “Do it?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” Ashley said. “I want to watch you shit your pants.”

“Fine,” Logan said. “Give me.”

Stephanie handed Logan a small mirror, also giving one to Charles and one to his sister Charlotte. She kept one for herself.

“Now,” she said. “It’s simple. Look into the mirror. Make sure you can’t see anything. Just pure darkness. Take a step back from the candle if that helps. When you’re just looking at nothing but darkness, look at the mirror and say, ‘Hello. I know you’re there. I can see you. Can you see me? But! Don’t do this lightly, friends. When you make contact with another realm, it leaves you forever susceptible to…seeing things. Experiencing things.”

Smirking, Logan leaned away from the candle, looking into the mirror as Ashley leaned over his shoulder, clearly entertained. He heard Charlotte start to speak to her mirror, so he figured he might as well start.

He looked into the black mirror.

“Hello,” he said. “I know you’re there. I can see you. Can you see me?” He waited. Of course, he saw nothing…just blackness.

The others had similar results. Stephanie shrugged and said with a laugh, “Maybe the spirits are too busy having Leap Day parties to give a crap about us. Let’s drink.”

Logan put the mirror down and, wrapped his arms around Ashley again. For a moment, he felt a strange feeling on the back of his neck, as if he were being looked at from behind. He almost got up to turn on the light the way he had for the not-tarantula that had been on his wall, but he shrugged and hugged the woman who, after that night, would become his fiancée and, later, his wife.

AFTER THEY TOOK DOWN the Leap Day decorations, Ashley told Logan that she didn’t want to think about anything, least of all Stephanie’s death. She just wanted to go to sleep. It was as if she’d never been mad about Logan’s behavior.

She cuddled up to him in bed, crying softly. Even though they no longer worked together and Stephanie seemed to get stranger every time they would meet up, Ashley and Stephanie were very good friends through the years. Stephanie had been a bridesmaid. If Ashley hadn’t felt obligated to give the title to Kathleen, her childhood friend, she would’ve made Stephanie the Maid of Honor.

Now, she was dead. Logan didn’t know what to say. His mind was still muddled from the horror of the previous night. But that was over—it was time to be there for his wife.

He fell asleep to the sound of her quiet sobs.

He woke up to the familiar, creeping sensation of being watched.

He squinted in the darkness and saw it at the end of the bed. The face, just barely peering over the end of the bed.

“Ashley,” he said. She snored quietly.

The face moved up until he could see the smile again. The black, dripping, toothless smile.

“Ashley,” he begged. He went to shake his wife awake, but his hands were gripping the sheets so hard that he couldn’t release them. He was completely paralyzed.

The face lifted as the dead girl stood up, revealing a ripped grey dress with decayed, festering flesh beneath it. She waved to him, and then, this time, she spoke.

“ Hello. ”

Her voice was like glass breaking. Like tires squealing on the road.

Logan tried to call his wife’s name again, but nothing came out of his throat. Slowly, delicately, the dead girl placed a bruised, bloated knee onto the bed, lifting herself up onto it. She leered at Logan, grinning, dripping scum onto the sheets, and said, “ I know you’re there. ”

He tried to scream, but it was just a moan. Ashley stirred next to him.

The girl climbed across the sheets weightlessly. Logan gagged at the hot, oily smell. “ I can see you .”

He looked away from her, pretending she was just a not-tarantula, a scratch on the wall, nothing. He settled down in bed and looked at Ashley, pretending that nothing in the whole world existed but her.

The girl leaned over him, her face inches from his, the black juice dripping from her mouth, the worms crawling through her soft flesh, her eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets. “ Can you see me ?”

She brought her hand down into his mouth, forced it down his throat, and ripped, feeling the vibrations of the scream that Logan couldn’t make run through his ruined, bloody throat.

ASHELY WAS ASLEEP. SHE didn’t know that the man lying next to her was dead, that blood was flowing from his mouth and the horrible, gaping hole in his throat, forming a warm, crimson puddle on the sheets. She didn’t feel the weightless creature crawl off of the bed and sit on the floor. She couldn’t see the creature, and it couldn’t see her.

But it still stared, because it knew something was there. The creature stared at Ashley in the dark, unseen, and stayed until the sun peeked through the blinds and woke Ashley up… so she could face her own nightmare.

PINCH

by Shane McKenzie

Slim tilted the vodka bottle over his mouth, tapping the bottom of it to get at that last stinging drop he knew was in there. He stuck out his quivering tongue and snorted when the bottle refused to comply.

“Fuck!”

The bottle smashed into a sparkling mist as it disintegrated against the brick wall.

“Fuck…”

Luther sniffed Slim’s right leg again, and for the hundredth time, Slim kicked him away with the left. The right leg lay there on the concrete like a useless slab of meat; he hadn’t felt a thing in that leg for some time now… but he could smell it loud and clear.

And Luther smelled it too. As strong as the odor was to Slim, he imagined Luther’s heightened sense of smell made it like fireworks in his nose. The dog’s saliva poured from his tongue as he panted.

Slim didn’t like looking at it. Nothing he could do about it anyway, so he just kept his pant leg down and pretended nothing was wrong. Even when the wound would leak fluid, soaking it into the fabric of his already grime-covered jeans, he would just let it dry, then scrape away the milky film with his serrated thumbnail.

Slim had one cigarette left, but no goddamn lighter. He didn’t think he’d ever find the strength to go get one either; it was getting harder and harder to stand up, let alone walk anywhere. He stuffed his hand into his coat pocket, felt the cigarette there, sighed. His nicotine addiction was kicking him in the balls, but he chewed on it until it subsided.

Luther’s eyes went from Slim’s leg, back to Slim’s face. His tail was between his legs and he whined, whispery and low. His tongue slithered over his chops and snout, matting the hair down with dampness.

Slim flinched as laughter erupted from the street just a few feet away from where he and Luther sat, concealed by the alley’s darkness like two broken-winged bats on a cave floor. The alley was their home. Well, Slim hadn’t meant for it to be their home, but he sat there one day when his leg was smarting something fierce, and he hadn’t been able to move since. Therefore, home sweet home the alley became. It wasn’t so bad at first. He’d plopped down within arm’s reach of a trash can that had some salvageable food inside. He didn’t know who it belonged to, but whoever it was, they hadn’t refilled it since he’d been there. He hoped for them to come each day, but they always disappointed. And as he sat there in that spot, the feeling in his leg turned from excruciating pain to nothing—an ominous numbness.