A Nightmare on 17th Street

Link to article: A Nightmare on 17th Street.
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This isn't a movie, Guy!
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##black|**A Nightmare on 17th Street**##
##black|**Author:** [[*user KOTHARDARASTRIX]]##
##black|**Recommended Listening:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xoxUEKb0os Leather Teeth] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TK9fk0Jj2U Leather Terror] by Carpenter Brut.##
##black|**Additional Content Warning:** This article is in the style of an 80s slasher movie. As such, it depicts stupid young people getting drunk, using drugs, having sex, and dying horribly. There is also an abusive relationship depicted, and a character with an eating disorder.##
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As night fell over Leipzig, Site-54 hunkered down. Sirens flashed on every wall, and alarms wailed through every hall. Scientists sprinted away from danger, and task force agents did the opposite. It was Halloween night, and SCP-106 had gone trick-or-treating.

D-5321, formerly Heinz Weber, huddled in the closet, trying not to cry. Crying would make noise, and then the monster might hear him. He'd made a run for it as soon as SCP-106 dropped out of the ceiling, and the guards had been too preoccupied shooting at it ineffectually to worry about an escaping D-class. But the security bulkheads had sealed before he'd even figured out where he was running to, trapping him in Sector 3 until security found him or the skip did. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that, since he wasn't in his cell, he wouldn't be the one getting stuck in the femur breaker.

It didn't work.

Suddenly, the sirens stopped. Heinz tensed; that meant the new chamber was ready. Any moment now, the screaming would begin.

Instead of screaming, he heard slow, wet footsteps...and they were coming closer. Heinz held his breath. Maybe it would walk past. Maybe it didn't already know he was in here.

Then the door began to rot, and Heinz groaned pitifully. SCP-106 had entered its pocket dimension, passing into the outside surface of the door. In a moment, it would emerge from the other side, and he'd be dead meat.

-----

Far, far, away, a little girl stirred in her endless slumber. It was Halloween night, and SCP-239 wanted to go trick-or-treating.

A ripple passed through Site-17. The lights flickered orange for a moment. Ephemeral giggling was heard around every corner. A jack-o-lantern appeared in SCP-239's containment chamber. Someone reached for a panic button.

A small smile crept onto her dreaming face. It was Halloween.

**[[[halloween-on-17th-street |It was Halloween.]]]**

-----

Iris watched the kids, the ones she was supposed to be supervising, recede down 17th Street. She kept watching until Abe's truck rounded the corner onto 14th Avenue. She already knew she was going to feel bad about abandoning Siggy and the others like that for the rest of the night.

"What?" Abe asked.

"Huh?" she responded, startled.

"You look worried."

She thought about telling the truth, but she'd already explained the situation to Abe once over the phone, and it wasn't like he would listen any better a second time. Bringing it up again would just start another argument.

"I'm fine."

He looked over at her from the driver's seat, which always made her nervous about crashing. She gave him a smile, one that she hoped didn't look too nervous, and that was enough to put his eyes back on the road, at least.

"This is gonna be fun," he said. "DJ Scravecrow's gonna be there."

"Cool," she pretended to agree. Iris didn't actually like EDM, not that Abe would know or care, and she certainly didn't see what would be so fun about jumping around in a barn all night. She'd have much rather curled up with a blanket, some popcorn, and //Hocus Pocus//. But Abe wasn't much for cuddling.

He was, however, much for putting his grubby paw on Iris's thigh. She wanted to pull away, but then he'd just take his eyes off the road again. And he might put his hand somewhere else, somewhere it'd hurt. So she gave him another fake smile, and the big black truck roared on down the road.

-----

The Old Man emerged from the door, and it was not in a janitor's closet. In fact, it was standing on the porch of a small suburban home.

Four costumed children, who had apparently intended to knock on the door, saw the Old Man appear and wisely ran away screaming. One of them, a little girl dressed as a witch, dropped her bucket of candy in the process.

Candy?

The Old Man looked around. It saw the blood-red leaves. The visages of monsters and devils. The screams of surprise and delight.

It sniffed, wetly pulling the brisk fall air in through its ruined nasal cavity. Then it exhaled, with a nasty gurgling that approximated a sigh.

It was Halloween night. It was //his// night.

-----

To escape the unwanted attention of the meager local police force, the party was located well outside the limits of Sunny City, Pennsylvania. A small town like that didn't have much in the way of warehouses or other traditional rave venues, but the surrounding countryside had conveniently offered up a disused barn that would serve well enough. Though it would have been quite an incongruous venue under normal circumstances, this barn and its history - or, rather, that of the farm on which it sat - were uniquely appropriate for the Halloween season. Spiderwood Farm had sat abandoned for many years - the exact number of which varied, depending on who told the story - ever since an ill-placed lighting strike set the farmhouse ablaze. That house had burned down, they said, with a whole family still inside. all that remained of it now was a pair of lopsided brick chimneys, looming over the ruins like eerie tombstones. In Sunny City, it was a right of passage to run thirteen figure-eights around those chimneys on the first night of your freshman year, while costumed seniors chased after or laid in wait to startle you. Iris still remembered when she'd run the chimneys, and those memories were of such unpleasantness that she'd never intended to come back to this stupid, run-down farm in the middle of nowhere. Yet here she was anyway.

The party was already well underway when Abe's truck rumbled up the weed-choked dirt road and into the former cow pasture that had now become a makeshift parking lot. He parked in the grass at the end of a semi-straight row of other vehicles, gave Iris's thigh another unwanted pat, and climbed out. As soon as the door opened, Iris could hear the pounding bass that seeped out of the barn's old boards. Flashing, multicolored lights leaked through the gaps, and she had to stifle an anticipatory wince. She'd be walking away with a headache tonight.

Instead of rounding the truck to open the door for her like a gentleman, Abe stood impatiently between the truck and the barn and looked back. Sighing softly, Iris opened her own door and carefully stepped down from the ridiculously elevated cab. She drew up beside Abe as slowly as she felt she could get away with. Oblivious to her reluctance (or unconcerned by it), he threw one tattooed arm roughly around her shoulders and dragged her along.

As they approached the barn doors, Iris noticed a fellow in a plague doctor costume standing nearby. He was arguing with a guy in samurai armor, who had apparently brought an actual sword to the party and wanted to bring it inside. The plague doctor was refusing to let him do so; he must have been there with the DJ, to run security and probably help set up the equipment. As Abe and Iris approached, the doctor briefly stepped away from his argument with the samurai to slide the door open for them. Iris nodded a quiet thanks before it closed again behind.

The host of tonight's festivities, the semi-famous "DEE JAY SCRAVECROOOOOOOW" had set up his sound equipment in the hayloft, which was open to the dirt floor in the middle. Huge, thumping speakers perched all along the edge, interspersed with enormous jack-o-lanterns - real or plastic, Iris couldn't tell - that housed the lights. Strobing, multicolored beams shot down from the grins and grimaces of these funky pumpkins to snare the crowd in a shifting, multicolored web of light. Another jack-o-lantern, two or three times the size of the others, dangled from the ceiling and rotated slowly like a disco ball. Its grinning face swept along the walls like a spotlight, and its translucent sides glowed as orange as the full moon outside.

Even Iris had to admit it was pretty rad.

She was far from alone in that opinion. By the looks of it, half the school had turned up for this hoopla, and quite a few were in costume.

Some guys from the football team were bunched up in one of the near corners, holding beer cans and shouting over the music to each other. Iris couldn't identify them all in the costumes and dim lighting, but she was able to pick out Alex, the captain. All he had for a costume was a headband with two long springs sticking out of it, each tipped with a big shiny pom-pom. He looked profoundly ridiculous but clearly didn't care.

He also looked like a total hunk, but Iris certainly couldn't let Abe know she thought so. That's why, as soon as she noticed him, she tried to look away. It didn't work, though, and Alex noticed the two of them walking past.

"Iris?" he called, confused. He broke off from his group to head over to them. Abe tried to keep walking, but Iris felt obligated to stop. She knew Alex was going to ask about his little sister.

"I thought you were watching Cindy," he said, somehow measuring his volume just right to be heard over the music without yelling. He must not have been as drunk as the other footballers.

"I was," she said. "Cade's with them now."

Alex seemed concerned by this response, and he looked over at Abe. He'd once been on the football team too, and there was still no shortage of bad blood left over from that time. Abe just narrowed his eyes at Alex, who seemed to decide this argument wasn't worth having right now.

"Well," he said, "have fun." Then he retreated back to his circle of jocks. Abe squeezed Iris --protectively-- possessively and pulled her in the other direction. They squeezed past a group of anime kids - five girls in variously sexy cat costumes, and one dude in a wizard hat and bathrobe - who were doing some kind of weird synchronized dance and moved along the left wall, heading towards the back. A herd of nerds huddled awkwardly in the back corner, unsure of what exactly they were supposed to be doing in a place like this. Right now, they were watching, enviously or disdainfully, as Guy Hopper made a fool of himself and had a great time doing it.

He was positioned right at the center of the room, directly beneath the big spinning disco pumpkin. He couldn't dance to save his life, but either didn't know or didn't care, and therefore had no compunctions about busting a move. This obliviousness/indifference lent Guy a certain unique charisma, which had attracted a pack of cheerleaders. As Iris watched, Guy swept off the hat of his safari explorer costume and tossed it dramatically in the general direction of Ari. She laughed, of course, but Iris could tell from halfway across the barn that it was just that mean little cheerleader giggle. That bitch was strutting her stuff in a scandalous fox costume, surrounded by various bitchy friends in nearly-as-slutty outfits. Iris wondered if Guy knew the cheerleaders weren't laughing //with// him, or if he even cared. Maybe he just wanted to be surrounded by scantily-clad women.

"Why don't you dress like that?" Abe chuckled. She pretended not to hear him.

Guy stopped to catch his breath when the song ended. He picked up his hat from where it'd been dropped in the dirt and retreated back towards his nerd friends in the corner. As the next song began, the crowd closed back in on the space they'd made for Guy and started dancing again. Ari's cheer pack intermingled with the football team, and Iris sneered in distaste when she saw Ari rubbing her tail-clad ass all over Alex. To his credit, he looked just as unhappy about the situation.

At least she wouldn't have to deal with that. Abe had never shown much interest in public displays of affection (or private ones, for that matter), something that Iris appreciated, for reasons she preferred not to think about.

He didn't like to dance much, either, and that's why she was so surprised when Abe started dragging her out into the crowd. She shot him a quizzical glance, but he wasn't looking at her; instead, Abe's eyes - squinted into a mean, jealous glare - were fixed on Alex and Ari. For a moment, Iris was worried that Abe might be planning to start a fight, and that she might get roped into some conflict with Ari as a result.

Then she felt Abe's hands on her hips and realized that this was a different type of competition. Iris cried out in surprise and twisted away.

"What are you doing?!"

"Dancing," he said, already reaching for her again.

She stepped back. "What, no! I don't wanna do that."

Abe glanced around, and Iris saw an unfamiliar look (Embarrassment? Fear?) cross his face for a moment. She wondered if this might be more about how Abe looked than what he actually wanted, and somehow that was even more upsetting.

"Come on, Iris," he hissed, stepping towards her again.

"No, I-" before she could finish, Abe's clumsy hands were back on her.

Normally, this would be the point at which Iris decided that causing a scene wasn't worth the trouble that it'd cause for her later. Abe didn't like to be disagreed with, especially not in public, and tended to resolve such disagreements in ways that hurt.

Normally, Iris hadn't been dragged somewhere she didn't want to go to do something she hated. Normally, she wasn't worried sick about four little girls she was supposed to be watching, who would probably sneak away at the earliest opportunity and get into serious trouble. Normally, she didn't have a pounding headache and an unsteady stomach. Normally, she wasn't being assaulted by a stupid, mean asshole in front of the whole damn school, who didn't even actually want her, but was only acting like this and keeping her in this fucked up excuse for a relationship to feel like he was one-upping somebody else.

Normally, she didn't fight back.

"Get OFF!" she shouted, louder than she'd meant to, and pulled forcefully out of his grip. She bumped into a few other people in the process, catching any attention that her shout hadn't already gathered.

"What the hell?" he shouted, throwing up his arms.

"Keep your hands //off// me!" Without really meaning to, she accentuated that last bit with something between a shove and a slap, planted squarely on his chest.

Abe snarled. "Come //here//, you..." he grabbed hold of her shoulders this time, but she resisted more than he'd expected and slipped out of his pawing hands once again. They half-fumbled, half-struggled for a few more moments before it happened.

The Slap.

Iris hadn't meant to perfectly time the collision between her hand and Abe's face with the end of the song, but that's what happened. This meant, of course, that damn near everyone in the barn heard it. Most of them saw it, too, since the struggle that preceded the Slap had drawn a pretty sizeable audience in those few seconds.

Abe was keenly aware of these eyes and ears as he stood there, mouth agape and cheek stinging. Iris, however, was too pissed off to worry about that.

"//Never! Touch me! Again!//" she spat, her jabbing finger inches from Abe's reddening face. Then she stormed off, parting the crowd before her like the Red Sea and leaving a trail of "fuck off" so hot you could smell it.

Distantly, Abe wondered if DJ Scravecrow was ever going to start the next song. If he had, then Abe might not have heard that mean little cheerleader giggle, which quickly multiplied until he was completely surrounded by people taking joy in his embarrassment.

Abe handled this in the way he did all unfavorable situations, by getting angry at everyone nearby. He slouched off toward a corner, throwing barely-coherent profanity and threats of violence at anybody who got in his way.

When the music started back up again, most of the teens went right back to whatever form of debauchery they'd been engaging in before the Slap. Most of them.

Guy, however, noticed when Abe stalked past him along the wall, heading pointedly towards the door with mayhem in his eyes. Guy, being shorter than most folks in attendance, hadn't actually seen the Slap go down, but he'd gotten the gist of what transpired, and he knew that nothing good would happen to Iris if she was on the other side of that door when Abe opened it. That's why, without really thinking much about what he'd do when he caught up, Guy hurried after the bigger, stronger, and meaner dude.

Alex didn't see Abe (the fox girl was wrapped around him, saying something he couldn't hear over the music), but he did notice Guy's hat bobbing, and put the pieces together pretty quick. Ignoring Ari's protests, he disentangled himself from her arms and started forcing his way toward the door.

-----

Iris kept it together until she got outside, so only the plague doctor heard her burst into tears. She could only see his eyes, and they looked as confused and uncomfortable as anyone's would be when suddenly confronted with tears like that. He clearly didn't know what to do, but felt the need to try anyway, so Iris saved them both the trouble by slinking off around the side of the barn.

The doctor thought about going after her. As perhaps the only person at the party with zero awareness of what had just transpired, he had no idea what was wrong with Iris, or how worried he should be about it.

He also had no idea why Abe suddenly shoved him out of the way.

"Oi!" the doctor cried, staggering back from the door. Abe shot him a violent look, and the doctor quickly decided that, whatever was going on, he wasn't invested enough in it to get his ass whupped. Instead, he just threw up his gloved hands and let Abe follow his (ex-)girlfriend.

Once she was finally away from prying eyes, Iris slumped back against the barn and put her face in her hands. She couldn't yet articulate why exactly she was crying; some mixture of relief, anger, embarrassment, and regret was flowing through her heart and out her eyes. Right now, the only things she could sense were her own sobs and the way the bass beat shook the barn, sending vibrations up through her back and making her teeth rattle.

That's why she didn't notice Abe approaching until his hands were on her. Iris screamed in suprise as she was slammed against the side of the barn.

"What the //fuck// was that, Iris?" he growled.

"Let go of me!" she wailed, trying to squirm out of his grasp. It didn't work this time; he'd been surprised and confused inside, but now he was running on hot rage.

"You made me look like a fucking asshole in front of the whole fucking school!" 

"You //are// a fucking asshole!" she shouted, and it felt good. It didn't feel good when he put his hand around her neck, but it probably didn't feel as bad as his nuts did when her knee hit them.

"Aaah!" Abe screamed. He flung Iris aside and recoiled, though the blow didn't leave him on knees, doubled over and singing falsetto like it was supposed to. Iris wondered if it was his adrenaline, or if she just hadn't smashed his sack hard enough. Regardless, he was now looming over her and drawing back a heavy black boot for a retaliatory kick.

"Hey!" someone shouted. Abe's head whipped around toward the noise, which had apparently come from Guy, now standing at the corner of the barn. From the look on his face, it was clear that Guy had not expected to find Abe out there.

"L-leave her alone."

"Fuck off, fatass."

Guy swallowed nervously. "I said leave her alone." Then, in a display that would have been funny if it weren't so sad, he threw up his fists in a shaky approximation of a fighting stance.

Abe chuckled nastily. "Oh, you wanna fight, fatass? Come on."

Guy seriously considered running away, but he couldn't do that, not with Iris lying there on the ground with her shirt messed up and fear in her eyes. Instead, he rushed at his larger opponent, already expecting pain.

His expectations were met. Afterwards, Guy would not be able to recount exactly what happened with any real clarity. He was pretty sure he'd managed to land one punch in there somewhere, but far more than that landed on him, both before and after he landed on the ground. Guy found himself using his arms, not to throw punches, but to protect his own pudgy face from any further bludgeoning by the enraged punk on top of him.

Fortunately for Guy, he didn't have to maintain that defensive stance for long. Iris had already seen Alex round the corner, but all Guy saw was the green-and-black blur of a letterman jacket. Abe saw nothing at all, which is why he didn't expect to be grabbed around the middle and slammed against the side of the barn with all the force that a high school football star could muster.

"What the //hell// is going on here?" Alex demanded.

"None of your fucking business," Abe growled.

Alex started to say something, but then he noticed Iris climbing back to her feet. Her appearance was answer enough. He fixed Abe with a death glare more serious than his comically bobbing antennae should have allowed. Even Abe seemed a little frightened.

"Get. Out," he commanded, through clenched teeth. Then he slung Abe as forcefully as he could towards the parking lot, in much the same way that Abe had thrown Iris. Like her, he stumbled and fell, landing beside the still-dazed Guy.

More than the scuffs on his left arm and hand, the impact against the barn, or even the knee to the nuts, eating dirt like that hurt. Not his body, but his ego. Because said ego was already quite fragile, and because he wasn't especially smart, Abe made the mistake of not running. He also made the much more serious mistake of pulling a switchblade out of his pocket.

Alex was surprised by the flash of the blade in the moonlight. That hesitation would not have boded well for his health if Guy (who had seen the knife very well from his vantage point on the ground) hadn't done the only thing he could from down there and grabbed Abe's legs. The dumb son-of-a-bitch tripped again, buying Alex enough time to jump back with nothing worse than a cut-up letter jacket. That little stumble also left Abe off-balance, with his face in easy punching distance.

The first one was the hardest punch Abe had ever been on the business end of, at least until the second one hit. He wasn't very used to people fighting back, at least not people bigger than him, and it showed. He got in one more swipe with the knife - and missed - before Alex tackled him. Abe lost both the knife and his breath when he hit the ground, shortly followed by the shape of his nose and at least one tooth.

"Alex!" Iris called. The sound of her voice startled him out of the violent fugue. He looked down at Abe's pummeled face, and the blood and tears he saw there told him he'd done enough.

As soon as Alex was back on his feet, Abe made a run for it. He staggered past Guy, who had now made it back to his own feet, and didn't look back between there and the truck.

"Yeah, you better run!" Shouted Guy, flipping him the bird. Alex looked over at him.

"You alright, Hopper?"

"Yeah," he lied, gingerly prodding his lips, and his eye, and his other eye. "I'm okay."

"Iris?"

"I'm fine," she said, quietly. Iris was now hugging herself and looking at the ground.

"Man," Guy said, "what an asshole."

"Yeah," Iris agreed, faintly.

They watched as the headlights of Abe's truck came on, then turned and retreated into the forest.

"Oh, damn," she interjected.

"What?" Guy asked.

"I gotta get back to the kids. Ms. Stefansdottr's gonna kill me."

"Uh, I can give you a ride," he said, a bit too eagerly.

Alex looked disapprovingly at Guy.

"Really?" Iris asked.

"Sure. I, uh, don't think I'm up for much dancing now anyway." He rubbed his jaw for emphasis.

She bit her lip for a second, then nodded. "Alright." Then she looked up at Alex. "Thank you for that. Both of you."

Guy shrugged. "Hey, uh, it was the right thing to do."

"Bastard had it coming," Alex surmised.

Iris sighed.

"Yeah, I guess he did."

The three of them stood there for a moment, listening to the pulse of the music from inside. Alex unhappily inspected the new hole in his sleeve.

"So, uh, are you wanting to leave now...?" Guy asked.

Iris nodded again. "Yeah, let's go."

"Alright, uh, right this way." He gestured towards the parking lot, smiling as best he could with his various facial bruises and swellings. Iris went on ahead, but when Guy tried to follow he felt a strong hand on his shoulder.

"Hopper," Alex warned, "this is not the time to flirt with her. Okay?"

Guy laughed nervously. "Of course not! Why would I do that?" 

Alex nodded. "You wouldn't." His grip turned into a congratulatory pat. "Thanks for the help, by the way. There'd be a hole in more than just this jacket if you hadn't." He extended a hand to Guy.

"Oh." He shook it, a tad sheepishly. "Uh, no problem."

"Drive safe, now."

"Uh, sure thing." Then Guy took off, hurrying to catch up with Iris.

Alex looked back down at his sleeve and sighed. He liked this jacket.

-----

As always, Abe drove a bit faster than was really safe, even if the condition of the road meant that still wasn't particularly fast. His teeth were gritted, both because he was still seething and to keep them from knocking together as his vehicle bumped roughly over the weeds and ruts. He was gonna make Alex wish he'd never so much as looked at Iris, and then he was gonna gut that fat fuck Guy like a fish. And Iris was gonna be sorry too, once he got through with her. Nobody stood up to Abe Adams like that and got away with it.

Right now, though, somebody was standing right in front of his truck.

"Fuck!" Abe cried, slamming the brakes. His truck squealed to a halt, and he closed his eyes in anticipation of the impact.

None came.

Abe opened his eyes. The idiot that had been in the road was gone. Maybe he'd gone under the truck?

"Shit," Abe whispered, heart racing. He jumped down from the cab to check for a body. There wasn't one under the car. In fact, he didn't see the guy anywhere. A little confusion crept into Abe's confused face. He slammed the driver side door and went around to the front, where the dude had been standing. Now there was no sign of him. Nothing on the road, nothing in the woods, nothing but him and the eerie cry of a screech owl in the distance.

Shaking his head, Abe climbed back into his truck. That fucker Alex had probably given him brain damage, and now he was hallucinating. He was just about to shift back into drive when something outside his conscious awareness made him hesitate. Slowly, his eyes glided up to the rearview mirror.

In that mirror, he saw the last thing he'd ever see.

-----

Guy's vehicle was not a truck, but a slightly beat-up sedan. Its mileage was leagues better than a larger vehicle's, but its suspension was proportionally worse. It had only annoyed him on the way here, but now that Iris was in his car it'd become embarrassing. He drove slow, to minimize the head-bobbling as much as possible.

If Iris was bothered, she didn't say it, or anything else for that matter. She just stared out the window, one hand idly playing with the shoulder belt and the other folded across her stomach. He kept glancing over at her, as much he could safely do so while driving, but she didn't seem interested in interacting.

//Don't flirt. Don't talk about Abe.//

"So, uh," he began, cautiously, "you like photography?" He said this because he'd noticed the Polaroid still hanging around her neck. He was a little surprised it'd survived her scuffle(s) with Abe.

"Yeah."

"Cool."

And that was it. In an attempt to defuse the awkward silence, Guy turned on his stereo. It still held the same tape he'd been listening to on the way there.

"Spooky scary skeletons, send shivers down your..." he started to sing, quietly and involuntarily. Then both he and his car stopped, because he'd spotted the taillights up ahead. Iris saw them too.

"Is that..." he started to ask.

"Yes," she said, tensing up. He was pretty tense too. If Abe was waiting in ambush with a gun or something...

"Drive," Iris said.

"What?"

"Drive!"

Guy obeyed, getting the lead as far out as he dared on a road like this. Abe's truck was blocking basically the entire thing, but there was enough semi-flat space on the left side for Guy's smaller car to squeeze around it. He passed the truck at a distance of maybe two feet and a speed of maybe twenty miles an hour, ducking as low as he could and still be able to see in case a bullet decided to whizz through his windows. None did, and in less than a second the truck's headlights were receding in the rearview.

Guy didn't slow down, but he did straighten back up. He looked over at Iris to make sure she was okay. She was turned around, looking out the rear windshield. Her expression looked...confused?

"He's not in there," she said.

"What?"

"There's nobody in the truck."

Guy looked up at the rearview again, but they were too far away now for him to see the truck's insides with any detail.

"Hmm," he pondered. "Maybe he got out to pee?"

"Maybe," Iris repeated, but she didn't sound very sure. She kept watching the truck until it disappeared around a corner.

-----

Inside a lime-green Chevy Nomad, a monkey and a castaway (from the Tom Hanks movie) were doing drugs.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Franco asked, adjusting his fake beard. "I heard somebody had a heatstroke or something from taking that."

"Nah," Jake replied, popping the tablet into his mouth. "That's just the Man talking. They don't want us having fun. Or sex." He chuckled as he replaced the big-nosed monkey mask on his face. "You want one?"

"Uhh...I think I'll pass on that. Not really my style." To clarify, Franco pulled a plastic bag of marijuana out a well-concealed pocket.

Jake shrugged. "Suit yourself, dawg. Tonight I'd rather speed up than slow down."

"Well, I'm not much of a dancer anyway." He produced a rolling paper from somewhere else and started building a joint.

"Wait, are you gonna sit out here and smoke that?"

"I don't wanna do it inside. Already gotta carry this," he said, patting the volleyball in his lap for emphasis.

Jake sighed. "Well, I'm not waitin'."

Franco shrugged. "That's fine. It's a nice night."

"You want the keys?"

"Nah." Franco drew a lighter from yet another invisible pocket and ignited his reefer. "I ain't goin' anywhere."

"Aright. I'll leave the windows down."

"Thanks, dawg."

With that, Jake climbed out of the driver's seat and headed for the party. Franco watched him go, then watched the smoke from his joint rise into the starry sky. He leaned his head out the window a little bit. It was truly a beautiful night.

Jake was still a good ways off from the party when a rotting, slime-coated corpse stepped out in front of him.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, and jumped back. The Old Man just stared at him.

Slowly, Jake's surprise faded. Under his mask, he grinned...hesitantly.

"Damn, sick costume!" he chuckled nervously. It was //very// realistic. "That's Hollywood level right there, heh."

The Old Man didn't respond.

"Uh...happy Halloween!"

Slowly, the Old Man ground his jaw. First to one side, then the other. He didn't blink.

"...well, uh, enjoy the party." Jake started edging slowly around the freaky figure. "That's what I'm gonna do." He was almost past the Old Man. "Um." The guy's head turned to follow him, but he didn't move otherwise. "Bye!" then Jake ran, as fast as his dignity would allow, towards the barn. The Old Man watched him go, then turned back towards the parked cars. He saw a flickering, orange ember through the windshield of a Chevy Nomad.

From the corner of his eye, Franco noticed the Old Man approaching. "Whoa," he called out, "sweet costume, dude!"

The Old Man drew up beside the window Franco was leaning from and stopped. He just looked down at the slightly-stoned survivor.

"You want some?" Franco asked, holding the joint towards the newcomer.

Slowly, the Old Man reached up and grabbed it with three thin fingers. As soon as Franco let go, it disintegrated.

"Dude!" he exclaimed, "you gotta hold on to it!" To see where his weed had landed, Franco stuck his head out the window. He was still looking at the ground when a cold, wet hand clamped around his neck.

-----

Alex had dipped back into the party only briefly, so anyone who was worried about it could see that he had not been stabbed to death, and so that anyone else who felt like being an asshole tonight could see the bruises on his knuckles and take that as a warning.

Most people didn't seem super interested - to Alex's relief, the cheerleaders had been momentarily distracted by what was clearly "the creature from the black legume". Alex thought that was pretty funny, so he made a mental note to tell that guy as much if he got the chance.

Right now, though, he approached his friends from the football team, who were back in their corner with fresh cans of beer. Porkchop saw Alex approaching and shouted at him. Porkchop always shouted, even when he wasn't drunk and trying to be heard over the pounding sound of whatever this electronic music was called.

"HEY BROTHER! DID YOU KICK THAT WUSSY'S ASS?" It sounded like he might be trying to affect the voice of a professional wrestler, as one of which he was dressed, but that was already so close to the way he normally sounded it was hard to tell.

Alex winced a little at the combination of volume and proximity. "We had a nice talk." He extended a hand for the beer Chop was passing to him, so the others could see the bruises.

"It's about time." This was Spencer talking. Alex thought it was a little ironic that the guy dressed as an old-timey radio show crimefighter hadn't felt the need to fight for justice himself, but he didn't say it.

"Is Iris..." Lance began, but then the visor of his astronaut costume slammed shut in his face again, muffling the rest of the question.

"Yeah, she's fine." He waited for someone to ask about Guy, but it didn't happen.

"YOU SHOULD TOTALLY ASK HER OUT BROTHER!"

"What?" Spencer cried. "He just kicked the shit out her boyfriend, that's terrible timing."

Lance said something muffled in agreement.

"NAH BRO, YOU JUST ASSERTED DOMINANCE! GO FOR IT!"

Alex tried not to look as annoyed as he felt. "Iris went home." He felt that mentioning Guy would only draw further obnoxious behavior from Porkchop, so he tried to change the subject.

"This music's givin' me a headache. You guys wanna go outside?"

Lance raised his visor again. "Yeah, it's really hot in here." His exposed face glistened with sweat, at least until the visor fell shut again.

Spencer shrugged. "Sure. I could use another beer anyway."

"YEAH, THIS STUFF SUCKS! I WANNA HEAR SOME METALLICA!"

-----

"See, I'm the creature from the Black //Legume//."

Finn paused for laughs, but there weren't any.

"Y'know, cuz peanuts are legumes."

Katie did not, apparently, know. She just looked at him blankly.

"Like Mr. Peanut." He gestured at his top hat.

This reminded Katie to adjust the turban/bonnet/scarf thing on her fortune-teller costume, but she didn't otherwise respond.

"It's a joke."

"Are you sure?" she asked, tilting her head.

Finn sighed. "Oh, never mind." Katie seemed as glad as he did to be through with the conversation.

Finn had had it up to his Gill-Man mask with this stupid party. He hadn't even wanted to go until Liam talked him into it.

//"There'll be tons of chicks there!" he'd insisted. "I'm tellin' ya man, they'll be all over ya. And you know chicks dig a funny costume."//

Well, Liam hadn't shown up. Indeed, almost none of Finn's friends had. He'd seen Brad and Leif earlier, in their robot and clown costumes, but neither one had wanted to talk much. They just wanted to talk to Candace “Candy” Sweet, of whom Finn had also lost track. A pit of jealousy formed in his stomach as he wondered where they'd gone.

Of more immediate concern, however, was the sensation in his bladder.

The air outside was like a - well, like a breath of fresh air. It would have been hot enough in just one costume, but the combined insulation of the suit and the gill-man mask had made the barn almost insufferable. He ripped off the top hat the mask under it the second he got outside. Only then did it occur to him that he didn't know where he was supposed to pee. He looked over at the plague doctor, who was lazily swinging some kind of samurai sword at nothing.

"We got a bathroom?"

"Got trees," the doctor replied.

Finn sighed and slumped away. Why would anyone have a party in the middle of a forest? He retreated far enough into the woods to feel concealed, then began his business. He'd probably get splashback on his dress shoes, but they had already picked up so much dirt from the floor of the barn that he didn't really care. he looked around the darkned wood and grumbled. It seemed unlikely that Ari and the rest of her gang would lower themselves to pissing in the woods. Maybe girls were just really good at holding it.

"Hey, Fishy," a feminine voice suddenly called. Finn frantically tried to get his fly zipped while keeping his pants free of pee, but didn't quite succeed on either account. He cast a frightened glance over his shoulder and glimpsed a large, white shape with two little eyeholes.

"W-who's there?" he asked.

"It's Maddie, silly," she said, spinning around in her bedsheet as if she'd be any more recognizable from a different angle. He did know a Maddie, though - specifically a cute, artsy Maddie who sat two rows in front of him in English class.

"Oh, uh," he stammered, turning around as he finally won the battle against his zipper. "What's up?"

"You dropped this," she said, holding out his mask in one linen-draped hand.

"Oh! Thanks." He reached out to grab it, but she didn't let go.

"You're the creature from the Black Lagoon, right?"

Finn forced himself not to make the joke. "Kinda, yeah."

"Doesn't he...fall in love with a beautiful woman, and take her back to the lagoon?"

Finn felt his face turning red, and he hoped it was too dark for Maddie to see it. "Uh, yeah."

She giggled again, and pulled the mask out of his grip. "Well, there's a lake over this way." Then she slipped away, heading out towards the back of the barn.

"Maddie?" he called after her, for lack of a better idea.

"Come on!" she called, faintly. Finn looked around, feeling like this had to be a misunderstanding. Surely she wasn't suggesting...what it seemed like she was suggesting. Surely. But, then again, she might be. And if she was...

A nervous grin crept onto Finn's face. He adjusted his top hat and jogged after her.

The distant sound of Maddie's laughter led Finn deeper into the woods than he'd have been comfortable going under normal circumstances, but he barely noticed. The trees weren't all that thick here, anyway; maybe there'd once been a good-sized path between the barn and the lake, so the farmer's animals could have drink, or maybe so he could go fishing. The water wasn't very far away, either.

When Fish reached the shore, his first thought was that "lake" was a bit generous. This particular body of water didn't seem much bigger than a good-sized public swimming pool. It probably wasn't as clean, either, but right now the only thing he could see in the water was the orange moon's wavering reflection. He couldn't even see Maddie.

"Maddie?" he called out. He took a cautious step forward and felt something soft under his foot. He looked down.

It was a bedsheet. With two eyeholes. It looked like it'd been removed in a hurry.

"Over here!" he heard her call, from the direction of the water. Finn looked up, but still didn't see anything. "In the water, silly!"

Well, it //was// rather dark.

"Are you gonna get in?" she shouted, playfully.

"Uh." Finn looked down at his suit. It would be a pain to remove, and an even bigger one to put back on. Then if it got wet...

Maddie's bedsheet taunted him. He didn't see any other clothes. What had she been wearing under it?

"Come on!" she repeated. "It's nice and warm..."

Finn doubted that considerably. Under this chill night air, lake water was unlikely to be anything short of freezing.

//You idiot,// he imagined Liam saying, //she's not talking about the water!//

"My suit..." he began.

"Take it off!" she said, a little impatience creeping into her playful tone. "No one's gonna see us!"

Us.

Finn was trembling as he wriggled out of his clothes. He folded them as neatly as he could in the dark and set them carefully beside the sheet. He thought about keeping the boxers on, at least, but they'd be a (literal) pain in the ass to deal with if they got wet. He shivered in the breeze. Maddie had better have some towels around here, or they'd both get hypothermia. This was starting to feel more and more like a prank, but the part of Finn's brain that was thinking this had been thoroughly overridden by the part of him that was hoping to end up inside Maddie sometime soon. Speaking of which, Finn decided he'd best get in the water before anyone saw him out in the cold like that.

The water was as chilly as he'd anticipated. He had to grit his teeth and force himself onward just to get waist-deep. He was almost halfway across by that point, and still couldn't see Maddie anywhere.

"Maddie?" he called out. "Where //are// you?"

From her warm, dry hiding spot, Maddie snickered silently. She couldn't believe Finn had fallen for it. As if anyone would want to go skinny-dipping in this weather, or with //him//. But it had only taken a discarded bedsheet (under which she had worn a full set of casual clothing) and a little voice-throwing to get his horny, gullible, naked ass soaked in freezing cold water. Now it was time for step 2.

Quietly, Maddie stood up from her crouch behind a tree. After she stole Finn's clothes (which also contained his car keys), he'd have no choice but to wander around outside, cold and wet, and try to bum some clothes or a towel off someone. He'd be humiliated!

Well, he would have been, if a skeletal hand covered in burning black ooze hadn't suddenly closed over Maddie's mouth.

"Maddie!" Finn shouted, starting to sound angry. "If this is a prank it's not funny!"

A twig snapped, and Finn turned to look. He was surprised to see Maddie there on the shore, standing beside his folded clothes. Well, he assumed it was Maddie. She'd put the sheet back on for some reason.

"Maddie?" he said yet again, voice a confused mix of hope and indignation.

The figure didn't answer. It just glided forward into the water. Finn didn't understand why Maddie would want to get the sheet wet like that; it'd take forever to dry, and it'd be very heavy besides. Despite that, it didn't seem to hinder her any as she waded over to him. Soon, Maddie was just a few feet away. He thought he could see her eyes through the holes in the sheet, shining softly in the moonlight.

She stopped. He stared. Slowly, her head tilted forward.

Something fell into the water with a pair of little plops. Finn watched, uncomprehending, as two little white balls bobbed towards him like fishing lures.

They had pupils.

Finn looked back up at what was definitely not Maddie. His gaze was met by its real eyes this time - silver ones that gleamed like a cat's.

Finn's scream could only have been described as "bloodcurdling". He ran, kicked, and paddled as fast as humanly possible away from the //thing// under that sheet, splashing and spluttering and screaming the whole way. The thing under the sheet just sank out of sight, as if it'd been swallowed up by the bottom mud. That certainly seemed to be what the mud was trying to do to Finn; every step he took sank deeper into the sediment, which also made his feet tingle in a way that almost felt like burning. He had almost made it to shore, where the water was only knee-deep, before one foot became well and truly stuck and the next step sent him falling instead of forward. Finn's hands shot out to catch him and were promptly swallowed by the black, hungry mud, leaving him stuck up to the knees and elbows. Finn writhed, struggled, and called for help, but it seemed like the ground had suddenly turned solid again. He couldn't move an inch.

In horror, Finn watched as the mud in front of his face parted. A hairless, misshapen head emerged from the ooze, every inch coated in noxious slime except for those evil eyes and ghoulish grin. The head was attached to a neck, and the neck to a body - the atrophied, brittle body of an old man, peeling and rotting like a putrid corpse. The Old Man rose up until it was standing on the ground that had engulfed Finn's extremities, and it smiled down at him. Finn gazed up at those wide, shining eyes with tears of terror in his own.

"Please..." he begged, to the Old Man, or the harvest moon in the sky behind him, or the god that lived behind that sky. None of them heard his plea.

When the Old Man lifted a single swollen, discolored foot, Finn closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it coming. Then the foot came down on his head, and his screams were just bubbles in the mud as he went under.

-----

"What the hell?!" Guy exclaimed, gazing dumbfounded at the "get gas you stupid idiot" light.

"What?" Iris asked.

Guy didn't have to answer, because the last eighth of the gas drained out and his car sputtered to a halt.

"Shit!" he cried, and smacked the steering wheel.

Iris leaned over to see the fuel gauge. "Did you just run out of gas?!" she asked, incredulously.

"Apparently." He smacked the steering wheel again for emphasis. The second time didn't make him feel better either.

"Did you not make sure you had enough?!" she was almost shouting.

"I filled up yesterday!"

"Apparently not."

"There must be a..." he paused to fish for an explanation "...a leak in the tank or something. The light //just// came on."

Iris sighed. "Great. Just great." Then, more quietly, "shoulda gone with Alex."

That last one really scalded Guy's manly pride, such as it was.

"Lemme see if I can find the leak," he said, as if he had more than the vaguest idea of where the gas tank even was. Auto maintenance was a good way to assert masculinity, right?

"Won't put the gas back in," Iris quipped.

Guy sighed. "Just lemme check, okay? Maybe there's like, a blockage or something."

"Hmm." Iris crossed her arms and stared out the windshield.

Without anything else to say, Guy grabbed a little flashlight out of the console hopped out. He resisted the urge to slam the door; it'd be no good, venting his frustration over the breakdown with force. That's something Abe would've done.

Grunting, Guy half-squatted, half-laid down near the back of his car and shone the flashlight up under there. It was easy to spot the problem; a stinking, shiny trail reached all along the ground in the direction they'd come from, terminating right below a small hole in what could only be the gas tank.

"What the Hell?" he muttered, probing the hole with his finger. It was only about the size of a fingertip, with black, corroded-looking edges. Guy's car wasn't exactly new, but it certainly wasn't old enough to be rusting. He didn't know why it would only rust in that one spot, either. One thing he did know was Iris was right: there was nothing he could do to magically put the gas back in, even if there had been some way to seal the hole.

He groaned and stood up.

"Well?" Iris demanded, as soon as he opened the door.

"There's a hole in the tank. Looks like it rusted through or something."

She exhaled forcefully through her nose. "Great. Awesome."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go back to 17th street and make sure Cade didn't lose the kids!" she shouted.

"I know that," he almost whined. "I mean, do you wanna wait here for somebody to drive past and pick us up?"

"Somebody? Like Abe?" she asked, harshly.

Guy looked back towards the party. Abe's truck was still somewhere behind them, presumably.

"Oh. Huh."

"Huh indeed."

"Well, uh..." he began, looking the other way. "I guess we could walk to the highway."

"And hitchhike home? I don't wanna get murdered."

"I mean..." he began, and regretted it.

"Yeah, I know." If they didn't go past Abe on the way back, he'd just go past them on his way out, once he finished peeing or whatever. Neither of them wanted another confrontation with that guy, but it was looking increasingly inevitable.

"I guess if we hear the truck coming we can just hide," Guy suggested, shrugging.

"Yeah," she agreed, "I guess."

"I also have a tire iron," he added.

Iris nodded. "You should bring it."


-----


"Urgh," Katie groaned, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. Something about the heat inside the barn, the slightly excessive amount of beer she'd imbibed, --and the inescapable knowledge that even beer had calories and calories would make her fat if she dared to digest them-- had convinced her stomach it was better off empty, no matter how inconvenient that was for the rest of her body. Her mouth and esophagus didn't appreciate the scalding touch of stomach acid or its horrible taste, for example. Her knees didn't appreciate the dirt and leaves that were now all over them and would make people think she'd been out here sucking dicks. And most of all, her hair didn't appreciate the fact that not one of her so-called friends had felt the need to follow her out here and hold it back for her.

Her stomach had efficiently ejected what little it contained on the first go, but it kept on heaving anyway to make absolutely sure it'd gotten everything. Once she felt reasonably confident it was done, Katie groaned pitifully and slumped backwards against a tree. It wasn't comfortable at all, but she didn't feel like standing up. If she went back in to the party, people would notice the dirt and puke staining her fortune-teller costume. But if she went home, people would gossip about her for the rest of the night. Not that they wouldn't be doing it already. As she sat there, knees hugged to her chest and face buried between them, she thought about just staying there in the forest, where she could safely cry alone.

She wasn't alone, though. And she wasn't safe, either.

At first, Katie mistook the acidic, rotten smell for the stink of her own vomit. She didn't notice the Old Man's slimy, decaying arms until they were already around her.

-----

The trees loomed large above the road, only letting the orange light of the moon through in irregular gaps. A cold wind set the bare branches and lifeless leaves dancing, and they struck up a tuneless chorus of rattles and rustles. There was a screech owl somewhere nearby, and Guy shivered a little every time its ghostly shriek cut through the October air.

"Well," Guy chuckled, "this is spooky." It was a nervous chuckle, because "spooky" didn't quite encompass the fear of a stab-happy psycho stalking you through the woods at night. His white-knuckled grip on the tire iron didn't help much, either.

"Shh," Iris said, quietly. Guy started to protest, until he saw that she'd stopped walking. Once he did the same, he could hear it too.

An engine.

They stood there for a moment, eyes down the road, waiting for headlights to appear. But they never did, and after a while it became clear that the sound wasn't getting any closer either.

Guy and Iris exchanged a concerned look.

"Is this about where it was?" he whispered.

"I think so."

That was worrisome. They'd passed Abe's truck almost an hour ago. If it still hadn't moved...

"What should we do?"

Iris thought for a moment, then crept over to the side of the road, into the weeds. Guy followed. Then, slowly, they began to sneak towards the noise. After a few long minutes, they finally came far enough around the curve to see the headlights through the trees. It was indeed Abe's truck, and it was still right where he'd left it. And he //had// left it. As Iris and Guy crept closer, they were soon able to tell that there was still no one in the cab. They exchanged another worried glance before continuing.

When Guy drove around Abe's truck before, he'd done so on the left side of the road. Now, he and Iris were creeping along the right. He wished this wasn't the case, since the trees were closer on that side, and he was worried that Abe might jump out from behind one of them.

However, being on the other side also allowed them to see something they hadn't before. The metal on the passenger's side of the cab was blackened and corroded, like it'd be scored with acid or sat rusting in a junkyard for ten years.

Like the hole in Guy's gas tank.

He looked quizzically at Iris. "Was it always like that?"

She shook her head, perplexed. She looked at the rotted truck, then back at him. "What would do that?"

"It looks like my gas tank did."

Iris's eyes widened. "Should we take a closer look?"

Guy shook his head, rapidly. "No! Are you nuts?"

"What if the inside's rotted too? What if..." she let the sentence hang there. It'd certainly explain why the truck hadn't moved.

"Iris," Guy cautioned, "it's the people who go to check that always get killed!"

"This isn't a movie, Guy!" Then she started creeping towards the truck.

Guy weighed his options. He could stay in hiding there at the side of the road, and maybe get a chance to run if Abe popped up from the backseat like a horror movie. Or he could go with Iris, and maybe stop her from getting hurt (and get a chance to whack Abe with a tire iron). He chose to follow Iris.

Abe's truck had some kind of ridiculous lift kit that put its windows almost above eye level. Iris couldn't even see in on her tiptoes, and she didn't dare step on the rotten-looking footboard. Guy had just a few inches on her, so he was able to peek in. He didn't like what he saw.

Most of the cab was splattered with some kind of nasty black slime, which seemed to have rotted or dissolved everything it'd touched. There was no sign of Abe, and Guy suddenly wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

"Guy!" Iris whispered, urgently. He quickly turned around, expecting to find Abe in his face. Instead, he saw Iris knelt down, inspecting something on the ground. "Shine your light on this." He obliged.

There, in the flashlight beam, was a pile of human teeth. Bloody, slimy teeth.

Iris stifled a scream, slapping a hand over her mouth. Guy didn't feel like screaming, but he did think he might throw up.

"Are those..." he groaned.

"I think so," she whimpered, voice muffled by her hand.

"Oh God."

Slowly, Iris extended her other, trembling hand to point at something beside the grisly heap. Guy adjusted the flashlight beam just a bit, and what it illuminated made his blood run cold.

A big, slimy footprint. And another, and another, each one closer to the party than the last.

"Oh God."

-----

The fellow in the plague doctor costume was, in fact, event staff. It was his job to help set up the sound equipment, to keep people from sneaking in any weapons or other obviously dangerous things, and to raise the alarm if any cops showed up. It was, all things considered, pretty lame. Though the role of Mister No Fun Man was certainly important (if that weeb with the very real, very sharp sword had been any indication) that didn't make it any easier to stand around outside all night while the people on the other side of the door were getting high and bumping their naughty bits together. The latter was particularly irksome; he'd been hoping to score tonight, but everyone here seemed more interested in the contents of each other's pants than those of some anonymous goon from a different school.

Or so he thought, until the hot goth appeared beside him. She seemed to have stepped right out of a Type O Negative song; a masterpiece of boobs, buckles, and black, wrapped tight in more leather than should have been possible with that much skin still showing.

"Hey doc," Vicky said, flashing a pair of very expensive-looking prosthetic vampire cosplay fangs. She placed one long-nailed hand on the barn and stuck one hip in the other direction. "Nice mask."

"Hey," he said, reeling. "Nice...everything."

She chuckled. "So tell me, what kind of doctor carries a sword?"

"Huh?" he said, remembering the confiscated katana in his hand, then casually dropping it. "Oh, I just took that from some weeb. I usually carry a big stick, myself."

"A //big// stick, eh?" She peered, skeptically, down at his robe.

Under his mask, he grinned. "That's what I've been told."

She rolled her black-lined eyes. "And I suppose you've been told about your //huge// doctor's bag, too?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"In my experience, it's not the size of the scalpel that matters," she idly tapped the beak of his mask, "but the skill of the surgeon's hands."

He closed one black-gloved hand around her own leather-clad wrist. "My hands are quite capable." His sleeve slid back, exposing the skin of his wrist. She removed her other hand from the wall and ran one nail along the vein.

"Delicate..." she observed.

He tightened his grip. "Yet firm."

She grinned, showing the fangs again. "I think I'm gettin' a fever, doc." A teasing tongue licked at the corner of her black-painted lips.

"Don't worry baby," he said, placing his other hand on her hip. "I'm the cure."

He was a bit surprised when he felt Vicky's free hand close on the collar of his robe.

"We'll see about that," she said, and pulled him along.

Vicky led him away from the barn, away from the stray beams of multicolored light that snuck between its boards, away from the sounds of strings and synthesizers. He wondered where they were going, but not much. This chick could take him anywhere.

Soon, two crooked chimneys loomed out of the gloom. There must have been a house there, once.

"Do you know the story of this place?" Vicky asked, looking back at her companion.

"No?" he replied.

She smiled faintly. "There used to be a farmhouse here. Built the same time as the barn. A whole big family lived in it."

Then they came up beside one of the chimneys. She let go of his collar, but didn't turn to face him yet. Instead, she inspected the vines and creepers that wound snakelike up the crumbling bricks.

"But one Halloween night, exactly thirteen years ago, there was a strange, unseasonal thunderstorm here." Slowly, dramatically, she pointed up at the moon. Its orange light glinted off the studs in her ear. "Lightning struck the house. It burned." Now she looked at him, and her eyes were wide with excitement. "With the //whole// family still inside." She cracked another grin, but it wasn't sexy or playful. It was scary.

She placed both hands on the increasingly spooked plague doctor's shoulders. "People died here, baby." One hand crept towards his neck. A thumbnail lightly scraped along his throat. "Don't it make you feel alive?"

Then Vicky shoved him, and he felt the vine-draped bricks at his back. At his front, he felt...a lot of things. They felt //good//.

-----

The Old Man crept closer. A slimy, black tongue ran over his exposed teeth as he watched his next victims, oblivious in their revelry. He could have killed them right then. But he was going let them finish.

-----

When it was finally over, he had to grab hold of the vines to keep his trembling knees from giving way.

Vicky laughed. "Well, I //do// feel better."

"My cure," he gasped, "is most effAAAH!"

Vicky tried to ask about the "AAAH!" but she'd lost her breath. She'd also lost part of her spine.

The Old Man's glittering eyes met the doctor's, and he found himself as paralyzed by fear as Vicky had been by the loss of her vertebrae. The gears of his brain were jammed between too many different emotions, too many different hormones, to even grant a chance of running.

One cadaverous foot stepped on Vicky, and she sank silently into the dirt. One putrescent hand pressed into the doctor's chest, and he sank whimpering into the bricks.

-----

Damien stepped outside the barn, seething. Nobody had been impressed by his authentic samurai armor. He felt sure that if he'd had the authentic sword that went with it the effect would've been different. Maybe the plague doctor would let him bring it inside this time.

Damien was alarmed to discover that the plague doctor was gone. His first thought was that the bastard had stolen his valuable antique sword, but then he noticed that it'd just been dropped there in the grass, which was almost as bad. His ill-fitting armor rattled as he bent down to pick it up. He tried to brush off the grass, dirt, and leaves that'd accumulated on the scabbard while it was on the ground, swearing all the while. He'd need to go back to the car where there was better light to make sure he'd gotten everything.

-----

The Old Man calmly strolled up to the barn. Even through the walls, his ruined nostrils could smell the sweet scent of young bodies, covered in tangy sweat and filled with delicious, pumping blood. While they danced to the music of computers and instruments, he would make his own music. Anguished screams would be his lyrics. Running feet would be his drums. And his guitars would be the tearing of their young, supple flesh. He placed one rotten hand on the side of the barn and breathed deep...oh, yes. What sweet music it would be.

At a relaxed pace, the Old Man paced around the barn's perimeter. His hand trailed, almost absentmindedly, along the wood beside him. Everywhere it touched the boards seemed to age, turning soft and black like the trunk of a diseased tree. The corruption spread behind him like a ship's wake. It sunk down the post-holes that stabilized the supports. It seeped up under the eaves of the hole-filled roof. It crept into every crack and cranny, and sheathed every ancient nail with night-black rust. Yet those inside sensed nothing, knew nothing, but the pounding of the music and the flashing of the lights and the convulsions of their pretty flesh.

When the Old Man completed his circuit, he found himself standing below a small, high window at the rear of the structure. Slowly, like a spider, he crept up the wall beneath it. The withered tips of his slime-sheathed fingers and toes sank into the crumbling wood, painting a fan-shaped tableu of decay on the back wall - not that the oblivious babies inside could tell, lost as they were in their own senses and sensuality. No one saw the Old Man's gleaming eyes rise above the windowsill. The DJ sat only a few feet away, but his rag-clad back was to the window. The Old Man didn't bother to climb through; his body just passed right through the wall, the wood giving way to his corrosive secretions like paper gives way to water.

The Old Man approached the DJ slowly, savoring each moment of tension. He was almost invisible in the shadows behind Scravecrow. Even his gleaming eyes were easily lost amid the flashing lights above the dance floor. Slowly, the Old Man stretched one necrotic hand towards the oblivious DJ.

With one withered finger, he tapped him on the shoulder.

Startled, DJ Scravecrow whirled around, almost dislodging the pumpkin from his head. He opened his mouth to shout, but before the noise escaped it the Old Man's hand had been rammed inside. His spidery digits rotted and melted their way through through the roof of the mouth and into the brain cavity, seized a handful of squishy gray matter, and scooped it out like so many pumpkin guts.

Scravecrow collapsed backwards. The remains of his head fell onto the soundboard, sloshing blood and acid onto the electronics. As it, too, began to melt, the music slowed to a dissonant crawl and the lights fell out of sync. The hapless teenagers looked up in confusion, which quickly turned to fright as they beheld the Old Man revealed in the light.

He was a geriatric demon, a nursing home nightmare. Wide, cruel eyes shone from sunken sockets set above a wider, crueler grin in his bulbous, bald head. A thin neck ringed with fraying folds of gangrenous flesh supported that ghoulish globe above a sunken, concave chest. A jacket or dress shirt hung loosely from his narrow shoulders, seeming untouched by the black, caustic mucus that oozed from his every pore. With one nearly-skeletal hand, he messily shoveled the handful of scrambled brains into his lipless mouth. His other hand plunged smoothly into the dead disc jockey's abdomen and seized him by a rib. With a casual strength that belied his frail appearance, the Old Man hoisted the corpse over the soundboard and onto the floor ten feet below. The teenagers drew back and screamed as the body plummeted. Realizing that this was no prank, some of them turned to run.

They never got the chance.

-----

When Iris returned to the farm, she found Alex and his jock friends sitting the bed of Porkchop's pickup truck, drinking yet more beer. She hoped that Alex wasn't one of those guys who turned into an asshole when he got drunk. She already knew Porkchop wasn't one; he was //always// an asshole.

"HEY MAN, SHE CAME BACK!" he said, elbowing Alex. "NOW'S YOUR CHANCE!"

Alex ignored that, of course, but he did pay attention to Iris. One look at her was enough to tell that something was very, very wrong.

"Abe!" she shouted, as loudly as she could while so out of breath from running most of the way back. "He's dead!"

Porkchop started to say something, but Spencer kicked him in the shin.

"What?" Alex asked, rising to his feet.

"He...something killed him." Iris had reached the truck now, and she leaned against its open tailgate for support. "Some kind of..." she had to stop herself from saying "monster," because she knew how these jerks would react. "It ripped out his teeth."

That detail wiped all the amusement from their faces. "What did?" Alex repeated, eyes wide.

Iris swallowed. "I...I don't know, I didn't see it. But it's here, somewhere. I saw its footprints. They looked like a person's but they were all slimy. This thing, it's covered in this...acid, and it rots everything it touches."

Alex just looked confused, but there was skepticism creeping onto the faces of his friends.

"Is this some kind of a prank?" Spencer asked.

Iris straight-up screamed. "//It's not a fucking prank! Abe is dead and whatever killed him is here and it's gonna kill more people if we don't **do something**!//"

Nobody could fake that kind of distress, not without an acting degree. Porkchop vaulted over the side of the truck bed and flung open the driver's side door. There was a gun in the truck, one that Porkchop had been looking for an excuse to use ever since he bought it without ID or a background check.

Spencer and Lance stood up beside Alex, but they seemed less sure of what to do.

"What //should// we do?" Alex asked.

"We have to tell everyone in there," she said, pointing at the barn. "They'll listen to you, right?"

"Not if you tell 'em there's some kind of moon monster attacking," Lance said.

"Then say it's a shooter or a bomb or an escaped mental patient or something!" Iris yelled, waving her arms.

"WHERE'S THIS SLIMY FUCKER," Porkchop shouted, "I'LL PUT SOME LEAD IN HIS ASS!"

"Chop, no!" Alex cried, startled not by the shouting, but by the military-grade firearm in his drunk friend's hands. "Jesus, put that down!"

"IT'S OKAY I HAVE AN OPEN CARRY!"

"No, I mean, gah..." Alex grimaced and put a hand to his head in exasperation. "We can't just start running around shooting at things."

"Why don't we just call the cops?" Lance suggested.

"From where?" Spencer argued. "We'd have to drive to a payphone."

"Yeah, let's do that."

"And how long will that take?"

"WE DON'T NEED NO COPS!"

Alex started to intervene in his friends' arguing, but then he noticed Guy was missing.

"Hey, where's Hopper?" he asked, jumping down from the truck to land beside Iris. He looked worried.

As if in answer, Guy staggered into view. He was panting and absolutely drenched in sweat. Alex was relieved to see that Guy hadn't also been gotten by whatever this was.

"Hopper," he asked, "what's going on?" He hoped that Guy's explanation might make more sense than Iris's.

Once he reached the truck, Guy doubled over to catch his breath. He gestured vaguely at Iris. "Whatever she said."

"All I'm saying is," Lance shouted, "if this thing - whatever it is - could take Abe, I don't think we can take it."

"It's probably just some druggie, you don't really believe that acid monster shit do you?"

"WHAT'S THE MATTER, ARE YOU GUYS SCARED?"

Alex tried to intervene. "Guys, would you just-" at first, he sounded mostly exasperated, but then he noticed something. "**Shut up!**" he bellowed, in his best quarterback voice. His squabbling friends zipped it reflexively, and in the sudden absence of yelling they could hear it too. There was something wrong with the music. Instead of the steady, pounding beat and muffled synthetic guitar noises that'd been playing all night, it was now a slowed, distorted groan. As one, they all turned to look at the barn.

As one, they saw it collapse.

All thoughts of a monster were pushed aside then, as those buried by the fallen timbers screamed for help. Alex and his friends rushed toward the ruins, Porkchop's rifle dancing chaotically on the end of its straps as he ran. Iris and Guy hesitated, but only a little.

Alex was the first to reach the pile. He looked around for a moment, trying to pinpoint the nearest voice, then started prying at the splintered wood. Distantly, he noted its peculiar softness. He hadn't remembered it being this rotten before, but he supposed the structure was quite old. Maybe the loud music had shaken it apart? It seemed more plausible than a corrosive monster.

With help from Spencer, Alex managed to lift a large chunk of the wall out of the way, revealing Ari underneath it. She was bruised in a hundred places and cut in several more, her pained, frightened face streaked with dirt and rotten wood. Alex grabbed one hand and Spencer the other to pull her free, but she cried in pain. Something was wrapped around her foot. At first, Alex thought it was another piece of moldering wood that he'd missed. But then he saw the spindly arm attached to it, and the nightmare face that oozed out of the pile behind it.

Spencer screamed and jumped back, then tripped and fell. Alex stood his ground and grabbed Ari's arm with his other hand, pulling as hard as he could. He almost thought he might win this gruesome tug-of-war, but then the Old Man's other hand clamped around Ari's other ankle. Her sweaty, bloody, rot-slicked skin slipped out of Alex's grasp as the Old Man dragged her down screaming.

The disturbance caused the pile to shift. Alex, already off-balance, stumbled forward. His foot slipped and twisted into a crack, and the piece of wall he and Spencer had moved slid guillotine-like back into place. He screamed as it crushed his lower leg.

As Iris and Guy ran towards the ruckus, they passed Lance and Spencer going the other way. They watched, frozen in horror, as the Old Man rose from the ground between them and Alex. He did it casually, dramatically, like a rockstar coming on stage. Iris didn't think that was a coincidence; from the gleeful way he stared at her, it seemed clear that the monster was enjoying this. As Alex got his first good look at the creature, he redoubled his efforts to work free. He had no leverage in that position, though, and he no longer had Spencer to help him move the heavy timbers. His inarticulate cries of pain and panic seemed to recapture the Old Man's attention. Slowly, savoring each dreadful moment, each wide-eyed stare, he turned around and reached for his prey.

"AAAAAAAH!" someone shouted, distracting even the Old Man from the impending carnage. He turned his pulpy head to the right, just in time to see Damien bearing towards him, sword raised over one shoulder. The blade sliced down and seemed to pass through the ghoul's slime-slick torso like butter.

The Old Man didn't visibly react; he just stared at Damien, grin still frozen on his face. For a moment, Damien fancied that he'd bisected the monster so cleanly it hadn't noticed yet, and would fall apart as soon as it moved. But then he heard a tell-tale quiet hissing, and looked down to discover that his katana was its source. It had become coated in the Old Man's black mucus, which was now eating away at the metal itself. Damien watched in horror as his most prized possession disintegrated to the hilt.

He looked up at the Old Man.

"Uh," he began. He didn't finish, because then the monster's hand was around his throat, was //in// his throat, pushing effortlessly through skin, muscle, and cartilage to wrap itself around his spine. Damien convulsed wildly, kicking and punching at the thing in a futile attempt to break free. The abomination didn't even flinch. With one final squeeze, the Old Man pinched off Damien's spine, sending his headless body to the ground in a heap. The Old Man inspected the head in the way a child might inspect an interesting beetle before crushing it.

He didn't get the chance, because a bullet suddenly passed straight through the Old Man's chest and splattered the head like a pumpkin. The monster's head whipped around backwards like an owl's, and the gleeful grin suddenly seemed more like a snarl. He hadn't liked being robbed of his trophy.

"YIPPY-KAI-YAY, MOTHERFUCKER!" Porkchop bellowed, firing off a dozen rounds in the Old Man's general direction. Some actually struck the monster, evinced by the sprays of black mucus that shot out behind it, but it didn't seem to notice as it strode menacingly in Porkchop's direction. His aim grew more erratic as the monster approached, with some bullets flying wild into the wood pile or kicking up plumes of dirt far behind his target. Alex hunkered down and yelled something at his trigger-happy friend that wasn't audible over the sound of gunfire. Iris and Guy dove behind the nearest car.

The Old Man was only a few feet away when Porkchop finally acknowledged that no amount of bullets were going to stop it. He turned to run, but in his clumsy panic bumped into a nearby car and stumbled to the ground. The rifle slipped out of his sweaty hands and, as its butt collided with the ground, fired one final shot. Porkchop didn't even know what had happened when the bullet tumbled through his skull.

Curiously, the old man nudged the corpse with one foot. When it didn't budge, his bony shoulders seemed to sink in disappointment.

"Iris!" Alex called. His plea tore her and Guy away from the spectacle, and they sprinted towards the trapped quarterback. Maybe together they could...

The sound of a car horn split the night. Everyone, including the Old Man, looked up to see the late Porkchop's truck bearing down on the monster. The Old Man threw up a gnarled hand to shield its gleaming eyes from the blinding headlights, and seemed to shrink into the ground just moments before it would have been struck. The vehicle careened through the space where it'd been, one tire bumping roughly over Porkchop's body, before it struck the ruins of the barn and slammed to a halt. Both airbags deployed, and they were the only things that kept Lance and Spencer from cracking their heads on the windshield. The impact still hurt Spencer's neck like hell, but that was just the beginning of his suffering.

"Did we..." Lance started to ask, clutching his own whiplashed neck. Then he screamed, because he saw the Old Man's ghastly face looming outside the driver's side window. Spencer followed his friend's gaze, but would precede him to the grave. A decayed hand lunged through the metal of the door and into Spencer's abdomen, grabbed something that certainly shouldn't be grabbed, and pulled. Spencer gasped and clutched at the hole with one hand that did nothing to stop the tide of the blood spilling out of him. He fumbled at the door handle with the other, perhaps because his pain-shocked brain still believed that escape was possible. The door did open, but Spencer's legs simply fell out from under him. All he could do was lay there on the bloody, splintered wood as the Old Man grinned down at him. Spencer watched helplessly as the monster took a bite from whatever organ - oh God, one of //his// organs - it'd torn out, then planted a swollen foot on his bleeding body and forced him into the tarry quicksand that opened beneath.

Lance didn't see much of this, because he'd jumped out the passenger's side and bolted as soon as he saw Spencer's insides. As a lineman, he wasn't particularly fast under normal circumstances. Now, clomping along in oversized astronaut boots, he was lucky to even stay vertical - and his luck soon ran out. The impact didn't keep him down long, but it was long enough. He was still on his hands and knees when a putrescent hand shot up out of the ground and into his ribcage. It pulled back just as quickly, now clutching something pink and spongy. Gasping, Lance rolled onto his back and gazed dumbly at the hole where his lung had been. He was already well into shock when he started sinking.

With one last mighty heave, Guy and Iris finally forced the chunk of wood off of Alex's leg. He pulled it out of the gap, but saw immediately that it wouldn't do any more good free than it did trapped. There was a huge gash on the right side of his calf, and the whole leg cried out in protest when he tried to stand on it.

Iris saw it too, but she had to ask. "Can you run?"

Alex looked down at his injury and shook his head. "No." His voice cracked.

"Guys!" screamed Guy. He was looking at the Old Man, which had now risen from the spot where Lance had sunk. It was strolling towards them, almost casually. It knew Alex couldn't get away. So did he. Frantically, he dug his car keys out his pocket and thrust them at Iris.

"Go," he said.

"But-"

"Go!" Iris didn't need to be told twice. Guy hadn't needed to be told once. Before he ran off, he passed his tire iron to Alex, who acknowledged the mostly symbolic gift with a brief nod.

"Come on, old man!" he grunted, through gritted teeth. "That all you got?"

Lazily, like a shark, the Old Man circled him. Alex rotated to keep his eye on the wretched thing, but also watched over the Old Man's shoulder as Iris and Guy climbed into his truck. Hopefully he could keep it occupied long enough for them to get away.

"Is this how you get your sick kicks, you ugly fuck? Killing kids?"

The Old Man chuckled nastily. It was a horrible, wet sound.

"The //fuck// are you, anyway?  I've seen kids' costumes more-"

Alex was interrupted by the sound of his truck starting, against all expectations, on the first try. The Old Man's head snapped around backwards again to look at it, and Alex choose that moment to strike. He didn't at all expect to actually hurt it, but he had to keep its attention. Like every weapon before it, the tire iron passed right through the Old Man and came out the other side covered in corrosive ooze. It did recapture the monster's attention, though. Slowly, its misshapen head ground back around to face Alex. He dropped the disintegrating metal and raised his fists.

"Hey! I'm not done with you!"

The creature stared blankly at him. Its exposed teeth ground back and forth while it seemed to contemplate something. Then, as if a trap door had opened beneath it, it vanished into the ground.

"Shit," Alex whispered. It could spring up at him from any direction now. He turned in quick circles, keeping his eyes to the ground to watch for any grasping hands. Once, without meaning to, he glanced up towards the road to confirm that Iris and Guy were driving away. The glance lasted only a moment, but it was a moment too long.

A bony claw suddenly shot out from under a nearby car and clamped itself around Alex's calf. The thin, slimy fingers dug into bloody gash, sending out a wave of pain that collapsed his knee on its way to his brain. As Alex stumbled to the ground, the other hand grabbed ahold of his left foot, and pulled. He scrabbled desperately at the ground for a handhold, tearing out divots and clumps of grass as he was dragged under the car. The Old Man was impossibly strong; it felt like pulling against a tow truck. As a last-ditch effort, Alex threw one arm back and braced his shoulder against the side of the car. The Old Man adjusted his grip, forcing his filthy hands into the dissolving flesh of Alex's thighs to seize him by the very bone. His whole lower body was burning now, and seemed to be sinking. Through the agony, Alex realized with distant horror that it wasn't just killing him, it was //taking// him somewhere. In one last desperate heave, Alex //pushed// off from the ground and the car with all the force his muscled arms could muster.

There were two loud, wet popping sounds. Alex couldn't feel the Old Man's hands anymore. Actually, he couldn't feel his legs at all. The rest of him started to go numb, too, as he crawled away. It was...cold...and dark...

He began to sink.

-----

Guy thought he'd being going dangerously fast when he zoomed past Abe's truck before, but that looked like a leisurely cruise compared to the speed Iris was driving.

"Look out!" he shrieked, clinging desperately to the oh-shit bar as a tree trunk passed within inches of the side mirror. Iris didn't seem to hear him. Alex's truck wasn't as ridiculously oversized as Abe's, but Iris wasn't finding it any easier to drive. The only thing that kept her from flooring it was her fear of the high-profile vehicle rolling over and trapping them inside like sitting ducks. 

A bigger problem, as she soon found out, was the amount of time it takes such a large vehicle to stop. In the time since they'd last past it, Abe's idling truck had finally run out of gas, or perhaps become so corroded by the black goop coating its interior that it could no longer run. By the time its black bulk reared up in the headlights, it was already far too late. Dirt flew, brakes squealed, rubber burned, and metal crunched.

Iris cried out as her head snapped roughly forward and back and the seat belt bit into her chest. She turned to check on Guy, and cried out again. Like her, Guy had not been cushioned by the truck's apparently defective airbags during the crash. Unlike Iris, he hadn't been wearing a seatbelt.

There was blood on the windshield.

"Guy?!"

He groaned in response, which meant was alive at least. Iris looked over her shoulder, grunting in pain as her whiplashed neck protested. There was no sign of the Old Man in the taillights, but that didn't make her feel any better. Quickly, she hopped out of the driver's side and ran around the back toward Guy, ignoring the truck's mindless, beeping reminder that she'd left the keys. You weren't supposed to move car crash survivors, she knew, but if Guy stayed here he'd have much worse than a broken neck to worry about. She flung open the passenger door and grabbed his arm.

"Come on!"

Guy tried to mumble a response, but he didn't seem full conscious. Iris gave him a good shake, trying to ignore the blood coating his front and now her hands. That seemed to rouse him a little, and he looked over at her.

"Come on, Guy, we have to get out of here!"

Grunting unintelligibly, he tried to hoist himself out of the truck. Iris helped as much as possible, but she couldn't support his weight when his legs gave out under him. Guy stumbled to the ground and immediately vomited. That wasn't good.

"Guy, please, if we don't-"

"Go," he croaked.

"No no no," she repeated, trying to haul Guy back to his feet. "You can walk, we can-"

"Rris," he slurred. "Can't...run..." he almost toppled over again, so he leaned against the side of the ruined truck. "You go...I'll..." he choked back another wave of vomit and grabbed onto the open door for support. "I'll hide."

"No, you can make it, you can-"

He shook his head and almost collapsed from the resulting dizziness. "Can't run," he repeated. "Brain." He pointed one shaky finger at his bleeding head.

"Guy..." Iris said, but there was nothing that she could follow it with. He was right.

"Please. Run."

With tears welling in her eyes, Iris did exactly that. Guy watched her (and the blurry images of her that wavered to the left and right) vanish into the night. Then he staggered off into the trees. He had only just made it off the road when the world started spinning again, and he was suddenly horizontal. Rather than waste time trying to stand, he just crawled from there. The ground sloped away from the road, down towards a burbling stream that Guy could just barely hear over the death throes of Alex's truck and the rustling of wet leaves beneath his hands and knees. He couldn't be sure how steep it was, not with the ground moving like that, but it was steep enough to fall down. One hand shot out too far and he flopped over, then half-rolled, half slid down the incline. Rocks and sticks bit at his back, his limbs, and his bloody face until he finally came to rest beside a rotten, moss-covered log. With a grunt of desperation and pain, he slung first an arm, then a leg over the fallen tree and hauled himself over. Then he just lay there on the ground, waiting for his breath to come back and for the branches to stop spinning overhead.

Guy had lost consciousness again by the time the Old Man found him. He woke up when he felt a drop of acid fall on his face. When his unfocused eyes snapped open, the Old Man's were only inches away. He couldn't scream. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't focus. Dozens of Old Men seemed to dance before his eyes. For a moment, Guy thought the grinning figure above him was wearing sunglasses.

As an acid-drenched hand pushed him into the ground, Guy heard a screech owl cry. It seemed to say "Back so soon?"

-----

Iris had never thought of herself as a runner. Her only engagement with sporting events had been as a photographer for the school paper. Nonetheless, she felt sure - or she would have, if she'd stopped to think about it - that the track team had never topped her current speed. Iris didn't really know where she was, or where she hoped to get other than "away," but she was getting there faster than she'd thought her body could go.

Unfortunately, adrenaline can only get you so far. Iris's lungs were burning. Her sides were splitting. Her vision was darkening, and not just because the branches seemed to be closing overhead. Unwillingly, she stumbled to a clumsy jog, and then a stop. She was still doubled over, clutching her knees, when she heard the Old Man's footsteps behind her. She knew they were his from the squelching.

Wasting precious seconds, Iris flung a terrified glance over her shoulder. In the orange-tinted moonlight, she could only see his eyes, reflecting that same eerie glow back at her. He wasn't running, wasn't even jogging. His pace was more like a casual stroll than anything.

He already knew Iris couldn't get away.

Still, she pushed on. She had to. Iris couldn't manage anything close to a sprint anymore, but it was easy to outpace the corroded corpse behind her. He'd catch her when he wanted to, and not a minute sooner.

Suddenly, Iris noticed a glint of moonlight up ahead. It took her a solid second to recognize it as Guy's car, and another two to process just how little distance she'd actually covered during her panicked sprint.

Well, this was as good a place as any. Iris doubled over again to catch her last breath. She could hear the Old Man back there still, squelching lazily along, but couldn't bear to look again. Instead, she gazed forward, at the taillights.

...taillights...

...tail**lights**!

Before she fully understood why, Iris had wheeled around to face her pursuer. It stopped, maybe startled by the motion or simply amused by what it expected to be another attempt at fighting. But Iris didn't raise her fists.

She raised her camera.

This caught the Old Man by surprise. It didn't even have time to shield its eyes before the sudden, blinding flash sliced into them. It snarled in pain - a nasty, wet, animalistic sound - and fell back into the ground, back into the dark hole-of-all-holes it had crawled from.

Iris didn't let herself get cocky. Just as she'd remembered the effect of Porkchop's headlights on the monster - the only thing that had seemed to even inconvenience it all night - she remembered how quickly it had risen back up for revenge. She looked around for an island of safety, something that would stop the Old Man from popping up beneath her. All she found was Guy's car, so she climbed up onto it. Then she stood there on the roof, camera at the ready, waiting.

She didn't have to wait long. It tried to come at her from the left first. She heard the wet sound of its emergence and pivoted, flashing the camera into its wide night-eyes before it had even fully left the ground. With another howl of pain, it sank.

It emerged more quickly the next time, coming from the right. Its hand had almost closed on Iris's foot before her flash repulsed it again.

It came from the front, tried to clamber up onto the hood. The flash sent it tumbling back onto and into the ground.

From the rear, cautiously, as if she wouldn't notice those gleaming, vulnerable eyes rise above the edge of the trunk.

Iris didn't know how long she could keep this up. Maybe someone had managed to get service and call the police. Maybe word of the party had reached them, and they'd come to break it up. She wasn't sure what she expected the police to do about this, but at least they had spotlights and sirens brighter than her camera.

Iris felt the car shift under her, and her eyes widened in newfound panic. It was trying to come up through the car. She thought about jumping off, but that would be suicide. Instead, she just looked down at her feet, watching for any signs of rust or decay, as if she'd be able to see them in the dark. She flashed her camera again just once, to check. The shifting didn't stop. It rocked one way, then the next. Something metal fell off the bottom with a clang. Then it stopped. Iris tensed, and waited.

The car pitched again, more violently this time, as the left rear tire popped. She lost her balance. The Old Man lunged up out of the ground beside the tire, one hand extended towards her, but she regained her footing and flashed him away again. Now that she was ready for it, the next three tires didn't disturb her as much. And she was ready for the Old Man too, each time. Iris didn't waste time wondering why it hadn't been able to come through the bottom of the car. Maybe all the pipes and things down there were harder to navigate than simple walls and floors. It didn't matter, so long as it couldn't attack her from below.

After a while, it stopped attacking her at all. Iris saw no sign of the Old Man. A small hope fluttered in her heart; maybe it'd grown tired of her resistance and wandered off in search of easier prey. Maybe she could jump down and-

No. That was it wanted her to think. She kept her eyes peeled, turning in slow circles to watch the ground around the car.

She should have been watching the trees. With her eyes on the road like that, Iris didn't detect the incoming oak until she heard its rotten trunk creakily give way. She did the only thing she could do, and dove in the other direction.

The falling tree crushed Guy's car easily, sending a spray of glass shards in all directions. Branches crashed down all around her, splintering under the tree's massive weight. Something sliced her right arm, and something else smote across her back. Acorns and leaves reigned down like painful, blinding confetti. The noise was ungodly.

Then, it wasn't. Iris lay there for a moment more, arms raised protectively over her head, not yet realizing that she hadn't been crushed, hadn't been trapped. Everything hurt, but she could still move. And that was all that mattered.

Frantically, Iris started to untangle herself from the branches. The same splintered end sliced her arm again, but she didn't care. She had to get back off the ground, so she could use her camera-

Oh God, her camera!

Iris looked down and wailed in despair. When she'd let go of the camera to cover her head, it had fallen under her as she dove. She'd squashed it flat.

On cue, a slimy hand erupted from the dirt and seized her right foot. Iris shrieked and pulled away, losing her sock, shoe, and footing in the process. She smacked her head on a branch as she stumbled, then tripped over a different one and landed painfully on a third. A thousand twigs tore holes in her clothes, her skin, and her resolve.

It was too much. It was too much. She couldn't.

She felt a withered, evil hand tug at her hair. She whimpered.

-----

//You wake up. You cannot tell yourself it has all been a bad dream, unless you have woken up in a worse one.//

//Gray stone walls rise around you, stretching off into an infinity of intersecting, impossible hallways. Structures that aren't quite pipes and aren't quite vines crisscross the claustrophobic ceiling, dripping black ooze that you recognize all too well. There are no windows, no lights, but you can still see. A dim, unhealthy light of a color you can't describe comes from everywhere and nowhere, bringing all the wrong details into sharp focus and fading the rest into nothing. The stone is hot. The air is hot. Wet. Like breath. Like rot.//

//You're walking. You aren't sure you stood up. You aren't sure you're standing now. There doesn't seem to be a down, not a proper one. But your feet are somewhere, and they're moving. It's hot.//

//A door looms to your right. Arched. Gothic. Tilted sideways at an unmeasurable angle. Tilted wrong. The vines, the pipes, the veins have grown in front of it. They're not vines. They're bars. Bars of a cell, and Alex is in it. Some of him. In the corner. A body with no legs. A wound with no blood. A face with two hands pressed to it, clawing at the eyes, at the ears. More bodies. Children. Babies. Metal. Shrapnel. Bullets. Alex sees you. He shouts something, in Russian. You don't speak Russian.//

//Another cell. Katie. No hands. No eyelids. No movement. A chair. A projector. You can't see the movie. You're glad. She's not.//

//Hole in the floor. Water in the hole. Finn in the water. Water in his lungs.//

//A window. A padded room. A straitjacket. Guy. He sees you. He screams. He's not crazy. He's not crazy. He's not crazy. He's not crazy. He's not crazy. He's not crazy. A smiling doctor with sunglasses. And an icepick.//

//Ari. Dogs. They're hungry.//

//Abe.//

//His coffin hangs from the ceiling. Four rusty chains hold it up, hold it shut. You hear him screaming. He's claustrophobic.//

//A chain breaks. The links pop like popcorn. Metal falls around you like acorns. Rust flakes like leaves. The coffin opens. He falls.//

//He stops falling. There's a meat hook through his chest. **Damn you Iris you fucking cunt you fucking slut look what you did to me this is your fault everything is your fucking fault you bitch you whore you** don't need to hear the rest of it because you hear it every day and you were glad when you saw his teeth on the ground because you wished you could have been the one with the guts to kill him. Because you wished-//

//The Old Man. In the hallway. He stands there. Grinning. He's always grinning. He grins because he's having fun. He grins because you're his favorite toy, and he's gonna play with you until you break. He points. You look. Abe's gone. The coffin's gone. It's a door. A cell. Your cell.//

//You go in, because you have to. The veins grow shut behind you. It's a dark room. A darkroom. The light is red, like your blood. There are no tables, no chemicals. Just a thousand Polaroid pictures, dangling from a thousand tiny chains. They spin slowly as you brush against them. You recognize these photographs. They're yours.//

//Your school. Your house. Your parents. Your brother. You have a brother. Your boyfriend. Not Abe. Your boyfriend. He's walking away. Away from you. It's night. He doesn't see the killer behind him. He doesn't see the knife. But he feels it. He falls. You see. You watch. You remember.//

//You **remember**.//

//You remember the trial. The verdict. The men who came to see you. The place they took you. The number they gave you. You remember everything. It's so much. You fall to your knees.//

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Agent Iris Thompson stood up. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and the blood. She //remembered//.

The Old Man appeared before her. He didn't rise out of the ground like he'd done before. This was his domain; if he wanted to be somewhere, he simply was. He looked Iris Thompson in the eye, and he chuckled. A bony hand closed around her neck. She swatted ineffectually at the deceptively spindly arm. The acid was burning her skin, but slowly. She wouldn't be any fun if she were dead.

The Old Man pulled her closer. He wanted to look into her eyes. He wanted to see the surrender. To feel the fear.

Iris stared into the Old Man's eyes. As the photographs rattled on their delicate chains, she thought of photography. Of cameras. Of eyes. They weren't all that different, really. They both had lenses. They both had Irises. They both took a moment in time and stuffed it into an image, to be looked at and cherished forever, or stowed away and forgotten.

And if eyes were cameras, what were memories if not photographs?

Iris's hand came up, and the Old Man didn't even think to avoid it. Why would he? He was invincible. In this hole-of-all-holes, he was God.

Then there was a finger in God's eye. A hand. A mind. A memory.

The Old Man roared in pain and surprise, a noise that humans should never hear, much less make. Iris stared into the eye she wasn't touching and watched as its silver glow expanded. Wider, deeper, taller, until it had covered the Old Man's face, his body, his dimension, everything...

-----

...everything on the TV screen. It whined at the edge of hearing, flickering slightly. Iris looked away.

She was in a small, dirty recliner, in a small, dirty room. The carpet was brown, maybe by design, maybe because it was just that caked with dirt and mud and grime. Black mold bloomed on the walls and ceilings. Yellow wallpaper peeled like decaying skin. A dark, tarry puddle slowly spread from under the bathroom door. The only light in the room was a small, bent lamp in the corner. It squatted on a crooked bed table covered in flies and ladybugs, drawn to their death by the dingy yellow bulb.

No, not the only light. There was a window. A small one, not quite centered on the wall. Just a bit too high. A brown, moth-eaten curtain clung for dear life to the rod above it. Iris stood up. The carpet squelched under her feet. It was wet, but parts of it were sharp and crusty, poking her bare right sole.

The curtain crumbled at her touch. Light streamed in. Sound streamed in. The sound of gunfire. Of artillery. Of killing, and dying, and wanting to die. The battlefield stretched on forever, a hellscape of barbed wire and bleeding bodies, of gore-filled craters and twisting, serpentine trenches. There were no colors.

Now Iris was in one of those trenches. Living men ran past her, and dead men lay on the ground at her feet, forgotten by their comrades but not by the rats. She stepped over them. Iris knew where she was going.

He was squatting against the side of the trench, helmet cocked sideways on his bald head. She knew it was him. She recognized the grin. And the eyes.

"Lawrence," she said, extending a hand to the smiling, shell-shocked soldier. His grin faltered. He hadn't noticed her before. What was a beautiful girl doing in a trench? Why couldn't anyone else hear her?

"Lawrence," she repeated.

"Who are you?" he asked, using the wall to support himself as he eased back to his feet.

"My name is Iris Thompson. I'm here to take you back."

"Back?"

"Back."

Like a man in dream - for that was very nearly what he was - Corporal Lawrence took Iris's hand. Then she //pulled// him. Pulled him //back//.

-----

Iris stumbled back and sucked in a painful gasp. The air scalded her bruised throat, but the relief was greater that the pain.

The young man stood there, shocked. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know //what// he was. But he remembered.

"Oh...oh...oh God..." he moaned, sinking to his knees. "Oh God." He looked in horror at his raised hands, now free of corrosive mucus but invisibly marked with so much blood.

Iris knelt in front of him. She took his trembling hands in her own, and looked into his wide, horrified eyes with her own.

"It's okay, Lawrence. You're-"

Before she could reassure him any further, the young man tore his hands out of her grip and used them to clutch his stomach. He doubled over and vomited, coughing up nothing but black, acrid bile. Iris jumped back before it could spill onto her.

The young man looked at the slime he'd regurgitated and laughed. It was a scared laugh, a crazy one. He looked up at Iris again, and there was more of the stuff oozing from his tear ducts and the cracking corners of insane grin.

"You can't stop him, honey. Believe me, I tried. He's comin' back. And he's gonna //eat// ya." Lawrence threw back his head and cackled, a noise that was almost worse than the Old Man's chuckling. He was interrupted mid-laugh by another convulsion, and he pitched forward again to loose more of the caustic slime.

"Oh...oh God..." he moaned again, contemplating the pool of ooze before him. "What..." he looked up at Iris again, and now his wild eyes were pleading. "What have I done?" Iris watched in horror as the flesh of Lawrence's face seemed to age, drawing back from his eyes and mouth into innumerable folds and wrinkles.

She knelt down again, disregarding the slime as it began to eat through her jeans.

"Listen to me, Lawrence," she said, taking his hands again. "Listen to me."

He nodded, quickly.

"You can still make this right. You have to let us go, okay? Everyone that y...that he has trapped here. You have to let us go. Before he comes back."

"But what about me?" he whispered, squeezing her hands. "What about me?"

Iris looked away. "I'm sorry, Lawrence. I...I thought I'd pulled you out, but..."

"You can save me! You can change me back! You...you...you can push him away, like he pushed me!" A drop of acid ran from his nose and onto his lip. Absentmindedly, he licked it up.

"Not if I'm still here when he gets back. He'll kill me. He'll remember."

Lawrence looked down. He seemed to consider this. Beads of black sweat formed on his brow. He shivered. Then he looked back at Iris.

"Don't forget about me."

She nodded. "I won't." Then, slowly, she released his hands. He looked down at them for a moment, unsure. Then he clenched them into fists. He screwed his eyes up tight, squeezing black tears from the edges. He bit down, and black blood oozed from his gums. Deep in his throat, it started. A groan, then a growl, then a scream. A crack shot across the floor of the darkroom. Bright, white, pure light shone through it, dissolving the chains and photographs overhead. More cracks appeared, spreading across the floor and scrawling up the walls and ceiling. Pipes burst as the black goop inside boiled away. And all the while, Lawrence's scream grew louder. A scream of pain, and of horror, but of anger most of all. The cracks consumed everything. The light consumed everything. The scream consumed everything.

Nothing.

-----

In the first minute of November 1st, dozens of humanoid SCP objects woke up screaming, with disjointed visions of violence and terror shooting through their heads. But as dreams do, these visions soon faded. Few memories were left by morning, when they were recounted to some hungover research assistants, added to the Log of Extranormal Events, and forgotten about. For a few objects, these nightmares would reoccur once or twice over the next week or so. SCP-105 would suffer them every night for a month, but eventually they would slip away from her too.

In the second minute of November 1st, SCP-106 emerged from a janitor's closet in Site-54. D-5321 ran for his life, and the object didn't pursue him. In fact, it just stood there like a man in a daze until the task force agents guided it to its new containment cell with their HID guns. Once inside, it continued to stand motionless, eyes fixed somewhere only it could see.

There was a single camera in SCP-106's containment chamber. It was equipped with a high-quality microphone, to broadcast the screams during the recall procedure. Forty-five minutes after midnight, it captured a single word, whispered in a voice that was half growl and half gurgle.

"//Iris....//"

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A Nightmare on 17th Street

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