“Poorly,” Madison mumbles, hissing in frustration when her character dies and she’s put back at the respawn screen. Brynn, holding her laptop so they can play together, manages not to fall to the same fate, though I have no idea how she can play so wellwith a mouse that’s balanced precariously on a small lap desk. “So poorly. Sorry, Brynn, but she has a point.” She frowns at her girlfriend, who ignores the two of us.
After a few more minutes, I slither to my bare feet, stretching up to the balls of my feet once I’m out of the way of the television for Madison. “I’m going to head to bed,” I tell them, ignoring Madison’s glance of concern. “This will shock you both, but I’m actually exhausted. There’s probably a science to explain it, but I didn’t go to school for that like one of you did.”
Brynn also looks my way at the comment, her smile quick and teasing. “Just don’t do anything weird in the guest room,” she requests. At my quizzical look, I can see her roll her eyes before she adds, “Mads’ mom and dad are coming to visit next weekend.”
“What could I possibly do in there that would require aweekto clean?” I demand.
Both of them look at me, and I raise my hands in surrender. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I don’t want to know what you guys think I do in my spare time. I’ll try not to get ectoplasm or pea soup vomit all over the bed.” When neither of them responds or laughs, I roll my eyes hard enough it’s a wonder they don’t stay like that. “Classic horror movie references are lost on you both. I deserve better.”
“Clearly,” Madison agrees. “You deserve a guy in a mask who follows you from haunt to haunt, trying to scare the hell out of you with a knife?” When she looks up at me, her smile is sweet and teasing. “Too soon?” she asks when I dramatically press a hand to my chest like she’s wounded me.
“Significantly,” I tell her, almost bent double in my act. “I’m going to bed now, before either of you can drive the stake through my heart any deeper. That’s a?—”
“We’re not horror fans, but we’re not stupid,Dracula,”Brynn interrupts. She flicks her fingers at me. “Go on then,drama queen. Go sleep on our nice Egyptian cotton sheets instead of your messy bed full of pillows and Laffy Taffy wrappers.”
I don’t answer her jibe this time. I turn and head into the guest room, closing the door behind me once I’m inside. While I’d never tell them this, I don’t love sleeping over. Their guest room is too clean. Too…nice.I’d rather sleep on the couch—though that would horrify the two of them—so I could feel like this is a sleepover, not a business trip.
The sheets evensmelltoo clean. When I bury my face in the pillows, the scent of expensive laundry detergent slaps me in the face, prompting me to sigh into them. There’s nothing homey about the room, from the sage green sheets to the turned down comforter that feels as stiff as a hotel’s. But they’re my best friends, and I would never tell them that. Though I know I won’t sleep as well tonight as I would’ve at home.
And Idefinitelywon’t be relieving the ache between my thighs that’s persisted through the night ever since the masked stranger licked a line up my throat for the first time.
“I'm going homeafter this, Mother Madison.” My words are clumsy in my mouth, and I barely manage to mumble them as I shove another wad of Belgian waffle between my lips. Madison takes a much smaller bite of her waffles, which, unlike mine, arenotdrenched in two kinds of chocolate. Instead, strawberries decorate her plate, and her waffles are adorned with a few pats of butter and classic maple syrup.
Boring.
She snorts when I slump back on the bench, groaning and pressing my face to my hands. “Still got a headache?” As usual, she can read me easily, though right now I’m not being very subtle.
“I think I live with it now,” I reply. My fingers find the stiff knots in the back of my neck, and I wince at the pain of the pent-up tension there. “God, I hate being an adult. I’m basically a senior citizen at this point.”
“Have you considered that your posture sucks, you spend too much time in front of a computer, and you do literally no stretching?”
I don’t deign to answer her, since I know the question is rhetorical. While all of that might be true, I don’t intend to admit any of it. Instead, I stuff another bite of waffle into my mouth, nearly having to unhinge my jaw to chew it enough to swallow thickly. I chase it with a mouthful of skim milk, the only kind I can drink, and lick chocolate off my thumb before touching the screen of my phone again.
“Putting this off won’t make it any better,” I point out, feeling Madison’s disapproval. I know there has to be something from my masked stalker, but I’ve been dreading seeing how he’s taunted me online. With my luck, he posted the picture he took last night to show everyone on my blog that he can scare me and I’m not as confident as I claim. I can only imagine how embarrassing the photo is, with the flash probably illuminating a stupid expression and my worst features.
While I managed to post a write-up early this morning about Park Scream,I completely left out my stalker. I talked about the scare actors, the vibes, the setting, and the overall production value as I always do. I’d raved about the pizza, citing that they now have my favorite kind, and touched on the immersive atmosphere of the open-air carnival side of the haunt.
I didn’t talk about the warnings.
Or how more than one of the scare actors wereinon what my stalker had planned. Part of it comes, I hope, from self-preservation. I don’t want any of them getting pissed off andhunting me down for smearing their names online. But the other part of it is…
Well, I don’t know why I keep it to myself, bottled up like a treasure or a prize.
He isn’tthat,I tell myself absently, scrolling to my notifications.
A stalker isn’t something to be proud of.Especially at Halloween.
For a few seconds, my mind conjures up the image of him at my door, holding an old-school orange pumpkin basket made of cheap plastic. I can see his mask in my mind, and my brain creates the sound of him rattling the candy, murmuring ‘trick-or-treat,’in that low, rough voice of his.
God, I have problems.
The first few comments are what I expect, though there are a couple I have to re-read more than once.
You’re really just doing the same thing you always do, huh? You should’ve been nicer on Squad Ghouls. At least their content is entertaining.
You’re not pretty enough to be a bitch on a livestream.
My mood plummets, and it takes too long for me to move past those two comments that are now going to live in my head for the rest of my life. Madison snags my phone when she sees my face, and her eyes narrow when she reads them as well.
