Halloween

"Hey babe."

I grunt acknowledgement.

"Halloween is coming up."

I grunted again, refusing to indulge whatever nonsense this is.

He lays a hand upon my back. "I dunno, I guess I just, I was thinking we could go somewhere. Do something."

"Can't."

A sigh. "Why not?"

I turn to face him and gesture. "Look at me."

A hand under my chin pulls my rotting face up a little. His lips meet mine, warm, so warm, so incredibly warm. For a moment, I feel the hunger pangs, that familiar yearning almost taking over. He senses it, maybe, but politely ignores it. "You're beautiful, love."

I twist away, feeling the weight of my decaying muscles. "Can't", I repeat.

He laughs, musical, pretty, way too pretty for me. "Oh, come on. Fey's holding a party, you remember Fey, right? You liked Fey. You said she was pretty."

"I said I wanted to hurt her."

"Right". He pauses. "Same thing, no?"

"Mmm."

"We can get you something pretty to wear. I'll take care of it. Just tell me what you want."

"Go without me."

"Aw babe, you've been cooped up down here so long. It'd be good for you. I promise."

He moves closer, the warmth of life echoing off his body, pretty and cute. He's large, muscular, handsome. I wonder how long it took to carve a body that looks like this from the ether of all possible bodies. His arms wrap around me. We huddle together in my pile of old blankets. "I'm scared", I finally whisper.

"I know", he says. "I know".

He smells so good. He smells like blood and life and oh fuck, I can't take it anymore. He kisses my forehead encouragingly, and I grab his arm and my teeth break flesh, blood spraying out, muscles shredding under the force, his bones cracking, delicious marrow flooding my tastebuds. I sigh happily and he caresses my back as I tear him to shreds.

I drip a trail of blood up the stairs. He's right. It's been years. My body barely works anymore. I trail rot wherever I go. There's a dressing gown hanging on the back of the door to my basement. I don't recognize it. In fact, I don't recognize much. The walls, an unfamiliar colour, are covered in unfamiliar pictures. Has it been that long? Did he tell me he was redecorating? I cannot recall.

I don the gown to hide the mutilation of my nudity and creep towards the front door. It's heavy, wooden, iron fixings. I crack it slightly and watch the neighbourhood go by, beautiful bright and sunny. Our house is the odd one out, of course, tall and twisted. Every other house is identical, a perfect slice of suburbia. Manicured fake green lawns cradle the kids tossing balls and dancing in sprinklers and laughing. I glance at my garden, once my pride and joy, now a mess of dead matter and ugly weeds. The kids give us a wide berth. Do they know? I wonder what they think of us? I catch the eye of a scrawny dark haired waif across the street. Her little face scrunches up at the sight of me and she might have screamed had a passing truck not broken our eye contact. I shut the door.

The house feels empty without him. I miss him already. I suppose I always do. Do I? I certainly never come up looking for him. Perhaps I should more. It might be nice. I pass through our library, two stories of shelf lined walls and two cozy chairs by the fire. I had good memories here. We used to spend days doing nothing more than reading and drinking and laughing. He would get up and do a little dance and I would clap and smile. Finally, he would bring someone in, some little thing he'd seduced. He would smile at it, trace a hand down its spine, and parade it around before leading it to the bedroom. Showing off, I suppose. It was entertaining.

I ran a hand along the dusty mantle. Small artifacts adorn it. Each one a trophy of sorts. His chair is well worn, indented with the rough outline of a person. I sit in it for a moment. It's old, too old. He should get a new one. I should get him a new one. Mine is in its usual place. Of course he wouldn't replace it. It's covered in dust. No one had used it. He's such a hopeless romantic. It seems like he hasn't been here since I last was. I wonder why the hell he hasn't had anyone else up here.

I tour the rooms slowly, taking the time to remember all the things that used to make up a life before I turned my back on the surface. The kitchen is as I remember it, the right level of slightly too small so that we would continually bump into each other as we cooked. The pool room, oh how he loved that game. He spent hours lining up shots, the clatter of balls signalling his good mood. I would watch sometimes, leaning imperiously against a pillar and teasing him when he missed. It was always good to see him happy. His bedroom was the same as always. Sure, new trophies adorned the walls. Awards for music, sport, other competition. The markers of lives taken, stolen jewlery and watches. Photos of me. Of course he has photos of me. One by one, I turn them over.

There's a painting in the hall of a goddess and a god. The goddess is gorgeous, unnaturally perfect. She radiates beauty, curves, and life. And the god, oh, he is marvellous. Perfectly sculpted. I want to taste him. If I could still salivate, I would at the thought. I try to memorize the image, the curves of muscle and flesh, the love in their eyes. For a moment I remember what it was like to be feel like that. To feel alive.

The top of the tower opens onto the balcony. Up here, the ground seems so distant. Indeed, it is almost as thought I am in another world, one blanketed by dark clouds and lashed with heavy rain. I let the gown drop and face upwards, the rain tearing the blood and gristle from my lips. I am cold. This is not new. I am always cold. Was this worth it?

The rain clatters down, great thundering booms where it strikes the roof. I hear it. I see it. I feel myself decaying. If I go down again, I'll never come up. This I know. I'm losing myself. The rain keeps coming down. I wonder if the neighbourhood kids had gone inside or were enjoying it, dancing through it. Maybe I want to do that. Things seem easier for kids.

There's a mirror on the balcony, an old full length mirror, framed with delicately carved silver. My reflection shimmers, distorted by the rain patterning the sirface. I touch it and look at myself properly. I an abomination. I bite one finger experimentally, watching my skin compress through the hole in my cheek. I study the patchwork of scars, where different textures of skin meet. Maybe I was once sweet. Perhaps if I had the best of everyone who was in me, then I was the ideal human. But what if I had the worst?

The image shifts and warps and then it's a vague projection, a ghostly humanoid figure. He laughs musically and I smile. May the underworld take me, I missed him so much. His form shifts as he starts to talk, dancing through faces familiar and distant. "Enjoy yourself?"

I sigh and place one finger on the silver. "Yeah. Thank you."

"Of course, love."

I feel his spirit pluck at my own, a question asked via spiritual contact. I press my palm against the mirror in answer and he flows into me, both of us sharing this body. She picks a woman's voice and whispers in my mind clear as anything, "oh babe, I'm so sorry."

"What for?"

"Leaving you down there for so long."

"It's not so bad. I'm used to it."

He takes my hands and guides them along my curves, the missing chunks of body exposing bones and failing organs. "Love. You're a mess."

I don't know what to say. He knows that. For a moment, we are one. We are one.

"It's gonna be okay."

I whisper back, "I'm scared."

"I know."

"I don't know how to get better."

"I know."

"You should leave me."

"Come to Halloween. You need to get out, eat someone fresh."

I sink tighter into my hood, watching the rain through the filthy glass of the bus stop. The coat is massive. It's my favourite. I almost look normal when I wear it, shrinking into the shadows of its vague shape. The glass feels warm against my back, the wetness of the coat pressing into my icy skin. She's sitting next to me, prim and proper with her casual jogging outfit. I don't know where she finds them, her perfect victims. Rich and well cared for, obviously. I wonder if anyone misses her.

There's some other people waiting for the bus and they give us a wide berth. I wonder if they know. Maybe they struggle to wrap their minds around us. Maybe they see us as some other form of undesirable, merely queer or homeless or both. Perhaps. I see the bus turn laboriously onto this street, the blinking glare of its blue lights standing out on the otherwise empty road. It slowly approaches, too slowly. Time aches by painfully.

She hands me a card and I take it in one shaking hand. She shows me how to board, where to step, where to tap the card, where to sit. I pass the card back. I would just lose it. The world is too big. I watch it through the window. Thousands of buildings filled with thousands of people all going by. Do they see me? Am I a passing spectre in a bus window? A zombie drifting through the world? Do they fear me? Do they know that I've come to take someone?

We find a bench under a tree and settle in to watch people. It's dreary today. Despite the rain, the teeming masses swell and discharge, the flow of people from building to building never ceasing. Adorned by raincoats and umbrellas to protect expensive suits, they conduct business of all kinds. I huddle close to my lover, enjoying the scent of her. She points at someone occasionally, seeking my approval.

The rain clears to a dull cloudy sky by evening, fading to an ominous black. I'm sitting in an alley. She leans against the wall. The remains of dinner are scattered around us. The scent of decay stretches over us. People walk the streets, dressed in a thousand colours and fineries. I see them go by.

And then I see her. Small, dressed in a shimmering red dress, round, almost glowing with life. She's laughing at something her friend said. She looks beautiful. She looks delicious. She's perfection incarnate. I point at her. "Her".

"Okay."

And then she's gone, to do her thing.

I lay the corpse out on the table. White sheet, overhead light, rack of knives. A comfortable grip and weight in my palm. She is perfection, of course. But I have others, spare parts for the less visible components and my work must start with these. It does. I only have scant few days before my debut event, my opening night.

My lover comes to visit me as I work, always resplendent in new bodies and outfits. She or he or they or something more esoteric is always gorgeous and perfect. They hold me as I work, hand me tools, whisper things in my ear. They tell me that I am loved, that I am gorgeous. They trail fingers down the body I craft, stroking it, encouraging perfect. As much as I love them, I don't notice this. I am focused. I am making art.

Flesh holds a tight pattern, a reflection of a shape it remembers once having held. Human bodies are meat made smart, meat told what shape to be. I can tell it to be a different shape. I do this violently, with force and a sharp blade. The hard part is coaxing it to return to its previous shape, joining with the other myriad parts that now make me up. I strip myself down to the bone and begin the transformation.

A limb is easy. Bone, muscles, blood, veins, meat. The hard part is doing each arm without the use of the other. My partner is helpful for this, holding things down, scooping in the new. I tell her I love her. He tells me that they love me.

Organs are harder. At least, they might be if I still needed mine. Primarily, they are decorative at this point. They merely provide the benefit of reduced degradation, of slowing the inevitable rot. I feel more confident now. There are always more bodies to take.

I work from the inside out, first organs and musculature, and then blood, and finally the skin of that perfect being, becoming her in every way. I claim her softness, her curves, the sallow pallor of her tender cheeks. I tell her that I love her. That she is beautiful. That she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She knows this, of course. She knows because I killed her for it, I dissected her piece by piece to understand how she fit together so I can turn her into a jigsaw and rebuild her at will.

The stitches close back up and I am whole. I am beautiful. I am the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I am whole and I am me. I love myself.

I stand on the balcony in the rain, naked. My flesh is sealed. No holes. I am pale, inanimate, but more alive than ever, bouncing with the exhilaration of feeling. I am alive. I am free. I watch myself in the mirror. I am curvy again, breasts heaving as I run hands down myself experimentally, the raindrops on the mirror distorting my image, hiding the lines of string that bind me. I'm beautiful.

He kisses me. He touches me. I touch him back. I haven't had sex in a very long time, but I take him tonight, let him use this perfect form we stole. We both enjoy the dull smack of borrowed flesh, the hammer of our puppets colliding. They dance for our amusement and we laugh as they grind each other. It's funny to watch them go, to think that this is what the living spend their time doing. We are a grim parody of life.

I devour him when he finishes. God, I love him so much. God, he tastes so good, his blood dripping from my snarling lips.

He was right. I did need to walk the streets again, to feel the kiss of the night air on my skin. To smile at strangers. I'm pretty now, and that's almost enough to overcome the instinctual discomfort, long enough for people to tentatively smile back before moving on. I bare my teeth. I imagine sinking them into someone. I imagine the blood dripping down my front, the cries going up, the smile on her face as she watches. I missed this.

The party begins at 8 pm on the 31st of October. It is a perfect night. The sky is cloudless and the moon looms ominously. I cannot see the stars through the haze of light pollution, but I can feel them shining down upon me. They are right. They have my back.

My dress is spiderwebbed with dark thread, carving patterns upon my skin, hiding my lines. It is a luxurious thing, dripping with shadows and menace. A veil mires my face, and I adorn myself with heels and gloves. I am perfect in my role as the evil queen, the monstrous bride.

I play the perfect guest. I play the perfect lover. I listen the the ebb and flow of conversation and drink a gorgeous red drink and stare at tasty flesh and imagine sinking my teeth into it. It would be so good. I want it. I want it so bad. I want to feel the life draining, strength leaving muscles, whimpers dying to sobs fading to nothing.

I'm hungry, sure, but happy. I feel good. I feel alive. I listen to stories from strangers, some fascinating and some boring. When boring people leave, we laugh at them. When they come back, we laugh harder. Someone pours me another drink. There's music thumping somewhere, a deep bass I can feel in my chest.

Fey, the ever present host, separates me from the party. She asks how I'm doing. She smiles. I smile back. I can see my partner behind her, something sharp glinting in his hand. She doesn't know he's there. I bare my fangs very slightly and whisper, "You have the prettiest eyes."

"Oh, you flatter me", she laughs me off.

"Oh no. I think you're going to be flattering on me."

Her meat is among the best I've ever tasted. Tonight is a good night.