SPOOKTOBER STORY #2.

'who are you?' shouts the priest, the possessed boy's body twisting terribly and impossibly against the restraints. 'who are you!'

'i am abaddon, i the lawless one, i am lucifer the fallen star, i am the devil, lord of hell, and all your souls belong to me!'

suddenly calm, the priest stands, takes off his collar, and hands the shit-and-blood covered little boy divorce papers. 'mr. the devil... you've been served.'

the boy stares at the divorce papers, then back at the process server, then back at the papers. 'sheila... wants a divorce?'

'that's between you and her. goodbye,' says the process server, shrugs at the weeping parents, hands them a crucifix. 'good luck.'

'oh my god,' whispers the little boy, 'oh my god.'

SPOOKTOBER STORY #1.

Dinner was most satisfactory, the squab and rarebit that are a well-known specialty of our staff. The afters, however, an Eve’s pudding which proved much too sweet for our modest palates, perhaps yet another dreary experiment by Mlle. Garniere, set uneasily, and thusly we all removed to the parlor for a smoke and a digestif to settle our stomachs.

Mr. Phip was the first to speak, as we sat around puffing our smoke into the air and enjoying glasses of something exotic which Mr. Demme had returned from his travels to the Orient, and he began a story I had enjoyed before but most present had not, and I admired the adjustments and embellishments which set it apart from the previous telling. Was this to be another of our much-discussed nights of taleweaving? I certainly hoped so, as the esteemed Mrs. Hopperly was in attendance, and her prowess at the form was second-to-none in the social circles in which we revolved, though I had yet to hear one.

Mr. Phip’s story ended with an exuberant crash of terror which startled all in attendance, and set the tone for the evening. This was to be a night of ghost stories!

As the host, I took the next spot, and told (with an expert wickedness, in my esteem) the tale of a blind old woman I had happened across during my service. I elaborated with some great pleasure on the actual event, which had began and ended practically within the same quarter-hour, and turned it instead into a month of creeping evil against my person, from which I barely made it away with my life and sanity intact.

When I finished, a climax of terror and blood that I spun from wholecloth, there were several ejaculations of fright from the ladies in attendance, and swallowed harrumphs from the men, who stared into their glasses with feigned bravery. However, Mrs. Hopperly, her hands folded, remained unmoved. I turned to her.

“Perhaps Mrs. Hopperly would be so kind as to tell the next story,” I said, slightly wounded, “As she appears unaffected by the ghastly tales put forth by Mr. Phip and myself.”

She steadied herself, gazing upon me thoughtfully, appraising my person in a way I had not felt since I was a boy in shortpants, caught red-handed with a purloined biscuit. “Misters Phip and Epherton will excuse me. It is not that I do not appreciate the expertness with which their tales are told, nor the theatrical flourish of their telling. However, once one has been face to face with real, true, unfathomable horror, the parlor games of fictional ghost stories hold less sway than they once did.”

“Tell us,” begged Mrs. Demme, who was caught up in the fever of the taleweaving, a flush still on her cheeks from the fright the previous two stories had brought her. “A true tale of horror? We must hear it!”

There were nods all around the parlor. I, too, wanted to hear this story, if only so that I could publically scrutinize it afterwards; at the time, I found the thought that she would build legitimacy for her own story by tearing down the previous two quite unsportsmanlike. “Yes, yes,” I told her, a sourness in my tone. “Tell us this very true tale of oogy-boogys.”

She looked up at us, through half-closed lids, the glint of the fire against her spectacles obscuring her eyes.

“Very well,” she intoned. “However, I must warn you. Once I begin, I will permit no interruptions. It is not a brief tale, nor one that allows for questions; it must be told as it is told, and when it is finished, it is done.”

“Fine, fine,” I growled. “Get on with it, at your leisure, for we are only young but once.”

Her voice had lowered its timbre, as she seemed to disappear within herself, returning to it.

She began: “It was the second day in the month of October, and I was taking the first of my twice-daily constitutionals through the garden, where the delphiniums had begun to bloom. It was as I was admiring these that I saw a strange scrap of paper, which seemed cut from an old manuscript, yellowed, cracked at the edges. It was wedged between two stones which made up a wall.

I turned from the delphiniums and approached it. The wind caused it to wave, slightly, as if it were inviting me to pull it out, but the thought caused me a great chill, which penetrated through my body and caused me to nearly cry out.

However, I was alone, and so I dismissed the feeling as a result of the autumn breeze. I reached out, took hold of one corner of the scrap, and pulled. It came loose in my hand. I turned it about, and saw some faint words, only visible in shadow, as the sunlight washed them to invisibility against the page. I covered it from the sun with my other hand, used the cap of my bonnet as well, and with some great effort was able to make out the words.”

“What were they!” begged Mrs. Demme, enraptured.

Mrs. Hopperly glanced up at her, shaken from her reverie, the fire reflected in her spectacles mirroring the anger in her eyes. “I said I would permit no questions, and I kindly ask you to be silent as I tell my tale. However, since I was about to tell you regardless, I will answer this one, final, question.

The scrap said…

WELCOME TO SPOOKTOBER STORIES, YEAR SEVEN.”

always keep one pocket full of garlic powder in case i ever need to blow it in a vampire's face. makes doin laundry harder but i blew it on one once and he sneezed so hard he turned inside out. all his bones fell in the dirt and he couldn't put them back in right so now when he moves he sounds like a bowling alley

The haunted house's owner trips over a stack of vintage magazines, snapping their wrist, radius, ulna, and neck when they hit the bottom of the stairwell. They try to scream out for help, but their trachea was crushed by the corner of the washing machine as part of their tumble, so all they can do is wheeze and choke helplessly. Tears well in their eyes, but they die before the tears can fall.

The haunted house is listening to "Graduation (Friends Forever)" by Vitamin C on repeat and doesn't even notice its owner's demise for like a couple weeks, at which it thinks, "gross," and continues listening to "Graduation (Friends Forever)" by Vitamin C on repeat, because, let's be honest, it's a bop.

if you morph a photo with itself on FaceApp many times it creates the platonic ideal of the face in the photo. do not do this

i am halfway through cooking my own surgically removed thigh when i accidentally knock the entire container of salt into the pot, completely ruining it. i sigh, look down at what's left of me, start sizing up my other leg

Since your dad wasn't in the picture any more, your uncle Phil (your mom's little brother) taught you about baseball and cars and how to shave. He gave your mom money when her double-shifts at JC Pennys couldn't pay for rent and utilities that month. When you broke your arm diving away from a runaway Mazda in 2002 he brought over the Godfather box set and watched all three movies with you and quoted all the lines along with them and had a very fine time.

Your family doesn't really talk to Phil any more, since last Christmas when he said all those horrible things to Auntie Jeanne, but you go over to his house anyway, since it's Thanksgiving. You bring him a big plate of food, secreted away from the small group you have celebrated with.

You're wearing a mask, but you know what he's said on social media about them so you take it off before entering his house. He hasn't left the house since June and so it's very unlikely he'd have Covid.

***

Things started off reasonably enough, good-to-see-yous and how-ya-doins. He seemed in good humor, very happy to see you. He even looked like he used to. Maybe a little thinner.

You avoided most of the potholes. Even when he obliquely brought up the election, spitting the words and "Scorecard" and "Hammer" with a resentment usually reserved for war criminals, you were able to change the subject with a lively description of what Grandpa Ron considered good food (Phil always loved cooking for your family, back when he was still allowed, and he and Grandpa Ron always used to get into lively rows about it) and you had a pleasant enough discussion about stuffing, potato gratin, canned vs. fresh cranberry sauce.

It all fell apart when you asked when he was going to respond to your move in Words With Friends. It had been a few months since you'd played, you thought it was a harmless enough joke. Stupid. Stupid.

It spilled out of him: Facebook and Twitter, Zuckerberg and Dorsey, you know, have been censoring free speech, so he left both. He'd migrated to Parler, where there's a free exchange of ideas, he explained, all sorts of ideas. He'd been educating himself, and learning a lot.

He told you how, despite what they might believe, the mainstream media can't call an election. He told you, gleefully, how Trump is intentionally setting up election court cases that he will lose or get tossed out by corrupt luciferian judges in order to stop the certification, so that Sidney Powell has time to "release the Kraken," a phrase that he mentioned several times but never explained. You gather through context clues that the "Kraken" is some sort of court evidence. "Enjoy the show," Phil advised you, winking. "Oh," you said, not sure how he wanted you to respond. "Okay, thank you."

He told you about the Biden Crime Family, which is a narrative so complicated you are unable to follow any of the many interlocking and convoluted threads. Hunter Biden is a crackhead, and a sex predator a... war criminal? A mob boss or something? There's a laptop? There's a photo of Hunter's penis that Phil is especially incensed about, despite it sounding more like Hunter was wronged by having nude photos stolen and posted publicly for political reasons. Something about China, or Russia, maybe? What was clear was that Phil thinks almost everybody is a pedophile. You chewed slowly on a dry piece of turkey breast so that you had a reason not to engage him on this subject.

You told him how nice the Thanksgiving decorations he has up are, even though there's not many of them, but it's clear he'd put in an effort.

He told you how there's a clause in the constitution that explains if a presidency is interfered with the president is allowed to run for a third term, and that Trump had been playing 5-dimensional chess and allowing the news of his "loss" to spread so that he can gain constitutional ground to invoke this rule. You asked him what clause, specifically, this refers to, but he was already ignoring you and moving on.

He told you that Dominion servers were raided by the US Army, winking once more and saying "military grade," which doesn't mean anything to you. He told you about how Tucker Carlson is on the Comet Ping Pong VIP list and the Globalists are secretly funding wars overseas in order to create refugees that flee to western countries and destabilize Western Values, so they can create the New World Order. He tried to show you this on his phone but the video wouldn't load right.

Once he started showing you his gun collection, his crates full of soft-point ammo, explaining how in the upcoming war he could defend his home by blossoming them inside the skulls of any BLM or Antifa rioters that set a toe over his property line, wherein he brought up both V For Vendetta and the Matrix and a shitty 90s movie called White Squall, you made an excuse, another plate you had to deliver to someone, and left.

He will text you a few days later, asking if he can send you some videos, but you will ignore the texts.

The man you know, you loved, is gone, his thoughts blisteringly dark and scared, his mind soft and spongy and rotten, and in two years he will ingest a bleach-based disavowed cancer treatment, he will die alone, vomiting blood and bile, and no one will find his body for four months.

Due to your own hubris and incompetence, the Brickster has escaped, and he's going to take Lego Island apart... brick by brick!

Mama and Papa Brickolini can't bear look at you, weeping, standing over the remains of the Pizzeria. You watch impotently as the Brickster disassembles the police station with his Power Brick laser cannon. Officer Nick Brick, or what you think used to be Officer Nick Brick, staggers out, what remains assembled of his body collapsing, scattering into total disassemblage. You hear screaming from the Information Center. The Brickster howls with laughter.

"This is all your fault, Pepper Roni," he screams from his stolen police helicopter. "You did this! You did this!" You know he's right, so when he finally aims the Power Brick laser cannon at you, you don't even try to run.

Behind every great man is a great woman
and her name is Xshs'di The Devourer

"Mommy," Tim says, tapping on her bed. "Mommy, wake up, there's somebody in the bathroom."

Despite knowing full well her son is just imagining things, (Tim is a deeply imaginative boy... which sometimes gets him into trouble at school) something in the sound of his voice causes a slight tremor of fear to shoot through Lise anyway.

Still, she gets up, too tired to argue, picks up Tim and plops him into her bed. "Okay, baby, I'll go take a look."

Her sock-covered feet plod off to the bathroom, leaving Tim alone in the dark. He shivers against her duvet, and waits.

She's been gone too long. "Mommy?"

A second Lise looks out at him from the closet, her finger over her lips, smiling.

"What?" he says. "Hey, I'm five years old, this is fricked up, what, I've got two identical moms now? Shit lady, I'm still dealing with object permanence, don't give me this horse-hockey, you hear? Sometimes I still get freakin' peek-a-boo PTSD, what's all this shit!?"

"What's that, Tim?" shouts the first Lise from the bathroom.

"There's another freakin mom in here! She's actin real weird, too, all smilin like she wants to eat my soul and stuff." The second mother is shaking her hands in front of her neck, like, no, cut it out, Tim.

"That's weird!" shouts his first mother. "Is she saying anything? Hold on, I'm coming right back."

"No, she's being silent, like she can't even speak because she's just a demonic doppleganger or something!"

"Aw frick," grumbles Lise. "Okay, hold on, I'll be right there."

The demon mother looks really awkward and bares several rows of needle-sharp teeth, to try to scare Tim, but he just waves her away and rolls his eyes. "She's got fricked up teeth, too!"

The real Lise enters the bedroom, glares at the fake one in the closet. "Go to a freakin dentist, lady," she says.

"Ha ha!" laughs Tim. "Love you mom."

"Love you too, Tim. Now look here, demon, take a hike!"

"Yeah, take a hike!" shouts five year old Tim, delighted.

The doppleganger looks pretty depressed and leaves through a window.

You are on your way to buy milk from the corner store but you, already a double-agent, have to take a call where you are blindly assigned by the division to investigate the organization you are pretending to be a member of. Naturally, your alter-ego is the highest priority target, as you have worked your way up through the organization until you are just below the unseen leader (who is he?)... although... you are beginning to suspect that maybe, that the organization has structured itself that there is only a figurehead at the fore, and the true leader is that who is just below him... you, or whoever you are pretending to be. To investigate this suspicion, you secretly coordinate with a reserve team of other agents within the division; some of who you suspect are shed identities of your own, although you do not recognize the names (but it would make sense that the names in an organization such as this would shift over time, maintained for appearances, in case the organization attempted to infiltrate the division). You attempt to go rogue and investigate the reserve team yourself, but the potential shed identities are shielded by the code which you, yourself, years ago, decades maybe, had established, and your resources are already spread so thin, by you, or them, or someone else, maybe. You are exhausted. You are too tired to even remember which of your identities is lactose intolerant, and you leave, to buy milk from the corner store, then you watch yourself watching yourself buy it, the threads in your head sliding against each other and breaking wetly as you peer through a hole in the wall at a man watching a man watching a man buying milk and taking furious notes, and you start to drool and vomit because you, yourself, are lactose intolerant, and the man watching you takes notes on this, filing them in a cabinet stuffed and overflowing and unwatched and filled with all your observations, or their observations, or

The bedsheets come out of the washer all clotted with blood, which she's pretty sure isn't part of a regular spin cycle. "Hey," she complains, finding little fragments of ceramic or bone or something stabbing through the sheets. "Hey!"

It feels dangerously hot in the laundromat, which is annoying and she can't wipe the sweat off her face any more because her arms are all covered in the blood from the sheets. The attendant crawls across the ceiling towards her but she waves it away, not wanting help or eternal pain or whatever.

This place is DEFINITELY getting a wack Yelp review.

Dr. Frankendog's assistant is addressing the angry mob outside of the dogtor's ghoulish laboratory.

"Technically," he says. "There's no rule saying a dog can't play God."

There is a spot in your home, no matter how well you know it, no matter how long you've lived there, that will always be liminal. It's a little less than a square foot of space that you have never paused: maybe in a hall, maybe a doorway, maybe halfway through a room, maybe on the stairs. Whenever you are in this space it is only to pass through, unthinking.

It's not the place next to the bathroom you once made out with the cute guy at the Christmas party, it's not the place on the stairs you once, while very drunk, ate an entire pot of macaroni and cheese with a wooden mixing spoon. It's not where you hung the poster of The Boss. You have no memories built on this spot, and you never will.

The things that live there wouldn't allow it.

The first few times the movement behind the curtains turned out to just be a cat, their upset 'mows' startling you as they leapt out and scurried away, it was a relief. But there are now dozens of cats in the room, milling around beneath your feet, purring and rubbing their faces on you, their bodies hanging off of every surface... and still, the curtain still crawls with movement, writhing, alive... how many more could there *be*?

America The Idiot Death Cult can't find his shoes. "Where are my shoes!" announces America The Idiot Death Cult to the empty room. "Hello, shoes!" he continues.

America The Idiot Death Cult can't find his shoes anywhere. "I sure wish I could find my shoes," he says out loud. This doesn't reveal his shoes, which doesn't seem fair. "This is deeply unfair," growls America The Idiot Death Cult.

America The Idiot Death Cult feels pretty bad about himself. Nothing seems to be going right for him. Things feel pretty sick and wrong lately. He keeps waking up covered in sweat and chewing on his own hand so hard it draws blood. America The Idiot Death Cult knows that he used to be a good person with hopes and dreams and stuff, because that's what people keep telling him. But America The Idiot Death Cult doesn't know any more.

America The Idiot Death Cult remembers a phrase called "Manifest Destiny". He wonders if that's where his shoes are. He doesn't know what a Manifest Destiny is but he remembers it felt really good and that he would go there and come home covered in bruises and with pockets full of other peoples hair and teeth. "Manifest Destiny!" he shouts. His shoes don't appear.

America The Idiot Death Cult takes the gun out of his backpack and aims it at a picture of a woman that he hates (not because she's a woman, he reassures himself, but knows that's a lie). "Pow! Show me the shoes!" he shouts. He doesn't fire, because that's against the terms of his rental agreement.

America The Idiot Death Cult puts the gun in his mouth and tongues it. It tastes like metal. "Yum," he says, but the word is muffled by the muzzle of the gun.

"Where the hell are my shoes," grumbles America The Idiot Death Cult through a mouthful of gun. He pulls the trigger, like he's done so many times before, but this time is worse, somehow.

Sister Lisa tumbles into the lodge at the center of town, gripping her arm. The Brothers and Sisters look up from their enchiridions, frown when they see her knitted wool sweater is drenched in blood.

Brother Ingress steps away from the lodge's rostrum, decorated in rodent teeth and fresh entrails of fowl, to speak to her quietly. The Body pretends they aren't listening, but their ears strain to hear the whispered words.

"Is it done," asks the Brother.

"I tried to do as you asked, Brother Ingress. I went to Dr. Hiller's- I mean, the Profane's- house, and attempted to frighten him away from town by slaughtering his dog and nailing it to the door, as the 95 theses were hung by the Deceiver."

"You tried?"

"The hound is vicious, Brother."

"It is a schnoodle, Sister Lisa."

"Yes, Brother Ingress, a schnoodle with the heart of the Devil."

"Sister Lisa..." starts the Brother, then pauses. "Where is Brother Amon?"

She shakes her head. "Fluffs was vicious, Brother Ingress."

"He had a shotgun!"

"The Devil-hound disarmed him, Brother. And then devoured him. It would have devoured me too, had I not had a pocketful of Snausages to distract it. Evil resides in the Profane's house tonight."

"My God..."

You sigh in relief. The storyteller has ceased his prattling, ending the endless spill of words with a simple joke. He leans back in his armchair, disappearing into darkness, and you can only see the puffs of smoke from his pipe, drifting across the library crypt, illuminated by the fading fire in the hearth.

"Good stories," you tell him. "Ok, well, I've got to go."

"How do you feel," he asks. "Have the stories brought you comfort? They are, after all, only stories. Do their conclusion bring you a sense of relief?"

"Um. They were very scary, thank you, but it's November now, and I really should be getting back. This was very, uhh... illuminating."

The storyteller says nothing, smoking his pipe in the darkness, the tome on his lap. "Do you feel," he says, at last, "That the horror has alleviated? Do you feel now a warm autumnal glow, a sense of family and friends surrounding you, the smell of basted turkey and... cranberry sauce?"

"I don't... no, obviously. I'm still here."

"You're still here... intriguing," says the storyteller, and you can hear a wicked smile in the form of his words. A chill hand of recognition clutches your spine, and you shout:

"You said you'd let me out. You said it was just Spooktober, and then I could leave!"

"I said no such thing."

"Let me out!"

"Go fetch a log from the corner, traveler, the fire grows cold. I do not wish you to catch a chill. I have so many wicked and wonderful things to tell you..."

You shout, and howl, shuddering, weeping, gnashing your teeth, but you find yourself unable to disobey the sickly, even tempered voice of the storyteller, your feet dragging your unwilling body to collect wood for the fire.

Welcome, traveler, to SPOOKVEMBER STORIES.

q. why does a ghost wear a bra
a. boo-bs

ok that's it's folks, wrap it up, that's spooktober stories 2020