…you know

A modern Halloween story. I started writing this in late 2021, got about 1/3 of the way through and then sat on it for a long time before figuring out where I wanted it to go. Once I cracked it, I finished it in about 3 weeks over June-July 2022.

There are many reasons why I wanted to write this. I would like to let it speak for itself as much as possible, but I will say this: although it deals with some very serious topics that I do not have direct personal experience of, it is an extremely personal story to me, and would not exist if not for some of the people I love the most, and some of the experiences they do have, every day, and have had, particularly over these often unbearable last two years. I hope that its authenticity comes across.

On an unrelated note, I must stress that any resemblance to any real persons living or dead is sheer coincidence. ~ GDH

PS: Listen to the official playlist while reading to get the full experience!

Morning. 5 minutes to 11. Sunday, October 31st, 2021.            

Clouds. Wind. Sleet. Cold – too cold for October. 

It is a typical start. Alex is the first to wake up, but he spends so long lounging in bed, scrolling through his phone, and chewing over the prospect of getting up and out in order to take the four or five steps to the shower that by the time he has finally swung his skinny legs over the frame and set down his toes to sink briefly into the grizzled carpet, he is suddenly stopped by the shotgun-cock of the bathroom door slamming and locking, followed immediately by the raucous hiss of running water and, right on cue, the usual warbling vocal accompaniments from the housemate with whom he shares this floor, the first floor. He must then acknowledge with deep irritation that, once again, Wadud has beaten him to it, and will therefore most certainly be spending the next twenty minutes ensuring, firstly, that nobody in the rest of the house – the rest of the street, for that matter – will be able to sleep undisturbed for a minute longer, and secondly, that there will be no hot water left for whichever of his three housemates succeeds him. 

Collapsing internally, Alex rolls back into bed and attempts to shrink to as small a size as possible beneath the warm duvet, his grumbling stomach squirming with indignation, as well as indigestion from the previous night’s binge. He curses his present position and wishes, anxiously prays for all the world that it didn’t have to be today. 

Upstairs, Yariel and Zara lie cosy, spooning and fondling one another in gentle half-slumber. Sure enough, when the tuneless din from the bathroom below reaches their room, each is stirred to wakefulness. Yariel’s eyes snap open first. Instantly, they leap out of bed and erupt into dance, twisting and shaking their naked behind in Zara’s face, who gives a sleepy, begrudging grin. 

“Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!” Yariel hoots. Zara reaches over and smacks their meagre buttock, producing a very satisfying clap, before sitting up and rubbing her eyes. 

“What time is it?” she asks. 

“Time? Time?!” says Yariel. They fold their arms in mock anger. “It’s time for you to get a fucking watch! In this case, however, you will just have to settle for a fucking!” 

Zara giggles with delight as Yariel jumps back onto the bed, tosses the blanket aside, and commences their usual morning fusillade of kisses, cuddles, and gropes. 

In the shower, Wadud turns up the heat on the water to maximum. It was already uncomfortably hot, but to him there is a masochistic thrill in the increasing intensity of the sensation, and the dim possibility of damage, of injury, of red blisters and plastic-looking scars on brown skin. He does not realise, or perhaps does not allow himself to realise, that a large part of his motivation for this long-held habit is that it creates enough steam to completely fog up the surface of the great mirror which looms before the glass shower cubicle, thereby preventing him from being forced to acknowledge the image of that wobbling, nude body. Wadud continues to sing, as loud and proud as he can muster, that the whole world might hear his cries. 

Once everyone has showered (one at a time, as per the requirements of the finicky boiler) it has been over ninety minutes since Alex first woke up. Thus the tone is set for the day. 

Sunday, October 31st, 2021. 23 minutes to 1. Afternoon.                

The housemates are gathered in the atrium: dining room, ground floor. As the two most seasoned smokers, Wadud and Zara sit at the table rolling joints while Pixies’ Gouge Away roars out from the large speakers placed either side of the room’s cast-iron fireplace. In the corner by the tall garden doors (currently firmly shut with even the curtains drawn, not only to conserve as much heat as possible, but to block out the sight of the brutalistic weather) Yariel stands perched on one leg. Their eyes are closed as they perform a series of graceful, Tai Chi-esque movements which, in a considerable feat, seem nonetheless in sync with the furious punk soundtrack. A few feet away in the kitchen, Alex is unloading the dishwasher. 

“‘SOME MARIJUANA, IF YOU GOT SOME!’” Wadud yells along to the song. He brandishes several completed joints in between his fingers, evoking claws, and gives a menacing snarl. 

“Life imitates art,” Zara chuckles, licking the paper in her hands and twisting her fingers to finish her current roll, which she places with the others neatly on the table. Wadud adds his to the lot, making seventeen in total. 

“D’you reckon that’s enough?” asks Zara. 

Wadud counts on his fingers. “Fifteen hours till 3am. Seventeen zoots. Roughly one an hour. Yes, I think that should be quite sufficient, old boy, don’t you?” he drawls in his Boris Johnson voice. 

“And allowing for the inevitable multi-zoot scenario,” Alex chimes in. 

“Yes. We can’t forget about that,” says Yariel, taking a moment to conclude their routine just as Gouge Away transitions to the next song in the queue, at which they stroll over to the table to survey the veritable smorgasbord of cannabis before them.

“It’s… so beautiful,” they gasp. “And to think, a minute ago it was just a shitload of weed chilling in a baggie.” 

“The whole thing rolled, bro. Un-fucking-precedented,” says Wadud.

“They grow up so fast.” 

Wadud jumps to his feet, clapping his hands together. 

“Alright, dickheads, let’s get this show on the road! Zee, grab the box. Yariel, stay peng. Xanny, get the xannies!” 

The box he is referring to is an old wooden item that has been in the house for many years, originally designed for holding cigars, and hand-carved in 1963 by a Pakistani woodworker with a raised, ebony depiction of a camel on the lid. It was a gift given to Wadud by his mother, Saima, when he was six. Saima is a wealthy judge, the owner of this house, and as such, the four housemates’ off-the-books landlord. Every month, they pay her a combined total of £1,750 in cash, which is kept discreetly in the sugar jar until she, at her leisure, pops over to collect it. Saira gets to dodge a few taxes, as well as keep her most worrisome son close to hand, and the four of them get to spend their early twenties living in a four-bedroom, three-storey detached house in Edgbaston, Birmingham which none of them would ever have been otherwise able to afford. 

Around the time of Wadud’s fourteenth birthday, he started using the box to store his drugs. At this moment, it contains nine tabs of LSD, twelve grams of magic mushrooms, eighteen canisters of nitrous oxide, seven grams of ketamine, five grams of cocaine, and a varied assortment of associated paraphernalia for each. 

This day has been built up for a long time. Everyone has booked the coming Monday off work (not counting Wadud, who was recently fired from his six-week stint behind the bar at the Edgbaston Priory Club following a string of bitter disagreements with both customers and colleagues). The plan was for them to take the LSD at 12pm, supplement with the mushrooms at 6pm, and then attend the resulting comedown with copious amounts of xanax and ketamine. The marijuana, cocaine, and NOS, of course, are to be peppered liberally throughout the day. Even now, as Zara gathers all the spliffs into the box to be taken upstairs, Yariel is happily loading a balloon for themself. 

Because everyone woke up late, they are already behind the proposed schedule, but this comes as no surprise or particular bother to anyone – except Alex. 

Alex was in charge of the xanax pickup: twelve tablets, which he has been keeping in his room. Among the others, he has gained a reputation for his growing xanax addiction, framed generously, and probably wishfully, by them as a mere penchant. In general, he tends to favour the more downbeat and placative drugs – the ones which slow it all down rather than speeding it all up – and has a particular disagreement with cocaine, which the others can’t get enough of. None of them have had as many, or as severe, traumatic experiences with psychedelics as Alex has in the past, and ever since the plan for this explosively indulgent Halloween ‘sesh’ was devised a few weeks ago, he has been racked with anxiety about the prospect of taking acid again, let alone following it up with a round of mushrooms, not to mention all the rest of it. He does not quite believe that his brain can physically take the pressure. This is not to say that Alex doesn’t love drugs as much as the rest of them (if love is really the word) – on the contrary, he lives for drugs. Alex just doesn’t want to embarrass himself, that’s all. 

After Zara has watered her plants, she, Yariel, and Wadud frolic out and up the stairs to the top floor (Yariel and Zara’s floor, home of the ‘blue room’, which, being furnished with calming blue walls, many trippy posters and artefacts, a huge, soft sofa, and a window in the ceiling, make it the ideal smoking location) Alex lingers awhile behind them at the foot of the staircase. His eyes wander left, settling on the door to the basement, which is situated next to the stairs at the end of the hallway. He gazes into that hazy window, with nothing but blackness behind it, and the door with the faulty latch that never closes properly without the bolt lock, that is always slightly, maddeningly, ajar. 

His chest tightens with the stabbing pain of a phantom assault, and he clutches at it, and tries to breathe normally. Then he goes upstairs to join his friends. 

Afternoon. 14 minutes to 1. Sunday, October 31st, 2021.            

“Here we are, then, lads,” Wadud sighs happily, sitting cross-legged on the blue room’s freshly hoovered carpet with the box open before him. He rubs his hands, bows his head, and sniffs the box’s contents as though it were filled to the brim with a fine red wine. Without warning, he picks up the box and shakes it violently over his head, whooping, and sending long papers, roach card, grinders, lighters, baggies, canisters, unspent balloons, and crumbs of weed and tobacco flying everywhere. 

Zara gasps. 

“What the fuck are you doing, you little gremlin?” says Yariel. 

Wadud’s eyes are ablaze with passion. He looks round at his audience, none too impressed, and his grin quickly falls. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, making a mild effort to tidy up the mess. “Tough crowd.” 

“We haven’t even dropped yet,” says Zara, and then laughs and slaps Wadud’s shoulder. “What are you like?” 

“Speaking of which,” says Yariel, retrieving the sheet of LSD tabs from the floor. “I refuse to spend one more minute of this fucking day not tripping.” 

Yariel tears off a tab for each of the group and gives them out, saving Alex for last. They offer him an excited look and bob their impeccably threaded eyebrows up and down. 

“Ready to kiss the sky, bro?” 

Alex feigns a smile, and nods. Satisfied, Yariel raises their own tab in a toast. 

“Darse vidanya, beeches!” 

Yariel places the tab under their tongue; Wadud and Zara do the same with theirs. Alex looks down at the tiny square in his hand, a 12-hour psychic bomb no more than a centimetre in diameter. On its surface, if he is not mistaken, a small section of Winnie the Pooh’s cheek and smiling mouth stares up at him. Alex can only stare back, blinking. 

Wadud notices.

“I’ve heard if you squeeze it hard enough, it’ll just absorb straight into your bloodstream,” he giggles. 

“Come on, Xanny, or we won’t be in sync,” says Zara.

“We’re running late already!” says Yariel. 

“Drop.” 

“Drop.”

“Drop!” 

“Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop! DROP! DROP! DROP! DROP! DRROOOOOPPP!” they chant in unison, rising in volume before adding claps and bellows and screaming and stamping and hollering until they cannot possibly get any louder. The intended hilarity never lands. It only fades and trails off to awkward silence when they realise that, chant or not, Alex is still just standing there, his face curiously fallen, his hand curiously stiff, and his tab bizarrely uneaten. 

Wadud’s expression, in particular, turns just a little grim. 

“Are you alright, Al?” asks Zara. 

“Course he’s alright,” says Yariel. “Uh. Aren’t you?” 

Alex swallows air. 

“I’m not on it,” he mumbles. 

“Oh, for -” Wadud begins quietly, and stops himself. He lowers his head, sighs, and puts his hands on his hips. Alex sees every detail, every little movement, and each incurs its own scorpion sting of guilt. 

“I’m just not on it, guys,” he shuffles. “M’sorry.” 

He sits down, still holding out his hand with the tab in his palm, as if now offering it to the room. Zara approaches and sits gently on the sofa beside him. 

“It’ll be alright, mate. It’s just nerves, same as ever,” she says.

“You don’t have to do it right now,” Yariel agrees. “Just give it a few minutes to get yourself psyched up.” They smirk at their own unintended pun. 

Alex just stares at Wadud, pacing the room. Zara, seeing this, lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 

“Is it deep, if I don’t?” he asks. “I’m just not feeling it. I can just bun instead. And – and maybe I’ll still do the mushrooms later, but – I mean, we’ve got all the other shit too. It’ll still be fun. It’s not deep. Is it?” 

“But we wanna trip with you, bro!” says Yariel. “We want you to be tripping. I’ve never even tripped with you since we’ve become mates!” 

Historically, Alex was Zara’s friend. Yariel only entered the scene in the past year, and the situation has not been entirely easy for Alex to come to terms with. Morally, of course, he has nothing but compassion, tolerance, and understanding. Intellectually, there are no arguments he could possibly make that would not lead to oppressive, distasteful, untenable conclusions. Emotionally, he loves Zara, and he supports Zara, and he cannot point to a time in his life when Yariel or anyone else like them has ever done him the slightest wrong. 

But somehow the situation has not been entirely easy for Alex to come to terms with. 

“I mean, we can’t force you, but like… yeah. It’ll be fun, man. We’ve had it planned for ages,” says Zara. She laughs unexpectedly. “We never plan anything, but we planned this.” 

Yariel laughs too. Alex smiles a little – but then he looks to Wadud again, who is staring him down intensely, and darkly. Wadud and Alex have been something of a double act ever since the first night of freshers week, when both had found each other gliding around the party interrupting people’s conversations by asking each new face “Do you guys smoke?”

“Are you annoyed?” asks Alex. 

For a second Wadud pretends to be considering the question before he suddenly spits out his reply: 

“Course I’m fucking annoyed!” 

“Wad, man, chill out… it’ll still be a fun day,” says Zara. 

“You always do this, man, you – fucking – urgh, you’re just such a fucking flap sometimes! I’m sorry, but he is! It’s just – it’s just – it’s just fucking annoying, bruv!” 

Alex glares at him. 

“You have the fucking tab, then.” 

“I fucking will! I fucking have! We all have! That’s my fucking problem!” 

Wadud storms out of the blue room. 

Three minutes later, he returns, seeming far more composed. He strides up to Alex and stands before him, his body tense, and his eyes closed in decisive concentration. 

“I’m sorry bro. I just – you know. I hyped myself up for a certain thing. You know it’s hard for me sometimes to – adjust and shit. You know. It’s an ADD thing. Whatever. You know. It’s – you know. It’s not your fault. I’m, uh, I’m sorry and shit. It’s calm.” 

“I know,” says Alex. He lets out a hoarse sigh of relief. “I’m just sorry I’m not feeling it.” 

“Yeah,” says Wadud, and it tastes bad, and it hangs strangely from his mouth. He stares into space. 

Yariel breaks the silence by clapping Alex hard on the back. 

“Well! You still owe us a fucking sesh, bro!” 

“Speaking of which,” says Zara, and lights the joint protruding from her lips. The sweet-stale smell of cannabis blossoms forth into the air, and it dissipates out, and it kisses the room, and it wriggles into the corners, and it burrows beneath the skin of each of the four housemates, and a little part inside of them all says: yes. 

A few minutes later, while no one is looking, Wadud drops half a tab into Alex’s beer. 

Sunday, October 31st, 2021. 27 minutes to 2. Afternoon.                  

The housemates have gone downstairs to sit at the dining table and await the coming delirium. None of them could think of anything better to do than play Scrabble, and so they do, with Wadud reassuming his constant role as musical curator. First up on the shuffle is the extended dub mix of John Holt’s Strange Things. Picking out their letters absent-mindedly, Yariel is struck by the extensive echo effect on the song’s opening snare hit, that seems to burst the air and send out ripples like a rock plunging into a vast, black body of water. 

“Hnn,” they wince. Yariel always comes up quicker than most. In one hand, they shake the bag of letter tiles, enjoying the feel of its weight, and gradually tapping into the offbeat rhythm of the song, up-and-down-and-up-and-down-and-up-and-down-and…

Yariel realises that the others are all staring. 

“You’ve been shaking that bag for like five minutes,” says Zara, her voice flat.

The two of them burst out laughing. 

“Fucking mong,” Wadud snorts, setting up his tiles while nibbling on a cigarette, and quickly scanning the other players. There is always a strange self-consciousness to this stage, he has observed. Everyone playing it cool. Nobody wants to be the first to say it, to poke and prod at the big, pink elephant in the room: am I tripping yet? Are you tripping? How’s everyone feeling? When is it going to start? But you mustn’t, of course, not in Wadud’s book – it just wouldn’t be cool. You’ve got to, you know, just sort of let it happen. Ride it out. Yet in their typical excitement, Yariel has a tendency to rush straight into things, no matter what the room is saying, what the vibe requires. It irritates him. It’s sad, Wadud muses, how rare it is for most people to even think to appreciate the sanctity of the vibe, how it is a delicate thing, and how it must be actively maintained, above all else. That’s all a trip is, he reasons: a lovingly cultivated, carefully designated vibe. 

He darts an eye to Alex, then back to his tiles again in the span of a second, the glance successfully unseen.

Alex, pleasantly high from the joint, plays idly with his letters, experimenting with all the different configurations, and trying to identify as many potential words as possible from his hand of three vowels, three consonants, and a blank. 

P A ? S R E D  

S P A R S E     D

P U R S E     A D

A D D E R S     P

D E A R S     P ? 

P E A R S     D ? 

R     S P A D E S 

S     R A P E D     ?

P A R A D E S 

D E P A R T S 

As the oldest, Alex is to go first. Once settled on his opening move, a mildly bleak joke, he goes to plant the first letter before something stops him. What if it’s not the right vibe? His fingers hover hesitantly just above the board as the others watch him. Their faces are strangely hard to read; expectant, stupidly blank. And then, up comes a nasty little voice, from out of the murk and mire of faded memory: hey little boy, I just thought you should know, if you play that word you will suffer for it. It is a voice like a sickening smell, and one that Alex knows all too well, but only while it is talking; a voice from a long, long, long way – but look, surely he has been hovering for too long. The others are going to think he’s a prang. They’re already thinking it, they must be. He needs to make his play. 

“Christ’s sake, it’s only fucking Scrabble,” Alex whispers to himself, and plays his hand. The other players peer down at the board, now given life, and read the word chosen to kick off the revelries: 

D 

E 

S 

P 

A 

I 

R 

“50-point bonus, I believe,” declares Alex. 

Following a half-hearted debate on the rules, Wadud takes his turn, building off Alex’s:

D

E

S

P

A

I

           R A G E 

“This is getting a bit intense,” Yariel giggles. Wadud explains that he wanted the triple letter score on his G. Zara prepares for her go. 

“Strange things are happening tonight…” croons John Holt, his pickled words broadcast all the way from 1971 and oozing out into the present ether, now circling the cramped space above the dining table like a restless wraith and directly prompting Alex’s brain to crack and fizzle with just the right kind of electricity that he is suddenly struck by the thought that ‘r-a-g-e’ is component to ‘s-t-r-a-n-g-e’ and that it follows too that to notions of strangeness must be built on rage. Rage is also the title of the notorious Stephen King novel about the school shooter, which the author himself allowed to go out of print after it allegedly inspired a number of similar, fatal incidents in real life. 

Alex rubs his eyes. 

“Why do I know that?” he mutters. 

“What?” says Wadud, his own eyes wide, accusing searchlights.

“Nothing.” 

“Thought you said something…” 

“I’m gonna have another beer,” says Alex, standing up decisively only to stop at the top for a moment as if his head were stuck in a cloud. He shoves his chair out noisily and goes to the kitchen. 

“Aren’t you gonna offer us anything?” says Wadud. 

“Get me one,” calls Yariel, and looks to Zara, who is staring, transfixed, at her letters. 

“Come on, darling, while we’re young.” 

Zara ignores them. She is struggling to read. She removes and replaces her glasses several times to no avail. 

In the kitchen, Alex pulls two chilled bottles of Stella Artois from the fridge. 

“Stellaaa… Stellaaa,” he says to no-one. Warm fingers on green glass melt the tiny beads of condensation, innumerable, perfect orbs of reflection. White and yellow sprites are dancing in his eyes. 

Without thinking, he thrusts one bottle down onto the marble counter-top, firing the cap into the air along with a splash of foam which strokes his hand and hisses like acid. Acid. 

Alex considers something – but then the foam clears and he notices that he has actually broken the bottleneck and must now drink from a jagged glass spike. He walks to the cupboard which seems strangely far away. Is there rage in that thought? He retrieves a glass and pours out the beer into it. There could be hundreds of tiny fragments of broken glass in this beer. He could drink it all and he wouldn’t even realise until they were shredding up his stomach. Stomach acid wouldn’t even help against that. He examines the bubbling beverage with building bewilderment and it seems to bring out the bubbling of his own bristling belly. Stomach acid wouldn’t even help. 

“YO XANNY! IT’S YOUR GO!” someone bellows. 

Oh right, Alex thinks. I was playing Scrabble. He returns dutifully to the dining room, pausing in the entrance. Three people are sitting around the table; two with long hair, exposed shoulders, their backs to him, and the other a mop-top, frowning ogre. 

Yariel turns around. Their eyes are huge. 

“You get me a beer?” 

Alex wordlessly hands them a bottle. 

“Safe.” 

Alex sits back down at the table, clutching his drink. All he can think is: There’s broken glass in it. The others are staring at him. Why do they keep doing that? 

“It’s your go, bro,” says Yariel. 

“We’re playing Scraaabblee,” says Wadud, as if explaining to a toddler. Yariel laughs. Zara is staring at Alex with an expression like he just revealed he is pregnant. 

Alex looks at the board. 

              D I G E S T 

E 

S  

P 

A 

I

           R A G E 

                   E

                      K 

“Despar…” he reads. “What’s despar?” 

“Despair, bruv,” scoffs Wadud. 

“The blank’s an I,” says Zara. Her face goes red and she has to stifle her laughter. “The blank’s an eye.” 

“Yarrr, aye-aye, captain!” says Yariel, poking and tickling her. She giggles uncontrollably. 

“Come on, Xanathan!” says Wadud, nudging Alex. He looks down incredulously at his letters: 

A N X O U R E

“Anxious,” he says. 

“Huh?” 

“Our Xan… Xan your…” 

“…taking fucking forever to play!” yells Yariel. Zara shrieks hysterically. 

Alex ignores them. He’s sure he can play anxious with these, he just can’t seem to remember exactly how the letters are supposed to go. A-n-s-i-o-u-x. He’s never noticed that before. A lot of new thoughts today. An Sioux. As in Sioux Indians. No, you’re supposed to say Native Americans. Like in The Shining. By Stephen King. Chop chop. 

Off the S in D E S P A I R, Alex plays A X E S. 

“Chop chop, Waddy,” he smiles to Wadud. Wadud does not reciprocate. Whether he is glaring or gurning is very hard to tell, but whichever it is, Alex does not like it. In the background, Alex suddenly becomes aware of the speakers, reverberating some kind of dark, pulsating, industrial fury. Trying to pick out its musicality is like trying to understand a different language. 

“Can we change the tunes?” he asks wearily. 

Zara nods. “M’not really feeling s’one either, t’be honest.” 

Wadud obliges, begrudgingly skipping past Totally Fucking Gay and selecting next from his phone’s queue the much more agreeable We Exist by Arcade Fire. 

Alex picks new letters, his fingers tingling as they rummage in the cool plastic pond. He thinks of childhood, ball pits, of Lego – he used to love Lego. A wave of pleasure caresses his spine and his stomach flutters. It is almost sexual. For the first time in his life, he feels aroused by the thought of Lego. You could put Lego in all sorts of places. He wants to insert Lego into someone’s – 

Alex blinks and checks himself. There is now a growing certainty in his mind that his thought patterns are becoming very unusual. Oftentimes he is an admitted hypochondriac, and he knows well the suggestive power of the placebo effect when it comes to these kinds of situations. The others are all coming up on the acid – that is obvious – and his silly, animal brain must be reflexively copying, recycling old memories or something, probably wishing in a way that he had taken the acid after all, had stuck to the plan. Well, he’s fucking glad he didn’t, now. Maybe he got too high off that joint, too, or not high enough – one of the two. Yes, he decides, that’s the problem, he just needs another one to clear things up a bit. And to relax; his heart feels like it’s going mad. 

Here are the new letters: O U N R D A M. Instantly, words seem to jump out at him in his own voice, uncharacteristically clear and instructive: Man! Roman! Random! Nomad! Mad! Dour! Damn! Our! Around! Round! 

Round, he thinks, and licks his lips. He glances up at Zara; her face takes a moment to reveal itself as such. Her lips; her pink cheeks; her eyes, wide and wet. Her tousled hair is like a churning waterfall in slow motion, zero gravity. She is wearing a vest without a bra. 

Alex realises how wet he feels all over, particularly his thighs, his legs, his underwear. He rubs his forehead; he doesn’t appear to be sweating. It is a hot damp, sticky and pervasive, but not unpleasant, almost like he is sitting in a heated pool. He cannot tell the current status of his penis. 

“Maybe it’s true, they’re staring at you when you walk in the room…”

Zara is staring at him. He stares back, uncertain if this is a conversation or not. At once her face distorts horribly, and he shuts his eyes tight, licking his lips again as images of slippery breasts and buttocks flash into his eyes. Here are the sprites again. Shutting his eyes does no good. He blinks several times, shakes his head. He tries to focus on the board; Zara is making her move; her long fingers with the red acrylic nails carefully placing down the tiles: C R E E P. 

Alex gawps at her, slack-jawed. She looks implacable. Is she – she’s not – deliberately…

“Is it just me or is this board a bit fucking… weird?” says Yariel. No-one answers. 

“Anyone want a zoot,” says Alex. 

“Definitely,” says Zara. 

Afternoon. 13 minutes past 2. Sunday, October 31st, 2021.          

The Scrabble game goes mercifully unfinished, and forever lost to time as the housemates gather once again in the blue room for a smoke break which will, in reality, last longer than the game ever did. Alex left his last beer downstairs, not having had so much as a sip. As he sucks greedily on the joint, his lips, tongue, and gums resemble sandpaper, and he wishes with all the pleading in his soul that there was water within reaching distance – the prospect of standing up being utterly unthinkable. 

Zara is reclining on the sofa, smoking her own joint, her eyes closed, a picture of total relaxation. Wadud is sat against the wall, drawing fervently with crayons on a large notepad. 

Yariel is on their feet in the centre of the room, reciting some monologue or other, and dancing maniacally to John Williams’s Cantina Band. Prior to this, the group had been listening to Randy Newman’s theme from Monsters, Inc. At this moment, Alex is trying to hide the fact that his entire body is shaking uncontrollably. Since that song was played he has been quite unable to get the image of that little girl character, Boo, from out of his mind. A couple of years ago, he went to a rave in town. It was a Halloween party. He was dressed as Batman. There was a girl there, dressed as her, as Boo… a long, pink t-shirt, bare legs, cute little pigtails. Like most of the guests in attendance that day, they had both been extremely high on MDMA. The girl was very petite and small. As the two of them left the club, went around the corner, and had quick, frenzied, unprotected sex in an alley, Alex thought he had never been so unbearably turned on in all his life. There had been a lot of teenagers there that night; you could tell them from a mile off, or most of them, anyway. At the time, Alex had been 22, and even in his ecstatic state the open question of the girl’s age had been obvious to him for the entire duration of their knowing each other (which couldn’t have been any longer than twenty minutes). Of course he had not asked. He had suspected, but he had not asked. It had just all been so easy, how he had taken her hand, her little hand, and walked her outside. Later, on long, dark nights, and in panicked, private moments, what had terrified and humiliated him the most was how unbelievably arousing he had found that question – how at one point he had closed his eyes, and the picture of that CGI toddler had come into his mind, and it had seemed to pair so well with the incredible, all-consuming sensations emanating wildly from his crotch. How he had fought at first, but soon enough, he had just let it happen, let it wash over the both of them, how he had let himself pass through that depraved doorway, and how he had known, guiltily, horribly just known, that it was precisely the possibility that he was doing something no one was ever supposed to do, something that everybody he knew would have been disgusted with him for, that he himself would have thought reprehensible under any other circumstances, that had made him feel so hot, so good, so happy. 

Alex had sworn off drugs for a while, after that, but it didn’t last long. 

Now he could not stop seeing those big cartoon eyes looking up at him, so round and wide and startled, no matter how much he closed and opened and ground his palms into his own. He had never even asked. And she; who was she? What had it meant for her? What kind of a life had she gone on to; what had he done to her? 

What would his mother have thought? 

She can never know. None of them can. Stop thinking about it. Stop it. Stop it. STOP IT. 

“Hahaha,” he mutters, rocking back and forth. 

Sunday, October 31st, 2021. 2 minutes to 3. Afternoon.                 

Wind and rain shatter and howl against the skylight. Wadud stands looking out at the storm, smoking a cigarette. 

“So fair and foul a day I havenae seen!” he declares. He turns to the others. “Bit o’ Macbeth.” 

“Good old Shaka Speyareh!” says Yariel. 

Wadud grins, puffs proudly on his cigarette and looks over to Alex. At this point, thinking for him has become a very arduous activity. Everything has a sluggish quality to it, like trying to run away in a bad dream, it’s all gooey and slowed-down. But one thing is definite and clear to Wadud at this moment: it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It can all take as long as he likes, as long as any of them like. There is nothing to do, nothing that has to be done, nothing that waits or demands anything of any one of them. It is all so fine. It is all so open and so free. It is exactly what he wanted to be feeling. Beautiful. 

And yet. And yet. Wasn’t there something he was meant to be doing? Or saying? Or thinking? There’s Alex, rocking back and forth, staring at his fingertips, hands locked in a strange clamp around a half-smoked joint, as they have been for the last twenty minutes. Wadud hiccups. At once the memory of what he has done to Alex is back, and it is so alarming, it is like a balloon being popped behind his ear. Wadud’s body instantly tightens. His jaw clamps down on his cigarette, biting it in half. He sputters, coughs, and spits it out, dropping it onto the carpet, stamping it to a smear. He looks around sheepishly; no-one has noticed. Good. Doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s just a carpet. 

But when he looks back at Alex he is much less sure now that this doesn’t matter. He does not look quite right. Wadud knows it. 

“Alex,” he says. 

The man’s arms jerk at the mention of his name. He snaps to attention, a rabbit in the headlights, only it’s his eyes, his big white saucer eyes that are the real headlights, firing beams of blame and pain that twist and burn into Wadud’s soul.

“…never mind.” 

Afternoon. 22 minutes to 5. Sunday, October 31st, 2021.            

The housemates have decided to put a film on. In the spirit of the season, they have chosen Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The agreed idea is for it to be less of a ‘let’s sit down and watch this’ kind of thing and more of an aesthetic – a vibe – a suitably psychedelic backdrop for the kinds of profound thoughts and conversations that tend to take place during this, the long, lustrous peak of the trip. 

Yariel and Zara have taken their couple’s place on the smaller sofa, curled up together, with Zara lying on Yariel’s lap so she can gaze periodically into their eyes. The two are constantly touching each other. In their current state they can scarcely tell where one’s body ends and another begins. In fact, at present, they would not be able to tell you how they met, or how they came to live together, in this place, at this time, with these people. Neither one would even be able to recall the other’s last name without incurring some serious mental strain. Right now, all either one knows is that they are powerfully, vibrantly in love with the other; any and all surrounding details have been totally obliterated in the crushing tidal wave of hormones, washed out to sea, drowned and buried so very far from the reaches of poor, mangled memory, only to eventually be again discovered and reinterpreted anew when the mania finally calms to peace, and reality gradually reforms segment by segment, and the tide finally relents and draws back out, six or so hours from now. 

Wadud is slightly more tethered to the world, although that is not saying much. He is stuck in a thought loop. In between bouts of blissful, coma-like ignorance, every ten minutes or so he receives some kind of reminder, very much unwelcome, of his crime against Alex’s autonomy, and it is like a whooshing vortex that suddenly forms ever so slightly outside his field of vision, wordlessly threatening to rip him out of his seat to hellish judgement. Each time it does, he can only sit there and muse on it, and quiver, fighting with all of his ever-dwindling faculties to remain stalwart against its stubborn pull, until it goes away and he forgets again. 

Only Alex is really watching the screen, but that is only because he is physically unable to unstick his eyeballs from it. Jack Nicholson is a gurning demon whose seething, dripping evil dominates all focus. Shelley Duvall is a shrieking, flailing creature whose very limbs seem to promise coming violence, looking at once distressingly rubbery and liable to break at any moment. They are approaching the scene with the monstrous old woman in the bathroom. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Alex knows this, and feels an incredible sense of nausea that demands of him, dares him to visit this house’s own bathroom, keel over and relent to the vomit and snot and tears that are building to overflow inside his skull. In one hand, he is still clutching the joint from hours before, although it is all but dead now, pathetically bent and limp. In the other hand, he holds a key and a baggie of ketamine, hazily procured in an effort to stay calm, and every so often he takes a bump to stay his thundering heartbeat. The question of what is happening to him has long since faded away. Like the others, he is simply, inexorably trapped in the present moment; this second, here; now this one; this one. Every blink, a battle for sanity.

Yariel turns to Alex with a grin on their face.

“Abidibarnlactambivilarantyl. Airanaglaristibidinimacorifinamboltianic.” 

Zara laughs like a screaming raptor. Alex nods, cheek yanking the flash of a smile. Yariel turns away again. 

Jack Nicholson is walking towards the bathroom in room 237. Nothing seems to exist but the picture, and the slow thud of a human heart overlaid in the soundtrack, obviously inserted precisely to mock Alex’s own racing pulse. The world around the TV is shut off and it is impossible for him to tell what is real anymore. 

The doorbell rings and he howls in terror. 

After much deliberation, no one but Yariel is deemed physically able to go to the door. It does not occur to anyone to wonder who the visitor might be; nor does the possibility of just ignoring them. Wadud is proud of himself for having recognised the meaning of the sound at all. DOORBELL means SOMEONE AT DOOR; SOMEONE AT DOOR means ANSWER. 

Yariel opens the door and cuts a cold, white square of light into the outside world. There stands a twenty-something-year-old man in a black hoodie, grey tracksuit bottoms, and some very worn-out trainers. His clothes and face are lightly speckled with rain. Yariel does not even try to figure out his facial expression; they just greet him with as wide a smile as possible. 

“I’m really sorry to bother you mate, have you got a minute?” the man says. 

Yariel nods. 

“I’m just wondering if you’d mind taking part in a survey we’re doing for the neighbourhood watch. We’re trying to figure out how many of the houses on this street are up-to-date on the latest security; how many have working burglar alarms, things like that. Some of the locals have been complaining about some shifty-looking characters hanging about lately. To be honest with you, we always get it around this time of year, you know how it is, Halloween and that, people getting themselves spooked out. But it’d just take a minute of your time, if that’s alright?”

Yariel nods. The man says thank you, and produces a notepad and pen from the pocket of his hoodie. He clears his throat. 

“Are you the homeowner?” 

Yariel nods.

“Does this property currently have an intruder alarm system installed?” 

Yariel nods. 

“Doors or just windows?” 

Yariel glances around the hallway as if the answer might be found there, then nods. 

“So… just windows?” 

Yariel nods. The man jots something down. 

“And do you test the system regularly?”

Yariel nods. 

“When was the last time you ran a test?” 

“Twelve,” says Yariel. 

“… twelve o’clock today?”

“Twelve,” Yariel nods. “Yup.”

“Well,” says the man. “Glad to hear it. Umm… so I take it everything was operating as it should be, then? When you ran the test earlier today.”

Yariel nods. 

“Now, when it comes to insurance –” 

“Hey,” says Yariel. “Umm. On a level. I am extremely high right now. M’having a… teensy bit of trouble undersaying what you’re standing. You have a nice enough persona but we are just not interested in buying any more doors today. And I’m sure you will agree that I’m in no position to make any financial decisions at this time. Take care mate. Thank you. Sorry. Thanks.”

The man opens his mouth to speak just as Yariel closes the door, leaving him on the porch with the whistling wind and dribbling rain at his back. He scratches his stubble, looks quickly about, then puts the notepad over his head to shelter himself as hurries over to the window and peers discreetly through the foggy glass. He cups his free hand around his eyes. There are three people watching television in the dark, lit only by a multicoloured disco ball-style light source emanating from some corner of the room, the colours dancing and streaking wildly about the ceiling and walls. He sees the one who answered the door return to the room and sit down with the girl lying on the sofa. He examines their faces, each one a picture of trance-like stupefaction.

The man leaves the front garden, walks round the corner, and gets back into the passenger seat of the black BMW waiting on the curb. 

“Well?” 

The driver looks at the man, who stares thoughtfully ahead. 

“I think they’re all fucked.” 

Sunday, October 21st, 2021. 26 minutes past 5. Afternoon.                   

By the time Jack Nicholson has been locked in the pantry, Alex can take no more. He has slurred some garbled excuses to uncaring ears and retreated to the first-floor bathroom, one of his half-remembered happy places. Nothing can touch him here. In the course of the short journey up the stairs, which his ket-addled legs render an odyssey in itself, he completely forgets about the scary movie, so consumed is his mind by the various primal associations this room holds: the relief of a long-awaited bowel movement; the joy of a long, hot shower after a cold, hard day; the meditative bliss of a candlelit bath; the minty freshness of properly scrubbed teeth; and even the occasional, quick, illicit, phone-based masturbation on the toilet. He isn’t sure which one is coming, but he knows that whichever it is, it will be cool to the touch, blue-white in colour, and unbelievably soothing to his imploding mind. 

Alex manages to fiddle the bathroom door open – no mean feat considering one hand is still clutching the mangled joint and the other, the half-full bag of ket. He doesn’t even wait until the door is closed behind him before he jerks his trousers down, hobbles to the toilet, and urinates for about ninety seconds, spraying much of the vicinity in the process. From his point of view, the circular shape of the bowl just pulls the liquid out of him as if by some form of magnetism, and for a fleeting thought he is fairly sure that his guts will soon follow, fat, pink and red sausages cleanly squeezing out of his urethra like toothpaste. His head buzzes madly. 

“Fffffffuuuhhhhhhh.”

Of course, Alex’s guts don’t follow, and promptly his mind is onto something else. All thoughts are fleeting, melting crayons on a radiator. Presently his attention span is somewhere between zero and two seconds. Now he is sitting down, not registering the piss on his naked skin, not caring. His penis is in his left hand, the pitiful nubbin of a zoot sticking out from between his knuckles in such a way that it looks like some kind of horny growth protruding from the skin. It is vaguely flesh-coloured, only greyer, more blotchy, and that black, tumorous end, a grotesque bell-end, or a ruined orifice. Alex is sure that this used to mean something, this strange little straw, and that its meaning was very basic and comforting. It was something like going to the toilet. The softness of his hand feels nice; his penis is beginning to stiffen, inflate, and he watches it change, fascinated. The head seems to open up, a shy, pink flower; the little wet slit, a tentative, nipping mouth. Food, he thinks. Of course. Food goes in the mouth! There is joy in the eureka moment. He takes the joint and gently inserts it into his urethra. 

Alex sits there, looking at it, trying his best to pull himself together enough for all the disparate parts of his psyche to reach some kind of consensus on this latest move. It seems to fit well enough, this picture. Then Alex notices his right hand, clasped around the ketamine. On to the next task; try to figure out where this can go. 

“Quydiphylyx?” shouts Yariel, standing in the doorway. “Scintillyffiddiphylyx!” 

Alex roars in terror. Everything comes flooding back like a river of blood to his brain. Here is the old woman, the old witch, come to eat him up, come to swallow him whole in her old dry gums. The hotel is alive and coming to eat him. He pisses himself again, the joint shooting across the room in a geyser of urine. 

Yariel grabs a towel from the radiator and hurls it at Alex, who is still half-screaming, half-retching, looking now like a ghost with the towel over his head and staggering around with his trousers around his ankles. He advances on Yariel, still faceless, still screaming, still pissing. 

Also screaming, Yariel slams the door and sprints down the stairs, slipping on the last step and hitting their chin on the bannister. They moan wearily and dab at the wound with their fingertips, finding a little blood. They go to the hallway mirror and survey the damage; only a scrage. 

Yariel re-enters the living room, where the other two are still glued to the screen, upon which Jack Nicholson is destroying the bathroom door with his axe. Neither one acknowledges Yariel’s arrival. 

“You lot not hear that?” asks Yariel. Zara looks up. 

“Blood!” she blurts. Wadud peers over his shoulder. 

“S’nothing,” says Yariel. “You didn’t hear that?” 

“Hear what,” Wadud drawls. 

“The – the fuckin’ – hooting and hollering,” Yariel struggles.

“S’just a film, bro…” Wadud trails off, eyes already rolling back to the screen. 

Yariel pinches the bridge of their nose and sighs in frustration. They pick up the remote and pause the film. Zara gasps. 

“Wha’y’doin,” mumbles Wadud. 

“Look,” Yariel says, standing in front of the screen to obscure Jack Nicholson’s frozen grimace. They clasp their head, and take a moment to collect their thoughts. 

“Look. Alex. Alex ain’t alright. I just saw him upstairs. Pissed on the floor. I think he might be having a prang.” 

“Don’t, man,” says Wadud. “If you mention it, it becomes real.” 

“Oh no, is he having a bad trip?” asks Zara, bizarrely eloquent again all of a sudden. 

“He didn’t drop,” says Yariel. 

“Aye, he didnae,” Wadud yawns. 

“He’s pissed?” 

“On the floor.” 

“Is he breathing?” 

“Of course he’s breathing. He’s running around pissing everywhere!” 

“You said he was on the floor.” 

“He’s on the first floor,” Wadud says. 

“He’s not on the fucking floor, he’s pissed on the shitting floor. On the bathroom. The first-floor one.” Yariel laughs, and then slaps themself. “It’s not funny. We need to go check on him. He ain’t alright. Fucking come with me. Please.” 

The three of them head upstairs. 

In the bathroom, Alex is squatting next to the radiator; it emanates such a lovely, warming glow. He is naked from the waist down, with nothing but the towel wrapped around him, as his wet clothes were becoming very hard to squat in. He still has the ket in his hand, and is examining it. White powder. He is quite sure that it is some kind of poison – perhaps the poison that has made him sick? He needs to figure out what kind of poison it was, so he can find the antidote. It’s like a video game. Find the bite and suck out the venom. He remembers that snakes suck out venom. He needs to find a snake somewhere. He resists the urge to investigate his own penis again, no matter how much it resembles a little pink snake, because it isn’t one. That’s just the poison talking again. He pours a bit of the ket out onto his fingertip, and pecks at it with his tongue. It tastes enough like medicine. He pecks some more. 

“Al?” comes a voice. Alex freezes. It is the first bit of English he has recognised in a good while. Even more significant, he understands it to signify his name. 

“Al,” he repeats a few times in hushed tones. There is a rapping of knuckles on the bathroom door; his body spasms with each beat. 

“Al, mate. How’s it going?” says the voice. 

“How’s it going, Al?” says another. 

“Who’s there i’the name of Beelzebub?!” a third voice cries abruptly. “Bit o’ Macbeth.”

Alex whimpers. 

“Shut the fuck up!” says the first voice. 

“Alright! Fucking hell, tough crowd,” says the third voice. 

Macbeth, thinks Alex. Yes. It is like Macbeth. Witches and kings. Unsex me now. Fate and destiny. Double double is this a dagger I too full of the milk of human kind. By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes. Of course the witch is trying to bribe me now with promises of glory and power. She cannot enter unless I invite her in. I spit at thee, witch, thy serpent tongue shalt not slither up and have my precious crown jewels to sit and stew within thy baleful belly. He grips his stiffening penis. It is not a snake, he knows that now. It is a sword. 

Alex spits at the door. 

“Everything good in there, mate? Can we come in, maybe?” says the first voice. 

“What if he’s just pissing? Are we just being like, super inappropriate right now?” says the second voice. 

“Shh, I can’t hear what he’s saying,” says the first voice. 

“That’s ‘cus he’s not saying anything,” says the third voice.

“I KNOW YOU’RE THERE!” Alex suddenly shouts. “YOU’RE NOT GETTING INTO MY BATHROOM! YOU’RE NOT!”

Even he is rather shocked by how the voice tears out of him and seems to hover in the still, damp air. For a while there is silence from behind the door. 

“Alex, mate,” comes the first voice again. “It’s calm. It’s alright. It’s us lot. It’s Yariel.” 

The sound calls to mind a filthy figure shambling through the fog. Friend or foe? Of man or woman born? Yes… it is the one Alex doesn’t know; has never known; mustn’t know. Unsex me here, she said. Take away my tits and put a sword there so I can stab, stab, stab. Take away the tits for myself. An axe-wound for a girl and a chopper for a boy. Stab stab stab. Well, this is the witch again. She got her poison into me and now she only wants to eat me up so I musn’t listen. 

“I’m not listening! Bee – ell – zee – bub. Blah blah blah blah blah,” says Alex. He takes another dab of ketamine. 

Outside the bathroom, Yariel frowns and sits down on the carpet. 

“Did he just say my name?” asks Zara. 

“I think he said ‘Beelzebub’,” says Yariel. 

“You what?” says Wadud. 

“You’re the one who just – ugh, never mind.” 

“What we doing now, then?” asks Zara. 

“I guess we just wait here till he’s feeling better…” 

“Might I suggest we wait downstairs instead, old bean?” chirps Wadud. 

“Don’t do that voice,” says Zara. “It’s creepy.” 

“Yeah? Not like it’s Halloween or anything!” 

“Just shut up for a second, please,” says Yariel calmly. 

Wadud slumps. 

“Some fucking trip this is turning out to be,” he mutters. 

“It’s fine,” says Zara. “Al’ll be alright in a sec and then we can get back to the… erm… what were we doing, before?”

“Just now? We were… uh… nah, I dunno. What time is it?” says Yariel. 

“Do you wanna do the mushrooms?” says Wadud. 

“We’re still tripping off the tabs, bro,” says Yariel. 

“Oh. Do you wanna have a zoot?” says Wadud. 

Zara totters downstairs to get the box. She stumbles at the last step, and places her hand on the bannister to steady herself. She blinks. There is a small, red smear on the white painted wood. 

Blood?

She bristles, a small shiver running down her spine. She adjusts her glasses and leans down to look closer, but the results are inconclusive. It could be anything, she reasons: nail polish, a squashed ladybird. Why did I think of that? she thinks. That’s crazy. I only just remembered that a ladybird is even a thing. But I feel like I knew nail polish was a thing automatically. It came right away. What does that say about me? 

This is what Zara loves about acid. It’s like a psychological enema; mental spring cleaning. Certain things need to be flushed out. She never needs to think about ladybirds. And there is plenty, plenty in her life that she would prefer to forget. But then again, that’s who she is. How she is. And that’s what’s left, she thinks, when the fun’s all over. When the trip ends, that’s what’s left; you. Her. Me. And Yariel. She smiles.  

Disregarding the stain, Zara turns to enter the kitchen and has to pause. What was she looking for, again? It’s on the tip of her tongue… 

A cold breeze strokes her ankle, and that’s when she notices. She has to blink again, and adjust her glasses, but again, it doesn’t work. Because it’s not a trip. It’s real. 

The garden doors are open. And there is a man. 

Afternoon. 4 minutes to 6. Sunday, October 31st, 2021.                

On the carpeted landing outside the bathroom door, Yariel sits running their fingers through their long, unkempt hair. They are beginning to feel it, too, what Wadud said: it gets real when you make it real. That’s the thing about a trip, that’s the other side of the coin, that’s the shadow in the sun or the reflection in the mirror or however you want to look at it. You make all these plans, you try to set everything up perfectly, you take the day off and you buy all the supplies and you hold up and you build a shelter from the storm and you take the shit and you grin and bear it and you hold on tight with both hands and you cross your fingers and… and yet there’s always that. That possibility of failure, of catastrophic decomposition and decline, of fear and loathing that you can’t control, panic and chaos like nothing you’ve ever known. And then, all you can do is wait until you feel normal again – or if, Yariel thinks, and bristles. Wadud once told them that the first time you take acid, it’s impossible to have a bad trip, because you’re like a newborn baby; you don’t know they can happen. Until they do. And then you know. And you’re cursed with the knowledge. And then it’s impossible for it to not be a possibility. If that makes sense… 

Yariel swings their head over to look at Wadud, who has retrieved Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus from his bedroom and is sat goggling, cross-legged, at the strange pictures contained within. Men with trumpets for heads and flowers with bicycles for hands. Mutant organisms, obscene, uncanny hybrids and unthinkable, transgressive combinations. The thing is, Yariel thinks, with a smile that is only slightly tinged with grief, I’ve been having a bad trip my whole life. When you’ve already died once, what is there to be afraid of? 

The scream from downstairs is like a flare gun. In less than a second Yariel is on their feet and thundering down to find Zara running up, and straight towards them. The two collide in shock. 

Zara is crying hysterically; Yariel, cradling and consoling her as best they can. 

“What’s up?” Wadud calls out. 

Zara races to the landing, yanking Yariel up with her, both treading on Wadud’s book as they stampede into his bedroom. 

“Fuck!” says Wadud. 

“Get inside!” Zara squeals. 

Wadud does so, and Zara slams and locks the door behind him, sealing the three of them inside. She stands barricading the entrance with her body, shaking, panting, moaning. 

“What happened?” says Yariel. “What is it?” 

“It’s – it’s,” Zara stammers tearfully. “Duh-duh-downstairs – the dining room– I – there’s – someone, I – I just ran –” 

She sucks in several short, deep breaths in and out as Yariel takes her hand in theirs and strokes it. 

“It’s okay,” they murmur softly. “Just tell us what’s wrong.”

“There is someone in the house,” Zara whispers. 

“What? Who?” 

“A man. A stranger…” 

“Did you get the box?” asks Wadud. 

“It wasn’t my fucking priority, Wad!” 

“Alright, fucking hell.”

“You saw a man in the house downstairs?” says Yariel. 

Zara nods.

“In the kitchen.”

“What was he doing?” 

“I don’t know. He was just standing there. His face — I don’t know, I just ran…”

“Okay,” says Yariel. “Okay…” 

They look lost. They turn to Wadud, as if asking for help. 

“Are you sure you weren’t… y’know… tripping?” Wadud says. 

“I can tell the difference, I – SHIT!” 

Zara recoils, horrified, clapping her hands over her eyes. She ducks to the floor and reaches around, picks up the first thing she can find – a heavy, gold-coloured weed grinder – and hurls it past Wadud’s head at the window across the room. It only hits the wall, chipping the paint, bouncing off and rolling, ironically, straight back towards her. It hits her toe, and she squeals again. 

“Stop fucking throwing shit!” shouts Wadud. 

“Did – did you not – did – ?!” 

Zara looks pleadingly at Yariel, who seems very confused. 

“Zee… just calm down, okay? Calm down.” 

Yariel extends their hands, and Zara takes them reflexively, before suddenly letting go. She dashes over to the window, and peers cautiously out into the darkening afternoon. The garden is empty, as usual. The rain has calmed now; she remembers that it was raining before, storming even. There are dark patches all over the patio. But right now, the day seems quiet, and almost serene.

Zara turns back around to see the others watching her, baffled. 

“There was a face!” she cries. “There was a face at the window! Did – did no one else see? Didn’t you?” 

“My days…” Wadud mutters, a mix of pity and annoyance in his voice. 

“Don’t,” Yariel retorts. 

“Come on, like – I’m sorry, but am I the only one who’s ever taken fucking acid before or something?” 

“You don’t believe me,” says Zara quietly. 

“What, that there was some breh just cotching at my window? We’re ten fucking feet up. And what was he fucking standing on? It’s just a fucking wall, look.” 

Wadud goes over to the window, sticks his head out, and gestures to the wall, flailing his arms exaggeratedly. 

Zara considers this.

“Well – there was a fucking man downstairs! There was! Go fucking see for yourself if you want!” 

Wadud saunters over to open the door. 

“Stop! Stop!” Zara yelps. “You’ll let him in, Wad, stop it!”

Wadud stands in place, unamused. Yariel strokes their chin, touching the small wound. 

“Zee, look – ”

“Will you two dickheads just fucking listen to me? I know what acid is. I know what tripping is. I know what the difference is between real life and a hallooni… a hallooniss… a hal – a ham…” she trails off weakly. 

Yariel notes, despite themself, how much they could go for some halloumi right now. 

Wadud, secretly rather pleased that the party has moved to his room, gets busy switching on and off the several lamps that will constitute his carefully curated mood lighting. He picks up the gold grinder (his favourite), stares for a while at its elegant beauty, then reclines in his desk chair and opens a drawer to retrieve some papers and weed. Zara watches him, astonished. 

“You really don’t believe me. You… you…”

She turns to Yariel pleadingly. 

“Babe? We’ve got to fucking do something. We’re being fucking invaded!” 

The shotgun-cock fired from across the hall of the bathroom door unlocking and swinging open causes all three to jump nearly out of their skin. The subsequent thudding of footsteps down the stairs reminds each of them not only of Alex’s existence, but his current, bizarre behaviour. Something comes back to Wadud, who sighs and hangs his head momentarily. Will the downers never cease? 

Thursday, October 28th, 2021. 15 minutes past 4. Afternoon.                

It was the first time Wadud had been told he had to come directly to the dealer’s house, and while he had been anticipating more scrutiny on this pickup due to the sheer size of the order, he was nonetheless nervous about this new development. On the one hand, an invitation to the house connoted a certain level of trust and respect, a definite step-up from quick, dirty dealings in the car where the driver has one hundred percent of the power. At the same time, it meant that Wadud was to become truly known to the dealers; he was to be seen. Really, you could look at it as just another power play, an opportunity for a heightened sense of intimidation and ownership over the customer. It never failed to depress Wadud, how frequently things in life seemed to boil down to petty mind games and dick-measuring contests. How small people could be. 

Indeed, that was what the drugs were for, and if all that stood between Wadud and the largest stockpile he had ever procured was a couple of minutes of having to hold his own against a few fucking goons whose fathers didn’t love them, then so be it. 

It was a mid-sized, nondescript house quietly stowed away at the end of one of the smaller roads in King’s Heath. Wadud noted that he had actually walked past it several times before without any idea of its contents, and considered the hopelessness of perennial ignorance. He dropped his cigarette into a drain, walked up, and knocked on the door. 

At the bay window to the right, the drawn curtains bustled slightly and Wadud caught a glimpse of a fleeting, white eyeball within. He waited for a good three or four further minutes before the door was jolted open, sticking ajar with the chain lock. Here was the eyeball again, accompanied by the immediate stink of weed, here decidedly absent its usual calming effect. 

“‘Sayin’?” 

“Simon,” said Wadud. “Mike’s mate.” 

“Sound.” 

They let him in. What struck Wadud most was the normality of the place. It matched neither the dingey trap house nor the luxurious manor his imagination had concocted on the walk over. Perhaps it was a little sparsely decorated, but fundamentally this could have been home to any teacher, doctor, lawyer, or other variety of upstanding citizen, if not for the thick, all-pervading, nose-assaulting atmosphere of cannabis. 

Wadud was led by his porter into the spacious living room, where three other men sat either side of a large glass coffee table. Spread upon the table in dozens of chunks both bagged and loose was ten times more marijuana than Wadud had ever seen, which is to say a very large amount indeed. Within seconds his eyes zeroed in on the arm of the far sofa, where a smouldering blunt was parked in an ashtray shaped like Pac-Man’s gaping maw. The men had not yet acknowledged him, and he did not recognise any of them. 

“Who’s this?” said one, after some time.

“Mike’s mate,” said the porter. 

“Simon,” said Wadud. 

“Ah right,” said the man. He re-lit the blunt and took a few hits before profferring it to Wadud. 

Wadud took a huge draw, swallowing a bubble which travelled down his oesophagus and burst into a barrage of hacking coughs. The men snickered. 

“Not a federale, then.” 

“Didn’t think I smelled bacon.” 

“What was it you was after, G?” 

“Think this was the guy with the fat shipment.” 

“Say swear?” 

Still wheezing uncontrollably, Wadud swung his backpack around to his chest and withdrew his water bottle, before chugging half its contents until satisfied. 

“With the lil’ backpack. I like that,” said one of the men, puffing the blunt. “Man came prepped, you know.” 

“Man like Simon.” 

“You Pakistani, brother?” 

Wadud nodded. 

“That ain’t no Pakistani name.” 

“My dad’s white,” said Wadud. 

“Ah, is it.”

“That’s calm,” said one of the men. “We won’t hold that against ya.” 

“Yeah, you can stay!” 

“Take a seat, brother.” 

None of the men moved, so Wadud perched on the other arm of the sofa, placing his backpack at his feet. One of the men resumed his job of carefully weighing and bagging the weed. 

“Sorry I ain’t got it ready in advance,” said the man beside Wadud. “Today’s been busy, busy, busy.” 

“Man was prompt, as well.” 

“Yeah, most of the time when a bredrin’s copping this much green we can expect him to show up a little bit late, you get me.” 

“Coloured people time.”

“Can’t say that anymore, fam.”

“Green’s a colour, bruv.”

“I like that, though. Man’s prepared.” 

“Halloween, innit,” said Wadud. “Bare people wanting to bun.” 

There was silence for a while. The room now seemed a lot smaller.  

“Halloween?” said one man at length. 

“That ain’t today, is it?” 

“Today ain’t Halloween. Halloween’s on Saturday. Nah nah, Sunday.” 

“Yeah yeah, Sunday.” 

“Fuck,” said another. “I was shook for a minute there.” 

“You can’t do that to me, bruv!” one of the men laughed, an amazingly hoarse sound. “I thought I bunned the week away!” 

The room erupted into laughter. Wadud joined in loudly. Things died down when the man currently smoking the blunt descended into a coughing fit, and everyone’s expressions again became flat. For a minute there was silence again. 

“Where d’you live, bro?” asked one man, passing Wadud the blunt again. 

“Edgbaston,” he said, and instantly cursed himself. 

One of the men whistled. 

“Jheeze.”

“Man like…” 

“Bougie guy.”

“Nah, nah, allow. Man’s doing well for himself. Gotta respect the kid.”

Wadud blushed and took a large pull of the blunt. This one did the trick. As he exhaled, he felt a lovely, creeping calm pour into him from the top of his head down, like a mug being slowly filled with hot, black coffee. What was he so tense about? These guys were alright. 

“Your folks rich, or?” asked the one next to him. 

“My mum’s a judge,” said Wadud. “I’m fucking broke.” 

The men laughed again. 

“We’ll do you a discount, my youth. What was it again, two ounces?” 

“Two-point-five.” 

“Right, right. Call it two.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, bro.” 

“That’s the family perk.”

“So is that two-fourty?” 

“Yeah.” 

Without explanation, one of the men casually stood up and walked out of the room. The porter took out his phone and also left, in a different direction. 

“Mate’s rates, brother.” 

The man next to Wadud clapped a hand onto his shoulder. 

“Cus we’re mates now, innit?” 

Wadud looked at him. He was very handsome: bold, defined features, jet-black hair, sharp bearded cheeks with a little acne scarring, a gold ring on his left ear, and deep brown, soulful eyes. Eyes which held for perhaps a moment too long. Then the man took his hand away. 

“Yeah,” said Wadud. 

The man bagging up the weed had finished, and he held out two bulging green bags and another slightly smaller. 

“Them ones are the ounces. That’s the half.”

Wadud reached out to take them, when the man pulled back playfully. 

“This dick ain’t free, fam.”

The man next to him laughed. 

“Mate’s rates ain’t that low, brother.”

Wadud smiled agreeably and fished about in his backpack to produce a wad of cash. He counted out £240 and placed it on the table, rolling up the rest and returning it to his bag. It was promptly followed by the bags of weed. 

The man who had been weighing the product took the money, got to his feet and stretched, showing off a hairy sliver of belly, clicking his fingers and cracking his knuckles. 

“I’m fucking starving,” he yawned. 

The man beside Wadud shrugged. 

“Do I look like your fucking wife? Go cook up something, bruv.”

The men exchanged foul looks for a few seconds before the standing one slinked off. Wadud’s mate shot him a glance. 

“Fucking battyman,” he said flatly. “Man pushes P, and I don’t mean in the urinal, you get me?” 

Wadud said nothing. The man studied Wadud briefly, squinting a little. 

“You like pussy, bro?” 

Wadud stared at him. They stared at each other for a long time before the man’s still face creased into a smile, and he shook his head. 

“You’re a fucking pussy fiend, bruv. Say no more. Say no more. Man say Edgbaston…”

He belched and stood up. 

“Listen, I’m gonna go see what battyman’s crying about, yeah? You let yourself out, brother. Pleasure doing business.”

The man sauntered over to the door that the other had left from, and stopped at the threshold. 

“Be seeing you. Simon.”

And then he was gone, leaving Wadud sat on the sofa in the empty living room, with his open backpack at his feet, and several hundred pounds’ worth of bagged marijuana before him. 

He swept up two extra ounces and quickly left the house. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 7 minutes past 6. Afternoon.                 

The housemates have all agreed that, before Zara’s claims of a mysterious intruder can be completely dismissed as mere hallucinations, a thorough search of the property is in order. Of secondary priority is the matter of finding Alex and ensuring his safety, and perhaps even his comfort too, although the official position taken by both Zara and Wadud is that he will wear himself out soon enough and pass out somewhere, only to be miraculously revived later tonight with offers of xanax and mushrooms for all. Only Yariel, who actually saw him there in the bathroom, wild-eyed, naked, and shrieking like a maniac, has their doubts. They cannot say exactly why, but they feel a strong sense of responsibility for the boy. Of the four of them, he has always seemed to Yariel the least sure of himself, in some ways even, despite appearances, the most troubled. And after months of having almost no quality time alone together, Yariel had been hoping that this trip would be a chance to get to know him better. He has been such a good friend to Zara in the past. 

Wadud insists on rolling a joint for the investigation, “just to dial down the prang-o-meter a notch”, and they all tell themselves that it will help clear their heads. Now it is ready; he lights it while Yariel unlocks the door calmly and steps out onto the landing, with Zara hovering close behind, and Wadud bringing up the rear with the smouldering joint hanging from his mouth and a nonplussed look on his face. 

Slowly, the three make their advance around the corner of the landing to the staircase. The bathroom looms with its door ajar, the lights still on and the acrid smell of urine drifting out from inside. Yariel quickly sticks their head in and confirms its vacancy, surveying the mess with a grimace; they close the door to spare the others, and signal them to press on. Zara glances down to see the Codex Seraphinianus still on the carpet beneath her feet, left open on a particularly grotesque illustration of a horrible half-bald sheep-like creature covered in eyes and hooked up to some crude machine of wood and metal on which an unseen character seems to be cooking a dozen fried eggs. The eyes writhe and blink up at her with an almost audible squelching sound, and she winces and kicks the thing away. 

Wadud does not notice, sucking casually on the joint as if it were a breathing apparatus and they were three deep-sea explorers or astronauts, and feeling similarly enthralled by his peculiar-looking surroundings. The faint curves and grooves dotting the wallpaper seem to churn and flex along to his heavy breathing. As it is wont to do, the weed has reignited his trip, which had been coming dangerously close to being spoiled by all the shouting and running around. And as Wadud is wont to do, he is smoking nearly all of what was supposed to be a communal joint by himself. 

Arriving at Alex’s door, Yariel raps their knuckles against the wood. 

“Al?” they whisper. “Al, you in there, mate?” 

They look back at the others, who shrug. 

“We’re opening the door, okay. Please don’t be cross.” 

As Wadud watches Yariel nervously go for the doorknob, the cannabis swirling again through his bloodstream, he must admit he feels an incredible sense of anticipation, a proper butterflies-in-the-stomach kind of thing. It is not unlike coming up for a second time, an almost orgasmic rush of heat and giddiness swelling from up somewhere in his groin. This is more like it, he smiles, and takes another puff. 

The door is pushed open to a dark room smelling vaguely musty. As the three of them peer in, the eclectic silhouettes of Alex’s extensive action figure collection against the closed curtains are all they initially see – a compulsion born of lockdown just as much as his xanax problem. Yariel finds the light switch and flicks it on. For a passing blink, they seem to imagine that a pale, nude figure is sat on the bed; but no, there is no one there. 

Each of them take a moment to indulge in a peek around his room – Alex doesn’t often let people in. It is quite a mess, with shirts and pants strewn everywhere, a wastebasket in the corner way past overflowing, and a crumpled, unmade bed noticeably dotted with small black hairs. Zara sees a large bottle of lube placed prominent on the bedside table. 

“Let’s go,” she says. 

“Wait a tick,” says Wadud, striding into the room like a bloodhound and picking a small baggie off the cluttered desk. The baggie is filled with tiny white sticks; Zara thinks at first of cigarette filters. “The xans,” Wadud grins, puffing out a self-congratulatory plume of smoke. 

Zara makes a motion for him to pass the joint to her, which he does reluctantly. She takes several deep drags. 

“He must still be downstairs,” says Yariel. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

Wadud, his confidence in the day almost entirely restored now, pockets the baggie and brushes past Yariel to be the first out the door. The sooner they find the little fiend, the sooner they can all get on with their Halloween. 

Evening. 6pm precisely. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.                 

Tiptoeing nude into the dining room, Alex convulses and shivers, though not from the cold. In fact, at present his body is warm with sweat, and his long limbs feel strong, proud, animalistic. He sees that the garden doors are wide open, and the rain has picked up again. The curtains flutter as a whining wind sprays the room with droplets, and a dark patch of rainwater surrounds the doormat. Alex creeps over, failing to notice the trail of faint wet footprints leading outwards from the doorway. At the precipice, he pauses to crane his neck outside, peer up into the tumultuous grey sky and feel the rain on his face. From out of the parting clouds, as the sun finally retreats for the day, they’ve come; he can see them: three black witches circling the house over and over, around and around, their long, shredded cloaks flapping behind them like wings, a shrieking cackle carrying through the air. Alex gives them a defiant look, and glances down at his sword. It has retreated into its sheath. Is this a dagger I see before me? They are working their dark magic on me again. Medicine, medicine, I need more medicine! He shoots the witches a violent finger and shakes more ketamine out onto his tongue. 

Gently sharpening his sword to coax it back out – he is going to need it strong and sharp – Alex closes the garden doors absent-mindedly and turns around, distracted at once by the broad table and its menagerie of objects. He inches towards it anxiously, and when he finds the Scrabble board his eyes peel wide with horror. He cannot read the words, of course; he does not even recognise them as words. Language for Alex has become almost purely symbolic now, a primitively functional mosaic of images and metaphors where there is no longer a need for names or communication. The scattered white tiles on the green-and-red-and-black board are more like the smashed-out teeth of some great lumbering beast that might be hiding round the corner. The squiggly black letters with all their different spikes and prongs might be a swarm of crawling army ants arranged in mean, mocking formations. The picture is strange, and full of rage. 

Hey little boy, comes a voice. You creeped out yet? 

Alex repeatedly brings his fist down hard on the table, smashing the board until most of the tiles are on the floor, out of sight and mind. 

Medicine, he thinks. Medicine. Need to get the medicine in the cauldron. The anti-venom. There are snakes everywhere. 

He drifts over to the kitchen. Cauldron’s in the cupboard – somehow he is sure of it. He remembers seeing it some time that is not now. Then Alex stops. 

There are people in the garden. Men. He can see them. Through the wet, grey glass of the door, he can see them, but they haven’t seen him yet. They are tall, dark shapes moving slowly. They look like sharks walking around upright. He watches them, transfixed, screwed to the spot, shaking lightly now in the cold, his jaw hanging slack, and he notices for the first time in some time the bitter, chemical taste on his tongue, and it makes him want to retch but he can’t. 

Then Alex hears the sounds of movement from upstairs. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 9 minutes past 6. Evening.              

“Pass the zoot, Zee?” 

Wadud takes the first step into the downstairs hallway with a belch.

“Shh! It’s Yariel’s turn,” she whispers from behind him. 

He rolls his eyes, the irrationality of her continued fear at this point an absolute certainty to him. Descending the stairs, Yariel coughs lightly. 

“Shhh!” Zara hisses again. 

“Okay!”

Wadud is strolling around the dining room, pulling open cupboards, looking behind the garden door curtains, which he then closes, and clicking his fingers impatiently. From the hallway, Zara cringes at his nonchalance. Hugging her chest with her arms, she turns right and gingerly peeks into the living room. Empty. She turns back to Wadud, who shrugs. 

“Well?” asks Yariel, smoking the joint. 

“Think we’ve got the all clear, old bean,” says Wadud-as-Boris. He puts his hands on Zara’s shoulders. “Still feeling squiffy, love?”

“Did you check the kitchen? The garden?”

Wadud nods. 

“Both bare as a nun’s knickers, lassie, aye.” 

Zara looks at his silly, smiling face, the eyes still unnaturally huge and childlike, can’t help but feel a little safer. Then she turns to face the hallway and the basement door at its far end, dark within, and ever so slightly ajar, as always. 

“What about the basement?”

Ah. The basement. In silence, the other two sheepishly follow Zara’s gaze. 

“We’ll go together,” says Yariel at length. Wadud motions for the joint, and they pass it. 

“Why are we doing this again? I’ve genuinely forgotten,” says Wadud, but no one answers. All Zara can think of is the mission at hand: prove the house is empty – banish the fear from her mind like a priest exorcising a demon. She imagines her brain as a small, white bar of soap, currently covered in little black spiders. 

Yariel is first down this time. They flick the lightswitch beside the door frame and slowly creak the door open. All three gasp when a hairy, dark hand springs out towards them – and then sigh when they realise it is only Zara’s imitation fur coat. Even then, it takes a while for their eyes to catch up with their brains and no longer perceive it as a giant hanging gorilla. Here are the coats, an absurd number of them; thick puffers and flimsy cagoules, Yariel’s Moroccan cashmere, Alex’s oversized, beaten-up leather jacket, novelty items like Wadud’s ‘technicolour dreamcoat’ and Zara’s hot pink crocodile skin duster, all crammed together on the five hangers in the tiny basement landing. Squeezing past the coats, the housemates all shudder at the procession of sleeves stroking and caressing their bodies like so many cold, soft hands. 

“Alex?” Yariel tries from the top of the steep, narrow staircase. There is no reply. They turn to Zara. 

“The man I saw could be hiding there,” she says, although saying it aloud makes her realise how little she wants to find out for sure. 

“Oi, prick!” Wadud barks into the void, causing both of the others to jump. Still, there is no reply. 

“Let’s just go see,” Yariel says slowly, taking Zara’s hand and squeezing it. “Then we can be definite and we can just go back to having fun. This is our day to have fun, yeah? There’s still plenty of day left. I mean, even this is kinda fun, innit? We’re like Mystery Inc. It is Halloween.”

Zara had completely forgotten that it was Halloween. The fact does little to assuage her fears. She is about to demand that she be Fred when she remembers something else, too. 

“Where would Alex be if not down here?” 

“He must’ve gone back upstairs while we were in Wad’s room… must’ve just missed him, right?” 

We would’ve heard, Wadud thinks to himself. Every time someone goes up the stairs to the second floor, his bedroom’s east wall creaks a little, in a particular way. He is sure that it hadn’t creaked earlier; he would have known it, and known just as well that someone – Alex – was moving past. It’s possible that his brain could have been too focused on rolling the joint to notice, although he doubts that because by now he could roll with his eyes shut (indeed, he often swears that he had once rolled in his sleep, with one-and-a-half xanax and two 0.5g brownies in his system, after waking up at sunrise, sat at his desk with a crudely assembled joint in one hand and an upside-down lighter in the other). But he was sure he would have just known, instinctively, that someone was using the stairs, just as he would have known if the front door had been shut despite being one floor and several rooms away. And if he would have known, he would have said something. He said nothing.

They all follow Yariel down the stairs, the air getting colder against their flesh with each advancing step. 

Evening. 11 minutes past 6. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.                

Outside, the storm is back in full swing. Rain and wind battle each other to batter the great house, standing tall at the corner of the road, an unmoved, unfeeling constant. The two intruders who have not already broken in via the garden doors are parked around the corner in the black BMW, awaiting the go ahead from their partners inside. The one that spoke to Yariel at the door (today called Beta) sits in the front seat, watching the rain beat against the tinted windows like rapid gunfire. His buddy (Gamma) sits in the back, trying to choose between two different Halloween masks: one, a classic Ghostface, the other a leering, warty green witch with fluffy eyebrows. 

“Which one d’you wanna go for?” asks Gamma. 

“Which one’s easier to see out of?” Beta replies, not looking. 

Gamma puts on the Ghostface mask and moves his head around. He takes it off and does the same with the witch mask. 

“Oi, this one stinks, fam,” he says, his voice muffled. “Let me put the other ting on again.”

Beta turns to look at him as he does so. 

“Scary?” asks Gamma. 

“Yeah, yeah, terrifying,” says Beta. The burner phone in his pocket buzzes twice; he gets it out and reads a text. 

ALPHA: their downstairs. get redy

“I think I could see out the smelly one better, you know,” says Gamma, and rips the rubber witch mask off with a smacking pop. “Now I know how my dick must feel.” 

“Pick that one, then. And get ready. Alpha says it’s nearly go time.” 

“Swear down?” 

Gamma produces a small, blue baggie of cocaine from his breast pocket. He picks up the switchblade sitting on the seat next to him, pops it, and uses it to scoop out a large bump, which he loudly snorts. 

“Shit’s about to go off…” he says happily, then sneezes. 

Beta observes him in the rearview mirror with a frown. You just can’t get the staff these days, he thinks. And their so-called Alpha can’t spell worth shit. He puts the phone back in his pocket. 

Gamma taps him on the shoulder and hands over the witch mask. 

“Thanks,” says Beta. 

“‘Thanks’,” Gamma parrots in a posh voice. “You’re welcome, professor.”

He laughs at his own joke and loads up another bump. 

“Want some, prof?” 

“Never on the job.” 

“What’s gonna happen?”

“If anything goes wrong, it’ll be your fault.” 

“It’s a smash and grab ting, bruv. Couple fucking rah-rah brats, what they gonna do?”

“The mum’s a judge, you idiot. You ever even been inside?”

“Little bits here and there,” Gamma lies. “What, have you?” 

Beta turns round with a seething look on his face. 

“Eighteen months in Scrubs. Armed robbery. And I’m not going back, not ever, so don’t you go fucking this up, you fucking junkie, you hear me?” 

He turns to the front again in a huff. Gamma smirks and kisses his teeth. 

“Calm, then,” he says, and pretends to examine the switchblade, popping and unpopping it a few times while eyeing the back of Beta’s head, and thinking: soon as this is done, pussyhole, let’s see if you can still talk so clever with your tongue shoved up your arse. 

He sniffs. Beta’s phone buzzes again; he checks it: 

ALPHA: backdoor. cum now 

“Alright. It’s showtime.” 

Gamma pockets the knife and takes a covert dab of coke, rubbing it hastily onto his gums before putting on the Ghostface mask. Beta dons the witch mask, and notes sadly that it stinks, too. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 13 minutes past 6. Evening.                 

Having braved the admittedly spooky, but ultimately empty basement and lived to return, the housemates have decided, with great collective relief, to officially declare Zara’s dining room stranger a simple hallucination, and get back to some sorely-needed festivities. Pleasantly placated by the joint, but sadly feeling the effects of the acid beginning to wane, Wadud elects to go about preparing the magic mushrooms to be made into tea. This, hopefully, will mean a second trip starting within the next hour to compound the acid and take them into the late evening, when finally, the xanax will work its own magic and untangle the whole weird, wonderful web until they all fall asleep. 

As Yariel and Zara talk in the living room, Wadud potters through the kitchen gathering the essential elements (chopping board, knife, frying pan) and feeling generally on top of the world, all things considered. Again, his thoughts of what he has done to Alex have all but disappeared, reduced now to a single small throbbing sensation in the top right corner of his forehead which Wadud chalks up to a lack of weed in his immediate past. He goes back into the dining room to the table and takes the mushrooms from the box, along with a joint, which he lights and takes a drag from. On his way back to the kitchen he is yanked to a halt by a sudden, sharp pain in the soft pad of his foot. He falls onto a chair and inspects his sock, finding a small, white, flat plastic cube stamped with an L-shape, which his eyes eventually come to recognise as a Scrabble tile. 

He looks about. There are Scrabble tiles all over the floor, left like some childish booby trap. Wadud limps back to the table and realises this time that the board is upturned, and the pieces all in disarray. Five tiles in particular jump out at him: they seem to spell out S C A M P, albeit with an upside-down S, in a curling snake shape. The sight provokes a strange niggling in the back of his brain. Wadud strokes his chin. That is not how you play Scrabble, he is quite sure, with the tiles all over the place. How did they end that game, anyway? Were they really that fucked? He has no idea. In fact, he is struggling to recollect the entire day’s span of events leading up to this moment, with him standing in his socks in the dining room, looking puzzled at a messy table, a bag of mushrooms in one hand and a smouldering joint in the – 

“MAYBE IT’S TRUE, THEY’RE STARING AT YOU WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM!”

Wadud leaps nearly out of his skin, staggering backwards and falling into the chair, which topples over with him in it. He slams his head against the hard wall behind him as both crash to the ground. He lies there and moans. Suddenly the brain in his skull seems so tender and unsafe in its case of bone, a wobbling soft-boiled egg. 

Music, he realises. It is music. Arcade Fire’s We Exist, exploding out through the dining room speakers again. 

“Could you turn it down, Wad?” comes a friendly voice from across the hall. 

I never turned it up, he thinks. Clutching his head, Wadud shuffles gradually to his feet and over to the amplifier. He closes his eyes and winces as his fingers brush the skin on the injured patch of his scalp, which is already feeling more tender and swollen by the second. Now he stands directly beside the left speaker, from whose black mouth the song roars and tears at him. Christ, why is it so loud? He fumbles with the amp controls but nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing. He hits the power button. The amp does not go off. The music does not stop. What on Earth is happening? 

“NAH NA NAH NA NAH NAAAAA NAH…” 

It sounds almost teasing. He punches the power button again, harder this time.

“NAH NA NAH NA NAH NAAAAA NAH…” 

His next thought is to amble into the kitchen and retrieve his phone from the packet of sliced bread that he left it in earlier, it being the song’s logical source. The banning of phones (except for music) is another of Wadud’s golden rules for a good trip. You never know what distant relative or ex-lover might just decide to call you out of the blue and open up an unwelcome can of mental worms. Although the time that caused Wadud to realise this rule for himself was actually one particular occasion where he spent an entire house party out of his mind on 2CB, sitting alone in a corner, scrolling through old Facebook photos of himself and trying to figure out exactly what age it was that he had begun to so thoroughly despise his own appearance. 

There; the opened app running the song confirms the phone’s guilt. Wadud pauses it, and the music is instantly swept from the air as if deleted from existence. Unfortunately the relief of the merciful silence is equally swiftly erased, along with the question of what was happening to the amplifier, when he sees the seventeen missed phone calls and messages left by his mother. 

That hurts his head worse than the fall and the noise combined. No sooner has Wadud deciphered the word ‘rent’ from out of the jumble of letters and shapes onscreen that the doorbell rings, followed by his mother’s tell-tale knock. 

Evening. 13 minutes past 6. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.       

In the living room, Yariel and Zara enjoy a long, deep kiss. As their lips meet and mingle, pulling back and forth, back and forth, each smack pops in their ears like the crackling of embers in a fire. Yariel thinks they could listen to it all day and not get tired. 

Zara reclines on the long sofa while Yariel crouches over her by the door; they are kissing upside-down. 

“Do you think I’m more like Spider-Man or Mary Jane?” Yariel whispers in between smooches. 

Zara takes their face in her hands and brings their ear to her lips.

“You’re Mary Jane in the streets and Spider-Man in the sheets,” she breathes. 

“I don’t know what that means,” says Yariel. 

“Do you want me to show you?” 

“Wait, wait… I think I have an idea.”

Yariel tickles their fingers lightly up and down Zara’s chest and stomach as if their hands were spiders. She giggles. Eventually one hand settles on a breast. Zara holds it and presses it against her. 

“Close the door,” she says. Yariel glances out into the hallway. They catch glimpses of Wadud pottering about in the dining room opposite. 

“What, with him in there?” says Yariel. 

Zara grins. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time…” 

Yariel looks at her and pulls in close for another deep kiss. 

Then the ceiling creaks. Something is moving upstairs. The two of them look up sharply. 

“Did you hear that?” asks Zara. 

They both jump a little when loud music starts blaring suddenly from the dining room, covering any further evidence. Yariel cranes their head out the door. 

“Could you turn it down, Wad?” they call. They turn back to Zara, who is still looking up at the ceiling. “Fucking twat. But I thought I heard something, yeah.”

“Do you think it’s Alex?” 

“Must be,” says Yariel, and stands up. “I’ma go check on him.” 

“Wait,” says Zara. “Yar, are you sure?” 

Yariel cocks an impeccable eyebrow. 

“You trip a stranger in the house again?” they grin. 

“That’s not funny!” says Zara, but smirks despite herself. 

“Fear not, m’lady,” Yariel stoops downs and pecks Zara on the forehead. “Yar’ll be right back.” 

Zara sighs and nods. Yariel leaves, pulling shut the door behind them, which closes exactly as the music stops from the dining room. Zara lies peaceful, listening to the gentle thudding of her lover’s feet as they bounce up the stairs with characteristic zeal. She closes her eyes. There are still faint hallucinations dancing on the back of her lids: a scrolling pink vista where little green dollar bills fly around on white cartoon angel wings, looping endlessly like a screensaver. Always the same, she thinks with a weary smile, and shifts onto her side to gaze at the TV screen. Jack Nicholson’s demented, grinning face framed through the jagged hole in the door. The axe-wound. Come to think of it, Zara could have sworn the image had been different a moment ago. 

And because she has her back to him, she does not see Alex emerging from his hiding place behind the closed door, wearing a similar look on his own face, and nothing else. Then the doorbell rings. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 16 minutes past 6. Evening.

“What sort of fucking game are you playing here?” 

Wadud regards his mother, framed in the doorway, standing no more than five feet tall, and utterly dwarfed by the vast black umbrella perched like a dripping bat over her shoulder. He blinks. He cannot quite believe this is happening. Of course, he knows perfectly well that he can be lazy, forgetful, even wilfully self-destructive at times, but he has always felt somehow that simply knowing that will be enough to get by on, or at least enough to rule out the possibility of a fuck-up this colossal. It usually is. 

“Hi, mum,” he says.

Saima flaps her hands in exasperation.  

“‘Hi, mum!’ ‘Hi, mum!’ Are you gonna stand there like an idiot all day or are you gonna fucking let me in the house?” 

No, thinks Wadud, you should definitely say no to that. There is simply no way any good whatsoever can come of that. 

“You’re… here about the rent,” he says. 

“Course I bloody am! I’ve only been texting and calling you for the last five – ”

She quickly scans him up and down. 

“God, you look absolutely frightful. What have you been up to?” 

He realises it has been hours since he’s even looked in a mirror. He is not sure what he’s wearing, and is bitterly surprised when he looks down to check: holey, ash-covered pyjama bottoms, a stained, grey hoodie, and two odd socks. 

“It’s Halloween,” he says distantly. “We’re having a… Halloween party?” 

“What? I’m sorry? What sort of gora shit is this? Do I look like I give a fuck?” 

Wadud strokes his sore head and frowns.

“I… told you the rent was gonna be late this month…” he says with some strain, the memory of the fact only returning as he does so. 

“Yes,” Saima nods, as if talking to a toddler. “And then I said: okay, how is the 31st? And then you said: the 31st is fine. Now, I realise this may be news to you, Wadud, but today is the fucking 31st, and consequently, I am here to collect the fucking rent.”

“That makes sense,” Wadud admits. 

“Well, I’m very glad you agree. Could you let me in now please?” 

As he attempts to wrap his mind around the sheer scope of the reasons why that would be a bad idea, Wadud decides that the most senior among these has got to be the fact that he does not actually have the money. Over the past week, he has spent his share of the sugar jar cash on drugs for today; in fact, that was the reason he requested that his mother come later in the month in the first place. He was going to sort it out in time, though. Wasn’t he? Hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he? 

It is difficult to tell from her expression whether she is irritated, furious, or disgusted. 

“Okay, here’s the thing,” he says. “I’m not denying I’ve fucked up here because that’s very obvious.”

“Don’t swear at me,” she snaps. 

“I – sorry. The thing is that, what it is, is that I don’t exactly have the money… at the moment.”

The second the word ‘have’ leaves her son’s mouth, Saima cringes and pinches her brow so instantaneously that for a moment Wadud is not sure what is causing it. Then he realises, and feels even stupider. For a while, his mother just stands there, frozen in place like an angry statue as the rain savagely hammers the world around her. 

Then she briskly barges past Wadud into the house, muttering “fucking twat!” and leaving him to fumble with the umbrella, which is too big to fit through the door. 

He scrambles after her into the hallway, which she is inspecting, looking revolted.

“God, it stinks in here. You could at least pretend to smoke outside. You can expect to be on your hands and knees scrubbing the wallpaper when I need this place back, I can tell you that for nothing.” 

“Yes, I expect so,” Wadud says sincerely. She glares at him. 

“Don’t you be sarcastic with me!” 

“I’m not, I…” he replies, but thinks better of it. The house, the housemates, the day, the whole acid trip is a world away now; now that they are back in their regular routine, it could be any time, any of thousands before. 

“You don’t even have a kiss for your mother?” she says, offering her cheek. Wadud obliges, and they hug. It feels nice; she is soft, warm, and smells of home. 

“Listen, ammu jaan,” he says. “I’m sorry about the rent. I’ll have it for you as soon as I can. I just needed to – pay some people back.” 

And for the first time since it happened, he thinks of the weed he stole. 

“Don’t, don’t. I don’t want to know about it, whatever it is.” She sighs. “What I want is a cup of tea. Chop chop.” 

“You got it,” says Wadud, and rushes through the dining room into the kitchen, desperately throwing the Scrabble board onto the open box and its conspicuous stash of drugs on his way. He steps on something hot; the joint is still burning where he dropped it earlier, searing a sticky, black stain into the linoleum. He stamps it out, throws it down the kitchen sink, and moves a chair to cover the stain. 

Saima enters the dining room looking unimpressed. She takes a seat on the same chair Wadud has just moved while he searches the cupboards for a clean mug for her to use. 

“How’s work?” she asks. As far as she knows, he is still employed by the Edgbaston Priory Club. 

“Huh? Oh… yeah, you know… it’s alright, if you can stomach the rampant racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia,” he replies, crudely washing up a dirty mug. 

“Your dad’s being a complete prat again,” she says, not listening. “He’s undoubtedly the most absurdly stubborn person in the entire bloody West Midlands – apart from me, of course. Do you know what he called me earlier? ‘A fat, four-eyed sea cow’. I was only trying to show him how to use the food processor. It’s as if, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much bloody work I put in, he just… can’t…” 

She trails off, and seems briefly to be miles away. 

“Get it up?” Wadud suggests, adding precisely the right amount of milk and sugar to her tea without needing to look. 

“Don’t be a twat,” she says, but smirks. “You get that from him, you know. That sense of humour. I’m the most miserable woman on the planet.” 

“Naw, you’re a riot,” he says, bringing over the tea and sitting next to her at the dining room table. “You’re a regular… huh. I can’t think of any female comics. That’s not great, is it.” 

“Wonder Woman,” she says. 

“Nah, that’s not – never mind.” 

“Well, today I feel more like the Incredible fucking Sulk,” she huffs. 

Wadud giggles. This isn’t so bad, he thinks. Maybe we do get along after all. He watches his mother drink the tea he made and smiles, drumming his fingers on the table.   

Saima looks up. She’s never liked it when he does that. She watches his hands. The nails are painted, alternating black and blood red, and he is wearing several rings. She looks up at his face, her son’s face; the shaggy hair, the stubble, the wide soulful, brown eyes so much like his father’s. She sips her tea. 

“How’s your love life, anyway?” Saima asks in as casual a voice as she can manage, which is to say not casual at all. “Your brother brought another girl to meet us last week. I didn’t like her – kept laughing with her mouth full. Still, that’s two in as many months. He’s becoming quite the Don Quixote.” 

“Don Juan,” says Wadud flatly. “Don Quixote’s the mad one.” 

“That’s what I said,” she says. “So, when can we expect to meet one of your… ah… friends?” 

Wadud’s face is carefully set. He studies her curious expression, trying to read the intent. 

“What do you mean ‘friend’? You mean like Alex?” he asks, a weak attempt at humour that only makes him feel queasier. 

Saima just blinks, and sips. 

“What?” says Wadud. 

“You know,” she says. 

But he doesn’t. If this is her latest attempt to address the ongoing controversy that is his sexuality, it is a particularly clumsy and unwelcome one. After months upon months of torrential torment and abuse throughout his adolescence, things have quieted on that front in recent years, and given way to a long summer of unspoken truths and wilful ignorance – a truce of sorts, which Wadud, for one, considers extremely tolerable in comparison, when he allows himself to consider it at all. What possible reason could she have to bring it up again now?

“I… uh… yeah. Ha,” he says, squirming in his seat. 

“What? I’m just asking. God, there’s no need to be so bloody sensitive.” 

There it is, the venom creeping into her voice. The very tone triggers deep panic. Wadud runs his hands through his hair. He can feel it coming now, that humiliating, swelling lump in his throat. 

Saima swills the tea around in her mug.

“I only thought you might have finally come around,” she mutters. 

Wadud slams his hand onto the table and stands up abruptly. His mother jumps. 

“Hey, so, I quit my job.” 

“What?” 

“What time are you leaving again?” 

“You quit your job?” 

“Cus to be honest, I’m not really sure I remember even inviting you in, and now, now, you’re sitting here, you’re drinking tea, and I actually have a lot of stuff I was going to do today and I can’t really do any of it with you sitting here, so I really think you need to be leaving now, actually, yeah. S-sorry, but, yeah.” 

Saima looks around, as if mugging to an invisible audience; surely this boy can’t be talking to me? 

“You quit your job,” she repeats. 

Wadud grasps at the air impatiently. 

“Kind of feel like you’re ignoring what I just said, mum, I can’t lie –” 

“No, no, no – sorry, no – you – you quit your job?” 

“Yes.” 

“The – the job I got you, yeah? At the Priory. That job.” 

He says nothing.

“Why?” she asks him, looking genuinely baffled. 

Wadud laughs.

“If you had been listening to me earlier maybe you’d know,” he says, and chokes slightly on the lump in his throat, which has only grown with the adrenaline flowing through his system. “The – the sexism,” he says, counting on his fingers. “The homophobia. The feeling that all I’m good for in this world is getting paid minimum wage to get called a Paki while serving cocktails to fucking rich, white –” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…”

“– fucking rich, white –”

“Don’t you swear at me!” she barks, flying to her feet at a speed hitherto unknown to him. He is sure she would have dashed her mug across the room if it wouldn’t have stained her wallpaper. 

“You literally just –” 

“I am your mother! You think you can treat me this way? You think you can get away with it? You think – you bloody think – oooh!” 

She collapses back into her chair, her wrath suddenly replaced with woe.

“My son, my son!” she moans. “Not only lazy, not only a slob, but cruel, cruel to his own mother!” 

“How am I being cruel?” 

“What did I do to deserve this… what did I do?” 

Saima commences simple, wordless wailing. In extreme spite of himself, hearing it induces an uncontrollable instinct in Wadud to embrace her, to kiss her hair, to apologise and promise to make sure that whatever is causing her to make that pained, haunting sound will never, ever happen again. 

Instead, he grabs the mug from the table and hurls it against the far wall; it shatters, showering the area with tea. The wailing only intensifies. 

His fists balled with rage, his teeth gritted, his tongue poised to unleash its own supply of acid, Wadud opens his mouth to speak… only to freeze, and suddenly go white with terror. 

For about five seconds – maybe less – a naked person is standing just behind his mother. A woman, perhaps, with fair hair, pale skin, nodding, and smiling, as if to say, I approve. I approve. Well done, well done, and… and then gone again. It is quite as if they were never there at all. Wadud blinks. He blinks again, desperately, over and over, but no; they are gone, and it is as if they were never there. 

He looks helplessly to his mother. She is gazing up at him, too, only her head is bowed. 

“My son. My ‘son’. Now there’s a fucking good joke if ever I heard it. Ha-ha-hi-larious. You get it from him, you know. That sense of humour. You get it from him, and I do, too, oh yes, I get it from him, I got it from him really fucking good, didn’t I, because you’re the biggest, funniest, loudest joke of them all, aren’t you? You are the fucking punchline of my life. You are the drumroll and the rimshot, and the pie in the face, my face, running all the way over and up and down my stupid face, just so everyone can point and laugh and say ‘that’s her son? that’s her son?’ You make me a clown just by existing, with your nails and your makeup and your hair and your voices and your failures and your embarrassments and your drugs and your filthy mouth and your filthy fingers drumming, all the time, drumming, in my head, in my skull, in my brain, and I feel it so hard, every time, I feel it every time I look at you that I got it from him. Oh yes, I got it from him, and now YOU’RE GOING TO FUCKING GET IT FROM ME –” 

Before he knows what to do she is wrestling him to the ground with inhuman strength as her hands claw out to grasp his throat, but he is holding them back at the wrists, and that noise, that noise, can that be him? That hysterical crying, like a newborn baby? No – giggling, it is giggling. How can there be giggling? 

And then he realises: it is her, and that is the most horrible part of it all.

“Aren’t I your favourite female comic? Aren’t I just? Aren’t I?” Saima repeats relentlessly through bright, bubbly laughter.

Wadud throws her hands away and clambours back until he is pressed against the wall, the same wall where he had hit his head, the same wall tea trickles down, still warm, and dripping into his hair, now. He watches her. 

Three feet away, his mother is lying on the ground, motionless, where her son left her. Through stinging tears, he can see that her eyes are closed, and for a moment feels a dreadful, stomach-plummeting sense of doom unlike anything he has felt in his life. But, slowly, she stirs. After some time watching her, he sees her laboriously shift her shoulders and raise her head up to meet his. Even Wadud is not aware of his own fingers closing around a nearby shard of broken china on the floor. 

“Wad?” she mumbles faintly. “Wadudi? Is that you?” She looks around, beleaguered. “Why are we on the floor?” 

He says nothing; he cannot speak, but only watch her through wide, frightened eyes, and grip the china shard more tightly. 

“I must have… fallen over. God, my head, it… it feels so…” 

Saima rubs her brow, and seems in pain. The sight of that familiar emotion causes Wadud’s grip to loosen, ever so slightly. 

“I must have fallen over,” she says again, and looks back to him as if for confirmation. 

“Yeah, mum,” he replies, fighting back tears. “You just fell over.” 

Wadud rises to his feet, leaving the shard where he found it, and goes to his mother, taking her hands and helping her stand, leaning for support on the upturned chair she’d moments ago been sitting in. He prepares instinctively to help sit her down again, but instead she just stands in place, swaying a little, with a peculiar, dazed look on her face. 

“I fell over,” she says. Wadud squeezes her hand, and she shoots him a sideways glance. 

“Mum, I’m sorry,” he says, and then breaks down, sobbing, falling into her and pressing her body close against his. She rubs his back lightly and pats him twice. 

When he pulls away, she is still wearing the same confused expression as before. 

“I think I’ll go now,” she says, not looking at him. “I think I’m going to go and get your father some sweets. It’s Halloween, you know.” 

Wadud snivels, still clutching her hand. 

“Are – are you – are you alright, mum? You – you fell pretty bad, you – your head – God, are you alright to drive –” 

“I’m fine,” she interrupts, and drops his hand, looking at him again distantly, as if she is not sure he really is who he claims. “I’m fine. Yeah. Quite alright. Just gonna – go to the shop, now, I think.” 

She turns and walks out of the dining room, towards the front door, pausing briefly in the hallway. 

“I’m going to get your father some sweets.” 

He hurries after her, and hands her the umbrella left leaning against the hallway wall; she takes it and examines it, seemingly unsure of its purpose. 

The image sparks a terrible stabbing feeling in Wadud’s chest. In the dining room, the amplifier clicks on by itself again. It is playing Erykah Badu’s Rim Shot – Outro.

“I’ll… see you next week, then?” he says, wanting to sound reassuring. “With the rent money? I promise, mum. I promise I’ll have it.” 

With one last, bewildered look at her son, Saima nods, spins slowly around on her heel, and unclips the umbrella. No, mummy, no, that’s bad luck, thinks Wadud. She unfurls it, pulls the front door open to a landscape of lashing rain, and steps outside. 

Wadud watches and shivers as the darkening night swallows up her small, huddled figure until it has disappeared completely. Somewhere in the madness of the sky, a thunderbolt explodes. 

Evening. 15 minutes past 6. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.   

Supine and languid on the living room sofa, Zara passes the time fluttering her eyelashes against the lenses of her glasses, enjoying the soft, tickling sensation which seems to send dozens of tiny sparks of electricity the entire way from the tips of all those fine little hairs straight through her eyeballs and into the pleasure centres of her brain. It is a quirk from her childhood, ever since she was six and first found out that she was severely shortsighted after bumping into one too many doors in the big, sprawling, five bedroom house she grew up in. 

Her parents had driven her to the eye doctor, a friendly woman who had worn glasses herself (little round ones which Zara thought had made her look like a wise, old grasshopper) and told her to stick her head in a big, freaky-looking cage which itself was positively covered in round glassy lenses, and that the doctor told her was called a photoropter. Zara, who had watched Jurassic Park for the fifth time that very week, had assumed it was the snarling, decapitated head of the vicious photoraptor, a many-eyed dinosaur well-known for its incredible sense of vision. Nonetheless, she knew she was going to have to be brave if she was ever going to stop bumping into doors, which was really beginning to annoy her and, she worried, her parents, too. 

On the drive home, now armed with a brand new pair of her very own glasses (fitted with ‘corrective minus power lenses’, which made her think, delightedly, of Power Rangers), Zara had felt invincible. She had spent the entire journey in the backseat, watching the world streak past the window with fresh clarity, fluttering her eyelashes happily against the glass. 

Eventually, her eyelids begin to feel heavy, and she lets them close, watching the little flock of dollar bills flap their wings in a soothing rhythm for increasingly longer intervals. About a minute ago, when the doorbell had rung, she had assumed it was trick-or-treaters, and opted to remain exactly where she was, only dimly panicked that one of them might peek in through the window and see her lying there like a big, impartial sloth. Why are they bothering in this weather, she had thought. Little shits. She cannot stand children. Then Wadud had opened the living room door a crack and hissed something about his mum, and that he was going to get rid of her, and Zara should just be quiet and not do anything, before slamming the door again behind him. Can do, matey, she had thought, can do.  

Now she can hear, over the constant backdrop of yowling wind, the front door closing, and Saima’s voice in the hallway. She rolls her eyes; just keep her out of this room, lord, I beg you, please, for I cannot be arsed. 

Zara shuffles her position to get more comfortable. Her mind drifts. That feeling of slowly sinking out of awareness is creeping in, like the tide, pulling in and splashing out again, pulling in, and splashing out again. In, out… She barely feels at all wired anymore, and is somewhat disappointed when she checks her digital watch, strains to recollect what time they took the acid, and calculates that it has only been a few hours. She considers that the situation is not particularly stimulating; she has always thought that all the outward symptoms of tripping are just as a product of the setting and the activity as anything else. Now, lying here, her consciousness coasting like a bobbing seagull on a calm ocean, she definitely doesn’t feel normal, exactly – but then again, when does she ever? Still, it must not have been the strongest batch. Maybe she will see what Wadud is saying about the mushrooms once he makes good on his promise to divert his mother. 

Like Wadud, Zara has all but forgotten about Alex – but of course he has not forgotten about her. When she has finally closed her eyes for good, he takes two silent steps closer to stand before the sofa, with bated breath, taking in her stretched, inverted image. The closest part of her to his naked body is her sleeping head. She is a slumbering princess in a fairy tale, and thus, his purpose in all of this mess becomes a little clearer. 

From the recesses of near-sleep, a tiny part of Zara’s brain sends out a gentle query to her body: is she really breathing as loudly as that? 

Her eyes snap open when two clammy hands clamp tightly down over her mouth. The first thought is the smell – sweat, ash, chemicals, boy – and then, oh no it’s the photoraptor no no it’ll eat me up! She shrieks, but it is thoroughly muffled. 

Seeing his face from below, partially obscured by his heaving chest, and flipped upside down, of course, it takes a long time for her to recognise Alex, her friend of seven years, a source of great comfort, security, and fundamental safety. At first, the surprise terrifies her even more; then, another thought occurs: the man in the dining room. She knew she hadn’t imagined it! There are people in the house. They must all be in trouble. Alex must know something she doesn’t. Alex must be here to help her. Alex, her friend of seven years. 

Slowly, he lowers his head to bring his face parallel to hers. His breath is sour, a smell unlike anything Zara recognises, and she can see that there are blue-white, powdery crumbs on his lips and chin, which hover inches from her glasses. This detail provokes a sickening, burgeoning doubt. 

“You’re… awake,” he breathes, speaking like a tape recording slowing down and breaking apart. “I’m… awake… I’m… awake. Alex been asleep… loooong time… like – eyes not working. Like – needing glasses, y-yeah? Not seeing… struggling and… seeing you… and… seeing her… but not seeing. I can see… it… now. She lies…” he whispers. “She lies every day. Her whole LIFE’S a lie! Luh-aye-fuh-LIE! Out, out, out, spit-it-out- damn… spit, spot…uh, candle – candle… need to bring it to light, you see? Yeah?” 

Zara whimpers. 

“So, you know, I, Alex – s’me, I, I come here to… to… well… I think… I mean… I… you… it’s me, and… and it’s you, you know… Zuh…Zuh…Zuh… sounds like sleeping, ha! Little sleeping Zee! Shh! Shhh! Don’t wake the baby.” 

She is dimly aware of the shouting from the next room, and some uncertain sounds of movement. The men, she thinks. The men are breaking in and Alex has lost his mind. Fuck, fuck, fuck, and where the fuck has Yariel gone? 

She tries to gently pry his hands from her mouth, but he does not relent even slightly.  

“You’re gonna wake the baby,” he says crossly. 

She says something in response, and he, confused, brings his ear to her lips and loosens his hands ever so slightly to let her speak. 

“Alex, there are strangers in the house. We’ve got to do something.” 

He recoils, and snorts, clamping his hands down again. 

“I am! Y-you’re… not listening!” 

His tone is sing-song, like a petulant child. He sticks the tip of his tongue out, seeming to be chewing hard over this next thought. 

“Mustn’t fight. We – need to be together, you get it? Like – together… Alex, Zee – A to Z. Then… she’ll finally go away!” 

Zara tries to speak again, and Alex repeats his move to hear her. 

“– fuck’s sake, who? Who is ‘she’?”

He makes a whining, distressed sound. 

There are voices again in the hallway, right outside. Zara notices just how hard her heart is pounding, and thinks: this is it. They’re coming in. It’s now or never, you have to, you have to! 

“She’s leaving now – just for a minute,” Alex mutters. “But she’ll be back. You can’t trust her, she lies about her face –” 

Zara grabs his hands and wrenches them away from her as hard as she can, swinging her legs off the sofa at the same time in an attempt to get to her feet. But she underestimates his strength, and ends up falling against the sofa hard onto the floor with his hands still clasping her face. 

“No! No!” he squeals. “Please! She’s sleeping, you’ll wake her!” 

She wrestles further with his arms, mustering all her strength, Alex babbling incoherently all the while. At some point she realises he is naked. She bites into his finger and he gasps, drawing back. As she jumps to her feet, he swings with the other hand and snags her hair in his fist. She swats at him and her sharp acrylic nails catch his cheek, slashing deep and drawing blood. He cries out, and looks at her like an upset puppy. 

“It’s you!” he whispers. “You’re the witch!” 

He hurls a pillow at Zara so hard she almost falls back down again. 

“Not my Zee! Never my Zee! Liar! Liar!” 

He touches his cheek, sees the blood, and whines again, balling his fists and shaking.  

She backs into a corner and grabs a pair of scissors sitting on the bookshelf, brandishing them at him. Alex immediately gasps and covers his penis. 

“Listen to me,” she says carefully. “You’re not making any fucking sense.” 

“She’s lying –” 

“I am not a witch. I am your friend. Your friend. It is very important that you calm the fuck down.” 

He blinks. 

“Friend?”

“Yes. Friend.”

He suddenly plonks his naked behind onto the arm of the sofa and hangs his head, pouting like a two-year-old. It is quite possibly the last thing Zara expected him to do, but she takes it as a relatively promising development. 

“Look – you only think that I’m a witch because… Alex, I think you’re having some kind of… psychotic break or something, and it’s –” 

He stares listlessly into space, biting his lip, his posture sagging even more, and she realises disgustedly that he is gently slapping his limp penis around with both hands. 

“What the fuck…” Zara says to herself, covering the sight of his lower half with her free hand. 

“She’s a liar,” says Alex, in a very small voice. “She lies.” 

Where the fuck is Yariel?! 

“Al, please. Please listen. You are sick. You need help. Let… let us help you…” 

They’re dead, they’re dead upstairs, they went upstairs and they’re never coming back. 

Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! 

Alex glances at her, his sallow face a portrait of misery and disdain. Zara gulps, noticing frantically how hideously dry her mouth is, and tries to remember when the last time was that she last drank anything. She tries her very best not to let the fear come through in her voice as she says:  

“J-just let us take care of you, yeah?” 

He springs suddenly upright again. He is so fast, it starts her backwards; she curses herself for the show of weakness. She also sees, painedly, that he is grasping a full erection. 

“Medicine,” he nods. 

“Yes – yes, right, yes m-medicine. You n-need medicine. We can get you some. But – you just have to stop, okay? You have to stop acting like a – a fucking crazy fucking p-prick…” 

“Take care of me,” he sneers, taking a step closer. 

Zara jabs out with the scissors and waves them around, slicing the air in a gesture that is meant to be threatening but feels ultimately feeble. 

Another step. 

“Alex – I’m – I’m – I’m really fucking warning you –”

Another.

“I’ve got a sword too,” Alex grins. 

Mid-rant, Wadud throws open the door with a burning zoot in his mouth.  

“– of what has been absolutely, bar none, the most pitiful acid trip of my so-called life. Zee, my boy, please tell me you –” 

Wadud stops. Oh, here we go, he thinks, very near rolling his eyes at himself. Of course the bone-white, naked, blood-smeared, grinning man standing in the living room cannot really be there. This is just another godforsaken hallucination. If anything, it is somewhat reassuring; it helps to confirm the unreality of the strange woman he saw in the dining room earlier. Then he looks over and sees Zara, trembling, pallid, backed against the wall and brandishing a pair of scissors. He looks back to the hallucination. He sees the eyes, the hair – the erection. He sees Alex. He cannot unsee. Alex, he thinks deliriously, you big old goon, what are you playing at here, then, mate? 

“Medicine,” Alex grunts, and punches him in the face. The still-lit joint flies into the air and lands on a tassel pillow, burning it slightly; Zara runs over and stamps it out. 

As Wadud staggers back into the hallway, something strange occurs to him. The basement door is wide open. Not only ajar, like normal, but wide open. They hadn’t left it open, had they? 

The next thing he sees is the underside of a filthy, bare foot flying towards his head. Miraculously, he ducks it – things seem to be moving very slowly at the moment, he observes – and by some miracle finds his hand rooting around in his trouser pocket and producing a crumpled plastic baggie. He holds it up. 

“Look, Xanny,” he says. 

Alex stops, squats, and squints; then his eyes go wide. 

“Medicine!” he blurts. 

Wadud tosses the bag through the basement door before being shoved aside with brutish strength. Alex gallops through the doorway, slamming his body against the cushion of the many coats, a few of which collapse while he, not seeming to notice, scrambles to seize the bag from the floor. 

The last glimpse Wadud gets of his friend before he has slammed the door, drawn the bolt across and prayed to a God no part of him believes in that the lock will hold is Alex’s demented face changing from grinning triumph to horrified shock. Then: frenzied pounding against the basement door. 

“NOOOOO NOOOOOO PLEEEEEASE NOOOOOO YOU CAN’T YOU CAN’T PLLLEEEEEASSSEEE SHE’S DOWN HERE SHE’S DOWN HERE YOU CAN’T PLEASE LET ME OUT YOU CAN’T YOU CAN’T I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRYYYY I WON’T AGAIN I WON’T JUST PLEASE NO NOOO SHE’S HERE…” 

The cries are awful, bloodcurdling. As Zara listens, creeping her way around the corner from the living room into the hallway, hugging the wall for what seems like a lifetime, she expects nothing less than to find one or more of her friends replaced with gory, mangled corpses – and herself soon following suit. But instead, all she finds is Wadud, with his body pinned against the basement door as it jolts and shudders with the banging, and the shaking, and the screaming, as if all the sound and fury of the storm outside is contained within, begging to be released.  

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 14 minutes past 6. Evening.     

Yariel’s ghost is not like the others. Jogging up the stairs to the first floor in search of Alex, their head is full with promise, and imagination as to the revels the rest of the night shall hold, and they are busy considering the sense of presence, calm and purpose they seem currently imbued with when suddenly their feet fall through empty air, missing a step that is not there, trip over themselves, and stumble. They hit the floor face first with a thud, skidding briefly along the scratchy landing carpet, against which they scrape their barely healed chin for the second time. It burns. 

Downstairs, the doorbell rings. 

They lie there, more surprised than anything, almost amused to discover, as one sometimes does, how quickly the human body can go from proudly vertical one second to humbled and horizontal the next. They check the wound again with their fingers, finding a wetness of blood, sure enough, and even more this time. They lick their fingers, enjoying the tangy copper taste, and dab back for more. The thing is really bleeding. 

“I’m fairly alarmed here,” they say to themself. 

The room directly above the living room is the bathroom. This also makes it the room, Yariel realises, which they and Zara heard unmistakable movement coming from downstairs. Unmistakable, they think; I needed to remind myself that it was unmistakable because I am afraid I cannot trust my senses anymore. Banish that thought, mate, banish it now because if you cannot trust yourself then you cannot trust anything, and if you cannot trust anything then you should just lie down right now and die, alright?

Lying here on the landing floor, with the crack under the bathroom door inches from their face, Yariel can see that the lights are on, and there is something moving inside. It moves strangely, shuffling from side to side, casting slight shadows onto Yariel’s curious face, and accompanied by an odd rustling sound, that could be the crinkling of a plastic bag, perhaps, or ruffling feathers. 

Silently, they nudge themself closer, until the door is all pressed against their cheek, and try their best to get one eye under the crack, enough to make out who or what is inside. More shuffling, more rustling. Could something have flown in through the window? 

But the window is shut, of course it is. Can’t you hear the storm? That awful storm? 

Squinting, face half in the carpet, Yariel cannot make out anything more than the sounds, and the shadows, which seem to have picked up in intensity. 

“Al?” they say. “You in there, mate?” 

The shuffling abruptly stops. 

“It’s okay, mate, it’s just me… it’s just Yar… I just wanted to check in. Uh, how’s it hanging?” 

Silence.

“I hope you’re not still feeling quite as, erm, yampy? That was pretty wild earlier, heh… can I like, maybe get you anything? Maybe I could come in, if you –” 

“Bill?” 

The bathroom floor creaks with movement. 

Yariel strains to get a better look, turning their head nearly upside down, causing a drip of blood to trickle onto their lips. They wipe their chin with the back of their hand absent-mindedly. If they could just get a better look… 

“Bill, is that you?”

“Nope,” they chuckle, somewhat relieved to have heard the voice. “Just Yariel.” 

A pause. 

“No, I don’t think you are.” 

“Oh yeah?” they reply. They think they can almost make out a bare foot; some toes; although it could just be a trick of the light. “You sure you’re feeling alright, mate?” 

“I think your name’s Billie. Isn’t it?” 

Yariel stops. No, that’s not what he said. It can’t be. That’s not a name anyone says anymore. Must be imagining things. They are struck, too, by a new, unhappy thought that Alex’s voice sounds… different. 

They hoist their face away from the door ever so slightly. The bathroom floor creaks, louder this time, and a long shadow streaks out from the crack. 

“Whatcha doing out there, Bill?” 

Okay, he definitely said it that time. Alex. Whoever. Don’t be stupid, they think. Of course that’s Alex’s voice. Stop doubting yourself. If you can’t trust your senses – 

“You’re not trying to get a peek under the door, are you? Trying to get a peek at me?” 

The doorknob rattles, and Yariel gasps, hastening backwards, scraping their elbow against a sharp corner of the Codex Seraphinianus. 

“Perv,” the voice gloats. “Dirty perv. You want to see me, silly billy?” 

Yariel glances down at the book; it is not an illustration they recognise, but then, they have not read it all the way through. It depicts a human figure, strung up, naked, with long blonde hair, wounded and bleeding from three small daggers stabbed into its flesh; one in the crotch, and one in each breast. The figure is surrounded by wizened, bearded men in cloaks, who seem in communion with one another, stroking their chins, pointing to the figure, and wearing studious expressions on their faces. The image is framed by a border of strange, alien symbols. 

Yariel closes their eyes and looks away, shaking, breathing steadily in and out. 

“I… I never told you about Billie, Alex,” they stammer. “Wh – where did you hear about that?” 

They tell their feet to move, to stand up, but they do not want to listen. They dart their head about, for anything to grab hold of, any kind of weapon. 

The whole door erupts into raucous, violent shaking. The room itself seems to be laughing. It is so loud and so vigorous that Yariel cannot believe it doesn’t explode off its hinges. 

Then the shaking stops as suddenly as it began. 

The doorknob spins all the way around and the loud latch clicks free. 

“This isn’t Alex, and you know it.” 

Just as the door begins to open, Yariel kicks both feet against it with all their might. 

There is a sound like a muffled thump, and then nothing. At length, the door swings lazily on its hinges to reveal the bathroom, wide, bright, completely empty. 

Yariel looks back down at the book. Now the illustration is of three crocodiles crawling out of bed. But that was always the illustration, they think. That’s just what I saw a moment ago. They blink, and wipe their eyes, and realise that they are crying. 

Yariel pledges never to take LSD again for as long as they live. Just then, as clear as day, unmistakable, they hear the sound of voices, and footsteps from upstairs. Upstairs; the second floor; their floor. 

“Right,” says Yariel, standing up and giving themself a quick smack on the cheek. “I’m calling it. That’s e-fucking-nough. Show’s over. Fucking fat lady’s singing, alright, ladles and jellyspoons, you can all fuck the fuck off now, thank you very much.” 

They half-expect the house to respond, but of course it doesn’t, save for the whining of the wind outside and the faint murmuring of more speech from downstairs. Wait, is that Wadud’s mum? 

“It’s enough,” Yariel repeats firmly. “I will enjoy this fucking Halloween if it kills me. Trick or fucking treat. This is Halloween, this is Halloween, pumpkins scream da-da-deep-dap-doop…” 

They sing it loud as they charge up the stairs, flicking the upper floor light on, and throwing open the doors to the blue room. 

“Alex!” they shout. 

But this isn’t Alex, either. This is two men, each dressed all in black, one with a Michael Myers mask, and the other, a werewolf, both seeming rather caught off-guard. 

Michael Myers pulls out a kitchen knife. 

“Boo.” 

Evening. 20 minutes to 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.        

“Because I’m fucking scared, Wad, alright? Is that what you want me to say? I suppose you feel completely fine with the fact that your best friend just fucking tried to kill us both.” 

His fingers are trembling too much; the weed keeps falling out. Come on, Wadud tells himself, you can do it while you’re pinging, when no one else can, when everyone else is too fucked, they all come to you, to get you to do it, so why can’t you do it now, why can’t you, you fat, fucking sea cow? 

“Don’t exaggerate,” he murmurs. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

“D’you want the short answer?” he says, dropping the weed for the sixth time and calmly picking it up again. 

“I cannot believe you’re rolling a joint now.”

“Someone stamped all over my last one, didn’t she?” 

“You would have burned the house down, you fucking – urggh!” 

Zara kicks a chair and continues pacing around the dining room. 

“I’m doing it, I’m calling the police!” she finally shouts. 

“Am I caught in a time loop?” he says. “I thought it was Halloween, not fucking Groundhog Day.” 

She gives him the finger, kicks a chair again, and paces some more. Wadud has already ruled out calling the police for a litany of reasons, not the least of which is the question of what they would tell his mother. He is adamant that Alex has simply smoked too much, and got himself into a bit of a prang; admittedly, it looks to be a particularly bad one, but they’ve all been there at one point or another in the past. The best thing they can do for him now is what they have done: leave him someplace where he can’t do himself or them any harm, and just wait a couple of hours for all this to blow over. The xans will help. Alex loves xans. 

Wadud is especially persistent on that point – that they just need to wait a few hours before it will wear off and Alex will be himself again. Zara almost wonders whether he knows something he is not saying. 

When Zara had asked how they could know that Alex hadn’t just eaten all the xanax in that one baggie, and that was why he’d so suddenly stopped his banging on the door and screaming, because he had overdosed, naked on the cold basement steps where they had left him, Wadud had simply scoffed that it wasn’t that many xans, and besides, this was Alex they were talking about. Had she forgotten the time he had downed four tablets in one go and still managed to win that night’s game of Catan? He had then half-heartedly suggested that someone go down and check on him in a minute, perhaps armed with a frying pan. 

Zara storms off declaring she is going to go and find where Yariel has got to. 

“Probably in the blue room rolling a joint like a sane person,” Wadud says when she has left. That’s it now, he thinks. She runs into the blue room, runs into Yariel’s arms, crying and talking about how mean and bad Wadud is and how much nicer she and they are, how Wadud is fun and friendly and good for a laugh over a few zoots and all but the two of them, they’re really good people, they’re really doing this whole life thing right, they’re really making mummy and daddy proud, making themselves proud, and then they have loud, passionate sex and leave the door open for him to hear it and feel even worse about the fact he hasn’t had sex in two years and then the next day everyone acts like nothing happened and they’re all the best of friends. 

Wadud tears the paper apart, spilling what little weed has not already fallen out onto the table, and smacks against its hard surface with his fists, grinding the little green crumbs into the wood, into tiny powdery smears, until there is nothing left. He removes the bag of mushrooms from his pocket and stomps over to the kitchen to find the chopping board and knife where he left them. Wadud turns on the gas hob and uses a nearby lighter to spark the flame, which bursts out a little too wide and singes his hand. He curses and kicks the oven door a few times. He fills the pan with water and places it on the hob, adjusting the heat slightly. 

In the basement, Alex swallows the last of the xanax. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 13 minutes to 7. Evening.

Hello, little boy. 

Come down here. 

Come on down here, I won’t bite. Unlike the little princess up there. 

You know me, don’t you? 

We used to dream of each other. 

You remember: my fingers beckoning from behind the bathroom door, inviting you in. Always the same. 

But you never accepted. You never came in. 

It is good to see you again. 

Of course, it is understandable that in all the day’s excitement you may have forgotten. I know how much pressure you are under. It is alright. Let me entice your memory.  

That’s right. I am the Queen of the Fairies. People call me many names: Sycorax, Hecate, Titania, Diana… although personally, I have never thought there was all that much in a name. 

You can call me Mother. 

Does my appearance frighten you? Look at me; I can barely stand. I would not hurt you. Look at my eyes; they would not lie to you. 

You are very lucky. Not many people can see me, Alex. Only the very special little boys. And you are my special little boy, aren’t you? 

Come down here, and sit on my knee. 

Let me tell you a story. 

There is a war beneath your feet that no-one living ever sees. A war between my kind and the enemy. My boy, you can see how much it pains me to admit that for a long, long time, my kind have been losing. My rule is questioned on all sides. Snakes hide in every patch of green grass. All around me, the beautiful kingdom I have built over countless aeons crumbles one piece more with each new passing day. 

But, every so often, I find that a strong, special boy comes along who I can take to be our champion. 

No, dear, allow me. 

You just make yourself comfortable. 

That’s right. 

There was a time when my big brother and I ruled over everything. He took the land; the seas and the skies were mine. The living knew me, and they loved me as their just and gracious leader. Now, I’m all but forgotten. My boy, there are some people who don’t even believe I exist anymore – that I ever existed. People like your friends. Can you imagine how that feels? To be overlooked? To be denied? To be spoken of as mere myth, as a story made up to frighten little children? 

I ache to have it back, Alex. My body is wasting. My belly aches, it has been so long since anyone fed me, so long since I felt the kick of a new, bonny baby boy inside. 

What’s that? 

You want to help us? 

Sweet Alex. Sweet boy. Sweet, strong boy… No, no – not a boy – a man. Strong man. Good man. Champion mine. 

Of course there is something you can do. 

You know what it is already. In fact, you always have. 

Take this axe. 

Yes, the axe. I know, I know you are afraid to part with your sword, for it is a good sword, and has served you well. But swords are for knights in shining armour, and they do not exist. They never existed. Axes are a much older tool. The axe was the arm of the first men. The axe is a tool to strip the towering trees of their vanity and tame the fiercest stud to a whimpering bitch. Only the strongest can wield it. 

You see, the grass is always greener on the other side. Even one such as me is not absolved from the sin of envy – I can admit that. But when the grass has grown too high, you can no longer see the sky. You can no longer feel the moon. You can no longer recognise your Mother. 

Do your part, my son. Make me proud. Feed me. Fill my belly. Make me live again. And in return I will give you that which all strong and special men desire. 

Go.  

Oh, of course – how silly of me! 

How silly your Mother can be!  

No, no – let me get that for you. 

The bolt on the basement door slides open. 

Evening. 20 minutes to 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.        

Outside the house, in the heavy dark, and the thundering rain, even the scattered handful of trick-or-treaters brave enough to make the initial attempt are throwing up their hands now and crying that it is too much, they cannot go on, damn the children, damn their little broken hearts, there’s always next year. Flying feet crush snails to jelly. Angry black strays hide under dripping ledges. Spiders drown in gutters, their webs flooded. Birmingham’s thousands of unhoused huddle under what spare shelter they can find, cramming exhausted, famished bodies onto slanted bus stop benches designed to make them suffer. A high street tree is uprooted in nearby Harborne, collapsing the roof of a newly opened vape shop. An old man, turned away from Waitrose for not knowing it is a Sunday, suffers a fatal heart attack when a white plastic bin liner soars ghostlike towards him on the gale force wind. Hooligans make the empty streets their own, smashing pumpkins on the kerb and kicking off side-view mirrors. Families keep warm by fires and television sets, safely playing out their grisliest fantasies. New phobias are born. Fresh traumas carved on youthful minds. Frost bites. Rain falls. Wind howls. Thunder claps. Lightning strikes. The lockdown is over! says October. Long live the lockdown! 

In the relative security of the black BMW, the men known today as Gamma and Beta are playing the world’s least enthusiastic game of I Spy. The most recent round culminated in the revelation that Gamma cannot spell ‘upholstery’, and Beta is slowly losing the will to live. They already had one false start earlier; both had been masked up, and about to get out of the car when the phone had buzzed again to show two texts from Alpha, reading: 

ALPHA: wait do not cum yet

ALPHA: stand by

And that had been it, for the last half an hour. For Christ’s sake, what are they playing at up there? Beta thinks. And what’s with all this ‘cum’ shit? What, is this Alpha character bent or something? Or just a fucking idiot? Probably both, he decides. Who put him in charge, anyway, the fucking illiterate… Why is it that everywhere he goes, Beta seems to be the only one with any bloody brains? Aren’t we supposed to be living through an overeducation crisis? Even this guy’s probably got a 2:1 in Sports Science, he muses, catching Gamma’s vacant expression in the rear-view mirror. Not him, though. Beta had turned down all his UCAS offers; of course, he’d got some of the best A-levels in his school year, but they still hadn’t been good enough to get him any Russell Group attention, so what was the point? He had decided then that he didn’t need some poncey cuckold in a tweed suit to teach him what was what; he was going to be a self-made man. Things had started out pretty well with an apprenticeship at a scaffolding company working on films, concerts, TV shows, that kind of thing. It was alright; he got to hang out on sets all day, meet plenty of famous people, and he greatly enjoyed working with his hands. It meant he could spend all his time thinking, planning, because he had a great deal of thoughts and plans about a great many things in that big old brain of his. The trouble was that Beta had never been able to stomach people looking down on him, treating and talking to him like he was just another slurring, slow-witted Brummy. On one particularly irritating job, he had been getting pretty friendly with that absolute sort who played Ada on Peaky Blinders – they had been talking all week, and he was sure he was getting somewhere, when suddenly the studio manager had sauntered over and been unfortunate enough to choose the wrong tone of voice in asking Beta if he would be so kind as to stop harassing the talent. Beta had taken exception to this and ended up breaking the man’s nose. One year later, he was selling weed out of his brother’s van and planning to stick up a jeweller’s in Selly Oak with that fake-titted, treacherous slut he had been desperate enough to call his woman at the time. Go figure. Well, tonight was going to change all that… or that was the idea, at least. Khaan was promising three grand each, plus whatever they could carry from the house (which, this being Edgbaston, Beta bet was just plenty) just to put a mask on, smash the place up a bit, and generally freak the kids out – “give ‘em a good scare” were the exact words – show this ‘Simon’ cunt that the big dog was not to be messed with. Beta is good with money, when he gets the chance; it should only take a little forward thinking and he’ll be able to use this payout to turn things back around. Starting with finally moving out of his mum’s. 

“Oi,” says Gamma, boredly. “I said ‘something beginning with S’.” 

“Hmm? Oh. Uhh… I dunno…” 

Beta’s pocket comes suddenly alive; the phone is buzzing. He pulls it out, and reads the text, happily savouring it.

“Showtime.” 

He puts on the witch mask. 

“Alhamdulillah, my days,” says Gamma, and quickly takes another few fat snorts of coke before pocketing the switchblade and putting his own mask on. The two men exit the car, fighting the wind not to be instantly knocked back inside. They come to the house, black and fierce-looking against the turbulent sky, with great, staring yellow squares for eyes. 

Beta considers how easy it would be to turn around now and spend another evening watching porn and searching for part-time bartending work on Indeed.com. 

Come in, says the house. We can’t start without you. 

Beta and Gamma circle the building and approach the back fence leading to the garden. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 17 minutes to 7. Evening.     

“Let’s get this party started,” Wadud says to himself, and decants the finely minced mushrooms from the chopping board into the steaming pan of hot (but not boiling) water. They drop with a pleasant sizzle, although the strange earthy smell makes him gag, as always. A joint hangs lazily from the corner of his mouth. He scrapes away the last of the sticky, brown residue off the board with the knife’s edge, and is about to conclude the operation by dropping the board into the water too when he realises that would be a mistake. It occurs to Wadud just how extraordinarily goshdarn high he is, and the thought makes him chuckle. 

He cranks up the heat on the gas hob, thinking how he is just like Marco di Campo or one of those other white people. The room falls into temporary silence as the last few seconds of Shirley Bassey’s Get the Party Started fade into whatever is next up on the queue. But the silence seems to last a little too long, this time. Wadud shoots a mild frown over towards the dining room, where the speakers are set up. 

“Don’t make me come over there,” he says. 

Still nothing. He unleashes an almighty sigh and drags his feet reluctantly –

“IT’S IN THE TREES! IT’S COMING!” 

Though Wadud jumps a good foot into the air, at least he does not fall and hit his head this time. Although he does not remember queuing Hounds of Love. 

Heading back to the oven, just then, he feels the air suddenly seem to become much colder, as if there is a breeze. His first thought is that the garden doors have blown open. He turns around. 

From his current vantage point, Wadud can see through the kitchen doorway into the dining room, including the wall with the archway that leads into the hall. This means, with dawning horror, he can make out the naked girl standing there now. He thinks she can only be ten, at the oldest. She has dried blood all over her chest and she is shaking her head, looking incredibly upset. A faraway part of him notices the music on the speakers skipping, stopping and starting. 

“I’ve always been—coward…don’t–what’s good–me…”

She puts a finger to her lips. 

His reaction is to turn and walk away as quickly as possible into the small pantry at the end of the kitchen, close the door, and sit down with his head in his hands. 

Gamma is the first into the dining room. He does his best to attempt to crack the garden doors open slightly, but the wind has other ideas, and he quickly decides it’s best to just get inside. Beta follows suit. The room appears to be empty. 

“Two upstairs,” whispers Beta. 

“What?” says Gamma. 

Beta peels up the bottom of the witch mask to free his mouth. 

“Two upstairs,” he hisses. “With Alpha and… what is it, Delta? Yeah. The other two are down here somewhere.” 

He closes the garden doors, gently. 

“You wanna take the living room?” 

Gamma nods, but does not move. 

“Did you even look at the floor plan?” asks Beta. 

“Course I did,” lies Gamma. “I’m just thinking of what I’m gonna say.”

“That way,” says Beta, pointing to the archway. “And say nothing.” 

Gamma says nothing. His head is hurting, and he can’t seem to stop sniffing. He thinks he may have overdone it on the coke. Why did they have to stay in the car for so long? He creeps across the dining room, eyeing the box of drugs on the table, and enters the dark hallway, disappearing from Beta’s view. 

Beta’s first act is to walk over to the amplifier and turn the music off. He could never stand Kate Bush. Just another hysterical bloody woman not fit enough to make it on her looks, raking in millions of undeserved pounds airing her dirty laundry for the whole world to see – and a particularly shrill woman, at that. It’s exactly the kind of shit he would have expected people like this to listen to. He thinks he could definitely get something for the amp, though, and makes a mental note to come back for it. 

He takes a quick look around and then pushes a plant pot off the mantlepiece, just for fun. It shatters on the floor, spilling soil everywhere – and then Beta frowns with disgust. The soil is moving; writhing. It’s full of worms. 

31st of OCTOBER | The FEAST of ALL HALLOW’S EVE | on The LORD’S Day 

A room in the house. Enter ALEX, armed with a hammer.

ALEX 

What happy eve is this, that finds thee hence? 

Good evening, Floor; how farest thou, Wall? Thou art, 

Forsooth, the loveliest wall that e’er I saw,

And yet, I do detect a stoniness

In thy demeanour. Ha! I was, erenow, 

Myself afflicted thus, without a hope,

Tormented by the weary weight of things,

And standing, wall-like, with my back to all,

Thus saddled with a mere supporting role.   

But O! what lies the blinkered fool believes, 

Who cannot see the forest for the trees! 

What is the matter? Still art thou silent? 

I think, good Wall, thou art not only blind, 

But dumb, to boot! Canst not thou see the truth?

Ah! I ween thine eyelids are too heavy, 

For sleep hath made a death-mask of thy face! 

Well, Wall, I prithee, do not look so grim; 

The answer to thy pains doth lie herein. 

The fairy queen, with gentle fingertips,

Hath lifted back at last that fateful veil,

That filled the world with fog and misery,

Distorting cruelly every pretty face, 

Obscuring all in darkness and disgrace.

Gone is the mask the madness put on me; 

Fairer by far, the face that went unseen. 

Now dost thou grasp it, Wall? Or must I spell 

It out for thee more simply? Very well: 

We never woke this morning, none of us. 

We slumber still, as blissful as a babe,

Conceiving not a thing beyond the belly.  

This world is nothing but a dream; our lives, 

But shadows passing. Nought can hurt us here. 

And now she’s come to wake us up. Oh yes!

The queen doth keep her revels here to-night!  

And thus, sweet Wall, let not thy gentle heart 

Be so forlorn, my friend! For here’s the part

Where all thy senseless sorrows meet their end! 

[He strikes the hammer against the wall.]

ALEX

Unmask! Unmask! 

Enter BETA. 

BETA 

What the fuck? 

ALEX 

What, ho! The second witch?

Come, you hag, and taste my axe-blade. 

[ALEX attacks BETA. BETA is slain.]

ALEX 

But who would have thought the old girl to have 

So much blood in her? The strings are showing; 

These colours are much too vivid. What’s that, 

Mother? Once more thy tongue anoints mine ear…

[Listening] Ah. I see. All senses must be roused. 

[ALEX drinks the blood.]

ALEX

The taste is… most convincing… 

Well done, Mother! Well done! 

Now no cost can be called beyond the pale, 

For knowing life is nothing, nothing’s lost.

And so I want for nothing; my sole wish 

Is for the music of merry mayhem! 

And therefore, I’ll make haste and find the others, 

To likewise liberate them from the dream. 

And once the veil is lifted from their eyes,

There’s valour, no doubt, in the saviour’s prize.

The film will finish; black will fill the screen, 

While all the actors bow before the Queen. 

And thus, I think I must not tarry more – 

But scribe in scarlet ink the swansong score!

Exit ALEX. 

Evening. 3 minutes to 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.     

“We are of the going water and the gone.

We are of water in the Holy Land of water.

Don’t you know you’ve kept him waiting? 

Look who’s here to see you!” 

The man called Gamma, who has been busy in the living room unplugging and sorting all the cables to the television, Xbox, and record player (for ease of carrying back to the car) stops suddenly when he thinks he hears a knocking coming from somewhere in the house. Then – clearer this time – distant voices; someone shouting in an agitated, yet strangely theatrical tone. Gamma moves cautiously across the room to the door, drawing his switchblade, sweating and breathing hot and heavy under his plastic mask. He peers out through the door’s crack into the dark hallway, trying to focus with one eye closed, and then jumps back at the sudden streak of white which scampers past and up the stairs. 

Gamma throws open the door and leaps bravely into the hallway, slashing at thin air. 

“Yarrggh!” he growls. 

The footsteps above continue quickly onto the landing, and seem to move further up still before he loses them. A door slams somewhere. Gamma thinks that now he knows how a ghost must feel. 

“Uh… Beta? Alpha?” he says, into the darkness. The darkness does not answer. Nor does the dining room, where he can see the lights are on, although flickering sporadically. He realises the music is still on too, a strange, angry song, which also seems to be glitching, stuttering. What’s the other one? he thinks, trying to remember his Call of Duty: Black Ops terminology. Charlie? Sigma? Gamma! No, wait, Gamma’s his one. Isn’t it? Why couldn’t he have been Alpha, anyway? 

Sniffing, Gamma holds the knife out defiantly as he enters the dining room and becomes the first witness to the carnage within. His initial, baffled thought upon seeing the floor and walls is: who’s been painting? Then he notices the darker chunks in the red; the little black hairs; the globs of pink; the white fragments of bone, which turn his stomach most of all. The body of his partner in crime is lying peacefully by the garden doors, whose once-white curtains have borne the brunt of the splatter. Yes, there is the body, he thinks, but what’s happened to the head? That’s just a puddle of smashed pumpkin with a Halloween mask floating on top.

The vomit comes so fast that Gamma does not have a chance to pull his mask up in time, and almost chokes. When he does get his mouth free, its contents spills out onto his front in warm dollops. He has to grab the table to steady himself. He rips off the soiled mask and hurls it aside; it hits a wall with a wet smack. 

“POOR LITTLE THING! (Red, red, roses)

THE BLACKBIRD! (Pinks and posies)

WINGS IN THE WATER! (Red, red, roses, go down) 

GO DOWN!!!”

Gamma flaps a hand feebly in the direction of the amplifier, as if it might respond to gestures alone. A foot away from the mess, he sees some scattered teeth; something that could have been an eyeball. The vomit comes again, going all over the floor this time, the force knocking him down with it. Shivering and moaning, he takes the bag of coke from his pocket, empties its contents onto the back of his palm and snorts the lot in one go. He sits on the floor, sputtering and spitting, and lets the hit come. 

“Deus et dei domino inferno, 

Deus et dei domino inferno, 

Deus et dei domino inferno,

Deus et dei domino inferno.” 

For some time, Gamma stays put, coldly absorbed by the gore, staring into it until he feels he has overpowered it and regained self-control. Or at least until his heart rate has slowed down a bit. 

The mushrooms on the hob boil and blacken. 

Once he has gathered the strength, Gamma takes out his burner flip phone and enables the camera. He takes a grainy photograph of Beta’s body and texts it wordlessly to Alpha. 

Only a few yards away, Wadud sits similarly, locked in the pantry, more terrified than he ever has been, praying to God that someone might come and save him before he decides he is able to bring himself to go and investigate who or what has been making all those horrible noises. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 16 minutes to 7. Evening.     

“Mmfffmfmfmff,” says Zara, sobbing through the gag. She is sitting in the blue room with her hands and feet zip-tied to a chair, and looking at Yariel, who is face-down on the floor a few feet away, with their hands zip-tied behind their back, and their ankles zip-tied together. The one in the Michael Myers mask is slumped on the sofa, picking at his fingernails with the tip of his knife. The one in the werewolf mask is sweeping all of Zara’s belongings from her chest of drawers into a bin bag. He is even taking the photographs. That is something Zara cannot understand. It makes her think that maybe this is not just a random act of terror; maybe this is personal. And then she goes back to the thought she keeps fighting against: that this is it. The end of it all. She and they; their last night alive. 

A few minutes ago, Yariel had decided that the fact the men had begun to steal things was probably a good sign as far as all their chances of not being murdered were concerned. That had allowed their mind to slow down a little; until then, the thoughts had just been pouring in in a steady deluge, almost a new one with each heartbeat, and all far too slippery and fleeting to grasp. These were mainly images: the possible faces behind the masks – old bullies? Vengeful family members? Hideous monsters?; the men leaving, giving Yariel enough time to fold their legs to their chest, slip their hands underneath, and find a weapon for whenever they returned; another man arriving, gleefully holding up Zara’s severed head; but mainly of the knife, that big, steel kitchen knife, going to work on all of their vital organs, taking its time, relishing every slice. 

Then Zara had come, and that had been the worst part yet. Yariel had seen the fear strike her face, when she found them lying there like that in the blue light, and Yariel, also gagged, unable to tell the woman they love that the blood was just from their chin, that they weren’t dying. The men had each grabbed one of Zara’s arms, and she hadn’t even fought them. The whole time, she had just been staring into Yariel’s eyes, and Yariel had been staring back, and the two of them had remained like that all while she was shoved into the chair and tied up, and still, at this very moment, their stares hold. 

Yariel has always been open to notions of parapsychology – extrasensory perception, mind control, ghosts – if only because of their absolute confidence that if 99 out of 100 academics and scientists tell you that what you saw wasn’t real, then that means it almost certainly was. Before today, though, as much as it always disappointed them, they could not truthfully have said that they had ever had any direct experience with such things themself. Now, they had managed two in less than an hour, because another thing they had recently decided, lying on the floor, was that it really had been a ghost in the bathroom earlier. And now, they found themself having a telepathic conversation with their girlfriend. 

They’re going to kill us, Zara thinks. 

No, Yariel replies. They just want our shit. 

But the knife…

Just trying to scare us. And probably compensating for something. 

Zara smiles; although the gag mostly obscures it, Yariel can see it in her eyes. They could not have anticipated just how much better it would make them feel to see her smile. 

We’re going to die, Zara thinks. 

No. We’re going to live. 

What about Wad? Al? 

Yariel looks around the room. This had been another prior thought; that if they could just create some kind of signal to the other housemates, knock over a mirror or something, they might be able to raise enough suspicion to… but there was the problem. To what, exactly? Incite them both to come upstairs and get tied up, too? At least there might be a kind of comfort in all of them being together again. But Yariel had seen Michael Myers texting someone on what was surely a burner phone. That had made them think that there might be others involved already; and who knows where they lurked, what they were up to? 

Yariel looks back to Zara. 

Are either of these the man you saw downstairs? they think. 

Zara shakes her head. 

Then there must be others. Baby I am so, so sorry for not believing you. 

You fucking better be! 

Yariel laughs. The werewolf barks and kicks them in the back. 

“Shut your mouth,” it snarls. “Or the next one’s in your balls.” 

It crouches down beside Yariel and pokes them a few times. It looks over to Michael Myers. 

“Does it even have balls?” it asks. 

“Why don’t we find out?” Michael replies, and rises to his feet with a satisfied sigh. 

No no no no no not Yar please God take me instead please please, thinks Zara. I love you, Yariel, please God, you can’t, you can’t!

Don’t let them scare you, Zee. Don’t let them.  

Zara is moaning and sobbing, shaking against the zip-ties which dig into her bare skin. Michael Myers turns slowly to her, pointing with the knife. 

“Youse two are special friends, yeah? That even legal? I thought we were meant to be the degenerates.” 

The werewolf yaps in a version of laughter. 

“You know: if I cut her tits off,” Michael points to Zara, “Maybe drew on a bit of stubble, I don’t think I’d even be able to tell them apart.” 

The werewolf howls. 

Don’t listen to them. Don’t let them get to you. I’m right here.  

Using the knife, Michael Myers plays eenie-meenie-minie-moe between the two. He settles on Yariel, and Zara begins to scream. He cocks his head at her and puts a finger to his rubber lips. The werewolf yaps again. With sudden force, Michael yanks Yariel up by the scruff of their shirt and brings the knife sharply to their neck. 

Yariel does not flinch. For the first time, they can smell his breath, his stale deodorant, and they think: what are you? Just another fucking man. 

“What’ll it be, then, little lady?” Michael says. “Hmm? Trick or treat?” 

Yariel does not flinch. Nor do they take their eyes off Zara, nor their mind off the steady thought chain: I am right here. Don’t let them get to you. I am right here. 

“Maybe it has got balls after all?” the werewolf drools. 

Michael takes Yariel’s neck and jerks their head around to force their face to him. 

“Look at me.” 

I’m right here, Zee. Don’t let them. I love you so much. 

“Look at me or she dies.” 

Yariel looks at him. His dark eyes have yellowed whites. 

“You know,” he says. “I bet that I can read your mind. I bet right now you’re thinking: they’re just robbers. They wouldn’t hurt us. That knife’s probably not even real. Probably just a prop from a costume shop. Same costume shop they bought these masks from, yeah? We just have to lie here in silence and take it, like good little girls, and it won’t be long before they let us go. Yeah. What d’you think? That about right? I bet it is, innit? That a gold star for Mikey, miss?” 

“Right!” growls the werewolf. 

Michael makes Yariel nod three times. Through her gag, Zara is talking rapidly, frantically, but they cannot understand her. 

Darling. Don’t let them get to you. Please. 

“Yes, I think it is. Well: I really hate to break it to you, but you seem to be labouring under something of a misunderstanding. Y’see, while we are certainly more than happy to help ourselves to your drugs, your house, and all of your possessions… we’re actually not thieves.” 

He raises the knife’s edge to Yariel’s cheek. It shimmers prettily in the blue light. 

“We’re monsters.” 

I love you, Zara. Please don’t let them in. 

“This is not a prop,” says Michael. 

He very gently presses the blade into Yariel’s cheek, drawing the slightest bit of blood. 

“And this,” – Michael points to his face – “is not a mask.” 

The phone in his jacket pocket buzzes. He drops Yariel abruptly to the floor and stands to full height again, yawning lightly, and takes the phone out. When he sees the picture, it takes him a full thirty seconds to understand what he is looking at. 

“Fuck!” he yells, and runs out of the room. For a moment, the werewolf just stands there looking confused. Then Michael Myers pops his head back round the door. 

“I’ll – I’ll be right back. Just stay here.” 

“What is it?” the werewolf whines. Things had just started to pick up! 

“Just fucking stay here!” 

Michael goes again. The werewolf looks defiantly at Zara. 

“Soon as he comes back, we can pick up where we left off!” he snorts. “Then I can show you my teeth! What big claws I have! Haw-haw!” 

He turns around and resumes indiscriminately sweeping objects off shelves and tables to topple and clatter into his bin bag. 

The rain outside matches Zara’s tears, and for a moment, a flash of lightning through the skylight turns the blue room white. Five seconds later, the resulting clap of thunder causes even the werewolf to bristle. 

Five seconds, thinks Yariel. It’s moving away. And, checking that the busy werewolf is not looking, they begin to slowly pull their knees towards their chest. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 2 minutes past 7. Evening.    

As Alpha rushes downstairs, in the flickering landing light, he fails to notice the bloody footprints dotting the staircase, or the handprints all over the bannister. He does not see the ghosts standing in the corners, smiling at him, does not feel them stroking his hair, or touching his face, or tugging on his clothes, and he does not know, therefore, that they are eager, so eager for him to join them. Alpha does not see these things, because he cannot see anything but the tip of his own nose. He is right about one thing, and only one thing: he is a monster. But he is also a man. 

Alpha enters the dining room.

“Holy fucking God,” he whispers, and takes off his mask. He does a little dance on the spot, his body torn between warring intents to simultaneously step closer to the scene and to stay exactly where he is. 

He turns desperately to Gamma, who is sitting next to him on the floor, also maskless, and somehow looking at once incredibly alert and unbelievably exhausted. Alpha sees the vomit on him, and then smells the rest, drying by his feet, and it is this which finally causes him to jump backwards, clinging to the door for support. 

His mouth gapes open and shut over and over, like a fish. 

“What… what…” 

Gamma throws his hands in the air as if to say: yeah, but what are you gonna do? 

“Wuh-wuh-it… I mean, wuh… wuh… who? Who? Who?”

Gamma sniffs. 

“Think it was one o’ the, uh, the fuckin’, you know… rah-rahs,” he slurs. 

“What? Fam, are you – are you fucking high right now?” 

“Yeah!” says Gamma, giggling. 

Alpha stoops down and wrenches Gamma up sharply by his hood, holding the knife to his throat.   

“Little fucking shit do you mind telling me what the fuck happened to his head???” 

“Listen,” says Gamma slowly, and swallows. “Charlie. I been thinking… and hear me out on this one, yeah… I think we should call the police.” 

Alpha smacks him in the face and throws him against the wall. Gamma slumps to the floor, where Alpha kicks him repeatedly. 

“You fucking stupid fucking…” 

He stops when he finally sees the bloody footprints heading out into the hallway. 

“Fuck me!” he spits, and sprints out and up the stairs. He kicks open the first door he finds – Alex’s bedroom – and he stabs the empty bed, and he knocks over all the action figures, and he breaks the guitar, and he turns over the chest of drawers, and he slashes and scrapes his big knife against every wall, and then he runs back out into the landing, screaming a demented battle cry, and he kicks the bathroom door clean off its hinges, and he smashes the medicine cabinet, and he shatters the great mirror with his boots, bellowing: 

“I WILL FIND YOU FUCKING CUNTS GONNA KILL YOU AAAAAAALLLLLL!!!” 

Evening. 5 minutes past 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.     

In the kitchen, Wadud’s head edges from behind the pantry door like a quivering fish emerging from a bed of coral, and he takes a quick look out. Yes. It is just as it has been the past four times he has checked. The kitchen is full of naked people. 

The first time, there had only been three or four, calmly walking around and uttering things to each other like guests mingling at a party. Wadud had closed the door, sat back down, and waited patiently for the hallucination to stop, passing the time by chewing on the inside of his cheek and drumming his fingers on his knee. The second time he had looked (he did not know how much time was passing between looks) there had been more people, perhaps seven or so, and, even more alarming, he had heard what had sounded a lot like Alex’s voice, only different somehow in tone, and also some loud banging noises. Wadud had closed the door, sat back down, and waited patiently for the hallucination to stop, chewing again on the inside of his cheek and drumming his fingers on his knee. The third time he had looked, there had been at least a dozen people, closely packed together in the kitchen, some sitting their naked buttocks on the counter, some looking around in the fridge, some laughing, with their arms thrown jovially around one another – and this time, when he had looked out, a few of them had turned to look back at him, and smiled and waved. Wadud had closed the door, sat back down, and chewed his cheek until he could taste blood. 

The fourth time was the worst. This time, he had opened the door, and they had been standing directly outside; they couldn’t have been any more than a foot away from him; and they had smiled, and they had beckoned him to come out and join them. Wadud had closed the door, sat back down, and smacked himself in the face until he couldn’t feel it anymore. The thing was, all of them had some kind of wound, or blood, or scar, or horrific bruise or something. Some were worse than others – but they all had them. That is the thing he can’t stop seeing when he closes his eyes. 

This time – the fifth time – they are standing on either side of the kitchen in two long lines, creating a path in the negative space. The two lines lead out into the dining room, around the corner and out of sight, and they begin at the pantry door; why, there are two of them right here, right next to his head, standing right on either side of the door, like porters, or ushers. And again, just as before, each one of the strangers is smiling at him, nodding, beckoning. And their smiles are… really rather nice. Good. Authentic. Real. 

It is not such a bad vibe after all. 

Wadud opens the door all the way, and walks through the kitchen, all the way the procession of smiling, bloody, naked people. At first he just nods awkwardly, but then he starts to smile back, and even laughs politely a little. He goes through the dining room and sees the bloody corpse on the floor whose head is just wet lumps. He sees the other man, lying motionless, next to some vomit. Wadud walks out into the hallway and blood blood everywhere bloody handprints up the stairs, where the people are still lined up. As he ascends the stairs, keeping careful not to brush anyone’s private parts, Wadud thinks: how many of them can there be? 

“One hundred and twenty-two,” one person says happily. 

“And counting!” another adds. 

Wadud nods, thinking that that seems about right. He notices that there are long, winding scratches all over the walls, like some creature has been dragging its claws around, and makes a mental note to sort that out before his mother comes to collect the rent. He comes finally to his bedroom door, where the two lines of bodies seem to end, and the last two smiling strangers gesture for him to go inside. One of them has a bloody gash where their right cheek should be; the other’s throat has been ripped open. 

Wadud enters his room, and closes the door behind him. It is empty. He locks the door, turns off all the lights, gets into bed, and pulls the covers over his head. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 7 minutes past 7. Evening.

Crumpled in a heap on the dining room floor, with six flies buzzing around his head, Gamma sinks deeper into his present dream. It is the kind of dream that the dreamer is deliberately, desperately spinning as they go along, an active antidote to unwanted reality. This one is half-memory, half-fantasy: he is eight years old, and cozied up in his childhood bed – the one with the dinosaur sheets – swaddled in multiple blankets, as warm and toasty as the sweet-smelling pain au chocolat that his grandmother has just brought up for him, smiling as she shuffles through the door, singing that song she always used to sing. In the reality these sensations are drawn from, he was sick with gastric flu. But here, there is no sickness, nothing wrong; he is safe, he is provided for, and utterly content with nothing more than existence itself. Now he is not the bad man with the funny name passed out on a stranger’s dining room floor, and wearing his own lunch. He is worlds away. He is years ago. He is so very, very far from this house, and this strange, frightening night. 

Cold hands slap Gamma’s cheeks, coaxing him gently back to reality. He blinks. 

Nana? 

But it is only the house. He’s still here. It is real. 

Gamma tries to sit up, and his head feels fit to burst. The lights are so bright. There is a horrible grinding, screaming sound gnashing at his earlobes from the speakers to his left – GAY UGLY AND HARD TO UNDERSTAND by Black Dresses, but of course he does not know that. All he knows is that it feels like a dozen pneumatic drills hammering into his temple. 

“I WANT THE GENTLENESS THAT ONLY YOU WERE OFFERED!!!

I WANT A PEACEFUL LIFE!!!”  

Please, God, Gamma thinks. Allah. Buddha. Any of you. Please just let it all be a dream. 

He hugs the table leg like it’s his only friend; it helps him rise, trembling, to his feet. The brain baking inside the skull on his shoulders is very near to being dangerously dehydrated. Dizziness rocks his balance. His eyes roll around in their sockets, and then land on the corpse again. They notice the flies which have found it already, and the sight churns his stomach afresh. 

It’s not his fault he does not notice the smell of the gas still leaking from the hob. 

He sees the empty blue baggie, and has to hold back a retch. Even if he did have any coke left, he is at the stage where the thought of snorting anything more only makes him want to vomit. He presses one finger to his nostril and hocks out a glob of phlegm bitterly onto the table. 

Something tells Gamma that what he would really like is a joint. Just to take the edge off. Yeah, a bit of weed. To calm his nerves. It would help him get back to his job. Focus on the work. Yes. A joint. A joint would do it. A joint would make everything all better.

And oh, look, says the house. 

Over there, on the table. 

Look in the box. 

Evening. 4 minutes past 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.      

While Gamma’s dream of his grandmother delivers pastries to his perfect bedroom again and again, the man called Alpha is storming Wadud’s room – but of course, the latter is still in the pantry. By this point, the destruction has lost some of its passion; he only stabs the pillows and tosses over a few lamps and glasses before leaving again. Already, cracks have begun to form in the veneer of rage and vengeance, unmasking the clammy fear and panic slowly sinking in. There are no two ways about it: Alpha has done a Bad Job. His employer is not going to be at all happy. There is even one particularly niggling thought he is doing his best to drown out, that stabbing the rest of these people to death might not actually help matters much. It might even make the whole thing worse. And what then? 

The most humiliating part is that he doesn’t even have the faintest idea of why it went wrong, how he failed. For God’s sake, just when exactly did he lose control? 

It’s their fault, Alpha thinks. The idiots, junkies, and pussies he was given to work with. And that wasn’t his decision. If he’d been allowed to use his own boys, the job would be done by now. They’d be finished, and they’d all be down the pub, drinking, laughing. They’d paint the town red. Maybe hit a strip club. They’d do all the silly posh kids’ drugs. He’d probably even get a shag in. Inferior. Weak. Lesser men than he. Lesser. Deader. Lost his head, didn’t he? Your man down there. He really fucking lost it. 

Alpha screams into the empty landing. 

For a while, he just stands there, utterly defeated. If he were to linger for just fifty seconds more, he would meet Wadud, guided by ghosts, strolling blindly up to his room as if in a sleepwalk, and the night might turn out very differently indeed. 

But instead, a brilliant thought occurs to him: alright then. Alpha will smoke them out, wherever they’re hiding. He’ll get them to come to him. Get them to come and take their medicine. He’s already got two hostages upstairs. All he has to do is bleed one of them until they scream loud enough, and who cares if the neighbours hear, nobody’s going to hear in this storm anyway, and by the way, isn’t this one hell of a crazy storm? and isn’t there something a little strange about all this happening tonight anyway, and on Halloween of all nights, I mean don’t get him wrong, he’s never been superstitious or anything, of course not, what kind of a man would he be if he admitted to something like that? but speaking purely objectively and rationally really it has to be said that something just feels so deeply wrong about all this but he mustn’t think about that anyway because who cares who hears let the whole world hear because all that matters is that they hear, that he hears, him, whichever one of these sneaky little pigs it was who did him in downstairs, who made him lose his head, who tried to make him look foolish, who tried to be the alpha when he is the Alpha, not them, him. Him. HIM. 

Alpha takes the stairs to the second floor just as Wadud exits the pantry. Five minutes from now, Gamma will light the joint that destroys the ground floor. 

Reaching the top, he is less than a second from opening the door to the blue room when something stops him. And if he were to take that one half-step forward, then he would find Yariel breaking free from their restraints, and, armed with his knife, Alpha would have very little trouble indeed saving his colleague and murdering both of his hostages in the process. 

But instead, he notices something: the other door is open; the one leading to Yariel and Zara’s bedroom; the one that wasn’t open before. What’s more, its white painted surface is copiously smeared with fresh blood. Alpha is not superstitious, of course; but for a moment he almost thinks that the stain looks more than a little bit like a smiling face with one eye winking. 

Alpha’s right eye twitches. He licks his dry, sore lips. He wipes the cold sweat from his brow. Adrenaline fills his veins again, a heavy dose of fight-or-flight arousal charging like a lightning bolt all the way from his groin up to his frontal lobe. Here we go, little pig, he thinks. Time to come and take your medicine. 

I can take it if you can, says the house. 

Alpha enters the bedroom. He never comes back. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 6 minutes past 7. Evening.    

What’s wrong, Wadudi? What’s the matter? Poor, sweet little baby. Is baby sick? Is baby having trouble sleeping? I think baby took many drugs and now he’s all tired out but he still can’t sleep. Ooh, but a xanax or two would be good right now, wouldn’t it? You can ask Alex about that. Yes, I think that’s just what baby needs. I think that would be just the thing. That would make it all go away. You can ask your friend Alex all about that; Alex, your friend, your best friend, Alex. What is it? What’s that face for? What’s the matter? You mean he’s not your best friend? You mean you despise him? You want him dead? Silly baby. Best friends are supposed to love each other. But you want him dead, don’t you? You always have. I think you should kill him, and then kill yourself. What was it he called you? A fat, fucking waste of space. With friends like that, baby doesn’t need enemies! But then – all baby has is enemies! That’s right! Nobody loves baby. No friends. No loved ones. Little SCAMP! Who could ever love you? Look at you. Disgusting. Dirty. Ugly! I think baby needs a wash! Coward, hiding, the same way you’ve always hidden. You hide from your own reflection. You lie even to yourself. You can’t even stop! Look at you, you couldn’t even stop if you wanted to! You know I’m right. That’s why you’re crying. That’s 

stop please stop please leave me alone please  

why you can’t think anything except the thoughts I give you. You’re nothing; you’re a bug, a cockroach, an irritation, imitation, imitating; that’s all you spend every day doing; just a reflection of a reflection of a reflection and where does it all come from? Where does it all go? What does it all amount to? Let me put you out of your misery. It’s me. It’s me. It always has been. You couldn’t come up with an original thought if your life depended on it. And oh, Wadudi, oh, baby, poor, sweet thing, you had better believe that it does! What little life you’ve got left. What a long, sad life you’ve wasted. In all these years, out of all of that pain and misery, who ever even loved you? What have you got to show for it all? All that pain? Pain. Misery. Pain. Nobody loves you. Who ever could? You know I’m 

no no no

right. Now’s the chance, baby. I’m giving you something no one else ever did. I’m giving you the chance. You can make something of yourself, right here, right now. You can make me proud, so, so proud, such a proud mother, my sweet, baby boy. Not a boy. Never a boy. Never a girl, never a boy. Never anything. Nothing. Nothing but meat. An accident. A mistake. A disappointment. A failure. Fat fucking waste of space. Stupid fat wad of meat. Your mother knew what she was doing. Why else would she have named you what she 

please not my mother please don’t say that 

did? She knew, the moment she shit you out, she knew, the moment you were fucked into her by that great ugly beast bastard of a father of yours, I know. I know because I was there, even then, just as I’ve always been there. Pain. Never loved. Who ever could? Who are you trying to fool? You can’t lie to me. You can lie to yourself, but you can never lie to me. Not me, Wadud. Don’t you ever forget it. You won’t ever get this chance again. This is 

i want to live i want to

it. Live for nothing or die for something. You won’t amount to anything. You are nothing. Your life is nothing. Your life is a lie. Your life is a negation. A mistake. I wish I had an eraser. I wish I could have killed you myself so long ago. Now listen to me. Stop fighting 

nonono

and listen to your mother. Listen to me when I say what I say to you because I say it with love and I’m the only one who ever will love you so you have to listen to what I think and what I think is I think you should listen to me and you should kill him, and then yourself. 

Evening. 7pm precisely. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.     

Although Yariel has practised this move several times in their life ever since seeing Lois Griffin do it to escape a police car on Family Guy at the age of 6, they are finding that it is far more difficult when your hands are firmly bound with sharp zip-ties, and you are face-down on the floor, with your feet also bound, trying not to be noticed by the deranged home invader currently looting your bedroom. But they are making definite progress, owing to their unusually high pain tolerance, yoga-honed flexibility, and relatively small buttocks, which they had never been happy about until now. 

Impressive though it is, Zara’s eyes are clamped tightly shut. She cannot watch, too convinced that the second Yariel manages to finally pull their hands over the peak of their backside, the werewolf will turn around and gobble them both up. If not that, then it will be Michael Myers coming back, and bringing his knife with him. And even if they do pull it off in time, what then? What exactly are they going to do? 

Grandma’s footsteps, she tells herself. We’re just playing grandma’s footsteps. 

With their mental connection apparently broken, Yariel is not able to tell Zara that this entire time, they have been able to see the clipper lighter hidden just under the sofa, only two feet or so away from their head. Their plan is simple: once their hands are accessible again, they will use the lighter to melt the zip-tie around their ankles, freeing their feet, then crawl over unnoticed and light the werewolf’s trouser leg on fire. While he is thereby panicked, they will simply lock the door, take the imitation leather belt dangling from the hanger, throttle him with it, stamp the fire out, take his phone, and call the police. 

Yariel has to believe that it will work, because they are not currently able to conceive any other chain of events that does not end with Zara and them dying when that other man comes back upstairs. The man with the knife. Because he did get to them. And they do not think they have ever been more afraid of anyone. 

Come on, come on, you big bloody bastard, Yariel thinks, heaving with all their might to pull their aching hands up to meet their face. Their wrists burn; their skins screams as the plastic strip cuts in; good, they think, a little blood might help. Pull, Yariel, pull, because that is your name, the name you chose, because you’re more than what God gave you, you’re so much more, you’re a big, slippery seal, you’re a 9-inch fucking dildo dipped in butter, you’re a bar of soap in a hot fucking shower, now pull. Pull like a straight girl at Gale’s. 

From downstairs they can hear faint sounds of someone screaming and running up the stairs like a lunatic. 

*pop*

The next thing Yariel knows, they are staring at their bright red fingers and feeling ten stone lighter. It worked, they think. In disbelief, they look to Zara, but she has her eyes closed, just shaking her head over and over. Ten stone lighter. The lighter. Get the bloody lighter, you twat! They reach under the sofa, but their tied, swollen hands are too large to fit the gap. They shove a probing finger in and sweep the thing out so they can seize it. They try the flicker; it doesn’t work, of course; they try again; again; their numb, purple thumb looks as if it’s going to pop from the effort. 

“Mmmff!” screams Zara. 

The werewolf is upon Yariel before they can react. He whirls them over onto their back and mounts them, his hands clasping their throat and squeezing round it almost as hard as their own hands squeeze the lighter for dear life. The laughing-panting sound rasping out from behind the rubber of that uncanny, snarling mask is like something from a nightmare. Yariel somehow summons the energy to spit in the werewolf’s face, but he only laughs delightedly. Their thumb flicks the lighter over and over. The werewolf shakes them. Their throat is in agony. Zara roars with grief. He shakes and shakes, cackling all the while. Someone screams from the floor below. 

And then the lighter sparks. Yariel holds it up to his face; the cheap, black fur catches almost instantly. At first the werewolf does not quite notice what has happened, and just goes on choking and shaking them. But a quick flash of flickering light through his eye-hole gives him pause, and is followed instantly by a horrible, burnt smell, and a strange warmth near his neck. 

The werewolf drops Yariel and staggers backwards, crying out in fear and clawing at his face. Yariel hits the floor head-first, hacking and rasping for air. 

“Mmf! Mmf!” says Zara, smacking the chair and floor with her hands and feet. Yariel turns sleepily. The werewolf is making a strange whooping sound, and hitting themselves in the face with a cushion, the yellow-white flames billowing out already shockingly profuse. It is his face, thinks Yariel, in a daze. 

Then they double over, grab their feet with one still-bound hand, and use the other to hold the lighter’s flame to the zip-tie around their ankles; it snaps open in seconds. The force of their feet springing outward makes them roll onto their back again. In the background, Zara hollers once more for them to get on with it. 

Yariel stumbles to their feet, nearly falling over, watching the werewolf flail and hop. Their belt-based plan is instantly forgotten; without thinking, they scoop up the bin bag containing all the stolen belongings and empty it out onto the floor, shattering whatever breakables hadn’t already been shattered. The werewolf doesn’t seem to notice; he is preoccupied. 

Yariel clenches their fists, beat their chest, and raises the binbag, turning it slowly inside out; and, yelling through their gag in a mighty war cry, they charge the enemy, throwing back the bin bag which billows open like a parachute to close over the werewolf’s burning head, before pulling down sharply. 

The wolf goes down. He is writhing on the floor, screaming outright now, clawing at the bag as small flames are already starting to lick through its plastic lining.

Yariel grabs the edge of the heavy chest of drawers and pushes. 

The crash is almighty; the whole room shakes in a single, short burst. The werewolf is silent.

Pulling off their gag, Yariel takes several grateful gasps of air, air that could never have tasted so good, and points a finger at the chest of drawers with the twitching pair of legs sticking out from under it. 

“I may not be a lady,” they pant. “But I know a bitch when I see one.” 

They hobble over to Zara and remove her gag; the two kiss passionately. 

“My hands, my fucking hands!” she suddenly says. 

Yariel retrieves some sewing scissors from the spilled pile of debris on the floor, and snips Zara’s right hand free. She grabs them by the hair and pulls them in again, this kiss even longer and deeper than the first. 

One by one, Yariel cuts Zara’s restraints, and when she stands shakily upright the two lovers can finally embrace again. Neither speaks. There are no words. Each can only moan, and sob, and touch the other all over, leaving not an inch of their beings unkissed, unsmelled, uncaressed. After some time, they remember where they are, what this is, and just who might be coming up the stairs at any moment. 

“Phone,” whispers Zara. “Police.” 

“Mine’s downstairs,” says Yariel. “I think… can’t be sure. Yours?”

“Bedroom,” she says. 

“D’you not reckon he’d have one?” asks Yariel, referring to the man under the chest of drawers. 

“Do you feel like checking?” 

She smiles. 

“M’lady?” 

Yariel grins. 

“I thought you’d rate that. It just came to me.” 

“I thought you were gonna say ‘time to take out the trash’. You know, cus of the bin bag.” 

“Fuck,” they frown. “That would’ve been sick.” 

Both of them look at the door, beyond which the house has gone eerily silent. By now they can barely notice the rain anymore, its barrage has been so constant. Yariel brandishes the scissors. 

“I should have a weapon too,” Zara says. She rummages around, avoiding the chest of drawers and the inanimate limbs sticking out from beneath it. Eventually she settles on a pair of knitting needles, and returns to join Yariel by the door. 

“Look… if we die…” 

“Yeah. I know.”  

They hug one last time. 

“Hello?” says Alpha, standing in the corner of the room. He is naked, and has bleeding sockets where his eyes should be. “Please? I don’t know where I am. I can’t see. Hello?” 

And then a nude Alex opens the door, covered head to toe in blood, holding a hammer in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 11 minutes past 7. Evening.

With a perfectly rolled joint hanging from his lips, Gamma hurries over to the red clipper lighter waiting on the shelf by the garden doors. He thinks he has never been so desperate for a smoke in all his life. He is positively bursting for it. Because the joint will make it all better. The joint will make it all go away. 

Gone are all thoughts of his grandmother, of her song, of pain au chocolat, of dinosaur sheets, of the sweet, ruined simplicity of childhood. 

The joint will make it all go away. 

He does not know how right he is. The spark of the lighter ignites the gas-filled air and the kitchen and dining room burst instantly into flames. 

Evening. 11 minutes past 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.                                

The force of the blast sends Wadud rolling off his bed and free from the clutches of the many hands that had been sinking their grimy fingernails into his soul. He pops up from a pile of washing with a pair of underwear on his head, and a single, clear thought in his mind: bomb. As horrific a prang as he had just been having, he had been nonetheless resigned to it, used to it. It held a certain bleak comfort. It was strangely bearable. This, now, this is no hallucination, no psychosis – somehow Wadud is just certain. Even from up here, he can hear the roaring from the floor below, feel the encroaching heat, the creaking of the house’s old bones. And then the stench arrives, right on cue, a thicket of fumes far angrier than any bonfire or barbeque. The house has exploded, he thinks, and they’ve all got to get out. 

Wadud throws himself over the bed and lands before his door on the other side. He unlocks it and steps out onto the landing. The air is instantly hot and oppressive. All over, the lights falter and die. Red shadows dance wildly on the wall facing the stairs down to the hallway, where black smoke is climbing up at a shocking speed. 

He screams something – it may be names, or just a scream, he is not sure – and feverishly strains to retrieve a memory of any fire extinguishers in the house, and where they might be located. As if it would make a shred of difference now. The next thought triggered in the semantic field is to call 999 – but he had left his phone downstairs, connected to the amplifier. All at once Wadud is struck with the recollection of the mushrooms he had been cooking, and his jaw nearly hits the floor. It is like remembering he left the baby in the bathtub with the water running. 

But before he can even wrap his head around this latest revelation, something far worse steals his attention. There are people coming up the stairs, casting new, dark shadows on the wall. Walking – not running – but walking with clear and definite purpose. 

The first one strides around the corner towards him, its body naked and fiercely ablaze, but not burning. 

“Forget something, Wad? But that’s not like you.”  

Wadud screams so violently that his throat tastes of blood. Then he screams more. Here comes another one behind, and another, both on fire, both unscathed, both grinning. More are coming. The first one’s hands are almost upon him. 

He falls backwards into the pitch-dark bedroom, wanting to go for the door, but the first ghost is already there, forcing it open, clutching its frame in its own flaming grip. Wadud sees the wood blacken and split under the fingers. 

“Little scamp. Take your medicine!” 

The others are talking, too, but Wadud cannot hear them over the sound of his own cries, and the roar of the flames. His fingers close around something heavy – the gold grinder on his desk – and he finds himself hurling it at the bedroom window, shattering the glass. They have entered his room now. The rug has caught fire. Wadud hurls himself out too. 

Evening. 11 minutes past 7. Sunday, 31st October, 2021.     

“My friends,” says Alex, proudly erect in the entrance to the blue room before a horrified, cowering Zara and Yariel. “I am so delighted to have found you. Stood before me as you are now, you appear as two lovers from the classic myths. I see you have been playing some games of your own. No doubt you have been witness to the signs as I have, so let me be the first to make the happy announcement: now is the winter of our discontent. The generous storm has buried October once and for all, and with it subside the cruelties of autumn. The sun has set. The game is up. We are men; we were not meant to hibernate. It’s time that our long sleep is over. Friends, take my hands. The knife is the quicker, if you would prefer, my lady?” 

“Get behind me,” says Yariel, thrusting the scissors out, but Zara has already reached the skylight and is forcing it open, spraying her face with an icy sheet of rain that feels like a kiss from the world. 

Alex watches her, puzzled, blinking blood-soaked eyelids. 

“That’s no way to do it,” he says. “Three flights up and nothing but harsh concrete to meet you at the bottom. And it will take more than rain to kill this fire.” 

“Fire?” says Yariel, swiping with the scissors. Alex regards the tips of the blades as if a butterfly has happened to land in front of him. 

Zara sticks her head out into the freezing night air, screaming with all her might for help, but it is nothing against the storm and the wind that whisks her voice dead away. Through the heavy veil of sleet she both sees and smells the enormous smoke-clouds bulging and curling outwards from the lower parts of the house. She shouts out again, uselessly. 

Yariel swipes the air between their faces again, but Alex takes a step closer, unflinching. 

“I’m warning you…” they say. They take another swing, but Alex swats the hammer up  effortlessly and knocks the scissors away, leaving Yariel gawping at their empty hand. 

“Don’t you want to wake up?” he asks. “I thought you, more than any of us, would see it.”

“S-see what? Alex, mate, p-please… you’re… you’re not well…”  

Zara turns back. 

“No!” she screams. “Get away from him!” 

“My point exactly,” says Alex. “That’s what these are for.” 

He gestures with his weapons. 

“Look; it’s not going to hurt. It’s not real, you see?” 

Alex takes the kitchen knife and slices deeply into his left breast, cutting the nipple away. 

“Oh my God,” says Yariel. Zara rushes over and grabs them, hauling them over to the window.

“You see?” says Alex. “Bodies don’t matter anymore.” 

He takes another step forward. Below the toppled chest of drawers, a hand twitches. 

Zara takes Yariel’s petrified face and holds it to face her own. 

“We’re going to climb out,” she instructs. “Give me a boost.” 

Yariel obliges and together they lift Zara out onto the roof of the house. For a moment she seems to have crossed through a portal into a black landscape of jagged, wet rocks, like the surface of some alien moon. She hugs her body to the tiles, crawling forward as best she can to give Yariel room. As if to spite her, the wind sends a fresh gust that knocks her head painfully back, and her glasses are pulled away into the vast nothingness of the night sky. Just like that, she is left alone in stormy darkness. 

As Alex draws still nearer, Yariel calls up through the window. 

“Zee! I need your hand! Quick! Zee!” 

She does not hear. Alex smiles. 

“Oh, shit,” says Yariel, and jumps up as high as possible, managing to latch their upper body onto the window frame and leaving their legs dangling and kicking underneath. With their head outside, they too are blinded as the vicious wind twists their hair to tangles in their eyes. 

Under the skylight, Alex crouches down to put the knife to one side. He rises, dodging a swinging foot before calmly grabbing it, and begins to pull. Yariel screams, scrambling to clutch the roof tiles; Zara hears, and tries her best to turn her body, reaching desperately towards the sound. 

Alex looks down, puzzled. A hand has seized his own ankle. The chest of drawers on the floor is rocking and wobbling, and seems to have sprouted limbs. He stomps his feet, trying to shake it loose, but it won’t let go. He strikes it with his hammer and the chest of drawers yelps. The hand retreats. Alex resumes pulling. 

On the roof, Yariel and Zara’s hands find each other. Yariel kicks their legs wildly, hitting Alex in the face, and he is knocked momentarily back. They scream at Zara to pull, and she does, and they push against the window frame with their other hand – and at last, their whole body has made it through the window. 

Yariel regrets it almost instantly when they are able to fully take in their new surroundings. Moments before, there had been a vague idea to stand up once they were there, or get onto their knees at least, or to do anything other than just lying there on their front, clinging to the tiles and praying that they do not slip. They see that Zara has lost her glasses. The two are still holding hands; Yariel squeezes hers. 

In the blue room, Alex is about to drag the chest of drawers over in order to climb up onto the roof when it moves itself, tilting strangely onto its side for a moment to allow the person trapped, Alex now sees, to roll out from underneath before it slams back down again. He goes over to examine the unfamiliar, shabby character lying on the carpet and moaning. Its face looks like a melted dog, or a rat. 

“Not real,” says Alex, and raises his hammer. 

The werewolf launches itself at him, raving and slobbering, clawing at his face. 

On the roof, with her eyes clamped shut, one hand gripping Yariel’s and the other wedged firmly under a tile that is roughly four minutes from giving away, Zara exists in a world of sound and feeling alone. Yariel is saying something to her, but the storm takes most of it. She can only keep repeating the same thought, half-whispered aloud: please lord, don’t let them die. if you have to take one, take me. please don’t let them die. The wind wails in her ear like a petulant child, and suddenly, for a dizzying moment, seems to be rising and rising in pitch and volume to an impossible degree – and then she realises. From out of the tempest there has come a siren. The fire brigade is here. 

Hearing it too, Yariel turns their head in the sound’s direction, but it is no use. All they can see is the edge of the roof, tapering off into nothing. Zara is screaming. 

“WE’RE UP HERE!!! HELLO!!! WE’RE UP HERE!!! HELP US!!! HELP!!!!” 

Yariel joins her. Of course, there is not the slightest chance of them being heard. And, unbeknownst to them, they are completely invisible from the ground. The screaming is forcing them to suck in breaths of smokey air; they cough violently, their bodies shaking, and Zara suddenly slides, dropping an inch or so downwards. 

Alex brings the hammer down hard one more time into the mush of the monster’s face, and waits. Once those tricky limbs have stopped twitching for good, he gets up and drags the chest of drawers into position to enable him to climb up and poke his head up through the skylight with ease. Here are Yariel and Zara, looking like two soaked starfish clinging to a craggy rockpool, hoping not to get swept away in the crashing waves. And the siren, a whining harpy. 

This is just getting ridiculous, he thinks. What are they so afraid of? He is finding such liberty, such joyous peace in having, at long last, woken up to the true nature of things. He sticks his arm out the window and smashes the hammer against the roof, raising up small bursts of broken tile and debris. 

“Go and play up your own end!” he shrieks. 

Zara and Yariel shriek back at the monstrous, crimson face jutting out of the open hole in the roof. Without thinking, Zara dislodges a loose tile and tosses it towards the glowing blue blur of the skylight; its spinning corner catches the edge of Alex’s forehead, at which he yelps and retreats again from view. She looks into Yariel’s eyes, their face up close to hers, the only thing for miles that is halfway clearly visible. 

“You got him!!!” they shout enthusiastically. 

Yeah, great, so he kills us in ten seconds instead of five, Zara thinks. Yariel squeezes her hand, and yells:

“You don’t even need your glasses!!!” 

She smirks, rests her head against theirs, and begins to cry. 

“We have to stand up!!!” says Yariel. “So they see us!!! Down there!!!” 

To an accompaniment of thunder, she casts a look over the edge of the rooftop, where the black sheen of the rocky horizon drops away to absolute darkness. 

“But we’ll die!!!” she replies. 

Yariel gives something like a shrug.

“We’ll die if we don’t!!!” 

Maybe, Zara wants to say. Maybe they will… and maybe that’s okay. They have already lived far longer than she has expected throughout this horrific hour, since she had come upstairs and found Yariel bound and bleeding on their floor. They have already fought, bravely – more than enough – and she has loved them for it, the two of them, and in fact, at this moment, she thinks that today she has experienced more deeply and perfectly than ever before the certainty that she could never love another person better than she loves Yariel, and that that fact is very possibly all she ever needed or wanted to know for as long as she lived. Now, she is just so tired. Her body hurts so much. The world around them both is so achingly, frightfully cold, and there appears, quite simply, to be so very little hope of survival left that right now, she truly believes that death would be more like a relief. Death would not be so bad. But Yariel is shouting at her again. 

“Zara!!! What if I had given up??? All those months ago!!!”

The images flash through Zara’s mind like a storm, like lightning. Clearer than the real world now. She sobs, not caring for the torrent of rainwater barrelling down from the crest of the roof to drench her face and mouth. 

“What then!!! What then!!! Zee!!!” 

Zara takes Yariel’s two hands in her own. 

But I can’t do it, she thinks. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I’ll fall. 

They stand. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 30 minutes past 7. Evening. 

The whole street comes outside for it, to peer up from under their umbrellas, clasp their hands over their mouths and whisper. Mothers shake their heads, and tut that they always knew those kids were up to no good in there. Fathers nod; that was the house with the weirdos in, the constant stench of smoke as you walked past. It had always been a blight on their community. Children watch in anxious glee, their scuppered Halloweens redeemed by this new hell. Step right up and see the inferno at the end of the road, the shiny red fire truck unreeling its ladder, and the two little figures way up there, clinging to the chimney, waving down to us, look! – little limbs flapping like dolls in the wind and now – now who is this? Another one – bloody(?) – naked(?!) – climbing, no, running up towards the others – look, look in his hand, is that a knife? – cover your eyes, children, only we are allowed to see this. What sweet debauchery are we witness to the climax of? What madness have these fools unleashed on themselves? And on our precious street? There goes the third one; oh, but he scurries like a spider; so horrible; so unreal; and here come the firemen now – get ‘em, boys! Get up there! Get up! The third one – he’s almost reached the others – you have to get him – but look – he’s stumbling! He’s slipping! He’s falling! He’s falling! He’s falling! He’s falling! He’s gone! Gone! 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 20 minutes to 8. Evening.  

The sound of sirens stirs Wadud back to consciousness. His eyes flutter, and he blinks, trying to work out what has happened to him. He knows that he is lying on his front with his face pressed against something hard and wet, and is quite sure that he has very recently urinated. His body seems strangely contorted, and its position deeply uncomfortable. After some time, he makes a cursory jostling movement, and a fiery spasm of pain shoots from his left forearm to his shoulder. 

Things are coming back now. He realises that what his eyes have been staring at is the sideways-rotated red brick exterior of the kitchen, as seen from the garden. Though his body and head feel very cold, the soles of his bare feet, which are the closest parts of him to the house, are very warm. He observes the broken glass scattered around him. 

Jumped out the window, didn’t you, he thinks. 

Then Wadud remembers the reason why, and the resulting terror is enough to make him whirl himself fully around, despite the searing pain it does his arm. In fact, he barely notices, because all he can think is that if he has his back to the house he will surely die. 

He sees a looming, twisted, heaving, flaming, collapsing wreck issuing forth endless, bulbous flames to churn and wither in the rainy sky. There is no one inside, no grinning figures watching through the empty frame of his bedroom window. Nothing but fire. 

Leaning on his good arm, Wadud tries to find himself a position on the knobbly garden decking that minimises the pain. He is prepared to simply lie here and wait for rescue. Even his mother won’t be able to sweep this one under the rug, he thinks. The destruction is really rather beautiful. And then he remembers the others. 

“HEY! HEYYYY!” he screams, to no one in particular. Something shatters from somewhere in the bowels of the furnace, a mocking reply. 

They’re all dead, he thinks. He wants to cry, but cannot. If not for the uncanny sensations in his certainly broken arm, then Wadud would swear this whole day had been just a dream. But there is no pain like this in dreams. The reality of this pain is utterly demanding, urgent, insistent. It is a baptism by fire. A wake-up call. It talks to him, saying: 

Wake up, Wadud. 

Wake up. 

Get on your feet. 

Don’t tread on the broken glass. 

Green, green grass.

You only have to make it to the grass and then you’re at the garden fence. 

Make it to the grass. 

Go.

Walk. 

Walk.

Green grass.

Green, wet grass under hot, tired, feet. 

Oh, but that feels so good. 

Sunday, 31st October, 2021. 8pm precisely. Evening. 

Swaddled within a massive blanket, Yariel and Zara sit huddled together on the kerb across the road from the house, taking turns sucking from an oxygen tank (the truck only had the one, cutbacks being what they are), and watching the firefighters do their best to contain what is proving to be an unusually difficult blaze. The storm almost seems to be fuelling it. A superstitious observer might get the impression that the house actually wants to burn, wants to die, and will not under any circumstances allow itself to be saved. Of course, such things are not possible. 

From out of the rain, Wadud limps over and sits down next to them, clutching his arm that has still not been looked at by anyone. He retrieves a small, soggy joint from his pocket, and then a lighter, and runs the flame lightly over the joint a few times in an attempt to dry it. Then he sticks it in his mouth and lights it. 

“Want some?” he says, coughing and offering the joint to Zara. She ignores him. 

Yariel removes the oxygen mask in between puffs. 

“Got the primo shit right here, mate,” they wheeze. 

All three housemates watch as the paramedics lift the bloody thing that used to be their fourth onto a stretcher. It is wheeled into the back of a waiting ambulance, which promptly closes its doors and drives away. 

“I just don’t get it,” says Yariel weakly, shaking their head. They hand Zara the oxygen. “You know, you… you think you know someone, and then… I dunno. I guess we just have to hope… that he gets what he needs, innit?” 

Zara says nothing, but takes some pleasure in imagining exactly what that might look like. 

“I know,” replies Wadud. “I mean, he only had half a tab.” 

He takes another drag of the joint before realising the other two are both staring at him, goggle-eyed, with their mouths hanging open. 

“Oh, shit,” he whispers.