Page 11 of Trick or Treat
“You were going too fucking fast, Sil; I warned you,” Blade spits while fidgeting with the Saint Christopher pendant he’s holding in his hand and nervously scanning his side mirror.
As we continue down the freeway toward the cemetery with a dead body stuffed in the trunk, they zoom past us with their sirens blaring, and all the tension in the car leaks out of all four open windows. Riley and Nixon are seated in the back, acting as if they don’t care about anything, with their eyes glued to the night outside their windows as it passes by in a blur.
"I was following the speed limit, Blade. Simply fucking put, they’re out tonight because it’s Halloween. Relax.”
“Relax, you say. Relax? We have a fucking dead body in the fucking trunk, and you’re telling me to relax?”
“Blade, you do need to relax. You’re working yourself up for nothing,” Nixon pipes in, sticking his head between the two front seats with a cheeky grin on his face.
Blade turns away from him and peers out his window, anxious and impatient. I can see Riley's knife in the rearview mirror, glinting in the moonlight, and just thinking about what the sharp blade can do to a human body makes me aroused.
As we draw near, my grip on the steering wheel becomes more firm, and excitement surges through me as I consider the unfortunate man in the trunk who crossed our paths tonight and met his demise.
In no way were we raised to be respectable members of society. With the parents we grew up with, Blade and I never stood a chance in life. Despite the fact that I don’t know much about Riley and Nixon's early lives, I assume they weren’t the most idyllic either.
We enlisted the moment we were able, hoping that the military would help us develop the structure and discipline we lacked. Even though it was a terrible mistake that I immediately regretted, it gave me the knowledge and abilities I needed to pursue my true passion, which is killing.
In the military, Blade and I connected with Nixon and Riley, and the four of us became close because we all shared a passion for homicidal acts of torture and murder. Killing enemy combatants and dismembering their bodies for amusement to see what it would be like was initially considered harmless.
From enemy soldiers, we gradually advanced to people that nobody would miss. We were honorably discharged after serving in the Marines for a decade, but we had undergone significant change as a result. In fact, we are as far from honorable as you possibly can fucking be. With the exception of children—the only innocent people left in this corrupt world we live in—the four of us continue to do our due diligence and practice our beliefs on whomever we choose, now that we’re all back in the United States and retired from the military. To avoid getting caught, we now bury the victims that we do not burn or dismember in the cemeteries near Salem.
A soothing chill spreads across my back and cascades down my spine as soon as we pull through the gates and begin to slowly drive the Mercedes down the lonely, winding road to the Mausoleum at the back. My nostrils tingle as the smell of death drifts through the air, and I eagerly take in as much of it as I can.
The thought of holding a blade in my hands and experiencing the velvety feeling of the blood as it drips down my hands and paints them red makes my hands itch. Blade still glides his pendant through his hands, an annoying tick he has picked up from his battles with severe PTSD, and yet, there is so much more he’s hiding beneath the mask. Then again, aren’t we all hiding something beneath our masks?
We pull up and get out, stretching our legs after the long drive. Myeyes scan my surroundings, feeling like something is off tonight. Blade, Riley, and Nixon head for the trunk as I hit the button on the key fob, opening it to reveal our prize for the holiday.
“You killedhim, Saint?” Riley’s tone is one of pure shock as he peers into the trunk, noticing whose throat is slashed to his spinal cord, bleeding out on my brand new fucking carpet.
“Yeah, I sure the fuck did," I reply smugly, and my brow raises as I begin to walk the perimeter, trying to listen for the laughter that I could’ve sworn I just heard.
“Everyone is going to be looking for this mother fucker, Saint. You don’t just go around slitting some frat kid’s throat.” Blade tries to play the big brother card, even though he’s only a year older.
“It’s already fucking done. Now get him inside the fucking tomb,” I spit, and hear the sound again, determined to find out where it’s coming from. “I’ll be right in. I’m gonna go look around to make sure we’re straight.”
I walk off as they work on getting the dead kid out of my trunk, his blood still stained on my hands, along with hundreds of others, but obviously I don’t mind. I know these graveyards like the back of my hand. We live in these places, and even though we have our own places, we spend most of our time here.
I follow the sound of panicked voices, keeping in the darkness with my blade out, hoping I’ll get the chance to use it again. Crouching behind a headstone, I see a group of kids in their early twenties, fucked up and out of their minds by the looks of it. I look between the four of them, but my gaze only catches one. She’s fucking beautiful.
It'sher… Her jet black hair shines under the beam of the moon, making her eyes glow as if she were possessed or something. The tight fitting outfit she’s in leaves little to the imagination and shows off all the beautiful curves of her body, perfect in every fucking way. But what catches my attention more than her exquisite beauty is the gun in her hand and the crazed look on her face as she holds it, frozen in place.
Scarlett
It feels like there’s a demon inside of me that’s telling me to do these things, but there’s this other voice—a good voice—telling me not to do them. I look down at the gun in my hand and furrow my brows, trying hard to remember how I got it, and where it even came from.
“Scar, give me the gun.” I hear River’s voice, and I turn toward the sound of it, seeing his silhouette but not his face.
It’s the drugs, I tell myself; I'm probably having a bad trip. I stumble toward River and give him the gun, feeling myself collapsing right after.
“Where did it even come from?” I ask, still trying to figure out what happened that led us here.
“It’smine. You saw it and wanted to play with it, and I guess you liked the feeling so much that you didn’t want to give it up,” Shawn laughs, taking his gun back from River and spinning it around his finger by the trigger.
“I wanna play with it!" Carli yells, jumping up and down, making me dizzy with her childish outburst, especially with the killer headache and short temper I have right now.
A brisk gust of wind whips through, rustling leaves and snapping twigs popping in my ears, snapping my attention in front of me, but all I see is darkness and a tiny spot illuminated by the full moon.
“It’s not a toy, Carli. It’s a fucking gun.” I hear Melanie say to her, but I can’t tear my eyes off of the line of headstones on the other side of the cemetery, feeling like there’s something back there, even though I can't see anything.