Spooky Challenge 2024 — Day 7
It is the final day. It is Halloween. Night has fallen. Are you ready for my last tale of tantalizing terror?
Today I wanted to do something different. I’ve been using prompts sent to me, but tonight I want to use a prompt from a special little book created by J.W. Donley: 100 Unusual Prompts For Writers of Horror, Weird, and Bizarro Fiction. I was invited to submit a prompt for inclusion in the book, so if you’re looking for inspiration, be sure to grab a copy!
So, for my last prompt for my final story:
The Butcher of Edge Fallow
“Fuck.” Joe looked down at the twisted body of the once perfect 10/10 blond jock.
The kid lay twisted at the bottom of the dried up creek, having fallen trying to escape Joe. His body was face down, his head was face up. Kid was def dead.
Joe looked down at his machete. Shiny in the moonlight. Absolutely fucking unstained by any goddamn virgin/jock/stoner/nerd/outcast goth kid blood. He sighed.
Thirteen years in a row and no goddamn real kills.
Frustrated, only hours to go before midnight this All Hallow’s Eve, Joe turned and began to make his way back to Lovers’ Lane. Surely there were some sexually active youths there to kill. This jock had been too fast for Joe, outrun him like this was the goddamn football field. Up until the kid had fallen head first into Dry Skull Creek.
Joe shook his head again. “What a waste.”
Joe made his steady way through the woods, always a power walk, never a run if he could help it – running made him dizzy. His blackened dead heart couldn’t keep up.
Joe thought about his predicament. Thirteen years ago, he’d been a teen at Cordel High School – Go Warthogs! – a nerd, bullied relentlessly. When Cindy, the head cheerleader, asked him to Homecoming, he’d really thought he’d been noticed. Been seen.
Instead, the football team and cheer squad had chased him from the dance with cow prods, eggs. They’d chased him through the fields and down country roads, until his heart had given out under a cold sickle moon at the crossroads of Sulphur St and Main.
The following Halloween, he’d woken. Woken with the knowledge that he could never rest until he’d wet a blade with enough blood to fill his heart again.
Up ahead, he spotted moonlight glinting off the roofs of several cars. Far enough apart that the passengers had privacy from each other.
Joe lurked in the shadows beneath the trees.
Of course, they didn’t call him Joe anymore. Or Joe the Poor Shmoe as they’d mocked him in high school.
Now he was The Butcher. Joe flexed his wrist, hearing his tendons creak, his skin cracked in deep fissures that reeked of rot.
He sucked in a breath, straightened his shoulders.
The girls in the front bench seating of the nearest car were too busy necking – did they still call it that? – to notice his approach. In the fogged side window, Joe caught sight of his chosen face before he yanked open the door.
The girls screamed. He pulled out the closest one with a bit too much enthusiasm and ended up landing on his ass. The girl kicked at him, her slim legs surprising powerful, screams alerting the others.
Headlights turned on, blinding him. The other girl in the car kept screaming and screaming, as she slid over to the steering wheel, threw the car in reverse, and promptly ran over her girlfriend – popping out intestines and blood all over the dirt – before squealing away.
The other cars followed, leaving Joe and his non-victim, alone in the dark.
He adjusted his mask. It was the old Warthog mascot head he’d stolen his third Halloween. After he’d claimed it, it had stayed with him ever since. It made him feel more powerful.
Looking up, Joe sighed. The moon was lower. Daybreak was coming and, with it, another year of purgatory. He had to kill someone with his blade, anyone.
Power walking with a purpose, Joe made his way to the local campground. Kids loved that place. Drinking, drugs, whatever. As he approached, he smelled the bonfire before he saw it. A ton of kids there, easy pickings – hopefully. Most were stumbling around, necking it on the dirt, dry humping to some ugly thumping music.
Joe lurched into the clearing, machete raised.
A kid noticed and screamed; “The Butcher!”
They stampeded. It was chaos.
Joe swung his blade, he had to hit someone at this rate – there were so many. His pig mask slipped on his sweaty face and he missed the nearest teen by a mile.
Several of the idiots fell into the bonfire, their booze stained clothes catching instantly and setting them ablaze.
Another asshole ran straight into a sharp branch, popping his own eye, piercing his brain.
Joe grabbed someone who tried to pass him, raised his blade again. A girl shoved him and he fell onto his back. The same girl fell over him, a broken bottle impaling her straight through the mouth and out the back of her neck.
Rolling over on his belly, Joe adjusted his mask, and reached for his dropped machete.
Some gym rat with a buzz cut ran at him, axe in hand. Gripping his machete, Joe struggled to get to his knees.
“Die, you monster!” the kid yelled, his voice breaking on the last syllable, and the kid’s foot rolled on a beer bottle.
Unbalanced, the boy windmilled his arms, managing to catch two others in their throats with his axe. The three went down.
“Fuck me,” Joe said, frustrated. He could feel the night waning and, with it, his chance at rest, at peaceful oblivion.
He had no idea who decided he needed to “get revenge for his torments” but he didn’t think it was fucking fair. Joe had been happy to finally escape his bullies, the terrible life he lived in the town of Edge Fallow. But here he fucking was, forced to chase after idiots every fucking Halloween for a chance to finally be left alone.
Blue and red lights washed over the scene. He sighed, stood with his machete.
“Put your fucking hands up!” a man yelled.
Joe didn’t bother.
“Kill him! It’s The Butcher!” a girl screamed.
The cop reacted – poorly to say the least – jerking his arms towards the sound and the girl’s head exploded with a pop.
Another cop approached. A woman. “Joe?”
He paused. The voice was familiar. One he hadn’t heard in a long, long time.
“Joe,” the woman steeled up to the bonfire and the flames revealed her face. “It’s me.”
Dolly.
He looked at her through the narrow eyeholes of his mask. They’d had Chemistry together. She’d always made a point to be his partner for projects and labs, to talk to him. She’d been away that fateful night, some sort of Bible retreat or something her parents had forced her to attend.
Dolly. Dear Dolly.
“We have to take you in, Joe.” She approached with handcuffs. Had she come here for him, to see him? After all this time.
He allowed her to cuff him, to put him into the back of the cop car. The other cop was crying.
“He’s a monster!” A kid wailed. “He killed all of us! All of us!”
Joe rolled his eyes as the car pulled away. He wished he’d killed all of them. Then rest would be on the horizon. Instead, it was just the sun and another condemnation until the next Halloween.
As Dolly drove, Joe felt his body falling apart, turning to colourful leaves. He would return, of course. He always did.
Happy Halloween, dear reader!
x PLM
