Macabre Moments

I

A thick, looming fog cloaked the night, shielding it from the moonlight. At the peak of the witching hour, the streets were void of life but full of faint echoes of running children and skittering candy wrappers. After a long night of tradition, the quietness seemed rewarding.

But, down the street, on the second floor of the Tully Road apartment complex, loud blasts of ambient-rhythmic music radiated through the outdoor halls. The frail, wooden door shook with every deep thump of bass, and the subtle clap of the snare drums escaped through the door’s undercut frame. The almost-eardrum-rupture-volume of the high-tempo music vibrated through dozens of skulls as they danced and bounced around the living room.

I had zero desire to attend the Halloween party, but I was forcefully dragged there by a girl. That was all a front. Deep down, I knew I would have gone if it meant spending time with her.

We were separated as soon as we arrived. Somewhere between the bouncing crowd in the living room and the lingering bodies in the hallway, she was pulled into a crowded room filled with smoke and laughter. I felt the pull from dozens of hands, inching me toward the epicenter of the fun. I was being handed shot after shot of whiskey as I zombie-walked through the crowd. Through the chaos and roars, I found myself in the kitchen as the spins slowly hazed my mind. And I couldn’t breathe. The drunken laughter had become so uncontrollable I actually believed I was going to have a rock-solid six-pack of abs. I couldn’t even remember why I started laughing in the first place.

I calmed down after a couple of seconds of getting a grip. The rest of the party raged on, and I stood in the kitchen, looking for alcohol. There was no need. A short king dressed as Superman tapped me on the shoulder and nodded for me to follow him.

Sure, I’ll follow you, Short King Clark. He led me into a room where a thick cloud of smoke shrouded every inch of space. What appeared to be my sleep paralysis demons were actually people rotating a few joints. I had to squint my eyes just to grab them.

“Shit,” I echoed. It was too much. What time was it? I didn’t remember how long I had been at the party. Where was my girl? I passed another joint to the left, simultaneously grabbing one from the same person I had just passed it to. I inhaled. I held my breath. I exhaled. I repeated the process three more times. I needed to find my girl. A chubby Wonder Woman approached me and handed me a long, blue, shiny bong. She said it was my turn. But I didn’t know what she meant. My turn? For what? I was caught in a staring battle with her outfit and tried to figure out when Wonder Woman developed a muffin top.

My ears were ringing, and I felt them radiate heat. The music in the background kept thumping and clapping and snapping, and my neck followed along. I felt a nudge at my ribcage and saw a hand emerge from the smoke and light the bottom of the bong. It was like my idiot brain had a gun pointed at it. I took a deep breath and inhaled. That was such a deep hit. I swore I felt it down my asshole.

Muffin Top Wonder Woman covered my mouth the second I opened it to exhale. So, I stood there with a grubby hand on my mouth, silently choking on smoke. 1/10 would not have recommended.

I couldn’t breathe. She took her hand off my mouth, and I choked up a storm of smoke. The music sounded like someone had turned up the volume tenfold. My legs wobbled and jittered into an imperfect balance. Instinctively, I walked to the kitchen in search of water. The fridge was barren except for light beers and rum. I turned to the sink, which had a stockpile of dirty knives encrusted with chocolate cake on the blade and dirty dishes piled like an almost-toppling Jenga tower. I cupped my mouth on the faucet. Metallic water had never tasted so good.

The loud blasts of music were in sync with the loud chattering of dozens of conversations. The sounds imitated a beehive. And we were all bees. Muffin Top Wonder Woman stood next to Short King Clark by the DJ, who was dressed as Bumblebee, dancing like an inflatable dancer at a car dealership. Their costumes had changed colors to black and yellow. Bees. The people dancing were buzzing. In the middle of the crowd, Skyscraper Freddy Krueger, in his black and yellow striped sweater, twisted and flopped his arms, looking up at the ceiling. He was probably reaching for the sprinklers. Next to him, a swarm of real bees gathered in the air, their bodies shifting and swirling until they formed the figure of a human being. They swayed back and forth, matching the music with a hypnotic rhythm. This wasn’t a person, and I could see right through their buzzing, chaotic form. I was losing it. Fucking bees.

As the bees buzzed, the girl I came with, Sexy Satan, tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, feeling my face and head dragging a couple seconds after I initiated the movement.

We locked eyes for a moment. I forgot the bees and the buzzing and the weird DJ. I blinked and felt the warmth of her lips. I wasn’t in the apartment when I opened my eyes. I was in a beehive planet made of honeycomb. The plants were made of honeycombs. There were honeycomb rivers, trees, animals, a sun, and clouds. The geophonic component of the environment was a subtle buzz coming from the distant honeycomb forest. The river, made of thick honey, ran backward toward the forest. Wild honeycomb salmon with bee wings and a bee stinger fluttered near the river floor. The sight brought forth many questions, but I had no willpower to ask or wonder.

An opening in the forest revealed a bear, deep in the woods, lying beside an oversized queen bee. Almost as if the bear had smelled my curious glare, its ears perked up, and it stood on its hind legs.

Looking straight at me, the bear opened its mouth and said with rhythmic intensity, “I’m not a perfect person.”

I stared in bewilderment.

What?

“There’s many things I wish I didn’t do,” the bear continued in tune as the queen bee nodded.

“Is that fucking Hoobastank?!” I yelled as I stared at a crowd in the living room singing along. The bear and the honeycombs had evaporated into nothing before I registered them into my brain.

Sexy Satan laughed and stuck her tongue out where a discolored strip of paper lay like a perfect sprinkle.

“Have a nice trip,” she gulped and joined the crowd.

“I’ve found a reason for me…” the sing-along continued.

I stood there feeling my heart hammering heavily in my rib cage. I felt and heard myself breathe; each inhale and exhale reverberated down my throat and into my chest. The autonomic breathing process became foreign and forgotten, and I found myself manually working my lungs, desperately trying to keep air in me.

Muffin Top Wonder Woman approached me and asked how I was doing. All I could muster was a lazy thumbs up.

“What did we smoke in the room?” I managed to mumble.

“A sweet strain called ‘Honey, I’m Home!’” she chortled.

That explained everything. I walked away, leaving Muffin Top to converse with herself, hoping the tab of acid hadn’t completely dissolved into my system. I was wrong.

I staggered through the hallway, stiff-arming a thicket of people whose faces had become geometrical shapes. Circle eyes, oval mouths, triangle noses, square faces, and rhombus ears. I had shoved two dozen triangular bodies until I reached the end of the hall.

“I never meant to do those things to you..”

Hoobastank raged on mindlessly. From where I stood, the music transformed before my eyes, each note billowing through the air like waves in water. Colors bled from the melody, twisting into vibrant shapes that floated in midair, pulsing in rhythm with the beat. I watched as the song became something tangible—bright tendrils of sound that danced and shimmered, weaving together like a living tapestry of light. Every word and note seemed to stretch into the space around everyone, swirling in an ethereal dance. It looked like a contorted version of the northern lights. The song inched closer to me, glowing and blinking with every motion. My back was to the wall, which had transformed into a viscous, translucent slime.

Hoobastank, in its mesmerizing and physical form, neared my arms and crawled up and around my shoulder, sending a cold, stabbing pinch down my back. My ass clenched as the pinch twisted my nerves. The song circled my throat, and I felt its blue and green colors cool me down. The grip tightened, and I suddenly felt the urge to mutter a safe word. We hadn’t even agreed on one, so I had no clue what to say. It felt like a fucked up 5 Gum commercial advertising physical and emotional abuse from Spearmint and Peppermint.

I panicked as the struggle to breathe grew difficult. In a desperate attempt to escape, I looked around the hall, between all the people, and saw Muffin Top Wonder Woman at the end of the hallway, reaching her outstretched arm toward me. Her elastic hand maneuvered between, under, and over people, and I watched her grubby little fingers wiggle toward me. Like a true Amazonian, she pulled me out of Hoobastank’s predatory grasp and launched me forward. I almost fell forward, but I managed to steady myself on my wobbly feet.

As I staggered through the mindless sacks of meat jumping up and down, I ran into Sexy Satan. In the nine seconds since I last saw her, she had metamorphosed. Her silky, smooth skin had been transformed into yellow-orange scales with thick, short hair awkwardly spread around them. Brown ooze dripped from her rotten fingernails, sizzled on the floor, and smelled like a nine-day-old spinach omelet left at room temperature.

My disgust was instantly swallowed when I saw her pretty, pale face. Her auburn hair hypnotized me as they mystically blew in the wind. It felt like I was in another commercial. L’Oreal, maybe. They always had wind blowing indoors, scattering hair in slow motion.

She opened her mouth to speak, and in place of her serene voice, a blood-curdling screech rang out. It was terrifyingly melodic. A chill crawled up my spine, and the sweat on my right brow began to stream down my cheek. The black of her pupils engulfed both irises, leaving her with empty windows.

I ran.

I could hear her screeches ringing out in rhythmic, conversational patterns as if she were yelling, “Why are you running?”

Scree-screeeeech-scree-screeech

At the end of the hall, I ran into Short King Clark, who stopped me by putting his hand in my face. It took me a second to realize his hands looked like tree trunks and his fingers like tree roots. His rough skin had become dark brown oak bark, and his ears had become green, mossy, and covered with fly agaric and jelly antler mushrooms. In place of his once blue eyes were tree holes that sheltered two Boreal owls no bigger than my left toe.

Behind him, Muffin Top Wonder Woman stood silently with her pepperoni eyes, staring a hole through my skull. Her greasy skin melted like hot cheese, her bursting acne mixed like basil and tomato sauce, and her green pepper-slivered lips flapped as she mumbled incomprehensible words.

Nope, I thought and ran straight to the front door. With a swift tackle, it swung open and slammed it shut behind me, fighting off tightly grasped hands cupping my neck. I felt the cold whispers of the apartment in my ears, trying to convince me to stay, to indulge. Gooseflesh ran down my back. I broke down in a cold sweat at the thought of the whispers being real.

II

Outside the apartment, my warm breath frolicked against the cold autumn wind slowly enveloping me.

The air buffeted me. It was sharp, unforgiving, and relentless, forcing ragged breaths into my lungs as I stood there, struggling to hold myself together. The crispness of the night was a stark contrast to the sour, suffocating stench of stale alcohol that had clung to me inside.

But it wasn’t relief that I felt—no, the fresh air only sharpened my senses, making the weight of my condition more terrifying. This clarity wasn’t a comfort but a descent into the uncharted. The drugs had been swirling in my system like a whirlpool of dirty bath water.

I began to walk toward the stairs, suddenly feeling like a sailor struggling through a savage sea storm. The railing kept me balanced, but the hallway stretched longer with each step I took. The endless walkway moved further and further away, taunting my feet and mocking my feeble attempt to catch up.

“You’re so stupid.”

“No, no.. No. Come on,”

“Look at you, so stupid.”

“HAhaHahA, worthless.”

“Yes, hmmmmmmm.”

“Over here! No.”

“Look, idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Look, idiot. Look. LOOK.”

“Stuuuuuupid.”

“I said.”

“BzZzZz.”

“ahHahAhaha.”

“I’m over.. here! Look. Too slow.”

“Is that all? Hm. No. No.”

“Idiot.”

The whispers of a thousand voices echoed and reverberated, overlapping and dragging in high and low pitches near and far from my ears. I could hear my heavy, panicked breaths escaping my lungs, searching for relief, some kind of helping hand.

I struggled to breathe, letting out short, rapid breaths. The music thumped against and through the door behind me, crawling up and into my ear, vibrating my head and adding to the disorientation.

The hallway had stopped mocking me, and I managed to fix my gaze on the flight of stairs at the end. It was at least forty feet away, and my legs tingled like millions of cold ants skittered up and down my thighs to my ankles. I wanted to move, but I was immobilized by fear.

The dead, skinny branches from the trees on the first floor stabbed through each railing baluster, casting dancing shadows with stop-motion movement from the flickering lights. As I stared at the shadows, they transformed into long, bony fingers that inched closer to me as the lights wavered. I imagined them reaching me with a strong, skeletal grip around my ankles, slowly dragging me away. I was in complete paralysis. I nearly burst my lungs from screaming, but the only sounds I heard were my bitten-down fingernails desperately scratching, digging, and searching for a way to hang on. The flaky, fleshless fingers flirted with my Achilles tendon, flicking and treating it like a clitoris. My heart quaked against the hallway floor.

As we neared the top of the stairs, I turned and saw a black, gaping hole with glowing red tint. In one swift motion, cadaverous hands pulled me down, and I plummeted into an infinite abyss of pitch-black darkness.

I felt five years old again, trembling with a cold sweat from night terrors. Blurry strangers often visited me in my sleep as a child. They would reach out to me with their fuzzy hands, aiming for my throat. Even before I felt their touch, I always felt deprived of oxygen, waking up screaming and crying, gasping for air. The night numbed me with paralyzing dread. After countless nights, my grandma began to sleep beside me, cradling me, whispering in her sweet voice, “Mi niño, aquí estoy, mi niño.” Eventually, the darkness slowly lost its grip on me.

Down below, the outline of a disfigured body slithered in awkward pattern. Its contorted limbs were bent backward, its torso was wrung twice over, and its piercing voice wheezed a wet laugh.

As I settled on the floor near its feet, it stopped and stared, instantly salivating. The figure was engulfed in hot tar—almost rubber-like and shiny. I could feel the heat radiating and penetrating my body, creeping into my pores and forcing sweat through.

“You’re here,” it wheezed. I stared at the smooth space where its face should have been.

“Where am I?” I said in a stutter.

“Our domain. The farthest, deepest corner of our mind,” it wheezed, its ragged voice piercing my soul, “We are you—your fears, insecurities, sadness, regrets, anger, envy—you—in the purest form.”

I called for help again, screaming so loud my throat churned with pain. It was useless.

“Your biggest fear—do you remember? Do you remember Matthew?”

My eyes widened.

“We remember. We remember him, standing over us like a tower. Mocking and laughing. Pointing at us, calling us FAT,” a roar echoed, “Those stabbing words. ‘Get up, pig. Oink, oink, pig. OINK!’ We remember the bully. BULLY,” another roar shook the inside of my head, “We remember the punches to our face. We remember the bully. We remember the cold shower that night. Our fingers down our throat. Puking our dinner. Shoveling food and bile down the drain with our FEETS!” another roar, “Our feets. Our pig feets. We remember.”

I was trembling. The memories of Matthew the Bully came flooding in, each piercing me with terrifying precision. It was endless torment, day in and day out. A memory blossomed from the darkness. I saw myself riding a tricycle, pedal to the metal, with a smile. It faded when Matthew’s foot stomped the front of the tricycle, abruptly stopping my joyride. He didn’t have to say anything. He knew he instilled fear in me and loved seeing me squirm like an uncomfortable worm under a magnifying glass. Matthew, the holder of the magnifying glass, got off on it. That day, he was taking out the trash. I didn’t see a bag, but I smelled the rotten stench and filth behind his back. As soon as I turned to pedal and leave, he swung the bag into my face with such force it left me in a daze, trash scattering everywhere around me and on me. The stink of days-old spaghetti and eggshells stuck to my clothes. I cried so much that day that I trembled all the way home into my mom’s arms.

“MOM!!” I wailed. The Figure flashed a smile. A gaping, curvy opening curled around his face, showcasing rows upon rows of flesh-white shark teeth.

A cold, wooden handle rubbed against my lower back as I flinched away from his grin. I had forgotten about the cake-crusted knife I nabbed earlier. It hung comfortably in the back-right belt loop. Why someone would use a Victorinox Swiss Chef’s Knife on carrot cake was unfathomable.

I took the blade and swung it inches away from its neck. The Figure, unreactive to the knife, kept its menacing mouth open, letting thick, clear saliva pool on the floor.

“Dude, you okay?” a familiar voice crept behind me.

A voice suctioned me out of the pit of despair. I was back in the hallway at the top of the stairs, wondering when I had walked the endless distance.

I turned to see Short King Clark looking at me with a half-assed, worried expression.

“You’ve been walking and yelling for your mom for, like, the last…” he glanced up at the chipped ceiling as if calculating the circumference of the circular light, “… fifteen seconds, give or take.”

I turned again, no longer seeing the Figure or the pitch-black void of its domain. It was almost as if I blinked it out of existence. The knife, still tightly enveloped in my hand, pointed at the moon.

Still dazed and floaty, I waved him off and steadily walked down the stairs. My tingly hand had safely sheathed the knife.

“What’s with the knife?”

I ignored him and slowly descended the stairs before the short king could say another word. I just wanted to find a safe spot to process what I had experienced. The urge to vomit bubbled at the bottom of my stomach, belching and twisting, the acidic screams traveling up my esophagus.

III

I walked a short distance to the parking lot and stopped beside a power box between thick, tall bushes. The night was silent and lonely; nothing but crickets, cats, and candy wrappers stirred. Near the apartment complex, the sing-along was still raging in faint unison.

I could feel the remnants of the song trying to reach me from the distance. I shivered. The night had become a fight for air and sanity.

A mix of acid and half-digested chunks surged up from my stomach, burning my throat as it exploded through my nose and mouth. I gagged, choking on the vile sludge of bile and Hot Cheetos as it spewed like a partially clogged faucet. Red, lumpy splatters covered my jeans and shoes, pooling at my feet in the dirt. Then I saw it—something grotesque in the mess.

I froze, breathless, as my insides twisted with terror. Among the pulpy red chunks, unmistakable shapes began to surface. Fingers. Ears. Human remains floated in the vile soup at my feet like lifeless, bloated goldfish. Bones glinted under the moonlight, cartilage shining wet and slick. The horror was absolute. I staggered back, trembling, unable to look away from the nightmare before me.

“…no,” I exhaled. A sharp prick stabbed at my molar, making me wince. I stuck my finger to my molar and took out what felt like an enlarged popcorn kernel. Raising my hand to my eye-line, I saw a bitten-down fingernail dripping in blood and black rot. I flung it away from me and turned to run—from all of it. The vomit. The endless hallway. The Figure. The music.

“Hey,” Sexy Satan whispered.

IV

She stopped me dead in my tracks. Part of me felt relief and comfort as I heard her soothing voice reverberating through my ears. I might have head-butted her straight into her slightly crooked nose if I had heard a screech.

“Where’ve you been?” she slurred.

She stepped closer, breathing into my chest. Her alcoholic breath simmered up my nostrils and singed the hairs. The walking Chernobyl had just fumigated my entire respiratory system, and I felt mildly annoyed as I swallowed a mouthful of vomit.

Sexy Satan fell into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her. She cocked her head back and let it fall, limp like a dumb, newborn baby. My eyes gravitated toward her dilated pupils as they cloaked her irises like an annular solar eclipse. I lived for these moments. Staring into her eyes and losing myself within her felt like a privilege to be let into her world. The brown of her irises, barely visible, retained its light shimmer under the parking lot lights.

I cupped her face, steadied it, and pressed my lips against hers. Her cracked lips tasted of cherry lip gloss and burnt weed. Our lips locked like two conjoined puzzle pieces of flesh. Inside our hot mouths, chunks of vomit and drool mixed together into a slop and swirled like a radioactive whirlpool. I regurgitated new lumps of processed vomit and felt her suck them out of my mouth as if we were playing a game of hot potato. Our slimy tongues brushed against each other, twisting and turning, almost as if we were reciting the alphabet with our tongues. My fingers caressed her back like a soft tickle and moved down for a handful of ass. Our hearts beat together like conga drums, faster and faster.

We stopped before our sexual urges turned animalistic. When we pulled apart, my eyes adjusted to the light, slowly opening to a terror-filled sight. A wide, sloppy grin flashed under the light, and our saliva still connected our mouths, like a scene from a demented Lady and the Tramp film.

The Figure stood there with rows of shark teeth, moving in line like an endless conveyor belt. Thick, cloudy saliva had pooled at its feet. Under the streetlamp, I saw its menacing facial features, revealed by shadows on its smooth face. The curvature of its nefarious smile and the crazed arch of its brow sent paralysis through my body.

My lungs betrayed me, failing to breathe. I desperately gasped for air, clawing at my throat, begging my body to function. I tried to divert my eyes from the figure, but I was locked in. It held my gaze with invisible claws, wrapping around my eyeballs and forcing them in its direction. Cold, subtle whispers shimmied into my ears.

Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look. At. Me. Look. Look. Look at. Me. Look. Look. LOOK. Look at me. Look. Look. Look at me. Look. Look. Look. Look. Look at me. LOOK. AT. ME.

Its joints creaked grotesquely as if its awkward posture welcomed imbalance. It was eager. Rows upon rows of jagged teeth screamed for blood, and its sharp, pointy tongue lay curled like a python in its mouth, ready to strike. Its body pulsed with each raspy breath. The smile widened, stretching across the surface of its smooth face.

“Here we are,” it wheezed.

The knife was quick in my hand, trailing like a bright shooting star through the air. Its thick, rubbery neck made a shlwop sound as the blade dug deep. I stepped back, took a breath, and waited. The shadows around its brow line narrowed with subtle concave spaces forming underneath. It bellowed a slow, maniacal laugh and stepped toward me, reaching for me.

Without a second thought, I lunged and grabbed the knife from its neck. Blood spurted out like an almost-empty ketchup bottle, filling the air with the stench of metal. We crashed hard to the ground after pretzeling in midair. I landed dominantly, ass on its chest, with both my legs pinning its sides. My hands gripped its arms tightly, trapping them under my legs until they went limp with audible snaps.

The knife, an extension of my hand, felt light and swift, making every swing smoother. I slashed, stabbed, and carved into its smooth, fucking face and neck until it stopped laughing. Blood squirted and splashed in my eyes and down my throat as I yelled.

“Leave! Me! Alone!”

“Leave me alone!”

I wept. Tears mixed with blood, mixed with snot. I swallowed some, spat out the rest.

The knife penetrated flesh like cutting tofu; there was no struggle. Each stab made its face blink to every person who had ever hurt me. At first, it was Matthew, the wonderful piece of shit. Then it was Stephanie, the girl in preschool who fucking slapped me and called me disgusting for presenting her with a dead spider as a sign of my love. Christine, the bitch who ratted me out in kindergarten for pissing my pants after asking for help. Eloy, the motherfucker who didn’t want to partner up with me during soccer practice because he “didn’t want to run next to the fat kid.” Pauline, the older, horny skank who flashed me her hair-encrusted cunt when I was in the sixth grade. Julio, the sack of shit who caused a fury of gossip after pantsing me in front of a group of girls our freshmen year; those girls gossiped about my “flaccid dick doing helicopter spins” for weeks. Mary, who told me I wasn’t man enough for her right after destroying her guts during a sex-filled craze in her parent’s driveway. Countless other faces who had a hand in molding me through the years.

Loud, obnoxious wails tore through the fog in my mind, dragging me back to reality. The adrenaline that once fueled me was slipping away, leaving my arm pulsing with sharp pain and relentless soreness.

My breath escaped me again, faster than before, as I looked down at the terror.

Beneath me lay a mangled mess of skin, flesh, and shattered bone, smeared together like a grotesque, blood-soaked cherry pie. An eyeball, still dangling by its optic nerve, swung lazily from side to side, hanging from the ragged remains of torn cheek, its milky lacquer lifeless in the gore.

The Satan costume was torn open at the chest, soaked in vomit and blood. Her arms were broken, crumpled, and jiggled like lemon-lime Jell-O.

Her throat was battered and turned inside out, exposing a ruined trachea.

I peeled my eyes off the sight and looked around. Red and blue lights flashed like the sun, straight into my blood-shot eyes.

“It—it was here!” I yelled.

The police officers had their guns drawn.

“I swear! I didn’t—”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” Officer Dubious snarled at me.

The knife’s handle was stuck to my palm, merged by layers of dried blood. As I peeled my thumb away, it released with a wet schluck. I twisted my wrist, watching the blade glimmer red under the streetlamp, a sinister gleam that reflected the carnage.

A thunderous crack whipped at my eardrums, followed by a sharp, hot pain in my gut.

Officer Dubious yelled at me not to move again.

My body went limp, sinking into an ocean of blood. The thick splash barely softened my fall, but the weight of my shattered world pressed down on me. Sexy Satan lay lifeless in a twisted stew of brains, her body deformed in ruin. And still, I couldn’t catch my breath—each gasp slipping away like air in a drowning nightmare.

Above me, the moonlight seemed impregnable. Almost perfect. As I fixated on the glow, everything was swallowed by darkness, and I was pulled toward a vast emptiness.