there are few things more animalistically horrifying than being caught outside in winter with rapidly diminishing options for getting out of it. on some Midwestern winter nights you can watch the battery in your cell phone drain in front of you. in fact the original arc of this story was someone stumbling upon a satanic cult ritual while seeking shelter from the cold but as I got into it the more childish this idea seemed. reality is at its cruelest when wearing too little on a cold Halloween, doubly so when you’re lost trying to make it to a party. sometimes as a writer you just have to stick with what you know.
Halloween was on a Thursday this year but that meant fuck all to Erik. He had the afternoon shift on Friday and his paycheck dropped yesterday so he had the baggy: both the mind and the body were ready.
He had made plans this evening with his similarly degenerated buddy Lloyd to go to a party at a new (or at least new to him) off-the-books party spot known only as “The Sanctum”. It was ‘The Dark Tidings Halloween Party’ and according to the flyer he got texted, a band called Ballgag was playing back to back with Monster Fucker. There was a picture of a buxom woman in all black leering at the camera, black contacts and studded leather. He wondered if that was the eponymous Monster Fucker.
Erik was no stranger to one-offs at strange locations. He’d been to the basement and attic parties, of course. There was the occasional generator show down by the koi pond. Now and then he’d even ended up on the various rail-road tracks crossing the city, burning away until the sun was rising.
Yet where this car was taking him was somewhere he’d never been. In fact it looked as though they’d left the city entirely. He gazed at the silhouette of a grain tower half crumbled as the moon passed behind it. Eventually, the car pulled over and Erik stepped out. Without a word the driver pulled away.
It was a parking lot in front of a derelict trucking company.
“Fuck.” Erik mumbled, pulling the hood up on his jacket to shield himself from the late autumnal wind. Did he get the address wrong? He checked the text Lloyd has sent a few hours earlier:
“1420 w short st dont be to late idk anyone else whos coming”
Erik looked around him, it was desolate. Desolate and cold. He shivered again, he was severely under dressed for the weather: a torn black form-fitting shirt, latex pants, a cheap pleather duster, and some black and white face paint.
He was dressed as The Crow.
There was another burst of cold wind, this time felt down to his bones. With a jolt of adrenaline he realized he needed to get indoors, now.
Lloyd had made it to The (so-called) Sanctum and was thoroughly unimpressed. The crowd was far too basic for his tastes. The flier for the show had in its design implicitly promised goths bedecked in bondage gear whipping each other to blaring music. In reality the event was a few huddled groups of black garbed misfits murmuring indistinctly underneath the musical selections of some no-name DJ.
The venue was nothing to write home about either. When something is named “The Sanctum” there are many images that come to mind: perhaps a dark foreboding mausoleum lit by guttering candles. Maybe an underground lair with dripping stalactites and twisting tunnels leading to unknown depths. With a bit of imagination it might even conjure up an occult library, books with inverted pentagrams on their spines and the smell of old paper ensconcing the palate.
What it did not bring to mind was an apartment above a tire shop.
“God I could use a bump right now.” Lloyd grumbled as he sipped a beer from the heavy case he had lugged to the party. The deal was that Lloyd would bring the beer and Erik would bring the bag and between the two of them they’d have the requisite chemical regiment for the good times. Yet Erik was nowhere to be found. He checked his text messages and saw nothing new. Where was he? Lloyd gave Erik the address over two hours ago: 1420 East Short Street.
Erik was trudging along the dimly lit road when the text arrived:
“wya?”
At this point he had no idea. The GPS on his phone wasn’t working well, perhaps the result of blowing past his data cap watching videos on the ride over or perhaps because of the cold. In any case his battery, only at 20% when he had left, was nearly depleted. There were no building numbers he could make out and not even a bus stop to give a hint as to his location.
“im walking down the street can u come outside and find me?”
Lloyd responded with uncharacteristic promptness: “its above the tire shop just look for freaks outside”
Erik surveilled his surroundings. There were buildings that looked like they had maybe sold tires at some point in the past, they had piles of tires out front of them anyway, but no freaks to be seen. No one to be seen, in fact.
“man just come outside it’s fucking freezing and my phone is dying”
“alright fine u brought the bag ya?”
He rolled his eyes and put his phone away. Clearly Lloyd had his own priorities. Erik’s fingers were tingling from the oppressive cold and even when shoving them under his armpits he could slowly feel them going numb.
This was a shitty way to start Halloween, possibly in the running for the shittiest start to Halloween he could remember. Still, there was plenty of time for things to turn around. Lloyd was going to find him and after a couple of harsh words they would make it to the party and all would be forgiven. Erik just needed to power through this, just needed to keep walking until he saw freaks, heard music, made out the shape of his dipshit friend's banana costume.
He just needed a bump to keep the blood moving.
Lloyd stared at his phone expectantly. Erik had better have brought drugs, there was no way he’d get through these god awful bands without them. Ballgag was playing and rather than the energetic industrial mosh jams he had expected it was more akin to pseudo-goth whal esong struggling to be heard over a bitcrushed electric organ. It wasn’t bad per se, but Lloyd had heard it done better before.
Whatever, he was ready for a cigarette anyway and Erik needed help finding the spot apparently, the dumb ass.
Lloyd shuffled through the crowd, purposefully allowing the bulky costume to knock into a few of the other party-goers and taking a small degree of mischievous pleasure in the nasty looks they shot at him. That he was dressed as fruit at the purported goth show was a laugh in and of itself, that he was now that asshole dressed as a banana was hilarious. Eventually he made it to the exit and walked out onto the sidewalk.
Fuck was it cold.
He looked up and down the road looking for evidence of Erik. For all the pretensions of being at a ‘secret location’ the tire shop was located on a relatively busy intersection. Traffic moved at a fair clip up and down and there were a few teenagers in costumes skulking around presumably up to no good.
Lloyd pulled a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and took a long drag. What’s going on with Erik? He should have been able to find the spot by now, it was pretty obvious where the party was happening. The music was barely softened by the walls of the apartment and you could make out the bass from down the block.
He absent mindedly kept looking up and down the street, taking a few blurry swigs from his 6th can of beer this evening and puffing gently on his smoke. He went for another drag when he saw a single snowflake land on the burning tip, putting it out with a soft sizzle. A light dusting began to come down and Lloyd shivered.
Fuck it! Erik’s a big boy. He can figure it out himself.
Erik had lost feeling in his toes and his fingers were becoming more numb by the second. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been wandering along the side of the road trying to find evidence of a concert or even a building number to get his bearings.
“One four two zero” He repeated, “One four two zero”. His cheap cellphone wasn’t responding on account of the cold so the GPS was a complete non-starter, let alone trying to call a ride. If he was going to make it through the night he needed to find somewhere warm.
Sickly orange street lights leered overhead as Erik shuffled as quickly as he could, the warehouses, truck yards, and indistinguishable industry only getting more run-down as he kept walking to nowhere in particular.
Finally, the road dead-ended at the broken gate of a defunct muffler repair shop.
Erik sat down on the curb and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to conserve what little warmth was still in his body.
Was this it? Were they going to find his body in the morning, frozen stiff still in his tight costume? He could imagine the jokes now, the 5th page story about the dipshit who somehow got lost in sub-freezing temperatures on a weeknight.
Would they even know who he was dressed as?
It was too late for shame. If he was going to die, he was going to die doing what he loved: cocaine. He liberated the baggy from his wallet and grabbed his car keys, fingers adhering unpleasantly to the frigid metal. He scooped up some of the powder and brought it to his nose and upon taking a big sniff he heard something coming from beyond the gate.
It seemed like Lloyd had blinked and there was a pile of empty beer cans scattered around the corner he had decided to camp out against. In fact, he had been idly scrolling through his phone and crushing beers for the better part of three hours, doing his best to look busy and not supremely bored.
Where the fuck was Erik? He was supposed to be here by now. Lloyd’s legs were beginning to cramp from crouching in his corner of shame so he decided to try and stand upright.
This was a mistake.
The effort made his vision spin and his stomach churn. He dropped the phone and there was the unmistakable sound of a screen cracking.
“Fu-fuck…” He slurred as he went to reach down for the phone.
This too was a mistake, and Lloyd face planted onto the ground knocking empty cans all over the place. His forehead hurt, and he felt the unmistakable dribble of blood coming down his face. He sat back and tried to stop the bleeding while the other concert goers looked down at him, smirking and whispering among themselves at the dipshittery on display.
A large muscle-bound man approached Lloyd, ‘Security’ written in bright yellow letters across the chest of his jacket.
“Time to go.”
“W-who the fuck’s as- asking?”
Murmurs of music rumbled gently under the howling wind as snow began to blanket the concrete lot and rusted-out jalopies. Erik trudged onwards, the whisper echoes of a heavy bassline leading him to his destination and the drugs in his system giving him the energy to push forward. Cold air blew in his face and rather than feeling the caress of death he felt invigorated. Numb extremities be damned: he was going to make it to the show.
He moved past the rusted cars and off the lot, cracked asphalt giving way to dry, frozen leaves and patches of ice. The music was growing louder, heavy drums and frantic wailing and a sinister drone underlying it all. At the back of the property he saw an opening in the brambles and grasping branches that winded down an incline. He followed, slipping briefly on the snow dusting the ground before catching himself on the trunk of a leafless tree. His hand was cut open on a ragged gnarl but no blood poured out for it had already thickened in his veins. The music was pumping louder, and now he swore he could hear the sound of laughter and the smell of cigarettes.
The path kept going down and down and down and the wind howled, petrifying the tears in the corners of his eyes and leaving his lips cracked and blue. He could no longer see the moon nor the stars nor even make out how far he had come for the obscuring snow that was lofted into the night sky but it did not matter for what he sought was now so clearly visible below him backlit in the orange of fire where the lithe horned figures dance in shadows drinking deeply of their blood scarlet wine writhing to the sounds of frenzied music to which the screaming revel churns eternal.
Lloyd woke up in his bed aching all over, still wearing his shoes and banana costume but sans wallet and cell phone. He had a cut on his head, a black eye, and a general sense of misery which he accounted to getting fucked up the night prior. He couldn’t remember what happened though he knew he was going to a show with Erik. He remembered getting to the spot, then it all went hazy. He’d have to ask Erik if he remembered what went down.
Erik was definitely there, he was sure of that. They would both have a big laugh when they got their story straight. Another night of debauchery, another Halloween well spent. The weekend was around the corner, too. There was another show lined up on Saturday and it was at a secret location. He had the address and he’d make sure to send it to Erik a little later.
What a great story. The simple terror of realizing just how vulnerable you are when a few things fall out of alignment.
Too many zingers, to choose, but I pick this one "It was too late for shame. If he was going to die, he was going to die doing what he loved: cocaine."