Red and blue filled Zeke’s vision.

He sat on the curb clenching a crusty, tattered book to his chest with a stuffed doctor’s bag by his side, keeping him company as a cacophony of sirens and angry chatter forced him to stay in the present moment—no escape from the nightmare he created for himself.

Zeke turned his head over to Heath’s Sports Bar where a rabble of fumed zombies, vampires, witches, and dead pop stars talked to a pair of men in uniform. A tipsy witch—whose costume was one sway away from an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction—shot a glare back at him, he looked away quickly, averting his gaze towards something even more unpleasant.

The flinty, middle-aged detective standing before him.

“They’re saying you tried to kill him,” the female investigator said.

“Really?” Zeke replied. “Oh, come on, do I look like someone capable of murder?”

The taut-faced detective dug her hands into the pockets of her camel coat, staring without making a response.

Zeke’s face fell, remembering who he looked like.

Sure, he kept his dark curly hair slicked back, like a ruthless mobster. His mother has stylized his hair like that since he was a child.

It reminded her of some Mexican actor who starred in one of the many telenovelas she’d binge on Saturdays. Despite his rebellious hairdo, he wasn’t a violent guy at all. The most threatening thing about him was his fashion sense with his array of colorful patchwork pants he insisted on adding to his everyday attire.

But to the residents of Winterberry, he was just another good-for-nothing Rosario.

“Ezequias Rosario, did you poison his food?” the detective questioned.

“He was the one who ordered the Special Deluxe Nachos without reading the ingredients...” Zeke mumbled.

What kind of person with a nut allergy doesn’t watch out for stuff like pesto in their food? But, he knew he couldn’t say that. It would just prolong the windy night he was so desperate to put an end to.

“He probably didn’t know that pesto has nuts in them,” Zeke added cautiously.

“And maybe you exploited that in some way.”

Zeke cocked a brow.

“I don’t know. You work at the bar, right?” the detective said, waving her hand around as she talked. “Maybe, you suggested it to him and wanted to look like a hero when you saved him. People tell me that you go around town blabbering about wanting to be a doctor and trying to act like one.” She paused. “What kind of doctor wannabe injects someone with an expired EpiPen without making sure they had one on them in the first place?”

“I was just—”

“And then, the way you administered it. You can’t just jab those things into people. This isn’t a movie—”

“I got excited for my first real case and—”

“Where did you even get that EpiPen in the first place?” She eyed his ancient-looking doctor’s bag with parts of its bleached navy blue leather peeling off. “Do you run around collecting random medical supplies?”

And by “collecting” she meant “stealing.”

Zeke stood up. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

The book dropped and popped open. The exposed browning pages were filled with drawings of sigils, magic ward ornaments, and shapeless nightmarish creatures dotted with protruding eyes and oval mouths with twisted, jagged teeth. Words from an unknown language, or just horrendous penmanship, were scrawled across the pages.

The detective’s tight face crinkled as she studied the horrific pages and then slowly raised her head. “What the—?”

A girl rushed towards them, crouched to the book, and closed it. AJ was her name. As she rose, her towering height was made apparent, startling the detective for a bit. Beating both her and Zeke by many inches.

“It’s an inheritance from his grandmother,” AJ said as she handed the book back to Zeke. The book slipped from her large hands into Zeke’s.

He ogled at them again. They were easily comparable to those of an athlete. In gym class, her massive hands could swipe a basketball from another player effortlessly.

If only she actually played.

Zeke averted his gaze as AJ turned to face the detective. He knew how conscious she was of her man-hands and man-... everything else.

“Zeke didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” AJ said.

“If that was enough to excuse someone from a crime, prisons would be empty.” the detective said. She stole a glance at Zeke and let out a sigh. “But having a chance to talk to you now… I can see the number of people that called 911 and their claims may have been out of hand. Look, kid, you’ve gotta be more careful.”

“Are you going to have to call my mom?” Zeke asked, shuddering at the thought of the fury of the Latina woman.

The detective curled her lip to the side. “No, I don’t think so—”

A trio of first responders burst out the front door of Heath’s Sports Bar with Zeke’s patient on a stretcher. As they rushed to the ambulance, Zeke grabbed his book and bag and caught up to them.

The EMT ran to the driver’s seat of the ambulance while one of the paramedics moved behind the stretcher and the other stayed in the front. They used the ramp to load the swollen high school student into the vehicle.

“Wait!”

The paramedic in front, a trainee possibly, wheeled back to Zeke. “What?” he shouted.

“Can I…” He lowered his head, building up the courage to finish his sentence.

“What do you want, kid?” the trainee asked, scratching his chest.

“Can I come? Just to… stay with him till he reaches the hospital? Please,” he asked with a pathetic quaver in his voice. “I want to make sure that he is okay.”

The trained turned to his superior inside the ambulance. She growled and shrugged.

“Okay, fine, let’s go.” the trainee said and climbed into the ambulance, migrating the scratching to his back.

AJ ran up to Zeke. “You’re going with the ambulance? Well, then, I’m coming, too.”

“Come on, we’re wasting time here!” The older paramedic yelled.

###

In the back of the ambulance, Zeke was seated on one side with AJ and watched the real professionals do their job as they sped to the hospital.

The trainee monitored the oxygen tank closely while seated, and the older paramedic was on her feet checking the patient’s oxygen mask, and then examined the hives that mushroomed across his arms.

“The expired EpiPen is not going to kill him, right? I’ve read online that EpiPens retain 90 percent potency even after expiration—”

“Oh, so you did mean to use the expired EpiPen?” She glowered at him and then made a feral snarl. “You thought it would work.”

“N-n-no, I didn’t know it was expired. It had been a while since I checked the date, a-a-a-and I, uh, I, uh, I was just mentioning the fact about—”

“Do yourself a favor and stop talking, kid,” the trainee said as he grabbed a pen and scratched the bottom of his chin.

“Just because it’s Halloween, doesn’t mean you can pretend to be some medical authority,” the paramedic muttered, shaking her head.

AJ grabbed Zeke’s shoulder and pulled him back.

They exchanged a look.

She was always amongst the tallest kids in class. Zeke, like most kids, suspected that she was just an early bloomer, but at the start of every year, they’d find her at least half an inch taller than the last while, Zeke waited for his Latino genes to find and unlock an unlikely height attribute for himself.

But it never came, and he stagnated at five foot five, and AJ beat him by six inches.

“So much for your day off, huh?” she said.

“So much for a birthday…” he said.

AJ shrank back and put on a softer expression. “I’m sorry, Zeke…” Her eyes moved down to the old book in his hand. “So, what’s the book she left you about?”

Zeke scratched his head. “It’s… nonsense,” he said. “When I went to pick up her stuff today, according to my Uncle Pablo, the box she left was prepared years ago. Appointed to me, specifically.”

AJ warmed up with a smile. “That’s quite nice.”

“I guess but this thing is just more evidence of her deteriorating mental state. Demons and satanic symbols. This is too much even for a crazy person. Aside from the book, she left charms, talismans, amulets, rings, and other junk.” Zeke said.

The paramedic growled loud enough to demand everyone’s attention. They all stared at her in silence.

“You okay?” the trainee asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, twitching to the side, making more guttural sounds. “I’m fine!”

“Alright,” the trainee said and then switched the pen for a flowmeter to scratch his back.

AJ pulled her attention away from the personnel and focused on Zeke. “It may be junk, but all those things meant a lot to her, and she wanted you more than anybody to have it,” she said. “Zeke, you know, during her time at the ward, she was probably very lonely and scared. Your mother barely visited, the same goes for the rest of your colorful family. You were her only friend. You made her secluded life in that place more worthwhile. Her last years leading up to that heart attack could’ve been much more painful.”

Zeke grinned and blinked away the tears burning in his gaze, readjusting his blurring vision. Out of all his family members, the harmless, demented old lady was the one the universe decided wasn’t worth keeping around.

He studied AJ and blurted out, “I wish I came from a family like yours.”

AJ whipped back and stared into his dark brown eyes while furrowing her brows.

“No, you don’t. They’re not as bad as criminals, sure, but a family of accountants and computer programmers makes way for the worst dinner table conversations ever. My dad once told me an hour-long story about his favorite calculator brand, which somehow concluded with the final message being, ‘always respect your elders.’” She let out a long groan as she stared into the distance and swam through the memory in her head. “Where is your brother, anyway? I thought that you two would spend your day off together.”

The comment served as a reminder of a neat perk for Zeke that came from his mother marrying a gangster.

Her taste in men ripened and she remarried a dentist. His son was the same age as him.

Coincidentally, the kid was no stranger to Zeke. Ugo was his name, but he called him ‘Mora’. Ugo explained his directive for the day before disappearing into the cold haze that morning. “Getting closer to achieving his goal,” he said. Those words coming from someone like him can only raise suspicion.

Zeke’s eyes fell back onto the patient. He had a frame belonging to that of a seasoned football player and was now reduced to something so pitiful and feeble.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You did try to save the life of a complete stranger.”

“He goes to our school, AJ. After I left Uncle Pablo’s, I saw him fighting with someone else. That new kid, baseball player—”

“Raylan?” AJ shrieked with a twinkle in her eyes. Zeke gave her a look. She made a chagrined smile and then reset. Focusing on him with an indifferent stare, giving him the mental cue to continue.

“If he dies… it’ll be my fault.”

The paramedic released a powerful scream and whipped to the trainee. “Would you stop with all that scratching?” She pointed at the flowmeter. “Put that down!”

The trainee didn’t follow the order. “I don’t know why… but I am so itchy.”

Zeke studied the trainee and his face was dry, flaky even. But the flakes spread across his face were… gray.

The trainee raised a shaky finger, pointing back at the paramedic. “Y-Y-Your hand…”

Zeke shifted his gaze towards the paramedic’s hand just as she looked down on it.

A carpet of hair blanketed the back of her hand and the tips of her fingernails were sharp, no… they were sharpening. Shaping and elonging in real-time.

The paramedic gaped at her hand in horror as hair began to take over her cheeks.

The trainee stood up with woody warts growing on his face. “Here, you should sit down—”

With one swing of the paramedic’s hand, the trainee was blasted to the floor of the ambulance as blood splattered on the wall in the form of claw marks.

Zeke trembled and pulled back, bumping into AJ, feeling how much she was shaking. He looked back at her—her watery eyes got even wider behind her black, thick-rimmed glasses.

The paramedic growled once again in a beastly, demonic voice.

Zeke looked up at the woman slowly losing her humanity. Her ears changed shape and her back arched up and she increased in size, causing tears in her uniform as more hair grew from all over her body. Her claws and teeth—jagged and yellowing—continued to lengthen.

The ambulance shook violently, but the half-woman, half-beast remained firm throughout her transformation. Her eyes took on a golden-yellow hue and her mouth stretched forward.

Zeke felt his heart fall down into his stomach and pull itself back up over and over. He put up a good fight trying to avoid screaming, but as the creature’s hungry eyes directed and fixated on him, it became as impossible as trying to finish a bowl of soup with a fork.

Although, what came out of him wasn’t a scream. It was something closer to a squeal.

Zeke had no problem with dying after hearing the noise he made.

Then the world shifted to the side and then, it flipped.

Everything flashed into black.

###

Zeke, marked with bruises and scratches, was brought back to reality by a hot breath pushing into his face. He opened his eyes and let out a yip.

He was pinned on his back while staring right into the werewolf’s yellow eyes. It sniffed him all over with its giant snot and grabbed him by the throat with one arm, lifting him off the ground.

It opened its massive maw, lines of saliva drooping between its teeth, and a long tongue hanging out greeted him.

Without the willpower to scream, he just sobbed softly as his head neared the chompers.

What have I done with my life till now? What have I accomplished? The last thing I did was put someone’s life in danger. A fitting end for a Rosario, I guess.

The werewolf stopped as Zeke’s head rested in its mouth.

It pulled him out like a taste test gone wrong and dropped him.

They were on the grassy side of an empty road. A dazed Zeke looked up at the monster and noticed it was staring down at something to the side. He followed the direction it was looking at and found a man approaching the werewolf.

The man was drenched in sweat and seemed to be in his 20’s and wore a burgundy knee-length black fur-trimmed parka over a black shirt with a loose purple tie, and a scarf of the same color around his neck.

The werewolf cowered looking at the sweaty man.

“Wait, just hold on…” the man started. He slowed his steps and raised his hands like a zookeeper stepping into a cage to feed a lion, or rather, a wolf in this case.

The werewolf got on all fours and made a break for it.

As the man was about to lurch forward to go after it a sharp cry made him stay. He turned to the distress and backtracked.

Zeke raised to one knee, following him with his eyes and then the man crouched down to the sobbing trainee.

He was on his back as his arms and legs were twisting and enlarging—transforming into tree branches and fusing with the ground. The woody warts had fully taken over his face, blocking his eyes and obstructing most of his mouth. “Help me! Help me! Please! What is happening to me?”

The man’s expression became despondent. “I don’t know… and I can’t help you,” he said.

“Huh? What?” the trainee blubbered. “Am I going to be like this forever?”

“Your consciousness will be long gone before you know it… or at least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Another source of sobbing prompted Zeke to dart his gaze to the other side of the area. He found the ambulance to his right, flipped on its side, and the EMT hunched over projecting rainbow vomit.

Once he stopped, he looked back at Zeke with exhausted eyes. Unicorn horns protruded from all over his body with blood leaking at the base. “Somebody… help me.” The EMT collapsed in a puddle of his colorful bodily fluids. More horns began to sprout out of his body.

His heart panged as he made a horrific realization.

AJ was nowhere to be found. He scanned the area in a panic. Forcing his aching body back on its feet. “AJ!” he shouted.

“Your friend is fine,” the man said. “I got all of you out at once. I thought the wolf was unconscious when I lied it aside to tend to your friend. Sorry about that.” He pointed at a tree where AJ was propped up against, unconscious, but unscathed. The patient was beside her and in healthy condition as well. No swelling, no scratches.

“They haven’t been afflicted with any otherworldly ailments, so that’s good. I can’t do anything about the others, though,” the man explained.

The man neared Zeke, during so, he felt his legs bend and buckle as if the top of his body suddenly became too heavy for them, and his chest closed like his lungs were being squeezed against each other. The man stood before Zeke and he had to resist the bizarre urge to venerate him not as some righteous saint but as something far greater.

“Who are you?” Zeke asked, unable to contain his tremors.

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t remember any of this.” The man raised a hand and halted. “You feel… strange.”

Zeke squinted at the man and looked back at the unicorn-horn-blighted EMT and then at the metamorphosing trainee. “You can’t save them?”

“The ones who can… are on the wrong side.”

As the man’s palm touched his face, Zeke felt serenity. A wave of calmness and happiness washed over him—it seemed to last for an inexplicable time period that was either shorter than a zeptosecond or as long as an eternity. It was hard to use logic to describe it.

He closed his eyes and had the best sleep of his life.