Season 1, Interautumnal Interlude II - "Halloween Happenings 2"

“And then, bam!” Isaac slammed his fist down on Audrey's table. “I get sucked into a slow-burn romantic drama that took fifteen years to wrap up!”

He gestured at his two friends. “Pretty scary story, right?”

Audrey nudged Reed awake. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I was shaking in my boots. Pure terror.”

Isaac unwrapped a candy bar. “I bet you were. You see, when you told that stupid story about Dave selling you a haunted VHS tape, I thought, ‘Wow, that would be a good scary story.’ So my story had the VHS demon really appear after we watched The Tool Shed. Imagine that! A demon that you can only defeat through bribery or neutrality. Scary!”

Audrey nudged Reed awake again. She stretched her arms out to wake herself up and took some candy from a bowl Audrey placed on the table. “You oughta workshop your stories next time.”

Isaac crossed his arms. “You’re just mad I voted for Audrey in the costume contest.”

Reed pointed a candy bar at him. “I voted for myself, Audrey voted for herself, it was all up to you. And what do you do?” She took an annoyed bite of chocolate. “You voted for Audrey rather than yourself, just to deny me a third of a victory. That’s a fraction, Isaac. Not even a whole number. You won’t even give me the satisfaction of getting a fractional victory.”

“Of course not,” Isaac simply said.

Reed jabbed her candy bar at Audrey. “Destiny D’Urberville can fly through space, but Amelia Earhart couldn’t even fly around Earth correctly.”

Audrey snatched the chocolate out of Reed’s hands. “As the whole number victor, I have a right to this candy bar!”

Reed went to steal some of Audrey’s candy, giving Isaac an opening to nab several of her peanut butter-chocolate bars. Reed slouched in her seat and simmered. “You know how many things I had to buy to make this costume? Seven things. Seven-”

“So what did you think of the story, Audrey?” Isaac asked.

“I said seven-”

“Eeeeeh,” Audrey admitted over Reed’s protests. “It was okay. I didn’t like the implication that I don’t know what 1970s funky jazz music over a scene with a plumber and a woman who can’t pay means.”

Isaac shrugged. “That lack of knowledge fits your character.” He eyed Reed. “And that knowledge fits yours.”

Reed raised an eyebrow.

“Isaac, I don’t own any sort of vile tape like that,” she lied. “And getting stuck in a slow-burn romance? Talk about a lackluster ending. Here, let me show you how a real ending is done.”

The bell to the rental shop rang, signifying the entry of a new customer. Sitting behind the counter, Dave glanced up at the arrivals and turned down the radio.

“How can I help you today?” Dave asked the two students.

“We’re looking for something scary,” Lynn informed him, Mackenzie next to her, nodding in agreement. “Something good for Halloween.”

Dave pointed at a nearby aisle. “Got a bunch of horror movies out near the front. Slashers, mashers, movies that mess with your mind. Even have a few from Austria.”

“Austria?” Lynn repeated.

“The Austrian people are notorious for their ability to remain unphased by horror movies,” Mackenzie explained. “Reed told me that. She’s smarter than a PhD student. Richer than one too.”

“Yes, we all love Reed,” Dave confirmed. “She used to come in here with this guy, what’s-his-name. But I heard he went missing a few days go.”

Lynn recalled the rumors. “I heard something happened at his apartment. His heart full of spite, he apparently voted for Audrey in a Halloween costume contest over the rightful winner. So upset with a such a miscarriage of justice, Audrey and Reed refused to remain with him and instead left to go trick-or-treating. All alone with just an apparently haunted VHS tape, he was never heard from again.”

Mackenzie shrugged. “Not that we really care about him.”

Dave grinned. “Amen to that. Anyway, help yourselves to some tapes.”

Lynn and Mackenzie thanked him and made their way to the aisle he pointed out to them. They passed by San Francisco slashers, Mexican mashers, and Munich movies that would mess with their minds. Both of them shuddered as they passed the Austrian section, wishing Reed was there to protect them.

They ended up in the low-budget section, spooky films made by smaller studios or larger studios with leftover money. Things like The Tool Shed or A Haunting in East Eden that had the goal of making the audience laugh (sometimes unintentionally) just as much as scaring them.

Lynn blinked as she passed by a particular videotape.

“Something catch your eye?” Mackenzie asked, peering down at the tape she chose.

“The Tool Shed 2 – Tool Harder,” Lynn read aloud. She flipped it over to read the back. “After making a historical blunder – betraying his best friend in a Halloween costume contest – a young, foolhardy student was punished for his transgressions.”

“Don’t breath,” Mackenzie continued, an unimpressed look on her face. “Don’t move. Don’t think. One wrong slip and you’ll end up locked away in...The Tool Shed.”

Lynn and Mackenzie thought about it.

“Looks dumb,” Mackenzie decided.

Lynn laughed. “I agree. Almost as dumb as the guy on the cover.”

The two looked at the front. Mackenzie’s eyes widened.

“Lynn...that’s Isaac! Isaac’s on the cover!”

Lynn squinted. Sure enough, she saw a rather pasty-looking kid, his eyes full of fear, locked up inside a tool shed, or perhaps The Tool Shed.

“They say he disappeared a few days ago...” Lynn looked up at Mackenzie. “Do you think he’s been trapped there?”

Mackenzie rubbed her chin. “I think...that I don’t really care.”

“Yeah, me neither. I heard he got what was coming to him.”

Mackenzie and Lynn placed the videotape back on the shelf, where it would remain, for nobody would pick such a stupid-looking movie.

On Halloween nights, if you listened just at the right time, you could hear the distant scream of someone who wished they had picked the real winner in the costume contest...

“And then, bam.” Reed tapped a finger on the table. “You’re stuck in a VHS tape for life, Isaac. That’s irony. And that’s scary. Make fun of a VHS tape, end up as a VHS tape. Now that’s a real ending.”

Audrey had to restrain Isaac. Steam poured from his ears as he simmered and struggled against her grasp. “Reed, I’ll kick your ass!”

Reed smirked. “You should separate the work from the creator, Isaac. Let the piece of art stand on its own, don't let yourself be biased by your own feelings - in this case, a romantic feeling of a belligerent kind - towards its creator. That’s homo sapien. Wait no, ad hominem, that’s the phrase.”

“It’s stories like that that’ll make me not vote for you in the Halloween costume!”

Reed rose from table, knocking over a bag of candy. “So, you admit it. You voted for Audrey purely out of spite. That’s grounds for a duel in at least six Welsh provinces.”

Isaac stood up as well. “And enough with your made up facts!”

Audrey clapped her hands. “You guys! Halloween is all about being together!”

“That’s Christmas,” Reed informed her.

“Or Thanksgiving,” Isaac added.

“Fourth of July, too. Gotta spend a Fourth of July eating burgers with people.”

“And New Year’s. Who wants to spend a New Year’s alone?”

Audrey broke in. “Okay, I appreciate you two’s ability to turn my own words back at me. But let me send some more words your way! Here’s Audrey’s ending!”

Isaac and Reed looked at each other, then shrugged, deciding to listen.

Audrey turned the lights off, then sat back down at the table. She brought a flashlight to her face.

“Let me tell you two the terrible tale of terror known as the-”

Mishandling the flashlight, Audrey choked out in terror when the beam blasted light over her face. She rubbed her eyes and sat back up.

“Ahem. Anyway, as I was saying, let me give you a proper ending to the VHS demon of The Tool Shed!”

Audrey gave a wide grin. “It’s me! I’m the VHS demon!”

Isaac and Reed raised their eyebrows.

Audrey grinned. “Don’t believe me? Well, take a look at this!”

And then Audrey was the VHS demon.

Her hands and arms suddenly dissolved into magnetic light and red light poured out of her eyes. Isaac and Reed screamed in terror (Reed far more loudly than Isaac) as the tape overtook them. The last thing they heard was the gloating laughter of the VHS demon.

"And then, bam!" Audrey smacked both arms on the table. "I was the demon all along! Isn't that spooktacular? Isn't that...isn't that really scary..."

She eyed Isaac and Reed uncomfortably. "You guys won't actually turn into demons, will you?"

"Keep stealing my candy, and watch out," Reed warned her. She crossed her arms, reviewing the night's events. "I liked Audrey's ending. One of us turning out to be the demon all along? That's clever. And you'd never guess Audrey. Usually, you can always guess the murder culprit in the movie by figuring out which of the characters serve no actual purpose in being there. Like the wealthy parents and siblings will have their own storylines involving inheritances and secret romances...but the butler? But the gardener or the butler? They have no purpose beyond dressing a scene, which makes them below suspicion, which makes them the perfect culprit. What I'm trying to say here is that I would've guessed it was Isaac because I don't see why he's here-"

"I'll kill you!"

Audrey had to restrain him once again.

Reed continued on. "And, of course, I liked my own ending, since I was the one who made it-"

"That's homo sapien!" Isaac interrupted.

"Yeah, yeah." Reed shrugged. "Well, I guess since me and Audrey's tied, that makes us winners of best scary story, and Isaac the automatic loser."

"Fractional winners!" Audrey agreed, high-fiving Reed.

Isaac wiped his face. "But I came up with the story itself."

Reed raised a finger. "But you couldn't finish it, and finishing's the most important part. Maybe this can be a lesson."

Left with nothing but defeat, Isaac sighed, since at least he could eat more candy.

Reed saw the look on his face. "Chin up, Isaac," she offered, breaking a big candy bar into two. "You screwed me over in the Halloween contest, I screwed you over in this unofficial scary story contest. That makes us even, right?"

Isaac decided to take up her offer for one half of the candy bar. "Guess so. And only the costume contest had money attached to it, so I still came out ahead."

Reed completely forgot about the money. She narrowed her eyes.

Somewhere off in the distance, the sound of a power saw could be heard.

THE END

?

"The implication is that you murder us," Isaac explained as the three walked to school, the light of the seventh morning in November on them. "Reed didn't want to pay, so she got uppity as she does and kills us. The distant sound of the power saw makes it ambiguous."

Audrey rubbed her sleeve of her tear-filled eyes. Reed simply rolled hers.

"Isaac, it's been seven days since Halloween. Are you still going on about Halloween stories?"

Isaac nodded violently. "You told me I'm the automatic loser. I'm no loser, let alone an automatic one. And the only way to get good at something is to practice, so I'm just going to keep telling you guys scary stories until one ending lands with you two."

Reed yawned. "Just give it a rest. The only scary thing here is your obsession with this."

Isaac shrugged. "Well, man has the ability to ruin himself through what seems like an innocent obsession that steadily grows uninnocent until it becomes too late. Then, at the very end, he's left asking himself where all the time went. Was all of that time wasted, all of it just an ultimately meaningless obsession?"

He looked at the sky. "Perhaps that's the scariest thing of all. That we just have a finite amount of time on this planet, and any time we spend is time we no longer have. Imagine looking back at life on your deathbed and realizing it was all wasted."

Audrey and Reed joined him in looking at an empty sky.

"Existentialism isn't scary, Isaac, just annoying."

"C'mon, Reed, I really thought I had it that time..."

SOMETIMES, I THINK - IS THIS ALL THERE IS?