I’ve noticed lately (and have commented on it here and there, and Mike and I talk about it in our interview coming next Tuesday) myself especially drawn to stories that read like the author was having fun while writing them. Something about that energy in the prose, the joy of “what might happen next??,” the *vibes* that consume me while reading the story.
This story has all of that in spades. As soon as I started reading, the premise and the first few sentences had me hooked (meta, self-aware, time loop/horror movie mash-up set the night before Halloween? All in. And Mike delivers on the promise of those few sentences, and then some.
—Aaron Burch
Oh no, a time loop.
Of all the times to get stuck in time, I get stuck in this time?
My senior year of high school?
I’m seasonally depressed, chronically bullied, I have like 45 zits, and my parents and all the other grown-ups (can I even say that anymore? Am I a grown up?) in town are drinking themselves stupid every night because of the state of the world.
In addition to being in a shit season of my life, it’s a shit time of year to be in a damned time loop. Sure, the leaves are pretty, but no amount of pretty leaves can make up for the fact that Pithole is really fucking depressing. We have at least 300 days of cloud cover a year, but in October it’s like God buttered two or three layers of clouds onto our Wonder Bread town.
And my boyfriend (kind of) dumped me.
To be clear, he really dumped me. He was only kind of my boyfriend.
Sad!
So, we can agree this is a terrible situation, right? Don’t worry, it gets worse.
Because I don’t just fall asleep and wake up and repeat the day. I don’t even get a whole day. And I never sleep.
I only get the night. The night before Halloween. And on each of those nights, I’m murdered by a horror movie villain that everyone knows.
He’s associated with a significant holiday. His films take their name from it. A holiday that happens in October. One that’s actually tomorrow. Tomorrow. A tomorrow that could be years away, or never come at all.
He wears a famously expressionless mask, and the myth around it is that the costume designer from the original film bought a Captain Kirk mask and spray-painted it bone white.
I’m pretty sure my killer isn’t the well-written villain from the first movie or the more recent sequels. I don’t even get the gross but mystical whackadoodle from the terrible remakes.
No, I’m with that lunatic from the middle movies. He has terrible hair. The mask looks like a knock-off of a knock-off. I know all of this because I’m a big fan. Was a big fan.
I even bought a replica of that white, rubbery mask just the other day, so that I could wear it myself for Halloween.
My killer has no air of mystery, no sense of otherworldly evil. He’s just gross. He’d give me an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach even if he wasn’t busy pitting my stomach. And, I know this sounds meta (I’m in a fucking time loop, give me a break), but it’s like he’s here directly from the movies. He’s unpredictable (derogatory), badly directed, and haphazardly edited. He doesn’t stalk me through the house methodically, and his motivations are obscure at best. In fact, I can’t track his movements at all. He just appears, randomly, and murders me in disgusting ways.
The expression on his mask never changes, of course, and his body language never belies anything but efficient malice. He’s always wearing the same jumpsuit and smells like old farmhouse dust.
I’ve considered that perhaps something snapped and I’m in a padded room somewhere, swaying and screaming as I’m murdered again and again in my tormented mind. But I don’t think that’s it. It all feels so real.
And murder hurts so bad.
I’ve died hundreds of times now. I’ve been gored by a pitchfork, shot in the face, drowned in a washing machine, strangled with my own intestines (I know, ew), impaled with a lawn gnome, smooshed by tombstone, and smothered with a bear-skin rug. I’ve been thrown out a window, jumped out a window, and fallen out a window. I’ve been stabbed, slit, and skewered with all number of items. My neck’s been snapped, my back cracked, my throat slashed, my legs hacked.
There are quite a few problems with this whole scenario, but the most immediately concerning to me is that my body regenerates, but I remember everything. I’ve been carrying the trauma of each assault with me to the next same day.
I’m in the caretaker’s house in Redvale Cemetery, which isn’t nearly as odd as it sounds. Or maybe it is, and I’ve just lost my sense of what’s normal and what isn’t. My parents have been friends with the caretakers, the Killmyers (I know, I know!) for years, and I’m here babysitting their two youngest children, Crystal and Branson. If my reputation could get any more tragic, perhaps I’d be concerned about being Pithole’s premiere male babysitter.
Crystal and Branson are strangely perfect children. Funny and stubborn. I love them so, so much. I’ve been with them for what must have been a year by now. A year’s worth of one single night.
I’ve died hundreds of times now. I’ve been gored by a pitchfork, shot in the face, drowned in a washing machine, strangled with my own intestines (I know, ew), impaled with a lawn gnome, smooshed by tombstone, smothered with a bear-skin rug...
It’s evening, late afternoon really, and the sun is already low. The sky is mostly grey, and the rusty autumn light peeking through the clouds has made the cemetery’s trees brown, yellow, and red smudges through the window.
The Killmyers are out drinking with my parents, which they do on a regular basis. Mrs. Killmyers, or “Mama Mimi,” is lovely, the kind of mom who feels like she’s your mom, too. Mr. Killmyers, Nick, is gruff and distant and so freaking hot it should be criminal. He’s so strong, from years of working in the cemetery, and has all those long, tanned limbs. He’s very handy and helpful; everyone calls him Saint Nick.
I’ve got a bag of piping hot Taco Bell on the counter, and I’ve been pulling out tacos one by one, unwrapping them, and arranging them on plates with apple slices so the kids know I care. The kids’ parents are very meat and potatoes people – they’d probably combust on the spot if they even got pepper on their food – so I’m trying to give the kids a little culture. I’ve got a pot of water boiling to make rice, too, because I feel like adding rice makes it a well-balanced meal?
The kids are upstairs, hopefully playing with their Nintendo and not their dad’s guns.
Just kidding. I’m not that bad of a babysitter. I know the guns are in the basement, and I won’t let them down there. I won’t go down there either; the few times I’ve gone gotten my hands on a gun, I’ve always ended up getting shot myself. And I hate it. Getting shot is way worse than getting stabbed, which was a surprise.
The basement also houses the cemetery office, which contains what I assume is the cemetery’s Lost & Found. And let me tell you, people leave some weird shit in cemeteries. The Lost & Found isn’t even a box; it’s a whole closet. A closet full of black candles, a variety of animal bones and antlers, and books on Satanic rituals, Druidic runes, Sumerian demons, and dark witchcraft. There’s a black scroll labelled The Curse of Thorn. Also tons of cigarettes, lottery tickets, and gold coins. I don’t need to be spending my time around that crap while fighting off my cinematic attacker. He’s scary enough on his own.
I’m standing in the kitchen, checking to make sure the kids aren’t coming down the stairs while I try to get a good angle to take a picture of my ass, so that I can Snapchat it to my douchebag ex-kind-of-boyfriend, so he’ll know what he’s missing.
I know an 18-year-old shouldn’t date a 40-year-old (okay, “date” is a stretch here), particularly a 40-year-old who says he’s “100% straight.” A 40-year-old who flinches at the word gay.
“We all have to make sacrifices,” he said when he broke it off. It was probably a Jesus thing.
Anyways, he’s a butt guy, and my butt looks really good in the low light of the Killmyers’ kitchen.
And this is where the loop begins.
*
I wake up.
It’s the night before Halloween.
My ass is out, one arm on the counter, the other stretched behind me, trying to get the phone far enough away from my body to get my face and my butt in the picture all at once. I back up too far and sit right on the Grilled Cheese Burrito, which squishes molten cheese right out onto my left ass cheek. I scream and drop my phone into the boiling rice water.
My butt is sizzling but I’m bracing for the splash caused by my phone’s fall. The pain comes, and the hot water against the vicious hot cheese is like being spanked by a mean ghost’s ectoplasmic hand, but a huge crack behind me distracts me from my pain. I turn to the kitchen window, butt still hanging out, and see a lineman – a dude from the electric company, not a football player — flail as the pole he’s been working on is struck by lightning again and again until it splits in half and falls into the Killmyers’ autumn vegetable garden, which is buttressed right up against the cemetery itself.
By now, I know the precise arc of his fall. His left leg slips first, his arms windmill, then he drops. He doesn’t scream. Darth, the Killmyers’ beautiful black Labrador retriever, barks, presumably because men are falling from the sky.
The angle of the window is such that I don’t see his landing. I hope he falls into a leaf pile and then limps away to safety. I hope he escapes. Sometimes, I wonder if maybe he’s trapped in his own loop somewhere, that maybe we stumbled upon the same dimensional tear and we’ll be spinning around each other, never touching, for eternity.
Maybe he’s still falling.
For some reason, the lineman has become the symbol of all of this for me. Not my clichéd tormenter, not Crystal and Branson, not getting my ass burnt by Taco Bell. It’s the lineman.
A few seconds after the lineman’s fall, the power goes out. Presumably it has something to do with the lightning or the fallen pole, but who knows if the rules apply now. Perhaps someone, something, somewhere finds it more entertaining to see me die in the dark.
I pull my pants up, dried cheese and burnt skin sliding up with them, and run to the stairs. I’ve not let him get the kids yet, and I’m not starting today. By now, I’ve given up figuring out how to end the loop. Instead, I have a checklist:
Save the kids.
Save the dog.
Die well, or last as long as I can.
I’ve thought it through. I know the loop doesn’t end with his death, as the few times I’ve killed him he’s simply reappeared and killed me. Maybe I have to kill him twice, or three times, but that seems like too many rules. It obviously doesn’t end with my death. It’s possible, I suppose, that it could end with the kids dying, but how would I live on if I sacrificed them to break free?
Though fate or the universe or time or magic has proven itself to be such a bitch, that would be uselessly cruel. I refuse to give in to that.
I sprint into the kids’ room, where their little faces are illuminated by their handheld Nintendo screen. These kids have grown up in an ancient house in a cemetery; they don’t spook easily, and they don’t sweat a power outage.
I know the precise choreography by now. Dragging them out will only make them push back. They’re smart kids, and they get suspicious. So, I gather them up in my arms, my bracelets clanging as I place my wrists on their little shoulders.
“The house is going to burn down,” I tell them. It isn’t, but this gets them moving fastest. They also respond to “there’s a killer in the house!” but that scares them so badly that I try not to resort to that.
Their little eyes go wide.
“I need you to get down your ladder and then run down the street to the Walkers. Ask them to call 911.”
“Where’s your phone?” Crystal asks, as always. I ignore her. Explaining that I boiled it taking pictures of my butt isn’t a conversation I need to have with elementary school children.
“I’ll get Darth and I’ll meet you at the Walkers.”
“But…” Branson starts, and I wave him off.
“Do as I say!” I yell. I hate being so harsh, but yelling it at them gets them moving so much faster, and I prefer the loops where they don’t witness me being gutted.
They haul an emergency ladder from under Crystal’s bed while I open their window. I hook it to the side of Branson’s bed and toss the ropey ladder out the window, then watch as they wiggle out.
Then I quickly walk down the hallway, along the railing, towards the master bedroom. It’s an old house, and there’s a back staircase. The killer tends to appear where I am, so moving away from the kids gives them time to escape. If I try to exit the house with them, he always appears and slaughters me.
I’m halfway down the back stairs when the piano starts playing.
Dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo.
There’s no piano in the house, but the music still plays. Just as he arrives.
I hear his heavy footsteps behind me, thumping across the master bedroom. A shock of terror rockets through my nerves, though I’ve heard that sound countless times. I jump down over the last six steps, but I lose my balance and fall into the wall.
I know his swing, so even though I’m off balance, I push my weight to the left. His knife goes through my right side, but it doesn’t hit anything vital.
I’ve been stabbed so many times that I know what the stabbing of each organ feels like.
I run along the downstairs hallway and wrench open the back door, but he’s right behind me.
In the split second between feeling his thumbs on the back of my neck and the moment when the rest of his fingers will press into my windpipe, I drop my chin and open my mouth. Hesitation will only give him the chance to squeeze, and in this position he’ll rip off my cheek in addition to strangling me.
Instead, I bite fast, taking the pads off of the middle and pointer of his right hand.
As usual, he tastes like ass.
He pulls the hand back and I spin. I know that if he’s trying to strangle me then the knife will be stuffed into his left pocket. I reach down, grab the knife, and swing it up into the bottom of his chin. I can only see his outline, the only light being that amber, storm-kissed evening light coming through the window in the backdoor. I watch the shape of him crumple to the floor.
If I stop to pull off his mask, I’ll be treated to a wrinkly plane of blank, grey-pink skin. The body will remain, but he’ll already be popping up somewhere else on the property.
I push through the back door, out into the rain.
Darth runs up, tail wagging, and licks my hand, his big Labrador eyes giving me a rare dose of happiness in the hell (hells) I’m living. I run to the back gate, open it, then grab his collar and shove him through.
I don’t follow. If I do, the killer will appear and off me and poor Darth in some horrible way.
I look to the fallen electrical pole, which has smashed through the fence on the far side of the Killmyers’ backyard. The lineman is nowhere in sight, of course.
I turn towards the house just in time to see the killer’s blank white mask coming towards me.
He’s got a bocce ball in his hand.
Dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo.
This will be new, at least.
He swings the ball, hard. Pain screams through my temple and…
*
I wake up.
It’s the night before Halloween.
My butt is sizzling but I’m bracing for the splash caused by my phone’s fall. A huge crack erupts behind me, and I turn to the kitchen window, butt still hanging out, and see the lineman flail as the pole he’s been working on is struck by lightning again and again, until it splits in half as it falls into the Killmyers’ autumn vegetable garden.
I watch him fall and wait for the power to go out.
And wait.
And wait.
The lights stay on.
I’m halfway down the back stairs when the piano starts playing.
Dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo, dah-doo-doo, dah-doo-doo.
My ass is out. It stings. The kitchen lights are on.
Have I solved the puzzle? Had that been the secret? I needed to be killed by a bocce ball?
What else did I do differently?
A series of loud barks.
Darth, probably startled by the falling lineman.
The lineman!
The sound is coming up from the back yard and through the kitchen window.
I run into the back hallway, sprint to the door, shove it open.
The lineman survived the fall, thank God. He must have fallen right into the pile of manure on the edge of the vegetable garden. Not glamorous, but good luck nonetheless.
It’s so odd to see him do something other than fall. I’ve seen him fall hundreds of times. And now, here he is. His back is to me, and he’s facing Darth, who has stopped barking and is simply wagging his tail enthusiastically.
Darth isn’t much of a guard dog, which is why I spend so much time rescuing him.
I feel the cold rain and I realize my ass is hanging out. I pull my pants up. Ass on the brain, I look at the lineman’s; it’s impressive.
But there’s something else, too. I see an object shoved into his back pocket.
It’s white and looks rubbery.
A mask, which the lineman slowly pulls out and peels over his head before turning to face me.
It’s him, of course.
Have we reset? Am I still in the loop? Or are we back in real life? What happens if I die now?
He takes a massive step towards me, swooping down as he moves, grabbing a bocce ball off the lawn.
The memory is fresh. I duck before he’s in full swing, and his arm sails over my head.
I throw my weight forward, and the lineman slips on the slick lawn. He falls backward into the wet vegetable garden, smashing a pumpkin on impact. I leap over his long, flailing legs and open the back gate. I shove a confused Darth through it and swing it closed behind him.
I turn back to see the lineman rising from the vegetable garden, bringing a hideous lawn gnome with him. Just today but also months ago, that evil gnome’s viciously pointy hat went right through my belly.
I know it will take him three steps to reach me.
He takes his first step, then his second, but between the second and third step, I turn sideways.
He shoves the gnome forward and it scrapes across my midsection, giving me little more than a scratch.
The left side of his face is directly in front of mine. White rubber of his mask brushes the tip of my nose. The mask looks just like the one in the bad sequels. It looks just like the one I bought the other day.
I swing my head forward, my forehead connecting with his left eye socket.
He screams. He’s never screamed before.
I push off, running back into the house, swinging the door shut behind me, then run up the hallway, my wet shoes sliding on the floor as I wobble into the kitchen. Before I have time to think, I’m knocked sideways when the basement door bursts open. The lineman barrels through, handgun in his right hand.
He doesn’t hesitate, but I know he won’t. Unlike the movies, you can’t dodge a bullet once it is fired. You have to move before the trigger is pulled. I twist just enough that the bullet goes into my left shoulder.
I hit the floor with a heavy thwomp. I expect him to leap on top of me to finish the job, but he turns and walks purposefully up the front hallway. He must assume I’m out of commission.
Even the toughest people don’t hop right up from a gunshot wound. But even the toughest motherfucker on Earth hasn’t survived a hundred murders.
I grab a handful of sauce packets from the Taco Bell bag on the counter, shove them in my pocket and head for the back stairs.
I meet the lineman in front of the kids’ room, at the top of the front stairs. I pull the kids’ door closed and hear their startled voices on the other side.
I met my killer in this exact spot dozens of times. I duck as the lineman tries to pistol whip me and then I slap him hard across his rubber face. He’s stunned, and I take the opportunity to grab his mask and pull it up, up, up.
I only get it halfway off, but I recognize him right away.
It’s Nick.
Mr. Killmyers.
Crystal and Branson’s dad.
My ex-kind-of-boyfriend. Did I mention that?
And suddenly it all makes sense. The knowledge of hundreds of bloody deaths seems to rise out of the dirt, up into my nerves, and straight to my veins. I wonder if the bodies down there, the bones — under this house and yard and this whole damned cemetery – did this for me somehow?
All of my deaths weren’t punishment.
They were practice.
Those books on Druidic runes, Satanic rituals, Sumerian demons, and dark witchcraft aren’t from the Lost & Found after all. Nick is a child-sacrificing, Kool-Aid drinking psychopath!
I look straight into his black eyes and I can see it all in an instant. He’s obviously no lineman. He’d climbed onto the pole from the top of the garage. A small hop from the pole would have led him right to the huge ledge outside of the master bedroom’s big windows.
He’d sneak right in while the stupid babysitter took selfies and ate tacos. He could slip across the master bedroom, up the hallway, and into the kids’ room. They’d be surprised to see him, but they wouldn’t make much of a noise because they knew him so well.
And then he’d kill them. His own children.
As we stare into each other’s eyes, I feel like he maybe he knows, somehow. About the loop. Surely a murderer can feel all of the death on me? It must radiate off me. I must smell like the inside of his head.
He drops the gun, then reaches up with a shaking hand and angrily pulls the mask down over his face.
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s a trade,” he says. “It’s the two of them or all of us.”
He doesn’t sound as sure as I’d like him to.
“I saw it, I know it,” he says.
“Why not just come up to the front door?” I say. “It’s your house. I’d let you in.”
I’ve already let him in plenty.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says, but it’s a lie, and I don’t just think that because it’s coming from behind a murder mask.
It’s because it’s coming from behind my murder mask.
“You were going to frame me, you cunt.”
If I’m going down, I’m going down NC-17.
“It’s the only way,” he says.
What had he said when he’d decided that he had to stop giving me a ride home after I babysat for them? When he’d decided to stop fucking me in the back of his truck in a dark corner of the cemetery?
“We all have to make sacrifices, Larry.”
This douchebag meant literal sacrifices.
It all makes a terrible sort of sense. Only something so against the natural order of things – a father murdering his own children – could cause the universe to rise up and warp reality so wholly.
Or maybe he’s already taken me to Hell with him.
I shove my hands in my pockets. Then I pull them out, aim for the mask’s lips and punch.
He barely flinches, but I have another goal. I rub my Diablo-sauced hand all over the mask’s oddly delicate lips then shove it up under the mask and into his mouth before he knows what I’m doing.
“Kids, the house is on fire!” I scream. “Don’t come out! Climb out of your window and run down the street to the Walkers!”
“But...” Branson starts from the other side of the door.
“Do as I say!” I scream.
Nick bites at my fingers and I feel the bones crack in his mouth. I yank them out.
Then, mouth free, he calls out, “Kids! Come out! It’s…”
His voice is raspy, his mouth puckered. He really doesn’t sound anything like himself. He probably hasn’t had hot sauce since his youth.
“Who is that?” Crystal yells through the door.
“A killer!” I scream. “Now, run!”
“It’s Daddy!” Nick chokes out, but he doesn’t sound like Saint Nick anymore. He sounds like the monster he is. The kids do not react, and I hear the ladder clanging against the bed frame.
Then Nick plunges the knife into my leg.
I scream, then slam my open hand into his face, giving him another big whiff of the Diablo sauce and hopefully a broken nose.
He falls backward, pulling his knife from my leg as he rolls backwards down the stairs.
I sit down and slide down the stairs on my ass, then spider crawl over Nick and put my body between him and the door.
He’s been hurt in the fall down the stairs, but he’s still mobile. He stands and shoves the knife towards me.
I hop to the right on my good leg. The knife gets me in the hip.
“Just a scratch,” I rasp at him.
He pulls it out and stabs again. I’m dizzy, but I know this move. I flop down and roll as he stabs. He cuts a hot line in my back, but I roll into his legs and he falls forward.
I’m waiting for the sirens. I’m waiting to know the kids made it.
Nick straddles me. Plunges the knife into my stomach and pulls it out slowly.
I need more time.
I smile up at him, feel hot blood pooling at the corners of my mouth.
“Yeah, daddy. Stick it in,” I burble at him.
I can feel the temperature of his rage increase. There it is. I’ve hit the gay nerve. His knife hand shakes so badly that he nearly cuts his own face. He reeks of Diablo sauce.
He stabs me again, but it’s deflected by a rib bone.
“That’s right,” I choke out. “Harder, daddy.”
He shoves the knife towards my heart, hard, but I have just enough strength to shrug. He hits lung, and twists.
It’s hard to breathe, but I can still whisper.
“How’s it feel to be inside me again?” I rasp.
He’s furious now. He withdraws the knife and wraps his hands around my neck.
I buck and turn, trying to get out from underneath him.
But I can’t breathe.
I can feel the temperature of his rage increase. There it is. I’ve hit the gay nerve. His knife hand shakes so badly that he nearly cuts his own face. He reeks of Diablo sauce.
Then, finally, I hear the sirens.
As Nick’s shoulders slump, I smile up at him.
He roars and squeezes harder. As I feel my windpipe collapsing under those calloused hands, Nick leans his head back and screams in anguish, in failure, and it sounds like it hurts.
Good.
I can die now. Finally. For real. There’s just one thing to do first.
I reach up, my fingers sliding along his left side.
I put my other hand in my own pocket. Get it nice and wet as Nick really puts his back into it and squeezes as hard as he can.
Just as my vision begins to go black, I throw my saucy hand up, wiping it across the mask’s dead eyes.
Nick screams, his eyes stung by Diablo sauce.
Remember: if he’s strangling me, he’s put the knife is in his left pocket.
I thank Taco Bell, and then pull the knife from his left pocket and plunge it into his heart.
I don’t miss.
I will not be defeated by a man with only one life.
A man with only one death.
I close my eyes, and as I slip away, I see the credits roll. Bold orange writing on a black screen. Loud, violent piano chords. The light of a jack-o-lantern casts a menacing flicker over the names of all the people who made this nightmare possible.
Soon, the title will slam down one final time, accompanied by a single, shrill, violent violin note.
And then, of course, the end.
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I wake up.
It’s Halloween.
Not Another Time L∞p!
STORY:
Like Sharon Stone and the zipper, Dr. Mike McClelland is originally from Meadville, Pennsylvania. He has lived on five different continents but now resides in the startling American Midwest with his husband, two young sons, and a menagerie of ancient rescue dogs. He's the author of the short story collection Gay Zoo Day and his creative work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Electric Literature, The New York Times, Boston Review, Vox, Observer, Wired, The Baffler, and in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. He teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, and you can find him online at magicmikewrites.com.
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ART:
Matt Mitchell is a writer, editor, and part-time drawer from Columbus, Ohio. He currently runs the music section at Paste Magazine.
Next Tuesday, we’ll feature an interview with Mike about this story!
So creepy and twisted and twisty and hilarious 👻🎃👻