“Trick or treat!”

Jason and his buddies huddled together in the bushes, giggling and shushing each other as they tried to keep from being overheard. This was the best night of their lives. They had already scored two trash bags full of candy, smashed every pumpkin on this side of Holland Street, and scared at least four dozen kids to the point of tears.

And it was only eight o’clock.

“Leave this one to me,” Shawn said as he slid on his werewolf mask. It went well with the furry suit he was already wearing and his 6’1, linebacker build was more than intimidating enough for the job he was pulling off.

He crept under the porch, waiting for the front door to close and the unsuspecting kids to make their way down the steps.

Then he pounced. “RAWR!”

Seeing him, the kids burst out laughing.

“Aw, come on,” he said, lowering his claws. “I’m trying to be scary here.”

Pip looked down at the tally on his clipboard. “Do tears of laughter count for children we made cry?”

Jason didn’t answer. Following Butthead (who was nicknamed that because of a mohawk that made the top of his head look like two bare cheeks) and Ram, they slithered out of the bushes on their stomachs like snakes and grabbed the kids from behind. The kids spun around and screamed when they saw the faces of the teenagers.

Shawn laughed as the kids ran past him. Using his claws, he snatched up their goodie bags and watched them tear down the street. Then he looked back to the gang. “With faces like yours, why wear a mask?”

“Damn acne,” Jason muttered, rising to his feet. “No matter, we got what we came for. Anything good?”

He dug through the bags. “Yeah, there’s a few Twinkies in here.”

“Good, try not to eat them all before we get to the next house, fat ass.”

“Whose house is next anyway?” Ram asked, cracking his knuckles. He was the only one not dressed up. Shawn had his werewolf outfit, Jason was supposed to be a zombie (but he only looked like a hobo with his torn clothing and long hair), and Butthead was trying to pull off the gangster look, which was his usual costume even when it wasn’t Halloween.

Pip, crawling out of the bushes, was dressed as Harry Potter for reasons unbeknownst to the rest of the gang. They let it slide because he was new, though. And because he was keeping track of their Halloween pranks on his handy dandy clipboard. “That about does it for Holland Street. You want to hit Christie’s house next?”

Jason grinned, a zombie grin. Christie was his ex. They had broken up over the summer and yet he had hadn’t gotten over her. He had been planning to get even with her for months. And this was the perfect night to do it.

Well, anybody who knows East Shore High knows that Holland Street is the main residential road, which arches around the high school in a half circle. Everything south of the street (inside the curve) is in the poor section of town, located by the school for easy walking distance. Everything north of the street (outside the curve) is in the rich section, where most of the high school girls, including Christie, lived. For some reason, the girls of East Shore High seemed to have better luck financially than the guys, particularly the group Jason hung around.

But still, for as poor as they were, nothing was quite worth the pleasure of giving the rich people what they really deserved.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Let’s get that bitch.”

They turned around, counting their candy, and froze when they saw a little girl on the sidewalk in front of them. She was dressed as a ghost—but not really. Her clothes were plain but glazed over in a ghostly bluish chalk. Her eyes were faded as well, the pupils almost too translucent to see, and her hair, like the frayed strands of her clothes, danced slowly and eerily in the night breeze. White-skinned, she stared at them, and they stared back, seeing right through her.

“Hey, little girl,” Jason sneered. “You have any candy? Or do we have to scare it out of you?”
The girl continued to stare, unmoving. “…I saw what you did.”

Her voice made them shiver. Her lips had barely moved, but she had caused a cold echo to ring about them, draining down into their skin. Goosebumps bubbled to the surface of their arms.

“You have brought tears to many children on this night…” she spoke again, her very image wavering like paper in the wind. “But you should’ve been careful about who you play your pranks on. You never know who might want to join in…”

“I don’t think she’s going to share her candy,” Ram whispered.

But Jason took a bold step forward. “Enough of this. Fork over your candy or I’ll beat you like a piñata, you little brat.”

“…Little?” the girl mocked in a banshee’s cackle. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Jason was close enough to touch her now. He reached down to seize her wrist, but his fingers only brushed air—air so cold that his skin went numb and he stumbled back. “What the…?”

The girl didn’t move, but slowly her image began to dissolve. “If you wish to keep playing, then there shall be no pity for you. May the best prankster win…”

By the time her echo had finished ringing, she was gone.

Jason looked down at his hand and curled his fingers, one by one, to make sure he could still move them. “That was weird…” The wind caught his hair and made him shiver again. No stars were out tonight. Instead, the only glow of light came from the front porches and the streetlights down Holland, but even those looked cold and blue and faded now. The trick-or-treaters were scarce now and the gang was alone.

“She must’ve been one of the rich folk,” Butthead tried to rationalize “They’re always trying to top our costumes.”

“Yeah, we’ll get them for it,” Shawn said. “To the rich people’s houses!” He threw back his head and howled at the full moon. Rebels without a cause (and apparently without a clue), Butthead and Ram joined in as well, the three of them locked in arms and yowling and shrieking like cats on a fence. The wind picked up.

Jason and Pip looked at each other. They were the only two who seemed the least bit concerned by what had happened. But even their fears were soon subsided by the gang’s merriment and, before they knew it, the five of them were tossing rolls of toilet paper over the houses of the rich and chucking rotten eggs at their doorways.

They saved Christie’s house for last, though. For good reason. That’s where all the girls from ESH were hanging out. Every year for Halloween, Christie (who was one of the few lucky kids in high school to live on her own) would throw a huge Halloween bash. Usually guys were invited, but ever since Jason and Christie had broken up, she had become very anti-men. This year she made it pretty obvious that she didn’t want any guys at her party (the banners with ‘GUYS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT’ in bold, capital letters and a picture of a man with a red ‘x’ over his face was more than a subtle clue), but that made it all the more perfect to crash her party. The excitement was in the challenge.

Sneaking up Christie’s driveway, which was filled with cars that poured out into the street, the gang scurried across the lawn and crouched down under her front window. They could hear music through the walls and Jason managed to get one or two peeks through the curtains in the window. The house was swarming with girls. They were all dressed in costumes, of course, but it was clear that Christie hadn’t broken her ‘no guys allowed’ policy.

“They’re like a flock of sheep to us wolves,” Ram joked. “We’re going to crash their party and they’ll be running and screaming all over the place and won’t know what to do.”

“Right,” Jason said. “But we take no chances. I want to see Christie’s face when she finds out that I’m the one who ruined her party. I want to be right there in her face when she cries and then whisper, ‘I got you, bitch’.” He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to imagine it, the whole time smiling. Then he turned to Pip. “Alright, what are we doing?”

Pip quickly thumbed through the pages on his clipboard. “Okay, let’s see… Operation one: the inside job. Ram, Shawn—you two need to get inside the party with all the girls.”

“Why me?” Shawn whined.

“Because you’re the only one in a mask.”

“But you’re the one with the feminine figure.”

“No, I’m the one with the intellectual mind capable of formulating complex operations like this. You’re the werewolf. You’re going in.”

“What about me?” Ram said. “I don’t have a costume.”

Pip took off his wizard knapsack, unzipped it, and brought out a wig and a folded-up dress. “You do now.”

“Oh, hell no!”

“You two are the only ones who can do it,” Jason hissed.

“…Fine. As long as I don’t have to use tampons.”

“Thank you for that disturbing image,” Pip said, running his pen down the clipboard page. “Okay, operation two: the dive-bomb.” He took a quick peak through the window. “Good, it looks like they still have the refreshment table by the stairs… Jason and Butthead—you two will need to get onto the second floor and use this rope to tie yourselves to the banister. Then, when I give the signal, you’re good to go.” He tossed them each a coiled rope from his knapsack.

Jason caught it in his hand. “What’s the signal?”

“That’s operation three: the black-out,” he replied. “I’m going to squeeze through the basement window here and find the fuse box. When I shut off the lights, that’s your cue to make your jump.”
“Got it!” Jason grinned. “Oh, this is going to be sweet.”

Pip dropped the clipboard into his knapsack and zipped it up. “Everybody know their job?”

The gang all nodded and then put in their hands in a circle like a football huddle before they broke apart and went their separate ways. Pip kicked open the cellar window. Throwing his knapsack into the darkness first, he then slid his legs into the opening, using his small body to wriggle the rest of the way through. Jason and Butthead crept low around the outside of the house, being careful not to be spotted through any windows. When they reached the back of the house, they found a perfect staircase to the roof—a stack of logs pushed up against a shed, which they could climb onto to reach the greenhouse, from which they could grab onto a branch from a nearby tree that just hung over the slanted roof.

Meanwhile, Ram had thrown on the wig and dress and met Shawn by the front door of Christie’s house. They looked at each, shrugged, and rang the doorbell.

“Twenty bucks she doesn’t fall for it,” Shawn whispered.

“Go bite yourself.”

The door opened, revealing a slender brunette with a red bandana pushing back her hair, a patch over one eye, and a striped shirt with ripped sleeves. She looked at them, lifted the eyepatch, and then looked again. “Um…hi.”

“Oh, Miss Christie, it’s so good to see you again!” Ram squealed in the most girlish voice he could manage.

“…Do I know you?”

“Why, I’m Ram…ella Buttski. We went to elementary school together!”

“Ramella Buttski… From elementary… My, how you’ve changed.”

“Haven’t we all!” Ram giggled. Shawn was a little disturbed of his friend’s almost too good performance.

“…So where’s your costume?”

“What?”

“You’re just wearing a dress. What are you supposed to be?”

“…Britney Spears.”

“I see… Try losing the dress then. And whatever is on under it.”

“Tee-hee, oh, you naughty girl!”

Christie blinked. “Yeah, okay... Well, welcome to my party. Refreshments are in the living room, dancing in the lounge, and if you need to use the bathroom, please use the one downstairs. I’m trying to keep the party off the second floor after the accident last year and all.”

“You’re a doll,” Spike said, kissing her on both cheeks and then starting inside. The werewolf tried to follow him, but Christie blocked his way.

“And who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

Shawn thought quickly. “…Uh, I’m with her.”

With a shrug, Christie stepped aside and watched the two idiots walk into the party, giving us each other a high-five and then mingling with the guests as if they were old friends. She pulled the eyepatch back over her face and shook her head.

“Why did you let them in?” somebody asked. Christie’s friend, Leah, appeared at her side dressed as a butterfly, complete with fluorescent pink wings and two bobbing antennas over her head. “You know they’re guys, don’t you?”

“I know,” Christie said. “They’ve been creeping around outside for the past ten minutes. I’m surprised you didn’t hear them with all the noise they were making.”

“Well, I did see a bunch of guys outside the window. I figured they were just spying on us.”

“They could be, but Jason is with them.”

“That loser? He’s still stalking you?”

“Probably came to wreck the party.”

“Idiots… Should we do something?”

“No, no, this is too good to pass up. Go get a camera and take some pictures of that guy in a dress. Whoever he is, he’s going to have his face posted on every locker of the school on Monday.”

Leah laughed. “Okay, but keep an eye on them. Jason’s been pretty desperate to get even with you lately.”

“And I’m loving every pathetic minute of it,” Christie said as she joined the party again.

Pip clicked on his flashlight. The cellar was dark, even with the help of the dim beam, and he had to run his hand across the cement wall to make sure he didn’t collide with anything. Not that it helped much, though, as he found himself constantly tripping over a labyrinth of pipes that ran across the floor. It wasn’t until he reached the other side of the cellar that his Harry Potter slippers got caught underneath one of the pipes and he tripped. He tried to catch himself on his palms, but only succeeded in cutting them across the hard wet floor. The flashlight slipped from his fingertips and rolled under a stack of boxes. Grunting, he reached between the boxes and the wall, seized the handle of the flashlight, and rose back to his feet. The bulb was cracked and dying, but it gave off just enough light to reveal the fuse box, only a few feet away. He grinned.

Setting the flashlight down on the stack of boxes, he snapped open the metal case of the fuse box and drummed his fingers along each of the switches inside until he found what he was looking for: the main power switch. He gave a quick glance at his watch, deciding to give the gang a little more time to set up. He knew they wouldn’t be as quick and successful as him.

After three minutes had passed, he felt an itch on his neck—something stringy and ticklish, like a cobweb. He brushed at it and a small brown spider fell from his shirt, landing inside of the fuse box. It quickly scurried down the wall. He watched it, his only source of amusement in this dark prison, and then reached his fingers for the power switch. The guys had enough time. They had to be set up by now.

Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the lever and pulled it to the other side with a slam. It didn’t take long for the shrieking cry of about fifty girls to echo from the floor above him. He had to stifle a laugh, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him among all the panic. But that panic soon subsided. He scrunched his face, trying to figure out why. Why hadn’t Jason and Butthead crashed through the refreshment table? Why hadn’t Shawn and Ram groped the girls in the dark? Surely the girls should be making more noise than this.

Pip couldn’t figure it out. The power switch must’ve worked. He heard the girls scream. Now they were just talking in hushed whispers and he could hear their footsteps creaking on the floor over his head.

Something had gone wrong.

The flashlight’s bulb had since died and left him in as much darkness as the girls upstairs, so he didn’t bother picking it up. He couldn’t even see it anymore. Nor could he see the window he had come in through. So he stood there in the darkness, holding his breath, knowing he had to get out of here.
Before he could, though, the cellar door opened and a cone of light shone through. It was another flashlight, most likely in the hands of one of the girls, and danced across the walls like a searchlight. It was huge. Pip tried to dodge it, but the light easily washed over him. For a moment, he thought he was caught…

And then he realized something. The beam of light was too big to be a flashlight. It was more like the light of a lighthouse. The boxes around him, too, were huge. Like boulders. That spider he had brushed off his shirt before—he saw it again and gawked as it stood eye-level with him, glaring at him, its beady red eyes like tamed fire in a jar.

“Oh, shit,” Pip said, stepping back.

The spider watched him.

Footsteps thundered from the staircase. Pip looked over his shoulder to see a girl dressed as a pirate making her way down the stairs. The light radiated off just enough her to make out the simplest of details of her face, but that’s all he needed to recognize her as Christie. She was, after all, the target of this prank.

And now she was a giant.

Though the light was on Pip and the spider, Christie’s eyes were on the fuse box over their heads. She walked straight towards it, paying no mind to where she stepped, for her sailor boots fell in dark shadows anyway.

Pip watched her, stunned, mesmerized, awestruck by enormous size. He had never seen something so big move so fast and gracefully before. As she got closer, though, he realized he was standing directly in her path. Her footsteps came closer and closer, splashing through the cold water on the floor.
But he couldn’t move. He watched, still amazed, as her black boot sailed over his head, blowing back his hair, and came down on the poor spider. It didn’t stand a chance. The spider couldn’t even offer the least bit of resistance as the boot simply pressed its squishy body into the cement floor. Its legs twitched, broken, pieces of them stuck on Christie’s boot. And its eyes, once full of fire, were now blank, staring forever up at the fate that had crushed its life away. Christie only took one more step, lifting her heel up to reveal those remains of the spider to Pip, and then, when she realized she was too close to the fuse box, fell back on her heel, squashing the spider all over again. The whole time, she never noticed the crushed thing under her foot.

“Now who did this?” Christie’s voice boomed from above. She was only thinking out loud, but still her voice was quite audible for the tiny Pip. She looked over, spying the burned-out flashlight on the stack of boxes, and picked it up in her free hand.

“Jason!” she yelled. “Are you down here?” She searched the room with the flashlight, but remained standing by the fuse box, her eyes darting in the motion of the ray of light. “I swear, Jason, you better get out of my house before I call the cops.”

Pip continued to stare up at her. The fake silver sword around her waist glittered in the dark as she stood there and the reflection of the flashlight cast an orange glow around the shadows of her cheeks. She finally looked down.

“Christie! Christie!” Pip cried out, flailing his arms like a man stranded on a deserted island in hopes of getting her attention.
 
He wasn’t sure if she noticed him, but he did see her eyes locks with his, the beam of light now shining directly in his face so that he couldn’t make out the detail in her expression. All he saw was her brow crinkle, the bandana tied around her forehead being pulled down with it.

“There are some sick bugs down here,” she said. Upon the word ‘bug’, she lifted her foot and held it over Pip, keeping just the lip of the boot pushed back so that she could see where—and what—she was stepping on.

Something inside Pip told him he should run.

And he did.

Christie’s boot pounded the cement behind him, but he was away from her now. She followed him with the spotlight, trying twice more to stomp the life out of him, but he dove to opposite sides both times and finally made it behind the stack of boxes. His intense activity, though, was just a short-lived sport to Christie, like flicking a ball of dust across a table. She hadn’t even really tried to crush him. Certainly she would have if he wound up under her foot, but she hadn’t bothered to exert much energy. Crushing a bug wasn’t worth breaking a sweat.

 Again, she searched the cellar for Jason, now working up the courage to walk around. She started by circling around the stack of boxes, which caused Pip, gasping for air behind them, to quickly switch sides. She paid him no mind.

Finally, she sighed and turned the flashlight towards the fuse box. “Okay, I guess he’s not down here…” She reached her hand up, flicked the master switch, and heard the cries from the girls upstairs that the lights were working again. “But somebody shut off the lights.” She saw the bug again, out of the corner of her eye, cowering just outside the circle of her flashlight beam. “Was it you?”
Pip swallowed, nodded, and stepped into the light. He hoped she would recognize him now. She was, after all, the only one to save him from this dark prison. There was no telling how long he would be left down here in the dark, alone and forgotten to the world, if she walked away from him.
But Christie didn’t recognize him as anything but an insect. “Stupid bug, it probably was you.” With that, she slammed her foot down on him, dragging her boot back across the floor so that it would smear his body, ensuring that he was dead, and wipe the bug juice off the bottom of her shoe. She smiled when she lifted her foot and saw nothing remained. At least somebody paid for interrupting the party.

Unfortunately, Pip wouldn’t be the last to pay.

Shawn and ‘Ramella’ were also shrunken when the lights went out. They were in the middle of the dance floor, and though they tried to grope the girls in the dark, they wondered why they couldn’t knock anybody off their feet. That answer became clear as the lights suddenly flashed back on and they found themselves at the girls’ feet, small enough that they were eye-level in a sea of ankles.

“This can’t be good,” said the ever obvious Shawn. The girls were only standing now, but the lights were back on and the music was starting up again. Feet began to tap and bodies began to sway.

Ram craned his neck upward. So many of the girls were wearing outfits with short skirts that he found himself staring up at a cotton-clouded heaven. “Oh, God, you mean this couldn’t be better.”

“No, I mean… Move!” Shawn shoved his dazed friend forward as the sparkling foot of a gypsy girl landed between them. The foot continued over Shawn’s head and across the dance floor.

Ram let out a girly shriek as another foot crashed beside him. This one came from Ruby, one of Christie’s friends, who was dressed up as an Egyptian Cleopatra. But his biggest fear came from another one of the girls making his way towards him. She was dressed as a clown with shoes of about a size eighteen.

“It must’ve been that stupid ghost girl!” Ram yelled as he ran over to Shawn and threw his arms around him. “She shrank us!”

Shawn shoved him away. “Get off me, man! Not even in life and death circumstances do I want you touching me.”

“But we have to stick together if we want to survive!”

“Screw that! Every man for himself!”
 
Shawn took off, darting between the pounding waves of legs, and eventually disappeared amongst all the skin and fabrics and estrogen in the dance room.

Ram was alone. He stared up at the girls, both cute and scary in their various costumes, dancing all around him. The music played louder. There was no way they would be able to hear him.
Backing up towards the wall, he hugged the baseboard and slowly made his way out of the lounge. Footsteps thundered around the wooden floor and the blaring music caused his ear drums to shatter more than once, but he eventually just slapped his palms over his ears and sprinted the rest of the way. He found himself in the empty hallway. The cellar door was on this left and it suddenly swung open.
With his quick football reflexes, he dropped to his stomach and the door swished over his body. He lifted his head to see Christie appearing from the cellar and rolled towards the wall as she stepped on the carpet of where he had just been and wandered into the dance room.

As soon as she was gone, he leapt to his feet and raced across the hallway. The front door loomed before him, growing bigger with every quick stride. He was almost there.

But he had forgotten about the winding staircase to his left. Having found the camera, Leah was making her way down the stairs—leisurely, but her speed was still about equal to that of Ram. When she reached the bottom stair, she placed her next footstep on the floor in front of Ram. He slammed into her buckled sandals and fell backwards, staring up at the giant butterfly girl. She didn’t notice him. She stood still and looked around, apparently searching for somebody or something else. Little did either of them know that the one she was looking for was the one at her foot.

But the rumble of music was softer here (because rich people have soundproof walls built into every room) and Ram thought there was a chance she could hear him if he called out to her. And he did, knowing very well her name because she was quite recognizable in her costume that revealed more than it hid.

“Leah!” he cried. “Leah, down here!”

She flicked her blonde hair to the side, the antennas bouncing over her forehead, but made no sign that she had heard his minute voice. So he decided to try again.

“Leah, you stupid whore, look down!”

For some reason, whether she heard him or not, she chose at that moment to look down. The first thing she saw was Ram.

“Hey there, little guy,” she said with a glittery smile. “I hope you’re a lady bug. Christie doesn’t like guys at her party.”

“Lady, you don’t know the half of it,” Ram muttered, looking down at his dress and then back up at the enormous Leah, who put one knee next to him and knelt down.

She didn’t seem to hear or recognize him as a human being. “We better get you out of here. Even if you were invited, you’re only going to get stepped on if you stay.”

Before Ram could protest (as if it would matter), Leah plucked him up by the dress and set him in her palm. Then she stepped over to the door and opened it to the cool breeze of the night. The wind was enough to knock Ram over.

“Time to fly, little guy,” Leah said, giving the bug in her hand a little toss out the doorway. She lost him in the darkness, but she smiled knowing that she had done a good deed. She had saved an insect from a horrible death under somebody’s foot. That kindness made her feel good inside.

And so she shut the door, forgetting that some bugs can’t fly. And this one was one of those. Ram knew that. Ram knew that he couldn’t fly from the time he was born until Leah threw him out the doorway from a distance of some hundred feet to the ground. He still knew that as he sailed through the air, crying out Leah’s name. He forgot that somewhere, though, when his body collided with the stone pathway to Christie’s house and, after a few messy rollovers, he became a gooey stain amongst the rocks.

He wasn’t conscious enough to see the ghostly image of a little girl standing by one of the big oak trees, giggling.

Unfortunately, his buddy Shawn wasn’t having much better luck. He, like Pip and Ram, had been spotted, but rather than thinking he was a bug, the werewolf costume he was wearing made all the girls shriek out, “Rat!”

The dance floor became a crazed mob. All feet were surrounding Shawn and all eyes were drawn down to him.

“Squeak…” he said meekly. Then he slapped himself, remembering that these were girls he was dealing with. They were more afraid of him than he was of him.

“Fear me! Feeeeear me!” he bellowed to a group of cowering girls. They shrunk back, not because they could hear him, but because he was a filthy rat that was ruining their Halloween party.

“Why did the music stop?” Christie’s voice boomed from the back of the crowds.

“There’s a rat!” one of the girls shrieked. “It’s sooo ugly!”

“Get it away from me!”

“Ew! Ew! It touched me!”

“It’s looking up my skirt!”

“Pervert rat!”

Shawn laughed maniacally. He never had so many girls at his mercy before.

That is, until the crowd made way for Christie. She borrowed a broom from one of the girls dressed as a witch, slammed her boots down in front of Shawn’s hairy body, and raised the broom over her head. “Good-bye, you dirty rat.”

Shawn started to look up at her, but only got as far as her waist before the straw of the broom battered against his small figure. He hit the floor. The broom came down again. And again. In fact, it happened three more times before Christie slapped the broom against the wooden floorboards and pulled it back, winding up for a slapshot, and knocked the mangled rat against the wall. His bones shattered on impact. With one last squeak, his crumpled body lay motionless at the feet of the crowd, who all cheered as if Christie had made the winning goal in a game.

“That’ll teach you to crash my party,” Christie said to the ‘rat’, boldly picking it up in her bare hand and stepping through the clapping crowd. She headed for the kitchen, opening the trash can lid with her foot, and dropped the dirty thing in the garbage. The lid slammed shut behind him.

Jason and Butthead had hid in the second floor bathroom when they saw Leah coming up the stairs. She disappeared in one of the bedrooms, though, and apparently didn’t notice the two coiled ropes wrapped around the banister and snaking across the ground and under the bathroom door.
 
Leah wasn’t very smart.

The lights blinked out a minute later. Leah shrieked and so did the fifty or so girls on the first floor. Jason and Butthead laughed and threw open the bathroom door, their sounds masked by the cries of all the girls. They found the banister in the dark, climbed on top still laughing, and launched their bodies over the edge…

Then something went wrong. Butthead felt himself slip right through the rope tied so tightly around his waist. But he didn’t hit the table nor break any bones. Rather, he landed in a cold rush of water. Drowning, he thrashed his arms against the waves. The water was sweet and fruity, like something of a tropical paradise, but he felt his lungs doing knots and quickly swam to the surface. He came up, coughing and gagging, and floated in the dark, calling out for Jason.

Then the lights came back on. Butthead looked around, his eyes rapidly adjusting to the sudden light, and found himself swimming in a glass bowl of red mist. It wasn’t until he looked over the edge of the glass, beyond the horizon, that he realized it was the punch bowl sitting on the refreshment table. And now he was treading water in it.

Jason was nowhere in sight. Butthead cried out to him again and maybe a little to his mommy, but the chatter of female voices and music were playing again and drowned out his calls. He tried twice to swim to the glassy side of the bowl, but both times he was dragged back towards the middle as the tiny waves of his own weight tossed him about.

Meanwhile, Leah had come down the stairs and, after lingering by the doorway for a moment, made her way towards him. He stared up at her growing figure, the butterfly wings strapped to her back making her look like the most terrible of cute beasts, and then heard Christie’s voice from behind. He winced. That voice. How he hated it.

He looked the other way to see her, his ex, dressed as a pirate and strutting towards him. And then he realized neither of them were coming for him. They didn’t know he was crashing the party. He was just there, a boy in the punch bowl, a fly on the wall, completely off their radar, and directly in the spot where Christie and Leah bumped into each other. He floated practically on his back, gazing up at them in wonder.

“Get the camera?” Christie’s voice thundered from above.

Leah held up the camera in her left hand. “Yeah, where’s the cross-dresser?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got a clue and took a flying leap out of here.”

“Yeah,” Leah laughed. Her eyes wandered over to the two ropes, each with a noose on the end, dangling over the refreshment table. “Those are odd decorations. You plan on havin’ a hangin’, pirate girl?”

“Hmm, I don’t remember putting those there… But I sure would love to hang Jason from one of them.”

“Oh,yeah… Any sign of him yet?”

“Not yet,” Christie answered, looking down at the punch bowl. She idly grabbed a ladle and swished around the red punch, her mind elsewhere.

Butthead was caught in the angry whirlpool she was creating. He tried to fight the current, but Christie’s swift motions, however languid they may have been, were enough to keep him from escaping the waters. He went under once. Twice. Thrice. Each time he would be sucked into the swirling vortex, a gush of fruity punch bursting through his senses, and then he would surface again. The metal ladle, looming dangerously close to him, circled him like a hungry shark. And it was Christie’s hand that was pulling all the strings, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Punch?” she said absentmindedly to Leah, pushing the ladle under the sugary water.

Butthead was taken in by the force, his body banging against the scoop’s handle. He fought again to escape the rush of the waves, but when Christie brought up the ladle, he was trapped within its metal walls. She lifted him into the air.
 
Fortunately, it wasn’t as hard to reach the sides of the ladle as it was the bowl, so he doggy-paddled over and latched onto the edge. The ladle began to tilt. He was looking straight down into a plastic cup being held up by Christie’s other hand. A red waterfall began to pour around him. It washed over his body and tried to heave him over.

Crying out, Butthead let go of the metal edge and sank to the bottom of the ladle, only to be brought up again and carried back towards the dip. Right before he was hurled over the waterfall, though, Christie tipped the ladle back to its upright position. He was thrown back. Sighing in relief, he felt the near-empty ladle sinking back into the punch bowl. He was safe.

“Sure,” Leah answered.

Butthead looked up to see the open ceiling of the ladle suddenly become reddened by a flood of punch from all sides. He was forced under once more as Christie lifted the scoop, held another plastic cup over its brim, and pulled the entirety into the cup. This time, Butthead wasn’t so lucky. He fell headfirst into the plastic cup, followed by enough furious red punch to push him to the unfriendly bottom of the plastic prison.

Then he was transferred from Christie’s hand to Leah’s. He struggled to pull himself over the plastic edge, but his clothes were soaked and Leah’s hand was too shaky from the drumming of her pinky against the cup. Every time he managed to straddle himself to the brim, her finger would thump against the bottom of the cup, throwing him back into the red mist. But it didn’t last long. She soon held the cup to her lips, opening the cavern of her mouth, and chugged it all in one gulp. The red stream poured down her throat, Butthead helpless against its ever-flowing fury, and a small burp was all that remained to be had of either of them.

“Gross,” Christie laughed, suddenly breaking out of her daze.

Leah giggled too and wiped her red lips with her butterfly sleeve.

Jason had seen the whole thing. He had landed in a barrel full of water and floating green apples, one of which he had managed to climb onto like a raft. It was a bit tricky, keeping the apple from turning over the dumping him under, but he got it right by the time he saw his friend disappear into Leah’s gullet.

“…I never liked him anyway,” he said aloud, although he knew nobody could hear him. “Or her.” His eyes drifted over to Christie. “Or her. I hate you all! I will have my revenge, Christie!” He fell into the water and came up coughing.

“I wonder when he’ll make his move,” Leah said, but she didn’t sound too worried.

“Who cares?” Christie shrugged. “Jason’s a weenie. A big hollow weenie.”

“A hollow weenie?” Leah laughed.

“In many ways, my little butterfly. Now, come. Let’s enjoy my party.”

Unfortunately for Jason, that meant the start of games, the first of which was bobbing-for-apples. Christie and Leah each took a side of the barrel, carrying it into the living room. Jason tried to jump out with the water being spilled on the floor by the rather clumsy girls, but he, like Butthead, soon learned his vulnerability against the might of thrashing water. He was worse off, though, in that the apples began to slam together like fast-moving green icebergs and he was caught treading icy water in the midst of them.

But the barrel was eventually set down and the girls began to gather around. None, of course, noticed Jason inside, but the succulent apples looked most delicious to them all. They took turns bobbing for apples, each one dunking their heads next to Jason or sometimes on top of him, as he was often swept under the current only to find himself trapped under the cheek or forehead of one of the girls. He only tried once to get their attention, but the lighting in the room was so weak that the water looked black and only the bright green of the apples glittered in the dark.

Then it was Christie’s turn. She stepped up to the barrel, looking down at the sea of apples. Jason swam amongst them, immediately recognizing his ex-girlfriend towering above him. The last thing he wanted was her to find him, so he grabbed hold of the stem of the nearest apple and climbed onto its smooth green surface. There, he waited…

Which probably wasn’t too intelligent of the fool because that was the same apple Christie had her eyes on. And she went right for it, not giving Jason a chance to see her coming, as he felt the waves wash over him and Christie’s teeth, like those of Jaws, clamp down on both sides of him. White juices of the apple sprayed his face. The water poured out the sides of her lips as she lifted the apple, perfectly clenched between her teeth, out of the barrel. Jason stood, trapped on her tongue, the green wall keeping him from freedom. He threw his shoulder into it uselessly.

And then, from the back of Christie’s throat, he had a giggling laugh followed by a sharp whisper that was meant only for his ears. “I got you, bitch.”

Then her teeth sank into the apple and all went black.