HALLOWEEN HORROR: ‘Silver Dollar’

School. Work. Talk to Leon. Sleep. Day in and day out, that was the sum of Fae’s life. Today was a normal day, like any other; however it wasn’t the day she was anticipating. Fae was looking forward to what was to come later in the evening. It was Halloween and her older sister Constance had procured a sitter for her three children. She was taking her baby sister out to the opening of a new bar after she took the kids trick-or-treating.

The Silver Dollar was a brand new pub in the moderate sized town the sisters lived in and the owners had quite cleverly decided to have their official opening on one of the biggest party nights of the year. The grand opening was advertised as a “Howl of a Halloween Party” including no cover charge, shrieking good drink specials, a guest DJ, and a costume contest with a thousand dollar grand prize.

Fae was stoked; she hadn’t been out much recently. It wasn’t that Leon forbade her from going out without him; it’s just that Fae didn’t want to upset him, or make him jealous, or worry about her; so she stayed at home on nights that they weren’t together. When her older sister told her she was taking her out and that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, Fae happily agreed to go (after clearing it with Leon, of course).

Constance arrived no more than an hour after nightfall. She brought in her bag of make-up and her own costume. Fae’s older sibling patiently fixed her hair; pulling her luscious dirty blond locks into a bun and then securing it with gold netting and purple and pink ribbons that cascaded down the sides of her head. She then applied purple glittery eye shadow, a pair of pink eye lashes, and fuchsia lipstick to her younger sibling.

While Fae changed into her costume, Constance made herself up. The older sibling straightened her long brown/black locks, which flowed to the small of her back, adding a single braid to the right of her face and tying a wine coloured pirate skull cap around the top of her head. Constance’s make up was much darker than Fae’s: red and grey eye shadow, thick black lashes and bloody maroon lipstick. Constance was always the sweetly dark yin to Fae’s luminous yang; complete opposites, yet they had always complimented one another and gotten along brilliantly.

In her room Fae laced up a gold flowered corset and pulled on a short purple and pink layered fairy skirt over her frilly gold panties. She slid her feet into fuchsia pumps before positioning her gossamer wings over her shoulders. Walking into the living room she found that Constance was waiting, ready to leave.

Her older sister stood by the front door wearing black fishnets under wine coloured calf-high boots. She had on a tattered brown and white striped skirt and a brown leather corset vest over a white off the shoulder poet’s blouse. Excitedly, the siblings grabbed their purses and headed out the door. They arrived at the crowded parking lot in front of the Silver Dollar shortly after 10pm.

The place had a plethora of patrons already, but was not crowded to the point of being claustrophobic, yet. As they walked toward the main bar, the fairy and the pirate saw quite a few men dressed as Michael Jackson at different points of his career. “Hey! Let’s take a shot every time we see the Michael Jackson!” Constance suggested as a nice party game. Fae laughed and agreed, adding “He is popular tonight; we’ll be trashed before the night is over.”

The women ordered their first shot from a bartender whose costume was that of a sexy Catwoman with all the right curves, and their second drink from an attractive bartender dressed convincingly as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, from bowler hat to codpiece. The sisters knocked back festively colourful mixed drinks along with several shots of different whiskeys as the evening progressed.

They played games of pool in the company of a “one night stand” who had a cardboard box resembling a nightstand around his waist and a lampshade on his head, and a vampire whose fangs were idiotically super glued to his actual teeth. The sisters danced with numerous inebriated strangers, including several movie monsters and a gigantic Scotsman wearing only a very short kilt. All the while they became more and more intoxicated.

Late into the evening the women stepped outside into the smoking area. The music was not quite as loud outside but the sisters were still required to yell to be heard over it. Constance pulled out her cell phone and pointed the black and red bejeweled device at Fae and took a picture. The flower fairy forced a smile; she was beginning to feel the effects of the liquor on her stomach. Fae leaned in toward Constance. “I have to pee. I’ll be back.” She said to her big sister. Constance nodded and replied with a smile “I’ll meet you by the bar inside.”
Fae slowly made her way through the crowd toward the restroom. The music seemed ten times louder than it was earlier and the entire bar was tilting to the left and then to the right just before everything started spinning. She stopped on the dance floor, mere feet away from her destination and shut her eyes. Someone grabbed Fae and forcefully started dancing with her, rocking her back and forth to the music, triggering an involuntary urge to vomit.

She pushed away from her would-be suitor and escaped through the door of the bathroom. She rushed past the line of angry waiting women and entered the newly unoccupied stall. Fae slammed the door shut and slid the lock into place, just in time to turn toward the toilet as her stomach relieved itself of every drink she had downed as well as her dinner, and possibly lunch.

When seemingly everything she had ever consumed had been expelled from her stomach Fae rested her head against the toilet seat. Unlike her usual sober self, dizzy nauseous inebriated Fae could care less about the disgusting bacteria, including urine and microscopic fecal matter that she pressed her burning face against. The world was out of focus and all she wanted was to lay her head down. Fae closed her eyes and passed out.
Her cheek momentarily sticks to the disgusting grey and white tiled floor as lifts her aching head up from it. It takes a minute for Fae to realise just where she is. She picks herself up off of the filthy floor of women’s bathroom, using the toilet as a crutch. The place is quiet and for a moment Fae wonders if she has gone deaf, but then she becomes aware of the sound her feet make as she shuffles toward the stall door and the echoing click the lock makes as she releases the latch.
No one is in the bathroom, save for her, and a feeling of unease takes over. Women’s bathrooms are never empty, especially at a bar. As she moves toward the door leading back onto the dance floor, Fae is confused as to where all the noise has gone. She doesn’t even hear voices beyond the restroom. The only sounds she recognises are her steadily increasing heartbeat and the click clack of her heels as they softly strike the ground each time she takes a step.

Fae wonders if she was somehow overlooked when the bar closed and is now locked inside. She doubts that Constance would have forgotten her, even if her older sister was highly intoxicated. The woman can be flakey at times but Fae knows she means the world to her. Whatever the case may be, the hung-over bathroom fairy decides to go out into the bar and call someone to let her out and pick her up.

Fae reaches out her hand to grasp the doorknob when her left shoe slides out from beneath her. She completely loses her balance and lands in the slippery mess which caused her descent to the bathroom floor. Beneath her is a pool of what looks to be a congealing spilled drink, containing cranberry juice, seeping under the door from the bar and she wonders why it wasn’t cleaned up before closing. When she picks herself up and wipes her hands off on her already ruined costume, Fae notices that the sticky burgundy liquid she is covered in doesn’t smell sweet but rather metallic.

Being extra careful not to slip again, Fae turns the doorknob and pulls the door inward. A large mass of flesh, slightly resembling a kilt wearing human torso, which had been propped on the opposite side of the door, falls to Fae’s feet. She stares down at it in horrified astonishment for several seconds before lifting her head and turning her attention to the rest of the bar. What she sees in no way resembles the festive Halloween party she left when her stomach initially revolted against her.

Blood is pooled on the floor and splattered across the walls. Smears of crimson, in the shape of human handprints cover the pool tables, the front door, and several windows. A plethora of faces stare out at Fae, blood covered hair matted to their severed heads; mouths open in eternal silent screams, wide terrified eyes staring blankly at her. Chunks of flesh and random mutilated body parts, some identifiable and some not, are strewn across the floor. Fae takes in a short gasp of air and keels over, her body attempting to vomit once more but she has nothing left in her stomach to expel, not even bile.

When she can stand again, not by choice but from a desperate need to escape this nightmare, Fae staggers toward the entrance. She turns the knob but it is locked from the outside. She searches franticly for a window that will open, stepping over pieces of “one night stand” and “superglue vampire”, finding none that will budge and allow her a safe escape. She moves to the bar and picks up the phone, already knowing that it will be as dead as everyone else around her.

Amazingly Fae hears a dial tone. Hot tears stream down her face as she begins to cry with relief. The horrified woman dials 911 and is even more surprised when another living human answers. Hysterically Fae tries to explain the situation, but the person on the other end can only understand every other word and what she does hear sounds like something straight out of a gruesome horror novel.

After the 911 operator assures Fae that police are on their way, she drops the phone and slides to the floor. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she closes her eyes and sobs uncontrollably. Fae can hear the sirens in the distance and as they get closer she opens her eyes, in complete and utter shock she prepares herself to stand up and go wait by the door to be rescued, but something shiny catches her eye.

Amidst the human debris, Fae makes out a black and red jeweled cell phone only a foot away. For the first time since she first glimpsed the horror surrounding her, Fae remembers about her older sister, whose remains must be among the corpses scattered all about. She leans over and picks up Constance’s phone, which amazingly has no blood on it, and slips it into her bra before the police break through the door.

They call it the “Silver Dollar Halloween Massacre”. Ninety three people in all are declared among the victims. A vigil is held in the parking lot of The Silver Dollar even before the crime scene is cleaned up. Fae does not attend. Not only is she mourning the loss of her sister, she has a hell of a case of survivor’s guilt, not to mention severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She wakes up screaming in a cold sweat every night, and her depression is beginning to take its toll.

She won’t eat, and can’t bear to sleep any longer. Her dreams are hauntingly vivid. Fae relives the morning she awoke in that bathroom in the bowels of Hell, except in her dreams she sees Constance. Her older sister is torn apart. Her lower jaw hangs by the tendons of her face in a tortured Cheshire grin; while her tongue dangles dripping blood from the gaping hole in her mouth. Her body is not intact. Both arms are attached to her torso but she has no lower extremities. Fae’s older sister crawls across the bloody floor, dragging her insides along behind her ravaged trunk as she inches toward her sister. She reaches out with tattered hands, and moans the inaudible words of a tortured soul before Fae awakes drenched in her own sweat and tears.

So instead of sleeping, Fae simply lies in her bed staring at the ceiling. She is doing just that when she hears a quiet beep coming from the corner of her room. Fae dismisses it and rolls over on her side, staring at the wall for a change of pace. A few minutes later she hears the beep again, then again and again. For the first time in days, she gets out of bed for something other than the use of the restroom. Fae walks over to the corner of her room.

She waits a minute or two and then hears the beep again. It seems to be coming from the mountain of dirty laundry pushed against her wall. She digs through the soiled clothing only to find her bloody costume and the under garments she wore on Halloween, which surprisingly have yet to be disposed of. She picks up her bra and out falls Constance’s phone. Fae had completely forgotten that she had taken it. She flips open the cover and looks at the screen. The battery bar is blinking, which is probably what was making the thing beep.
Fae puts her finger on the button to turn the phone off when she notices another message in the corner of the screen saying “memory full”. She remembers the pictures Constance had taken that night and as much as it hurts, Fae opens the media file on the phone. She looks at the pictures and begins weeping again. As she scrolls through their last memories together, Fae comes to a video from that same night. She doesn’t remember her sister shooting any video, so she presses the play button to see what it is.

Constance was standing with the camera pointed at her face. Just by the look in her red rimmed eyes, Fae can tell she was wasted. To the phone her sister slurred, “Fae went pott-y. I think she drank too much… But it’s Hall-o-ween so it’s o-k.” Then Constance laughed at what she said like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. This was followed by an unexpected scream in the background, and then another and another. The view on the camera shakily moved around the room, blurring past people, toward the screams.

People were running to the door but two bouncers, who don’t quite seem to be human any longer, were blocking the passage, while the “Clockwork Orange” bartender stood behind them securing it with heavy chains. Other patrons were screaming and the camera shot around to see what else was causing such panic.

Behind the bar, the camera focuses on The “Catwoman” bartender whose face quite literally began to shift. Her delicate features quickly grew fierce. Her mouth and nose elongated, transforming into a snout with huge razor sharp teeth. Her back distorted, growing longer and slightly hunched over, revealing a jagged protruding backbone as it ripped through her clothes. What was once a woman began to sprout charcoal grey fur, with silver highlights, all over her body as it continued to mutate. Her muscles contorted, growing massive and powerful until the transformation seemed complete.

Standing before the bar was an at least eight foot tall monster resembling a rabid dog. Saliva dripped from its jowls as it eyed its scurrying prey. No. It wasn’t a dog… It was… A wolf thing. The camera scanned around, showing that the other bar staff had taken on a rendition of the same form and were slowly approaching the frightened partygoers, as a wolf might stalk a frightened rabbit that can smell death approaching.

The camera phone dropped to the ground, next to Constance’s boots. All Fae can see on the screen are the legs and shoes of costumed people and the things that were closing in on them. Constance turned to run but had her feet swept out from under her. She landed on her stomach face to face with the camera. Fae can see one of the creatures reach down and grab her sister by the calf, sinking its claws through her flesh and into muscle.

Constance let out a blood curdling scream, as the thing started pulling her away. She reached out her hands, grabbing for anything, but finding nothing. Finally out of desperation she dug her fingernails into the ground. They bend and then break, three of them ripping completely off. Bloody fingertips are left, desperately grasping but still finding no purchase, before leaving a crimson trail as she was dragged away. The camera stops recording as it times out at two minutes.
Fae subsequently loses her mind.

Her mother finds her two days later; laying with blood caked around her eyes where she violently clawed them out with chewed finger nails, in a pool of dried blood which had matted her pretty blond hair, staining it brown. A broken cell phone lay beside her cold body and in her right hand, just below the fatal diagonal rip in the flesh of her wrist, was a large sliver of the cellular phone screen encrusted with blood at its sharpest point.