“Then allow me to tell you the tale of our final journey.”

⦿

Across the cemetery, fluorescent blue flames flickered and faded. They blew with the breeze like abandoned balloons in the moonlight. It was a beauty I beheld, but my forehead wrinkled with my waning patience.

A breath of midnight air whistled across the headstones and swept through our hair while we sat cross-legged in the dirt. In the distance, bells and chimes sung and hummed. I rubbed the numbness out of my leg.

“Angie, how long is this supposed to take?”

“Mm- probably like, ten minutes at most?”

“Ah. It's already been fifteen-”

“Shush.”

Angie pressed her finger against my lips as the flames around us fell dark. The ground began to bubble. Bursting from the earth, a cat, what was left of a cat, rolled in a clump of grass between us. We clasped each other's hands and shrieked in excitement.

I lowered my hand to pet the cat’s sparse patches of fur between exposed bones and rotted flesh, but before I could, it crumbled to dust. One side of my mouth curled inward.

“Hey-”

“Not my fault.”

“Who’s-”

“Morgan, don’t say a word. I swear.”

We sat in silence. The moon that consumed a quarter of the night sky illuminated my distaste. Angie rested her hand against her fist and sprinkled the cat’s ashes from a pinch. She looked up at me.

“So uh, wanna try again?”

“Absolutely not.”

I grasped the head of the tombstone beside us and pulled myself up. With a slight stumble, I steadied myself. White lights whirled around my fingertips and stretched into a broom. A big, red hat plopped down on my head.

“We should probably head back into town since we’re on Locate Kids Who Didn’t Get Enough Candy and Give Them Candy duties this year.”

Angie sprung to a stand and snatched her broom and blue hat from thin air.

“Bleh. The Circle has been doing this for eight years now and they still can’t come up with a better name.”

“If you’ve got a better one why not let Donavin know?”

“Ick. He’s so awkward to talk to though, could you do it for me?”

“No way. He still thinks I’m a girl just because I’ve got a soft face.”

“A very pretty girl-ow-ow-ow.”

I stretched Angie’s cheek before we straddled our broomsticks and shot toward the sky. The fog that once wrapped around our feet fell over a forest of fall-colored leaves like a blanket of webs.

Soaring over the treetops, a rush of rain soaked our shoulders. Our lips curled in annoyance, but spit out laughter after the shower subsided and warm lights puddled on the horizon.

“Oh, oh, I know, what about the Sweet Savers?”

“That’s - actually not bad-”

“Get it, like savor with an O, but saver.”

“-And I hate it.”

“Waah- Morgaaan~”

The glows in front of us pierced the fog with clarity and the whitestone homes in the village of Witcheim graced our eyes.

Darting dots dotted the cobblestone roads and the cheerful cries of children danced across our ears. They shouted trick-or-treat with pockets full of sweets and smiles wrapped around their faces. We giggled with glee, watching from above, as Halloween had officially begun.

Angie held out her hand.

“Oh.”

She flailed her arm in front of her, empty flashes failing with each flick.

“Please tell me-”

“Morgan. No. We just need to go to my house so we can pick up the candy.”

With the world turned upside down, we somersaulted through the air and spun toward Crystal Lane. Through candlelight and pure delight nestled between the cozy cottages of stone and cedar, we clicked our heels against the cobbled street.

The strong scent of cinnamon swayed from lamppost to compost and the sound of tiny shuffling feet filled the air. Creaking under our own feet, the porch steps welcomed us home.

Angie placed her hand against the front door and held herself still for several seconds. Short on time and patience, I squeezed past her and pushed the door open. Angie’s hand slammed into my chest and shoved me to the ground.

“Hey-”

A dozen spectral daggers hummed around her shoulders, pointed toward the doorway. I peered past her and saw the devastation inside.

Tables overturned, books folded on their bindings, and planters smashed into scraps of clay covered the floorboards that groaned under our feet.

I placed my hand on Angie’s shoulder. She spun around with a smile.

“Somebody’s going to die~”

“I know it’s bad, but chill. Their first mistake was robbing you of all people.”

Angie’s eyes widened, the wicked smile still stuck to her face.

“Undeniably.”

A stream of ethereal mist flowed from Angie’s palm. Steam swelled with each breath heaved from behind her gritted teeth and the mist lit a trail of footprints leading out the door. Skipping with a spirited stride, Angie beckoned me on.

The trail marched down the road and around a bend. With a course to chart, Angie jumped onto her broom and soared toward the moon before rocketing across the sky. Seconds later, her feet scraped against the cobble.

“You’re not gonna believe this.”

I fell back on my broomstick and trailed Angie toward the clouds. Parading under our feet, the footprints glowed in a line several miles long. We pushed through the skies and the laughter and shouts of children fell back behind the fog.

We swooped and swayed through winds that numbed our hands. Out of a dive to drive away the cold, we slinked and snaked through a forest of decrepit trees with branches that crooked like fingers clawing toward the moon.

The footsteps ran through the fog until the trees fell away, meeting their end at a gate that guarded an abandoned manor. Beyond the gate rusted with neglect, we dropped into its courtyard with eyes heated in resolve.

Our feet plopped into the mud. Behind us, a fountain’s basin gathered green slop speckled with flakes. Weeds that were bunched up across the edges of the courtyard waved with an overgrown welcome. Creaking in the wind, boards and shingles groaned and clacked, clinging against the house’s frame by a thread and overlooking a set of cracked steps that led to the manor’s entrance.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Yuck. Somebody’s gonna die twice.”

The front door creaked open, a woman in a white dress stood on the other side.

“Good evening, may I help you?”

Angie stormed up the steps, her eyes erupting in an orange hue. Chaotic cracks of sunset shaded sparks burst between her fingertips and a pulsing cackle escaped her lips. I slapped the back of Angie’s head.

“Eyuh- Morgan~”

“Do you own this place?”

The woman shook her head in tiny bursts.

“We’re probably looking for whoever does. They borrowed - look, I’m just going to level with you since my friend already almost wiped you from the face of this realm.”

I explained the situation to the woman in the doorway in detail.

“Oh, marvelous, you have arrived.”

“Pardon?” “Pardon?”

“Mister Donavin has been expecting you, please come in.”

We entered into the foyer and beyond tiles of marble extended a staircase that split both ways across an upper floor. Rolled down it, a rug stained red was fringed with golden tassels. Paintings of antiquity and ancient heritage hugged the spaces between vases and busts. I paced behind Angie.

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“You know like- a letter or something that doesn’t involve destroying my house would have sufficed.”

“Hang on, it’s kinda hard to believe a star witch would do that. For all we know he could have caught someone else in the act and dragged them here.”

“Well let’s just bring him on out here and ask him ourselves. Donavin!”

“The Mister is waiting in the dining hall, please, if you will follow me.”

The hallway we strolled through was stapled with redundancy. Overly stretched with overly self-indulgent memorials to families of the past that once walked those halls were stitched in paintings and tapestries. At its end, a vaulted stretch of room ran the length of the banquet table stretched down its center. As if the hallway wasn’t self-indulgent enough, a man sat before the table with enough food to feed a village.

“Donavin.”

Angie threw back her hand and through heavy steps stomped toward the far end of the table. Leaping out of a sprint, I locked my arms around her shoulders and she flailed to break free.

“Donavin!”

“Angie- hear him out first.”

“Why’d you destroy my house?!”

Donavin pinched the stem of a wine glass and scoffed.

“I thought it would be funny.”

I let go of Angie and clapped my hands together.

“Ah. Understandable. Have fun.”

“Degenerate filth. Upon my name as Angelica Pendragon, star witch of Stelvera, your head will be the last thing served at this table.”

Angie leapt onto the table and charged. Scraping against wood grain and whole grain, bolts arced from her nails toward Donavin. Black tendrils shifted like smoke from his back. The tendrils coiled around him before recoiling from the shock. I whistled in admiration.

“Since when can you do that Donny?”

Beneath Donavin’s cheek, a web of shadows bubbled below burned flesh. His skin stretched and covered the hole.

I shifted the world around me into darkness. Where Donavin sat, a void deeper than the black that filled the room churned with malice.

Sparks shot out from my step and I stood at the entrance to the dining hall, clinging to Angie’s arm. In front of Donavin was nothing. Not table, nor floor, nor ceiling. It was not black in color, but void of anything real. It was not the nothing of shut eyes, but a nothing that eyes were incapable of gazing upon in the first place.

I dragged Angie along and we bolted down the hallway. As we ran, the lights around us flickered and began to fade. The shadows, squishing and stretching, squashed against the lights like putty. A cold whisper tickled my ear and the world fell dark.

Drops like water pelted the carpet behind us. The dripping stopped for only a moment before that water became something else. Not entirely liquid, but gushing over our shoulders. Our heads slammed against a door.

Angie and I picked ourselves up and rushed through the foyer’s light. Down the staircase, two dozen women dressed in white marched in rows, their faces obscured by masks that smiled. I turned to my side and Angie was gone.

When I looked back a woman stood inches from my face. Her head cracked upside down and her mask shattered against the floor. A face with a smile. A face without skin. Its mouth opened.

The stench of wet feces burned my nose and the buzz of a fly hummed in the distance. It buzzed inside my ear, picking at the wax, but then it wasn’t. Faint, far off. In an instant it was in my ear, vibrating, screaming. I looked up.

A sky of inverted flesh pulsed. Veins arching across it snapped like strands of spaghetti stretched by a fork. Clumps of blood tinged vomit fell, burning away the marble tiles.

I hadn’t moved, but I was in a hallway. The walls were narrow. They had to be, but how could they be? There was nothing but darkness before me. Any misstep would send me hurdling into a bottomless abyss. Why did I think that? Shadows wrapped my ankles. Why did I believe that? A bell chimed in my ear. Why did I waste so much time?

The chime ticked like a clock. Rhythmically counting the seconds to the end. Every second that ticked by added a new grain of sand to the pile. Every wasted second.

How many grains were in that pile? How many people have ever lived? Waste another second with me and try to imagine it.

Friends, friends that grow distant with time, friends that struggle to put you first like you do for them, friends who cast you aside for the company of strangers. Would you feel more comfortable if I said the company of others? But they are strangers to you, aren’t they?

Family, family buried and forgotten until I told you to remember them. Is that how much they mean to you? Is that how much you mean to them?

Strangers, strangers a world apart, strangers lifetimes apart, strangers with no form and no memories, because that’s all they are, strangers, so why expect any of them to see you as more than a stranger lost amongst the grains?

I told you to imagine it, to count the billions upon billions of grains in that pile. It’s okay to give up counting, but then tell me, which of those grains are yours?

We will always be lost amidst the grains, destined to be buried in obscurity with enough time. Thoughts, emotions, relationships, status, wellbeing, all cease with enough time. All equally fleeting. All easily forgotten with enough time. With so many of us trapped beneath the pile how could anyone be significant? Especially when we never have enough time.

I raised my arm made of ash and wiped my brow. The flakes where my flesh should have been fell like the final sands of an hourglass. My heart shot into my throat and I fell backwards onto the marble floor.

Angie bent down beside me.

“Hey, you alright?”

Scrapes and clicks crawled across the upper floor. The women in white dangled by their intestines like dreamcatchers strung from the ceiling. Click. Their necks snapped upside down, turning their smiles into frowns.

Something crawled down the stairs.

“Donavin?”

“That’s not Donavin.”

Long, jaundice nails that were split down the center clawed and bent against the rug. Flesh that looked like a beige bed sheet was stretched around its bones. Swaying from side to side, its eyes dangled from the sockets, each blink snapping against pink cords. A screech flung the room into darkness. The shriek was so shrill it was as though those jaundice nails scraped against the face of a chalkboard. Angie stood mesmerized.

I wrapped my arm around her waist and we sailed through the air on my broom.

“Fourth Art-”

A molten heat engulfed my soul. The front door burst open, but it stretched just beyond my reach. My grip slipped. Sliding from under my arm, Angie dangled by the crook of my fingertips. The door shook and creaked, falling further into the darkness. A breath scraped my neck.

We shot through the entrance before the door clicked closed. Spiraling, we slammed into the ground and rolled across mud and gravel.

Around us, fluorescent flames flickered and faded. They blew with the breeze like abandoned balloons in the moonlight. It was a beauty I would behold, but my forehead winced with my waning pain.

A breath of midnight air whistled across our heads and swept through our hair while we lay barely conscious in the dirt. A bell chimed in my ear. I kicked my numb leg into the dirt and spun around.

⦿

“And that’s pretty much our story. I hope it wasn’t too boring.”

“Ah- no, no, I really enjoyed it. I’m just sorry it all happened, but I’ll make sure it's one that everyone can hear.”

Angie threw her translucent blue arm around my shoulder.

“Aw, come on Morgan, you didn’t get to the part where my eyeballs split open and I dragged the gooey flaps across the ground while writhing in agony.”

“Okay first of all, gross. Secondly, I mean, I wasn’t exactly alive long enough to see that.”

“Mm- fair. But next time it’s my turn to tell the story. I wanna tell it at least once before Albenac decides our spirits have overstayed their welcome. Besides, I like my version better~”

“Fine, but we should probably head back into town since it’s almost that time of year again.”

“Hehe~ Another happy Halloween with the Sweet Savers~”

Angie and I lifted into the sky, waving goodbye to the one willing to hear our tale. The glows in front of us pierced the fog with clarity and the whitestone homes in the village of Witcheim graced our eyes.

“Hey, did you know that woman back there?”

“Not before tonight. Why?”

“She reminds me a lot of you.”

“I’m- not sure what to say to that.”

“You could say thank you for comparing you to such a pretty girl-ow-ow-ow~”