Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Last Halloween was a nightmare for you, and for the poor children of your town. It’s always been such an important holiday for you, though it isn’t thanks to nostalgia or some deeply personal moment from your childhood. Having lived in your cozy little neighborhood for years, you’ve seen the neighborhood kids go from teeny tiny little toddlers to awkward preteens, and they’d always been the sweetest things.

Last year a group of grown adults wreaked havoc on Halloween night, barreling down the streets in a souped up pickup truck terrorizing the locals. You could hear the booming of their truck from across town, and woke up at the start of November to find your house covered in yolk and eggshells, your mailbox snapped in half, and your favorite candy bowl, a cute ceramic bowl decorated with the visage of a cartoon bat smashed on the porch.

You had heard the same drunken lunatics would be using your town as their personal demolition derby this Halloween this year, and feel a weight pushing onto your chest.

The minute a plan pops into your head you get to work and contact a close friend of yours who will have exactly what you need. Having been from old money, he has access to high-class clubs and is a regular at his favorite auction house (which he had claimed was under a super secretive company so you didn’t push further).

The next day, as Halloween is just around the corner, you meet with your friend at the Elmwood St. Cafe. You find him sitting in your usual spot waiting with a black and dark purple case on the table. You take a seat and inspect the case, then order a snack and a drink. You tell him about the drunkards and their romp around your neighborhood, and go into how you want to play a prank on them if they try again this year.

Before you pick up the case, your friend places his hand on the top and says “Hey by the way, you’ll want to be very careful with this thing, weird things happen when candy is taken out of the bowl so don’t let it fall or dump any out.”

You nod, thank him, and head home, being as careful as possible when handling the fancy case. Once you’re home and the case is safe in your house, you trace your finger across the logo etched into the leather lining its surface. “MC&D” must be the auction house your friend has been so secretive about.

However, he’s given you the perfect tool to exact your revenge so you don’t dig any deeper.

You open the latch and lift the top of the case to reveal a small bowl filled with a rainbow of candy wrappers. As you carefully lift the item from its safe, you notice the small note attached to the side reading “take no more than two, please!!” with a simple smile drawn in the corner.

Though you have your doubts behind this rather mundane bowl of candy, you take a single candy from the bowl to make sure they’re safe. Once you take a close look at it, you toss it in your mouth. It’s about what you’d expect from a piece of candy, perfect for the barbaric hooligans you’re certain will be terrorizing your friendly little neighborhood. You had gotten a second bowl full of candy for the trick-or-treaters just in case.

Finally the day arrives and news is stirring up about tonight’s Halloween festivities.

Unfortunately it seems the community is still a bit shaken by the events of the previous year, but you let your neighbors know you’ve got a plan.

As night rolls around, you watch as people leave out bowls of candy on their doorsteps, each one with a sticky note asking that trick-or-treaters take no more than two pieces of candy. You haven’t seen what this bowl is capable of, but you trust your friend enough to trust the item sitting on your porch.

The sun has fully set and the stars fill the sky, but the only sounds you hear as you sit in your folding beach chair is “Monster Mash” coming from the jack-o-lantern on your lawn and the cackling from the trio of animatronic witches across the street.

You wait in the silence for anyone to show up and hope that you can execute your plan. These bastards ruined another perfectly good Halloween, and you’ll be damned if they do it again next year. While you wait you grab a second piece of candy, letting it sit on your tongue as you fully memorize that iconic Halloween theme.

After what feels like hours of listening to the menagerie of Halloween decorations populating the lawns of your neighborhood, you notice that the booming of pickup trucks has replaced the faint echoes of Micheal Myers’ theme from around the block.

You rush inside and close the blinds, watching from your bedroom as the plan takes shape.

For a while there is nothing but the roaring of engines and booming of blown-out speakers as a gang of drunkards cruises down the streets and litters the town with all sorts of filth. You feel your whole body grow heavy as you hear them get closer, waiting for your plan to take place. Your heart feels heavy, though, as images of your terrified neighbors pop into your mind.

They zoom in onto your street and you see the group bring a trash bag to each door and pour the contents of each bowl into it. At least one of the hoodlums makes sure to punch or push over the decorations at each house, littering the lawn with liquor bottles and rotten eggs. You watch from the front window, feeling your heart start to race as they get closer to your house.

The nasty gang of booze cruisers take a lap around the block, pelting you and your neighbors’ houses with rotten eggs and expired produce. You nearly drop dead of a heart attack as putrid egg yolk coats your bedroom window. They step up to your yard and you feel your breath stop in your throat as “Monster Mash” cuts out and is replaced by the smashing of a baseball bat against plastic. As they get closer you go to the camera on your doorbell and see the bastards goofing around with your inflatable ghost decorations as one smashes a bottle of Blue Moon on your porch stairs and barf into your beloved petunias.

One of the crazed drunkards notices the blip of red light from the doorbell camera and they run to the door. One of the young men stares directly into the camera before flipping it off and grabbing the item you’d been waiting for them to find.

For a moment, they threaten to smash the bowl and howl with laughter as they recall last year’s shenanigans. Then one notices the paper and attempts to remove it from the bowl to no avail. Just as the driver and the guy sitting in the passenger seat approach the others, the drunkard grabs into the bowl, taking a handful of candy.

Before he can place the candies in his mouth, both of his hands are severed at the wrist, causing the candy to scatter across your lawn.

Blood curdling screams fill the neighborhood as blood gushes from the drunkard's wrists and his friends all stare down at his detached hands. You don’t get a moment to fully grasp what has happened as the group of men that had terrorized your community last year get a taste of their own medicine. They scream and run around your yard, one of them rushing to the truck to grab something and the part of you that isn’t frozen in terror is hoping he’s going to grab bandages.

Unfortunately all he grabs is the trash bag filled with candy and grabs the bowl. If you weren’t completely still you’d probably cover your face in exasperation.

Right as you hope and pray that things couldn’t get any worse, you watch as every last piece of candy is poured from the bowl into the trash bag. As the last piece drops from the bowl, the camera short circuits and you drop your phone as you feel a stinging pain around your wrists. Looking down, you notice a very thin cut around your wrists akin to a paper cut.

You grab your phone again and call 911, hoping they can handle whatever is left of the poor bastards on your porch.

Police and ambulances arrive at your house along with a black van with a pair of men with the logo “Security for the Common People” on their shirts. You’d considered buying equipment from that company so you recognize the name, but you’re not sure why they’ve shown up with the police.

You only get to see two of the men as they are brought to an ambulance, but you notice that they have also had their hands removed. As you explain to the police that you had been given the bowl by a friend and that you hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt on that level. This brings the attention of one of the security workers who steps aside saying he needs to talk with his supervisor.

You explain the situation in as much detail as you can push past the terror blocking your throat, going on as long as you can until you notice another black van approach your house. Another man gets out and talks with the other two.

One of the men interrupts you and asks “Excuse me, you said that you received this item in a box. May we see it?” This prompts you to run inside and grab the leather case.

As you hand the box over, the three men step aside and discuss something among themselves. You don’t really care what that is, however, as you just sit on your porch and look out at your trashed neighborhood. Guilt crushes you as you slump into your beach chair watching the three men approach the officers and one of them sprays them with something from his pocket.

“Before we leave, we would like to thank you for all of the information you’ve given us,” one of the men says as another one hands you a cold bottle of water. “Now I know you’ve been through a lot, but just take a deep breath. Soon it’ll all feel like a bad dream…”

As he sprays you with a light gray mist, your eyelids drop and your mind is made clear.

“Good night, and happy Halloween from SCP.”