Bogleech.com's 2018 Horror Write-off:
Senior Year Halloween Dance 2006
Submitted by Average Humanoid
You see your crush across the auditorium. And they are as beautiful as ever. The angle of their face hits you like a spear to the chest. Your friend, G, tells you to talk to them, that this is your last chance. G is dressed like Kramer (long story, nobody else is dressed like Seinfeld characters) and correct.
Your crush, J, is moving to LA to live with their brother in a few months. You need to do this. This is you last chance, you think with youthful fervor, to be a real human being.
You start walking to J, who is dressed like Austin Powers and somehow they are no less attractive for it.
You say hi.
They say hi.
You talk for a bit and then feel as though you are propelled through the conversation by a great wind. You both speak as though you have always been close. Over the course of a few hours you learn much about them.
They are a capricorn.
They play video games but tend to avoid fighters.
They are an only child.
You ask them about their brother. J looks surprised, like a steel wire has gone taut in their gut.
Then their face relaxes and they tell you it’s their cousin they’re going to live with, not their brother. Because they want to be an actor. So you start talking about that and forget the paranoid glint behind their eyes.
Later, after the dance, in front of the 7-11, you are kissing. J’s Austin Powers teeth have long since clattered to the pavement. They tell you that they have always had a crush on you.
You are elated.
You feel alive and warm and human and real for the first time in years. It doesn't matter that you only have a few months till they leave. Because you are in love or something very like it. You reach down and take hold of their hand.
It feels loose.
You pull away and the skin of J’s hand comes with you. You both stand there looking at the fleshy glove, totally unsure of what to do.
“Oh no.” says J. “I thought I had time!”
They hold their hand up revealing green, scaled claw. Their skin begins to turn sallow and slough off.
“Why do I have to go?”
J cries out, not in pain or fear but in rage. What is happening before you is not fair. They are drowned out by the sound of their bones growing. J sheds themself like a cocoon. Is this death or rebirth? Is there a difference?
This is not fair.
There is something new that both is and is not J. A hulking shape bathed in the light of the 7-11.
It is Necrid from Soul Calibur 2.
They idle for a moment before performing a vertical slash. Necrids form is perfect, pre-animated and stolen from Nightmare’s moveset. In the moment before you are bisected by a blade of low-poly green energy, you smile.
Because this is absurd and you are alive.
Alive and human at last, before Necrid.