Halloween's Hollow Heart
The police found him lying in a pool of his own blood; the doors to his and the adjacent apartment were found ajar that early November morning, and two lifeless bodies found inside. The rooms and the bodies both told a story, but it was a subtle one; a story of friendship taken for granted and cast aside for false connections. Their deaths both seemed physically separate and unrelated; the truth, however, was opposite, as the neighbors’ deaths were linked. Forensics teams examined the apartments for a story or even such a slight link between the two deaths, but little told them of the internal struggle that engulfed these neighbors’ lives the night before. That night had begun differently than any other night…
The man awoke to the lonely darkness that encircled him in his small room. His memory escaped him and he could not recall how he had made it to his humble New Jersey apartment’s bedroom. The seemingly vacant chamber reminded him too much of his vacant heart. His naked body was aching and he was slowly recalling the occurrences of the night. It was Halloween and the blank stares of the graven pumpkins’ violent expressions fell upon his exposed body with judgment. Images of strangers dressed in costumes of “friends” popped into his head; memories of earlier in the night. He knew all of these people, yet he was so isolated. Their friendships meant nothing to him, and he knew his meant nothing to them. He longed for the support and friendship of a group, a fun and “perfect” group. However the truth of the group’s friendship was that it was not truth at all, but lies and disloyalty. He was alone in this crowded room as he found himself only displaying truthful emotions. As the man lay, he remembered the pain of mingling with the strangers; the way their soulless, uncaring eyes would dispassionately claim, “I don’t need you and I don’t care about you at all” when he tried to talk through their eyes and rather to their hearts.
The man had only one true friend: his neighbor who lived right next door. The neighbor and the man had enjoyed many days of true friendship; they played games together, they watched television together, they even occasionally ate dinner together. The friendship they shared was the most important thing to them, for it was their savoir from the loneliness that was inevitable without each other. Both individuals were truly unstable, and had lost so much in the past: their families, their pets, and anyone who ever loved them. The bond that they shared was a bond that was highly reactive if broken. That night, though, was different, for the man had fallen for the immediate shelter of these strangers’ false friendship.
During the man’s rowdy Halloween celebration the neighbor had come over to politely ask the man to turn the volume in the apartment down out of respect. The request was met with a response that the man regretted,
“Fuck off asshole! We’re having a good time!”
The words slipped from the man’s drunken lips; drunken with the falseness of the surrounding group that assured him “friendship.” Then more came,
“You’re not a true friend if you try and put limits on my life! That’s what my new friends say!”
With this sentence, the neighbor turned away in despair. The neighbor’s only friend had abandoned him for people he had no bond with at all, and in turn left him to the crushing loneliness, of his apartment.
While thinking about the terrible occurrences of the night and lying in the crisp sheets of his cot, he heard a cold voice from the next room. The party had ended hours before and there was no reason for anyone to still be there, but he remembered now.
“You ready to go again?” said the young woman’s shadow.
The man recollected the drunken sex that he had with this woman right after his party, and he would not call it love making for he felt no emotions towards her. He had felt only her slithery silk skin and her vicious bites on his lip.
The woman skulked into the bedroom, stating, quite chillingly, “You have no choice anyways.”
It was then that the man realized that all of his limbs were handcuffed to the bedposts. To his horror he realized that his drunken stupor had left him vulnerable to this attractive stranger. His eyes widened with the realization that he could very well be raped by this shadow.
“Why are you doing this?!” he asked.
“It just comes with the Halloween spirit I guess.” She calmly said while kneeling on the end of the bed, one hand behind her back, one caressing the man’s leg.
“Stop! Un-cuff me and get out of my house!” said the man urgently. He bashed his hand against the bedroom wall and called for his only real friend, “FRIEND!? HELP ME! CALL THE COPS! I’M GETTING RAPED IN HERE!”
Hearing this plea the neighbor exclaimed, “You’re just drunk! I have no friends! You can help yourself!” After spending hours in his apartment truly alone in this world, the neighbor searched for something that could help stop the anguish. With the darkness of isolation closing in, the neighbor stopped it in one last effort.
The man heard a gunshot come from the adjacent apartment and immediately started to shed tears. His captor, showing no emotion, heartlessly licked the dampness off of the man’s face and pulled from behind her back, a knife.
“Oh happy dagger!” she said as she smiled and lifted the blade above the man’s torso.
“NO!” Screamed the man as the blade ran smoothly into his chest.
As the blood ran down his chest onto the bed sheets and the woman walked away, the man once again awoke to the lonely darkness that encircled him in his small room.
