There were
no mirrors, but Frank could feel that the
cut in his cheek was both wet and deep.“I dunno.”
“Well what day is it?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, look at your phone, for fuck sake.”
All Bojo had on was a pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear, but his cell phone was perched between his hip and the elastic.
"October thirty first."
"Fuck me."
"What?"
“It’s Halloween," Frank said. "We must be at Lou’s party. Hear the music?”
“He never invited us before.”
“Yeah but after what we done, this must be our reward.”
Bojo didn't look happy about being reminded of what they had done. But at that moment, Frank felt good about it. It was like what Lou said had come true: 'You assume a mask, and after a while the mask becomes your true self, and then you're free.'
“We’re in man. Bojo we’re in. Let’s go party.”
Bojo picked up his clothes from the floor. “How we gonna go out there? Our clothes are covered in blood, and… stuff.”
“Dude, it’s a Halloween party. We’ll fit right in,” Frank said.
Frank put his hand on Bojo’s shoulder, and they took baby steps down a dark hallway walking toward the sound of the techno music, laughter and chatter. Bojo tripped.
“Goddamnit.”
“What is it?”
“Stairs,” Bojo said, and then as he rose to his feet again a few steps below, he said, “Fuck me.”
“What is it?”
“The party.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know what to say. You have to look yourself.”
Frank climbed a few stairs down, pushed Bojo out of the way and took a look. The first thing he saw was a naked woman fly by as if carried on a wind. A man was chasing her. He slipped in some thick brown slop and went sliding into a corner where pigs were eating. Frank looked away – he didn’t want to think about what those pigs might be feeding on.
But no one else seemed to care. Assorted devils, ghosts and zombies were chatting, dancing, making out, drinking, popping pills, smoking from hookahs and gorging on food. Frank had heard about Lou’s place in the south where he held his parties, but he couldn’t have imagined anything like this. He grabbed a bottle of Jack and a bloody-red roast beef sandwich from a table and entered.
A young boy or girl, Frank couldn’t tell, was lying with a needle sticking out of the arm, eyes rolled into the head. A woman leaned down on her knees in front of the overdosed youth. At first Frank thought she was trying to help, but as he got to the bottom of the stairs and entered the party, he could see that she was going through the pockets for valuables. Frank admired the roundness of her ass underneath her short black leather mini-skirt. There is no right and wrong, he thought, just winners and losers.
“Hey” Frank called out, and she turned around.
A thin black line ran across her face from ear to ear meeting at her orange lips (the same color as her hair). Her lips were sticking out as if they were being squished together by the black line, which looked like stitches. She wore black contact lenses and had long lashes and big black circles painted around her eyes. Pink laces criss-crossed out of what looked like shoelace holes in her chest.
Frank stepped back. Then he laughed.
"Awesome," he said. He was eyeing her body underneath the costume.
“Trick or treat,” she said offering Frank whatever she’d found in the pockets.
In her palm were small square pills with different colors on each side: bright red, green, white and blue.
“Have some instant insanity,” she said.
At once, Frank felt light and dizzy, but at the same time, powerful. He grabbed her arm and pulled her through a door to a dark, narrow hallway. He pushed her face against the wall, pulled up her skirt and pushed in against her. She didn’t protest, but she didn’t respond either.
Frank looked down at his shirt. It was caked in half-dried blood. He felt something trickling down his cheek. He was still chewing on the sandwich as he fucked her, and the blood from the meat mingled with his own blood. He began to laugh.
“Hey, you know what? ” he said pointing to the gash on his cheek and the blood on his clothes. “This isn’t a costume. It’s real."
She turned around, opened her big black eyes, and mumbled something out of her tightly stitched mouth.
“What?” Frank asked leaning in closer.
“So is this,” she whispered in his ear.
Frank studied her closely. He touched her face feeling the stitches.
Then he started screaming.
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