Halloween War

It was October 31st. Halloween. Gina got up to drink water and shivered as she got to her living room. It was covered in various shades of red and black and the fact that it was just four in the morning made it look more scary. She had gone all out this Halloween. She and her friends had a competition every Halloween on who could scare the other more. Gina had never won.

Last year she had pretended to be dead, laid on her bed holding her breath but none of her friends had believed it. A splash of cold water had her on her feet and sputtering in seconds. Rain, Joel and Brian, her friends, had all won before. In fact, Joel had won two years in a row now. The last time, they had found him face down in his pool, the colour of the pool blood red. It had been so realistic that they had all screamed and then he stood up laughing a maniac laugh.

Ever since high school, when they had created the game, Gina had never managed to actually scare them. Her tricks were sloppy and unbelievable so that is why she had gone all out this year. She had called her neighbor, Eddie, an art major, and soon her house was bathed in creepy colours of blood red and scary black with creepy skulls and everything that screamed scary. Her main trick was a live size poster of her, placed just in front of the door. Eddie had done a good job, it looked just like her. She had her doubts it would work because it was flat but she hoped it would. She shivered, not from the cold although it was chilling and her nighties was not thick enough to wade off the cold, but from the sight of the blood red knife sticking out of the gut of the poster. Eddie had done a fake knife but it had been ruined while they were setting it up in her house and since he had an important test he had to prepare for and didn't have time to create another knife, they had decided to use a real knife, with the tip painted red. It was chilling seeing a mirror of herself with a bloody knife sticking out of her stomach and the chilling air and scary atmosphere only added to her nerves. She just hoped this would work.

She drank the water and left, setting the cup aside. She had hardly wrapped herself in her blankets when the doorbell rang. She looked at the clock and frowned. It was just quarter after four, too early for anyone to be visiting. She walked to the door, trying to ignore the scary atmosphere of the living room. She walked past the poster and opened the door, looking into the hallway. There was no one there. She frowned as a chill ran down her spine. She was just about to close the door when she noticed a package on the floor. She picked it up with shaking hands and quickly closed her door. In front of the door she tore open the package. With an uneasy feeling in her stomach and her chest tightening, she opened the lid of the container and screamed flinging it away. She staggered back and gasped when she met with a resistance. She felt the poster behind her fall and then she was falling with it. She stopped falling as the poster fell across the arm of her chair, a searing pain tearing through stomach. She looked down in shock as she saw the knife that had been stuck in the poster sticking out of her, now coated with real blood, her blood.

Rina, Joey and Brian waited till they heard her scream before they moved from their hiding place. Joey had already scared Brian and Rina so they were out of the game. It remained Gina now. A harmless cat video playing in her room had woken Rina up. While she was 'awing' and cooing she didn't expect an ugly monstrous face to appear in front of her and she had given up an impressive scream. Joey had removed the mask and rolled around laughing. It was just one o'clock then. Then they had gone to Brian's house where he had woken up to a hand over his mouth and a knife at his neck with a photo shopped picture of his mother tied up and with a gun at her head staring at him. That had scared him shitless.  So they had tagged along to watch Joey scare Gina. He didn't really put much into it, Gina was easy to scare after all. Just a fake bloody hand and she had given off an impressive scream that they were surprised had not woken up her neighbors. They got to her door, hoping she had not locked it and then Rina turned the handle. They smiled at each other as it opened before pushing it the whole way and stepping inside.

"Got you!" They said together expecting Gina to let off another scream but they were the ones who let out ear splitting screams. Gina laid across her chair, a wicked looking knife sticking out of her stomach and blood dripping around her. The creepy atmosphere did nothing to calm their hearts.

Gina felt her lips tug in a weak smirk as her friends let off a satisfying scream, at least satisfying to her. As her eyes closed and darkness crept in, her final thoughts were:

Finally I won.

©Fekoya Jesutofunmi