CONSUME

02.

CHAPTER TWO

Small town get togethers were never fun, yet everyone acted like it. It was almost Halloween and preparations for the annual haunted house that the town put together had begun. It was a fun thing, only the preparations and cleaning were excruciating plus all the crying and screaming children, and adults.

Esther's dad had loved halloween and everything that the holiday meant, so much that he always helped with the haunted house and every year spent hours on decorating and planning. This year he wasn't here and everyone had expected Esther to take his place, so she did. It wasn't something that she necessarily wanted to do but she didn't have the heart or the guts to say no.

It was freezing outside and leaves crunched under her boots as she carried the heavy box filled with decorations over to the large house that would soon look like it came straight from a cheap production  horror movie. She was wearing a thick coat and grey knitted mittens, matching the large grey scarf she had wrapped around her neck in layers. Underneath she wore a knitted sweater, preparing for the cold the best she could. She wore big headphones and a soft song played from her phone, it was a short walk but it had felt like music was needed.

The house was already filled with people from the town's committee, consisting of picky elders, people who only wanted the pastries that came with the job and ladies who wanted to look like the perfect mother and wife. The banter had already started and their raised voices could be heard from the street. Esther sighed, glanced at her clock and hurried up the old porch and into the house.

It smelled like coffee and stress and from the second she stepped over the threshold anxiety began to build up in her chest. The crowd and the high energy they shared made her anxious, which wasn't that unusual.

"Hey honey! You're just in time, we're about to wrap up and start decorating." Eva spoke, hugging her quickly before returning to the heated discussion.

She could hear words like theme, nonsense, terrifying and planning flying around until Eva finally put an end to the conversation by telling everyone what to do. It was good that they had her, the leader role seemed to fit her perfectly and without her everything would fall apart in seconds.

"I brought decorations from last year, should I hang them up?" Esther asked as everyone began to scatter, finally finding it okay to talk without having to overpower anyone else's voice.

"Do that, just make sure it follows the theme." Eva spoke and darted off, already beginning to check that everything was being done right.

She wasn't sure what the theme was.

Esther hummed as a response and walked over to the stairs, setting down the large box and quickly looking trough it carefully. She found the spiderwebs, the pumpkins, the fake axe and the fake blood. The stairs creaked under her feet and she struggled to hold the tangled spiderwebs, the material intertwining and becoming hard to handle. As she began to hang up the decorations by the stairs a strange feeling came over her.

It was an overwhelming feeling and it almost felt like someone had just suddenly thrown ice cold water all over her. Everything suddenly felt wrong, so awfully wrong that her stomach began hurting and her hands drop to her sides.

She was being watched.

It was painfully obvious that someone was watching her and it struck her harshly. It was strange to be effected so strongly by something so harmless and small but it didn't feel innocuous, it felt menacing and overwhelming. It was not an innocent glance, it was someone watching her so heatedly that she could feel it in her bones.