Vengeance: A Halloween Novella

Chapter 3

October 25, 2023

Vancouver, Canada

Brock Boeser, a 208-pound, six-foot-one-inch tall Vancouver Canuck forward, startles awake from a nightmare with a loud gasp. His blue blanket falls into his lap. Sweat drips down his toned athletic chest, which is heaving outward from the pounding of his heart. A lock of his wavy blond hair dangles over his forehead from the jerking motion of him sitting upward in bed. He rubs the sleep from his deep blue eyes.

"It was just a dream. Just a silly...dark...disturbing dream."

Slowly he begins to calm down, until he is able to run a hand over his hair, removing the troublesome lock from his face. Then he slides out of bed and into a pair of green and blue fuzzy slippers.

He yawns and stretches, before walking out of his room and into the main room, where he finds two people sitting on his couch, playing fortnite on his TV.

"Good morning, Prince Charming," one of them, a youthful-looking light brown haired man with bright blue eyes, greets, not taking his eyes off of the TV and working a game controller in his hand with a skilled vigorousity.

"Already, Jake?" Brock groans with a roll of his eyes. He folds his arms across his sweaty chest.

"At least I'm not standing in just pink-colored boxers and a pair of slippers," Jake Virtanen retorts.

"And sweating like I just had a wet dream about Elias Pettersson doing some dirty dekes," the second man remarks, looking up from his controller with an awkward expression on his face. He's got similar wavy dark brown hair to Brock's own and a pair of misty brown eyes that looked almost gray in the dim light coming from the sun shining through a skylight in the ceiling.

"Q, I do NOT dream about Petey!" Brock snaps, stomping his foot on the ground.

"Look, another tiny Brock-tantrum because he's denying his true feelings!" Jake laughs, jamming his finger down on the controller. "HA! Take that, Quinn Hughes! I killed you!" He jumps up to his feet and does a victory dance.

Quinn tosses his eyes and throws the controller to the side. "Damn it. You don't have to be a giant dick about it, Jacob Virtanen."

Brock leaves them and returns back to his room. This is what he gets for being nice and letting Jake Virtanen and Quinn Hughes room with him for a little bit while they moved out of their shared apartment. He sighs and sits back down on the side of his bed and picks his phone up.

"Call Elias Pettersson," Brock orders the phone through Siri.

"Calling Elias Pettersson," the phone repeats back in a British-female voice.

While the dial tone rings, he snatches up the remote for his room's TV and powers it on. It automatically turns on the news. He sets the phone on his bed, turning on the speaker, just as a few clicks sound on the other end and then...

"Brock? How's it going with Virts and Huggy Bear? 'They still annoying you senseless?" a soft heavily accented voice speaks on the other end.

"Yeah," Brock calls out as he puts on his outfit: a Canucks hoodie with black pants. "Woke up from a nightmare and found them playing fortnite."

Elias gives a light laugh.

"Well, you know that those two love the game. I, myself, don't quite understand why it's so--"

Brock glances at the TV, reading the headline and watching the latest story as Elias speaks. He tunes his friend out as his mind digests the words on the screen and his blood runs cold:

Matthew Tkachuk, Resurrected from the Dead.

His nightmare floods back into his memory. Tkachuk is standing over Elias' dead, bloody body and is holding a crimson soaked dagger in his hand. His eyes are pitch black and he is cackling like a villain. Elias, meanwhile, has been tied down to a chair with ropes and he is looking hopefully and desperately at Brock.

His mouth seems to form the words, "Help me, please."

Brock screams out to him, before Tkachuk's cackling overwhelms him and he finds that he can't breathe.

"--but you know, some people just enjoy it," Elias says with a chuckle to his voice, slicing through Brock's reverie.

"Shit," Brock hisses under his breath, forgetting about Elias on the phone.

"Brock?! You okay?" Elias calls out. "Brock?! Brock Joseph Boeser--"

"Petey, um, sorry, what were you saying?" Brock cuts off his scolding, trying to disguise his fear and nervousness. He scratches his stubbly bearded chin, recently shaven from his NHL team's playoff run.

The Vancouver Canucks had been so close to the final. Like for three years in a row, including the time in the Edmonton Bubble. This year they made it to the Western Conference Final again. But they just can't solve getting to the Stanley Cup Final.

Brock remembers, overhearing Tkachuk two times  when he was walking through the halls of the Rogers Arena after a morning skate in 2019. It was then that he found out Tkachuk was head-over-heels obsessed with Elias.

At the time, Brock thought he was crazy, maybe he suffered from schizophrenia and had to take pills or something.

Then, during the time in the 2020 playoffs in the bubble, when he overheard the Flame talking to himself in his room. This time, Tkachuk sounded more mad. More obsessed. It scared Brock, but he couldn't fret and dwell on the Calgary Flame and his issues.

Then, one day (later on in 2020), he appeared, bloody and dead, in the plaza outside the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. It was all over the press, in the news, being passed around the team. No one knew who'd killed him or why.

Brock, himself, had questioned it at the time.

All he had known was that Tkachuk was dead and not a threat to Elias anymore.

Or...maybe he still was...is...

"I was just asking if you are okay. I hear the news in the background, is there another serial killer running around?"

"Worse," Brock breathes out, stunned.

He can hear Elias turning the news on. "How?! He was dead! It was confirmed and he was buried in the ground, but that's him walking through Downtown Calgary. Didn't you tell me he had a crush on me?"

"I did...he did...I overheard him, but he was DEAD. There's got to be some mistake. Listen, Petey, don't move, I'm coming over there ASAP."

Elias sighs on the other end. "I know. You think Tkachuk's dangerous. I promise not to move, so that my Prince Charming can come to my rescue and protect me from the evil Calgary Flame."

"Don't sound so thrilled," Brock teases, grabbing his favorite Canucks' snapback hat and slapping it down onto his head. "I'll be there in five minutes!"

"What about--?" Elias begins to say as Brock cuts him off by hanging up.

Brock quickly snatches up the remote from his bed, turns the TV off and throws the black box back down on the bed. Then he flips the hat behind him so that it is on his head backward with a forceful yank. He then gathers up his necessary items: his wallet, keys, glasses and phone. He slips his feet into a pair of tennis shoes, not bothering with socks and throws open his door.

Jake and Quinn have left the room. And the house.

Brock will have to fill them in later on what is happening. For now, he has to beat a zombie Calgary Flame to his best friend.