#aughtober

"Goddamn the Quota, anyway."

"Heh, nothing we can do. No use spitting brimstone about it."

"He seems like such a nice kid. I hate to do this to him. Kid doesn't have the exoskeleton for it. 'Skin for it?' Whatever the humans say."

"Aren't you always the one saying they need as many nice people as they can get? Seems like you of all people should be ecstatic over this little morsel joining their ranks."

"Who knows if he'll even still be a nice kid by the time he finds his people? Go look at his parents' memories, it's not going to be a pretty time for him. I hate doing this, Zephriel."

"Oh don't sigh all heavy like that! You know I can't stand that pout!"

"I think it would bother me less if we got the cases with accepting families, or even an aunt who's like them so they don't feel so alone. Seems like you and I are always on Quota Balance duty."

"Careful, you start talking like that, people will think you're against the Quota--here, hold his eyelid open, I'll do it--and then where will you be?"

"Well, maybe I am against the Quota. Careful, he's rousing a little."

"Bah! Then hold him steady, will you? Anyway... you know the rule, some get placed in G-class homes, some get placed in P2-class homes like this. You know the new management can't stop talking about 'Quota-this', 'Quota-that'."

"I just don't see the worst that could happen if all of them got to grow up G-class."

"You're not human, you wouldn't understand anyway, Posarion. They seem to prefer it this way. Alright, there, this one's all done. Heh heh, rest easy while you can, kiddo. What's next?"

"Just up the street. The Meyerson's eldest."

"Meyersons!? New management has a sick sense of humor, maybe tonight will be more fun than I thought. Let's go. What are you doing?"

"Just... giving him a vision is all."

"You're not authorized to do that!"

"I'm just... showing him who he's going to be, just a sneak peak, just enough to maybe guide his way. You're not going to report me?"

"Bah! Of course not. You're a ball and chain, Posarion, but you're my ball and chain."

I’m bad at scary stories. So for AUGHtober, I’m going to just… write out the nightmares I have. Dress them up a bit to make them feel like stories, but… they’re just going to be the nightmares I have, as I have them. Discretion is advised, sometimes they’re gruesome.

++

His knees crashed into a rail. The Horse screamed.

He was awake and couldn’t know that his eyes were open, it was so dark. He put out his hand and felt a wooden post beneath his fingers. The world pulled sickeningly to one side, a burning all down one side

The Horse screamed again.

In the darkness, there was a sound like a mouthless thing shushing the horse.

Then he felt a pull at his skin, the fatty bit under his arm, the skin. A pin prick. He shrieked by the darkness caught it. A tension, penetrating him, pulling through his skin. His hand flailed, felt the wooden post again.

In a stall, then. In a stable? Horse hair at his back, the racing heartbeat against him.

The Horse screamed.

Thread. A needle. Stabbing through just below the last. Pulling the thread through his skin, then into the skin of the horse. He could feel it all down his right side, the dull ache, the tug at his flesh when he flailed.

His back was being stitched to the side of the horse.

He screamed. The horse shook, stamped. Three of the stitches ripped out in the sudden jerk. He bit his lip till it bled trying not to scream again.

When he tried to swat at the thing in the darkness, something that could not be a hand caught his arm. Something that could not be teeth cleanly chomped through one finger.

He recoiled, he cried out, stitches ripping, the Horse screaming, trying to bolt from its pen. Ripping, ripping, ripping. The thing was repairing all stitch by stitch.

He must escape, he must prepare himself. Scream. Slap the horse. Have it break its enclosure. Tear away whatever he needed to escape the thing. Stumble after and follow the sound of the horse crashing into the darkness. Escape. He had to be ready for the unbearable pain.

Ryan could hear the crack of the flail in the next room, Patrick's mournful groans and austere sounds of agony. There was a syrupy tendril of false blood that was beginning to drip from Ryan's false beard, about to fall and join the puddle of red-dyed cornstarch at the foot of the cross.

Ryan wore a long brown wig and a false beard and little else besides a blood-stained cloth around his boxers: in the semi-dark of the haunted attraction, he was the spitting image of the crucified Christ. His arms were strapped into the cross-beam of a large cross which held him high above the extras in Bible-clothing who were milling around waiting to be jeering onlookers. He was covered in fake blood, and occasionally as it trickled down over an eyebrow and he would waggle his head, unable to free his arms to brush it away.

The things you did for the Kingdom.

"Every 'hit' you take, every person you defile yourself with outside of marriage, every Sunday you slept in: each of those is another crack of the whip onto Jesus' flesh."

Ryan could hear the guide narrating through the scene right before they were supposed to enter this room and see that Jesus on the cross, dying for their sins. The attendees had been through the drugs room, the suicide room, the school shooting room, and were proper scared and ready to see some Biblical violence.

And so, next door, Patrick, dressed almost identically to Ryan, was being 'whipped' by a costumed Roman soldier: tortured. Then, with their trespasses still rising in their throats, they'd walk through the door and BAM: cross.

He was sweating beneath the fake blood and cold everywhere else, but it didn't matter too much to him. It was a big honor, he'd been doing Nightmare Walk all through high-school, and finally he was allowed to play Jesus. Still, as he hung there, Ryan thought that he was glad this would be his last year. It had turned out that, since meeting Patrick especially, he more looked forward to hitting the local Denny's with the other actors once the night was over.

"AGH!"

Ryan shook himself from his reverie, tried to stretch his arms which were quickly becoming numb. He heard it again, another shout. This one wasn't austere and Biblical, it was Patrick, and he was actually screaming.

"The fornicators, the idolators, the thieves, and the homosexuals will not be permitted to enter the kingdom of heaven!"

The narrator was 'preaching' at a fever pitch now, and Ryan didn't recognize the voice or the script they seemed to be using. His stomach sank.

"Oww! Hey, time-out, stop! STOP! Davis--AUGH!--stop!" Patrick was sounding panicked now.

"This one is guilty of lying with another man. He is abomination. Play-acting as our Savior with this unrepented sin still upon him!"

Ryan began to struggle with the bindings that held him fast to the cross, but they wouldn't budge. Patrick's cries had grown softer, broken, pleading. The door opened, and a crowd of people in fall-coats and scarves sidled in, led by a woman Ryan did not recognize.

"And here's the other one, the other homosexual. Dressed up like the Son of God, mocking the almighty with his iniquity." The woman proclaimed. Ryan couldn't make out the faces of the crowd in the darkness, but when the woman stepped forward, he saw she was carrying a brick. Maybe everyone in the crowd was.

The coffee shop was a hole-in-the wall, a dark hallway with a counter up front and small tables leading back into the windowless space. A couch, in the back corner of the shop next to the Employee's Only restroom, was upholstered brown to not show coffee stains.

Nikki's eyes had been riveted to the pattern of the sofa for what felt like forever. She tried to focus on her textbook, but the page resisted her gaze as if they had different polarities. And the harder she tried, the more exhausted she felt, the more her eyes threatened to close.

She lifted a cup of coffee to her lips, the hot liquid warming her throat. Nikki had lost count of how many cups she'd drank at that point: every time her eyelids began to droop, it was time for another full cup. The light outside had gone away and come back and gone away and come back, and there was a sense that maybe a storm had rolled through outside, or that Nikki had somehow squatted in the coffee shop for days.

The narrow shop had become like the barrel of a gun, or the tunnel to the great beyond: when Nikki looked up, the windows were washed out white. Couldn't make out anyone else in the coffee shop, not at the tables or behind the counter, but somehow, as soon as her eyes would begin to flutter, her cup was full again.

"Go to sleep, Nikki." On the wall above the restroom was a macrame owl, as big as a real one. She looked up, eyes barely able to focus on the owl, and it spoke again. "Time to sleep."

Nikki opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. With a trembling hand, she took another sip of hot coffee, then continued drinking until the mug was empty. No sooner had she set it down then did it begin to spill scalding on her hand, brimming once again with steaming coffee.

"Something something something," the owl whispered. "Something something, do you know?"

The tide was low and the beach deserted, early on Sunday morning while the gray clouds pinked at the horizon but refused to let the sun rise properly. The dark water was capped with silver peaks as a breeze stirred across the bay.

A ragged man burst forth from the water, coming up to his knees in the shallows just off the beach, as if he'd sprung out of the foam itself. His eyes were wide and his open jaw trembled. It was a long moment before he finally took a colossal gasp, filling his lungs with the morning air.

He almost collapsed back into the surf, but caught himself on his hands, now braced on all fours in the water. It seemed at first he wasn't wearing any clothes, but was perhaps covered in sea weed. On a second look, it would be easy to assume what had been mistaken for sea weed was the tattered remains of a long jacket. It hung off his emaciated frame, as utterly soaked and dripping as the messy tangle of hair that fell across his face.

Another breath, another long moment later, as if the man were getting used to the sensation. He looked up, eyes still wide, mouth still gaping, but now wheezing breaths as he surveyed the beach up and down. He brought himself to his feet and trembled, ankle deep in the water.

He was nearly naked, except for the scraps of the sodden coat, and--yes--sea weed. In his hair, curled around a leg, dangling from a shoulder. His eyes in the morning light could now be seen to be a stormy gray, and he looked at his quivering hands as if in awe of them.

As the pink horizon gave way to gray again, the man straightened, staggered across the sand, leaving long, dragged foot prints behind. Up the sea wall, and the frontage road atop was quiet. Blocks away, a small cafe sat overlooking the ocean, and the man stumbled toward it. No car passed when he crossed the street. And behind, the surf could not seem to wash away the marks he left in the sand.

There was one customer seated in the cafe. A young man, close-cropped hair, his long jacket hanging over the back of his chair. In the fluorescent lighting of the cafe, his gray eyes took a sickly green hue from the wallpaper. The door opened quietly, and the man looked up from his coffee to the sound of wet, bare feet plodding across the floor.

No cars passed when the drowned man crossed back over the street. If there were any, they would have seen the quivering and bedraggled figure dragging another man behind him. The man kicked and clawed, but it was as if the drowned thing could not feel it.

Down over the sea wall, back down to the beach. The tide had begun imperceptibly to roll back in, and where the drowned thing dragged the man across the sand, it only seemed to erase his earlier footprints.

The floor creaked under Mickey's shoes, and every time it made him wince. As if his weight would be the thing to finally overload the floors which had been supporting shelves and shelves of books for decades. Mickey hated the old library for this reason. As if he didn't have enough reasons to be self-conscious about his weight.

The rest of the members of his class hated the old library, too, but for a different reason. The library was, well, not exactly haunted. But special.

Mickey had to stoop to look at the bottom shelf: of course the book he wanted was on the bottom shelf. The floor creaked, and Mickey winced. "The Poetry and Songs of Ancient Egypt's New Kingdom" felt heavier in his hand than it looked. He opened it to the back cover, looked at the yellowed check-out history card as a force of habit.

He froze. The last name on the check-out history was a familiar and precisely written: "Cassie Schmerz"

After her name, the blue ink of the librarians stamp: JUL 2024.

Mickey had had a crush on Cassie Schmerz since last year... in 2021. Mickey paled. There were exactly two things that were rumored to be 'special' about the library. First, somewhere in the library was a book, and in the back of that book was your signature and the month and year of your death. The library hadn't used the stamps and check-out cards for years since everything went digital. Kids said the old stamps didn't even go as high as the year 2000.

The second special thing was a rule: if you found someone else's card, you could not under any circumstances tell them... or else.

Or else.

Or else what? What could be worse than spending the next two years watching Cassie Schmerz, knowing the end was coming, and not even being able to tell her?

He stood up with the book. The floor creaked wildly. What could he do? He took out his phone... no, he immediately imagined himself taking a picture of the card, the floor giving out under his weight at last. Killing and burying him in a pile of books and splintered shelves, atop the pile a book with his name on its check-out card, todays month and year stamped upon it.

Maybe he could leave it somewhere for Cassie to find? No! What reason would she have to pick up a book so dull and weird as one of his hobbies!

He couldn't do this right now, he couldn't think about this right now! Mickey put the dusty book back on the bottom shelf and backed away. He would just tell Cassie she had to come and do a thorough search of that shelf. He wouldn't tell her which book, just which shelf. Yeah.

He careened down the flights of stairs to ground level and hurried up to the check-out desk. Hands shaking, he set the other books he'd found--all his dumb hobbies--on the desk.

"Woah there," said the librarian, eyebrow raised after scanning Mickey's library card. "Says here you've got a pretty big over-due fine."

"Wh-what?"

"Browman's Guide to Cuneiform and Its Antecedents."

"But I just checked that out last week!"

The librarian gave him a frown.

"Well, this says you checked it out in October 2021. It's practically three years overdue."

Mickey jolted back from the counter.

"Wait, what? What date is it?"

The librarian gave him a curious look, then scanned him up and down.

"It's... it's August 8th, 2024. Hey, are you okay?"

Mickey bolted for the door, librarian calling after him, calling for his co-worker: