(Usual Disclaimer Time: Even though this story almost entirely takes place in a high school setting, all the characters in this story are 18 years old or older, and since we're living in the wide wonderful world of porno-land here, where clichés roam free and things might get a little unrealistic from time to time, please remember it's all in good fun, I swear.)
(Author's Note: So it's been a long, strange trip, but we've finally made it to Halloween night! I aim to provide creepy, sexy fun. After receiving some well-warranted criticism of my last chapter, I want to apologize for biting off more than I could chew and sacrificing characterization for too many scenes of smut. Moving forward, I will aspire to keep things more streamlined to avoid such issues unless the chapter absolutely calls for it. Thank you for your criticisms; though I don't say it, I value the quality criticisms every bit as much as the praise. As always, if you're enjoying this, please, please, please drop some stars, reviews or shoot me some feedback. Though I may not always respond, I do love hearing from all of you and seeing that you're enjoying the series. It keeps me going and motivates me to continue writing more. You've all been wonderful and I can't thank you enough for all of your kind words and encouragement!)
Previously, on Senior Year Memories: It's finally Halloween, and nerdy 18-year-old Ryan Collins has a lot on his plate. Helping run a haunted house for his school paper for the school's annual Halloween Scream carnival, Ryan was frustrated by the constant, demanding texts from paper editor Nadia Barclay and moderately frightened by the fact that he appeared to have been followed around school by a girl in a creepy ragdoll costume. To top it off, it was a sexually exhausting day, after morning shower anal sex with best friend Tori McNeil, lunchtime sex in a school closet with cosplayer Mallory Dourif, and a threesome with cheerleaders Kaitlyn Pruitt and Haley Campbell. However, when the threesome was interrupted by Nadia, Ryan was able to help her relax through the powers of hardcore sex in every hole, just in time for Halloween night...
***
When I was a kid, I used to believe in monsters. It's not exactly my greatest point of pride that I once thought Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster walked the earth, but really, how is that any different from believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?
Like all those other fictional characters of my youth, I grew out of believing in them when time and experience taught me that they were nightmares made up in the minds of talented authors and artists, and that they weren't all that scary anyway. Not when there are real world monsters to truly fear. I learned this quick when I became introduced to Kyle Bowman. Growing up, I was completely convinced there couldn't be a greater monster than him, and if only that were true the world would be a damn sight better place. Studying history had taught me that real monsters didn't howl at the moon or suck the blood of virgins, no, they held power as despots and moguls, running countries and corporations and killing infinitely more people than a reanimated corpse with bolts in its neck could ever dream of. Fictional monsters came and went, but real monsters, they were constant, and they were legion.
And yet...
And yet. There's always an "and yet."
And yet, despite all of this understanding, there was a part of my mind that knew this was a lie. It knew better than the rest of my rational mind that not only were monsters real, but they were everywhere, hiding in every dark corner, waiting to pounce at a moment's notice. They gained power from lack of belief, and the more I tried to banish them and push them away, the more they'd be after me.
It was a silly notion, the voice in the back of my mind of me as a small child, back before I loved horror movies and was entranced by them only because I felt physically incapable of looking away from the terror. That me was a deer in headlights when it comes to the stuff of nightmares, at first stunned by the darkness before taking flight.
It was only that I was on my bicycle at the time that allowed me to skip the "stunned" step and go right for "flight" when the monster came for me on Halloween night.
I pedaled with all my might, my lungs burning from exertion and fear. I didn't scream because it wouldn't have done any good, just one more voice in the night where screams were common and considered jokes. I couldn't scream anyway for how much of my breath I needed to keep ahead of the monster's implacable pursuit.
I was close to home. Once I got inside, I could lock the door and I'd be safe. I was on familiar streets, and I knew they weren't. If they were, they'd have found me sooner. I could do this... but what would be the point? They could've taken me at any time if they wanted. Were they playing with me? Why were they playing with me? What had I done to them?
The answer was easy: it didn't matter because it was Halloween. It was the night when the monsters came out to play, and tonight I was the monster's toy.
And to think this day had started off so well.
I saw my house up ahead. Dad would be asleep in his room, dead to the world. That child's voice in the back of my mind told me to call out for him, that he'd send the monster away, but I knew that was foolish. This was my monster, and only I could deal with it.
I hopped my bike up onto the curb, ditching it as I stumbled for the front door. I tripped over the walkway, falling flat on my face on the grass, cursing myself for making the kinds of mistakes that a slasher movie victim would make, the kind that Tori or Josie or I would've made fun of. It was so easy to make fun of them when you weren't being chased, and the part of me that wasn't convinced that I was about to be eaten, that small part that knew I was going to make it out of this alive, wanted to remember this and not make fun of those buxom horror movie victims ever again.
It probably wouldn't happen, but it was worth remembering.
I got back up onto my feet, slowly, not looking back, focused on the front door. The porch light above it was lit, and with the light there was safety. I stumbled for it, reached it, fumbling for my keys in my pocket. They slipped through my fingers, clattering on the doormat.
"Fuck!" I exclaimed, bending over to pick them up. My fingers wouldn't cooperate, grazing the keys, almost picking them up but then dropping them again. Finally my fingers looped through the key ring, picking them up and making for the door.
It was too late, though. They were right behind me, standing too close for me to run.
The high, giddy voice giggled. "Trick or treat!"
***
I lunged, screaming from the darkness.
My victims, a couple of freshmen by the looks of them, screamed even louder, darting around the corner of the snaking maze we'd built in Bungalow 237. It must've been the fiftieth time we'd pulled this exact scare, but they fell for it every time.
Chuckling, I slid back between the black curtains into the dark little alcove I'd helped build, smiling possibly even wider than the painted on smile that Mallory had added to my face. I didn't know then that within a few hours I'd be running for my life, testing the imagined safety that my childhood home offered when I ran from a monster. I was blissfully unaware of many things then, because all I had to focus on was that Regan Hills High School's Halloween Scream was open for business, and as one of the people running the "Dr. Happy's Asylum" haunted house, that was good news indeed.
