User blog comment:CrashingCymbal/Halloween Writing Competition 2013/@comment-13492543-20131025145709

(Okay, it's not that great, but hey, I tried. c: )

“No. No, move it over. No, that isn’t right. Move it over THAT way. Yes, better. Little more... perfect.” Blatant directions to a dumb man, I thought. I’d been shouting at my friend Chester for almost half an hour, as he’d been putting all the decorations in the wrong places. We’d been preparing for my Halloween party, and it had to look perfect. I had a lot of friends coming, and he’d got a few girls to come along, so it needed to look as good as we could get it.

“John, I know what I’m doing. I’ve decorated for parties before.” He huffed, angry at my commands.

“Yes, for your seven-year-old sister. That’s quite different.” I replied. He really didn’t know anything about ambience. There were polystyrene skulls covering parts of the ceiling, hung by chains, and a skeleton was hung for the ceiling in a way we were hoping wasn’t too offensive. We put up the LED lights shaped like eyes behind the black cloth we had draped over the walls, and there was a very faint singing of a twisted nursery rhyme playing from the speaker hidden in the wardrobe. After a little while, we’d put everything up, and sat down on the couch, taking a couple of drinks from the crate we had ready for later. I picked up the local paper. Some kid was found who had run away a few days ago, and the escaped mental patient case had been disproved. Nothing interesting. Just stupid crap for bored people.

We didn’t get to rest long before the first guests arrived. I was pleased to see a group of girls Chester had invited. There was one dressed as a cat, one as a she-devil, one an angel (who I presume was co-ordinating with the devil girl) and a witch with a pretty stunning laced dress. They settled down and more guests started to flood in. Eventually, we had everyone, or at least, I thought we did. We had the four girls, an impressive Slenderman (obviously my friend Doug; he’s an awesome tailor and pretty well balanced on stilts.) A couple guys Chester invited, a few girls he invited that I sadly didn’t know the name of, my friend Lauren (dressed in a silver and green morph suit and wearing alien-eye shades; she never really cares for looking in any way “hot”, though he’s kinda pretty even so) and some of mine, Adam, Louie and Jake, who had also co-ordinated and formed a group of messed-up clowns. The only one who hadn’t showed up at the party was Carlos. He’d decided on being an “insane” doctor a little while ago (he’d covered a lab coat in blood, got a fake needle, bone saw, etc) and it was strange that he was late, as he lived nearest to me. I was confused, I mean, he promised he’d come! I’d spoken to him the same morning. I quickly got my phone out (must’ve looked out of place, a full-fledged zombie on an IPhone) and sent a text. Waited a few minutes, and no reply, so I called him. He didn’t answer. I left a voicemail.

“Hey, Carlos, where are you? You promised you’d come, dude. Don’t go back on yourself now. You haven’t forgotten where I live, have you?” I laughed a little. “It’s 95 Apater Avenue. You know this. You’re letting me down!” I laughed a little more, and hung up. Ugh, he never usually let me down like this. A few minutes later I got a text back: “I’ll be there later.” LATER. That was Carlos’ thing. Saying later and meaning MUCH later. But usually, he’d come over by the end of the day (or the night.)  Even so, he didn’t show up. I talked to some girls and guys (it hurt my neck to talk to Doug whilst he was on his stilts) and had fun, but it wasn’t quite perfect without Carlos’ usual chat about nothing in particular. I continued trying to text him a couple times, but got no reply. But, just as everyone had left my doorbell rung. I approached the door to see a form in the window who seemed too tall to be anyone from the party, but too short to be Doug. I opened the door and looked up to see a man with a rather unsettling smile on his face, wild facial hair, and worn-looking clothes staring back at me.

“Hey,” He grinned. “I heard you were a guest short...” His grin widened. That wasn’t Carlos. I didn’t know this guy. I shook my head.

“Uh, no, my party finished a half hour ago...” I gulped.

“Oh no, hehe... You were missing a, uh,  Carlos... I found him in his uniform...” Then, he lifted something up. I almost puked. I almost fainted. There, held up by the scruffy blonde hair, was Carlos. Or rather... his head. The man threw the head to the floor, and began to laugh. Then, he pulled the knife out.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">“Oh, come on, pick up!” Chester scowled down at his phone screen. John hadn’t picked up in the 7 times he’d called him that day, or any of the many times yesterday. He couldn’t go over because his parents were staying at his house for the weekend and his Skype was down. Angry and incredibly bored, he threw himself onto the couch in his bedroom, and picked up his laptop. The first thing he looked to when he turned on the laptop was the news widget on his desktop. The article read:

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">‘It was real after everything!

<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(255,255,255);white-space:pre-wrap;">The supposedly disproved case of the mental patient escaped from the local psychiatric ward turns out to be a case with truth behind it, after all. Citizens are warned to stay away from anybody acting suspicious, and alert the authorities if somebody by the name of Oliver Jean-Grey- who is roughly 6ft8”, sports scruffy clothing, a large beard and a seemingly forced smile- to the authorities.’