Oct. 31st.
Disclaimer: Neither West nor Cain belong to me, but you knew that, didn't you?
Skeleton trees rake the slate sky with bare fingers. All turns sepia toned, even the brightest colors are put away until next year. Leaves of pumpkin-orange and harvest moon-yellow crunch down on sidewalks to be trodden underfoot, the children of the neighborhood enjoying their newfound wealth.
Scarecrows border minor kingdoms like ancient sentinels, smoke stains the trees, stains the sky, stains the air. Tonight every king shall be a fool, and every fool shall be god. Titles, ranks, personalities even will be surrendered, however temporarily, in favor of the macabre, the strange, the garishly gaudily rich. True, flowers have gone, but soon other blooms of every shade on the spectrum shall come forth under a moon pregnant with the new tide.
The gardens of high Babylon? No.
Vainglorious, lost Carcosa? Certainly not.
It is the 31st of October in the Miskatonic valley, and in a basement of a home in one of the older residential areas, a ghoul far worse than anything dreamed by Shelley's stories or Poe' prose has taken up residence. He sifts from mad beaker to mad beaker, breaking into fleshless grin only a mockery of true mirth. He stands upright as a gallows, never tiring, always about his black business. For his is an art that turns to ashes in minister's mouths, turns the faces of society-
"-jeez, Herbert. Don't you ever sleep?"
If Herbert West was startled from his deep reverie, he hid it well. He immediately assumed the patronizing stance he used to deal with Dan when these moods took him.
"I don't know, Daniel, do you think you can come up with a different question?"
His roommate and partner in crime thumped down the stairs, rubbing his eyes and trying to flatten out his bed head. He could be anyone, a young businessman, a construction worker, a therapist, he was so blatantly normal you saw hundreds of him on the street every day. What set him apart was nothing in temperament, it was a secret he possessed. A secret known only to him and few others, that he resided with a genius and a madman…who was apparently quite cranky. Dan reminded himself to ask if he had eaten yet. Odds were, no.
"You should really take a break, how can you be working at– what do you call this?"
"One-thirty p.m."
"Oh." He straitened and rubbed his head, checking the wall calendar that was stuck on March 1978 to cover up his embarrassment. Herbert took no notice, just worked away.
"Oh well, you should rest anyway, Herbert, it's a holiday. You should at least give yourself a day off."
"Dan, the annual festivities set aside by the status quo mean less than nothing, and one can ignore them if they choose." Herbert stated, sounding like he was reading a scripted argument to a reporter.
"But, still, I mean, doesn't this holiday reach you at all? I mean, this really is a holiday that I thought would appeal to you, Day of the dead and all."
A sigh from a throat that was losing patience. "Dan, Dia de los Muertos is in November, and is actually celebrated in mostly Latin-American countries, not here. Also, try not to say 'I mean' so much, you sound like a preteen schoolgirl."
Dan blushed, it seemed like Herbert was always running circles around him in conversations, what he wouldn't give to shut Herbert's sarcasm up for once…
"But, still-"
"But nothing!" Herbert turned to Dan, and if he had been the type, he would have shaken his finger at him. "All holidays are just a meaningless distraction. Real science never sleeps. As if I'd be interested in all of that hoodoo, do you think I'm still in elementary school? I gave up costumes and candy-corn long ago."
"Yeah, but you've kept the grandstanding." Dan muttered.
"What was that?"
"What was what?"
The two men glared at each other. For the first time in about a day, Herbert had gotten completely on Dan's nerves. Herbert, however prickly he seemed, was only just now really exasperated with Dan. Now he would pout all day, walk around the house slamming doors, which in this firetrap meant a collection of dust, silverfish and god-knows-what else raining down on Herbert. He wished Dan could go at least three weeks without finding some small problem to nitpick at, wished he would stop trying to "humanize" Herbert.
"What makes you think," Hebert said carefully, at long last, "that I would have any interest in ghouls and goblins, in make-believe?"
"Welllll…" he tried to remember the argument he came up with in the hall, but it sounded so stupid now.
He had to try.
"It's not just the trappings that come with it, Herbert, it's the spirit of things." A raised eyebrow. "That wasn't a pun! I mean, the interest in the unknown, getting a small taste of death-"
"-Wrapped up in festivity paper and tied with a playful bow. No, I don't 'go in' for this sort of thing. I don't celebrate mankind's ceaseless struggle to come to grips with his own mortality, and I hate candy."
"Good Christ, were you ever a kid?"
Herbert's eyes flashed. "That was quite uncalled for, Daniel!"
"I-I'm sorry! I just…lost my composure there for a minute." Dan wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.
Herbert snorted. "Well, be sure that doesn't happen again, I don't want anything broken in here."
With that ghost of a threat hanging in the air, Herbert turned back to his work, leaving Dan to glare helplessly at his back.
"Isn't there anything you're afraid of?" he murmured.
"It isn't so much a matter of fear as a matter of hate, Dan. I hate the thought of mortality, I hate the very middling nature of humanity, and I hate interruptions, so if you would-" he gave a curt nod to the door.
Dan bit his lip, shot down again. God, he was only trying to…would it kill him to just…if only he could shock Herbert into listening, scare him at least temporarily to get his message across. Where was a zombie when you needed one?
He sighed and turned to go, but stopped short. The corners of his mouth tilted up almost imperceptibly, and he turned once more to the table where Herbert was working.
He grabbed Herbert's shoulder and spun him around, the very unexpectedness of the act made it possible. Herbert had little time to react, only long enough to utter an indignant "Dan! What the-" before Daniel Cain's mouth was crammed up against his.
Twin suns of humiliation spread from Herbert's cheeks, until they nearly encompassed his entire face. They stayed like that for only a few beats, but time seemed to slow to an eternity.
Finally, it seemed, Dan pulled away, looking into Herbert's eyes with a sort of smug self-satisfaction before turning and tripping happily up the stairs. Once above ground level, he made a quick pass-over of his hair, put on his coat, and clapped a wizard's hat on his noble head. He cheerfully went outdoors, ready to scare the neighborhood in the spirit of the season.
Down below, Hebert West was frozen for a few moment, eyes locked on the door his partner had disappeared to, raising a hand as if to touch his face but quickly dropping it again. He gulped audibly a few times, before turning to put away his experiment and then walking slowly up the stairs. He calmly went to his room, tugged his comforter off, and spent the rest of the day huddled under the bed hiding.
Author's Note: Hello children! I took a look at my past stories and decided I never did a lighthearted account of their relationship. It all sprang from a thought about what Herbert was really scared of, as well as wanting to do a story set(stereotypically!) during Halloween. If the prose sounds weird, it's because I was trying to recall the old-tymey feel of Halloween, ghost and goblins instead of just a candy grab. Did it work? Ah, well. I think for my next piece I'll try to do an unusual point of view, someone we don't hear from often. Hill? Halsey? That's a while away, so don't hold your breaths too long. I'm out of serum.