TikTok posted by user guido_goth_dad: A white food truck pulls up into a well-lit parking lot.
A tall skinny man with braids trots out and leans a chalkboard against the right front tire before going back into the vehicle. A serving window slides open, giving the viewer a glimpse of a very compact kitchen, a bank of iron skillets, and stacks of plain white paper bags. Shift change at the Salem Police Department – cops converge on the truck and walk away with bags of large, flat pastries and steaming cups of coffee.
The final view is of the logo on the door of the truck: "Don't waste your money on donuts: Frybread Power!"
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Truck restocked and parked a block from the school all gassed up and ready for an evening shift at the Merston High athletic complex for the big game, a satisfied Officer Leon Abbaccio clocked in at Merston High– he and Miss Nix sold every last piece of frybread at the Salem Police Department before sunrise: drizzled with honey, dusted with powdered sugar, or cinnamon.
Schmidt, who'd helped him get the rolling wreck street legal and health code friendly on weekends, had a side-gig or six, why couldn't Officer A.?
Hell, two of Schmidt's nieces were even working on a real logo and some t-shirt designs… they might be up to some extra weekend hours, steal 'em from Daisy's! … nice, pretty girls working the counter along with Miss Nix watching over things while he worked the six cast iron skillets and the deep fryer in the back? Hell, yeah, good for business! Anyway, if Miss Nix agreed and Schmidt and his wife agreed, they'd spend summer weekends attending festivals and concerts up and down the coast while introducing Gen X-through-Z and whoever else showed up to the best food on the planet – Indigenous.
Look out Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts and Tim Horton's!
As for Taco Bell – Leon was developing a tastier, more authentic alternative to those nasty corn shells that always fall apart on your lap, maybe fill it with bison, smoked salmon, or elk... native greens… authentic queso or maybe something local and artisanal, maybe something vegan... salsa made on the spot… Yo quero, my ass!
Braids wafting cinnamon and hot grease, a satisfied Officer A. strolled barefoot through the echoing pre-dawn halls of Merston High, clipboard in hand, inspecting the fire alarms and the front door metal detector, not anticipating much more than the occasional student squabble that broke itself up and doing the weekly random drug checks on lockers with one of the K-9 officers… shit!
"Maronna mia!" Forgetting his mother's side of the family by unconsciously channeling his Jersey goombah of an old man, Leon stopped dead in his tracks with a groan, slapping himself on the forehead, razor sharp talons squealing against the tiles. Darlene, the K-9 officer and Goliath the highly trained German shepherd had been replaced by one of the new RAD special officers... and the new guys were … schifozz… disgusting!
Great… just great.
Dripping glitter and blood, a sixteen year old girl dressed like a teddy bear stripper lay sobbing on greasy black and white tiles in a room that reeked of iron and dead rats.
Pulling herself to a sitting position, she choked up a jawbreaker, the hard ball of sugar bouncing off one fishnet stockinged knee before rolling into the darkness with a clatter.
Black tears of mascara ran down her pale cheeks as more candies tumbled wetly from her mouth. Her bobbed, undercut blonde hair stuck to her face and scalp in impossible sweat-soaked tangles.
"Oh, Dollie-Gurl, sweet baby, stop crying." Candies forgotten, her head swung unsteadily and mechanically in the direction of the locked door. A garish rectangle of dirty yellow light fell over her to the squeal of neglected hinges.
A Dum-Dum Pop fell out of her mouth and clattered on the tiles as the silhouette of a dumpy, middle-aged rabbit filled the garishly lit doorway. The bunny pulled off its head, revealing a pudgy, balding man with thick glasses who grinned down at his favorite employee with crooked yellow teeth.
"Just let me go home." She moaned in a thick drawl, "I jus' wanna go home."
"Don't be silly, Lolita," he said, "This is your home now."
"But what'bout m'friends? M'sister?" the girl drawled, "Cain't they go home?"
Humming, bunny-man rocked back on his floppy, oversized feet, thinking. Finally he said, "I could, but I don't want to."
"But gramma's waitin' fer me!" the girl sobbed before retching up a long sticky rope of strawberry Twizzlers.
"Do you honestly think anyone wants you?" He jeered, crouching in front of her, "Mommy left you, and you barely know daddy. Do you really think the people you were dumped on even care?"
The girl scootched away, "P-please, Mr. Afton, I just wanna go hoooooomme! M'sister's waitin' fer me!"
"The only time people care about you is when you and your little gang of friends shake ass on stage for soccer mom crotch droppings, and their big brothers who cum in their boxers at the mere thought of you." Mr. Afton growled, turning her face from side to side in his pudgy, foam-rubber hands, "Except me, Dollface. I'm the only one who loves you – you belong to me."
Shaking, the girl tried to pull away.
"It's all for me and me alone. Don't deny it, I know you do. How you curl your hair, what perfume you wear; I see what you're doing, and I appreciate it." Tittering, the rabbit caught himself with an effort before continuing, "I made you— you owe me."
Suddenly angry, the girl backed away. She owed HIM? SHE was the one up on the little stage shaking HER moneymaker, not HIM… Lunging forward, she snarled, "I'll fuckin' kill ya!"
"Don't be like that, sweet Lolita." Snarling, he blocked her with one grubby yellow paw. "Dollface, youaremine!"
She smacked his hand away.
"Back off, perv!" She tried to wobble upright in her absurd platforms. He easily wrenched her back down, forcing her into his lap. She pushed at him, nose spurting, feathers flying loose around her as—
—Josie sat up gasping less than two hours after going to bed, reeling from a double Sunday shift at Daisy's following a post-Homecoming sleepover at Cleo's.
Shaking, she checked her cell phone.
5 a.m.
It was now what once was Halloween.
Woozy from the aftereffects from the blitz of nightmare, Josie turned on her little bedside lamp, listening to the rattle of her space heater, her rack of dresses swaying like empty fursuits full of teeth in the flow of warm air.
Shaking her head, Josie rose, stood in front of her illuminated mirror, and studied her face, unable to get back to sleep… no thoughts, head empty… just see.
She leaned forward, gripping the edges of the little dressing table that Uncle Mike had very carefully retrofitted with soft white LEDs around the mirror before painting it pink for her last summer after rescuing it from the curb in front of Giorno's house during Salem's annual Big Trash Week.
Something was off; like she was supposed to have something, or maybe she had it at some point, but now it wasn't there?
Was it was her hair?
Over the summer, she and Clawdeen deliberately brushed their hair into 'fros, which was fun. Good for keeping pencils and paint brushes in, too— but for some reason, her crown in all its natural glory hadn't done it quite right, leading to sister locks with Clawdeen doing the do one hot afternoon while binge-watching Invader Zim while Clawdeen's little brothers and sisters played in the wading pool outside on the patio.
Josie eased back in her chair, briefly thinking about Fugo and dancing with him to ET, by Katy Perry - the only good song plastic girl ever wrote.
But Josie was a RAD, a synth, not plastic… ummmm… But what could fix it?
Saying, 'Fuck it!" by undoing all the hard work that went into her hair?
Maybe?
Many worlds and years ago, Michael Myers mechanically sat up in the night, double-socked feet thudding heavily on the chilly padded floor of his darkened cell, exactly one year away from death.
Frowning behind the ragged pillowcase he kept over his face at all times, he let his mind wander the Liminal, looking… looking... Something was wrong,
Very wrong.
Dollface, about a year after this and just miles away, fired up Grampa's electric shaver.
Hunks of dirty blonde hair cascaded around her, landing at bare her feet on the tiles of the bathroom floor.
It felt good.
No, it felt right.
Gramma would kill her. Oh well, not her problem.
Uncle Sebbie would get her cleaned up later.
Mouth dry, Josie opened the attic hatch and tiptoed down the stairs. Once in the kitchen, she suddenly had an idea, like a tick in a bad place, the kind you couldn't shake.
Thirst forgotten, Josie hurried towards the bathroom before she could change her mind.
Michael gripped the sides of his tiny sink, staring past his reflection and into the Liminal that the polished steel surface of the tiny mirror embedded in the wall of his padded cell concealed.
Seven feet tall, he could easily rip the little porcelain fixture loose and use it to break down the single, barred door separating him from the world and leave any time he chose.
Only Michael preferred to stay put.
He found the outside world chaotic.
Inside the asylum, his cell, things were… predictable.
Michael liked predictable.
Besides, there was pudding every Tuesday.
Vanilla.
Bland.
Exactly how he liked it, even if he was treated like a stupid animal by his caretakers.
Only whatever was going on now, wasn't… predictable.
(Making it impossible to ignore.)
Josie padded down the hallway towards the bathroom, Uncle Mike snoring loudly where he lay entwined with Aunt Raina on a futon in the living room under a Grow-Lite…
…Dollface stood, ice cube pressed to her ear, remembering red soaking blackly into the frayed bedsheet she'd used as a costume last Halloween before everything turned upside down… how something behind her eyes shone brightly, dwindling as the big man in the mask's hands in hers went cold and limp… cold…
…Josie pressed an ice cube to her ear. Abruptly changing her mind, she dropped it into the bathroom sink, remembering being in this room last summer, home alone when Puck, Mama came in…angry.
Mama was always angry, but she'd been especially angry that particular day.
Uncle Mike and Aunt Raina should never have left her alone with Mama… Josie doubled over remembering the pain of her head clipping the edge of the bathroom sink on her way down, eyes squeezed tightly shut as…
…14 year old Dollface Cowatch held up a needle taken from the emergency sewing kit she kept in her school bag, two years away from disaster just hours after a very large man died holding her hand…
…straightening, Josie paused, a needle from her sewing machine in one hand while…
…Michael Myers, exactly one Halloween before he'd die, listened with half an ear to the droning complaints of the night orderly to the janitor about pay cuts, not that they could have stopped Michael from doing what Michael was about to do with the safety pin he'd secreted beneath his tongue during this morning's annual physical while…
…Josie took a deep breath as she, Michael, and Dollface, three extraordinary children who'd miraculously found each other, poised their instruments and plunged them through the cartilage of their ears on Halloween night across memories of different worlds… colliding.
…somewhere on a windowsill, a raven watched all three as…
Dollface panicked, blood trickling down the side of her neck like some sick kind of foreshadowing - what did she just do?
Oh God! Oh God! Oh G— she scampered into her bedroom on socked feet, heading for her jewelry box, the one big ol' Cousin Mike sent her from Japan during his last deployment. She sifted through the little pink satin lined drawers, the "Toreador March" from Bizet's "Carmen" tinkling unheeded from the music box built into the bottom like a prophecy.
Exclaiming, Josie slammed the little lacquered box with its painted cherry blossoms and pagodas shut before poking one side of the little gold hoop she'd found on the bottom into the painful hole throbbing in her upper ear, even as…
…Josie reeled backwards, stumbling over the toilet, needle kabobbing her upper ear….
… some-when and somewhere, a twenty-year old Michael struggled mechanically against six hastily summoned orderlies, safety pin skewering his ear, blood spattered across the padding of his cell… he shrugged one off, pulling the pin out, jamming the little gold hoop he'd stolen from one of the nurses during that same examination, into the bleeding wound as a hypodermic was stabbed into one of his upper arms, causing the overwhelming world to fuzz out at the edges… complete, Michael Meyers fell back into the soothing darkness of his own mind, happy to leave the sensory overload behind.
Balance had been achieved.
In a year, his sister, some teen he managed to hunt down would get stuck with his ashes, while the spirit lived on.
Somewhere it could wander without the constant agony of existence.
Even if what remained gathered dust in an attic somewhere.
…ear bleeding, Josie scrambled upstairs, pulling the hatch shut behind her, leaving her in the dimness of her attic room.
Oh shit, now what?
There were no notes, no database to consult, just fake memories of a birthday ear piercing as a six year old sitting on Aunt Raina's lap in Claire's Boutique, holding hands with Puck and Maggie, eyes squinched shut in anticipation of promised rainbow Pegasus studs and a huge cookie from the shop next door— nothing as unplanned and painful as…
…Dollface lay face down on her bed in the dark, calming herself now that the gold hoop after being drenched in Bactine was now firmly in her swelling ear.
Huh.
She felt…complete.
In about a year or two, age sixteen, give or take a few days, she'd wake up in a similar position on a shop table, eyes shifting focus, rosy light filtering into the pizzeria's smeared windows, the remains of a disastrous sleepover pooling red at her feet.
Her friends would be found, hiding in strange places and inexplicably smelly, not remembering anything from the night before as clocks chimed and children sang.
But Dollface would.
She remembered everything...
...Scrambling through her jewelry box, Josie hyperventilated, one hand clutching her bleeding ear… then she relaxed, finding a ring.
Josie held it up, admiring it's tiny gold perfection between her forefinger and her thumb, backlit by the light of her makeup mirror.
When did she buy this? And why weren't there two?
At this point, who cared? Josie slid the needle from her bleeding cartilage, and wincing, put in the ring greased with a dab of Neosporin.
Josie turned off her mirror light and went back to get to bed… feeling… real… as the distant sounds of a crowd of cheering children and a chiming grandfather clock melted into a cacophony of alarms beeping all over the guest house.
Heart thundering in her ears, she sat up— six a.m. already?
Chuckling to itself, the raven flew away, things were getting interesting!
It would have reported all of this to its Master, only the Master was dealing with the Master's Master in England, leaving the raven to its own devices.
Which meant the Master would come back in a foul mood.
Rolling all six eyes thoughtfully, the black bird folded its double set of wings and landed atop a sixty foot Sitka Spruce to watch the sun rise.
Goodness me, it thought, and here we thought all of those had been killed long ago. How wrong we were! And as for the Master's Master's property, had anybody had asked the raven, the raven would have agreed, that yes, it was way past time to do something about Mike Schmidt and his little family.
Oh, and that the Master's Master was nasty, self-centered little bitch who seemed to have never grown past the age of ten.