Author's Note: So sorry it took so long to write this! Hopefully you'll enjoy! No direct spoilers in here but if you aren't caught up then some jokes may fly over your head!
Daryl sat on one of the hay bales spread throughout the room, downing the whiskey he'd swapped his fruit punch for. Just across from him, Glenn and Maggie sat swapping stories of their worst customers.
Maggie kicked things off by recounting her tales of a fat, older 'gentlemen' named Otis, who enjoyed being ridden like a horse, saddle and all, while being fed oats and jerking himself off.
Glenn quickly squashed that with his own stories of the governor. Though his stories quickly killed the light hearted, joking mood.
As Daryl listened, Beth, the younger of the sisters, sat down beside him. At first, Daryl ignored her. After a while though, that became nearly impossible. The girl's massive blue eyes followed every slight movement he made, and he was quickly growing tired of the constant surveillance.
Turning towards her, Daryl made direct eye contact, but said nothing. The girl grew nervous, looking down, away, anywhere but at the man she'd staring at so intently before.
Within the minute, the girl cracked, "H-Hi." She managed to squeak out. Daryl narrowed his eyes.
"Hi." He responded flatly. Surely this girl hadn't been staring at him for the sole purpose of saying hi.
"My name's Beth." She said, trying to regain his attention once he had turned away from her.
Daryl turned and looked toward the door, praying that Rick would get here soon. "Daryl." He said when her gaze remained fixated on him.
When Daryl raised his glass to his lips to take another sip, he saw Beth's eyes follow the whisky to his mouth. Watching as he drew the drink away, he realized that he wasn't what she had been staring at.
Daryl thought for a long moment, but decided that the girl would just stare him all night if he didn't offer. "Wanna drink?" he asked.
The girl's already large eyes grew even wider and a light seemed to shine in them. She glanced down at the cup with a strange longing in them. Daryl held the glass out to her, he was growing very impatient for Rick to arrive. "Go on, take it." He told her.
"I-I've never had a drink before." She said as she gently took the glass from his hand.
"Yeah," Daryl said, turning back to Glenn and Maggie, "whatever."
At that moment, there was a heavy knock at the door. Merle answered it quickly and Daryl watched the door open as a few of tonight's guests were invited in. None of them being Rick Grimes.
When Daryl looked back to Beth, she had downed the glass of whiskey and was busy trying not to cough up her lung as the burn settled in. "You alright?" Daryl asked, not terribly concerned but tired of listening to her coughing in his ear.
She nodded her head as the coughs finally died down. She smiled widely, her blear blue orbs shining up at him cheerily, "Can I have another one of these?" she asked.
Daryl narrowed his eyes at her, after all that, she wanted another one?
"The bar's over there," he pointed in the bar's direction and watched as the girl scampered off in search of another drink.
Daryl sat and waited restlessly for Rick to arrive, in the meantime he tried to listen to Glenn retell the events of the night they had all escorted their insane dates to the party and attempted to keep them from effectively ruining life entirely.
Daryl found it somewhat amusing to hear it from Glenn's perspective, but the story could only hold his attention for so long before his gaze waivered back to the door.
The customers slowly filtered in, and the housemates and their new associates began to get to work. Shane and Michonne had settled into the corner of the room with one customer who was dressed as the phantom of the opera. The man drank his punch as the two of them made the occasional brush against him with their hands, their touches lingering just long enough to entice the man into relaxing further.
Daryl always found the Halloween party rather annoying, mostly because he was definitely not into seeing his housemates- Dale, in particular- naked and getting it on and having not one care about the matter.
Daryl looked over to the bar to see what the blonde he'd spoken to earlier was up to. He saw her hunched over the table top of the bar, pouring herself a drink out of a nearly empty bottle and giggling to herself.
Upon deciding he shouldn't let the girl drink herself to death, Daryl stood, walked over to the bar, and took his seat beside her. She looked up and smiled dumbly at him. How she had the time to get this hammered was beyond him. She must've just sat right down and taken shot after shot.
"H-Hey there," she hiccupped, "do you want a drink?" she slung her glass towards him. He took it from her palm and then poured the fluid back into the bottle. The girl made and whiney noise and covered her face in her hands.
Suddenly, the girl perked up, "Wanna hear a song?" she said, her wide eyes somewhat dimmed by the alcohol but still bright nonetheless.
"No." Daryl said, feeling a headache come on as he heard Dale's tell, that terribly awkward dry moan, come from across the room.
The girl cleared her throat and began to scramble on top of the bar Daryl tried to grab her and pull her down, but he saw only bad outcomes from grabbing and pulling a drunken girl with so many bottles and hard surfaces below her.
And so, the girl climbed atop the bar and began to sing, her voice out of pitch and the tune going horribly wrong as unintelligible words began to stream from her mouth. Behind them, Dale's moans began to seemingly hum along in some horrible twisted song that made Daryl briefly contemplate going upstairs, grabbing his crossbow, and ordering everyone to get the fuck out.
Especially Dale.
Daryl looked around the room, wondering if he was the only one bothered by Beth and Dale's God awful musical collaboration. Upon surveying the room, he found that surprisingly no one cared. Not one person had looked up from whatever or whomever was busying them.
In the corner, he found one man sitting on a hay bale, with his arms crossed, looking rather angry. Daryl's eyes did not linger on him though, as something about the man was very much unnerving. He wore a basic scream mask, and a black cloak. No wonder no one had gone near the man.
Turning back to the moaning chorus Beth and Dale had going, Daryl decided it was probably best to just head up to his room to wait for Rick to show up. He'd know where to find him anyway.
While Daryl moped at the bar, his brother was on the prowl.
Ducking from closet to closet, Merle made his way to the kitchen. And then ducked inside of the pantry to wait for his victim to leave.
Since Bob had been around Merle had made sure not to be without his fake hand, one that was indeed very realistic and convincing. In never having met Merle before, there was no reason for Bob to think there anything different about Merle.
Which have Merle the perfect prank idea.
He watched Bob from his spot in the pantry, making a mental note that Bob primarily stayed on one side of the kitchen, never wandering on the other side of the breakfast bar. Which gave Merle ample opportunity for his plan to unravel.
Merle unscrewed his false hand and left it in a bunch of potatoes. He grabbed a bottle of ketchup and made his escape.
Bob was so caught up in cooking mini hamburgers and singing a jolly tune with a wide smile on his face that he didn't even notice when Merle snuck behind the other side of the breakfast bar and began squirting ketchup all over the nub of his arm, spreading it around as he ducked behind the counter.
Another moment later and Bob had left through the kitchen door, smiling widely as he brought a tray of hamburgers out to the guests.
Standing up, Merle saw the bowl that Bob had used to mash up the hamburger meat and throw in the seasonings before he flattened them into patties and cooking them. To the side of the bowl was the beat grinder Bob had used to grind the meat down enough so it could be molded into such patties.
Merle smiled wickedly as he smeared some of the ketchup on the rim of bowl. In the mouth of the grinder, he poured a heap of ketchup and turned the grinder so as to work the ketchup further into it, to the point where the ketchup was dripping from the grinder.
Merle then laid down on the floor, squirting ketchup all around his hand, smearing the 'blood' on the floor, trying to make it seem as realistic as possible.
He laid in wait for a few anxious moments.
When Bob stepped back into the kitchen, Merle let out a moan.
Perceptive individuals would have recognized that it was nearly impossible for a man to sneak into the kitchen, grind his hand into oblivion, and then pass out from blood loss without someone hearing a cry of pain or some sign that he had been there until this moment.
Perceptive individuals would have noticed that the 'blood' that coated Merle's hand, the floor, the meat grinder and the bowl was far too thick and bright to be real blood.
Bob, however, was unfortunately not a perceptive individual.
So when Merle looked up at him and raised his good hand out, Bob stood there in complete horror. "Don't…" Merle whispered, "eat the...burgers," he said before dramatically falling 'unconscious'.
Bob was shaking in his boots staring at the bright red that covered the kitchen floor. Panic filled him, and Bob did the only thing that unperceptive, and perhaps slightly unintelligent people do when they come across something such as this.
They panic.
He dashed out of the kitchen and screamed "TAINTED MEAT!" at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the place stopped their rather unsavory acts and turned to stare at the crazed loon dashing around the room and collecting the hamburgers from those who had collected them.
"TAINTED MEAT!" he screamed again, slapping one man who had refused to hand his burger over. When the man tried to slap Bob back, Bob punched him in the gut in an attempt to get the man to choke up the bite he had just taken.
Daryl was thankful for the loon, as he managed to get both the drunken blonde and severely disturbed old man to stop their strange moaning song.
But while Daryl was enjoying the show of course his brother was not.
This was supposed to be a prank, a mostly harmless little prank. Now, that crazed asshole was out there scaring his paying customers half to death. Merle pushed himself off the floor and ran out into the room where Bob was wreaking havoc on some poor man's abdomen.
Merle grabbed Bob, covered his mouth with his ketchup covered nub and dragged him back into the kitchen, laughing nervously as he did so, "Meat's fine, y'all enjoy yer evening."
Bob thrashed about and screamed into Merle's arm upon seeing the bloody nub at his mouth.
Merle tossed the man into the kitchen, "Oh shut up!" he yelled. Bob looked at him with wide, fearful eyes as Merle wiped the blood from his arm and showed his it was not an open wound.
Bob's face twisted into confusion. Merle grunted and walked over to the pantry, grabbing his discarded fake hand and showing how it connected it to his arm. "Hmm?" he hummed angrily.
Bob still seemed rather confused, so Merle took him around the breakfast bar and showed him the discarded ketchup bottle only then did Bob finally catch on and start laughing hysterically.
Merle just stared at the man in front of him as he continued to laugh. Merle was normally the only one to find joy in his Halloween tricks, having someone else- his victim, no less- find joy in them ruined it for him.
"Shut the fuck up and git back to work." He mumbled as he made his way out of the kitchen. "Oh, and clean this shit up." He said, pointing towards the pool of ketchup on the floor.
Neither of the Dixon brothers seemed to be enjoying themselves tonight.
Daryl had decided that while sitting and watching chefs scream about tainted meat was all well in good, there was still no sign of Rick Grimes.
So, with a tray of the 'tainted' hamburgers in hand, Daryl climbed the stairs to his room, where he shut the door and threw himself down on his bed, laying the burgers beside him and eating them one by one. He made sure as to not eat too many, lest Rick finally decide to make an appearance.
About ten minutes later, Daryl heard a knock at his door. He sat up, expecting to see Rick walk in, but was met with the tall, black robed man from the corner of the room. The man still had on the scream mask. "What chu want?" Daryl asked grumpily.
The robed figure closed the door behind him as he reached up and pulled the mask off.
And, of course, it was none other than the governor.
Because that was just Daryl's luck.
Rick practically jogged through the streets. He was late. So, so, so late.
He had been at the annual Halloween charity event for the town, and being the town's mayor, it seemed only right that he should actually attend. So, he had gone, smiled and talked to a few key people, planning his escape while he faked smiles and shook hands.
But when the time came for him to actually make his escape, there were difficulties. The people started chanting for a speech, one he was certainly not prepared to give, nor would he probably have ever been ready to give because it seemed so unimportant at the time.
All he really cared about was seeing Daryl, and there was certainly no Daryl amidst the 'sexy kitten' costumes and doctor getups.
Rick took a deep breath as he rounded the corner to the brothel and adjusted his sheriff costume and hat as he approached the front step.
Walking inside, he was immediately met by a hoarse and dry moan that was altogether just disgusting sounding. His eyes adjusted to the darkness of the place and after looking through the writhing, partially nude bodies for a few minutes, he had decided that Daryl was not among them.
Rick climbed the stairs to Daryl's room and took yet another deep breath before he opened the door.