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Once upon a time…It was a dark and stormy night.Actually, fuck you, it wasn’t. It was simply an unremarkable average October Saturday, but Neil was the narrator (and unreliable pathological liar) of this fucking shit-show of a story and he could describe the night in as many stupid cliches and inaccurate accounts as much as he fucking wanted, because Neil was pissed, you see. And he did things for the plot. How else did you think he got himself a boyfriend? But anyways, as Neil was narrating:It was indeed a dark and stormy fucking night.He contemplated how much dignity he was bound to lose by voluntarily re-entering his own dorm room with Nicky’s violently decorated Halloween atrocities, and choosing to exist in said room until the rest of the Foxes passed out on whatever disgusting concoctions of cocktails Witch’s Brew and Vampire’s Kisses were. Considering he had walked into this dressed (forced) into some abominable rabbit getup complete with makeup, a bow tie, fake ears and everything, the bar for Neil’s integrity was already pretty low.
It was worse for Andrew though. He came dressed up for this Halloween party as Aaron.Nicky beamed then he saw them both, leading them to the rest of the Foxes, laughing maniacally and failing at it. The whole living room had been transformed into a shit-show of jack-o-lanterns, fake cobwebs, and mysterious blood stains that someone (Wymack or the police maybe) were definitely going to question later. And were those–“Dick-shaped candles?” Neil asked.“I bring them out for special occasions,” Nicky winked.“They’ve never left the coffee table since you got them,” Kevin accused. Or what Neil assumed was Kevin from underneath a plain white bed sheet that was his poor attempt at being a ghost. Neil was jealous he didn’t have the privilege of also dressing-up that lazy.Everyone was sitting in the middle of the room in a circle. Aside from said ‘ghost’, they were all made-up in similar self-deprecating costumes at Nicky’s insistence, and everyone was surrounding an old leather book, strange archaic symbol drawings, and most importantly, a cauldron filled with copious amounts of alcohol judging by the way everyone looked like they were worshipping the thing. And yes, strange-but-also-not-out-of-place phallic-shaped candles which Neil chose strategically not sit down next to.“Okay! You’re all here!” Nicky beamed, trying his absolute best to mimic a Transylvainian accent despite not even being dressed as Dracula. For someone who had been so excited about tonight, he was unimpressively dressed in a simple white singlet, basketball shorts, and a Foxes lanyard with a whistle around his neck –Oh.Nicky was Wymack for Halloween.Halloween night 2009 had to be up there with the most painful things Neil had experienced, and it hadn’t even started yet. “Welcome, Welcome, all my vampire fuckers, my ghoul gropers, and my Franken-shits to this year’s Foxes Halloween night! Tonight, prepare yourself for unseen horrors, undead spirits from the underworld, and my terrifyingly irresistible presence guiding you through this spooky time on All Hallow’s Eve! If you need any emotional support amongst these ghastly frights from yours truly, I am offering a total of one ten-minute blow-job per person, and since it’s a Holiday, that proposition stands for the ladies, too!”Everyone stared, wondering if they were supposed to clap or cry at Nicky’s monstrosity of theatrics and (unexpected, really) invitation of Hallowen sex. Andrew left immediately to make himself a drink in the kitchen and raid whatever snacks were left in their fridge. Kevin was the first to speak, choosing to acknowledge no one at all. He ripped the ghost sheet off his head, reaching for the entire cauldron of god-knows-what and said, “I don’t have enough vodka for this.”“And to think I thought of you as inconsiderate and heterophobic, Hemmick,” Allison mused.“Did you rehearse that entire speech, Coach?” Dan asked from Matt’s lap. Both she and Matt said they would be dressed as Cinderella and Prince Charming for tonight’s party, however Neil hadn’t expected that Dan was the Prince and Matt was Cinderella.
Nicky wiggled his fingers like a spirit in front of them both and changed his voice again. It was not any better than the last impression. “NooOoOo~!” he drawled. “Nicky didn’t because he’s a natural-born gifted storyteller! OooOoO~!”Kevin was still drinking the entire cauldron when he piped in, “He did. I hear him at night through the walls doing this and other unspeakable things that I drink to forget.”Dan looked down to the alcohol he was cradling like a baby and back up to his face. “You drink to everything.”Kevin didn’t even try to defend himself. It was Nicky that cut in again, speaking in that wispy, hollow imitation of something Neil thought was supposed to be Casper. “That wasn’t me, those were the ghoOoOosts~!”
He gasped suddenly, breaking character and pointing an accusatory finger at Kevin. “Wait! ‘Unspeakable things’, Kevin! You naughty dog!” He winked, suddenly smirking. “Did you like what you heard and/or are in need of emotional assistance?”“Sure,” Kevin admits with apathy. “So much that I frequently consider burying myself alive if it means never seeing, hearing or interacting with you again.”“Um, okay,” Nicky said. “Weird way to tell everyone how deep in closeted denial you are, but–”Kevin picked up the white sheet from his lap and balled it up and threw it at Nicky. “Imagine you going and fucking yourself.”It hit Nicky in the face, but Nicky pulled it off and wrapped it around his shoulders, moaning seductively in a way that was in no way out-of-the-ordinary, “Imagine you having the balls to fuck me yourself.”
Like a curse that liked to haunt his cousin for absolutely no reason than he was menacing enough to do so, Andrew chose that moment to come back. He passed a blood-red mocktail into Neil’s hands, sitting down on the floor next to him, sipping straight whiskey. At his bored, unrelenting stare and the warning of a finger he dragged along his neck, Nicky cleared his throat, held his hands up in front of him and amended, “Hey, wait, chill. It was a joke.” Freighing innocence, fluttering his eyelashes in Kevin’s direction, he added, “I’m concerned for Kevin’s liver, okay?”“You say that like you haven’t downed five shots yourself already,” Neil said. He didn’t actually know if that was the correct amount, but if he knew anything about his fellow Foxes, guessing anywhere between inconsolably-crying-in-the-bath-tub drunk and hospitalisation-level intoxication was a fair enough assumption for any of them.To prove his point, Allison threw back a chalice to match her blasphemously inappropriate nun costume, and said, “Five? Weak.”“This team’s unity relies purely on alcoholism and spite,” Matt mused, but more of a ‘stating the obvious’ kind of way, than Wymack’s ‘I’m disappointed in every single one of you (yes, Josten, you too – if not most of all), and I don’t even wanna know why the fuck I’m bailing you shits out of a holding cell in Georgia’.Nicky clapped his hands together once and beamed, “It’s sacrilegious if we don’t occasionally despise each other and drink like it’s our twenty-firsts!”“Amen,” Kevin agreed.“And tonight is special because it’s–!” Nicky began again, but Neil shh-ed him.
Everyone fell silent.
Something was wrong.Shit. There was a noise coming from the hallway. There was something else here. Something actually worth fearing. It was coming closer. Closer and closer and closer. Whatever it was, was moving towards the living room, and–HOLY FUCK!!! IT CAME AROUND THE CORNER INTO THE WORLD, AND NEIL SCREAMED. IT WAS HIDEOUS. IT WAS TERRIFYING. IT WAS THE MOST AWFUL THING NEIL HAS HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF WITNESSING! HE COULDN’T BEAR TO LOOK AT IT ANY LONGER BUT HE DIDN’T KNOW IF HE’D HAVE THE STRENGTH TO RUN AWAY. HE JUST KNEW HE’D HAVE NIGHTMARES FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS!
NICKY SCREAMED WITH HIM. EVERYONE SUDDENLY JUMPED AT THE TANGLE OF PETRIFIED VOICES AND THE HORRIFYING CREATURE THAT HAD JUST WALKED INTO THE ROOM.
“WHAT? WHAT IS IT? DEMONS ?!” NICKY DEMANDED.AND THEN THE CREATURE CAME OUT FROM THE DOORWAY, LOOKING DEAD-STRAIGHT AT NEIL . IN ALL IT’S AWFUL, GHASTLY HORROR, NEIL WAS FORCED TO TAKE IN IT’S MESELY FIVE-FOOT FRAME, IT’S SCRAGGILY BLOND HAIR, IT’S DUMB FUCKING COSTUME–“Worse,” Neil shuddered. “It’s Aaron.”Aaron, who had come dressed as Andrew (and vice versa), stuck up the finger in his face. How someone could be Andrew’s identical twin brother, dress exactly in his white goalkeeper uniform, give him such apathetically rude gestures, and still look this ugly was beyond him.“Eat a dick,” Aaron spat.Neil blinked. “I did.”“Disgusting,” Aaron said. Not because he hated gay people, but just because he hated Neil. Neil knew this because he’d seen Aaron’s (traumatising) search history that one unfortunate time, asking r/nostupidquestions: ‘fellas does hating your brother’s boyfriend because he’s your brother’s boyfriend and not because he’s gay, make you homophobic?’ Neil raised his glass of Virgin Blood Mary to Aaron in communal solidarity that came with equally hating each other, as Aaron added, “I hope the demon kills you first.”Kevin had a straw now, still ingestinging what was probably a concerning added amount of straight vodka from the cauldron. “I hope it kills me first,” he muttered.Andrew finished his glass and got up to get another. “Same.”Allison nonchalantly pulled out a compact mirror and applied more crimson lipstick to her face. “You can’t be suicidal tonight. It’s Halloween.”“I’m not,” Andrew said. “I’m agreeing with Kevin that he should die.”Kevin huffed and pouted at all of them.Allison snapped her mirror shut, equally as uncaring when she said, “Oh okay, that’s better then.”All of a sudden, Aaron decided to annoyingly screech at the top of his lungs for some fucking reason. “Ow!” he exclaimed, rubbing the side of his face from a stray pillow that had flown through the air and mysteriously targeted him because he deserved it most, Neil assumed. Said pillow also happened to be one of the ones drenched in that mysterious fake(?) blood, so now half of Aaron’s stupid face was covered in it, too. An improvement, really.“Guys, that was so weird,” Neil said, not bothering to cover up the fact the (alleged) evidence of the same faux blood was all over his right throwing hand. “A ghost just socked Aaron in the face with that cushion.”“You fucker–! ” Aaron screeched again, but thankfully he was cut off by Neil’s amazing, best bro, Matt.“Wait, can we rewind? We’re summoning demons?” he asked, and bless him, he actually sounded concerned about all this.Nicky huffed dramatically with his whole body. “Oh my god! Fuck you guys, you ruined my whole thing! But yes!” He pointed to the centre of the coffee table draped in a black cloth and said, “This is a sacred altar and this here is an ancient grimoire! I’ve also brought everything we need to make this work! Sage, candles, blood of a virgin – thanks, Neil.”Nicky gave him an innocent shit-eating grin and two thumbs-ups, and Neil went to hit Nicky with the same pillow he’d thrown at Aaron but was stopped by Andrew who took it from him first.“Does Renee approve of this?” Dan questioned.“Obviously! It was her idea!” Nicky turned to Aaron who was still annoyingly sulking on the floor wiping away blood. Nicky whispered in his ear before promptly being shoved away, “Parentheses – it was not her idea, she’s just not here to stop us.”Neil was momentarily jealous that his mother wasn’t alive and getting remarried this weekend – not because it would’ve saved him a lifetime of trauma and abuse from both her or his serial killer father who hunted both of the,m down across several continents, but because he wouldn’t have had to sit through this fucking bullshit.Allison sighed, picking fluff from the huge white crucifix down the front of her cocktail dress. “Oh fun. We can’t just go blood curse the future descendants of each freshmen’s lineage, or piss on the graves of our enemies, like normal people?”Nicky shrugged. “We did that already last year. We have to try something new.”Neil must’ve blocked out that whole insufferable event last October if it was anything like this year’s, because he sincerely didn’t remember pissing on anyone’s grave. But come to think about it, that definitely sounded like something Neil would do.
With Nicky’s puppy dog-eyes pleading into his soul, Neil gave in. He said, “I guess summoning demons could be the six least scary near-death-experience I’ve had so far.”“You’re all fucking insane,” Aaron bit. Neil shrugged and didn’t disagree.“That’s the spirit, Aaron!” Nicky took that as the permission it wasn’t to continue to make them all liabilities in what was probably a crime against the laws of what was natural, but whatever. “Now,” He narrowed his eyes, smiling menacingly towards each and everyone one-by-one. “Who wants to go first?”In a move that absolutely no one had expected (probably aside from Neil), a bored voice broke through the silence –“Me,” Andrew said.Nicky’s shocked expression turned to his cousin, the others all soon following. “My, my!” Nicky started. “How unexpected! How unforeseen! How surprising!”“You’re just listing synonyms–” Kevin cut in, whole body back underneath his bedsheet. Obviously, he was ignored as usual.
“–What a mysterious turn of events! Any particular reason, cousin?” Nicky asked.Andrew shrugged. “So Neil couldn’t.”There was a chorus of ‘aww’s (minus Kevin who was still drinking, and a gag from Aaron shoving a finger down his throat).
“Oh my god,” Nicky cooed. “Beautiful. Tear jerking, truly. Andrew loves Neil, and he’s protecting Neil from martyr-ing himself and saving his true love from a murderous demon that we are willingly inviting into our home and–”Andrew stopped his rambling by picking up the grimoire and shoving Nicky away from his altar. “I’m sacrificing Neil to the demon,” he clarified without bothering to look back at Neil, mildly offended but also not surprised.Allison raised her chalice. “I’m drinking to that.”“Don’t worry, my son,” Matt clasped his shoulder and looked uncomfortably into his eyes as Neil edged backwards. “If they drag you to hell, I’ll save you and bring you back. I’m your Castiel in that one Supernatural episode, my dude.”He didn’t know what the appropriate response to that sentimentality was so he just said, “Thanks, you too.”“So, Andrew!” Nicky started, pointing to the page Andrew had already turned to. “That’s the spell, but it’s not in English. There’s no translation, and it has to be said as it’s written. All you have to do is try to read–”Without even waiting for Nicky to finish, Andrew read aloud the incantation in perfect Classical Latin, uninterestedly going through the first section of the ancient spell like he was reading his course’s syllabus or any of Kevin’s Exy magazine reports. Before he was even done with the entire reading, there was a demand of, “What the fuck.”Andrew didn’t even bother to address his brother.Allison rolled her eyes like this new information wasn’t the earth-shattering revelation it was, and rather a simple annoyance because it involved something she hadn’t known before. “He speaks Latin,” she scoffed. “Of course he does.”Despite everyone else not even trying to be fazed by the fact Andrew was fluent in a centuries-dead ancient language, Aaron didn’t drop it. “Why do you know Latin?” he pressed.Neil could almost see the smile Andrew wanted to smirk as he said simply, “Years of living in a home with Roman Catholics that thought indoctrinating abandoned foster children with their faith would save them from a life of sin.”“Can we send him back there?” Allison asked. “It clearly didn’t work well enough.”
Neil had to stop Andrew through a sheer look alone from murdering her for that comment.Kevin looked up from the entire cauldron he’d stolen for the first time since he’d taken it, and said to Andrew, “Did we ask for your traumatic backstory?”Andrew didn’t say anything, so instead Aaron took to saying, “Mine is that he killed my mother.”Andrew barely looked up from the grimoire in his hands. “You want me to commune with her right now?”Aaron crossed his arms and pouted. “Shut up, you’re adopted.”Nicky got between them despite neither twin actually ever having moved. He flicked a pointed finger to both of them. “Children, no fighting, no murder accusations, and no summoning Aaron’s mom!”Neil felt like being difficult so he raised his hand and asked, “Can we summon mine?”Um.Okay it was a joke, but suddenly every Fox went dead silent and all at once and he had seven eyes upon him, each either rightfully concerned, weirded-out, or murderous. No one threatened to call the team psychologist or a psychiatric hospital though (unlike last time he made a similar remark), so small victories.“You can go talk to her in Hell when I murder you myself,” Andrew said.
“Why can’t you fuck-stains flirt like sane people?” Kevin muttered and Neil ignored him by drinking his almost-finished mocktail, contemplating mixing Kevin’s vodka into it just so Kevin didn't have it anymore and him and his crippling alcoholism suffered.Matt laughed awkwardly, and clapped to get everyone's attention. He was holding out his cellphone and pointing to a caller ID name that Neil couldn’t make out apart from the insufferable amount of hearts. “Maybe, we can just not summon demons or dead mothers tonight, and instead, call my mom Randy on the phone right now!”“Boring,” Andrew decided.Allison tipped her third drink to him. “What Little Orphan Annie said. We’re summoning demons. Now hurry up and finish it, Minyard.”Andrew continued to read the incantation, and perhaps it was the fact that Latin was one of the languages Neil couldn’t understand, or that it was just Andrew and all of his Andrew-ness , but there was something inherently sexy about hearing him speak in an archaic tongue and summon demons with it. He thought about what they would do together once Andrew decided he was done participating in such rituals and socialising with his teammates, and figured that a definite improvement to this night would be Andrew wanting to suck Neil’s–Something rudely interrupted Neil from his erotic daydreaming about Andrew.It was really annoying, incessant screaming.
Neil went to tell Nicky to shut the fuck up when –
Oh.That wasn’t good.Andrew had finished the spell, it seemed, because currently, the room was chaos. Every light was flickering on and off, the penis candles abruptly extinguishing, the kitchen cabinets flying open, glass exploding and shattering liquor all over the floor. Kevin clutched his vodka cauldron like both it and his life depended on it.
An invisible wind and fog roared through the entire living room. The pages of the grimoire were rustling violently, ancient rituals and spells inside suddenly flowing everywhere across the dorm. No one was keeping their shit together, and –Worst of all, Andrew was possessed.Neil noticed it before any of them. His eyes started to flicker, rolling back inside his head until they were a ghastly, blood-shot white. His body shook, chest heaving, limbs and spine and head controting as his mind fought to stay in control. When he started levitating in thin air was when everyone else started to realise the amount of deep fucking shit they were in.“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” Nicky screamed.“Oh fuck, this is bad!” Dan, just as hysterical, added helpfully.Not everyone was all that concerned however. Allison, who was nonchalantly batting the occasional flying object away, called out, “Hey, I don’t know if you can hear me Andrew, but you look really badass.”“Don’t encourage this!” Aaron shouted, turning back to his brother like Andrew was choosing to be a dick and not being possessed by an ancient inhuman molevent force for once. “Andrew, I swear to God, stop fucking around! Get back on the ground now!”“Can he still play if his bones are all warped like that?” Kevin slurred.“Shut the fuck up about your fucking stickball!” Aaron screamed. “My brother is a demon!”Allison shrugged. “Chill, it’s no big loss. He was always a demon. Now he’s a demon that can fly.”Nicky grabbed ahold of Matt’s shoulders and shook him hard enough to make them both crash to the floor. It didn’t stop him from shouting, “Matt, are you calling Renee?!”
Matt scrambled for his phone that was lost somewhere amongst all the other chaos. “We need Jesus! What else am I supposed to do?”He must have found it because the next voice to come through was a cheery, unaware greeting from the Foxes’ only appropriate religious expert for this kind of situation.“Hello everyone,” Renee chirped before Nicky wrestled him for the phone and threw it into Kevin’s cauldron. Neil actually thought Kevin might sob with the devastating way he was now staring into it. It was truly impressive how less of a shit Kevin could give about this gone-wrong gone-paranormal shit-show.Dan held up what Neil guessed was supposed to be a makeshift crucifix out in front of her, but the best she had seemed to find were two of Nicky’s phallic-shaped party candles. She even went to the length of commanding, “May the power of Christ compel you!” which was something she’d said more than once to a totally normal, non-demonically-possessed Andrew anyway.Matt gestured wildly to Not-Andrew now floating menacingly in the centre of the room, his arms slightly stretched out, the entire whites of his eyes facing the ceiling. “Could he levitate like that before?!” he asked incredulously.Aaron picked himself up from the wall he’d been invisibly thrown against (ha) and gestured back, screaming to Matt, “What the fuck kind of question–”“I don’t know!” Matt defended. “It just seems like an Andrew thing to do!”
The room shifted again. Everything was still flying and contorting and breaking. There was an electricity that fizzled through the fog like a wildfire, Andrew floating in the ruins of it all like the spark that ignited everything. His eyes flickered closed, rolling back inside his skull. He ceased to shake, and simply stayed in midair like a wisp of black smoke. The room went cold.“Quiet,” Neil whispered harshly, his eyes never leaving Andrew’s, and Andrew’s – or not – never leaving his. “Someone’s here.”Silence, and then –“Hey,” it said casually, donning Andrew’s cold, empty voice.Allison reacted first. She eyed still-levitating-Andrew as he floated gently in the centre of the room. No one made any move at all to go near him, but Allison had the courage to be and express how offended the – now anticlimactic – events made her. “What the fuck. He’s back?”“He’s still ignoring the laws of gravity,” Nicky shrugged as if that was any consolation for Allison’s disappointment.Matt took a tentative step forward, looking up and asking, “Andrew, you good, man?”‘Andrew’ blinked and ignored him.
Damn. This demon was good.Allison let out an annoyed groan and whined about her grievances to the closest person next to her. “Kevin, make him demon again,” she complained because apparently having her teammate returned ‘safely’ after enduring whatever that shit was that Andrew just did was boring.Aaron was obviously still Aaron so he was predictably livid. “No!” he yelled and Allison held her hands up innocently. He stalked over to where Andrew was hovering, having to look directly up at the ceiling when he demanded, “Andrew, get on the fucking floor right now!”Neil rolled his eyes and couldn’t fathom the stupidity of his teammates and Andrew’s own fucking twin, and how they could all be so oblivious to thing Neil had known since ‘Andrew’ had opened his eyes again. “Guys. That isn’t Andrew. He just acknowledged you all. That’s sound like Andrew to you?”Nicky gasped violently as if all of this wasn’t the exact consequences of the decisions he had made.Dan furrowed her brow like she actually had to think about it. “You’re right,” she mused. “Andrew would never say ‘hi’ or speak to any of us willingly.”Nicky, now cowering behind Aaron, demanded, “Give him back right now! Who are you?”“I’m Aaron,” the demon supplied helpfully.“Oh my god,” Nicky shrieked, jumping away and falling on his ass. He scurried backwards, covering his mouth and pointing at his non-levitating cousin. “S-So that means you’re–”“I’m Aaron!” Aaron insisted. He pointed to the thing possessing Andrew. “He’s the demon!”Nicky looked between the two of them, and then back and forth again. “Oh right,” he said dumbly.It seemed that at this point, the demon in the room had become frustrated enough with the Foxes and their absurdity of a family, and dropped the act of impersonating Andrew (and subsequently Andrew impersonating Aaron).“Salutations mortals,” it drawled with a smile that didn’t look right at all. It floated gracefully back down to the ground and took a looming step forward, circling them all. “And may I say thank you. You’ve released me from the fiery abyss of Hell into God’s glorious creation, and for that, I am in your gratitude. But summoning something such as I has a price to pay. An extraordinary one. You’ve made a grave mistake in awakening me. It is a terrible shame you must perish.”They’re all going to die. That’s a new one Neil has never heard before.
As a matter of fact, the Foxes didn’t even try to give a shit this time around. Attempted murders, numerous death threats, and multiple mafia entanglements per season just kind of did that thing to an indifferent team of already homicidally desensitised delinquents.Kevin, never having gotten up from the floor, scoffed and immediately put forth blame. “Nice one, Nicky.”Nicky whined, “I thought it’d be more down to party and not ‘blah-blah you have to die now’.”“This is all your fault,” Aaron said to his cousin.Nicky titled his head, genuinely confused when he so helpfully suggested, “If you didn’t want to summon a demon, you should have said so.”Neil simply hated Aaron so he added, “Yeah, dipshit. Look what you did.”Aaron stared at him violently but not barely enough for Neil to feel even slightly threatened, and then gave up. He turned to the creature possessing his brother and said, “You know what? Just kill us all. I’m ready.”
Dan sighed and shook her head at her team’s wondrous self-preservation instincts that had gotten them to this very moment. Like a real leader, she asked the demon, “So for the few of us that rather like being alive, what are we supposed to do now?”The demon looked around at the whole group, all of the Foxes in some chaotic state of blame and either wanting to kill each other, or mildly infuriated that a demonic entity they’d brought here themselves was now ruining their party.
“You are supposed to be afraid,” the demon accused, huffing and crossing its arms. It was such an exaggerated display of emotion that it made the man being possessed underneath look absolutely ridiculous considering Andrew’s external emotional state was on par with a plastic spoon.Nicky shrugged, somewhat seeming disappointed at the under anticipated turn of events summoning a demon has led them to. “Well,” he shrugged. “You’re not really scary, no offence.”The demon took great offence. “I eat corpses,” it seethed, stalking towards him. “I torture souls, I’m possessing your friend.”“‘Friend’ is a bit much,” Allison corrected. “Enemy but affectionate maybe, unwilling associate even.”“And said associate is scarier without a demon possessing him,” Matt agreed.Surprisingly, even Kevin added, “Andrew is Halloween, but every day.”The demon seethed. Whatever it thought it was going to get out of the Foxes wasn’t working, and Neil couldn’t care less about it still being annoying in their living room, except for the part that it was making Andrew look pathetic and pretentious if people didn’t know he was being possessed by this asshole. “If that’s so,” it cursed, “Then I shall stay with him forever. I will relish in upending your lives, torturing out the shreds of humanity you mortals have left, and let all of cower in dread at my presence as I haunt this dormitory. I will be inside of your Andrew for the rest of eternity!”What the fuck.“Ew,” Allison said, speaking for them all.“Did the demon really just say that?” Dan turned to Matt, not bothering to make her whisper any less audible.The demon seemed to realise how pervertedly wrong that entire monologue just sounded, even for a creature of Hell, and rather defensively spluttered, “That is not what I meant and you know it!”Neil walked over to it, his eyes never leaving the demon’s too-empty-but-not-empty-enough pitiful imitation of Andrew’s glare, and said, just loud enough for everybody to hear, “Good, ‘cause I’m the only one that will be in–”“Do not finish that fucking sentence,” Aaron said.Neil smiled innocently back at him when he amended, “–be with him for the rest of eternity.”
Aaron still gagged.Neil turned back to the demon. “So can I get him back now?”The demon considered him. It tilted his head and bore into his heart like it expected to find something there. After an eternity it said, “On the Eve of All Hallow’s Night, a curse shall set upon the one who evokes the incantation. It is I who will bare their flesh and half of their soul. Your Andrew cursed himself by speaking my name, and so henceforth, the curse shall only be broken by that of the human remnant of the condemn’s other half, his other soul. You shall only gain your betrothed back with that of a true love’s kiss.”What. That's it? Well that’s fucking eas–“Shit,” Nicky gaped. “He’s a horny demon.”“True love’s kiss?” Kevin scoffed. “Is this demon twelve-years-old?”
“And really? C’mon, just a kiss?” Nicky added.The demon started to protest incredulously at those remarks, but Allison interrupted its bitching.“Neil, kiss, fuck or blow the demon for all I care. Just stop it from being Shakespearean, it’s upsetting me,” she said, pulling out her phone. He thought she was going to start recording this bullshit, but instead dialled a number. It only took a second for the other line to answer. “Hey babe, it’s me. Neil’s exorcising a demon by sucking off Andrew and I’m jealous, so when are you done with the wedding?”Something about the idea of true love’s kiss or some other erotic shit that had never even been on the table before this also made Dan/Prince Charming and her Cinderella take each other in their arms. “Hey, I think I might need you to free me from a curse as well,” Matt winked.“This is hurting me,” Kevin sulked. “Can you guys all try and get ass when the fucking supernatural crisis is over.”“Oh the hypocrisy,” Nicky sighed. “You’re only saying that because you drank all the vodka.”Kevin looked down sadly into his lap. “I know.”Neil fought the urge to throw his head back and groan. The Foxes were at that point in the night where they were irredeemably insufferable to tolerate, but if Neil he was going to save Andrew, he was going to fucking save Andrew.“Fine,” Neil agreed, turning back to the demon. It grew an awful, wicked smile and Neil grimaced in the hopes to offend it again. “Bring Andrew back a moment. I’m only kissing him.”“Th-that is not at all how it works,” it sputted, stunned at the mere requested, but Neil had had fucking enough and the five-minute abscence of his Andrew was starting to drive him murderously insane (and lonely. Neil missed him, okay, but shut the fuck up about it.)“Make it how it works,” Neil snarled, daring to step closer. He stared the demon dead in it’s eyes and said, “Or I can find means of making your time on Earth a fraction of the torture it was in Hell. This here is our world, we summoned you here, you’re the one at our mercy, so if anything, you’re the one that should be afraid of us.” He mimicked the awful smile it possessed a moment ago, and reeled in the way its whole body twisted in unease. “I’ve survived a lifetime of demons and you are not worth a smithereen of the hundreds of evil fuckers who have tired to kill me. And guess what? All the people that fucked with me, died fucking with me, so consider bringing Andrew back and maybe, maybe I’ll think about letting you go.”No one spoke. There was a slow clapping from Allison, still on the phone with it wedged between her ear and shoulder. “Shit, Josten. Renee, did you just hear that? Neil did his thing again.”“He just fucked us all, is what he did,” Aaron said.Nicky held up both his hands. “Not it. I’m not calling Wymack.”Matt shrugged. “At least he’s not verbally abusing the press this time.”“No, you’re right,” Aaron rolled his eyes. “It’s just an ancient supernatural entity from Hell possessing the body of Andrew.”“Shut up the fuck up,” Allison hissed, nudging him with her elbow. “They’re gonna kiss,” she had Renee on video call now. Renee was waving to everyone like none of this was out of the ordinary.Neil suppressed another sigh and turned back to the demon with a flat look.“I will grant you only but a moment with him,” the demon ground-out. “Pray you are indeed the other half of him, human.”Returning back to its body from wherever it was that a possessed soul went wasn’t anything like the ghost stories or horror movies foretold. The room didn’t start flickering again, all of the air was calm, and the mysterious cool fog from before evaporated completely. Andrew’s face simply went slack for a second and he blinked a few times, looking just as bored and indifferent as before. It wasn’t all that different from when the demon was possessing him, if only for the miniscule details that Neil would know anywhere. The slight softening of his eyes, the pull of the corners of his mouth, the way his shoulders relaxed once he regained himself and his eyes gravitated to the man in front of him.“Hey,” Neil said to him. “You got a demon in you.”Andrew stared, unimpressed. “Typical.”“I’ve got to give you a true love’s kiss to save you.”“Oh, is that all?”Neil smirked. “Only until we leave this party.”“I hate this fucking family,” Aaron said.Neil held up his middle finger to Aaron while grabbing the collar of Andrew’s shirt with his other hand and pulled him close, whispering on his lips, “Yes or no to banishing the demon possessing you?”Andrew placed his palms on the sides of Neil’s face, taking his jaw in his hand. His breath caught on Neil’s mouth as he whispered back, “Save me already, bunny.”And so it was the night of All Hallow’s Eve 2009, and Neil Josten’s true love’s kiss saved Andrew Minyard from an eternity of demon possession. And because Neil, an unreliable liar to the end of the Earth, was still narrating this story in cliches and inaccuracies and fucking fairy-tales, he got to narrate his perfect ending, too.
They kissed and then –They lived happily ever after.The End.Also fuck you, Aaron.
- Neil.