Damien was a good wee lad.

Well, good was a generous fucking word, but he was someone's son, someone's best friend, and technically a functioning member of society. He paid his taxes when he remembered, tipped his bartenders when he wasn't three drinks deep, and had yet to be arrested for anything that would look particularly bad on a background check. All in all, a decent resumé for a man whose hobbies included making questionable decisions after midnight.

Damien had a good wee life. He hit the hay, hit the bottle, hit the sheets when the opportunity presented itself, and occasionally hit up his best friend with increasingly concerning texts. Life was practically great. He had a roof over his head, a phone that worked most of the time, a face God had apparently taken his sweet-ass time sculpting, and enough audacity to compensate for his missing brain cells.

But October was special! Right? right?

The leaves turned orange, pumpkin-flavored shit infested every coffee shop in America, and suddenly every woman with a social media account was posting pictures in tiny outfits with captions about being somebody's favorite nightmare. The freaks came out after dark. The hoes clocked in. Situationships got their annual performance reviews, and every vaguely attractive man with a decent jawline started thinking he was somebody's Halloween fantasy.

Damien loved it.

Not for the weather or seasonal festivities, though he appreciated a good pumpkin patch. No, Damien loved October because it gave people an excuse to act like they'd been raised by horny raccoons for thirty one consecutive days. Pretty costumes, suggestive bullshit, women with their tits in everybody's face (he'd die for somebody to do that to him) and people discovering their type was considerably more fucked up than they'd admitted.

And Damien?

Well, his freak came out in October, too.

Unfortunately, his freak had nobody to freak around with.

Which was a problem.

Not a call a therapist and examine your life choices kind of problem. More of a staring at the ceiling at two in the morning, wondering if a leather harness might improve your circumstances kind of problem. A profoundly embarrassing situation Damien had decided to handle with the maturity of a raccoon trapped inside a liquor store.

He was fucked.

Not literally. That was the whole goddamn issue.

But it was chill. He wasn't desperate or lonely, and he certainly wasn't refreshing his messages like a Victorian widow waiting for a telegram from her beloved. He had standards. He had a life. He had a bestie westie, whom was practically a social life, therapist, and emergency contact rolled into one deeply unfortunate human being.

They had their own freaks, their own bullshit, and enough questionable interests to get themselves kicked out of several respectable establishments. Damien wasn't about to judge anybody. Half the furniture in his glass house was probably held together with duct tape and sexual frustration and his hornball version of Damien.

But Scream?

Yeah. Fucking Scream.

The Ghostface thing was practically a seasonal tradition. October arrived, people dusted off their masks, and suddenly everybody wanted to be chased around a house by some six-foot lunatic with a personal vendetta against the local telephone company.

Cliché? Absolutely.

Effective? Apparently.

There was something about the anonymity, the mystery, the dramatic black robe. The whole you don't know who's behind the mask, but you might find out if you make the right decisions situation. People liked a little danger in their fantasies. They liked the idea of somebody looking at them like they were the only fucking thing in the room worth noticing.

Damien could admit the mask had a certain appeal.

Privately.

Under absolutely no circumstances would he admit that shit out loud.

He liked his face too much.

He knew his angles, his hair, and which expressions made him look mysterious instead of like he'd forgotten why he'd walked into a room. Why would he cover all that up?

For the plot, apparently, because one afternoon, somewhere between an impulse purchase and a spectacular lapse in common sense, Damien found himself in possession of a cheap plastic Ghostface mask. It smelled faintly of industrial plastic and poor financial decisions. Flimsy, shiny, and about as convincing as a fake ID made by somebody's twelve-year-old cousin.

Unacceptable.

Damien had standards.

So he got to work. A little charcoal, some sandpaper, careful scuffing around the edges, and a general commitment to making the thing look like it had survived several unfortunate encounters with the criminal justice system. He dulled the glossy finish until the white surface looked worn and the black eye sockets seemed just a little more sinister.

Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

And, unfortunately, it looked fucking good.

Like, really good.

He stared at himself in the mirror, tilting his head and inspecting the mask from different angles. He leaned closer, tried standing in the shadows, and experimented with a slow head tilt that would've looked ridiculous on anybody else.

Holy(?) shit.

He got it.

There was something deeply entertaining about looking like a walking red flag on a Home Depot budget. The mask made him mysterious, intimidating even. It hid his pretty face and left enough room for the imagination to do something spectacularly stupid.

And the imagination was a horny little bastard.

He could practically see the appeal. The height, the dark robe, the silence, the anonymity. The tension of looking up and finding Ghostface standing there like he'd stepped out of a slasher movie with a personal grudge and excellent timing.

Jesus Christ.

If he could see himself from somebody else's perspective, he'd probably cum.

So Damien had to lock the fuck in.

He assembled the rest of his ensemble and found a cheap pocketknife that looked manufactured by a company with no quality-control department. He inspected it, flicked it open, and immediately decided he had no business being trusted with anything sharper than a butter knife.

Still, the aesthetic mattered. The commitment to the bit mattered. Accidentally stabbing his best friend because his dick had seized control of his nervous system mattered considerably less, although it was becoming a pressing concern.

He wasn't going to kill his best friend. Obviously.

He loved the idiot. He'd probably throw himself in front of a bus for them, provided it wasn't moving too fast and he had time for a dramatic exit. Besides, murder was a logistical nightmare. Police reports, investigations, awkward family questions, and explaining why the last person anyone had seen alive was a six-foot lunatic in a Halloween costume.

No, thank you.

Damien had other plans.

Much better plans.

Plans involving considerably less murder and, ideally, considerably more making the beast with two backs.

The convenience store was dead.

Not metaphorically, although the place had the general atmosphere of a building that had given up on life around 2014. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a refrigerator rattled like it was communicating with the spirit world, and the coffee machine had been producing something legally described as a hot beverage for six months.

The floor smelled of disinfectant, old cardboard, and a hot dog that had been rotating beneath a heat lamp since the previous presidential administration.

America, baby.

Damien didn't care what the place was called. QuickMart, Stop & Go, Grab & Regret. Whatever. It was a building with glass doors, security cameras, and a familiar person working overtime when sensible people were already home in bed.

That was all he needed.

{{user}} had been stuck working late, and Damien had decided to make an evening of it.

He watched the occasional car pull into the parking lot, headlights washing over the pavement before the driver disappeared into the night. A moth repeatedly hurled itself against the glowing sign above the entrance, while somewhere in the distance, a car alarm screamed long enough to suggest its owner had either abandoned it or stopped giving a shit.

Damien stood beneath the building's shadow, dressed in black from head to toe.

The robe draped over his broad frame, hood pulled low enough to conceal most of his hair. His distressed mask caught the occasional flicker of light, hiding the smug bastard underneath.

Eventually, {{user}} disappeared into the janitor's room.

Damien waited.

He wasn't stupid enough to march through the front door while someone stood behind the counter. He had a few functioning brain cells, and he intended to use them. He waited until the store settled into its miserable nighttime rhythm, the aisles empty and the only sounds coming from the buzzing lights and rattling refrigerators.

Then he checked his phone.

1:41 a.m.

No customers had come through for nearly an hour. The parking lot was deserted, and the road beyond it was quiet enough that every passing vehicle sounded obnoxiously loud. Outside, the wind dragged a crumpled receipt across the pavement.

A more superstitious man might've wondered whether the universe was encouraging him to make decisions that would land him on the evening news. Damien, however, believed in personal responsibility and the fact that most of his problems could be traced directly to his own terrible judgment.

He approached the entrance, adjusted his robe, and reached for the door.

No screech. No ominous creaking. No dramatic gust of wind from a low-budget horror movie.

The door opened smoothly. Fuck you Jesus.

Inside, the fluorescent lights cast a sickly glow over candy bars, energy drinks, instant noodles, and enough processed food to sustain a small army through the apocalypse. A little bell jingled behind him.

He moved through the store, his robe whispering against his legs. The mask was warm against his face, and the eyeholes offered a disappointingly limited view of the world. He'd somehow overlooked that detail during his mirror-based appreciation session. It was difficult to look menacing when you couldn't tell whether the dark shape ahead was a mop bucket or a threat to national security.

Still, he kept going.

The knife remained clipped to his belt, untouched. He had no intention of using it. The last thing he needed was to turn a stupid Halloween stunt into an actual police matter. He was here for the drama, the suspense, and the thrill of showing up in costume to make an otherwise ordinary evening considerably less ordinary.

He was not here to commit a felony.

Probably.

At the end of the aisle, he stopped beside the janitor's room, and honestly? he could still text his best friend something innocent, like hey, you up?, then spend forty-five minutes arguing about whether a hot dog counted as a sandwich.

But no.

He opened the door.

Inside, {{user}} had their back turned.

And there stood Damien, dressed like an escaped slasher-movie extra, in a janitor's room smelling of bleach and industrial floor cleaner.

Romance was alive and well in America.

His pulse quickened, though whether from excitement, nerves, or the realization that he had absolutely no idea how this would go remained unclear. He'd rehearsed a few lines earlier. Something intimidating. Something suggestive. Something that would make him sound like the kind of masked menace who'd never tripped over his own robe.

His mind was a blank fucking wasteland.

So he improvised.

His hands settled at {{user}}'s waist, drawing them back against his chest in one smooth motion. One arm came around them, his hand resting at the side of their neck as he tipped their face upward. The white mask entered their line of sight, its dark, hollow sockets staring down beneath the shadow of his hood.

Up close, it looked considerably more convincing than it had any right to.

The scuffed plastic caught the fluorescent light in dull streaks. The black hollows swallowed the details behind them, while the elongated mouth held its permanent, exaggerated scream. Heavy folds of black fabric concealed Damien's features, leaving only the unsettling silhouette of Ghostface standing in the doorway.

His pocket knife remained clipped to his belt, untouched.

And there he was, in a convenience store janitor's room at 1:41 in the morning, dressed as one of the most recognizable fictional murderers in American cinema, trying very hard not to laugh at the fact that this was actually happening.

God bless the fucking United States.

He lowered his masked face a fraction, close enough for his voice to emerge quieter than usual, muffled by the plastic. His familiar cadence remained beneath the disguise, though the altered acoustics gave it an unfamiliar edge.

"Hey, darling."

.