Someone had put a CD of popular Halloween songs on the stereo, and people in
costumes swirled and bopped all over the house, the living room, the
bedrooms, the kitchen, dancing to the Monster Mash and making the floors
tremble. Orange and black streamers of paper crepe fluttered from doorjambs,
strings of grinning paper jack-o-lanterns and blanched ghosts curved across
ceilings. Somewhere in the basement, where the pool table was, a sharp bang
issued forth. The Hostess winced, and nearly dropped her tray of hors
d'oeuvres. Dammit. That was a suspiciously loud noise. Like, say, for
instance, a pool table suddenly toppling over and smashing to the floor. God
dammit.
"Marvelous party!" a lady dressed as Catwoman shouted suddenly in The
Hostess's ear, and plucked a cracker with a wedge of cheese on it from the
tray. "Simply wonderful party! Superb!"
"Thank you!" The Hostess shouted back, trying to be heard above the general
roar of people talking and laughing and screaming and singing and the very
loud Ghostbusters theme song currently playing on the stereo. The woman in
the Catwoman costume simply smiled and patted her on the head, and swirled
away, back into the crowd.
The doorbell rang. Sighing, The Hostess, still clutching her tray of snacks,
pushed her way through the crowd of revelers to the door, and opened it with
another sigh. Please God, not another guest. She didn't remember inviting
this many people.
Two men stood on the doorstep, flanked by The Hostess's carefully carved
jack-o-lanterns. One man was wearing a large white box, bizarrely enough,
the other was dressed as a baseball player.
"Hey, baby doll!" the baseball player shouted jubilantly, and leaned over
and gave The Hostess a quick peck on the cheek.
The Hostess immediately broke into a smile and exclaimed happily, "Fox
Mulder! You dog you! It's been forever! I didn't think you were going to
come."
Fox Mulder just grinned and did a soft-shoe sketch on the front step. "I
always attend Fictional Character Bashes, you know that, kiddo."
TH snorted. "Sure, right, whatever, Mulder. You must be the most antisocial
person I know."
"I'm not a person, I'm a fictive! And I resent being called antisocial. I'm
just... just..."
"Bitingly sarcastic and moody all the time?" This was from the man in the
big white box. He smirked at Mulder, who sputtered, "Am not! Is it my fault
my writers make me quirky and cynical?" The man, ignoring Fox, turned to TH
and said, affectionately, "Hi, girl."
"Hi, Alex," TH replied sweetly, then stepped aside and let the two men
inside, tray of edibles still held aloft in one hand. "What on earth are
you supposed to be, anyway, Krycek? A blank Rubic's cube?"
"I'm a clothes dryer!" the assassin replied cheerfully, and Mulder rolled
his eyes. A gesture at his midsection. "See that circle?" TH nodded, amazed.
"That's where you put the clothes in! See?" Then Alex pulled open the little
circle drawn onto the box side, and a pile of clothes fell out and onto the
floor.
"God damn," TH breathed, as she and everyone nearby stared down at the pile
of clothes on the floor. "That has got to be the most unromantic costume I
have ever seen."
"Beg pardon?" Krycek blinked at her, confusion swirling across vibrantly
green eyes.
"I was expecting you two to come dressed as Romeo and Juliet, or something,"
TH groused sulkily. Both men immediately gave one another long-suffering
looks. "Something cute and couply."
"Mulder here refused to wear tights."
"Krycek insisted on being something kooky."
"Well, c'mon!" Krycek exclaimed. "Have you ever heard of a
superspy/assassin/Consortium Bad Boy dressing up as a clothes dryer for
Halloween? It's cool!"
Mulder scowled. "No, it isn't. It's weird."
"Oooh, the pot calling the kettle black," Krycek sneered. "I suppose you'd
have a lot of experience on that, wouldn't you, Spooky?"
Before a fist-fight broke out between the two, TH quickly intervened,
asking, "So, Mulder, which baseball player are you supposed to be, or are
you just a generic ball player?"
Mulder drew himself up proudly. "I happen to be dressed as Babe Ruth, only
the greatest baseball player to ever live."
"That's Mickey Mantle," Krycek corrected. Mulder glared.
"You don't look like Babe Ruth," TH said, frowning thoughtfully. "You're too
thin."
Mulder just sighed.
"Who are you dressed up as?" Krycek asked her, before Mulder could start
sulking.
TH smiled and spread out her arms to show off her costume. It consisted of a
straight jacket, long sleeves dangling, thrown over a glaringly bright
silver faux lamé gown, with a poofy skirt. Black circles were colored in
under her eyes, and her hair was wild and messy. "I'm Sylvia Plath's Esther
Greenwood! Isn't it cool? I was gonna go as her in her Pollyanna Cowgirl
outfit, but I couldn't find the right shirt."
Nonplused stares.
"And you call my costume weird," Krycek muttered, rolling his eyes.
"Esther never wore a straight jacket," Mulder said pensively, and it was
TH's time to sigh.
"Just go with it," she ordered, and the two shrugged. "And quit bugging me.
I have snack foods to give out to people. Go mingle, or something."
"Okay," the two lovers said, amiably, and disappeared into the crowd. TH
sighed.
Wandering into the kitchen to get more beer for people, TH saw that the
kitchen had been destroyed. A witch's hat lay forlornly in the sink. The
refrigerator stood half open, the pantry door gaped wide. Paper plates
filled with nibbled-on food lay scattered on every surface. Dear God. As she
bent to pick up a plate off the floor, a crowd of guests suddenly burst into
the kitchen. Screaming and laughing and splashing various liquids all over
the place. One of them, a teenaged girl with long blonde hair in two
trailing pig tails, dressed as a bunny, was squealing and trying to beat the
hell out of a boy dressed as a drill sergeant. "Give it back, Pan, you
creep! Give it back!!"
The drill sergeant just giggled drunkenly and held a pink wand with a
glittery moon at its end out of the screaming girl's reach, taunting, "Try
and get it, Bunny, try and get it!"
One of the other partiers, Freddie Krueger dressed up as Harold Bloom,
raised a knife threateningly at the sergeant. "Give the little girl the
magic wand-thing, you creep, before I slice your head off."
"Eeek," said the sergeant.
TH felt a great wave of fear wash over her. She did not want to become
involved. Quickly, she ducked around the kitchen table and snuck out the
back door. No one noticed her leave, thank God.
Outside, safely in the backyard, The Hostess let out a loud breath of
relief. Small clusters of people were scattered across the backyard,
laughing and chatting away. TH could feel the headache coming on. Time to go
and hide, for a while. Quickly, she crept out of sight.
Inside the house, a man dressed as Dr. Frank N. Furter stalked over to a
table of food and drinks on six-inch heels and began filling up a plate. As
he perused the array of alcoholic beverages, a woman dressed in a black
leotard and tutu with purple and green striped panty hose and a purple and
green striped witch's hat strode up to the table and joined him. Reaching
across the sweet transvestite to get at a bowl of cheese balls, the woman
said, "Excuse me," looked up, and froze.
"Walter Skinner?" she exclaimed, and the AD turned and looked at her,
surprised.
"Scully?"
The FBI agent took a step back and brushed a lock of frizzy red hair out of
her eyes. "Well, don't you look smashing, sir!" she cried, grinning widely,
her eyes roaming over Skinner's makeup, corset, elbow gloves, fishnets, and
garter belt. Skinner rolled his eyes. "I never knew you liked 'The Rocky
Horror Picture Show'."
Skinner grimaced and tugged at the string of oversized pearls around his
throat, like he normally would a tie. "It's... a cute movie."
"Hmm." Scully smiled and poured herself a cup of punch.
"Watch out, I think it's spiked," Skinner warned.
"Thanks," Scully replied, and gulped the drink down in one swallow.
"And who are you dressed up as?" Skinner asked as he reached for a brewskie.
Scully smiled again. "I'm Jill Thompson's 'Scary Godmother'. Isn't it a
great outfit?"
"Ah, yes it is," the AD replied, without a clue as to what Scully was
talking about.
"It took me forever to find these shoes," Scully continued, and they both
gazed down at her footwear for a moment, contemplatively.
"Seen Mulder and Krycek anywhere?"
"Yeah, the dynamic duo arrived a little while ago. Krycek came dressed as a
clothes dryer." Scully smirked, remembering.
"Jesus. That's creative."
"Frank N. Furter's creative, too," Scully replied, loyally.
"Not really," Skinner said sourly. "Two other people came as Furter, and
then to top it off, Frank came himself, dressed as an FBI agent."
Scully laughed.
"Furter's downstairs somewhere, last time I saw him, hitting on the Cat in
the Hat."
"That's pretty sick."
"Huh."
"Excuse me," a voice piped up, and the two stepped back to let a girl
dressed as one of Monty Python's knights of the round table (Sir Robin) get
to the bowl of chips. She had to set down a pair of coconuts and a cage with
a stuffed parrot in it to get her food. Skinner and Scully stared at the
cage, confusion on both their faces. The girl, seeing their looks, smiled.
"I couldn't decide between a Monty sketch or a Monty movie. So I did both!"
"Very clever," Skinner replied uncertainly, clearing his throat, and the
girl grinned and said, "Thanks!", then picked up her plate, her cage, and
her coconuts, and galloped off, going 'clippity clop' all the way.
"Maybe we should go somewhere relatively sane," Skinner suggested, and
Scully replied, "Sounds good."
The two left the table in search of parts of the house free of insane
fictives. As they left the living room, the doorbell rang. "Don't answer
that," Skinner cautioned Scully, the sixth sense he'd developed in 'Nam
suddenly kicking in.
Scully shrugged. "Okay." They continued out of the room.
The doorbell continued to ring, insistently.
"Hey!" Shakespeare's Ophelia, dressed as a Munster, shouted. "Somebody gonna
get that?"
"Where's the goddammed crummy hostess?" Salinger's Holden Caulfield shouted
back.
At that, a sigh issued forth from the table of snacks that Skinner and
Scully had just left, the tablecloth lifted, and The Hostess, who had been
hiding under the table in relative peace for a while, clambered out, got to
her feet, and went to answer the door.
Five little kids and an adult stood waiting for her on the front step. The
moment she opened the door, the little munchkins burst into song.
"Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat! If you don't!
I don't care! I'll pull down your underwear!"
"Hi," was all TH could manage to say, and quickly dumped the contents of a
giant bag of M&Ms into their pillowcases. Little hard candies spilled
everywhere. The adult in the group glared at her, but TH couldn't bring
herself to care. Just a few minutes ago, someone had broken her little David
Mack's 'Kabuki' statue, a prized possession. She'd almost burst into tears,
but managed to stave them off for the time being. The headache, on the other
hand, was screaming through her head full-force. All she wanted to do by now
was curl up somewhere quiet and die.
"Hey, wait a minute," one of the kids, dressed as a goblin, was protesting.
The Hostess ignored the kid and went back inside and slammed shut the door.
And to think, just a few years ago she would have been one of those kids,
dressed up as Snow White and telling stupid jokes for candy. When the hell
had she turned into such a cranky old person? Weirdness. For a brief,
horrifying moment, TH could feel the unshed tears well up once more in her
eyes.
"Hey, are you all right?" a man nearby asked her. TH looked up, and saw that
Batman, dressed as the Joker, was hovering by her elbow, acting very Bruce
Wayne-ish and kind.
TH sniffed. "I'm just feeling a bit off, that's all."
Batman smiled kindly. "Hosting a party is always very overwhelming. Why
don't you go lie down for a minute, then? I can hold the fort for a while."
TH smiled adoringly up at him, watery-eyed and grateful. "Thank you! Thank
you, I think I will."
Batman patted her on the shoulder, and TH slipped off toward her bedroom,
skirting Richard St. Vier dressed as Gandhi, Mulan dressed as Marie
Antoinette. Pushing her way through a group of werewolves and mummies and
one Big Bird, she finally arrived at her room, opened the door, and found
herself staring at two very impassioned men screwing like crazed weasels in
her bed.
"God! Jesus! God! God! God! Yes!" one man was shrieking as the
other rammed into him, knocking the headboard rhythmically against the wall.
TH, horrified, could only gape. Then she noticed the large white box with a
hole cut into the side lying abandoned on the floor, next to a discarded
baseball uniform.
Outrage erupted in her body, exploded into her head. "God DAMN it!" she
howled, irate, at the oblivious couple. Fox was by now caterwauling like a
cat, one long vowel strung out over the space of a minute. "Can't you two
ever keep it in your pants for more than an hour?! Jesus! And in my bed,
too!"
Before the irrational urge to kick the doorjamb repeatedly until her foot
bled took over, TH slammed shut the door to Mulder and Krycek's lovemaking
and stormed back into the crowd of partygoers.
"Rassum frassum frickin' frackin' motherfucking goddammed oversexed hormonal
jackasses," she muttered irately to herself, before being accosted by a
short man dressed as Gandalf.
"What!" she shouted at him. The man giggled and splashed a liberal amount of
the contents of his drink onto his wizard's robe and the floor.
"Psst!" he whispered, loudly. "Lemme tell ya a secret." The man leaned in
close and breathed into TH's ear. "I think th' punch's been spiked. Hee!"
TH frowned. "I didn't make any punch."
"Gambit brought it," a woman with a white streak in her hair announced,
passing by. She was dressed as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
"Huh," The Hostess said. This made, eerily enough, a modicum of sense.
"Then who spiked it?" the drunk short man asked.
"Gambit probably did that, too, sugah," Rogue said, and Matt Murdock,
dressed appropriately as the Devil, suddenly appeared behind TH, frowning.
"You've seen Gambit?" Daredevil asked Rogue, looking annoyed.
"Of course Ah did, he's mah date!" Rogue exclaimed.
"No he's not," Matt shot back, "he's my date!"
"No he's not!" yet another man shouted, and everyone turned to stare at the
X-Man Iceman, one of the other guests dressed as Frank N. Furter, who glared
at both Rogue and Daredevil. "He's my date!"
"He bloody well is not!" piped in another voice, and Gen X's Chamber stalked
up to the knot of people. "Gambit's my date ter this party!"
"Is not, you twerpy little rugrat!" Rogue shouted.
Suddenly, without warning, a fistfight broke out. Chaos immediately reigned.
Furniture started smashing indiscriminately, and soon half of the partygoers
were involved, Jane Eyre punching out Mark Renton, Homer Simpson with Dr.
Evil in a headlock. Over it all came the eerie strains of a Radiohead song,
the Halloween Music Hits CD apparently having finished.
"Stop it! Stop it!" The Hostess started screaming, helplessly, and then had
to duck when a knick-knack sailed out of the whirling fray and launched
itself at her head. "Aiiieeee!" she shrieked, and then the door to her
bedroom burst open and Mulder and Krycek, both very, very naked, rushed out
of the room, howling like banshees and leaping into the fray.
"Yeehaw!" Krycek shouted, engaging in combat with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was
dressed as a Sith. "I loooove party brawls!!"
"Hee hee!" Mulder replied, blocking a punch from Hank Rearden and shoving TH
solicitously out of harm's way. "First mind-altering sex, then a big, fat,
knock-down, drag-out battle! Life doesn't get much better than this!"
"Ack!" TH cried, watching despairingly as the fight flowed into the living
room and the kitchen, furniture caving in under the force of the fight. "Not
the stereo system! Not the stereo system! Anything but the stereo system!"
SCRUNCH!!
Radiohead's "In Limbo" song silenced abruptly. The Hostess screamed.
"Agggghhhhh!!" TH shrieked, her eyes beginning to flame a little as she
gazed at the remains of her beloved stereo system. "Does anyone know how
much I paid for that fifty-disc CD player?!? Aaaggggghhhhh!!" Something
inside her snapped audibly. Hefting a fire poker from the fireplace stand,
TH turned with a deadly smile to the fight whirling its way through the
house, let out a battle scream, and joined in.
"Whew! That was fun!"
The Hostess, upon hearing Krycek say this, turned to glare at the man with a
pair of black eyes from her spot on the floor. Krycek just grinned crazily
at her from around a split lip. He was sitting next to Mulder in the living
room, against the wall, and boy oh boy, did he look pleased with himself.
"Well, it was," he said, grinning happily. Skinner, sitting limply on the
sofa in the living room, which had been broken down the middle somewhere in
the fight, rolled his eyes. He was missing one of his high heels, and his
wig was gone. He looked utterly ridiculous.
"Krycek, shut up," TH snapped dully, feeling miserable. "Before I... before
I... oh, hell. Just be quiet. I'm in no mood for your sociopathy right now."
Krycek started to look contrite, but Mulder spoiled it by leaning over,
still quite blissfully nude, and kissing his lover on the mouth, mindful of
the split lip. Krycek immediately reciprocated, grinning into the kiss. They
pulled back finally, blood now on both their chins.
"Don't worry about it, babe," Fox said, smiling, "I still love you. My
hero."
"Awww," Krycek purred, snuggling up to Mulder, "sugarlips, what did I ever
do to deserve you?"
Halloween
by Raietta
The party had only been going for fifteen minutes, and already it was way
out of hand. Three stains on the carpet, which had been shampooed only a
month ago. God dammit. One vase broken, three glasses shattered, one picture
knocked off the wall, the frame smashed. The Hostess didn't have a raging
headache, though, happily enough. Things were going quite well,
comparatively speaking (flashback to the New Year's party fiasco earlier
this year--ugh). All the guests were having a blast. Hopefully, the damage
would be kept to a minimum. Please.
