Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
CASSIDY
THE DOTS CONNECT SOMEWHERE beneath the sea of vodka in my system. The voice, the lights, the not-pizza-guy—all force me to confront the terrible truth digging out of the grave at the bottom of my mind. The dead twins, yes, but… there were others. Memories crack through, stab into the present. Garish faces, horrid screams, so many reaching, grasping arms of the dead. For years, I have medicated myself to erase the nightmare figures. If I can’t see them, then they can’t be real. If I delete them from reality, then they’re just a figment. A sound in my head.
A story. Simple as pixels on a screen.
Electricity surges around the house. Lights flicker, appliance hums dim, then roar back to life. Something is burning. I can smell it close. A wire? Toast? But the scent morphs, sweetens. Into honey.
Don’t listen to him, hun. Chloe’s mom’s voice rushes into my ears.
Honey scents fill the air, thick and cloying. Warm arms wrap around my shoulders. Chloe’s mom. My own hands are shaky and hesitant, but I feel for her, familiar from a long-ago memory. And they’re there. Invisible, but around me. Thin, but strong.
The Englishman huffs. Oh, stay out of this, mummy.
Leave my girls out of your pranks, the honey voice warns.
Pranks? Heh, oh mummy. You should not have come.
Frost feet dance in circling patterns toward me along the floor. The honey arms release, then push me into the living room carpet. I can’t see the surrounding conflict. The ghosts… yes, they’re ghosts, admit it, Cassidy… clash in an invisible fight. I strain to see them, unlike I have in a decade, but my medication does its job. I inch toward the front door, jumping at every snap of ice.
Strong spirit, the Englishman admits to Chloe’s mom. But not strong enough, love.
Cassidy, run! Chloe’s mom shouts. I grip the front door’s knob, but as the bulbs flicker above, I can’t let myself leave. Not without Chloe. I rush through the kitchen, the line between my two realities so wobbly I can’t find my bearings this close to the happy-spouting speakers and the drunken laughter.
“Chloe—” I start.
The lamp pops. The music cuts out. Then the whole house sinks into darkened silence.
No more ice. No more honey.
In the dark, I react from instinct and need. I dizzy to Chloe’s side, able to find her arm and steady even without seeing her. She is laughing at a joke from the shadowy figures of the guys on the other side of the table. I search the darkness for any sign of frosty patterns along the walls, the floor. I stand close enough to smell her raspberry perfume to help anchor down my senses. Yet my mind whirls and distorts among the shadows, unable to untangle present from memory from self-made fictions. Alcohol has dissolved every mental wall I’ve built to nothing but sand.
I know what I saw, but here, among the living, I can’t process the truth in full.
“What gives?” Viking-boy slurs and slaps the shade around the darkened lamp above us.
“Why would I know?” Chloe says with a laugh. There is an edge lining her words, something snapping forward, ready to bite. “What, are you scared of the dark?”
Cell lights cascade on around the room, some to the game, some to the floor to find the ping-pong ball, some to Chloe and me.
Richelle snickers. “Miss Witch looks like she’s gunna pass out.”
Time stops.
Feeling leaves my limbs.
My grip on Chloe loosens.
My nickname should not be on those pink-painted lips. Should not slice through the air, stab into my gut. “What… did you say?”
“Thought you liked the dark,” Rick adds, fingering his fake mustache. “Can talk to all your little ghost friends.”
“She probably did this,” Richelle says and searches the ceiling for another light. “Some Halloween prank. Ooo, so spooky.” She arches a thin eyebrow, her stare lowering to my hand on Chloe’s arm. “Just copping a feel, methinks.”
Viking-boy grunts and chugs down another red cup as he approaches. “Bit clingy, hm?” With a thick arm, he separates me from Chloe and gives his girlfriend a side hug. He plasters her to his hip, bent at an awkward angle. “Need to tell me something, babe?”
Chloe laughs one note, absently messing with her hair. “She’s just… scared.”
“I’m fine,” I say. Automatic. Robotic. Blocks of cellphone light blur my vision. My thoughts are glitching.
Chloe is my friend.
But Chloe told them about my secret.
Chloe is on my side.
No, Chloe’s planted herself at Viking-boy’s side.
Not willingly. She doesn’t like him. Not really.
Does she like me?
Viking-boy shakes his head, sticking a thumb out at me. “Why’d you even invite her?”
I try to find Chloe’s eyes in the dark, but she refuses to look at me.
The ground is unstable. An amalgam of sensory information vies for my attention, the bitter taste of alcohol, the cold of my fingertips on my eyelids, the supernatural voice laughing circles around my thoughts.
Why would they say those things? Why won’t Chloe defend me? Why won’t I defend myself? Why would she tell them? These strangers?
I drift from the dock of reality—no anchor, no shore in sight.
“Now she’s crying, look what you did,” Viking-boy says with a barking laugh.
“God.” Chloe detaches from her boyfriend, shoulders up as she brings me back to the kitchen, away from the snickering laughter. “What’s going on with you?” Her bitter beer breath masks her raspberry perfume.
What do I even say? How can I describe this floating, untethered feeling?
Chloe glances back to her friends, jittery, lowering her voice. “Look just… Keep your crazy in check, all right? I can’t do this tonight.”
I blink. “Crazy?”
The beer pong game ceases, the new entertainment of Chloe’s rising voice drawing all the eyes. “I’m trying to have fun with my friends.”
“I’m your friend.”
“You’re not really acting like it,” Chloe shoots back.
I search for words in the shadows. “What?”
“You’re not even hanging out—just clinging to me like I’m your mom.”
“This was… supposed to be… our birthday tradition.”
“Yeah, well, I have other friends. So, we’re not doing that this year. We’re doing what I wanna do for once.”
There’s no ground to stand on. My mind glitches, sifting through memories, emotions, secrets. Anything real. Anything solid. I search the kitchen but can’t see if the frost marks have persisted. I sniff the air but can’t smell anything around Chloe’s perfume and bitter breath. Can’t tell if her mom’s honey scent remains at all.
The Englishman chuckles in my left ear. Night night, mummy.
“No!” I clutch Chloe’s arm and search the darkness around us for any sign of her mom. Any shimmer of a figure, a shadow, a full-on ghost. “No, no. Your mom. She’s… oh god. Chloe, oh my god. We can’t stay here.”
“The fuck?” Chloe tugs away from me. “Cut it with the mom shit. I’m over it, okay? It’s not funny. It’s never been funny.”
Tears blur her shape. “Chloe, she’s in trouble. We’re in danger.”
“God, you always do this. You have to make it about you, don’t you?”
“This is serious, c’mon! Listen to me.”
“I think she’s done listening.” Viking-boy assures, sliding into view. He waves me off and cuddles Chloe to his chest. And Chloe lets him, leaning into his broad figure, eyes downcast, arms limp. “Off to your cave, Miss Witch,” Viking-boy dismisses. “She’s not under your spell anymore.”
Laughter ripples. I wipe my eyes and run. Stumble in the dark, find the stairs and climb. As if on cue, a buzzing and a pop surge through the house. Lights return in a sputter. Chloe and her boyfriend have followed me. She catches my eye. But says nothing. Mouth twisting, but not brave enough to voice whatever her wish was in the laundry room, when Viking-boy shadowed her tiny frame. She cowers, eyes lowering to her feet. I can’t read her at all. Not anymore.
I run upstairs, humiliation following me as cackling laughter from Viking-boy. I slam the bedroom door closed. Slap the light switch off. I pull my sweater from the floor, curl inside it, my safe cocoon, and collapse on the bed in tears.
Chloe thinks I’m crazy… Has always thought I’m crazy.
And here I am, crying alone, wishing my traitor best friend would comfort me. The one person who used to act like she understood me. The one person I could share my deepest worries about my sanity with. Share my secret fears of the dark. She’s cast me away, letting me drift and sputter and drown.
I pull my phone from my pocket, filled with messages with Chloe, back and forth late into the night. Every night. For years. I throw it across the room, the thud hardly satisfying my need for release. I can’t make sense of my mind, two sides pulling me in opposite directions. Has she ever seen me as anything other than a token freak?
Lungs heaving, I tug my laptop up on the bed with me. I open the story I wrote for her. Starring us. As a team. Like our costumes. The Punk and the Pin-up… I right-click the file, considering deleting the two-hundred-page lie.
Bit of a dramatic, aren’t you? the dark voice teases.
A shadow crosses the bedroom window.
I freeze in place, a laptop of stories and a disembodied voice my only companions. The window slides open. Hands grope inside. I don’t know what to do, how to breathe. My heart skips, glitching out any reaction. My mind sinks, lost without an anchor.
In seconds, he slips in. The not-pizza-guy. Kane.
This isn’t a story. I don’t know what to do. I’m not Chloe. I’m nobody. A crazy nobody. All I have are words. Useless words.
He scans the room like a shark, then finds me—curled in my yellow cocoon, the perfect drowning prey.