The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 43
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

Every Day is Halloween

It’s still Halloween at my local bar. There are witches and werewolves and a man dressed like a hot dog. We’re all trying to find the guy who did this! he shouts, and we laugh.
          What he means is, we can’t leave. It’s like Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, or a Buffy episode. (I haven’t watched either of those; Josh with the Pabst Blue Ribbons told me about them.) We’ve been here for just about a year. There’s enough food, somehow, and the plumbing still works, which is a blessing, but no one ever arrives and no one ever goes. We don’t get much sleep. I think I may be an alcoholic now. But hey, October 31st is just around the corner, and I’m not the only one who hopes the spell will be broken. These are nice folks, but I have a wife and kid at home and a lot of explaining to do probably.
          The election’s coming up. The TV won’t shut up about it. I don’t get into political arguments anymore, but I would like to vote this year. It’s pretty important. I even vote in midterms and primaries except when supernatural barriers interfere. I don’t think anyone could reasonably criticize me but I still feel pretty guilty about it.
          I boned this Black Widow (her name’s Christine) in the storeroom a few months ago and I feel guilty about that too, but we both agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Actually we’ve been doing it a lot and now I’m wondering if maybe when we’re out I might leave my wife for her. But that’s a tomorrow-problem.
          It’s strange that our cell phones don’t work, and it’s strange that people gather outside on the street holding signs we never bother to read, but we can still tune in John Oliver every Sunday except when they were on strike.
          We had our own kind of collective action here too, when Andy the bartender refused to change the satellite radio channel. Look, we said, no one here objects to Heart of Glass or Modern Love or Once in a Lifetime, but once you hear it every day… Andy is about twenty years younger than I am but he likes the music I listened to in high school. Anyway, we said we’d stop drinking, we’d stop paying, we’d give him the silent treatment. It was the silent treatment that worked. That was a long two weeks, but we got some Lady Gaga out of it at least.
          I swear some of these people prefer it here. I kind of get it, but Carl, for instance, I think he never wants to go home. He likes to be mysterious, but a year is a long time and I know he came from Omaha, and he never finished high school (no shame in that), he worked in a car repair place, he’s divorced, he used to be really homophobic until his best friend came out and this was a real character-forming moment for him. I’ve gotten to know all these folks pretty well. Phillip and Sue were both in the Marines. Robert is a grad student in environmental something. Christine has a husband, and they haven’t been able to have kids. When I list it all out like this I feel like Billy Joel. In the last year I’ve switched from Summit EPA to Grain Belt because it’s cheaper.
          We’re counting down the clock like it’s New Year’s Eve. The President is on the TV. In a few minutes we’ll be free. The crowd outside the glass is pressed so tight that they’re blocking out all the light. Andy pours us shots of Jägermeister. Christine suggests I should eat her pussy before we go. Good idea. Ten, nine. We drink our shots and sneak downstairs.
          Eight, seven, six.
          Five, four.
          Three.
          Two.
💀