Luck

Content Warning: gruesome deaths, animal death, cheating, revenge

Death came as a wolf. His name was Greg.

But that was later. Right now….

Right now I can’t breathe.

I…can’t….

BREATHE.

I run out of Trevor’s house, tripping on the broken bottom step that I’ve forgotten about, and faceplant on the grass.

I hear him calling my name: Dani, Dani! The porch light comes on behind me. I swear to God that if he comes out—or worse, if SHE comes out—and tries to tell me, “It’s not what I think,” when it’s exactly what I think, I’ll probably strangle whichever of them has the audacity to lie.

Better yet, I’ll use the loose railing spindle to crack them across the face. That would leave a mark.

I pull myself up off the ground. My knees and palms are sore but not enough to slow me down. I’m in my car and speeding toward town before I see if either my boyfriend or my sister has chased me. My window is down, and the night air rushes in, whipping my brown hair in my face.

With one hand on the wheel, the other reaches into my purse on the passenger seat for my vape pen. I could really use a hit right now. My trembling fingers find my wallet, phone, keys, lipstick, tampons, condoms—

I open the center console and pull out my emergency cigarettes and lighter. Between the hair in my face getting stuck in the lip gloss I wore for Trevor, and my shaky fingers that can’t seem to remember how to strike a lighter, I struggle to get a flame, and the cigarette falls out of my mouth as I scream:

FUUUUUUUCK.

I chuck the lighter against the dash and put both hands on the wheel. Those things will kill me anyway, that’s what Trevor always says. If I don’t suffer a slow death by nicotine, I’ll probably wrap my Hyundai around a tree. That seems…quick. And not terrible considering the alternative.

There will be no escaping what I just saw. Conover is a small town, the kind of place where everyone knows your name and your business. Trever is a cop here. Shawna, my sister, manages the Dollar General. I can’t even begin to unpack this shit sack I’ve been handed.

Before I really do wrap my car around a tree, I careen into Smitty’s parking lot. The yellow sign across the top, the neon lights in the windows are the brightest lights in town at this late hour. The parking lot is full, mostly with pickup trucks and dusty Jeeps. My cousin Trish works here, and she’ll take one look at me and demand to know what’s wrong. It’s only a matter of time—hours, really—before the whole town knows.

If they don’t already. It dawns on me that I could be the last one.

I don’t go in right away. I don’t know if I’ll go in at all. I can’t imagine facing anyone. I can’t imagine going home either. I live with my sister, and our bungalow will smell like her raspberry perfume, her room still littered with all the outfits that didn’t make the cut tonight. As if she needed clothes. She certainly wasn’t wearing any when I found her.

I’m surprised the tears have taken this long. The shock must be wearing off after what has arguably been the worst day of my life.

This morning, I forgot that the parking lot at the call center where I worked was being repaved and I had to park three blocks away and hoof it the rest of the way in heels, and was ten minutes late for my shift. Since it wasn’t my first or even my fifth time being late in the last six months, my boss showed up at my desk at five o’clock and told me to clean out my cube.

At first, I didn’t believe him. But Carter, a thirty-something with a business degree and a closet full of ill-fitting suits, doesn’t make jokes. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t chide, doesn’t sing happy birthday. He stalks the cube farm with a perpetual scowl, ensuring all the worker bees recognize his disapproval the same way we know Carter is on the move by the cologne trailing in his wake.

Five minutes after he slapped a box on my desk, I carried my personal effects three blocks back to my car in the early summer heat, where I found a little yellow slip of paper tucked underneath the windshield wiper.

Greg, dutiful meter reader on the Conover Police Force, had likely signed the parking ticket with the sadistic flourish of a man punishing his high school girlfriend with the tiny modicum of government power the Conover Police badge had granted him. Fucking Greg. Still sore that I dumped him senior year and didn’t get him his football jersey back in time for the big homecoming game, his number—nineteen—unrepresented by a fan in the stands deemed as bad luck ever since they lost that night.

Late. Fired. Parking ticket.

I shot Greg a nasty text. When I checked my other messages, I saw that Trevor was canceling on me.

We had been dating for almost a year and were supposed to meet for dinner to discuss something important. I thought he was finally going to ask if I wanted to move in together because he spent most nights at my house anyway. Now he was canceling on me? I texted back that I had been fired, and he told me how sorry he was—about that and about canceling—but he had to pick up a shift for an officer who tested positive for COVID.

COVID? Really? Was that even still a thing? My day was shot, my night was shot, and I had to find a new job.

At home, my neighbor’s Shih Tzu was taking a crap on my lawn, again, as I drove up. Mr. Lewis didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t happening, didn’t come over and pick it up, just waved from his front porch like my previous requests for him to keep his dog off my property weren’t serious since it wasn’t technically my property at all. My sister and I were just renting.

I waited until I was behind my closed door to fully freak out. Shawna was curling her hair in the bathroom and when she hugged me, she smelled like Bath and Body Works lotion and transferred some of the glitter on her chest to my shirt.

We took a shot of Fireball then she finished getting ready. She said she had a date with a new guy and if it worked out, she’d tell me all about him.

Knowing what I know now, I could fucking kill her.

I sat alone in our house until ten o’clock then decided I’d use my key to hang out at Trevor’s until he got home.

Now I’m here in Smitty’s parking lot, the blue neon Bud Light sign blurred by my tears. I can’t go home. There isn’t anywhere else, at eleven at night in Conover, for me to go.

I wipe my eyes, smooth my windblown hair, and grab my purse. A couple I know from high school smile and call to me on their way out, and I wave and keep walking up the wooden steps and into the bar that has been the same since I was nineteen pretending to be twenty-one: yeasty with spilled beer, sweet with liquor, a little moldy from age and three decades of water damage, bleach from all the attempts to wash away the other smells.

Every head in the bar swivels to see who enters. Most turn back to their drinks when they recognize me. A few smile and nod. Trish is behind the bar. She waves me down to an empty stool by the soda gun on the far end.

She knows right away that something is wrong. Trish leans across the bar for me to explain. I’m yelling in her ear when the Lainey Wilson song that has been belting from the jukebox ends and twenty pairs of eyes flick to me as I’m saying, “fucking her from behind.”

Trish’s eyes go wide, but not wide enough, and Morgan Wallen starts playing before she can tell me why she’s surprised but not livid like I expect her to be. A few beats into the new song and she won’t look at me. Even with the music on, every ear in Smitty’s hears me scream, “You knew?”

She quickly shakes her head and gets animated with her hands. I catch about every third word, and piece together the explanation I expect:

Trish: I wanted to tell you, but Shawna made me promise…it only just started…I wasn’t sure there was anything to tell.

Blah, blah, fucking blah.

I stand to leave, as if I have anywhere to go, and Trish grabs my hand.

Trish: Stay. Please.

She pours me a shot and a rum and Coke.

Trish: On the house, babe. Sit and we’ll talk.

Without a more attractive option, and my hands still shaking too hard to safely drive, I sit.

Cinnamon from the Fireball shot is searing my throat when the woman on my left nudges me. I’ve been too preoccupied to notice that I’ve been sitting beside Crazy Carly the whole time. Aside from being the town drunk and never far from the bar stool where she is now perched, Crazy Carly earned the name for being…well…crazy. Like potion-making, cat hoarding, runes painted on her front door, her-last-boyfriend-disappeared-without-a-trace crazy.

And she’s smiling at me.

I nod and busy myself in my purse, finally sorting through the mess and coming up with my vape pen. Thank God, one thing finally went right today.

Crazy Carly takes a drag of her cigarette. Smoking isn’t allowed in bars here, but no one is willing to enforce it with her after the last person who tried ended up losing all their teeth a short time later. She carries her own ashtray everywhere she goes in a gator skin purse.

I take a hit off my vape pen and avoid eye contact with Crazy Carly. I can feel her watching me. In the brief silence between songs, she asks me if I’ve ever played the game in the back?

I know what game she’s talking about. There are a few slot-style machines plotted around the pool table and one lone gambling machine, a Spooky 2, tucked in a corner by the bathrooms. No one ever plays the Spooky 2 because the bathrooms smell like shit whether they’re occupied or not. Trish comes back and refills my drink with a helpless shrug. She’s been too busy to talk, and this being Friday night I’m not surprised. When she leaves to fill more drinks, Crazy Carly nudges me again, nodding toward the far side of the bar and the Spooky 2 machine. I tell her I’m not really in the mood.

She stands, snuffs her cigarette, and dumps her ashtray on the floor at her feet. Shoulders tense as she passes behind the people at the bar. Even those deep in conversation flinch as if stricken with a sudden chill at her proximity. I let out a relieved breath myself and quickly forget about her. It’s hard to think about anything else with the image of Trevor and Shawna fresh in my head.

As if to cap this day that just won’t fucking end, Greg—the cop who wrote my parking ticket—and a bunch of his cop buddies—who all work with Trevor—pile in and push their way to the bar and start ordering shots. It doesn’t take long for them to notice me. Can they tell by my face that I know the secret they are probably all keeping for their brother in blue? I get the side eye from some. Others shake their heads and laugh. I’m the butt of their jokes now. Perfect. I wonder which of them gave Trevor the idea to use COVID as an excuse to ditch me and spend the night with my sister.

I hate this place. I hate this town and everyone in it, but especially the cops. I have to walk past the whole lot of them to get out and I’m definitely ready to leave now. But I also have to pee and since I’ll have to pass them either way, I take what’s left of my drink, keep my head down as I push around the edge of the cop mob, and head to the bathroom on the far side of the bar.

I find Crazy Carly playing the Spooky 2 machine.

Her eyes on me raise the hairs on the back of my neck as I slip into the bathroom. I take a few more hits off my vape pen, pee, and check my phone. There’s nothing from Trevor or Shawna and I don’t know if I should be pissed or relieved.

When I come out of the bathroom, Crazy Carly isn’t at the machine anymore, and the whole corner smells like smoke from her Marlboros. I’m about to keep walking when the machine chimes at me and I notice the bank.

There is one hundred dollars in it, and the spin button flashes rainbow colors for me to play.

I look around for Crazy Carly and don’t see her at the bar. I swallow what’s left of my drink and I’m heading toward the door when the game chimes again. It’s a chipper sound, followed by a cackling laugh and a wolf’s howl.

One hundred dollars. I’m newly unemployed, and a hundred bucks could go a long way. I look around again and when I’m sure Crazy Carly really isn’t here, I press the cashout button.

Nothing happens.

I press it again and the bank stays at one hundred dollars. The screen flashes, frozen and waiting from the last spin. It’s like a casino game, but instead of cherries and jackpots, you match creatures from horror myths: witches, werewolves, Frankenstein, vampires, ghosts, Medusa, the grim reaper. A witch in the middle row winks at me and says, “Fancy a spin on my broom?”

I don’t usually play these kinds of games. I don’t have enough money to waste on them, especially when no one ever really wins. But I can’t get the damn thing to cash out, and I can’t get myself to just leave one hundred bucks un-played, so I sit, and press the spin button.

The rows spin, stopping from the left to the right. Okay, nothing unusual about this. I press the button again. I don’t understand how the betting works—how to choose how many lines to play and what their placement means—but I do know that every time I press the button, a dollar is whittled away from the original one hundred. I’m down to eight-six bucks when five wolves howl and a neon line connects their placement in the rows.

Coins fly across the screen, then a question: bank my five-dollar win or try my luck in the graveyard. Huh. I don’t know what happens in the graveyard, but I’m curious so I press the flashing headstone.

Seven new headstones appear on the screen, all flashing for me to choose one, so I do. Wolves howl again, but the sound is…different. Not the fake game-generated howl, but the sorrowful cries of actual wolves chill my veins. I look around to see if anyone else heard it over the jukebox. No one is looking at me. I would expect the cops at least to be on alert for anything weird, even if they’re off duty. What would they do if a pack of wolves wandered into town? For a moment, I indulge the fantasy of Greg and the rest of the Conover officers getting mowed down and chewed to bits before they could even grab their tasers. I bet that would wipe the smirks off their stupid faces when they look at me.

Wow, I am so filled with vitriol. I’m not normally like this. I’ve never imagined a wild animal killing anybody, but the thought is so oddly satisfying now that I keep indulging it that I almost miss the game flashing the words: beware the werewolf bite before returning to the main screen.

My bank has gone up to ninety-six bucks. I’ve doubled my win. I still can’t cash out, and I don’t want to. The monsters and their crooked, evil grins smiling up at me are the best part of this day. In another few spins my bank has grown to just over one hundred dollars, and five Medusas hiss with glee as a neon line connects their faces. Do I want to press my luck in the graveyard again? It’s a ten dollar win if I don’t, and the bank already has more money than when I started. What the hell?

In the graveyard, there are six headstones to choose from now. When I do, a single Medusa appears in the center of the screen, the snakes around her head shaking and hissing. Rattling—

Wait, that rattling isn’t in the game. It’s on the floor at my feet where I feel something slither around my ankles.

I jump out of my seat and scour the linoleum. There’s…nothing. Of course there isn’t a snake in Smitty’s. I feel stupid for even thinking it, but the impression of cool snake scales remains on my bare ankles. I’ve definitely had enough to drink and played enough of this game. I hit the cashout button and as before nothing happens.

I look up as Trish runs out from behind the bar with a fresh drink she says is from Levi.

Levi. I find him among the other cops, tipping his own glass to me with a knowing frown. He’s the only one of the bunch I don’t hope gets mauled by that imaginary wolf pack because we graduated together and always got along fine. The drink feels like an apology for Trevor.

I take it and stop Trish from running back to work.

Dani: The game won‘t cash out.

Trish (in a hurry): if I unplug it to reset it, the money goes away.

It’s all she says before she disappears behind the packed bar.

Great. I guess I’ll keep playing, at least while I finish my new drink that I can tell Trish made extra strong. 

Medusa’s message is an ominous look into my eyes and die and I definitely feel like I should look away. I don’t, and with a green flash on the screen, my veins freeze, and I shiver. It’s the same feeling I got whenever my former boss slithered down the row of cubes behind me. He’s the most frigid asshole I’ve ever met, and honestly, I should be relieved that I never have to see him again.

I sip my drink and keep playing.  As before, I’ve doubled my winnings. But, as I start playing again, I lose every last cent within a matter of minutes. I’m remembering why I don’t play these stupid games with my own money, when six green Frankenstein monsters with bolts in their necks flash in their rows, connected by a flashing neon line. I’ve won fifteen bucks, unless I want to try my luck in the graveyard.

Of course I do.

There are five gravestones now. When I choose, Frankenstein appears on screen and his big, lifeless eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls over dead. Or…more dead than before. My bank is struck by lightning that cracks it open, and thirty bucks leak out.

What the—? This hasn’t happened yet. I’m hemorrhaging money and I see my next rent check decomposing with the doubly-dead Frankenstein monster. The bank whittles down to fifty dollars and I’ve sucked my drink down to the bottom, when it happens—on screen are six Jasons from the Friday the Thirteenth movies in hockey masks with raised machetes, and a flashing neon line connecting them. It’s a twenty-five dollar win, and if I visit the graveyard, I have a chance at getting back to the original hundred.

In the graveyard, there are once again five headstones. I hold my breath as I choose, wondering how much cash I’ll lose to this murderous monster if I lose.

A single Jason takes up the whole screen and slices across the center with his machete, as if he’s slitting a throat. My throat, I think, as I suddenly feel a line pucker in my skin. My hand goes to my neck which, of course, hasn’t been slashed, but still burns until Jason speaks a garbled message.

Hold onto your heads.

I wonder what my neighbor would think if he woke up and his Shih Tzu’s head was hanging by the ears from his porch light.

Wait—did I seriously just imagine a decapitated dog? I hate that little Shi Tzu, but I don’t want it to die. What am I thinking? What am I doing?

I feel truly sick then. My bank fills with money and stops at one hundred bucks. I press the cash-out button. Slap it. Hold the goddamn flashing thing down with my palm. The monsters smile and patiently wait for me to spin again.

Levi: Hey, Dani.

I shout my surprise at finding Levi standing next to me, holding a fresh drink. I don’t realize I’ve finished the other one and have no idea when he walked over.

Dani (breathless): Hey.

Levi: Thought you could use this.

He trades me the full glass for the empty sitting on the edge of the game. I don’t know what to say or how to explain that I still feel a burning line in my neck from a machete that isn’t even real.

Levi swallows hard and lowers his eyes.

Levi: Trev’s a prick.

With that he frowns and heads back to the cop mob with his shoulders around his ears. I notice the music on the jukebox is becoming unsettling, like some kind of musical omen. The Doors begin singing about how people are strange, and I agree.

People are strange. And so is this game. I slap the spin button.

Almost immediately the screen fills with witches, connected by the jagged neon line that always signals a win. I already know what I’m going to do before I press the button for a chance at doubling the shocking fifty dollar spin. In the graveyard, I choose between the four flashing headstones that are offered before a close-up of a witch with a long, wart-covered nose poking out beneath the brim of her pointed black hat takes over the screen. She cackles and I get a sickening whiff of sulfur, as if someone has taken a fresh shit in the bathrooms behind me even though I’m fairly certain they are both empty.

I gag on the smell and the taste gathering in the back of my throat. I look down at my drink. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had. The room outside of the game in front of me won’t hold still, as if Smitty’s is on a boat in choppy water and everyone here is anchored except for me. What is Trish putting in these drinks? Isn’t it her job as a bartender to make sure I don’t have too much? I haven’t even asked for these, and I can’t believe Levi wants to sponsor my entire night of drinking.

Trish, my traitorous cousin who knew about the betrayal. Feeding me booze wasn’t penance enough. Does she really think she’s helping me? Or does she think I should get out of the way and let my sister and Trevor live happily ever after? Trish has always been closer to Shawna. They were in the same grade, and I was just the annoying little sister, the obnoxious younger cousin following at their heels. I bet Trish was the first to know. My sister probably sat at this very bar on a slow Tuesday night and spilled her guts to Trish, looking for advice on how to break my heart. Now Trish thinks a few Captains and Cokes will make up for it?

I see her cheer and take a shot with the cops. I hope she fucking chokes on it.

With two hundred dollars in my bank, I spin again.

Of course I fucking do.

Pink Floyd sings about lunatics, their song Brain Damage literally laughing at me from the jukebox. I feel like one. A lunatic. I race through spin after spin. I lose some, win some. I’m teetering around one hundred and seventy five dollars when I lose a graveyard gamble to a mummy. The next person who uses the bathroom comes out with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, trailing three feet behind them, and I watch the mummy rip my bank open and let a hundred coins spill out.

It feels a little like I’ve been ripped open, at least my hopes and dreams that suddenly seem to hinge on this game. But I can’t stop now. I have less money than I started with and I’m actually afraid to press the cashout button in case it actually works this time. That would be my luck today.

I lean closer to the game, absently sip my drink, and keep betting. Pink Floyd makes way for Monster Mash and I wonder what drunk idiot decided that June is the time for a Halloween playlist.

The monsters in the game seem to shimmy and shake with the music. It’s nothing if not disturbing. I don’t have time to dwell on it because the screen is filled with neon streaks and squares of vampires. There are seven or fourteen. I’m not sure. They won’t stay still long enough for me to count the pale faces splitting into predatory grins, revealing fangs dripping blood. My hand covers my neck where I feel the press of teeth at my jugular. I check my hand for blood and, of course, there isn’t any. I haven’t been bitten, just like Jason Voorhees hadn’t actually slit my throat.

I let many, many Draculas take me to the graveyard. There are only three headstones to choose from now. I get a sense that the game is winding down, but winding down to what? The prize if I win is two hundred dollars. If I lose, I guess that will take me into negative numbers. Will the game be over then? The thought is both a relief and terrifying. I need this money. I didn’t realize how much I needed it when I sat down. The hundred dollars that wasn’t even mine has come and gone several times over and I’m not walking away from this machine with nothing.

I choose a headstone, and a single Dracula looks me dead in the eye, his fangs dripping crimson on his black cape. I feel…something…wet land on my shirt and look down. There’s nothing there. He grins again and his fangs elongate down past his chin and the sharpness I feel over my jugular, the sudden piercing pain isn’t in my rum-soaked mind. It fucking hurts as if I’ve been impaled. Quickly the sharpness becomes a dull ache the spreads up through my jaw and down into my collarbone. I grow…cold. An iciness courses from my neck through my veins. I take a sip of my drink, hoping the addition of more alcohol in my body will interrupt the freezing sensation.

Shouting at the front of the bar startles me, and I look away from the game, almost missing Dracula’s promise:

I vant to suck the blood of the depraved.

The blood of the depraved? The first person who comes to mind is Trevor. I can’t think of anything more depraved than a man who sleeps with his girlfriend’s sister. My mind fills with the memory of Trevor naked with—

What’s happening? The cops are in a frenzy. I’ve been so engrossed in the game that I didn’t notice the crowd of police officers thin down to just Levi and two others. Greg and most of the other cops are gone, along with half of the rest of the patrons. What time is it? I fumble for my phone in my purse with hands that feel like ice blocks and see that it’s one a.m. I’ve been here for almost two hours.

More commotion near the door peels my attention from my phone. The bar door opens. I think I hear…no, it can’t be.

I hear a howl.

A wolf’s howl.

An on-duty officer rushes in, covered in blood. He’s hysterical, pawing off the other officers’ hands when they try to find the wound. The blood isn’t his. The cop—his name is Ryan, I think—relays a story that doesn’t make any sense from where I’m sitting. He got a call about a wolf near the Kwik Trip gas station on the east side of Conover. By the time he had responded to the call, it had attacked a man pumping diesel.

A fellow officer.

I knew before the rest came spilling out. Greg. Officer Ryan was covered in Greg’s blood.

The other cops go absolutely feral at the news. They run out the door in a pack of pumping fists and expletives to contain the beast and recover Greg’s body from the Kwik Trip.

The already cold blood in my veins slows. There’s no way. No way that this is real. A wolf? In Conover?

There’s another howl, closer. Right in front of me. On the game. The screen is waiting for my next spin and every wolf is howling at the electronic moon.

Trish is shouting. I wonder if it’s something about the cops, but they’ve all gone, and another patron has locked the door in case the wolf makes it this far. Trish is dancing behind the bar. A shaky, jerky, drunken-looking dance to this ridiculous song I’ve never heard before. The singer sounds like an escapee from a mental institution, and the lyrics are about someone coming to take them away HA-HAAA!

A nightmare. That’s what this is. A witch in the game cackles. None of this is funny. Trish’s wild movements start knocking drinks off the bar. Glass breaks, a guy trying to collect it off the floor cuts himself and bleeds. I push away from the machine to help, but the ground starts tilts instead. I didn’t mean to bet again. When the tiles stop, at least a dozen ghosts in long, white sheets are flashing, connected by neon lines. It’s a five hundred dollar prize if I win in the graveyard.

Five hundred dollars would cover a security deposit for a new apartment that I now need. It’s a month’s worth of other bills, plus gas and groceries. It will tide me over until I find a new job.

I forget Trish’s wild dancing, the man with blood streaming down his arm, and the concerned cries of the other patrons who are trying to help, and follow the ghosts into the graveyard to choose between only two headstones.

The dread in my bones is at odds with the flashing prize promise in the upper righthand corner. Something is happening here that is beyond my understanding. I don’t know exactly how it relates to the game, but I know that it does. That somehow something is being triggered by the Spooky 2 machine.

I hold my breath for the loss, not even sure what that will look like at this point. A ghost in its flowing sheet creeps into the frame.

I am who deserves to die, it whispers.

My heart breaks when I think of my sister. Not the Shawna I grew up with, but the one I found naked with my boyfriend. The one who knew I’d gotten fired and chose to spend the night with my man instead of me. The woman who looked me in the eye while she curled her hair and gushed about this date, the one she’d tell me about if everything went well.

A date with my own boyfriend.

The lying, traitorous bitch.

My bank fills with five hundred coins and my eyes fill with tears.

There’s pounding on the bar door, someone screaming outside of it. There’s an argument between two men about whether or not to open it. A third—the one wrapping a bar rag around his bloody arm—pushes between them and unlocks it.

Vomit threatens to roll up my throat. I barely recognize Officer Ryan with the slash down the side of his face, the entire left side of his body shredded. He collapses in a pile of ribboned flesh inside the door, gurgling and sputtering then going still.

Frozen. I am completely frozen in my seat. Everyone else goes stark-raving mad. Well, everyone besides Trish who, still dancing, grabs a glass bottle of tequila off the shelf and breaks it over her own head. Howls from outside fill the bar, drowning out whatever maddening atrocity plays on the jukebox. The two men who didn’t want to let Officer Ryan in hurry to haul him away so they can close the door once more.

The one with the bloody arm is the first to be taken down by the giant gray mass of claws and teeth that shatters the door before they lock it. As if an ancient deadbolt would keep this thing, this wolf out.

A woman starts cackling. I glance at the game and expect to find the witches reveling in sadistic glee. But it isn’t the witches. The woman cackling, audible over the jukebox, the snarling beast, and the absolutely blood-curdling cries of man being eaten, is Trish. She’s laughing like the lunatic from the Pink Floyd song while Jose Cuervo and blood from her head wound seep into her eyes.

The wolf lifts its head from the lifeless mess of flesh and bones underneath its giant paws. Yellow eyes lock onto me. It lowers its head almost to the body beneath it, pink saliva streaming from its jaw to the open cavity of the man’s chest.

A glint of gold catches my eye. It’s a richer, more natural color than the predatory eyes locked on me. There’s something gold hanging from the wolf’s neck. I focus my bleary eyes and for a moment the chaos in my periphery blots out, my attention narrowed on the small pendant I know I’ve seen before. A number at the end of a necklace. The entire football team had them.

The wolf stalks closer, stepping over its victim, and lifts its head as if ensuring that I see the number.

Nineteen. Greg’s football number. The same one I used to paint on my face before games. A one on my right cheek. A nine on my left.

I brace myself for the inevitable attack. Of all days, this would be the day that I would die. I expect my relatively small, relatively meaningless life to flash before my eyes like I’ve heard in the movies, but it doesn’t. Instead, I see all the people who have wronged me flashing in Greg’s narrowed stare.

Carter, my heartless boss. Trish, my lying cousin. Trevor, my cheating boyfriend. Shawna my only sister and the source of the worst possible betrayal.

Even my shitty neighbor and his shitty little Shi Tzu are mirrored there. And with them all, me. An unremarkable woman with glazed eyes and a broken soul who lost it all in a matter of hours.

All but the game. The Spooky 2 machine chimes and for a split second I shift my gaze to the screen. I don’t recall pressing the button, but the pictures are spinning. They slow and finally stop—not on a cartoon monster but in the graveyard itself where one headstone fills the screen. Walking slowly from the right, in a black cloak that drags along the ground, scythe in hand, is the grim reaper.

The last thing I see before the wolf—Greg—leaps is the name on the headstone.

Mine.

***

There’s pounding at the front door. I thought it would be in my head. I expect a hangover headache or nausea or something. When I sit up in bed the room doesn’t spin, my guts don’t quake. I don’t know how I’ve gotten here. It’s morning, and whoever is knocking is shouting my name.

I’m in the clothes I wore last night, down to the shoes. My feet hit the floor, and I wait for the flood of post drinking hell to finally catch up with me. It doesn’t.

I walk, somewhat numb, to down the hall to the front door. On the other side, Officer Levi is ashen and sweaty. For a beat he looks relieved to see me. I think he might even cry. He collects himself and looks me over, his brows pinching in confusion.

Red and blue lights flash in my eyes from the two squad cars on the street.

Dani: What’s wrong?

Levi can’t seem to find the words. He glances at my neighbor’s house, and I follow his gaze to the coroner’s van parked in the driveway, and two officers on the porch untangling something hanging from above Mr. Lewis’s door.

I try asking what happened, but I’m interrupted by the coroner wheeling a stretcher with a black body bag. One of the officers swears and the thing above the door finally comes loose.

A head. Small, furry, cleanly severed.

Levi (shaken): Mr. Lewis and his Shi Tzu were decapitated last night. The doorbell camera picked up a masked man with a machete.

A masked man with a machete.

He’s still talking as the memory of Spooky 2 comes back in a flood. The image of Jason Vorhees slashing across the screen. The slice I felt across my own throat for the fifty dollar win. I touch my neck and don’t feel the clean cut of a blade, but mangled flesh and tendons.

What the fuck?

I turn from Levi and run to my bathroom. What I find in the mirror is so much worse than a severed head. My neck has been chewed almost completely through. Only a few red muscles and tendons seem to hold my head on my shoulders. Blood coats my chest, my clothes. I look as though I’ve been slaughtered. The skin that isn’t mangled is pale, bloodless. Dead. But there isn’t much of it.

The right side of my face is mangled, bits of my cheek hang over a hole, over exposed teeth and gums. I open my mouth and don’t feel loose ribbons of flesh or the stretching of tendons. Inside my body feels normal.

No, not normal. Intact, yes. But normal? Maybe it’s the terror or revulsion at seeing my ravaged corpse in the mirror or the clarity I suddenly have over how it happened, but I am frozen. Just as I was last night when the werewolf, Greg, sank his teeth into my throat.

Levi: Dani—Dani, are you okay?

Officer Levi is at my side, watching me stare at myself. He doesn’t see what I see in the mirror, that much is clear.

Levi: We don’t know what’s going on, but the other officers—the ones that are left—are cleaning up bodies all over town. There isn’t an obvious connection between the deaths except…except for you.

I turn from the mirror. He sees the hysteria welling up inside me and mistakes it for confusion. I don’t want him to tell me about the others. About my boss that had been reported missing by his boyfriend, the only trace a new, strange statue in Carter’s likeness in front of the office where I had been fired. About my cousin Trish who slit her own wrists with a broken liquor bottle and bled out behind the bar, dancing a jerky, twisted jig as the blood left her body and her legs collapsed underneath her.

He leads me to the couch and sits me down, folding what’s left of my hands over my bloodied lap. My gaze snags on the ring and pinky fingers on my right hand that dangle by sinewy threads to the palm.

Levi: I’m so sorry about Trevor. I can’t even begin—

Dani (dazed): I know about him and Shawna.

Levi (confused): You do?

I nod before I realize he isn’t talking about cheating.

Levi: I don’t mean that…Trev…we tried calling him in. He never answered. We found him this morning naked, completely drained of blood.

My neck throbs with the puncture wounds I felt last night, a vague reminder of Dracula’s promise on Spooky 2.

I vant to suck the blood of the depraved.

I brace myself for the truth about Shawna. All Levi can tell me is that, like my former boss, my sister is missing. He doesn’t even lie and say they are hopeful to find her, and I know they won’t. He walks right by her when he leaves.

The ghost of my sister, pale and lifeless, stares at me from the lounge chair across the room. The woman I thought deserved to die.

She’ll be with me, always. A reminder of the carnage caused by a petty desire for revenge, as if I need another. As if the torn pieces of my body that only I can see that will never, ever heal would ever let me forget.

There’s money in my bank account—a laughable amount. Enough to cover my own funeral if anyone else finds out that I’m already dead, if that’s what I am.

Enough to cover Shawna’s if they ever find her body.

Then, there’s also enough for another round with the Spooky 2. My shredded limbs practically hum with the desire to press the spin button again.

There’s nothing stopping me. What else have I got to lose?