Halloween AU: Masquerade Mishaps Who: Tatum, Teagan, & Marcus (with mentions of Susie & Emma.) When: Halloween night. Where: High school party that is hosted at Susie Wilson's house. What: Teagan agrees to get her little sister into a party with 'the older crowd'.. but there is, of course, a catch. Warnings: Delicious death and subpar big sister skills.
“Come on, Taters,” the older girl cajoled, getting impatient with her sister. At thirteen, Tatum had officially reached a difficult age, according to their father. Teagan was just about ready to agree, as her kid sister seemed content to sit in the car all night. “I thought you wanted to come to the party with me. You agreed to the terms! Look, I’ll take you right back home if you’d rather sit around and pass out candy all night, but I promise, this will be fun. Besides,” she added, a smirk pulling at her sage green lips, “Emma’s probably gonna be here.”
That was admittedly kind of a low blow, but Teagan was worried that her peers were too stupid to get the venus fly trap costume without being accompanied by a fly. If she had to use her sister’s budding, awkward obsession with an older girl to get her to wear the costume in public, so be it. All’s fair when it came to Halloween, and Teagan didn’t want to get asked what she was supposed to be all night long.
Tatum didn’t know what was worse; the costume itself, or that she wasn’t allowed to pull her hoodie on over it. Wearing her sweater would cover up the ridiculous (and meticulously) hand-crafted wings, and pulling her hood up would hide the antenna headband that Teagan had put on her during the ride over, presumably at that moment so she would have less time to argue about it. “I d-did want t-to come,” she answered, only a little unsurely. Her big sister had her hook, line, and sinker.. and she knew it, too. If Emma Carter might be at the party, then Teagan likely could have dressed Tatum up in anything and gotten her to go along, short of showing up naked.
It could, she supposed, be worse than a fly. Her bony legs looked silly in the skin-tight black tights, and she had a perfectly good Queen Amidala costume at home that she could have worn.. but it could definitely be worse than a fly. She could be the big green fly trap, for example. “I just.. y-you really don’t think people are g-going to laugh at us?” If they laughed, whether it was with or at them, Tatum was sure she would just die. These were older kids, much more mature and worldly than she was, and it was a lot to live up to on short notice.
“I don’t w-want to go home with.. dad, I guess. But p-promise they won’t laugh?”
The older girl was fussing with her oversized collar, trying to get it to stand up at least a little bit. She’d put wire in the piping around it, but it wasn’t strong enough to counter the weight of the fabric. Other than the collar, Teagan wasn’t wearing much else. The catsuit had been white at one point, but she’d just about ruined one of their bathtubs dying it, and had spent hours painting vines and leaves against the green. She’d also dyed her hair crayon-colored red, to match the interior of the color. The intention had been to make a sexy venus fly trap, but the end result was lacking for all of her efforts, and the green makeup mostly made her look ill.
Still, there was no hesitation. No apparent self-consciousness, or trace of embarrassment. Teagan was eager to get into the party, and was only being held back by her sister, rather than the failings of her costume.
“Say they do,” she said, looking back at Tatum, perfectly sincere. “Say we go in there, and the absolute worst thing in the whole world happens and everyone points to laugh right at you. Then what? We laugh right back at them, show them all we have a sense of humor, and Emma Carter notices you exist for once. That’s it. That’s the worst case scenario, right there. Trust me, kiddo, it’s better to be laughed at than ignored.” Teagan’s eyes took on a faraway cast for a second, but she shook her head to focus again on her sister. “Anyway, it’ll be fine. If anyone’s an asshole, we’ll leave. I got your back, Taters. Promise. Now, you ready?”
Slouched back into the passenger seat, Tatum only pouted slightly as she listened to her sister’s answer. Of course Teagan would say something like that, she just didn’t understand what it was like for Tatum. Getting embarrassed, getting made fun of, was the worst thing in her thirteen year old life. Sometimes she wasn’t sure that her sister had a single self-conscious bone in her whole body. Tatum, on the other hand, could scarcely smile at another human being in passing without assuming they were making fun of her dorky looking smile after they walked away.
For everything that they had in common when it came to their interests, their views on the opinions of others had always clashed. Ignored was okay with Tatum. Hell, she almost preferred it, to blend in like a good piece of wallpaper. It was safe. She heaved a sigh, looking back at her sister quite sincerely herself. “Whatever. If they do l-laugh? I-I’m jumping off t-the roof, I s-swear to God,” she warned half-jokingly, though she was relenting, reaching for the door handle to let herself out of the obnoxiously yellow car. “If t-they’re not already l-laughing at us f-for rolling up in t-the Lemon, I’ll b-be surprised,” she muttered, swallowing thickly and reaching up to adjust her antenna once she was outside.
She could already hear the music blaring from inside, and see people mingling on the front steps of the house; most in costume, all drinking. She’d never even gotten drunk before, what if she threw up? What if she threw up on Emma? Even if she noticed her, it’d be ruined then. It was easier just not to try to talk to her, safer to avoid her. “T-This better be g-good as y-you say it w-will be,” she added, over the roof of the car. “I c-could be at h-home w-watching Loiter Squad..”
“It’ll be fine,” Teagan insisted, motioning for Tatum to go ahead of her while she locked the car. Then she caught up quickly, taking mincing little steps in her ridiculous electric green heels, so that people would get the costume association. Not that many people were looking in their direction, anyway. The Donnelly sisters didn’t exactly grab a lot of notice, especially since Tatum Donnelly was barely a freshman. As far as they were concerned, she was a virtual unknown. Teagan, on the other hand, was just an odd duck. Prone to lying, prone to being disruptive, and prone to wearing bizarre, homemade costumes to Halloween parties.
Though she did at least have some friends. She’d been invited to the party, after all, and had gotten the green light to drag her little sister along. As soon as they were threw the door, she was in full social mode, scanning the room for people she wanted to wave at (Avery Weston, who was essentially a dreamboat, despite being kind of broody and a potential member of the hivemind blonde club), as well as people she needed to steer Tatum away from (who’d invited Hunter? Good lord). It wasn’t the grand entrance she’d been hoping for, turning heads and drawing eyes, but it wasn’t a disaster. Nobody laughed. Nobody really cared.
“Okay,” she declared, clapping a hand on her little sister’s shoulder. “I see Susie over there… I’m gonna go say hi and find out where the drinks are. You stay here for a second, ‘kay? I’ll be right back.”
Susanna Wilson was in Teagan’s year, but happened to know every boy in the senior class. There was a part of Teagan Donnelly that hated the redhead, jealous of the fact that she could make a cheap Halloween store fairy costume look good. But there was also a part of her that desperately wanted to be like Susie, and was more than willing to use her for connections. She had it all planned out in her mind, how she’d go over and say hello, ask where the drinks were, and maybe point out the wings on Tatum’s fly costume. Offer to make Susanna a better pair for next year, maybe.
No, that was kind of creepy. Who would go for that? Ugh. Besides, Susie probably didn’t want to be a fairy twice in a row, that was lame. Teagan took a breath and smiled at Tatum reassuringly. “Mingle or something! Make a friend!”
Tatum couldn’t have been more thrilled about their lackluster entrance. She barely even noted more than a couple of pairs of eyes turning their way as they passed, before quickly turning away again, back to whatever they’d been doing before. Unlike her beaming sister, Tatum was a redheaded shadow, trailing slightly behind Teagan’s back. She managed to keep her head up, but avoided looking too long at anyone, not wanting to seem like a staring weirdo within the first five minutes of entering the party. She needed to play it cool.
She jumped a little when Teagan touched her shoulder, and her freckles stood out as her face paled immediately at the thought of her sister all but abandoning her in this crowd of much older, more intimidating teenagers. “W-What?” she managed to get out, despite knowing that she was resigned to her fate whether she wanted it or not. There was no swaying her sister once she got an idea in her head. “Don’t t-take forever, please,” the redhead pleaded, trying not to sound as whiny as she felt.
The suggestion of mingling almost made her laugh, but it would have been bitter laughter. Just mingle, make a friend, like it was that simple to do. She wasn’t Teagan, she couldn’t just talk to people. People might have thought Teagan was strange, but they never seemed to be surprised when she spoke up. Half of the time when Tatum opened her mouth, she was told to speak up. Sighing at the older girl, Tatum gave a compliant nod of her head instead, to show that she understood the agreement even if she didn’t like it. She did ask to come, after all.
It certainly wasn’t mingling, but it was easy for her to find a free space to hold up along one of the walls. Leaning her wing-clad back against it, hands folded behind her as well, while she wondered how long she needed to wait to ditch the antenna before Teagan would notice. Even when she wasn’t moving her head, the stupid things seemed to bob comically almost constantly, which was both embarrassing and irritating. She didn’t see Emma anywhere just yet, despite her sister’s suggestion that she might be around, but she kept a keen eye out.
If Emma was there and her costume was half as skimpy as the girl that Teagan was talking to, then Tatum supposed that she could at least go home happy. She didn’t want to leer at anyone in particular (except maybe Emma if she walked by), but there was definitely plenty of skin to see. It was hard not to end up looking at someone’s exposed something, with all of the pseudo sexy costumes being donned around the house. Evidently Mean Girls was right about Halloween in girl world.
“Some kind of beetle?” A dark voice asked, and a hand reached over to bop one of the antenna balls. The guy was over six feet tall, huge, swarthy, and wearing a football uniform that marked him as a senior at their school. His face was smeared with grey greasepaint, and he had black circles around his eyes. A half-assed zombie makeup. Teagan would have been critical of it, and probably offered to fix it for him. “Bichita,” he called her, smirking. “Cute.”
When Tatum turned her head in the direction of the voice, she ended up with her face practically in the older boy’s chest. In order to look at his face, she had to lift her own, chin out but eyes slightly lowered even as she peered up at him. She hadn’t even cracked five feet yet, and in comparison of both height and weight, he towered over her. He was obviously older, as old as her sister or older. It took everything in her not to look like a deer caught in the headlights when he flicked at her stupid antenna headband.
“F-Fly,” she answered weakly, lifting a hand to gesture vaguely toward the crowd that Teagan had abandoned her to go join. “My.. s-sister is the f-fly trap. The g-green girl over there. It was h-her idea.” Most things that the Donnelly sisters got up to were Teagan’s ideas, but she didn’t feel the need to add that to a stranger. She shuffled her feet nervously instead, glad that she’d at least been allowed to wear sneakers, and that he wasn’t laughing. Cute made her cheeks flush against her will, her eyes zeroing in the ground rather than looking up at him any longer. “T-Thanks,” she murmured back, unsure what else to say. Was this mingling?
Marcus spared a glance to the green sister, sizing the girl up. He knew Susie Wilson, but not the girl talking to her. The costume didn’t exactly scream fly trap to him, either, but he wasn’t really in a position to judge costumes. At least theirs looked like effort had been put into them. His was totally phoned in.
Normally, he wouldn’t be inclined to chat up underclassmen, but he was feeling pretty mellow after a few beers, and rather gregarious. Besides, she was vaguely interesting in an offhand way, trying to vanish into the wall like she was. She definitely wasn’t trying to look sexy, either, which set her apart from the rest of the female population. “You go to my school, chica?”
The way he said it was with a great deal of propriety. His school, like he owned it. As big as he was, as confident as he looked, he probably did. This guy didn’t have trouble mingling, that was for sure, and unlike Teagan he didn’t have to flit about begging for scraps of attention. Even just standing there, he was pulling the occasional gaze. People glancing over, wanting to know who he was talking to, wondering by association who she was. Some kid, obviously, but she had to be someone worth talking to at least a little bit, since he was standing next to her. It didn’t even faze him, that people would look. He acted like he didn’t notice.
She’d never actually seen him around school, mostly likely because she often kept her eyes on the ground and avoided the senior class like the plague for the most part, stayed out of the back parking lot where they all hung out, away from the wings of the school where their classes were primarily held. Their gym class period was right after the senior girls, and it was bad enough having to cross their paths once a week, keeping her head down as the older girls left the locker room sniggering. Probably at her chicken legs. She was no big fan of school.
But his jacket was enough to tell her that they did indeed attend the same school, despite never running into each other before. Tatum didn’t run into people, as a general rule, which was probably why her current situation was so painful for her. She wasn’t sure why he was bothering to talk to her, but she noticed every glance he brought, no matter how fleeting. Her cheeks were lit up like a pair of brake lights.
“Uhm, I-I think so,” Tatum replied, fidgeting slightly with the sleeve of her costume, tugging nervously at the fabric. “I’m j-just a freshman t-though,” she admitted quickly, lest he think she were trying to purport herself as something she wasn’t. She knew that she was probably one of the youngest kids in attendance, she had only seen a handful of people in the crowd from the freshman class, and she suspected they were tag alongs with their older siblings as well. “My s-sister brought me along w-with her, since we m-match.. she’s supposed t-to be over t-there looking f-for the drinks.”
Not kissing Susie Wilson’s ass and hanging off her every word, or whatever nonsense Teagan was over there doing. And of course, not that Tatum was especially eager to drink, since she was still worried about if she got sick and threw up in front of everybody.. but it was something easy to talk about. Everybody else was drinking. She’d have to, if she wanted to fit in, feel like less of a little kid. “She’s just uhm.. g-getting me a w-wine cooler or whatever. J-Just waiting f-for her.” She’d never so much as tasted a wine cooler before, if she were being truthful, but she knew they were considered a ‘girly’ drink, and it was the first one she thought of from the top of her head. She figured it would make her sound mature, or whatever.
“Heh. You sure you want to be drinking here, bichita?” Marcus flashed his teeth at her. They seemed larger than they should be. Sharper. Maybe he was wearing fake ones, but if so, then they were certainly better quality than the makeup. The look he gave her bordered on lecherous. “Some fucker might try to take advantage.”
“Ha, I d-doubt it…” Tatum shifted her feet more, staring down hard at the tops of her sneakers, and feeling the color in her cheeks deepen to a candy apple red. She wished that he would just go away, stop drawing attention to them. Where was Teagan, already? Shouldn’t her sister be there to rescue her from overly friendly football players? Skittishly, she risked a glance up to look for Teagan. Maybe if she caught her sister’s gaze, she could send her some kind of signal. Get Teagan to come over and intercept. Magically appear with a plastic cup and relieve Tatum from the torture of carrying on a conversation with this guy whose smile just kept getting bigger and bigger.
When she looked at his face again, it seemed as though the makeup were entirely different than before. Suddenly, her throat felt scratchy. Dry. “I-I should g-go find out what’s holding up m-m… m-m…”
“Your sister?” Marcus offered, helpfully. He was too close to her now, dwarfing her entirely. It wasn’t fair that he was so much taller than she was. Easily two full feet. But the height wasn’t the only thing that distracted her. Had she been wrong about the makeup? Now it looked like he was wearing a mask of some kind, stretched over his real face, with greasepaint smeared on top of that. It was a subtle effect, like something out of one of Teagan’s scary movies.
Tatum tried to swallow, but it was a futile effort. There was no moisture left in her. Her voice squeaked when it came out, like an old hinge or dying mouse. “Y-yeah….”
He threw back his massive head and laughed, probably at the ridiculous noise she’d made. She couldn’t blame him. She felt so stupid, letting herself be scared by an upperclassman like that. Teagan never seemed intimidated by the older kids, boys or girls. It never mattered to her. But Tatum wasn’t really that much like Teagan, despite coming from the same basic genetic pool. She was the weak one. The scared one. The one that needed to be looked after. That had been their dynamic since she was old enough to take halting, wobbly steps after her big sister, and right now that sister was really dropping the ball. Seriously.
“Here, bichita,” he was saying, placing a cold, red plastic cup that was half-full of liquid into her heads. “You want a drink? You can have mine. I’m done with it.”
Gross. Why would she want his drink? “Uh, n-no t-thanks…” She said, shaking her head and trying to give the cup back to him. Was everyone seeing this? A senior boy trying to force an open drink on a freshman girl? Come on, they’d covered that kind of thing in Health class. Never accept a drink from someone you don’t know was the lesson girls got right after don’t get into a car with a stranger, and if nothing else, Michael Donnelly had made damn sure that both his girls knew that.
Marcus wouldn’t take it back though. He just ignored her efforts to return the drink entirely and said, “It’s okay, mija. No worries. I can tell you’re a virgin. It’s pretty fucking obvious. I don’t mind, though. I like that about you.”
Suddenly, she realized that she was cornered. He had her up against the wall, and the bulk of him was so much that there was no way around, really. To get away, she’d have to somehow push through him, which seemed about as likely as her being able to push through solid concrete. Tatum looked around frantically, but now it seemed like the people at the party -- who’d been so fascinated, before -- were content with minding their own business. It seemed utterly absurd that she’d be practically getting shoved into a wall by a leering football player making inappropriate comments, and nobody was looking. She knew that she was probably over-reacting, somehow, and calling for help would draw everyone’s eyes right back to her, but this didn’t feel right. But she needed to call for help, even if it was embarrassing. Tatum took a breath to cry out, but she caught sight of him again and her throat closed up with fear.
His face unrecognizable. Twisted into an inhuman form; a void surrounding by gnashing teeth. Like a lamprey’s mouth, but so much worse. As it loomed over, she tried to force a scream, but nothing came out. Not even the little mouse-squeak from before it was on her, stretching to encompass her entire face. Her head. The smell was awful. A combination of booze and blood and M&Ms. In a knee-jerk reaction, her survival instincts kicked in and she thrashed against him, but that only made it worse. As big as he was, she expected his body to be hard, unyielding… but not sticky. Her hands clawing against his football jersey found a sickening amount of give, like his entire body was formed partially out of molasses. Her fingers sunk into him, and she could feel it getting under her nails as clearly as she felt the teeth closing around her throat, cleanly severing the jugular. Tendons, blood, flesh, hair and all, lovingly slurped down
He didn’t even chew. Didn’t have to. It wouldn’t take long for such a cute little bug to be completely dissolved.
When Teagan did finally come back, having given up on keeping her collar up but holding two wine coolers for herself and Tatum, all she found was a bent pair of wings and broken hairband with glued-on antennae. “Tatum?” She looked around, searching faces for the little redhead’s, but not finding her among the other partygoers. That was wrong. Tatum couldn’t leave without her; Teagan had the keys. And Tatum wouldn’t just strip the costume off… they’d made a deal. Teagan suddenly felt nervous. “Hey! Has anyone seen my sister?
Nobody had. After a half-hour of looking, ascertaining that Tatum wasn’t just sitting out in the car, combing the house and drafting her classmates into helping her with the search, Teagan called the cops. Her sister had gone missing and that was a big deal, far exceeding the penalty for underage drinking, as far as she was concerned. The rest of the party didn’t feel similarly, of course. The other students argued loudly about it. Her dumb sister had probably just walked home, like a loser, and it wasn’t any reason to ruin the whole party over it.
But Teagan knew better, so Teagan made the call. Even if it did mean becoming a social pariah for the rest of her high school career, and getting Susie Wilson’s mother in trouble for having an unsupervised party on her property, where minors had access to alcohol. Whatever. Tatum wouldn’t just leave like that.
It felt like it took ages for her dad to get there, for the police to come to take her statement. Teagan was sitting on the curb of the sidewalk, truly scared by that point. Her sage-green makeup smeared with tears shed while trying to convince others of her certainty that her sister hadn’t just wandered away. That Tatum had been snatched. Nobody was taking it seriously, though. Even their dad looked more angry than worried, listening to her theory before taking off in his car to go look for Tatum. So sure that she’d just decided to walk home on her own.
The policeman offered to take her home, since she didn’t seem to be in any shape to drive. He was sympathetic to her tears, but thought it was more likely that she’d taken something to make her overly paranoid. Drugs at a party full of teenagers seemed a lot more likely than a girl getting kidnapped without anyone witnessing it. It was an age for experimentation with that sort of thing.
“I’m sure she’ll turn up,” he said, opening the door of the police car for her and trying to cheer her up a little. Teagan might have appreciated the gesture, were it not for a sunken feeling in the pit of her stomach that kept telling her that her sister wasn’t just gone, she was gone. That Tatum wouldn’t be coming back. That she’d completely screwed up by bringing her sister to the party in the first place. Her baby sister.
“Hey,” the officer said, looking for a distraction when he saw the tears welling up in the 16-year-old’s eyes. “So what are you supposed to be, anyway?”
It was a simple question, something light to take her mind off of her fears, so he was confused when she responded to it by breaking into a loud sob.