Story by Liam Slade / Originally Published Oct 26 2025
Trapped. Nearly a week and nothing has changed.
That’s not entirely true, of course. They got AJ and Porter. We know better now than to go off alone. In any room or corridor of this place you could run into the Scaries. That’s a fact of life. I’m personally too afraid to sleep. I have to wait for my body to simply get too exhausted that there’s no choice but to succumb, and hope that someone will watch over me.
How did any of this happen. Before all this I was just regular old Andrew Lewis, co-captain of the Chess Club, debate team member, and all-around loser at Warren G. Harding High.
It was supposed to be a party. Almost the entire senior year of our high school was converging on the abandoned power plant for a costume shindig the Saturday before Halloween. Harmless fun. Girls in skimpy outfits. Guys dressed like Borat. Maybe someone’s older brother would bring some beer. Harmless. Even my friends and I were welcome.
Around half-past midnight was the flash. Don’t ask me what it was. Some strange green light filled the entire place. Then came the chaos as we realized what had happened. In an instant, each of us had become the costume we were wearing. Some of the girls became cats or fairies. Some of the guys became football players or ninjas. Two very unfortunate fellows – Kevin and Steve – became a single horse (who does a two-person horse costume anymore?) Some weren’t even lucky enough to become a living organism –Julia Swanson became a loofah, Terry Brooks became a statue. Margaret Hanlon was dressed as a rainbow, so I assume she simply disappeared. Matt C. became a giant Tetris piece (the L-shape), which was actually useful when we needed to barricade a door.
Then there were the Scaries – those who were dressed as vampires, zombies, ghosts and other monstrous creatures. To say they became their costumes is to understate it. Duane Van Camp always bullied me, now as Jason Voorhees he wants to chop my head off.
They hunt us, prey on us, terrorize us. Every day since then has been a never-ending sprint to get away from them, constantly on the move from one part of the building to another.
While we grappled with what to do, the authorities converged on the site, locking the fence and posting armed guards to keep us in. Somehow they knew what had happened. Somehow they felt they had to keep us contained, even those of us who were no threat. We have survived all this time on supplies dropped by drones.
I wouldn’t necessarily think it was so bad – I was sort of a geek before all of this but this has really given me a chance to come into my own among the survivors, using my chess club acumen to determine when it was safe to move from one wing to the next. But my smarts are starting to fade, I feel like the longer I spend here the more I identify as the costume and not my old self. You see, me and a couple of my debate club friends thought it would be so funny to dress up as cheerleaders. It was good for a laugh at first, but now I’m thankful for the increased cardio and gymnastic skills. Plus I know how to get others to be aggressive – be-e aggressive.
The man with the megaphone swears this is all going to end soon and we’ll be free, and I hope it does, but there are upsides. While I’ve had to fend off advances from the football team, I’ve shared a moment or two with a swashbuckling pirate who used to be Carolyn Smith with a painted-on goatee. His/her swordfighting skills have saved my life once or twice. I don’t know if we’ll have to go back to being our old selves when all of this is done, or if we’ll simply have to live like this.
If we make it out alive, I’ll probably be very careful choosing my costume in the future. I wouldn’t mind all of this so much, but I do have one complaint – I wish I hadn’t used such big balloons for my breasts. It really makes running for my life a pain.
Copyright 2025 Liam Slade, all rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without explicit permission from the author.
If you liked this story, you should check out my collection BEYOND OURSELVES available now!