"Vegan Halloween" by Marcel Gabbett
Silver and gold gloves gleamed in the moonlight as robots strolled downtown. Even among a horde of demons, black cats and sexy angels, their appearance struck a chord. Heads swiveled as the cloaked duo passed. Captain Jack Sparrow intercepted their path and grinned. “Finally back together! Safe to assume you guys are touring in 2027?” The robots exchanged monotone glances before shrugging at the beer-breathing scallywag. A few selfies taken with the cap’n and they were back on their way, gait rhythmic.
If the pirate had just taken a closer look, he’d have noticed this was no ordinary Daft Punk get-up. The six-time-Grammy-award-winning-electronica duo indeed remained retired; instead, ‘Daft Sunk’ sauntered down Mass Ave with the confidence that comes from knowing you and you alone have the best costume in town. Because seaweed coiled around the silver robot’s attire. Plastic algae and dollar store treasure glowed on his jacket. A pink octopus suckled his shapely helmet. Mangled flesh stained the gold robot’s arms and legs. Cambridge’s Halloween effervescence illuminated the compass and wrinkled treasure maps taped to his chest. A most awesome, yet unfortunate costume detail: a trident pierced through the neck that complicated moving through narrow entryways.
Even at a young 8 PM, Cambridge’s debauchery spilled onto the streets. Taxis swerved to avoid bands of salmon-colored aliens jaywalking the intersections. Shattered bottles littered the pavement, vampires puked into a storm drain, fisticuffs were exchanged outside Roxy’s Arcade between Hulk and a door-bouncing Michael Myers—presumably in response to the Hulk’s lack of clothing.
Hamza, masquerading as the golden robot, was quite proud of this year’s costume. Daft Sunk was a much-needed hit after the previous two years’ punny costume choices (Rango and Gash and Men in Sack) had failed to inspire. All it took was one viewing of Carpenter’s The Fog (with its drowned and rusted ghosts) to convince a skeptical roommate, Trent, that the idea was perfection.
Vision gray behind his helmet’s visor, Hamza squinted at another group of salmon aliens—small antlers and tentacles sprouting from shoulders and heads, seven elongated fingers, clawed toes, gnarly teeth and three gaunt eyes. They were fucking everywhere tonight. Perhaps the result of some zoomer show he had missed, some podcast recommendation he hadn’t heard—now responsible for the ugliest costume trend since Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.
Daft Sunk shoved their way through a skimpily clad Scooby Gang loitering outside a restaurant. “Can you like, please silence those or something?” A hot zombie waitress with loose flesh and a short skirt met them in the vestibule, eyeing the phones in the boys’ hands. “Get Lucky” boomed out of one, “Harder Better Faster Stronger” from the other. Hamza peered through glass walls to a booth way in the back, by the kitchen where impatient so-called friends were already halfway through a bottle of red wine and a plate of impossible burgers.
Trent rotated his spoon through a bowl of veganized clam chowder. The ghastly sight reminded him of all the horrific AI videos populating his Instagram’s ‘For You Page.’ The pale clumps sure looked like sea-born clams, but were likely some soy-based duplicates. The steamy liquid sure looked like a combination of milk and fish stock, but was undoubtedly some nutted excretion.
“Don’t you want vegan powers?”
Trent peered up to find Demetrius taking another swig of wine. The steamy Indiana Jones costume’s unbuttoned shirt displayed abs and a prominent outie.
“I’m not going vegan, even if this does end up being the bomb. I’m a carnivore at heart, baby.”
Daft Sunk sat shoulder to shoulder on the same side of the booth, their helmets deposited gingerly against the wall. Opposite them, Phoebe, Alex and Demetrius gorged on their vegan feast.
Undefined red sauce dripped from Alex’s lip onto his Matrix-inspired duster and combat boots. “What’s that supposed to be from again?” he asked Phoebe, his mouth full of rye bread.
“It’s from The Thundermans, you uncultured swine,” Demetrius growled, wrapping an arm around his girlfriend. In return, Phoebe stared daggers at her burly treasure hunter.
“Deema, babe, I can speak for myself.” She turned to Alex. “It’s from The Thundermans, you uncultured fuck.” Her makeup bore an unfortunate approximation of plastic surgery, in stark contrast with her usual elegance. “So, in high school, I babysat these twins. They were really into this Disney show called The Thundermans.”
“Can we get back to the topic at hand?” Trent swept his gaze across the booth. “Why did we end up going to Veggie Galaxy?”
“You’re acting like we forced you at gunpoint,” Demetrius said. “We voted, dumbass.”
“Well, yes. But it’s not really fair when four out of five members of the chat are vegan.”
“It is, actually.” Phoebe drummed her fingers on the table, her nails, hair and latex costume all as blue as the Boston Harbor. “Us four voted on this place. You got outvoted. That’s what happens in a democracy.”
Demetrius beckoned a waitress over. “Hey, it’s been a little while since we ordered our cocktails. Just wanted to check if the bartender remembered.”
This waitress, dressed as Poison Ivy, had a bead of sweat trickling down her green neck. In one continuous motion, she swooped down to listen, then kept walking to her preset destination. “I’ll get right on that.”
Demetrius scowled after her and then looked back incredulously at the group. “It’s not that hard to mix some drinks. I’ll go up there and do it myself if it’s such a force.”
“Calm down, honey,” Phoebe said softly, lacing her fingers with his. “She’s a busy girl. There were two other waiters when we arrived, but I haven’t seen them in a while.”
“I just don’t want to be late. The line’s going to be a mile long if we get there after…”
“Maybe it’s time you all convinced me.” Trent interrupted. “I’m just curious… not trying to start a war. Phoebe, did you become vegan because Deema is vegan?”
She shrugged. “I mean, that’s definitely why I started, but even if we weren’t together, I would still stay vegan. It’s healthier. But even more importantly, it’s about energy conservation. Spend five minutes doing some research and you’ll be acquainted with the details. I can send you some articles, but in the meantime, just think about it logically. All the resources we use to feed cattle and pigs and shit? If we just consume that ourselves, it would reduce starvation rates around the world.”
Trent leaned over the table to jab a finger into Alex’s duster. “What about you, Chosen One? What’s your reason?”
Alex was distracted, a vape pen in one hand, and a phone playing NBA highlight videos in the other.
“I asked you a question, dumbass,” Trent snapped.
Alex glowered at the helmetless robot. A few more glasses of red wine in his system and this establishment would be too bloody to continue branding itself as a vegan joint. “If I answer, will you let me consume and chew and digest my meal in peace, fuckass? Look, I really don’t want to act like some truther. I was born vegan. My whole family’s vegan, so I didn’t really have a say. I like to think I would’ve changed at some point, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I really know.”
“What about you, big man?” Trent nodded at Demetrius.
“Animal cruelty, dude. We’re in the same generation; you’ve definitely seen Meet Your Meat.”
Trent rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’ve seen…”
“Sentient creatures. No one deserves to be chained up or packed in like that. Especially not when we have an abundance of alternatives.”
Trent paused his questioning to ogle at Alex as he moved onto a second dish: green goddess bowl with a side of cashew cauliflower. “Uh, so Phoebe, if the whole energy thing is such a big deal, why aren't politicians running with it? Why does it feel like such an underground issue?”
“Maybe because it’s an elitist thing?” He added, elbowing Hamza’s shoulder. “That’s gotta be why your family is vegan. You can look down on all us peons using our grubby hands to pile meat down our gullets.”
Hamza slowly wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Not all my family is vegan. And I just don’t like putting dead things in my mouth.”
Trent winced, his eyes swiveling to a duo of women walking past their booth. Those same salmon bodysuits, except these two also donned four giant tits, reddish goo dripping out onto the tiled floor.
It ignited a fire in Trent’s mind, and he snickered back at Hamza. “But that’s not the whole truth, is it?”
No respect shown, even tonight, when Hamza had gone as far as financing their suits. He turned to the rest of the group. “I shared that with you in confidence.”
“And I can confidently say it connects to the discussion. Why’re aliens your biggest phobia?”
“You’re afraid of spiders, right? What, because they’re gangly and have eight eyes?” Hamza fidgeted with a small anchor dangling from his belt, the smooth ceramic pleasant to the touch. “Aliens are way worse. We don’t know what they might look like, what they might sound like. My fear is more like a fear of the unknown.”
The three opposite the robots were barely listening—attentive to the fact that the entire waitstaff had now vanished. Dozens of patrons approached the bartender to ask for their checks.
“Think about it.” Hamza gnashed his teeth. “Piggybacking off of what Deema said, sentience is the key here. If we eat creatures less intelligent than us, what’s to say a space-faring alien race, who obviously would be vastly above us, wouldn’t engage in the same behavior?”
“That’s fantastic and all,” Trent said with a smirk, “but that’s an awfully unique reason to be vegan. Are you farming for good karma or something?”
Hamza smacked his lips for a few moments, pondering a response. “I admit my fear of aliens was the origin of my shift to veganism, but now I like to latch onto the abundance of other positives it brings to both personal and global health.”
“Are you two done jerking each other off?” Demetrius said as he, Alex and Phoebe rose from the booth. “We out.”
Pennywise jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the group of five were cleared for entry. Hamza maintained eye contact as they walked by, bothered by the doorman’s fixed grimace: it didn’t fit the character at all. In the dark and red hall beyond, they had to shuffle past several saliva-swapping partners. Tinker Bell and a firefighter. A slutty cat and James Bond. A salmon alien dashed out of a bathroom and caught its arm on one of Tinker Bell’s wings. Wire cut deep, until orange puss spit out in foamy dregs on the ground. Tinker Bell spotted the mess, apologized in a slurred whisper and then continued swapping spit with the perky firefighter. Stepping over the sizzling floor, a beyond-buzzed Hamza made a mental note to research what was in those funky costumes—whenever he woke from the inevitable hangover.
Past the winding hall and a series of curtains, the five friends entered a multi-leveled subterranean club. Long bars on either side of the entrance, dozens of bottle service booths, tables and elevated platforms lining the walls. Straight ahead, stairs and ramps led down to the mosh pit.
For the next hour, all they knew was sweat.
Hamza’s golden helmet was long gone, discarded in some piss-filled corner or crumpled underfoot. The costumed crowd gyrated to the pounding darkcore electronic. Massive Jack-o’-lantern balloons bounced about, pulsating orange and red and white. Spiderweb confetti dropped from the ceiling in strands spanning the dance floor. “So what took you so long? Stop to do another Weekend collab on your way here?” This head-bobbing friend, Justin, sported a costume decidedly more involved than the bulk of the dancing rabble. Leather wrist and knee guards, an old rug dyed and detailed to resemble a hunting pelt. Scars slashed down his head and body like streaks of red lightning. Ashy face paint. Old hiking boots, bald cap and plastic axe were the last-minute additions to what was otherwise a top-tier Kratos ‘The Ghost of Sparta,’ costume.
Tiffany, standing beside her boyfriend, had to be responsible. Although half as much effort had been invested into her own Mary Poppins get-up (navy blue suit, white striped umbrella and red bowtie), it still bubbled with charm.
“No, man,” Demetrius answered, stepping in between Hamza and Justin. “Waitstaff dropped the ball. Couldn’t spot them at all. The bartender went to look and didn’t come back. That was the last straw. Everyone in the joint dipped.”
“You dined and dashed!?”
“Unfortunately.”
Hamza swiveled away from the conversation. Even by the dance floor’s perimeter, everyone had to yell to hear one another—way too fucking exhausting. And besides, now he could focus on the crop-top nurses clambering onto the stage. They pestered the Frankenstein’s Monster DJ with pointless questions about his rig. They snapped selfies with him and the crowd. They swayed their hips for a few minutes. They descended.
Following their act, several salmon aliens crawled up on all fours.
Behind Hamza, Trent was pointing out a girl on a higher floor of the club. “She’s totally checking you out, Alex.”
“Who, the one with the crown?”
“No, the one in the Stitch onesie.”
Alex followed Trent’s finger and spotted the girl in question leaning precariously against a metal railing. “I’m not getting it on with Stitch, dude.”
“You’re crazy. Who the fuck cares who she came as? You gotta get busy imagining what she looks like underneath the suit. Actually, fuck that. It's a onesie…You can probably slip inside it with her.”
Alex reared up a fist, but Trent’s pleas for mercy pacified him.
“I’m not crazy because I don’t want to fuck a slobbering alien!”
“Ouch!” Phoebe, returning from a cocktail run, shouldered her way to the group; blood trickled from her shoulder, turning her blue latex green. “One of those freaky fuckers. I brushed up against them in the crowd.”
“Who?” Demetrius hopped a few times, his fists balling.
“I don’t know which one, honey. Some guy dressed like those aliens.”
“Probably the one with blood on their costume.” Alex pointed one out, and the rest of the group turned in unison. It stood there amidst the rave, shoulders hunched, mouth gaping and watering.
“Guy must be really fucking high to mess with my girl.” The overhead lights flickered from rainbow to strobe, off-and-on highlighting Demetrius as he barreled towards center floor.
“What the…” Hamza watched as the salmon aliens on stage scratched at the DJ. What seemed kinky and playful at first turned when the artist and his rig crashed to the ground. The aliens pounced, ripping at flesh and costume, silencing the reanimated DJ.
The music quieted as bloodcurdling cries rang across the club. Hamza took an involuntary step back, but his shoe slid on spilled beer and he tripped. Kind faces, Justin and Tiffany, bent to lend him a hand.
In a blur, something swiped through Hamza’s vision. Blood and ash splattered onto his jacket. Justin and Tiffany’s faces were frozen in time, mouths slightly agape, brows curled with concern. Then a slit of red appeared at the base of both necks—heads slowly toppled, completing the decapitations. An alien, stringy muscles rippling, claws coated with blood, trampled over the dead. Face to face with Hamza, its three eyeballs moved out of sync, its hot breath rank of horrors too foreign to comprehend.
Another whir of motion, but this time it was the silver robot helmet colliding with the alien’s head. In the moment of the creature’s shrieking confusion, a pale-faced Trent hoisted his roommate up and ushered them off the dance floor. Hamza peered over his shoulder at Justin and Tiffany’s bodies—now a midnight snack for a group of aliens. Blood and alcohol and alcoholic blood spurted from the mosh pit. Some aliens leapt onto squealing dancers, some scaled the walls to dislodge the strobing lights.
In the center of the massacre, Demetrius’ arms were pulled in opposite directions, ripping him in two. The wall-scaling aliens finished their task, and the machinery above plummeted to mercifully squash hundreds of patrons. In the half-darkness that ensued, Trent lost grip of Hamza, Alex lost sight of them, Phoebe slinked away, and so each followed different neon signs for different exits. In their own microcosms of terror, they scampered past aliens, past splintered decorations, past dismembered Halloween-goers.
Tailed by several aliens, Alex climbed up a metal scarecrow fixture to the venue’s second level. Stitch lay hunched over the railing, blood trickling down her arms. As Alex hoisted himself over, biceps straining from the exertion, she came to her senses again. Eyes full of tears, puncture holes in her back, she screamed in Alex’s face, startling and stunning him. Additional tears soon followed; an additional shower of blood doused her as well, as she witnessed the aliens make a ladder, stacking and lifting each other up like they were competing in an intergalactic cheer competition—the lucky one at the top licked its lips as it drove a claw through the back of Alex’s neck, jacking him into the afterlife.
At the other end of the club, Phoebe, still nursing her wounded shoulder, vaulted one of the bars. Her initial plan of running out the entrance failed when a new horde of aliens rushed out of the red winding hall, bits of Pennywise stuck in their teeth. This new group closed in on the bar from every angle, from the walls, from the ceiling. “Not today, fuckers.” Phoebe smashed a vodka bottle against the counter, hoping to create a makeshift shiv. Instead, the glass exploded into her face, puncturing her eyes and mouth. Whimpering in pain, she didn’t even react as an alien arm extended out of its socket to grab her neck. It yanked her over the bar, her face banging against a barstool, lodging the glass shards further in. She was unconscious by the time the rest of the aliens joined in on the meal. One of them, curious about the goings-on behind the bar, located a canister of liquid nitrogen in a cabinet. Rather than chilling some fancy cocktails, it passed its discovery to the diners—now they could turn Phoebe Thunderman into a proper candy to share after Halloween dinner.
Trent climbed onto the DJ stage hoping to find some hidden compartment in the floor. Maybe on weekdays, this stage was used for magic shows or musicals. Maybe it wasn’t always used for disgusting dance orgies. Maybe there were retractable floorboards he could sneak into and hide. Maybe there was a crawlspace that led outside. But now it was his turn—and the silver helmet flew through the air, aimed with a pitcher’s precision, and struck Trent’s head. A vindictive alien snarled at its comrades to stay clear as it jumped onto the stage. Streaks of color more striking and blinding than Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 tour occupied Trent’s groaning head. The alien’s mouth opened, chortles, chitters and crackles ensuing. It picked up the silver helmet, lifted it high… and then slammed it down into Trent’s nose. The thin bone and cartilage snapped like a twig, blood streaming out onto the floorboards and into a hidden stage compartment just below his head. The helmet descended again, and Trent’s eyes imploded; the helmet descended again, and his skull cracked, descended again, and his brain squashed like a pumpkin, descended again, and squishy pops echoed around the dead club.
Hamza, inching his way backwards to a corner of the dance floor, couldn’t hear anything but his own voice. “But I didn’t eat them. I didn’t eat them!” A doorway leading backstage had collapsed into a mixture of debris and corpses. “I tried to be better. Surely you understand? I’m positive you understand. We don’t need to eat them.” Shards of beer bottles cut his hands as he pushed himself away from the stalking aliens. Every remaining eye in the club turned to him, all glowing with delight. “You must all see how immoral it is. How bad it is. You’ve seen the stars, you understand everything!” His back touched the corner, and he brought his knees up to a fetal position. The aliens crawled delicately to him, cocking their heads at his voice, razor-sharp teeth clacking. “I’m one of the moral ones, one of the smart ones. Don’t eat me. Don’t probe me. Leave me alone. Oh fuck, leave me alone!”
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