The werewolf pack rushed forward as the first fireball exploded against the asphalt. The wolfmen charged headlong into the coven, darting past the incendiary missiles and lunging for the witches, scattering them from their Mighty Ducks-esque formation.
Two of the witches were summarily sacked and eviscerated, their entrails flying far and wide. Another managed to flay a werewolf in mid-air before she could suffer a similar fate, peeling the fur from his muscles and holding his twitching body aloft, watching him writhe in agony.
Then the witch made the wolfman explode.
Children screamed and tried to flee as a gratuitous helping of gore rained down on them in thick chunks. Green flames and magic spells crisscrossed the night, sending the trick-or-treaters turning and ducking and panicking, if not simply outright murdering them. The werewolves brawled and gnashed with little regard for their surroundings. Everywhere the bystanders turned was blood and guts and some new, painful way to die.
One family thought they’d found an escape, running down Forest Street toward Maple Place, only to have the flaming carcass of a wolfman slam into the ground before them. They turned in terror to find the severed head of a witch sailing past, spattering them all with arterial blood. The father screamed and then promptly fainted. The youngest child, meanwhile, calmly sat down cross-legged in the middle of the street and soiled herself.
The little girl was not alone in this. In time, she would even call these fellow pants-shitters friends. They would help one another get past this evening and live normal lives again. But that was the future. For now, it was just disgusting. The entirety of Forest Street literally smelled like shit.
Throughout the chaos, Brian never lost sight of his goal. Dodging fireballs, he raced forward, leapfrogging an older witch and using her back as leverage to lunge at Suzette, only to be belted in the gut by Bertha and her magnum broomstick. The wolfman was doubled over and fell backward. The witch raised her cudgel over her head. Scrambling to his feet, Brian leapt for the witch’s throat as the stick came down, his teeth tearing into her meaty neck. Bertha screamed, dropped her broomstick, and then grabbed the werewolf by the nape and ripped him free of her. Blood poured from her throat like Niagara Falls.
“That was the last mistake yer ever gonna make, boy,” she spat.
Her hand closed around Brian’s neck like a vise. Slowly the pair began rising into the air.
Farther down the street, Sarah rode upon her broomstick, laughing madly and flying in circles around one of the werewolves. The wolfman jumped and swatted at her, spinning around and around as she circled him. The witch sped up and the werewolf followed suit. Eventually, though, he began to stumble, dizziness overtaking his coordination. He swung absentmindedly at the air. He shook his head to try to clear away the cobwebs.
Sarah pointed her finger like a gun and sent a bolt of electricity straight through the werewolf’s brain.
The lycanthrope thudded to the ground, skin melting off and smoke pouring from his skull.
Sarah threw her head back, cackling with delight. The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back and staring into the snarling, salivating maw of another werewolf. Her broomstick lay broken by her feet. Her hands were pinned to the street by the wolf’s enormous paws.
“I wasn’t laughing at him, I swear!” she pleaded. “I just thought of this joke –”
“I know what I saw,” snarled the werewolf. “You just murder–”
“Wait, what is that?”
“I don’t… I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“I’m pretty sure you do.”
Insofar as a supernatural monster was able to blush, that’s what the wolfman did now. Sarah was the youngest and most attractive of the witches, and the werewolf was, after all, a teenage boy.
“Wolfman’s got nards,” said Sarah.
“You’ve seen Monster Squad?”
“I love Monster Squad! It’s why I skipped college and became a witch.”
“But there’s no witches in it…”
“Look, it’s not a perfect movie.”
The werewolf and the witch continued to lay there in the street, things and people exploding all around them. They stared into one another’s eyes and the murderous fury drained from their faces. Their crotchular regions, meanwhile, began to warm up.
“My name’s Matt,” said the werewolf. “You want to, maybe, get out of here?”
“Don’t you need to, like, exact your vengeance or something?”
“That’s really more Brian’s thing. If he eats your friend’s heart I should be cured regardless of whether I’m here or not.”
“Oh, Susie’s not my friend,” said Sarah. “None of these ladies really are. They’re all ancient. And I mean literally. Other than me, the youngest one is older than this country.”
“So you’re not, like, three hundred or something?”
“Oh, Hell no. I’m nineteen. Joined the coven, like, a year ago. What about you?”
“I’m eighteen. Totally legal.”
“Oh, good. I thought this was going to get weird.”
And with that, the witch and the wolfman got up and strolled down Forest Street, hand in paw, while terrified children ran away screaming and their peers murdered one another in spectacular ways on the blood-soaked asphalt behind them.
Suspended nearly twenty feet in the air and gasping for breath, Brian used the last of his strength to slash at the witch’s wrist with his enormous, razor-sharp claws. The werewolf tore through Bertha’s arm like a fork through a baked chicken and lopped off the hand holding him. He fell to the ground, landing hard on his side and breaking several ribs. Grunting, he turned onto his back, removing the severed hand from his throat and breathing rapidly. After a moment, he opened his eyes.
All he’d done was make Bertha even angrier.
“Crap,” he mumbled.
Shouting with incontinent rage, Bertha began to glow with white light, purple spheres shimmering into existence all around her. The orbs began coalescing in her remaining hand, a horrible thrumming sound shaking the very air. The witch raised her hand and Brian began plotting how to spend his last few seconds as a member of the living.
Before he could be obliterated, though, he heard a sickening crunch. The lights went out of Bertha’s eyes and she plummeted to the ground like the Hindenburg — only instead of flames streaming into the air, it was liters of blood and viscera, and instead of screaming passengers it was a howling werewolf riding her into the ground.
The wolfman climbed from the anatomical wreckage, the witch’s ribcage in his claws.
“Jesus. Thanks, Jeff,” said Brian.
“Don’t mention it,” said Jeff. He held out the ribcage. “Make a wish?”
