I hear the doorbell ring and groan.
"I'll get it." Iris quickly says, getting up.
"Trick or treat!" I hear a couple high pitched voices squeak out.
"Here you go guys! Happy halloween!" Iris says cheerfully, waving the young kids off.
"What costumes did they have?" I ask, letting curiosity get the better of me.
"Well how about you get up next time and see for yourself?" Iris shoots back, entering the living room again and plopping down on the couch next to me.
My dad went on a fancy dinner with his wife, overnight apparently, we all know what that means. As a result, Iris got the chance to stay over, which he insisted on.
"This movie is sooo boring." He groans and complains, we're watching halloween one.
"How dare you call Halloween boring?" I feign hurt.
"It's so oooold and cliche." Iris responds.
"Okay then what do you suggest we watch?" I ask him, crossing my arms. My left arm has already healed and the cast is no longer there, which I'm happy for, I would get depressed looking at the twenty-something signatures all done by Iris, or my step mom, and a single one from dad in some freak accident of the day where he was in a good mood.
Iris snatches the remote, clicking off Halloween from netflix, and looking through the horror movie list.
"How about this?" He hovers over "Don't breathe."
I shake my head, and he furrows his brows, moving down the list again.
"This?"
"No."
"And this?"
"No."
We go like this for the next odd ten or so minutes, until someone rings the doorbell again.
"I got it." I say, standing up, and Iris plops back down.
I make my way through the living room and down the hallway, grabbing the bowl of different types of chocolate bars, snickers, mars, lion, the list goes on and on.
I open the door and two young kids repeat "Trick or Treat!" like they have done so all evening. The kid on the left, a boy, and the taller of the two is wearing a cardboard painted ironman costume, while the kid on the right, a girl, is wearing some princess costume I can't quite name.
I show them the bowl of chocolate bars and they both grin, picking up two bars each and throwing them into their baskets.
"Thank you!" They shout as they run down the stairs.
"Happy halloween!" I reply, shutting the door behind me.
I make my way back to the brightly lit living room, realising this is way too bright for a horror movie, I turn the lights off, startling Iris in the process.
"Warn me next time." He says, and I just laugh pointing my finger at him.
He moves to Conjuring on the netflix tab, and honestly I'm done searching at this point so I just nod, and he starts the movie.
I lie down on the couch sideways, bending my knees so that Iris still has where to sit.
"You good?" I make sure with him.
"Yup." He replies.
The movie is still pretty scary, even if I have seen it multiple times before, and I jump at the majority of the jumpscares, at one point in the movie, I know a jumpscare is coming and mentally prepare myself for it, ready to flinch, however just seconds before the jumpscare occurs, the doorbell rings, something I wasn't prepared for, and I jump, almost falling off the couch.
Iris glances at me, completely missing the actual jumpscare of the movie, and begins laughing, shaking his head, and gets up to get the door.
I facepalm internally, feeling quite flustered.
He returns soon after and we resume watching the movie in silence.
And soon enough the movie ends. I stretch, yawning, the last trick or treaters were the ones that scared me, which was over an hour ago.
"So the demon was this witch all along?"
I nod. "Yeah, and she possessed the mom, so she could kill the kids, you remember how they said that a lot of kids kept dying either in the house, near the house, or in the nearby villages?"
"Uh uh."
"Yeah it's because of the witch, she'd kind of manipulate the mom's I guess, and make them kill the children." I continue explaining.
"Ohhhh!" Iris says, having had his moment of revelation.
"Come on, it's past eleven, I doubt any more kids will be showing up, want to play some games before bed?" I offer Iris.
"I'll beat your ass." He grins in response, already standing up, but he heads in the wrong direction.
"Where are you going?" I question curiously, before he returns with the bowl of candy, we still have a lot of it left.
"Good thinking."
We get to my room and start up my xbox. Unlike finding a movie to watch on netflix, finding a game we both like was easy. We start with brawlhalla, and then slowly move our way through a list of games for two.
Much to my surprise, Iris is really good at most of them, being able to keep up with me, or even beat me some rounds, but I still take the overall victory.
We both glance at the clock on the bottom left of the monitor screen, which shows 01:13, and both decide it's time to sleep.
Our sleeping arrangement was supposed to be like this:
I sleep in my own room in my own bed, and Iris sleeps in the living room on the couch.
However, we were quickly both able to deduct from our side glances and Iris asking me if I'm sure I want to sleep alone that we were both still shaken up by the movie. So Iris settles himself in my bed beside me, it's a king size bed so there's no issue there and while I am a little horrified sleeping in the same bed as Iris, it's also not that big of a deal.
My eyelids feel heavy as I keep them open gazing at moving shadows in the darkness of my room, unspoken words resting at the tip of my tongue.
"Today was fun." Iris whispers.
"Yeah.." I whisper back.
We both lay there unmoving and in silence for the next fifteen minutes, before I break it, trying to talk to my best friend. Really talk to him. "Are you awake?" Iris doesn't respond. I turn in bed to face him, his back is to me. His long hair lay beside the pillow. "Good night." I mutter under my breath and close my eyes, listening to the arrhythmic beating of my heart. Eventually dozing off.
I wake up the next morning, and completely forget that Iris was supposed to be beside me the entire night. And because he's currently missing from bed, I don't remember that specific piece of information.
I yawn and stretch my arms, getting out of bed in the process and rubbing my eyes, looking around. I find my pile of dirty clothes and dress up.
I exit my room heading for the bathroom but hear faint sounds in the living room, I peek in and see Iris sprawled out on the coach, dozed off, the TV still running.
I sigh, heading back in the direction of the bathroom.
I finish my business and head to the kitchen, walking through the living room in the process, Iris now awake. "Good morning sleepy head." He says sheepishly, his long haired mishelved and messy, quite the bedhead.
"Have you looked in a mirror yet?" I shoot back with a grin, he just shrugs in response.
"Why'd you sleep here?" I ask after I grab a glass of water and gulp it down in one motion, and then begin filling another one.
"Couldn't sleep in your room." He says impassively, which is weird because he didn't respond when I asked if he was awake. I shrug it off.
"Breakfast?" I ask him.
"No, gotta run, my mom needs me." He responds, getting up from the couch.
I send him away with a goodbye but he stops just at the doorway, his lips partially open, as if he wants to say something. But he closes his mouth, turns around to face me, and puts his arms around me, taking me into an embrace, a hug. He smells nice, like lavender scented perfume, despite not having showered last night, and his embrace feels warm, it feels nice, it feels exactly like I had imagined it to be, something I wanted to do for so long, but had nobody to do it with. It lasts all too short though, as he quickly darts out the door, shutting it behind him without another word.
YOU ARE READING
A hill with a tree
General Fiction"I'll have to remember you.. For longer than I have known you." A short story about losing those that matter, and then having to live without them. August is a troubled kid living a difficult life, unfortunate to have close to no friends, but fortu...
