🤡 - go to a haunted house attraction (take your gf to a haunted house freddie. DO IT)
Halloween was very popular with Freddie and his kin. Izadia always seemed to love the fun and the food and the costumes. Blaine and Liam loved any excuse to be even more goth. And Freddie loved all of it. So when Izadia suggested they go to a haunted forest attraction he was so down for it.
It was a wonderful date idea. They got some food on the way there. They’d then have their haunting and be home in time to snuggle. Perfect. There were also a couple side trails before the main event.
The side trails were fun, to be sure. A walk through a graveyard where hauntertainers burst out of the graves to frighten them. Skeletons propped up in trees. Lights and sounds, and howling. The howling was great, whoever was doing it certainly did a good job. Izadia shrieked and giggled, while Freddie hooted and yelled. Both delighting in the sudden jolts, and leaning into each other.
This changed once they got to the main attraction. Freddie, in his infinite wisdom, did not check to see what the main attraction would be. As they walked out of the forest into the main attraction space a grand carnival was laid out before them. What Freddie had mistaken for just creepy effects was real. Carnival music filled the air, lights played off the big top, and the wonders of the Circus of the Damned opened up to them.
Izadia squealed with excitement. She stopped when she had to pull on Freddie’s hand to get him moving again. She looked at him with her patented caring expression and worried eyes. “What’s wrong Freddie?” she asked, her concern like a hammer to his frozen thoughts.
Freddie pulled his face into his dopey grin. “Nothing, just a little overwhelmed with all the smells. Caught me off guard.” He was not the best liar, but this wasn’t exactly a lie. There were a lot of smells in the air. Not as many as a real carnival, but still.
They had planned this. Between her work schedule and her other partners, date nights were not something easily recovered. And to have this one called short over something as little as his fear of… his fear of…
There they were all menacing and cruel. The proportions of its body were off, and it laughed with sadistic glee. Its white face was too big; its smile too wide. The thing lept from a barrel and reached for a young woman. Every muscle in Freddie’s body tightened. The young woman screamed.
She fell backward into her girlfriend and they both had a laugh as the clown waved a finger at them. Next time, it said with its body language, you won’t be so quick. And the clown pulled itself back into the barrel.
Izadia searched Freddie’s face then smiled. “Alright, let’s go!” She pulled him into the fairground. They played fair games, each modified to be horrific. A dunking booth where the person in the tank pleaded for you to not throw, and screamed in horror as they were dunked into a tank of piranha. A game where you shoot a target with an air rifle, but they used a crossbow and the targets were all realistic looking hearts that spouted blood when shot. A game where an “unwilling” person’s head was sticking out of a hole in a wall and you were given a few stones (bean bags)to pelt them with. If struck the person would go limp if stoned. These games all gave horrific little prizes, like a stress ball shaped like a brain or a bag of blood (a novelty juice pack).
If he was in a better mindset he’d wonder how they pulled off the effects. It was very good in a grindhouse sort of way. The hauntertainers were professionals and knew just how to sell the act. But Freddie was not in a better mindset. The place was infested with clowns.
Sword swallowers, and fire breathes, and jugglers all demonic and violent looking performed to the crowd. All to the delight of those watching. Scares thrown in, with “off limits” areas showed horrific and gory displays. Carnival workers cleaning up a mauled body. A tent where those daring enough to go in were chased off by a chainsaw wielding clown.
That was the one that did it. Freddie saw the bloody and murderous clown come at him with the chainsaw and panicked. In a moment he was a wolf, tripping and tumbling out of his clothes. Whining and howling in fear, trapped in his shirt, which bound his right front leg to his chest, and prevented him from doing anything but scoot along and whimper.
The hauntertainer turned off the chainsaw and called out something Freddie couldn’t understand. His jaws snapped at shadows and he bucked hard as someone grabbed him. Izadia held him softly, “I got you. It’s ok.”
A man in a production t-shirt with a headset on jogged over with a bottle of water and looked helplessly at Freddie. Izadia motioned for the man to put the water down. “He good?” the man mouthed with concern and confusion, not sure what the protocols were for freaking out wolf. Izadia nodded.
When Freddie stopped whimpering and looked up at her, Izadia shook her head. “Freddie, if you were that scared we didn’t have to keep going,” she said with her patented mixture of concern and reproach.
When Freddie calmed down enough to resume being human he didn’t look her in the eyes. “I didn’t want to cut the night short. You were having so much fun, and I should have been able to keep it together.”
“Freddie,” Izadia said with the same tone.
“Sorry… I’m really afraid of clowns.”
“I knew something was wrong,” Izadia said in a told-ya-so fashion.
“Yeah… But that’s like a baby fear. I’m sorry…” Freddie leaned against her.
“It’s ok. I’d say we should just go home but I know you Freddie, you won’t listen. So why don’t we find one of those shooting games and you can win me a stuffed bat as an apology for trying to be the macho tough guy.” Izadia was a saint for letting Freddie save a little face.
In the end he won her two stuffed bats.
