Post 282: Late Night TV, p1

<<go Camera 4>>

“And now a follow-up on one of our stories from last night,” announced Alicia Ray, temporary anchor for the 11 o’clock nightly news on Channel 5, “A Halloween filled with mischief has ended with possible tragedy for three families…”

Alicia felt the eyes, the attention of the whole city and surrounding metro area on her, and looked deep into Camera 4. Swollen already with pride, she nearly had to bite her lip as her confidence redoubled once again. Since she’d started filling in for the haha ‘mysteriously infirm’ Blake Rubens, ratings had been great for the late-night broadcast, every show bringing in more viewers than the night before. Some people, of course, attributed it to her tits and the new tall-woman, breast-obsessed culture that seemed to be sweeping the nation, if not the world. But others whispered that there seemed to be something else there, when Alicia smiled into the camera, something arresting, something almost magical. The cameramen certainly knew it; Alicia could see Chuck behind Camera 4, rubbing his eyes as if in disbelief, or to collect himself. Already there was buzz about not only giving her the coveted morning anchor position, but her own daytime show. Yes, they were just a local station, but it hinted at bigger things to come. Just thinking about it made her heart race, blood rush to her cheeks…and down lower.

“Let’s go to Julie Winters, who’s in Northville with our story…” the former beauty-queen concluded.

<<go Remote Feed, Truck 2>>

“Thanks Alicia,” spoke Julie Winters, roving reporter and unbeknownst-to-her-but-future midday panchor for Channel 5. Holding her mic and standing alongside a dark-haired teen in what looked to be a suburban living room, she looked serious as she appeared onscreen. “We’re at the home of Jeremy Chan, a student at Northville High School whose three friends have been missing since last night,” Julie Winters explained, “when according to Jeremy an evening of trick-or-treating became something out of a horror movie. Jeremy, can you tell us more?”

“Yeah, uh,” the teen boy began, obviously nervous on camera and seemingly half in shock as Julie Wibters shoved a mic in his face, “me and my friends, it was like eleven, eleven-thirty or something? We were just walking down the street. The lights, like the streetlights, started flickering…maybe it was closer to midnight..?”

…

It was basically midnight; I knew it because Colt had just made some joke about my curfew and I’d told him to fuck off. The streetlights had been flickering off and on for a few minutes, strangely, like something was wrong with them. But then suddenly they’d all went out except for one down the road. We all saw it, we saw her. There was a lady standing under it, in the light. It was really spooky, and the four of us froze in our tracks and stopped talking. She was looking at us, and started to walk slowly towards us. She wasn’t saying anything. It was sorta freaky.

“Is that…Mrs. Roberts?” Simon whispered to me, as the woman approached. I could hear it in his voice: he was as weirded-out as me. What was our geometry teacher doing out here??

“What are you boys doing?” the lady who looked like Mrs. Roberts said. She was wearing the same thing she wore in school today, but her eyes looked weird and her voice sounded different, like echo-y and not her own. She spoke quietly but her words carried down the street to us like they were on a wind.

The streetlight flickered off and on a bit, the street went dark for a sec, and then suddenly when the light was back she looked like my mom.

“Mom?!” Colt sputtered next to me, his eyes big and wide. Wait, what? His mom doesn’t look anything like my mom. Jackson and Simon also seemed surprised, and each took a step back.

“What are you doing out on a school night, son?” the lady who looked like my mom to me but was probably definitely not my mom and had a weird voice asked, still walking slowly towards us. The streetlight she’d been standing under when she first looked like Mrs. Roberts had gone out, and now the one right over us flicked up to life and it was like the flashing light changed her appearance again. She was now suddenly only like fifteen feet away and even though she was younger, like one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen, I was scared of her, my heart beating really fast.

Even worse: now there were three of them.

They were standing there, about six feet apart from one another, all facing us, casting long dark shadows under the single streetlight. All three were wearing long black dresses which seemed to flow and move with a wind that I didn’t feel. Or maybe one had just picked up? The one standing in the middle had dark hair, one had red hair, and the young one that used to look like my mom had, uh…hair that seemed to be changing color.

“Don’t you boys know mischief night was last night?” asked the red-haired lady - also reeeeeeallly pretty, and really tall. Her eyes glimmered green, and her smile made me want to run away and start crying but my feet were like cemented to the ground. She was standing to the left. The three of them looked at us, as if waiting for us to say something, but none of us could speak.

“Last night would have been safer for you ankle-biters to be out this late, to be out being dodgy,” said the young one on the right, who seemed to have an Australian accent and hair that was starting to move on its own, like serpents, green. “No night for naughty kids being goblins, this.”

“Yeah…” said the darkest one, in the center, in a voice that suddenly made all my blood cold, “…tonight is for the real monsters.”

And then, suddenly, from her, tentacles erupted. From her back, or from her sides, four or six or ten of them, somehow growing and stretching from her. They flailed wildly around, whipping and undulating like huge but graceful things from an alien movie before surging now towards us. They were dark and strong and purple and fucking holy shit they were tentacles with suckers like from some fucking octopus from hell. They were coming out of the dark-haired lady and they were wrapping now around Colt and then holy shit tentacles burst forth from the other two women and shot through the air towards Jackson and Simon and suddenly as my friends were being pulled in towards them I was able to turn and run but I fell and looked back and-

…

“…and then they ate my friends,” Jeremy Chan said on camera, voice shaking, to Julie Winters, the crew she had at his home, and the late-night viewership of Channel 5 News.

The dark-haired reporter, in a smart suit and killer heels, fought back a smile. She didn’t want anyone watching to think she was making fun of the poor boy, but of course his story was ridiculous. “You’re lucky there were four of you, and only three of them,” she said, watching as the poor boy tried to gather himself. This was great TV, if nothing else, and she was beside herself with glee that the police let her have this interview. “Did these…women say anything, before they - left?”

“They…they didn’t leave…” Jeremy answered, “They just let me get away, after Colt and Jackson and Simon were gone and the streetlights were all now surging really bright. But they did tell me something, as I was, like, standing up, stumbling, crawling away.”

“And what was that?” Julie Winters asked, “What did they say?”

“They said: ‘Tell them the witches are here.’”

=========================================

Once more thanks to Joyce Julep for letting me borrow the Channel 5 News Team