October Story - A Sugar-Free Halloween (Ch. 1) (Patreon)

Sequel to College Gas 101!

Emilia Bankowski took another swig of Corona and felt her senses swirl as it traveled down her throat and filled up her stomach. She was feeling number by the minute, so the fullness was going away. Pretty soon, she wouldn’t be aware of how full she was, and would keep filling herself up with more food and drink.

After having gone through their first college party with the rugby team, Rob’s Halloween party down the hall seemed like a walk in the park. Everyone was crammed in one small dorm room drinking. If they weren’t drinking then they were smoking by the open window. The bass-boosted music made it difficult to hear anyone. But then again, if one were drunk, it didn’t really matter now, did it?

Melissa Pereira tagged along with her dressed as a witch. She wasn’t too particular about Halloween costumes, neither leaning towards scary nor overtly sexy. It was a conventional looking garb with the shoes and the conical hat. But Emilia did admire how the somewhat skin-tight polyester hugged Melissa’s frame. Black looked good on anyone. Emilia meanwhile dressed up as Raggedy Ann. She put a lot of effort into it with the wig, the freckles, and the overall outfit. 

Rob’s dorm room turned into a sweltering sauna not long after they arrived. Emilia cringed feeling her armpits sweat. She wanted to leave when Rob moved through the throng and said with a grown, “Hey, wait, you guys leaving already?” His costume was a rather lazy attempt at being Jack Sparrow. No mustache or beard, just his clean-shaven, awkward, zit-scattered face.

“It’s REALLY hot!” Emilia cried.

Rob looked around; mouth hung open trying to think of something to do. Both windows, the only windows, were already open. He scratched his head but Emilia patted him on the arm and said, “It’s okay, Rob. We just need to step outside.”

“O-okay!”

The second she and Melissa stepped back out into the hallway, they could breathe easy. Melissa took off her hat and fanned herself, cheeks red.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I don’t get how people party in a room like that.”

It was far from the comfort of the suites, where there was much more elbow room. Rob lived in one of the more cramped dorm halls in the center of college, one which nobody really envied.

As they walked down the hall to the back door, Melissa said, “You know he likes you, right?”

“Oh of course.”

Rob wasn’t the best at hiding his feelings. At all. When they were the first to arrive at his party, he made sure to cater to her every need (Do you need another drink? Do you want to sit down? Here, let me clear the table for you.). Emilia couldn’t explain why but the first thing that came to mind when she thought of Rob was the bear from Bear in the Big Blue House. Tall, wide, and just overall bear-like but not at all in a menacing way. He always smelled like body odor, but Emilia – in her strange way – secretly liked that. He exuded a certain “manly” scent that signaled strength and…protection? Something like that. Those were the sentiments that stirred inside of her.

Alas, she was with Zack. And of course, she was fiercely loyal. She was disappointed when he refused to come over for Halloween, and instead wanted to persuade her to come over for Halloween. Emilia really wanted to spend her first Halloween in Brappaport with her new friends. Melissa persuaded her to stand her ground and not feel bad about saying what she wanted. Emilia did so – albeit mumbly and awkward. Zack surprisingly didn’t make her feel bad about it. Instead, he said that there’s was always Christmas and he would go to her for the Holiday Ball. And Emilia was glad that he managed to make a compromise.

As usual though, he had no idea that she was going to drink and smoke.

A part of her was nervous though. She didn’t want to go crazy like last time. Last time was an exception. It was all part of the women’s rugby team’s ritual. This wouldn’t be like last time. She would control herself.

Once outside, the crisp autumn air blew in their faces, rushing to get inside. The dorm hall was situated in a small courtyard with another dorm hall directly across from it. They were the only ones outside, as all the commotion could be heard from indoors through open windows. Off in the distance, a few drunk girls cackled as they staggered their way to their room. Emilia could hear the loud clacks of their high heels from there.

“There’s nobody here, right?” Melissa said, scoping their field of view.

“No. Why?”

Melissa lifted a leg slightly and ripped a long, growling fart. She groaned at the end of it, saying, “Fuck. I was holding that in forever.”

Emilia recoiled when the awful stench of rotten eggs hit her. She laughed. “Oh my God. Everyone would have DIED if you let it out in there! Jesus, Melissa!”

They laughed for a few seconds before the sound of the door opening so suddenly made them yelp and jump. Rob stepped out with his roommate Lawrence and a thin white girl with brunette hair that Emilia only knew as “Kayla”. She was dressed as an angel, with wings and a halo. Emilia already filed Kayla in the back of her head as “stereotypical hot Mean Girl”. A sudden desire to shun her with disdain because of how gorgeous she looked overtook her.

But then Emilia’s first impression completely crashed when she offered bags with Halloween themes on them and said, “You’re all going trick-or-treating too?”

Before Emilia could respond, Kayla sniffed loudly and said, “Ew, what’s that smell?”

Emilia could feel second-hand embarrassment for Melissa as Lawrence sniffed the air too and suddenly recoiled, half-shouting, “Fuck, what’s that smell? Is that…raw sewage?”

Melissa cleared her throat and stepped closer to Emilia, distancing herself from the unseen fart cloud.

Rob lit a cigarette for himself. “Ah, this college has all kinds of weird smells. You remember the cum trees?”

“Cum trees?” Emilia asked, wanting to laugh.

“Yeah. You know in spring when there are those trees that look all white? And they smell like cum?”

That clicked in Emilia’s head. For the longest time she thought that was just her imagination. “Oh yeah!”

“Those are from those trees. I forgot the name.”

“I thought you were taking economics, Rob,” Lawrence said, “not horticulture.”

“What? What’s that?”

Kayla butted in with her loud voice. “Are we going trick-or-treating or not?”

“Wait, what?” Melissa said, scoffing. “You’re really going trick-or-treating?”

“Yeah! Why do you think I have the bags for, silly.”

Rob beamed at Emilia. “I wanted to ask you earlier but I forgot. Do you want to come with us?” He then shifted his gaze to Melissa. “A-nd Melissa too. Of course. I meant ‘you’ as in ‘the two of you’.”

Emilia beamed back, but Melissa rolled her eyes.

“Come onnnnn,” Rob said. “You know it’s dumb and you want to. We’re getting older and soon they won’t be able to give us treats anymore.”

This was the perfect kind of childish excitement that Emilia was all for. For a brief moment, she and Rob locked eyes, and she turned red feeling awkward realizing they were sharing a similar excited vibe.

“I’m only doing this to avoid my ex. She’s somewhere in there,” Lawrence muttered, jerking a thumb to the party. He wasn’t even in the holiday spirit. His only effort was wearing vampire fangs.

Rob then took out a flask from his pocket. “We can make a drinking game out of it. Drink-or-treating!”

Emilia was enthralled by the idea. “Yeah! Let’s do it! Come on, Mel!”

“Alright,” Melissa droned, “whatever.”

Kayla handed them bags, and they set off into the suburb behind the college.