Upon the Sacred Evening (Patreon)

Greetings, my dear friends. You probably don't remember me, but I know you, very well. I've been part of your species' story since the very beginning. When your ancestors were huddling in caves during the longest nights of the year, they worshiped me as a god, with fear and trembling and with a strange form of joy that they could only begin to understand. I lurked in the darkest recesses of their caves, I stalked through the blackness of the forests on moonless nights, and most of all, I laughed and danced in the most terrifying of their dreams. I haven't always been given my due honor. Sometimes, I have been called a demon or a monster. I have even been called a mere psychological phenomenon, a manifestation of the darker side of human consciousness. I do not take offense at such treatment, however. Humans have many ways of dealing with their fears, and I love and cherish each and every one. I think of you mortals as my family, for I have watched you multiply and learn and grow since the beginning, and I have been with you every step of the way. We are kin, you and I, whether you choose to recognize me as such or not. I have gone by many names of course, but for tonight, we can risk a little informality. You can just call me The Lord of Nightmares.

It is that time of year again, my friends. Once again, the nights are growing longer, and the sky darkens above you. My sacred evening draws nearer. When the veil between the worlds, the lines that separate the real and the unreal, grow thin and tattered. A lovely time, I am sure you will agree, and the perfect night for me to get out and about and make my presence known once again. I may not be as sweet and friendly as your Santa Claus, but I too have wonderful gifts to share with you, my dearest friends. You must not think I am unkind, merely because I embody all that makes you shake and tremble. I too must go from house to house upon my sacred night, and admire all the offerings your people make in my honor. Oh, what joy it gives me, my friends. To see you try on a new face, to see you conjuring images from your darkest dreams and bringing them to life, to see you reveling in everything that terrifies you. You do me great honor, my friends, and I thank you for it.

Still, my generous soul has its limits. Even Santa gives out the occasional stocking full of coals, and I have my own ways of dealing with those who violate my sacred laws. You see, almost every darling little cherub who runs from door to door on my sacred night understands instinctively what I am, and grows up to honor me with appropriate rites. I ask for so little my friends. Just a costume here, a bowl of sweets there, a burning candle inside a carved squash. Surely you will agree that my demands are not overly burdensome or onerous. Merely a token of respect, a small favor, to show your appreciation for all the joy and mirth I have granted you over the years. Sad though it may be to hear, my friends, some souls are stingy enough to withhold even such minor tribute as this.

And these do I claim as my own, dear friends. If you dare to ignore my call, if you show such ingratitude as to lie down to sleep upon my sacred evening, as though it were any ordinary night, without donning costume, without carving pumpkin, without offering so much as a tootsie roll to the children who call at your door, despite having feasted at your own neighbor's expense in years past...well, how could I be expected to withhold my wrath in the face of such insolence? I assure you, though I am not unmerciful, my claws are sharp, my fangs are long, and there is no hiding place for any mortal who dare to offend me.

So tonight, you shall bear witness to the punishment of one such transgressor. I present for your consideration, and hopefully, your edification as well, Alicia Le Fanu. Alicia works as a manager of a hedge fund, and if you are foolish enough to inquire further, she will proudly explain that her fund outperformed the S&P 500 in five of the last eight years. Narrowly, I might add. Despite being a glorified Bingo caller, Alicia is quite swift to attribute her good fortune to hard work and superior cleverness. Still none of these sins occurred within my jurisdiction, so I cannot punish them. I preside only over her crimes against my sacred evening, which I think you will agree, are egregious in the extreme.

Not only has she desecrated my sacred night by failing to wear any costume, carve a pumpkin of any kind, or even give out a single piece of candy, she has compounded her sins by offering her costumed visitors cheap toothbrushes in lieu of their rightful plunder! Such sins cannot go unavenged, my friends! Already the children stand waiting to deal out justice themselves, armed with the rotten eggs and toilet paper traditionally employed for just such occasions. But I have something far more personal in store for this neer-do-well. There she lies, in her warm and comfy bed, tossing and turning, her limbs heavy, her breathing shallow, just about to drift off to slumber-land. Where I shall be waiting to greet her.

My heels clicked and clacked against the concrete. They sounded so loud in the otherwise utter silence. The air was cold, and there was a distinct smell of smoke in the air. The ground beneath me was paved with very rough asphalt, and the full moon cast everything in shades of black and bluish gray. I couldn't recall what I was doing there or why, but that question seemed to have no importance. I wandered from place to place, past classrooms, playgrounds, lockers, and long, dark hallways. Steadily, I came to see that everything about this school was familiar to me, save that it was all dilapidated and filthy. It was as though someone had taken every school I had ever attended and tossed them into a blender. It was all empty and abandoned, and looked like it had been for a while.

Silently, I wandered the maze of hallways. Some hooligans had spray painted strange, indecipherable messages onto the rotting walls. The kids of today get away with far too much.

Sometimes, the wind would rustle some leaves in the distance, or I would think for a moment that I had caught the sound of faint laughter in the crisp night air, but I could never be certain. Parts of the place were outside, and some inside, but somehow this never added up to an actual exit. I was always surrounded on all sides by more School, always more rotting desks, more half torn-down posters with inspirational messages obscured by fine gray dust, and vacant, staring computer monitors, most of the screens cracked or scrawled with obscene messages.

Something moved at the end of one of the hallways. I knew I had seen it, even if I didn't have a flashlight and it was the middle of the night. Something large, but utterly silent, with two long slender arms and two thick stumbling legs. I turned and darted down a long hallway, past what felt like dozens of long sets of lockers, and into a library. Surrounded by protective layers of bookshelves, I hid under a desk, hoping that the thing I had seen was not real, or that if it had been real that it had not followed me, and that if it had followed me, it wouldn't find me. I watched the door from my hiding spot. Every second that passed without any sign of pursuit only made me more anxious. Part of me also needed the thing to be real; there had to be some real reason why I believed that had seen that horrible, brief image and had run away, wanting to scream but unable to make a sound. If what I was sure I had seen was not actually there, how I could ever be free of it? How could I ever be certain that it wasn't lurking just out of sight?

I do not know how long I crouched there, waiting for something, anything at all to come in through the door. Gradually, I began to feel paranoid, as though someone were watching me from behind. When I turned, I found that nothing was there, just an empty window, looking out on a wide-open field. A wide open field crisscrossed with the shadows of trees, overhung with towering gray clouds, creating many heavily shaded areas where not even the pale moonlight could reach, where anything, anything at all, might be lurking, ready to step into the light at any moment, and give me a cheery wave of it's bony, claw-like hand. I stared for a while, wondering what it would be.

It was behind me. Of course it was. It had to be, or every movie I had ever seen had lied to me. I turned again. Nothing. No one was coming through the door. Nothing was crawling on the ceiling. Nothing was standing outside the window, holding a balloon and an eager grin. Still nothing coming through the door, with a dozen roses in one hand and and a meat cleaver in the other. I turned again. There was a shadow on the wall in the back of the room. The emergency exit was smashed. Glass was all over the floor as a long, spindly shadow slid across a bookshelf.

I fled. Not even trying to be stealthy now. I would have gladly screamed if I was able to, but there was no sound here but the relentless click clack of my heels against the tile floor. I ran for hours it seemed, across miles of hallways, thousands of acres of fields, gymnasiums, laboratories, more hallways, and still with no sign of any pursuer, or any living things at all, not so much as a spider. I could still feel those eyes on me every step of the way, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I heard a footstep behind me, and turned to see something ghastly right on my heels. I spotted a classroom and ran in to hide.

The door was hanging by a single hinge. I instantly recognized that I had been here before, even if I didn't remember when. The way the neat rows and columns of desks sat relative the to the empty doorway, their shadows interlocking in the dim moonlight coming from the row of windows on the opposite side, the large dry erase board at the front of the room, next to the rotting hulk of what had once been the teacher's desk.. The layout was so utterly mundane that it could have been any one of millions of near identical classrooms, but I knew instinctively that this was one where I had been before. I even saw the desk, third from the right, front row, where I had once sat. I crossed the room very slowly, glancing warily around, certain that every thin streak of shadow was hiding some creeping, silent thing, ready to pounce.

“Take your seats, please! Class is starting.”

The voice sounded like it had come from a long way off. I wasn't sure at first whether I had actually heard it, or was merely remembering it. Then the sound of a bell played, not a real bell but a mere recording, and I was certain that I had indeed heard it

“That means you, Miss Le Fanu. Take your seat.”

The voice was more tired and exasperated than stern. It sounded like a woman whose patience has already been heavily taxed today. Without thinking, I found myself lowering myself onto the rotting remnants of  my desk's seat.

The air instantly filled with light and noise. I looked around, and saw that the dark, long-abandoned classroom was now alive with activity. Nearly every desk was occupied, and every face was familiar. There were old friends I hadn't seen in years, aunts, uncles, cousins, and  people I had only ever seen in movies or on news broadcasts. At the head of the class stood a woman with a very clean, pressed white shirt with a blue ribbon tied elegantly around her neck. I recognized her immediately, but I couldn't decide whether she looked more like Ms. Pamplemousse, my Physics instructor at university, or Mrs. Lofthaus, my second-grade teacher. Her manner was pleasant enough, if a little reserved.

“Welcome back, class! I hope you all had fun over the weekend. Now, we don't have a whole lot of time, and I want make sure that everyone has the chance to present today, so that we can start the next unit tomorrow.”

A familiar pang shot up my spine. Presentation? I was usually really good at those, but thinking about it now, I couldn't remember being assigned anything of the kind. I certainly couldn't remember working on it. I opened my desk and searched my backpack, trying to find some evidence of preparation. I couldn't even remember what we were supposed to be studying here. Panic set in almost immediately, and vain hopes bubbled to the surface. Maybe she wouldn't call on me. Maybe someone else's presentation would run long, and they would have to be continued tomorrow. Maybe if I stayed up all night working, I could have it ready tomorrow. Maybe there would be a fire drill, or an air raid drill, or an active shooter drill, or an active shooter. Anything at all would be fine, as long as she didn't cal my name first.

“Who would like to start us off today?” asked the teacher, with the wholly unwarranted optimism of a teacher. I looked around. Everyone had posters and models ready to present. I had nothing. Despite their obvious preparations, as soon as the call for volunteers went out, everyone suddenly developed an intense interest in the windows, the fluorescent lights, and the pattern of the floor tiles. No one had ever or would ever ask to go first. I focused all my will on telepathically projecting a single thought into the teacher's brain.

“Don't pick me, don't pick me, don't pick me, don't pick me...”

“Miss Le Fanu, why don't you start us off?” said the teacher, casually dashing my hopes against the rocks.

Once again, my mind crowded with thoughts. I could simply apologize and accept a failing grade. Own up to my mistake like an adult. I could ask for more time, maybe suggest that I present another day. That would be awkward and embarrassing, but nothing compared to what I was actually doing, which was to stand up, arms crossed protectively, and walk slowly to the front of the class, like a condemned prisoner being marched to the gallows. I turned and stood frozen in front of the class. Nicole, my best friend from high school, gave me the thumbs-up in encouragement. My laboratory supervisor folded her hands and regarding me skeptically from behind her reading glasses. Xi Jinping glowered disapprovingly from the back of the class.

“I...um...you see...ummm...uh...” I stammered. I was frozen from head to toe. My cheeks were on fire, and my tongue felt like it weighed about fifty pounds. The teacher frowned slightly and jotted something down on her clipboard. “Whenever you're ready, Miss Le Fanu.” she said impatiently.

My next door neighbor Mrs. Lingon coughed. Desks screeched as their occupants shifted uncomfortably on my behalf. My heartbeat grew louder and louder in my ears.

Then, I heard another sound from down below. A soft rustle, or perhaps a light trickle. I looked down in horror as a patch of dark blue spread across my jeans. I tried with every ounce of my strength to hold back the flood, but all my efforts were in vain as my bladder utterly betrayed me.

Then the laughter began. It started with whispering and snickering, then picked up speed as the hot piss began running down my legs and onto the floor around me. It just kept coming, and soon the entire class was pointing and laughing, some even falling out of their seats and holding their sides. My face flushed so hard I could feel it in my scalp. I couldn't breath.

The teacher just sighed and shook her head . “Alicia...is there something you need to tell me?”

My bottom lip quivered. I didn't want to say anything. I wanted to run from the room and never return. Instead I felt my mouth open and a small, weak voice that only sounded a little like my own said “I...I peed myyy paaaants!”

I was crying. Blubbering in front of everyone while the class that seemed to impossibly include everyone I had ever met or ever would meet. It felt like the whole world had gathered to watch my shameful failure. My heart raced. The room was an oven.

“This is the tenth time this month, Miss Le Fanu.” I reeled at the teacher's words. I couldn't remember any of what she was talking about, but I couldn't remember anything at all in that moment. I had nothing with which to dispute her. “I'm afraid this was your last chance. It's time to face facts.” Her voice was calm and sad. No trace of anger, just resignation.

“...nooooo...” It should have sounded like a howl of despair, the cry of a broken woman. Instead it came out as the whine of an angry toddler. The room heated up still further.

The teacher pulled out her red marking pen and pulled off the cap with a loud pop. She stood solemnly in front of me. “It's time you finally got the grade that you deserve.” With the air of one performing a sad but necessary duty, she scrawled a large letter “F” across the front of my white blouse.

“You're just not ready for School. It was silly to think that you ever would be. It's obvious that you aren't nearly smart or mature enough. You're just a dumb little pantswetter, and that's all you ever will be. Isn't that right, Alicia?”

I hid my face in my hands and shook my head. Somehow, this didn't prevent me from seeing the dozens of laughing faces and pointing fingers. I felt something else as well, something that seemed not so much a contrast to my abject humiliation, but a part of it. A corona of excitement, a penumbra of pleasure, as the intense shame grew stronger and stronger.

The teacher flipped up my skirt and gave my butt a single, hearty slap. “I asked you a question, Miss Le Fanu.”

I jumped at the smack and sniffled pathetically. “sniff...yes.”

Another swat to my rear. “Yes, what?”

“I'm...I'm just a dumb little pantswetter!” I shouted. The blush was all through me now, shooting up and down my spine. My wet panties clung to me. The urge to reach down and adjust them was all but irresistible.

The teacher began rubbing my ass. She spoke in a soothing voice“Very good. We'll give your Mommy a call and let her know that it hasn't worked out. It's probably for the best, in the long run. After all, now you can finally wear the underwear that matches your maturity level.”

As she rubbed, I felt my panties bunch up against her hand. “These are your Stupidity Diapers, Alicia. They are here to remind everyone, especially you, that you are not to be taken seriously by anyone anymore.

I was barely even surprised to look down and see that my skirt was growing shorter and shorter as my panties ballooned outward. Colorful cartoon bunnies playfully frolicked across my disgraceful new underwear, where the word “Stupid” was spelled out in toy blocks. The laughter grew louder and louder, and my bladder surged to life once again, drenching my diaper and adding a yellow stain to the white bulge between my legs. I knew in that moment that I was now in Stupidity Diapers, and that I always would be. I heaved a sigh of utter shame and ecstasy, somehow combined without any seam.

“I waaant my Mommmmyyyy!” I sobbed. I was humiliated to say it, but it was the truth, and nothing I could possibly say now could make this any worse. Another humiliating surge of pleasure shot through me, and I felt a massive bow blossom from my hair.

“Oh Alicia, what am I going to do with you, baby?”

I looked up and saw my mother, wearing a blue dress and a string of pearled. The look of utter disappointment in her eyes crushed me. She was watching me piss helplessly in my Stupidity Diapers, and I couldn't stop. “I had so hoped that you could be a grown-up honey, but it looks like I'm just going to have to get used to changing your diapers again. Oh, well. At least your outfit is cute.”

“I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to!” The large rubber bulb of a pacifier formed in my mouth, drowning out my attempt to apologize. Mommy tapped the end of my nose.

“It's okay, Alicia. Come along. Let's get you home and into the playpen where you belong. No more school, or reading, or potty training for you. It's all far too complicated for your dumb little brain. From now on, it'll be nothing but naps, bottles, and lots and lots of diaper changes. Now, say bye-bye to all your friends. From now on, your only friends will be your stuffed animals.”

I didn't want to say anything, or even look at the classroom full of teasing, mocking students. Mommy grabbed my wrist and effortlessly forced me to wave as she walked me toward the door. My bladder was still not empty, and it continued to pour into the ever-expanding fluff of the diaper. My padded rear grew bigger and bigger as I was walked towards the door, which seemed to grow more and more distant as I walked closer to it. Something was waiting beyond the door. Something with very long, spindly arms.

Suddenly, the walls seemed to lift away and fly off into the cold night air. Mommy continued to drag me forward. The class followed behind. We were walking across an dark, open field. The dead grass was lit with hundreds of carved jack-o-lanterns, each watching with eager eyes and a jagged mouth. I realized that all my classmates were now wearing costumes. Mommy was dressed as Carmen Sandiego, Nicole as the Easter Bunny, my supervisor as Freddy Krueger, and Xi was decked out as Winnie the Pooh. We were approaching a dark shape in the distance, something that looked like a huge cage. I pulled at Mommy's hand, trying to break free, but she only smiled serenely as she dragged me toward the horrible thing. With each step, my Stupidity Diapers seemed to swell larger and larger, until the plastic leak guards seemed to almost reach down to my knees and up past my belly-button  It was only when we drew close that I saw that it was a giant playpen, full of cuddly stuffed animals. The bars were formed from dozens of huge plastic toothbrushes.

“Here we are! In you go, sweety!” cheered my Mommy. I shook my head in protest, but I could not spit out the giant pacifier. My teacher took my foot, and together they swung me back and forth, finally releasing me to sail through the cold night air and into the waiting playpen. As I floated over the field of burning pumpkins, I sights a tall figure with long arms, snarled, unkempt hair, eyes that did not quite point the same direction, and yellow, crooked teeth. He waved at me with his bony fingers and flashed me his odious smile. When I finally descended toward the padded floor of the playpen, I saw that the cuddly stuffed animals were gone, replaced by a deep pit that seemed to run far down into the core of the earth, and every inch of that cavernous throat was bristling with long, cruel teeth and slimy, probing tongues.

The relief that one feels when one wakes from a nightmare is perhaps, one of the best feelings in life. The gratitude of being suddenly returned to a sane world, where the impossible horrors you have just witnessed have no place. Even if my blankets were soaked and my mattress likely ruined, I was happy just to be alive and awake.

Another satisfied customer! I do hope she will change her ways and give me the proper honors next year. I would certainly hate to have to visit her once again. In the meantime, cherish every moment of my sacred evening. Happy Halloween, my friends!