For Little Ones Only

By the fourth house, Oliver had worked out how much it would cost to purchase the rest of the evening.

“Twelve bucks,” he said.

Marcus was watching his sister negotiate a path between two illuminated gravestones. Someone had stretched artificial cobwebs across the lawn, and Tessa was holding her broom horizontally to keep the trailing end out of them.

“Congratulations.”

“For a bag of Halloween candy. A big one. The kind you need both hands to lift.”

“Sounds heavy.”

“We could buy two.”

Marcus turned toward him. The theatrical scratches on his cheek looked surprisingly convincing beneath the streetlamp, although the effect was undermined by the strip of price label still attached to his flannel cuff.

Oliver pointed at it.

Without looking down, Marcus tore it off.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, about my extremely reasonable proposal.”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard it.”

“I’ve heard it three times.”

“Because you keep failing to appreciate it.”

At the front door, Tessa and Nolan lifted their buckets. The woman who answered wore an enormous pointed hat with a plastic spider suspended from the brim. She bent to admire Tessa’s broom, and Tessa immediately began telling her about the handle.

Oliver exhaled.

There had been a significant discussion about that handle before they left. Apparently, wrapping it in purple ribbon had been an artistic decision requiring everyone’s attention.

His phone vibrated.

JOSH: where are you

A second message appeared beneath it.

JOSH: tell marcus leah’s here

Oliver angled the screen toward Marcus.

“See? People are asking.”

“People can survive.”

“Leah might not.”

“Then she should seek medical attention.”

“Your complete lack of urgency is honestly upsetting.”

Marcus smiled without looking at him.

Up the path, Nolan was turning in a slow circle so the woman could see the bones on the back of his costume. She made an appropriately impressed noise. Tessa received a second compliment on her hat.

Neither of the men at the gate received anything.

Oliver checked his reflection in his darkened screen. The stitches drawn beside his mouth had survived the walk. So had the small, deliberate smudge of brown beneath one cheekbone. His hair looked good.

The scarecrow had been a compromise between making an effort and admitting he had made one. Old boots, good jeans, a flannel shirt worn open over a fitted black T-shirt. Enough eyeliner to suggest a costume, not enough to become a conversation. He had rejected Marcus’s suggestion of actual straw on the reasonable grounds that he hoped to take the clothes off later.

At a party.

With an adult.

Preferably before November.

Tessa and Nolan returned at a run.

“She had peanut butter cups,” Nolan announced.

“And she made the wreath herself,” said Tessa.

“Great,” Oliver said. “We can cross those questions nobody asked off the list.”

Tessa’s smile contracted slightly.

Marcus noticed. Oliver noticed him noticing.

“Which way?” Marcus asked her.

“The corner, then down Briar.”

“Lead on.”

Oliver waited until the children were a few steps ahead.

“We could buy them the exact same candy.”

Marcus put his phone away.

“They don’t want the exact same candy.”

“They seemed pretty pleased with the peanut butter cups.”

“They want to do this.”

“For how long?”

“Until eight. Like I said.”

It was six forty-three.

Oliver looked up at the dark sky as though someone there might take an interest.

The next house had a skeleton sitting on the porch swing with a newspaper open across its lap.

Nolan spotted it first.

“That’s new.”

“How do you know?” Oliver asked.

“Last year he was in the flower bed.”

“Promotion.”

Tessa giggled before evidently remembering that Oliver was annoying her.

The skeleton’s newspaper was dated October thirty-first. Someone had given it reading glasses. Behind the front window, orange lights framed a row of paper bats.

Across the street, a man in a reflective vest was directing a loose procession of small witches past a reversing car. Plastic buckets knocked against knees. Somewhere farther along, a recording of thunder played, followed by a scream so regular that Oliver had begun anticipating it.

The air smelled of wet leaves and somebody’s wood fire.

Tessa paused at the gate.

“Come on, Nolan. We have to say it together this time.”

“I did.”

“You started before the door opened.”

“He could hear us.”

“It doesn’t count.”

“Pretty sure he still gave you candy,” Oliver said.

Tessa turned.

“That’s not what she means,” Nolan told him.

“Oh, sorry. Are there regulations?”

“You’re supposed to do it properly.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want to get audited.”

Marcus caught Oliver’s eye.

Oliver lifted both hands.

“What?”

“Let them have a good time.”

“I’m providing conversation.”

“Try providing less.”

At the door, Tessa knocked. A television flickered blue through the curtain, but nobody came. Nolan leaned sideways to look for a bell.

“Maybe they’re out.”

“They’ve got the porch light on,” Tessa said.

Oliver glanced at Marcus.

Marcus did not glance back.

Tessa knocked once more, gently, and at last footsteps approached from inside. An elderly man opened the door carrying a mixing bowl.

“Oh, look at you two.”

The change in the children was immediate. Shoulders squared. Buckets raised. Their voices joined in an enthusiastic, imperfect chorus.

“Trick or treat!”

“There we are.”

The man asked whether Nolan’s bones glowed. Nolan stepped beneath the porch light to demonstrate, then realised this defeated the purpose and backed away again.

Oliver leaned against the gatepost.

Marcus’s phone lit up. He read the message, huffed a laugh, and showed Oliver. Josh had sent a photograph of a kitchen counter lined with bottles. Behind it, a woman dressed as an angel was making an obscene gesture at the camera.

“Civilisation,” Oliver said wistfully.

“Eight o’clock.”

“You say it like there’s a court order.”

“I made a promise.”

Tessa was coming down the path. Oliver raised his voice just enough to include her.

“What if Marcus buys you a mountain of candy tomorrow? Whatever you want. No walking. No waiting in the cold. Five minutes in a store and you’ve got the whole evening free.”

Tessa stopped beside her brother.

“For what?”

Oliver blinked.

“What?”

“What would I do with the evening?”

“Whatever you want.”

“This is what I want.”

Nolan nodded vigorously beside her.

Oliver looked between them.

“Okay, but the candy—”

“It’s not the same,” they said together.

Marcus pressed his lips together.

Oliver pointed at him.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

Tessa tucked her broom beneath her arm.

“We haven’t even been to the house with the moving graves.”

“And the corner house does full-size bars,” Nolan said.

Oliver stared at him.

“You know where else they have full-size bars?”

Nolan’s expression became guarded.

“The store.”

There was a short silence.

Then Tessa said, with devastating restraint, “We know.”

Marcus laughed.

Oliver felt heat rise beneath the painted stitches.

“Fine. Enjoy your expedition. I never went trick-or-treating, and I managed to become a functioning person.”

Marcus’s laughter stopped.

“You never went?”

“No.”

“Not even when you were little?”

“You’re acting like it’s a tragic backstory.”

Tessa was looking at him now. So was Nolan. He disliked the attention more than he had disliked being ignored.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Marcus said.

It was an irritatingly careful nothing.

Oliver pushed away from the gate.

“Come on. Moving graves. Apparently we’ve got a schedule.”

Briar Street narrowed after the corner.

The pavement rose beneath old tree roots, and the houses stood farther back, their porches separated from the road by strips of garden. Leaves had gathered against fences in damp, shining banks. Oliver scuffed through one and sent a spray of yellow across the concrete.

“Don’t,” Tessa said.

He looked down at her.

“What now?”

“I was going to walk through that.”

“There are more.”

“That was a good one.”

Marcus rested a hand briefly between her shoulders.

“There’s a whole pile by the next tree.”

Oliver walked ahead.

For a while, the neighbourhood supplied enough distractions to keep everybody quiet. There was a garage arranged as a mad scientist’s laboratory, with green light pulsing through plastic tubes. A woman wearing enormous bat wings handed out candy from a silver cooking pot. Nolan consulted another skeleton about whether the house farther down still had sour worms.

“They ran out,” the other skeleton reported.

“Already?”

“Only raisins now.”

Nolan returned to the group looking personally betrayed.

“Emergency?” Oliver asked.

“Raisins.”

“Thoughts and prayers.”

Marcus’s mouth twitched. For half a minute, things were easy again.

Oliver nudged his shoulder.

“Admit that was funny.”

“It was almost funny.”

“Your standards are unreasonable.”

“You’ve known me four years.”

“Feels longer.”

A gust of wind travelled down the street, loosening leaves from the branches overhead. Tessa caught one against her cape and held it up triumphantly.

Beyond her, a narrow house stood behind a hedge.

Its porch light was on.

Oliver could not have said why it looked different. There were decorations: a pumpkin on the step, webs between the porch posts, a black shape seated beside the door. Nothing unusual. But the houses on either side were busy with voices and footsteps, while the little path beyond the hedge lay empty.

Even the webs were still.

Tessa slowed.

“Do we do this one?”

“Light’s on,” Nolan said.

Marcus glanced toward the porch.

“Looks fine.”

Oliver was already turning through the gate.

“Excellent. Another opportunity to acquire something available at every gas station in America.”

The black shape beside the door moved.

A cat lifted its head. It was sitting neatly on the second step, forepaws together, tail curved around its feet. One ear had a small notch in it. Its eyes caught the porch light and returned a pale green shine.

Oliver clicked his tongue.

“Move.”

The cat watched him.

“Come on.”

There was room to step around it. Instead, he brought his boot down sharply against the bottom stair.

The sound cracked through the porch. Tessa flinched. The cat sprang sideways, slipped beneath the railing, and disappeared into the darkness under the house.

“Oliver,” Marcus said.

“What? I didn’t touch it.”

“Then you could’ve just walked past.”

“It’s a cat.”

“Exactly.”

Oliver turned away.

On a small table beside the door sat an enamel bowl full of sweets. No bell. No host waiting behind the screen. Just the bowl, a squat candle lantern, and a card propped against the wall.

FOR LITTLE ONES ONLY

Beneath it, in smaller letters:

TAKE ONLY ONE - OR ELSE

Oliver leaned closer.

“Or else,” he read aloud. “Jesus. Who’s running this place?”

Tessa chose a miniature chocolate bar. Nolan spent several seconds considering his options before selecting a packet of sour candy.

Oliver reached over them.

Marcus caught his wrist lightly.

“Leave it.”

Oliver looked at the hand, then at his friend.

“Seriously?”

“They’re for the kids.”

“There are about fifty.”

“One each,” Tessa said.

“I can read.”

He slipped his wrist free and took a handful. The wrappers were orange, with black twisted ends. No brand name that he recognised. Beneath the porch light, they looked almost old-fashioned.

Marcus’s expression lost its humour.

“Put some back.”

Oliver smiled. It was the smile that usually persuaded people that an argument was a joke, provided they agreed to stop having it.

He unwrapped one.

“Happy Halloween.”

The sweet was hard and dark amber, smelling faintly of burnt sugar. He put it into his mouth, then offered the others to Marcus.

Marcus didn’t take any.

Oliver shrugged and slipped them into his flannel’s breast pocket. They settled against his chest with a small crackle of wrappers.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Tessa turned toward the steps.

“Come on, Nolan.”

Something shifted beneath the porch.

Oliver glanced down. Through the gap between the steps, two pale eyes watched him. He tapped the toe of his boot against the wood once more.

The eyes did not move.

At the next house, the woman answering the door wore a cardigan embroidered with tiny pumpkins.

“Well,” she said, smiling at Tessa. “Aren’t you a wonderful witch?”

Tessa held out her broom. The woman admired the ribbon. Nolan demonstrated his skeleton, carefully remaining out of the light this time.

Oliver waited at the bottom of the steps with Marcus. The sweet had left a smoky taste at the back of his tongue.

The woman leaned slightly to see past Nolan.

“And a scarecrow! Those stitches are very good.”

Oliver looked behind him. There was nobody on the path.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Come along, then.”

She held out the bowl.

He glanced at Marcus, eyebrows raised.

“Finally. Someone appreciates the effort.”

Marcus was checking his phone.

Oliver went up the steps and chose a chocolate bar.

“No bag?” the woman asked.

“Didn’t realise I’d be participating.”

He slid the bar into his breast pocket beside the orange-wrapped sweets. One corner remained sticking out.

“There,” he said. “Prepared now.”

She laughed and wished him a happy Halloween.

Behind him, a breeze lifted the edge of his flannel. Across the road, between two banks of fallen leaves, the black cat sat beneath a streetlamp. He could see the notch in its ear.

It was gone when he looked again.

He followed Marcus down the pavement, adjusting the chocolate bar so its corner stopped digging into his chest.

Ahead, Nolan had intercepted two children coming the other way.

“Did you do the corner house?”

“The brick one?”

“With the big spider.”

“Yeah. Full-size.”

Nolan turned toward Tessa with an expression of vindication.

“Still?”

“Loads.”

“Useful intelligence,” Oliver said. “Anything on troop movements?”

Neither child acknowledged him. Tessa thanked them, and the groups separated.

“Which corner?” Oliver asked.

Marcus glanced over.

“What?”

“The house. Is it on the way?”

Tessa pointed ahead with her broom.

“After the crossing.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want to miss a major cultural landmark.”

But he looked ahead for the spider.

The next house had arranged a row of carved pumpkins along its garden wall. One was vomiting seeds into a flowerpot.

Marcus laughed.

“Found your people.”

Oliver stopped beside it.

“Finally,” Oliver waxed emphatically, “representation at last!”

A woman in a glittering black dress answered the door before Nolan could knock. She had a bowl tucked beneath one arm and a small dog beneath the other.

The dog wore bat wings.

Tessa forgot her prepared greeting.

“Oh my God.”

“He knows,” the woman said.

Nolan asked whether the dog liked Halloween. Apparently, he liked the doorbell and disliked the wings, so they were managing about half a successful evening.

Oliver remained at the foot of the path while Marcus went back to retrieve Tessa’s broom, which she had propped against the wall.

“And you!” the woman said to Oliver. “Come up where I can see.”

He glanced toward Marcus, then approached.

“Oh, those stitches. Did you do them yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Very clever.”

She tipped the bowl toward him.

Oliver selected a packet of chocolate buttons.

“You’re my second favourite house,” he told her.

“What’s the first?”

“Depends how this goes.”

She laughed. Behind him, Marcus handed Tessa her broom. No bowl was offered in his direction.

Oliver tucked the packet beside the chocolate bar. He expected to have to force it in, but it slipped down easily. He pressed his palm over the pocket, feeling the loose shapes inside.

Had it always been that deep?

“Happy Halloween,” the woman said.

The dog sneezed.

They were halfway to the crossing when Oliver stepped into the leaves.

He had been looking across the street at another green-lit garage. Beneath the rustling yellow surface, the pavement ended sooner than he expected. His foot dropped. He lurched sideways, one hand flying out, and Marcus caught him above the elbow.

“Whoa. Got you.”

Oliver’s boot scraped against the curb. He recovered with an awkward hop.

“Fantastic pavement. Love what they’ve done with the hidden trench.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Marcus kept hold while Oliver planted both feet.

“Your ankle?”

“Still attached.”

“Does it hurt?”

Oliver looked at him.

“No, man. I’m fine.”

Marcus released him.

Tessa had turned back.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Oliver said. “Your precious leaves tried to kill me.”

“They’re slippery.”

“Thanks. I’ll include that in my report.”

He bent to brush them from his jeans.

A square of brown fabric covered his right knee.

Oliver stopped.

The patch was about the size of his palm, secured with conspicuous black stitching. One edge had been deliberately frayed. He rubbed it with his thumb.

These were his good jeans. He knew the small tear beside the belt loop, the faded line where his wallet sat, the mark near the hem that never quite washed out.

He did not know this patch.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked.

“Did somebody-...?” Oliver pinched the edge. The stitches held.

Had he grabbed the wrong pair? 

No. 

He had put these on in his room. His phone had been on the bed. Marcus had called while he was fastening his belt.

“Hey Big O,” Tessa called. “Come on.”

He straightened, and something in his clothes rustled. A small, dry crinkle, distinct from the wrappers in his pocket. He glanced down at his boots, expecting a leaf caught against the leather, but there was nothing there.

Marcus was waiting a few steps away.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Oliver brushed his hand over the patch once more and followed.

The sound did not repeat when he tried another step.

Marcus’s phone lit up beside him. He read the message and smiled.

Oliver waited. Usually, the screen would already be turning toward him. Instead, Marcus typed a reply with one thumb.

“What’s happening?”

“Josh being Josh.”

“Helpful.”

Marcus slipped the phone away.

Tessa was explaining that the enormous spider wasn’t actually on the corner house. It was suspended between the corner house and its garage, which apparently mattered. Marcus asked her whether it moved.

“Only the legs.”

“Comforting.”

Oliver reached toward his own trouser pocket, then stopped to pull his shirt clear of the opening. The flannel seemed to have twisted around him when he stumbled.

Ahead, headlights swept across the crossing. Marcus called Tessa and Nolan back from the curb.

“Wait here.”

A car passed, its windows open just enough for music to escape. Oliver caught a pulse of bass, laughter, somebody singing badly. He watched its red tail lights recede.

Beside him, Marcus held out his hand.

Oliver stepped aside to let Tessa reach it.

Marcus’s hand followed him.

Oliver looked down at the open palm, then up at his friend. Marcus was watching the traffic.

Before Oliver could ask, Marcus took his hand.

“Hang on,” he said. “There’s another car.”

“Why are you holding my hand?”

Marcus glanced down, then at him.

“You nearly fell back there.”

“I tripped.”

“That’s what I said.”

The second car passed. Marcus looked both ways and stepped off the curb, taking Oliver with him.

For a moment, Oliver followed out of sheer surprise. There was nothing tentative about it. Marcus’s hand was warm and firm around his, his attention already on Tessa and Nolan as they crossed ahead. Oliver opened his mouth, but they were halfway across, and making a scene in the road would be ridiculous.

Something pulled narrowly over his right shoulder. He rolled it, trying to loosen his shirt.

Something was bunching between his legs, bulky folds refusing to settle when he lengthened his stride. The awkward cut gave him a pronounced waddle. He reached to tug the fabric straight, then remembered whose hand he was holding and pulled against that instead.

“Watch that,” Marcus said.

Oliver stepped around a shallow pothole.

On the opposite pavement, he pulled his hand free.

“I can cross a street.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t do that.”

Marcus looked at him properly.

“All right.”

It ought to have settled the matter. Instead, Oliver had the unpleasant impression of having complained about something minor - his sleeve being tugged, perhaps - and received a perfectly reasonable accommodation.

Ahead, Nolan shouted.

“The spider!”

It hung between the house and garage on thick white ropes, its body larger than a wheelbarrow. Eight jointed legs extended over the driveway.

Oliver stopped beneath it.

“Okay,” he admitted. “That’s pretty good.”

One leg twitched.

Nolan grabbed Tessa’s sleeve.

“See?”

“That could be the wind.”

“There isn’t any wind.”

Oliver studied the ropes. Somewhere behind the hedge, a motor made a low, intermittent grinding noise.

“It’s on a timer.”

As if responding, the spider lowered several inches. Tessa squealed and laughed. Nolan retreated into Marcus, who caught him by both shoulders.

“Brave skeleton.”

“I wasn’t scared.”

“Obviously.”

Oliver smiled despite himself. The spider’s legs folded inward, then opened again.

“Someone’s put actual money into that.”

“There he is,” Marcus said.

“What?”

“Someone finally impressed you.”

“Don’t get emotional.”

Marcus reached toward his shoulder.

Oliver ducked away.

“What now?”

“Hold still. You’ve got this twisted.”

His fingers briefly straightened something beside Oliver’s collarbone. A small metal piece clicked.

Oliver looked down, but Tessa was pulling the bell, and a deep recorded laugh rolled out from somewhere above the door.

“Welcome,” a voice announced. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Nolan whispered, “This is the one.”

The man who answered wore a dressing gown and a rubber Frankenstein mask pushed up onto his forehead. Behind him stood a cardboard coffin. Inside it, arranged in neat rows, were full-size chocolate bars.

Tessa made a small sound of delight.

Oliver leaned closer.

“All right. Credit where it’s due.”

“Trick or treat!” the children said.

The man held out the coffin.

“One each. Pick your favourite.”

Nolan chose immediately. Tessa deliberated between two, then asked whether one contained nuts.

“Good question,” the man said, turning it over to check.

Oliver waited beside Marcus.

“And you, scarecrow.”

He looked up. The coffin tilted toward him.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

He selected a bar with caramel and peanuts.

“Worth coming out for?” the man asked.

“He’s getting into it,” Marcus said.

Oliver’s hand paused above the coffin.

“I can answer.”

Marcus turned toward him.

“I know.”

The man’s smile faltered slightly. Oliver made himself smile back.

“Excellent spider.”

“Oh, thank you. My brother helped me rig it. You should’ve seen us trying to get it up there.”

He began explaining the pulley, and Oliver listened long enough to smooth over the awkwardness. 

Oliver reached to put away his chocolate.

His fingers met denim.

He stopped.

The pocket was lower than it should have been. Wider, too. He slid the bar inside and felt it settle against the other sweets. For several seconds, he kept his hand there, looking as the man explained the mechanical spider.

Then he looked down.

A broad rectangle of faded blue covered his chest. Two straps rose from it, passing over his shoulders. Brass-coloured clasps attached them to the bib.

His flannel was underneath.

Oliver gripped the edge of the denim.

“What the fuck?”

Marcus looked back.

“What?”

Oliver pulled the bib away from his chest. The pocket bulged slightly with candy. An orange wrapper showed beside the corner of his first chocolate bar. Below it, the denim continued past his waist.

There was no belt.

He turned, trying to see the sides. Extra fabric shifted around his legs with a dry rustle. The knees were loose, one bearing the brown patch he had examined earlier.

“Oliver?”

“These aren’t mine.”

Marcus glanced at the overalls.

“What?”

“These.”

Oliver tugged at the bib again. One strap pulled against his shoulder—the pressure he had been trying to shake loose at the crossing.

Then Tessa thanked the man who finished explained, Nolan remembered to do the same. 

Marcus tugged Oliver aside off the porch for a group of small ghosts coming up the path.

“Careful. You’ll undo the clasp.” Marcus hands straightened them, so they laid flat against Oliver’s chest. 

“I didn’t put these on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I was wearing jeans.”

Marcus looked down at his legs.

“They’re denim.”

“Not the same fucking thing.”

Tessa and Nolan had stopped a little farther along the pavement. Tessa was peeling one corner of her chocolate wrapper, watching them.

Oliver lowered his voice.

“Is this a joke?”

Marcus’s expression changed.

“No.”

“Because it’s not funny.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Oliver searched his face. The scratches. The small crease between his eyebrows. His mouth beginning to tighten with concern.

No suppressed smile.

Oliver looked down again. A loose thread extended from the top of the pocket. He caught it between finger and thumb, then let go. The garment was solid. Worn at the seams. One clasp had a darker patch where its finish had rubbed away.

He remembered his belt buckle against his palm while getting dressed.

Marcus reached toward the strap again.

Oliver caught his wrist.

“Don’t.”

Marcus stopped immediately. For a moment, they stood looking at each other. Then Oliver released him.

“You just touched it,” he said.

“Fixed it, it was twisted.”

“But it wasn’t there a minute ago.” Oliver tried to suppress the frantic tone seeping into his words. 

Marcus said nothing.

A group passed them, a woman shepherding three children toward the spider house. One of them pointed excitedly upward as the motor began grinding again. Oliver heard the familiar recorded laugh.

Marcus spoke gently.

“You were messing with that in the car.”

Oliver looked at him.

“What?”

“The fastening. On the way here. You said it kept catching your shirt.”

The pavement seemed briefly unsteady beneath his feet.

He remembered the drive. Tessa had asked him to turn the music down so she could explain the route. Marcus had laughed from the passenger seat. Oliver had parked beside a storm drain and checked the sign to make sure there wasn’t a time limit.

He had driven them here.

“Marcus.”

“Yeah?”

“Who was driving?”

His friend’s concern deepened.

“I was.”

Oliver reached for his keys.

His hand slid over an uninterrupted seam. He tried the other side, then pushed his fingers beneath the loose edge of the bib, searching for the familiar openings of his jeans. There should have been a pocket against his right thigh. His phone should have been in it.

There was nothing.

Marcus watched him.

“What are you looking for?”

“My stuff.”

Oliver searched the bib pocket. Chocolate buttons. Two full-size bars. Orange wrappers.

“My keys. My phone.”

“I’ve got the keys.”

Marcus took them from his jacket.

Oliver recognised the chipped blue bottle opener before he saw the car key itself. For his twenty-first birthday, Marcus had given him the bottle opener inside an elaborate presentation box. Underneath it had been a note reading For your many talents. Oliver had called him a cheap bastard. Marcus had bought the drinks that night.

“That’s mine.”

Marcus looked at the key ring.

“What is?”

“The whole thing.”

A child squeezed between them to rejoin a group farther along the pavement. Marcus moved aside and gestured Oliver toward the garden wall.

“Come over here a second.”

Oliver stayed where he was.

“Give me my phone.”

Marcus laughed briefly.

“What phone?”

“Mine.”

The laughter stopped.

“Oliver.”

“I had it. I showed you Josh’s messages.”

Marcus glanced toward Tessa and Nolan. They were examining a row of painted stones beside the next gate, pretending not to listen.

Oliver held out his hand.

“Come on.”

“I haven’t got a phone to give you.”

“Then call it.”

Marcus hesitated.

That hesitation was worse than an argument.

“Just call it,” Oliver repeated. “We’ll hear it.”

“Let’s get out of everyone’s way first.”

A family came up the pavement behind them. Oliver stepped reluctantly toward the wall. Marcus followed, putting the keys back into his jacket.

The little blue bottle opener disappeared.

Oliver stared at the pocket. He could reach in and take them. It was such an ordinary thought that he almost acted on it. Then Marcus asked whether he wanted some water, and the moment became impossibly awkward.

“No.”

“All right.”

“I’m not ill.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You’re acting like I am.”

Marcus looked tired suddenly.

Oliver lowered his voice.

“I know what I was wearing. And I know I had my phone.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t just say okay.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Oliver had no answer that didn’t sound ridiculous. He wanted Marcus to look down at the overalls and recoil. He wanted him to swear, or laugh nervously, or admit that something had happened neither of them could explain.

Instead, Marcus stood beside him holding a small bottle of water, waiting for him to settle down.

Oliver looked along the street. The spider was rising again. A woman across the road was trying to photograph a reluctant astronaut. Somebody called for a child named Ben.

He could not work this out here.

“Fine,” he said.

Marcus screwed the cap back onto the bottle.

“Fine?”

“We finish the street. Then we go back to the car.”

He could check the seats. His phone might have fallen into the footwell. Something would be as he remembered it.

“Sure,” Marcus said.

Oliver started walking before he could offer anything else.

Behind him, Marcus called to the children.

“A couple more houses. Then I’m taking him back to the car.”

Oliver heard every word.

The next porch had a scarecrow sitting beside the candy bowl.

Oliver saw the shoes first. Old work boots, their soles resting squarely on the step. Above them, trouser legs stuffed with straw. Gardening gloves lay palms-down on the knees.

“That’s a person,” Nolan whispered.

“Obviously,” Oliver said.

The scarecrow didn’t move. Its hat concealed most of its face. A strip of burlap hung loosely around its neck, and one sleeve had been patched with fabric almost identical to the square on Oliver’s knee.

He looked down at his own costume. One strap sat nearer his neck than the other. When he pulled it away, the sweets in its broad pocket knocked softly together.

He wanted his clothes back. More than that, he wanted the last ten minutes back: his phone in his hand, his keys in his pocket, Marcus laughing at something they both understood.

“Are you going?” Tessa asked.

Oliver looked up.

He could see how this worked. Someone approached, reached for candy, and the man jumped. The children screamed. Everybody laughed. Knowing ought to have taken the power out of it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going.”

He walked through the gate. The path narrowed between two clumps of dead flowers. His loose trouser leg brushed a stem, making it scrape against the denim.

The scarecrow’s right glove twitched.

There.

Oliver almost smiled. He had seen it. He could stop watching now.

He looked into the bowl.

A hand struck the wooden step beside him.

“BOO!”

The sound came from below his line of sight, much closer than he expected.

Oliver jerked backward. For one dislocated instant, he had no idea where the path was. His heel caught its raised edge. He tried to put his other foot behind him, but there wasn’t enough room, and his hand closed on empty air.

For a second the world tipped unpleasantly around him, and then Marcus caught him beneath the arms before he could properly fall.

“Easy.”

Oliver gripped Marcus’s forearm.

His heart seemed to be beating somewhere in his throat. He couldn’t draw a proper breath; every attempt stopped short.

He knew. He had known it was a man.

The thought repeated itself with furious uselessness.

There was a strange, breathless rush, excitement and nerves tangled together, his stomach dropping even though he was already upright, leant against Marcus' chest.

Then the tension began to drain.

His shoulders loosened first.

Then his chest.

Then something lower.

Oliver swallowed.

A peculiar warmth blossomed beneath the front of his overalls.

He went still.

Oliver looked down at himself and, for a moment, found absolutely nothing there that justified the sudden unease rising in him. The overalls still sat where they were supposed to, the denim lying smooth enough across his hips, even if slightly bulging around him, but denim acted odd sometimes. 

Right?

There was no obvious darkening of the fabric, no visible sign that anything had happened at all, and that should have been enough to dismiss the thought that had flashed through his mind the instant the warmth registered.

He had not wet himself because something startled him.

That was absurd.

He had stumbled. Marcus had caught him. His heart was still hammering, his skin felt prickly and overheated everywhere, and there was every reason in the world for some stray sensation to feel more intense than it really was. Adrenaline did strange things. Nerves did strange things. He was warm because he had been frightened for half a second, because his body was still catching up with the fact that he had not actually fallen, because the sudden shock had left him overaware of every point where cloth touched skin.

That had to be it.

Oliver drew a slow breath, waited for the flutter in his stomach to settle, then straightened and started walking again.

He felt better. Like the moment helped him release some of the tension he’d been carrying. 

He shifted off Marcus, he held him in his arms still, leant against him. Barely a second had passed. 

When he moved something underneath the overalls seemed to catch faintly at the inside of his thighs, not enough to stop him but enough to make it feel wrong. Oliver frowned and adjusted automatically, shifting one foot a little farther out. The sensation moved with him. 

There was a thickness there that seemed firmer than it had been moments ago, a stubborn padded resistance beneath the denim that no longer yielded quite as easily when his legs passed one another.

The warmth had not faded either.

That was irritating.

If it had been sweat, or nerves, or merely the lingering rush of being startled, it ought to have dispersed by now. Instead it remained close to him, held in a concentrated band around his groin, oddly diffuse at the edges and yet impossible to ignore once he had noticed it. There was something almost damp about the sensation, though that could not be right either, because damp fabric ought to cool and this had not.

It stayed warm against his skin.

Oliver’s jaw tightened.

No.

He was not doing this.

He was not going to let one badly timed fright make him invent humiliating explanations for ordinary physical sensations.

He shifted again, a little more deliberately this time, and the padding beneath the overalls compressed with a faint crinkle.

Oliver’s face warmed.

That sound was not helpful.

He tried to tell himself his underwear had simply shifted when Marcus caught him. That made sense. His clothes had probably twisted slightly when he stumbled, and the fabric underneath was sitting differently now, perhaps bunched too tightly at one side. The explanation was inelegant but plausible, which was good enough.

Except when he moved again, the material felt fuller, thicker, rather than merely misplaced.

The difference was subtle, but Oliver could not stop noticing it now. There was more resistance between his thighs, enough that the denim tugged faintly across the front of his hips and forced his thighs a fraction wider than usual. He tried to correct it, which made him feel ridiculous.

If he behaved normally, the sensation would become normal again.

Oliver stared at the porch. The scarecrow was sitting upright now. He was only a man in a straw hat. He had glasses and a grey beard and an expression rapidly losing its amusement.

“Sorry,” he said. “Bit much?”

Oliver tried to laugh. Nothing convincing came out.

Tessa stood behind Marcus, her broom held close against her chest. Nolan was looking from the man to Oliver. They had all seen him.

He straightened abruptly.

“I’m fine. I just caught my foot.”

“Yeah. There’s a lip on the path.”

Marcus said it without looking down.

Oliver looked down himself. A narrow timber edging ran beside the paving stones. That was all. Less than an inch of wood. He could not make it account for how frightened he had been.

The man removed his hat.

“Usually get people with the other hand,” he said, attempting a smile. “Thought you’d spotted me.”

“I did.”

His voice came out sounding strained.

The man nodded.

“Right.”

Oliver wanted to rescue the exchange. Say something dry. Make Marcus laugh and restore the familiar shape of things. Instead, he remained acutely aware of the hand supporting him.

He loosened his fingers from Marcus’s sleeve. There were creases where he had gripped it.

“Seriously,” he said. “Let go.”

Marcus released him immediately.

The man offered the bowl.

“Peace offering? We scarecrows have to stick together.”

The man was trying to be kind. Oliver could hear the careful brightness, the invitation to make everything ordinary again.

Marcus answered.

“Thanks. Just give us a second.”

Oliver turned toward him.

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Answering for me.”

Marcus smiled like he’d told a joke.

“All right.”

Another group reached the gate. Their conversation faltered as they took in the blocked path. Oliver moved aside before Marcus could guide him.

A few steps later, however, the warmth shifted with the pressure of movement, and something in his stomach gave an unpleasant little dip.

For one second the explanation he had been refusing stood up very clearly in his mind.

Maybe he’d really…

Oliver dismissed it so quickly it was almost reflex.

No.

He would know.

Wouldn’t he?

The thought irritated him enough that he picked up his pace, as though speed itself might prove something, but the change only made the thickness more intrusive. The sensation beneath the overalls pressed close around him, stiffened by whatever had been altered by his fright, and the fabric at the crotch pulled down differently with each step. Oliver found himself shortening his stride again because the alternative was to feel the thick bunching rub insistently against both thighs.

That was worse.

Much worse.

He stared ahead and tried to focus on anything else.

The pavement.

Marcus’s footsteps beside him.

The sound of kids laughing.

Anything except the warm, heavy thickness beneath his clothes.

Oliver swallowed.

He did not look down again.

There was no point. There would still be nothing obvious to see.

So he kept walking, just slightly wider through the hips than before, trying very hard not to notice the way the material beneath the denim had tightened around his stride or the way the warmth remained stubbornly centered exactly where he least wanted to think about it.

And because he could not explain it without arriving at the one conclusion he refused to accept, Oliver decided, with increasing determination, that there was nothing to explain at all.

Tessa and Nolan waited by the gate staring at them, giggling as they looked back at Oliver. 

“Come one, they’re waiting.” Oliver grumbled at Marcus, irritability rising with the humiliation of the kids giggling at his fright before. 

Oliver stepped forward, Marcus kept with him, until they walked shoulder to shoulder again, when Marcus’s hand settled briefly at Oliver’s side.

Oliver barely noticed at first. The pavement was busy, kids and adults in costumes milling about them in loose currents, and Marcus had already guided him once by the elbow to keep him from clipping a signpost. 

Tessa and Nolan were discussing their route through the rest of the lane, when Marcus’s hand slipped lower on Oliver’s overalls. 

His steps stalled.

Marcus caught the fabric at the front of Oliver’s pants and gave it a small tug, smoothing where it had bunched around his groin. Then his fingers pressed once through the layers beneath.

A subtle squeeze.

Oliver went very still.

The padding under Marcus’s hand compressed with a muted, spongy give. Warmth shifted faintly against Oliver’s skin. 

A sour scent teased his nose. 

He saw Nolan’s nose scrunch briefly and felt heat flush his cheeks, though he didn’t understand why it should bother him. 

Marcus shifted his hand, resting it firmly against his buttocks, though Oliver saw more than felt the movement. 

His touch lasted barely a second, but it was intimate enough to send more heat rushing straight into Oliver’s face.

Marcus hummed once, barely audible over Nolan arguing to stop for a photo by a tree with chickenwire ghosts swaying in the wind. 

Marcus adjusted the fabric once more along Oliver’s thigh, thumb dragging lightly over the crease before his hand withdrew.

Oliver stared ahead.

For a few steps he said nothing.

He did not understand what had just happened.

That was the part that bothered him most.

Something about Marcus’s movements had been practiced. Automatic. He had touched Oliver with the easy certainty of someone checking something he already understood, and Oliver had no idea what information had just passed beneath his hand.

Nothing was wrong.

Oliver looked down.

His pants bunched, as his thighs shifted. There was a vague crinkling, but maybe that was just the candy wrappers in his front pocket. 

He looked closer. There was a rounded shape to his groin beneath the overalls. His hand itched to check for himself. To press where Marcus had, and tell himself nothing was wrong. 

He saw Marcus eyes fall to his raised hand, when he grasped it again, pulling him forward, distracting him from examining himself further. 

The thickness shifted between his thighs when he walked, warm and present, the faint crinkle answering each step.

His face grew hotter.

“What was that?”

Marcus glanced at him.

Oliver tried to slow their brisk walk, Tessa and Nolan already waiting at the gate to the next house.

Marcus tugged him along.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Oliver frowned.

“What?”

“You’re fine.”

That made absolutely no sense.

Oliver stared at him.

Marcus jerked his chin toward the others farther ahead.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

And just like that he kept walking.

Oliver hesitated for half a second before following.

The street moved around them as though nothing had happened.

Oliver stayed quiet.

Every few steps he became newly aware of the thickness beneath his clothes, not because anything had changed, but because Marcus’s hand had drawn his attention to it and then refused to explain why.

He shifted once.

The material gave softly between his thighs.

Still warm.

Still apparently fine.

Whatever that meant.

Oliver looked sideways at Marcus.

Marcus was already talking about something else.

Oliver said nothing.

“Do you want to go back to the car?” Marcus asked, looking annoyingly calm and gentle and imploringly at him, when he noticed Oliver’s quietness.

Oliver looked at his face. His friend had caught him before he fell, had let go when asked, was offering him a way out. He should have been grateful. Instead, he wanted Marcus to be frightened too.

“Don’t you think something is weird?”

“The decorations?”

“No, no, I mean…something is off.”

Marcus glanced toward the children, then back.

“We can talk somewhere quieter.”

“You keep saying things like that.”

“Because you’re upset.”

Oliver opened his mouth. Closed it.

There it was again. An explanation that accommodated everything he did without acknowledging anything he said.

From the porch came the scarecrow’s cheerful greeting to the next group. Tessa still waited by the gate with Nolan. Neither was asking to move on. Marcus had become the person everyone was watching.

Oliver pushed his hand into the bib pocket. His fingers closed around a twisted wrapper.

He drew it out.

Orange paper. Black ends.

The quiet house returned to him so clearly that he could see the small indentation where the sign had leaned against the wall.

For little ones only…

He looked at the sweet, then searched the pocket again. Another. Another.

He had eaten only one.

“Oliver?”

He held them out.

“We have to go back.”

Marcus looked at his palm.

“To that house,” Oliver said. “The one where I took these.”

“Why?”

The question was so sincere that Oliver felt a sudden, helpless anger.

“Because I wasn’t supposed to.”

Marcus’s expression softened.

“That’s okay. We can sort it out.”

“No.” Oliver closed his fist before Marcus could take them. “You’re not listening.”

He looked past his friend.

Across the street, beneath a parked car, something black moved.

Then the cat stepped into the light.

The cat looked directly at him. Then it turned and slipped between two parked cars.

“There,” Oliver said.

Marcus followed his gaze.

“What?”

“That’s it! That’s the cat.”

Before Marcus could answer, Oliver stepped toward the road.

A hand caught his sleeve.

“Wait!”

Oliver stopped so sharply that the sweets knocked together in his fist. Marcus was looking past him. A bicycle swept through the space he had been about to enter, its rider calling something Oliver didn’t catch.

Even after it passed Marcus didn’t release him.

“Look first.”

“I did.”

He hadn’t. 

That knowledge made him angrier.

Across the street, the cat paused beside a low brick wall. Oliver crossed quickly, keeping his eyes on it.

“Oliver.”

“It lives there,” he called back. “At the house with the sign and the candy bowl. If we follow it, it’s bound to go back home.”

The cat jumped onto the wall. For an instant it stood outlined against a yellow window, its notched ear unmistakable.

Then it dropped out of sight.

Oliver wrenched his arm free from Marcus, and went after it.

There was a gap between the wall and a hedge. He remembered the hedge. Or thought he did. The quiet house had been set back. There had been a narrow path, a little gate.

Behind him, Marcus called his name again.

Oliver pushed through the gap. A branch caught his shoulder. He pulled free, one overall clasp knocking against the brickwork, and emerged onto another pavement.

The cat was halfway down it.

“Hey.”

It continued walking.

“Wait.”

He felt ridiculous as soon as he said it.

The cat turned a corner. Oliver hurried after it, the sweets gripped so tightly that the twisted ends marked his palm.

He would find the house. He would put them back. He could apologise, if that was what it took. Knock on the door. Say he had been an idiot. Say his friend had told him not to and he had done it anyway.

Behind the corner stood a blue house. A woman was taking paper lanterns down from its porch.

Oliver stopped.

He hadn’t seen that house before.

The cat was gone.

He looked back. The hedge ran along the pavement in an unbroken line. For several seconds he simply stared at it.

He had come through there. Somewhere near the lamp.

He walked back, searching for the gap, pushing aside branches where they seemed thin enough to conceal an opening. Leaves rattled. Beyond them, a dog began barking.

Oliver withdrew his hand.

“Marcus?”

The name sounded small in the open street.

He tried again, louder.

No answer.

At the corner, the street sign read BRIAR LANE.

He had been on Briar Street.

Perhaps there were two. Perhaps the gap had brought him farther around than he thought.

He turned slowly, looking for the enormous spider, the green-lit garage, anything tall enough to be visible over the fences. There was an inflatable ghost sagging against a chimney. A porch with blue lights. A plastic skeleton lying facedown on a lawn, its stake uprooted.

None of it meant anything to him.

Oliver reached for his phone.

His hand struck denim.

“Fuck.”

He searched anyway. The bib pocket yielded chocolate, orange wrappers, the empty paper from something he couldn’t remember accepting nor eating.

No phone.

He looked up and saw a man approaching with two children in matching astronaut helmets.

“Excuse me.”

The man stopped.

“Do you know where the house with the big spider is?”

“Which spider?”

“Over the driveway. Between the house and the garage.”

The man considered.

“Not sure. We’ve just come down from Hawthorn.”

“Is there a Briar Street near here?”

He heard the sharpness in his own voice and tried to soften it.

“Sorry. I got turned around.”

The man glanced behind him.

“Are you with someone?”

“My friend.”

“Where is he?”

“If I knew that-”

Oliver stopped. The two astronauts watched him through their raised visors. He forced his hand open. The sweets had left red impressions across his palm.

“We were just across the road.”

The man looked toward the crossing.

“Want to use my phone?”

Relief struck so hard it was almost painful.

“Yes.”

The man took it out and opened the keypad. Oliver reached for it.

Then stopped.

Marcus’s number.

He knew Marcus’s number. He could see the contact photograph: Marcus asleep on their sofa with a paper crown tilted over one eye. Oliver had taken it after somebody’s birthday.

The photograph came easily.

The number would not.

He tried to think of his mother’s. The first three digits arrived, then a familiar rhythm without any numbers attached.

He stood staring at the keypad.

“Take your time,” the man said.

Oliver hated the phrase.

He gave the phone back.

“I’ll find him.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

One of the astronauts tugged on the man’s coat. The man hesitated, then pointed toward the brighter end of the street.

“There’s someone handing out hot drinks down there. They might know the house.”

“Thanks.”

Oliver waited until they had gone before moving.

He didn’t reach the hot drinks.

At the next corner, he would recognise something. The garage with the green lights, or the spider, or Marcus standing beneath a streetlamp looking annoyed.

He turned.

Another unfamiliar house.

“No.”

He looked behind him, then back again, as though the street might correct itself if he caught it quickly enough. His chest felt too tight. He tried to take a deeper breath and couldn’t get to the end of it.

He needed to stop rushing. 

Think, don’t panic.

Even as he told himself that, he felt a sense of unfamiliar urgency press down upon him, almost physically from within. 

The house had been on Briar Street. They had turned after the skeleton on the swing. Or before it. There had been a crossing, but he couldn’t remember which side they had started on.

He could remember the cat. He could remember the sign.

Why couldn’t he remember the way back?

A branch scraped his sleeve. He flinched and nearly dropped the sweets. One slipped between his fingers. He caught it against his chest, breathing hard.

He couldn’t lose these too.

The thought frightened him enough to make him stop.

A black shape stood on the garden wall beside him.

“You.” Oliver called to it, a desperate tone in his voice, he couldn’t manage to restrain. 

The cat sat. Its tail moved once along the brick.

Oliver held up the orange sweets.

“Look. I’m bringing them back.”

The cat blinked.

“Just show me where.”

A door opened nearby. Children spilled down a path, talking over one another. Oliver lowered his hand. He was standing in the street bargaining with an animal.

The cat rose, stretched, and jumped down into the garden.

This time, Oliver didn’t follow.

He tried to arrange his choices into an order. Go back to the sign. Find the gap. Ask another person. Remember a number. But each one depended on something he couldn’t find, and every sound seemed to require his attention: footsteps behind him, a gate opening, laughter somewhere he couldn’t see.

Marcus might be calling out for him.

He listened.

Nothing.

Another wave of urgent pressure pulsed through him, and he bent over for a moment, hands against his stomach. 

Maybe the candy was bad and upsetting his stomach. 

He wanted his phone so badly that he searched the pocket again, pushing aside the candy, feeling into both corners.

Still nothing. 

Of course nothing. 

He knew it wasn’t there.

He kept checking.

A couple passed with a little girl carrying a glowing wand. Oliver turned toward the wall until they had gone. He couldn’t ask another stranger. He couldn’t stand in front of another offered phone and discover that he knew nobody’s number.

He would find Marcus himself.

He took one step. Stopped.

The panic had become something he could scarcely distinguish from physical pain - a tight, rising pressure that left no room to think. He tried to swallow it down. Tried to make himself move.

Oliver forced himself to inhale more slowly, but the breath caught high in his chest and came out too fast anyway. Heat prickled beneath his clothes. His hands had started to shake, just faintly, and there was a flutter low in his stomach that he interpreted as nerves because nerves were what he was having.

Another tight sensation rolled through his abdomen.

He bent forward slightly.

Just a moment. Just need a- 

One hand braced against his thigh while he waited for the cramp to pass.

It did.

Mostly.

Oliver straightened and began walking again, faster now.

The movement made the pressure return, lower this time, a dense twisting discomfort that seemed to gather beneath the panic already sitting in his stomach. Oliver slowed, confused by the sudden heaviness of his own body. His breathing had gone ragged enough that he could hear it, little shallow pulls of air that made him feel even more conspicuous.

He needed to find Marcus.

That thought became enormous.

Not the cat.

Not his phone.

Marcus.

If he could just find Marcus, a visceral thought in the recesses of his mind told him, then this would stop being his problem. 

Oliver hated the relief contained in that idea. 

Marcus was just his college roommate…wasn’t he?

He turned another corner.

Wrong.

Completely wrong.

The street opened into a lane he had never seen before.

His stomach dropped.

The physical sensation and the emotional one collided so perfectly that Oliver could no longer separate them.

“No, no, no…”

His voice came out thin.

He stopped walking.

People passed him, few glanced, their costumes loud around him. 

Nobody approached him again.

That should have been comforting.

Instead it made him feel very small.

Another cramp tightened low in his belly.

Harder this time.

Oliver folded forward.

His hands landed on his knees, slightly bent, almost instinctively, shoulders rounded as he tried to breathe through it. Sweat had gathered beneath his collar. His face felt hot. His stomach seemed to flutter and clench at the same time, panic churning everything into one confused mass of sensation.

He thought he might be sick.

Maybe that was it. 

A stomach flu or maybe it really was just the candy acting up. 

The pressure shifted.

Oliver’s eyes widened.

Something about that movement was different.

His body trying to communicate in a language he only half understood anymore.

Oliver went rigid.

“Oh.”

The sound barely left him.

He knew this feeling.

But recognition came too slowly.

He straightened a fraction, then immediately bent again when another wave passed through him, his stomach tightening hard enough to steal his breath.

No.

Not here.

His thoughts scattered.

He needed-

What?

Oliver squeezed his eyes tightly. 

His heart was pounding so hard that every other sensation became muffled beneath it.

Then his body stopped waiting for him to solve the problem.

Oliver felt himself tense instinctively.

A feeling like a cramp rolled through him, muscles tensing, stomach tight enough to make him grunt. 

The pressure gave way. 

His breath caught in his throat.

For one suspended second there was only the awful awareness of something happening that he had not chosen and could not stop.

His lower back tingled tickishly. 

Then something soft and slick pressed out his rosebud. 

He felt it like a part of him, felt it meet the backside of his underwear, before more squeezed out, another cramp, another grunt. 

It spread, hot and sliding across his buttcheeks. 

Oliver’s face went completely red.

He stayed bent over.

Could not move.

Could not think.

The panic that had been roaring through him changed shape.

Because now he understood part of it.

The cramps.

The restless pressure.

The strange sick feeling in his stomach.

His body had been warning him.

He simply had not known what it meant until it was too late.

Oliver closed his eyes.

It continued, thick like a paste. 

He felt it move, as it exited him, pressing upwards to the small of his back, downwards underneath him, a thick mess between his thighs, and then, when there was nowhere left it continued pressing upwards from underneath, encasing his balls and member, in its soft warm embrace. 

His underwear felt different now, full and warmer, heavy like a weight. The unexplained thickness he felt earlier no longer sitting evenly when he shifted his weight. He could feel the altered bulk pressing against him through the layers of his clothes, impossible to ignore once he knew what had happened.

His stomach lurched again, this time from humiliation.

He had soiled himself.

In the middle of a street.

While lost and panicked.

Oliver swallowed hard.

For a second he thought he might cry, which made everything worse, and he squeezed his eyes shut again until the sting passed.

Think.

He needed to think.

No!

He needed Marcus.

Oliver straightened slowly.

The mess clinging to his skin shifted with him.

His entire body went tense at the sensation.

He took one step.

Stopped.

The extra bulk dragged slightly with the movement, enough to make his stride feel wrong, his body suddenly unfamiliar from the waist down.

Oliver looked around again.

The lane still made no sense.

His breathing started to speed up.

No.

Not again.

He wrapped both arms tightly around himself and forced one breath in.

Then another.

Somewhere nearby a child laughed.

A bicycle bell rang.

The world continued with breathtaking indifference.

Oliver stood in the middle of it, lost and soiled and completely unable to fix either problem by himself.

That realization finally cracked whatever composure he had left.

“Marcus…”

It came out barely louder than a whisper.

He looked down the street.

No answer.

Oliver’s mouth trembled.

He tried again, louder this time.

“Marcus?”

His first sob startled him. He pressed his lips together, trying to contain the next one, but that only made it harder to breathe.

Then, somewhere beyond the crowd, a familiar voice called his name.

“Oliver!”

He lifted his head.

Marcus was coming down the pavement, Tessa and Nolan close behind him. Oliver tried to call back. His mouth opened, but nothing came.

Then Marcus saw him.

“Ollie?”

He hurried the remaining distance and stopped in front of him. 

“Hey. There you are.”

Oliver looked up at him, unable to arrange his face into anything that might make this less awful.

Marcus crouched.

“Are you hurt?”

Oliver shook his head.

“What happened?”

“I…”

His breath caught. Marcus waited.

Oliver tried again.

“I had an accident.”

The words came out quietly and distinctly. Once he had said them, he couldn’t look at his friend.

“It’s okay,” 

No it’s not!

Marcus sounded strangely relieved, like it was something Oliver told him on a daily basis. 

“I’ll take care of it.”

Like the it wasn’t clinging to the most intimate parts of him. 

Like the it was something normal to be taken of for him. 

Oliver shook his head, tears dropping onto his clenched hand.

“We’ll go back to the car, and get you cleaned up.”

Such a complete answer. Marcus knew where to go. He knew what they needed. He had a plan already, while Oliver was still struggling to accept what had happened.

“You can’t-”

He stopped.

“Can’t what?”

Oliver didn’t know how to finish.

You can’t know how to do this.

You can’t think this is normal.

You can’t be the person I need to fix this. 

His face crumpled. He bowed his head, both hands closing around the front of his overalls. The sweets slipped from his palm into the fold of denim between his fists. 

He stayed in his hunched over position, almost afraid moving would further spill the secret beneath his overalls to the world, as if announcing it to Marcus in the open street hadn’t. 

He tried to say something. Instead, a sob came out. Tears rained faster than he could stop them.

He couldn’t imagine letting Marcus- 

He didn’t finish the thought again. Instead he began to weep openly, unable to stop long enough to draw a steady breath.

Marcus bent over him, humming as if understanding the tears that kept spilling from his eyes. For a moment, he simply stayed there, one hand resting around Oliver’s shoulder. Then he gently smoothed his hair back for him, cupping his cheek and rubbing at the tear tracks.

“It’s okay, Ollie. I’m here.”

Oliver shook his head, but couldn’t have said what he meant by it.

“Let’s get you out of that yucky thing,” Marcus said lightly, patting a hand against Oliver’s backside jokingly.

Oliver shifted subconsciously but felt all too clearly the mess stuck against his bottom, the weight pulling the crotch of his overalls down midthigh.

He put an arm behind Oliver’s back. Oliver expected help standing. He shifted toward him, preparing to straighten when Marcus, without blinking, lifted him clear of the street.

“Marcus-!”

“I’ve got you.”

The pavement dropped away. Oliver’s boots swung clear of it, and for a dizzy second he reached for something that wasn’t there. Then he hugged Marcus’s shoulder.

He could see over the hedge now. A bicycle leaned against a shed. Beyond it stood an ordinary kitchen window, someone moving behind the glass.

The altered view frightened him more than he expected. He had never seen this street from here.

Marcus adjusted his hold. 

A hand came solidly beneath him, and he flushed as he realised it was Marcus’, holding him up by cradling his messy backside. 

He felt his mess squeeze and move into any crevice he had. 

The mass of his groin pressed against Marcus’ hip, and Oliver felt cooling liquid pool against the skin of his crotch. 

When had that happened? 

Oliver felt a swoop of shame in his stomach, as he realised he must wet himself unknowingly, and by the feel of it, it had been some time ago. 

Oliver waited for the effort of carrying him to show: a stagger, a strained laugh, some acknowledgement that this was an absurd thing for one grown man to do with another.

Marcus only asked, “Comfy?”

Oliver couldn’t answer. His cheek brushed the familiar flannel. He could hear Marcus breathing, steady and close, as they started down the pavement.

Oliver tried to lift his head. Tried to find the cat, or the corner, or anything that might tell him where they were going.

“Just relax, I’ve got you, deep breaths now.”

Oliver managed one, raggedly. Then another sob broke through.

Marcus held him securely and kept walking. Oliver clung to his shoulder, looking back until the wall disappeared behind them.

Oliver recognised the storm drain as Marcus carried him past it. He remembered parking there, watching the front wheel clear its broken edge.

Marcus stopped beside the rear door.

Oliver saw Tessa and Nolan over Marcus shoulder. They looked embarrassed for him, both noses wrinkled. 

“Can you give me a moment with Ollie?”

Tessa nodded. 

Nolan looked toward the house serving hot drinks, two doors down.

“Can we go over there?”

“Stay together. Where I can see you.”

Tessa hesitated.

“Does Ollie want anything?”

Oliver lifted his head, trying to gather an answer.

“I think he’s okay for now,” Marcus said. “Just give us a couple of minutes to get him changed and situated.”

The children went quietly, glancing back once before joining the little queue beneath the porch light.

A couple of minutes.

Oliver couldn’t imagine what those minutes were supposed to accomplish. They would end, and somewhere nearby, a house would still contain a bowl with fewer sweets than it ought to have.

The locks clicked.

Marcus opened the rear door, shifted his hold, and carefully lowered Oliver onto the back 

seat facing him.

“Mind your head.”

Oliver ducked automatically.

He winced as his backside made contact with the seat, the cooling mess pressing upwards, rising and clinging to the small of his back and hips. 

The interior light came on. There was a folded blanket on the seat and a plush looking bag in the footwell. Neither belonged to him.

He looked toward the steering wheel.

His car. It had to be his car.

Hadn’t it?

Marcus moved the bag within reach, then paused beside the open door. Oliver watched him press a hand against his chest, the other already reach toward the metal fastening of his overalls at his shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you get changed.”

The answer came without hesitation.

Oliver caught his wrist. Marcus stopped.

For a moment, all Oliver could hear was the activity outside: footsteps passing the car, a bucket knocking against the door of the vehicle beside them, someone asking whether the hot chocolate had marshmallows.

“I don’t understand,” he said. It felt like a terrifying and enormous confession. 

Marcus’s expression softened.

“I know it’s uncomfortable.”

That wasn’t what he meant.

Oliver tried to explain, but his throat tightened again. He looked down at his hand around Marcus’s wrist. He could stop him. Marcus had stopped already.

But then what?

Oliver looked across the pavement. Tessa stood near the drinks table, watching the woman behind it fill a cup. Nolan was studying something on the porch. They were giving him his couple of minutes.

He released Marcus’s wrist.

“Don’t let them see.”

“Awfully shy tonight,” Marcus chuckled, as if it was a silly request, “but okay.”

He checked the angle of the door and hung his jacket over the window, screening the back seat from the pavement. The interior became dimmer.

Oliver held the orange sweets against his chest.

“Want me to keep those safe?”

The question embarrassed him, but Marcus simply took them, and placed them in a pocket on a plushy bag sitting in the footwell next to him.

“Alright, let's get you properly situated.” Marcus pressed him backwards, before shifting Oliver's hips further into the car. 

Oliver had ended up lying lengthwise across the back seat, his shoulders and head somewhere near the middle of the bench while his legs hung awkwardly through the open rear door, leaving Marcus standing between them on the gravel. There was nothing graceful about the arrangement. The seat dipped under Oliver’s back in all the wrong places, he could feel his shirt had ridden up slightly at the waist, and every breath of cold air coming through the doorway seemed to find some new patch of exposed skin.

Marcus seemed entirely untroubled by the logistics of it all.

Oliver, meanwhile, could not quite decide where to look.

He settled for watching Marcus’s hands.

The first metal clasp of the overalls clicked open beneath his fingers.

Oliver’s hand moved almost at once again, more reflex than decision, catching Marcus lightly by the wrist.

“Are we really doing this here?”

He hated the weak whiny quality to his voice. 

Marcus looked down at him, fondly shaking his head like Oliver was being silly again.

A quiet laugh escaped him, not mocking exactly, just warm enough to make Oliver’s face heat anyway.

Oliver still had his fingers around Marcus’s wrist.

Marcus waited a beat, then gently disentangled them. He took one of Oliver’s hands and brought it toward his face.

“Hey.”

Oliver frowned.

His thumb brushed his lower lip.

Marcus nudged it a little farther.

“Shush now.”

Oliver opened his mouth to object, which rather defeated the objection when Marcus eased his own thumb between his lips.

His eyes widened.

Marcus was already reaching into the bag with his other hand.

“No more out of you.”

Something small and plastic was pressed into Oliver’s free hand, a chunky little figure he could close his fist around without thinking. 

It rattled when he moved it.

Oliver stared at it for half a second, baffled enough that he forgot to pull his thumb free.

That was apparently all the opening Marcus needed.

The second clasp came undone.

Both straps loosened and fell away, one slipping beside Oliver’s neck, the other folding against his shoulder. The denim bib sagged over his shirt. Marcus took hold of the overalls at either hip and began easing them downward, slowly enough that Oliver could follow every inch of the movement.

The denim passed his waist.

Then his hips.

And something white appeared from underneath.

At first he only registered thickness. Padding. Something high and rounded around his middle, the waistband rising beneath the bottom of his shirt, which hadn’t ridden up. It evidently only reached his midriff. Marcus pulled the overalls lower and more of it the tick off-white garment emerged, swollen through the front and fuller still beneath Oliver, the material no longer crisp but softened and discolored from use.

Had his underwear been crisp before?

Oliver’s eyes fixed on it, as the overalls cleared his boots entirely.

He stopped breathing for a second.

His thumb remained in his mouth.

The hand holding the toy tightened.

He shifted his hips, perhaps testing whether what he was seeing really belonged to him, and the answer came through his body before his thoughts caught up. The bulk moved with him. The gooey warmth and clinging, tacky softness shifted beneath his weight, unpleasantly yielding, sticking close against his skin when he settled again.

A diaper.

He was wearing a diaper.

Not merely wearing one.

He had used it. Soiled it to capacity. 

The understanding did not arrive cleanly. It came in pieces, each one somehow worse than the last, because the thing had been there all along beneath the overalls and he had not really known. The warmth, the thickness, the drag beneath him when he moved, all of it had existed without forming into anything his mind recognized.

Now he could not stop recognizing it.

From the bag in the footwell, Marcus retrieved and unfolded a fresh diaper beside him.

The crisp crackle made Oliver look over immediately.

The new one was startlingly white, flat and clean in Marcus’s hands, and for a moment Oliver simply stared at the contrast before Marcus stepped closer again and rested his fingers against Oliver’s hips.

The first tab peeled open.

Then the second.

His stomach swooped unpleasantly. 

He really was about to lay in the backseat of a car, his accident completely exposed to his college roommate and any passersby walking past. 

Oliver felt the diaper loosen around him, felt cold air creep into spaces that had been warm and enclosed, and his body gave a small involuntary shiver. His thumb moved once between his lips, a slow, unconscious pull that seemed to settle him before he had even realized he needed settling.

Then Marcus opened the diaper.

The smell reached Oliver at once.

His nose wrinkled sharply. He stopped breathing through it almost on instinct, but with his thumb still occupying his mouth he had to draw air awkwardly past the corners instead. 

A faint thread of saliva escaped at one side and slicked along the base of his thumb.

His face went hotter.

He still did not remove the thumb.

Marcus pulled a pack of wipes from the bag and drew the first one from the packet with a soft, damp snap of fabric against plastic. Oliver’s attention followed the motion obsessively, watching each part of the process because watching Marcus somehow felt easier than thinking about himself.

The first touch was cold enough to make him tense.

Marcus paused, watching Oliver's shrivelled soiled penis twitching. 

Oliver’s fingers tightened around the plastic toy.

After a beat, Marcus continued.

There was no hurry to him. That was almost worse, although Oliver could understand why. There was nothing beneath him but a thin blanket and the car seat, so Marcus worked with exaggerated care, folding each wipe into itself before replacing it, using the unfolded part of the soiled diaper between Oliver's thighs. 

Oliver kept his gaze fixed upward for long stretches at a time, studying the ceiling fabric, the little plastic handle above the door, the black seam around the window. Every now and then his eyes slipped downward again and found Marcus still working with the same calm concentration.

The coolness left behind by each wipe became sharper when the wind reached it.

Marcus took two wipes and gently ran the length of Oliver’s member, over and over. 

Oliver shivered again, not from cold this time. 

He looked down. 

A bead of precum glistened at the tip of his penis as it stood slightly erect, naked and clean.

A beat echoed in him. 

Where was his hair at?

His skin was milky in the low light, as his eyes traced from his tip to lower stomach where his happy trail once sat. 

Marcus took a clean wipe and non-committally stroked the head of his penis. 

A shiver of confused pleasure trembled through him, and he couldn’t help the groan that trickled with added saliva out the side of his mouth.

He suckled harder on his thumb, trying to will himself down, trying not to cum in the face of his friend, from having his diaper changed. 

His embarrassment rose to new heights, as Marcus gently shushed him, even as he moved on to the fold between groin and thigh. 

He stared hard into the ceiling again, trying to will his attention elsewhere, than the throb in his member and Marcus’ shushing. 

Whether it was directed at his bodily reaction or the groan, he didn’t want to know.

He focused on the odd sensation, like he was divided in two: clean and cold where Marcus had already passed, still acutely aware of the unpleasantness stuck to him beneath everywhere he had not.

The thumb kept moving.

Oliver barely registered it now.

It was simply there, warm against his tongue, his jaw working around it in a quiet rhythm that softened the edges of everything else. If he had been asked, perhaps he would have said he was not really doing it. His hand had simply found somewhere to be, to stay, and the suckling was an aftereffect. 

Marcus eventually reached for both ankles.

Oliver looked at him and seemed to understand immediately.

The embarrassment returned in a hot rush.

Still, he let Marcus gather his ankles together.

His knees bent toward his chest, boots lifting away from the gravel, and then his hips rose from the seat.

The change in position left him feeling strangely weightless and terribly exposed all at once.

Marcus supported him securely, one hand keeping his legs elevated while the other returned to the wipes.

His member pressed against his stomach. 

Oliver stared at the roof again.

He could feel the cleanup continuing without being able to see much of it now, only the repetitive cool passage of each fresh wipe and the gradual removal of the heavy, clinging discomfort that had been underneath him.

One wipe.

Then another.

Then another.

The packet rustled beside his hip every time Marcus reached for more.

Oliver’s legs began to tremble faintly from the position, and Marcus shifted his grip without comment, taking more of Oliver’s weight.

“Almost.”

Oliver’s eyes closed.

Something in his shoulders loosened at the word.

Another wipe passed where his crack was. 

Oliver suckled his thumb harder still. 

Almost.

He tried willing that to be true. 

Then the wipe pressed inwards at his teint, running the length of his the inside of his cheeks. 

Rustle

A new wipe ran the same course, except this one paused briefly at his betraying rosebud. Marcus’ wipe covered finger pressed inward, turning gently twice, before the wipe dropped to the splayed dirty diaper below. 

Oliver hated the way his body accepted the intrusion, as another grunt had escaped.

Marcus continued to work until he was satisfied, methodically checking everywhere he needed to, never rushing simply because Oliver was uncomfortable. By the time he finally stopped, Oliver felt scrubbed raw by awareness more than anything else, cold skin exposed to moving air and his entire body poised for the simple mercy of being lowered again.

It did not come.

Oliver opened his eyes.

Marcus had reached into the bag, and retrieved a tube of ointment.

His expression must have changed because Marcus gave him a small, sympathetic look before squeezing a little onto his fingers, onehanded. 

The ointment was cool at first, then soothing where the diaper must have rubbed and irritated him. Oliver watched Marcus’s face rather than his hands now, noticing the complete absence of awkwardness there. Marcus treated the whole thing as practical, ordinary, something Oliver needed and therefore something worth doing properly.

That was humiliating in a way Oliver had no defense against.

It was also unexpectedly calming.

Marcus mercifully finished, folded the used diaper inward and lowered it carefully out of the car.

Oliver’s legs shifted hopefully.

For one brief moment he thought that was it.

Then he heard the clean diaper opening.

Crinkle. 

His eyes closed again.

Nooooo.

More drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. 

Marcus unfolded it one-handed and slid the fresh padding beneath him while keeping his hips elevated. Oliver could feel it there before he was lowered, cool and dry, waiting.

Then a soft cloud of powder drifted into the air.

The scent filled the car so quickly that Oliver could almost taste it even around his thumb, faintly floral, lavender maybe.

He blinked through the faint dust.

And then Marcus lowered him.

The instant Oliver’s backside met the fresh diaper, a shiver ran all the way up his spine, and his member twitched again.

The padding compressed beneath him with a crisp little rustle, dry and cool after so long suspended in the air, and his body relaxed against it before he could stop himself.

His fist loosened around the toy.

His shoulders sank deeper into the seat.

Marcus eased his legs apart and let his feet rest on the edge of the bench while he finished, dusting a little more powder on his groin. 

Oliver watched as his fingers danced lightly over the powder, pressing it against his moist skin, and the folds of his groin, even a brief pass first circling the base of his penis and then the length of it. Another pearl of precum leaked, and was immediately absorbed by the powder. 

Marcus grasped Oliver's hips for a moment, shifted him on top of the diaper, then grasped the front of it. 

Oliver watched it loom over him in slow motion. 

The understanding descended upon him. 

He’d worn a diaper. 

He’d soiled himself. 

Now he was being fastened in another diaper, which would inevitably be soi-

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought. 

Marcus grasped his member again, before steering it to lay flat pointing downward as his other hand finally lay the front against him.

The padding came high against his stomach, broad and thick enough that it altered the shape of him even before Marcus fastened it. The first tab stretched firmly across one hip.

Press.

Then the second.

Press.

Marcus adjusted both sides, checked the fit, smoothed the front once.

He teased a finger into either legholes, adjusting the creases and leakguards. 

Why did he know there was such a thing as a leakguard.

He couldn’t help the twitch when Marcus finger brushed near his penishead. 

Oliver breathed heavily, willing his hips not to buck. 

He lay there absolutely still.

Fresh.

Dry.

Fastened into a warm embrace surrounding him, moving with him. 

He hated how much relief lived inside those facts.

The diaper gave a soft crinkle when he shifted, and his eyes fluttered closed for a second. The humiliation remained, heavy and hot somewhere behind his ribs, but underneath it was a quieter sensation he could not quite argue with.

He felt safe.

Marcus said nothing.

He simply reached beneath Oliver’s shoulders and pulled him upright.

Oliver startled slightly as the world moved around him, then found himself lifted completely from the seat and gathered against Marcus’s chest. His free hand caught automatically at Marcus’s shoulder. The plastic toy pressed against his shoulder blade, still clutched in his hand. 

His other thumb stayed in his mouth.

Marcus bounced him once, barely more than an adjustment of weight, before carrying him around the rear of the car.

That was when Oliver became sharply aware of what he was wearing.

Or, rather, what he was not wearing.

His overalls were gone.

Below his bellyshirt there was only the thick white diaper around his hips, plainly visible to anyone who happened to pass by.

Oliver turned his head quickly.

Empty gravel.

A line of cars.

Trees beyond them.

No one.

Then his gaze landed on Tessa and Nolan returning carefully with two steaming cups.

He was overly aware of his naked legs, and diaper on display. 

He curled closer against Marcus without quite thinking about it.

Marcus opened the opposite rear door.

Oliver looked over his shoulder.

And stared.

A car seat had appeared there, while they walked around the car. 

He knew it hadn’t been there a moment before when he was splayed across the backseat from the other side. 

It wasn’t something small, or improvised.

A proper seat, in red, deep-sided and padded, with a five-point harness lying open across it.

The padding was worn where a head might rest. There was a small scratch on the central buckle.

Oliver looked back at Marcus, baffled.

Marcus only shifted his grip and lowered him into it.

The fresh diaper compressed beneath Oliver again, puffing up between his legs. 

Marcus led straps over his shoulders, across his waist, and finally between his legs, the diaper straining against him and spilling out the sides. 

Click.

Marcus tightened them gently until Oliver sat snugly contained inside the seat.

Oliver watched every movement.

Only when Marcus leaned back to inspect the harness did Oliver finally notice his own hand again.

His thumb was still in his mouth.

Still bobbing gently.

Slowly.

Almost peacefully.

Oliver stared at it.

Then up at Marcus.

A deep flush spread across his face.

Marcus, mercifully, did not smile.

And Oliver, after several long seconds of mortified consideration, still did not take the thumb out.

...............................................................

Authors note

I really hope you enjoyed this spooky little tale. I was so motivated to have this edited and posted by today by some lovely comments on another story of mine. Let me know if you liked it - who knows, maybe there's a little spooky epilogue waiting for us around the next corner.