Drastic Red

– by C.L. Stegall

The last trick-or-treater had vanished into the October darkness twenty minutes ago, leaving Pearl Avenue to settle into its Saturday night rhythm. Porch lights dimmed one by one as families retreated indoors, but from 1247 Pearl Avenue, bass-heavy music still pulsed through thin walls, occasionally punctuated by drunken laughter.

Casey Brennan stood beneath the skeletal oak tree across the street, his breath forming small clouds in the crisp air. The red mohawk wig scratched against his scalp, and the safety pins threaded through his cheeks pulled at his skin with every subtle facial movement. He’d practiced this smile in the mirror for months—carved it, really—each pin placement calculated to create the perfect rictus grin.

Drastic Red. The name had come to him during one of his darker nights, when the razor blade felt particularly heavy in his palm. How fitting that she’d given him his stage name all those years ago.

Through the living room window, he watched Priss move between her guests like a golden lighthouse, drawing everyone into her orbit. Even from this distance, even through the haze of his damaged left eye, she was luminous.

Seeing her costume, an island-inspired sexy fit consisting of a coconut shell bra and a fake grass skirt, it triggered a cascade of summer memories he’d tried so hard to bury.

Building sandcastles at Miller’s Beach. Her small hand in his as they explored the tide pools. The way she’d defend him when Tommy Rodriguez called him ‘trailer trash’ in third grade.

Casey’s mismatched eyes—one violet contact lens masking his injured eye, the other his natural pale blue—tracked her movements as she emerged onto the porch for another beer. She wore the same carefree expression she’d had at twelve, before everything changed. Before she learned that some people were disposable.

He pressed his fingers against the items in his deep pockets: the box cutter, still warm from his grip; the zip ties; the vial of GHB he’d dissolved into the punch bowl during his earlier reconnaissance. Everything was ready. Tonight, Priscilla Jones would finally understand the weight of words, the permanence of abandonment.

Casey stepped into the street, his oversized shoes slapping against wet asphalt.

Inside, Priss surveyed her domain with growing frustration. The living room that should have been packed wall-to-wall held maybe fifteen people—a pathetic showing for what was supposed to be her legendary Halloween bash. Serena’s competing party had clearly won this year’s social war.

She adjusted her coconut bra and smoothed the grass skirt, catching her reflection in the hallway mirror. At twenty-six, she still turned heads, still commanded attention wherever she went. The suburban princess crown might be slipping, but it hadn’t fallen yet.

God, when did I become so desperate? The thought surfaced before she could suppress it, carrying with it the familiar ache of dissatisfaction that had plagued her since graduation. The marketing job at her father’s firm, the parade of attractive but ultimately hollow men, the growing sense that her best years were already behind her—all of it felt like wearing clothes that no longer quite fit.

“Priss!” Misty stumbled over in her Playboy bunny costume, beer sloshing from her can. “This music is perfect! Very retro Halloween vibes.”

Priss forced a smile. Misty had been her shadow since high school, the loyal friend who never questioned, never challenged, never threatened Priss’s position as the sun around which their social system orbited. Sometimes Priss wondered if that unconditional devotion was love or just habit.

“I’m worried about the turnout,” Priss confessed, then immediately regretted the admission. Showing weakness wasn’t in the queen bee playbook.

“Are you kidding? Intimate parties are so much better. Remember Jenny Morrison’s sweet sixteen? Three hundred people and it was boring as hell.”

Priss nodded absently, her attention caught by movement at the front door. Through the frosted glass, she could make out a large silhouette. Another latecomer—maybe the night could still be salvaged.

The front door opened to reveal the most disturbing clown costume Priss had ever seen. Not the jolly, red-nosed variety that performed at children’s birthday parties, but something that belonged in a fever dream. The stark white greasepaint created a death mask effect, while crimson diamonds around the eyes suggested blood rather than joy. But it was the safety pins—four of them, strategically placed to stretch the mouth into a permanent, painful grin—that made Priss’s stomach lurch.

“Holy shit, that’s commitment!” shouted Derek, the barbarian-costumed football player who’d been making increasingly aggressive passes at her all night. “Does it hurt, man?”

The clown’s response was barely audible over the music: “Every second.”

There was something in the voice—a familiar cadence that made Priss pause. But the moment passed as Misty bounded over, her bunny tail bouncing with each step.

“That is seriously the most fucked-up costume I’ve ever seen! I love it!” She squatted beside the beer tub, her costume leaving little to imagination. “Beer?”

“I’m fine for now,” the clown replied, those strange mismatched eyes—violet and blue—surveying the room with predatory focus.

Violet and blue. Something cold moved through Priss’s chest, a half-formed recognition that she pushed away. Lots of people had blue eyes. The violet was obviously a contact lens. Halloween costumes were supposed to be unsettling.

But as the clown moved through her guests with unsettling grace, that familiar voice nagged at her consciousness. The way he held his head slightly tilted to favor his right eye. The unconscious gesture of rubbing his left wrist—a nervous habit she remembered from…

No. She drained her beer in three long swallows. Casey Brennan was ancient history. A childhood footnote. This is just some friend-of-a-friend with a twisted sense of humor.

Still, she found herself watching him, waiting for some gesture or mannerism that would either confirm or dispel her growing unease.

In the corner by the stairs, seventeen-year-old Luna sat apart from the party’s forced revelry, her witch costume more authentic gothic than Halloween store kitsch. She’d only come because her sister Misty had insisted, and now she regretted the decision. These weren’t her people—they were the beautiful ones, the confident ones, the ones who’d never understood what it felt like to be invisible.

The clown approached with surprising stealth for someone in oversized shoes.

When he settled beside her on the steps, Luna caught the metallic scent of fresh blood beneath his theatrical makeup.

“Did it hurt?” she asked, nodding toward the safety pins.

“A little.” His voice carried genuine sadness beneath the theatrical affect.

“You’re the first to recognize they’re real.”

Luna had developed a radar for authentic pain—it took one to know one. She pushed up her own sleeve slightly, revealing the neat parallel lines that decorated her forearm like a ladder to nowhere. “I figured it out when I saw that.” She indicated the box cutter handle protruding from his pocket.

Their eyes met, and in that moment, two damaged souls recognized each other in a crowded room of people who’d never understand their particular brand of darkness.

“Every day,” he admitted when she asked about frequency, showing her his own collection of scars. Some were surgical in their precision; others were desperate, ragged things that spoke of nights when control had completely abandoned him.

“Sometimes I wish it would all go away,” Luna whispered. “Sometimes I wish I was someone else. Anyone else.”

“We are who we are,” he replied, his tone gentle despite the grotesque smile.  “Never be ashamed of who you are. It won’t make any difference anyway.”

They sat in comfortable silence for several minutes, two outsiders watching the beautiful people perform their nightly ritual of proving their worth through volume and excess. Finally, the clown leaned close to her ear and whispered something that made her eyes widen.

Luna stood slowly, straightening her black skirt. Even with the height advantage of the step, she barely reached his shoulder. “It was nice to meet you,” she said formally, as if they’d been introduced at a church social rather than bonding over their mutual self-destruction. “Have a nice night.”

She walked through the crowd without looking back, slipping out the front door and disappearing into the October darkness. Behind her, Drastic Red began the final phase of his carefully orchestrated plan.

Priss was in the kitchen, surveying her barely touched spread of appetizers, when she heard the commotion from the living room. Raised voices, sounds of people moving toward the front door en masse. She rushed back to find half her remaining guests putting on coats and heading for the exit.

“What’s happening?” she demanded, grabbing Derek’s muscled arm.

“Some neighbor called the cops,” he slurred, swaying slightly. “Noise complaint. Jenny’s cousin lives three houses down—she texted that she saw squad cars heading this way.”

“That’s ridiculous! We’re not even that loud!” But even as she protested, Priss could see the domino effect taking hold. Once a few people left, others would follow rather than risk being at a busted party. Her legendary Halloween bash was dissolving before her eyes.

Within ten minutes, only five people remained: herself, Misty, Derek, Misty’s teenage cousin Greg (who was passed out in a chair, having mixed beer with what looked like prescription painkillers), and the disturbing clown who seemed immune to the exodus.

“Well,” the clown said conversationally as the last guest departed, “intimate gatherings can be so much more… meaningful.”

Something in his tone made Priss look at him more carefully. The way he stood, slightly favoring his right side. The unconscious gesture of touching his left wrist when he spoke. The cadence of his voice, now that the room was quiet enough to hear it clearly.

“You’re nothing but a clown, Casey Brennan! I never want to see you ever again!”

The words echoed across fourteen years, carrying with them the full weight of that horrible afternoon when her carefully constructed social world had collided with genuine, desperate emotion. She’d been twelve, surrounded by her new friends from the country club, when awkward, poor Casey had declared his love in front of everyone.

The humiliation had been complete—not just his, but hers. To be associated with trailer park Casey, to have him think he was worthy of someone like her, had felt like a social death sentence. So, she’d said the words that would kill his hope completely, had watched his face crumble as if she’d struck him.

Had she known it would destroy him so completely? Had she cared?

Now, looking into those mismatched eyes—one violet contact, one the familiar pale blue she’d known since childhood—Priss felt the past and present collide with sickening force.

“Casey?” she whispered.

Drastic Red’s bloody smile stretched wider. “Hello, Priss. It’s been a long time.”

The music shifted abruptly from pop to something harsh and Germanic—Rammstein’s industrial fury replacing the party playlist. Derek looked around in confusion, but before he could voice a complaint, strong hands were guiding him to a chair.

“What the fuck, man?” Derek protested, but his words were already slurring. The GHB that had been slowly working through his system for the past hour was reaching its peak effectiveness. Around the room, the remaining conscious guests swayed on their feet, their expressions growing slack and unfocused.

Only Priss seemed unaffected—she’d been too nervous to drink much, and her earlier vomiting had purged most of the contaminated alcohol from her system.

She watched in growing horror as Casey—no, Drastic Red—moved with practiced efficiency, zip-tying wrists to ankles before his victims could fully process what was happening.

“Casey, what are you doing?” Her voice came out smaller than she intended, carrying echoes of the twelve-year-old girl who’d once called him her best friend.

“Making memories,” he replied, positioning his three captives in a neat row facing the stereo system. “You always said that’s what mattered most—making memories that last. Well, Priss, I guarantee you’ll remember this night for the rest of your life.”

Misty tried to speak around the silk scarf stuffed in her mouth, her eyes wide with drug-addled confusion and growing terror. Derek slumped forward, barely conscious, while Greg remained completely unconscious in his elaborate Cirque du Soleil costume.

“Please,” Priss whispered. “Casey, please don’t hurt them. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Didn’t they?” His voice carried a curious, almost philosophical tone as he secured the final zip tie. “Derek here—you know what he did junior year? Threw my lunch in the trash every day for two weeks straight. Called it ‘charity work,’ cleaning up after the white trash. And Misty…” He looked at the bound girl with something approaching pity. “Sweet Misty, who laughed so hard when you kicked sand in my face that she wet herself. Who made up that song about ‘Casey’s crazy eyes’ that followed me through high school.”

Priss felt the room tilt slightly. These weren’t random acts of violence—they were carefully selected retributions from a mind that had catalogued every slight, every humiliation, every moment of cruelty across fourteen years.

“And Greg?” she asked, looking at the unconscious teenager. “What did he ever do to you?”

Casey’s smile faltered slightly. “Wrong place, wrong time,” he admitted.

“Sometimes innocent people get caught in the crossfire. You should understand that better than anyone.”

Before Priss could fully process his words, Casey was behind her, one arm encircling her waist while his other hand pressed a chloroform-soaked rag to her face. She struggled briefly before the chemical overwhelmed her senses, dragging her into darkness.

When she woke, she was zip-tied in the same position as the others, facing her three bound friends. The music had changed again—now something slower, more mournful. Casey sat cross-legged in front of them like a demented storyteller at the world’s worst campfire.

“Now that everyone’s present and accounted for,” he said, “let me tell you a story. It’s about a boy and a girl who were best friends from the time they could walk. The boy was poor, awkward, different—but he was loyal and kind and he loved that girl more than his own life.”

Derek was semi-conscious now, his eyes rolling as he tried to focus on the scene. Misty whimpered behind her gag, tears streaming down her cheeks. Only Greg remained mercifully unconscious.

“The girl was golden,” Casey continued, his violet eye fixed on Priss while his damaged blue eye seemed to look through her to some distant memory.

“Beautiful, popular, destined for wonderful things. And for ten perfect years, they were inseparable. He would have done anything for her—died for her, killed for her. She was his whole world.”

Priss found herself remembering those years differently now. Not as time spent with an awkward hanger-on, but as a friendship that had been genuine and deep and irreplaceable. Casey had been the one person who’d known all her secrets, who’d seen her cry over her parents’ fighting, who’d held her hand during the thunderstorms that terrified her.

“But then puberty hit,” Casey’s voice hardened. “Suddenly the golden girl needed golden friends. Suddenly the poor boy wasn’t good enough anymore. She began avoiding him, pretending not to see him in the halls. And when he finally worked up the courage to tell her how he felt…”

Casey stood, pulling the box cutter from his pocket. The blade caught the light as he turned it slowly in his hands.

“She didn’t just say no. She destroyed him. Publicly, completely, with surgical precision. ‘You’re nothing but a clown, Casey Brennan! I never want to see you ever again!’ Do you remember? Do you remember how your new friends laughed? How they high-fived her for putting the freak in his place?”

Priss did remember. She remembered the surge of power she’d felt, the approval of girls like Misty and Derek’s sister Sarah. She remembered feeling grown-up and sophisticated, no longer tethered to childhood connections that might drag down her social stock.

She also remembered the look on Casey’s face—not just hurt, but something dying behind his eyes. She’d seen him around school after that, shuffling through the halls like a ghost, his grades slipping, his few other friends drifting away. By sophomore year, he’d dropped out entirely.

“The last time I saw you,” Casey continued, “was at Miller’s Beach. I thought maybe… maybe if we were alone, away from your friends, you might remember what we’d been to each other. But you didn’t just reject me, Priss. You grabbed a handful of sand and threw it directly into my face. Into my eyes.”

His left hand moved unconsciously to his damaged eye. “Most of it healed. But not all of it. I see the world a little differently now—literally and figuratively.”

Derek was trying to say something behind his gag, his eyes wide with belated recognition of their danger. Misty had gone silent, her body shaking with suppressed sobs. And Priss… Priss was finally understanding the true weight of that moment by the lake.

She’d been sixteen, annoyed by his persistence, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to accept their changed relationship. The sand had been an impulse—not calculated cruelty, just teenage thoughtlessness. She’d walked away without looking back, never knowing she’d partially blinded him, never caring enough to check.

“Now,” Casey said, kneeling beside Derek, “let’s make some new memories.”

He rolled up Derek’s sleeve, exposing the muscled forearm that had once hurled footballs with precision. “This is your throwing arm, isn’t it? All those touchdowns in high school. All those scholarship opportunities. Remember when you used to grab my lunch tray and throw it across the cafeteria? Called it ‘target practice.'”

Derek’s eyes widened as the box cutter came into view. Casey made his first incision with surgical precision—a long line from elbow to wrist, deep enough to part the skin cleanly. Blood welled immediately, running in rivulets onto the carpet.

“The beauty of the forearm,” Casey said conversationally as Derek screamed behind his gag, “is that there are so many nerve endings. You feel everything.” He made two perpendicular cuts, creating a rectangular flap of skin. “Just like I felt everything you did to me. Every. Single. Day.”

From his pocket, Casey retrieved a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Derek’s muffled screams intensified as Casey gripped the corner of the skin flap and began to pull downward with methodical slowness. The flesh peeled away like a grotesque banana, revealing the red muscle beneath.

Priss vomited behind her gag, choking on the bile that had nowhere to go. The force shot the gag out of her mouth, allowing her to breathe. And, scream. That sound—that wet tearing combined with Derek’s agonized shrieks—would echo in her nightmares for years to come.

Derek mercifully passed out from shock, his body convulsing briefly before going limp. Casey studied the exposed muscle with clinical interest, then reached for the switchblade.

“Mercy,” he said simply, drawing the blade across Derek’s throat in one smooth motion. “Something you never showed me.”

He turned his attention to Misty, who was hyperventilating behind her gag, tears streaming down her perfectly made-up face.

“Sweet Misty,” Casey said, almost tenderly. “Do you remember the song you made up about my eyes? ‘Casey’s crazy eyes, looking at the skies, wondering when he’ll die?’ Such a catchy tune. All the kids sang it.”

The box cutter traced a line across Misty’s forehead, from temple to temple. The cut was shallow at first, just parting the skin, but Casey pressed deeper on the second pass. Blood cascaded down her face like a crimson waterfall.

“Your face was always your power, wasn’t it?” Casey asked, retrieving the pliers again. “Your ticket to popularity, to being wanted, to mattering. Let’s see what’s underneath all that beauty.”

Misty’s screams reached a pitch that seemed to vibrate in Priss’s bones as Casey gripped the edge of the forehead flap and began to pull down. The skin came away in strips, some clean, others requiring the pliers to tear them free. Underneath, Misty’s pain was visible through the thin layer of muscle and fascia.

“Still beautiful,” Casey observed, tilting his head as blood dripped from his safety pins. “In a more honest way.”

Misty lasted longer than Derek before shock claimed her, but Casey ended her suffering with the same clinical efficiency—a swift cut across the carotid artery, then gentle positioning of her body.

Finally, he turned to unconscious Greg, then looked back at Priss with those mismatched eyes.

“Now here’s where it gets interesting,” Casey said, holding up both the box cutter and the switchblade. “One means he suffers like the others. One means he dies quickly. You get to choose, Priss. Just like you chose to destroy me all those years ago.”

Priss shook her head violently, refusing to participate in Casey’s twisted game.

“No choice is still a choice,” Casey said sadly. “And you know which one I’ll make.”

But instead of reaching for Greg, Casey pulled out a cell phone and dialed 911. His voice was calm, almost conversational as he reported the murders and gave the address.

“Three dead, one unconscious,” he said into the phone. “The fourth one… well, that depends on how quickly you get here.”

“Why?” Priss managed to ask when he set the phone aside.

“Because I want you to live,” Casey said simply. “Death would be mercy, and mercy isn’t what this is about. I want you to carry this with you forever. I want you to understand what it feels like to have something precious destroyed while you watch helplessly.”

He turned to face her fully, both hands holding the box cutter. “But first, I have one more memory to make.”

Casey’s mutilation of his own face was the most horrifying thing Priss had ever witnessed—not because of the blood or the torn flesh, but because of the peace that seemed to settle over him as he carved away the last pretense of humanity. In smooth, practiced moves, the box cutter was drawn from the edge of his mouth in a sort of semicircle to nearly his ear. He calmly repeated the destruction on the opposite side…all while peering casually at Priss.

“You were the only one who ever made me smile,” he said through his ruined mouth, blood spattering with each word. “Really smile, not this painted-on bullshit. When you took that away, when you made me understand that I was nothing… I learned to smile anyway. I learned to make it permanent.”

The safety pins came out one by one, taking strips of flesh with them. Casey’s face became a Jackson Pollock painting in red and white, a masterpiece of self-destruction that would haunt Priss for the rest of her life. His own tears were tracing smudged greasepaint and trailing into the bloody remnants of his face.

“Every moment we spent together is burned into my memory,” he continued, his voice growing weaker but somehow more intense. “Every laugh, every secret, every perfect summer day. You were my entire world, Priss. And you threw me away like garbage.”

Sirens were approaching now, growing louder by the second. Casey reached for the switchblade with hands that shook from blood loss and shock.

“I wanted you to remember me,” he whispered. “That’s all I ever wanted. To matter enough to be remembered.”

The blade found his throat with that same practiced precision. Casey’s eyes—one violet, one pale blue—remained fixed on Priss as life ebbed away, carrying with it fourteen years of accumulated rage and pain and desperate, twisted love.

The police found Priss catatonic, staring into the dead eyes of the boy who’d once built sandcastles with her on summer afternoons. The official report would list four fatalities and one survivor, but those numbers couldn’t capture the true scope of the damage.

In the weeks that followed, as Priss struggled through therapy sessions and police interviews, she began to understand the ripple effects of casual cruelty.

Casey hadn’t been born a monster—he’d been carved into one by a thousand small cuts, each administered by people who’d never thought to consider the consequences of their actions.

She remembered him as he’d been at five: shy, sweet, desperately eager to please. She remembered the way he’d protected her from bullies, shared his lunch when she forgot hers, listened to her dreams of becoming a marine biologist and told her she could do anything.

She also remembered the moment she’d decided he wasn’t worth keeping around anymore.

The guilt was overwhelming, but it was the memories that truly destroyed her. Not just the horror of that final night, but the rediscovered knowledge of what they’d lost—what she’d thrown away in pursuit of social status and surface-level popularity.

Casey had been right about one thing: she would never forget him now. His ruined face haunted her dreams, but even worse were the dreams where he appeared as he’d been—young and hopeful and heartbreakingly vulnerable.

Those were the dreams that made her understand the true cost of choosing cruelty over kindness, popularity over loyalty.

In the end, Drastic Red succeeded in his mission. Priscilla Jones would carry the weight of her choices for the rest of her life, understanding too late that some wounds never heal, and some words can never be taken back.

The clown had walked into her party, but the girl who’d rejected him had created him years before, one thoughtless act at a time.

END