''Thirteen Party ''By Ling

I started having Halloween parties back in '90, cause Renee Jenkins sold her house and moved to the Virgin Islands. Renee always threw a hell of a Halloween Party, and she had the perfect house for it, real old with a kind of classy but funky atmosphere. I loved that house. Whenever I pass by it, I wonder if the people who are living there now ever have half as much fun as we did back then. Anyway, after Renee left town, there were no Halloween parties for a couple of years. I was married to Rick then, and the thought of having one of my own never occured to me until I found myself unmarried to Rick, managing a music store, and living on my own in a little house way out in the country. The closest neighbor was down the road a piece, and the house was surrounded by woods on three sides. It was a little spooky for me living out there by myself, but I had my dog Normie, and my friends were always coming over. I was dating a guy named Dave then, and I told him one day while we were exploring the woods around the house, that I thought it would be a great idea to have a Halloween party. He was all for it, and so I bought some decorations, ordered a keg, and had the first of twelve really good parties. The next year we had a "haunted trail" party, which involved a guided tour through the woods to an old abandoned falling down house we discovered out in the woods. The year after that we did a role playing party where every guest was given a paper bag which contained a costume and a card describing a character. The guest became the character for the duration of the party. That party was a lot of fun, but I think the rum punch I served that year might have had something to do with it. After a few years I moved into another house, this one was about a hundred years old, and big, so that I could fit more people in it. We did a really good haunted house that first year there....and boy, did I have fun scaring the crap out of all my friends. I always looked for new and interesting ways to scare them so they would be taken by surprise. I would choose special assistants to help me with my scary projects. We would be busy for days making dead body and monster dummies to decorate the house to look as macarbe and sinister as possible. It was so much fun. My friends voted me Katrina, the Queen of Halloween...they would never dream of missing one of my Halloween parties. And so I had twelve really good parties. Last Halloween was the thirteenth party. As you can imagine, I made as big a deal out of it as possible.. I invited twelve couples. I was dating Kevin then, a really sweet boy, a good bit younger than me, but I like younger men, they're so much more fun than guys my own age. Of course, that made thirteen coup[es, and with Kevin's help, I planned the perfect murder mystery game. :He was the only one I let help me with the preparations. I wanted everything to be a surprise for everyone else.. We carved thirteen pumpkins, and there were thirteen dead roses in a large black vase on the dining room table. The house looked fantastic, and as the guests began to arrive, Kevin and I congratulated each other on the great job we had done. Everyone oohed and aahed as usual, and looked around expectantly, knowing that I had something planned, but not a clue as to what it could be. After all the couples had arrived, I announced that we would be playing a murder mystery game of my own design. I handed out plain white envelopes to each guest, and told them to open them, but not to reveal the contents to anyone, not even their significant others. I then told them that one of them would be named the murderer, revealed in his or her envelope, and the rest would have only chinese fortunes in theirs. The murderer would not be known to anyone, not even to myself, since the envelopes were randomly distributed. The murderer would then choose a victim, and sometime during the party, he or she would "kill" their chosen victim by privately telling the victim that they were "dead", and the chosen victim would then discreetly visit the bathroom, where they would fall down "dead", and the next person to visit the bathroom would then find the "body". Everyone would then get to view the "body", and then the victim would "arise" and become a ghost for rest of the party. The rest of the guests would then try to guess which one of them was the murderer. The ones who guessed correctly would win a prize. It sounded workable, and simple enough. I never thought that anything bad would happen. Nothing really bad ever happened at any of my parties. Everyone always had fun. I'd had twelve really good parties. I thought that this party, the thirteenth party, would be fun too. It began really well. After everyone had opened their envelopes, we were all looking arouund, trying to see if anyone had a guilty expression on their face. My own envelope contained only a fortune, something about getting an unexpected gift. I guess it really came true. Anyway, my best friend Angela, who was always the life of any party, made her way over to me and asked me if I was the killer. I rolled my eyes, and told her that it was a "don't ask - don't tell" kind of thing. She just laughed, and proceeded to do what she does best...flirt with every guy at the party. Except for Kevin. She never flirted with my boyfriends, which is why I guess we remained friends. Her date was a guy I had never met before named Drew. He acted like he was having a good time, and didn't seem to mind being mostly ignored by Angela. I saw her talking to Kevin's brother Toby, who was totally thrilled about it, although his girlfriend Michelle clearly wasn't. Angela could make a guy's day by smiling at him, let alone having an actual conversation with him. Later I saw her with Ryan, a guy who worked for me at the music store. Ryan was usually so shy with women. He was great with customers, and he knew a lot about music, but if you tried to have a social conversation with him, he would clam right up. His "date" was his sister Tonya, who abandoned Ryan as soon as they got there, and left him to his usual job of programing the cd player. I saw that Angela had him laughing though. She just had this way about her that even Ryan couldn't resist. I left Angela to her flirting, and caught up with Kevin, who was deep into conversation with Dominick, the owner of the store. They were talking football, which interested me not at all, so I went looking for other people to check out. Our neighbors from down the road, Bill and Charlene were there, and they were checking out the party food, along with Kelly and Anne, the only gay couple we know.. Kelly works at the store too, and she and Anne have been together for about as long as Bill and Charlene, which is just about forever. I chatted with them for a while, but if any of them was the killer, they weren't giving it away. Dominick's wife, Robin, joined us in the kitchen, and I thought she looked a little suspicious. I watched her closely for a few minutes, and then decided to go and see who was outside on the back deck. It turned out to be quite a few people. The keg was set up out there, and I suppose that was one reason, but it was also a really beautiful night. It was a full moon, and the temperature was in the 60's. It was perfect for being outside. Andy and Marie, who I'd met through Kevin, were out there, and so were the rest of the store's employees with their dates. Most of the people who worked there were fairly young, and unmarried, so some of their dates I didn't really know. My assistant manager Lauren had brought some guy with blue hair...I think his name was Troy. Everybody seemed to be drinking pretty heavily, but the mood was upbeat, and they were all having fun. I hung out on the deck for a while, and refilled my plastic cup a couple of times. We all started talking music, and when I checked my watch, I realized it had been a couple of hours since we had started the game. I also realized I had to go to the bathroom, and walked back into the house. The door to the bathroom was closed, and Charlene was waiting outside the door to go, so I went upstairs to the other bathroom that connected to my bedroom. Normie was lying on my bed. Crowds of people always bothered him, and he was getting kind of old, so he would hide out upstairs during a party. I went to the bathroom, and then sat and petted Normie for a few minutes. Then I went back downstairs and headed for the kitchen to check on the party food. I found Keven opening chips and putting out more dip. I kissed him, and apoligized for not spending more time with him. He just smiled and told me we would make up for it later when everyone else and gone home. Then the crowd from the deck swarmed in, evidently hungry as well as thirsty. I was glad we had enough food, experience had taught me that. I fixed myself a plate of chips and sausage balls and went into the living room. A few people were dancing to Ozzy Osbourne's "Goodbye to Romance", Ryan had programmed to play on the CD player. Ryan was sitting on a chair near one of the speakers, seemingly lost in the music. I walked over to him and asked him where Angela was. He shrugged, and closed his eyes. Just then, Ryan's sister Tonya came in the door from outside on the deck. She looked more than a little drunk, and asked me where the bathroom was. I pointed out the way, and sat down in a chair near Ryan. Maybe thirty seconds later we heard Tonya scream, and both us jumped up, me spilling my sausage balls all over the floor. Then I realized Tonya must have found the victim from our murder mystery game. I said as much to Ryan, and he sighed with relief, and told me he had forgotten we were supposed to be playing a game. The others in the room had stopped dancing and were kind of standing around frozen. Then Tonya came running into the living room. She looked both really scared and sheepish at the same time. She said she had forgotten about the game too, and how seeing the body in the bathtub had scared her so badly she had wet her pants. Then she said I had gone too far this time with my realistic looking death scenes. I looked at her with confusion. I hadn't staged any kind of realistic looking death scene for the victim of the game. I didn't even know who the victim was going to be myself, and the plan had been for the victim to just go into the bathroom and pretend to be dead. I started for the bathroom, and Ryan was right behind me. I turned around asked Tonya who it was in the bathroom. but somehow I knew already who it was, even before I heard her say it was Angela. I walked the rest of the way to the bathroom slowly, and it was like I already knew that the party that had started out so well, was about to go bad. She was in the bathtub, face down, with one of her legs hanging over the side. There was blood, a lot of it, and it looked as if someone had cut her throat. I knew this was no game. Angela was dead. I started to pass out, and Ryan caught me, and half carried me back into the living room. Everyone was still standing in the same places they had been before, and they were all staring at us. I remember I said for somebody to call 911, and I sat down on the sofa. Then everyone was running past me toward the bathroom. Ryan sat down beside me, his face was as pale as mine probably was. I heard more screaming, and someone came running back out and asked where the phone was. Ryan pointed toward the kitchen, and I told Ryan to find everyone in the house, and bring them all into the living room with us. Ryan told them all that Angela was dead, really dead, and that the police were coming. A couple of people started to laugh, but they stopped when they saw my face. I asked Ryan if everyone was still here, and he said he thought so. I asked him to count heads, and he did. He said there were 25 of us. The 26th was Angela. Thirteen couples. Kevin came and sat down beside me and put his arms around me. I started to cry then, and a few minutes later the police got there. Someone showed them the way to the bathroom, and one of them came running back out a few seconds later, and said that no one could leave. More cops came, and after a while, they started questioning us. They started with me. I told them everything I could remember about what had happened that evening. Of course, I had been drinking, so had just about everyone else, and that didn't help much. The police acted like they didn't believe anything any of us told them. The questioning went on for hours and hours, and the house was full of detectives, and the coroner came, and they took Angela away. It was almost daylight when they finally said everyone could go home, and Kevin and I went upstairs and collapsed on the bed. We slept until mid-afternoon, and I woke to hear the doorbell ringing. I went downstairs to the door, and it was two of the detectives again. I invited them in and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Kevin came downstairs, and we all sat at the kitchen table, after Kevin cleared all the party mess off, and they started asking us questions again. I had the most god-awful headache, but I tried to do the best I could to answer them. I had explained to them about the game, and they had asked everyone who was at the party, if they were the killer in the game. No one admitted to being the one, so the cops thought that whoever had received the piece of paper in their envelope that said they were the killer in the game, was most likely the real killer. Most of the guests had thrown away the little pieces of paper containing the chinese fortunes. I had thrown mine away too. Everyone had been passing them around to let other people read them, so digging them out of the trash to get fingerprints from them would have been no help. They did go through the trash to look for the paper that named the killer, but they hadn't found it. I shuddered, thinking that one of my friends had used my innocent game to kill my best friend. I couldn't believe that any one of them had done it. Angela was a flirt, sure, and some people called her a tease. But she hadn't meant anything by it, it was just fun and games to her. The detectives told us they were continuing to question all of the party guests, and that no one was above suspicion. When they finally left, I went upstairs to take a shower. Ryan had said that he would do all the cleaning up, for me not to worry about it. I was very grateful, because there was no way I was going to be able to go back into the downstairs bathroom. I was still wearing my costume from the party, I had been too exhausted to take it off the night before. I only wanted to throw it in the trash now. Kevin and I had dressed as MacBeth and Lady MacBeth. I wondered where Kevin's costume was. He must have gotten up sometime during the night to take his off. I was rinsing my hair when I realized that Kevin hadn't been wearing his costume when we went to bed. And he hadn't been wearing it when I saw him in the living room after we had found Angela's body. Was he wearing it when I'd talked with him in the kitchen last night? I'd been so buzzed, I couldn't remember. I looked in the clothes hamper when I got out of the shower. There was only a few things of mine in it. I looked all around the room, but I didn't see Kevin's costume anywhere. I got dressed and went back downstairs. I didn't see Kevin, so I called to him. He didn't answer. I went into the kitchen, but he wasn't in there either. The kitchen was still a mess from the party and the police going through everything. I walked back through the house looking for Kevin. He wasn't out on the deck or in the yard. I looked all through the house until the only place I hadn't looked was the bathroom. I walked slowly towards the bathroom door. It was closed. I turned the knob and opened the door. Kevin was kneeling on the floor, leaning over the tub. There was a bucket of hot soapy water beside him on the floor, and he had a sponge in his hand. I stared at him. He was wearing his MacBeth costume. Then I remembered he hadn't been wearing it in the kitchen. I'd been too drunk to notice at the time. But he was wearing it now. I said his name, and he started to turn slowly toward me. Then I saw the blood on the front of his costume. He smiled at me and stood up. He dropped the sponge he had been holding, and I saw the knife he held in his other hand. He spoke then, telling me how he was so very sorry, that his temper had flared when Angela had ignored his declaration of love for her. She had told him that she could never be interested in him because of me. So he had rigged the game and made himself the killer so he could kill her. And now he had to kill me. He grabbed me by my hair, and I kicked the bucket of water over and pushed him. He slipped and fell, and I ran out the door, and crashed right into one of the detectives. He pushed me aside and ran into the bathroom and had Kevin handcuffed before he'd even had time to get up off the floor. The other detective asked me if I was alright. I said I was, and I asked him how they knew. He said they had the house bugged, and they had heard every word Kevin had said. He said they had discovered some things about Kevin that made them suspect him. It turned out that Kevin had lied to me about almost everything. He was a liar and a killer. He had killed Angela, and he would have killed me too. So, I guess the thirteenth party was the last one. Halloween will be here again very soon, and I really don't know what I will do with myself. I don't have a boyfriend now, I don't really trust my judgement anymore. Maybe someone else will have a party. Or maybe we have all outgrown the whole thing. I wonder if I can sell thirteen boxes of Halloween decorations on E-bay? The End