The Red Cape

"This dance blows", Ray said. His punch raised dangerously close to the edge of the flimsy paper cup he held as he tossed his bushy red curls in a show of contempt. I shrugged my shoulders before realizing my fingers were tugging at the hem of my dress again. Why did we even agree to come to this stupid thing?

I felt a hand slap lazily against my arm as Ray's energy suddenly lit up. "Hey, she's here!" My eyes darted toward the door. Yep, there she was, alright. Kandi Waterhouse breezed through the open double doors of the school gym wearing the most ridiculous pink dress I had ever seen. But then again, I was never happy to see pink, dresses, or Kandi for that matter. Not since Ray had admitted his crush on her. 

Ray was five days younger than me, his dad was my dad's best friend, and he lived in the neat blue house with the white picket fence right next door to ours. It was established that he was honorary blood. He was my best friend in the whole world. Or, at least, that's the most I figured I would get from him. 

"She came with Bobby," I reminded him. It made sense that the most popular girl in school would flounce arm-in-arm with the captain of the football team into the Spring Formal. Not the captain of the quiz bowl. It gave me a twinge of satisfaction to remind him of this. "What do you see in her, anyway?" Tugging at the dress again. "She's a bimbo, and you're looking at a full scholarship to any school of your choice in the nation."

Ray turned his face toward me and flashed his pearly whites. Being the son of the town's most respected dentist carried certain advertisement obligations. 

"We don't know that for sure."

With a flick of his wrist, the punch was down his throat and the Dixie cup tossed into the nearly-overflowing garbage can. I had been smelling the trash for a while now, but I had been unsuccessful in moving us. Ray had wanted the best vantage point of the double doors. He winked at me as he pulled something small and shiny from the pocket of his black satin pants. I instantly recognized it. 

"What the-"

Ray's eyes grew wide and he stuffed the flask back down into hiding. His finger found my lips before I could speak again, and a spark lit my skin where it met his. "Shut up, shut up!" His grin grew more mischievous. He pulled his finger away too soon. "Want to get the hell out of here for a sec?"

I couldn't help but feel excited, but the fear of risk had always been an Achilles' heel. I pushed my finger between Ray's left ribs and he crunched instinctively. "That's your dad's!" I fought to keep my voice down and it tugged at my throat. "Besides, we aren't supposed to leave here until our ride comes."

"Oh, screw this place," Ray spat. "Besides, I need some liquid courage before I talk to Kandi." He reached for my hand. "Let's go."

_

Spring aromas were definitely in the air. Blossoms bloomed on the branches of trees that swayed with the gentle wind. The sun was almost swallowed by the stars, save for the striking slash of red and deep purple that kept the darkness at bay. For now. 

Ray and I darted out the side door of the gym, and I breathlessly snuck a peak behind my left shoulder to check if our escape had been witnessed. So far, so good. 

The high school that we were soon to be shed of lay on top of Cherry Hill Street, but just below us, through the thin veil of tall, slender trees sat the empty middle school that had just recently shut down. It was the one that Ray and I had called our own through those years behind a well-worn desk and through the locker-lined halls. Truthfully, it had bothered me that a new school was being built across town. It was a piece of our history that was over. 

Ray seemed to read my mind as he passed me the flask. "Can't believe it," he muttered. 

I shrugged, accepting the flask and placing it to my lips. The burn was something I wasn't prepared for this night, but Ray and I had tip-toed to his dad's liquor cabinet a time or two during cook outs. The fumes and familiar burn in my nostrils told me it was whiskey. Good whiskey. 

"Yeah," I spat as I made a face. "I'm really ready for a new chapter in life."

Ray smirked as he gazed down at my tattered fishnets and knee-high Demonia boots. "A new NEW chapter? You mean, devoid of Birthday Party and What's-her-name and the ghost screamers?"

I threw him a glare as I reached for the whiskey a second time. "You know damn well what their name is."

Ray nodded at the flask. "Think you can double shot?"

"You don't know who you're dealing with." I grinned, already feeling nice and warm. Maybe it was the liquor, or maybe... it was just nice to forget the world, and smell his cologne. 

Ray's face grew serious as he glanced up at the stars. I knew that face, when his features softened and he turned away, allowing for me to take in the scattered freckles across his nose and cheekbones and the glow of his red eyelashes in the moonlight. Rosy lips touched the flask, and a drop of the whiskey escaped from the corner of his mouth. He brushed it away with pale knuckles. "I'm going to do something with my life, Lennie. You watch. I'm going to get out of this backward town, and I'm going to be somebody. Whatever that takes."

"Ray, you are somebody." Four shots down. "You've always been my best friend."

"Yeah," a friendly but clumsy jab of his fist into my arm, words slurring. "But that's not all I want to be."

I felt the vibration start in the pit of my stomach, and it rose until it took hold of my throat. It was now, or it was never. Or so the whiskey told me. 

"Then be more."

Hazel eyes lifted and held mine for a heartbeat. Heat coursed through my face, and my heart pounded against my ribs like a prisoner begging for freedom. Only Ray held the key. I leaned into him, feeling more brave than I had any natural right to. Those hazel eyes dropped to my lips, and his parted. 

He scrambled to his feet, head lazily knocking toward the ramshackle middle school. "Race you." And he was gone before I could utter a word.

_

"You expect me to run in platform boots." I bent over as Ray fiddled with the window, gasping for breath. Running downhill was no small feat, and my thighs reminded with a painful ache that they were there. "You idiot, what are you doing?"

"Saying goodbye to this hell hole," Ray sputtered in a well-buzzed burst of language. He was using a thin tree branch as if it were a crowbar and the glass was just beginning to give. "Gotcha!" Dropping the branch, he braced himself against the unkempt lawn and pushed upward with both hands. The window groaned as it budged, but it opened. Ray lifted one long and lean leg up into the empty space he had created. He paused only to throw a puzzled glance at me. "Coming or what?"

The wind picked up around my skirt, and the hem that I had been so aware of gently swayed. I was unsettled. It was quiet. 

Ray didn't wait for an answer. He slipped in, and was gone. 

"RAY?" Ignoring the warning in the back of my head, I cautiously approached the window and glanced at the dozen or so dead insect bodies squished inside of it. The classroom was dark, but I could see the stacked chairs and desks in the back corner waiting for their exodus. Ray wasn't there. 

Stepping inside with my left foot, I gingerly placed my platformed-toe onto the tiled floor before shifting my weight to pull up completely. I jumped down, careful to distribute my weight evenly so as not to slip and twist my ankle. I straightened, smoothing the front of my dress. 

I instantly knew where I was. Mrs. White's English class had been one of my favorites, despite her catching my attempt at cheating during a 7th grade quiz on adverbs. I had written them all on my left hand in pen. Of course she would take that day to shake that hand. My cheat sheet had peeled off onto her skin like a press-on tattoo. I hugged myself to knock the chill in the bones. "Ray?"

There is something exhilarating about sneaking where you shouldn't belong, just like the emotion that fills your blood when you climb the side of a mountain and look down at 100 feet high. But as I trudged the empty and gloomy halls of an old life, I couldn't quite put a finger on how I felt. All I knew was that something was pawing at the edges of my vision. When I would turn, certain that Ray would be standing behind me with that stupid smirk of his, I would find myself gazing into the abyss of where I had come from. Alone. 

Beyond me, to the left, a scurrying noise down the hall. I snapped around and picked up the pace. I caught the door of the girl's bathroom just before it clicked in place, back to holding fast the privacy of whomever snuck passed the threshhold. I wrapped my fingers around the handle and pulled up, releasing the door and swinging it effortlessly and toward me. "Ray, this is NOT funny anymore."

A muffled giggle in the last stall. 

The room was windowless and dark. I flipped the light switch to the room, but the power seemed to be off. I was not about to go search for the breakers to this place. I crouched and peered under the stalls. No shadow, no movement. Empty. 

"You obviously have your legs pulled up." I rolled my eyes as I moved toward the last stall, my boots clicking against the tile. A drop from the faucet struck porcelain every five seconds or so. Beyond that, quiet. Too quiet. 

The door was slightly ajar. An electric shock flashed through my fingers as I placed my hand on it to push inward. I peered in, and...

I don't know how I ended up inside the stall, but I was flung forward, the door slamming into place. I whipped around and tugged at the door. Despite the lock being in the stall with me, it would not budge. I yanked as hard as I could, rattling the door. "Hey!" I shouted. "What in the hell?!"

Laughter outside the stall, hanging onto the air in just a few feet away.

"Ray, let me out!"

"Just a question."

I froze. The voice was ethereal, and so quiet that I was unsure I had even heard anything at first. I waited, then, "Ray?"

"Would you like the blue cape or the red cape?"

This was not Ray's voice. My lungs, my stomach, everything seemed to implode as my fear caused the blood to pump through me and my fingers went numb. "Wha-what?"

"Red. Or. Blue?"

My mind raced. This wasn't making any sense. But I did know that I was in danger. 

"What do you want from me?"

Suddenly the voice was whispering in my ear. "RED OR BLUE?!" It was so hateful, it was so...

I screamed, dropping to my knees and scurrying under the door. Screw the dress, I hated gussying up anyway. In two strides, I was pushing the door open and blasting through the hall back to Mrs. White's old English room. Nearly diving out of the open window, I found myself falling face first into a withered Boxwood. My fishnets tore and flapped in the wind as I scrambled back up the hill. I plummeted to the lawn as Ray's dad's car pulled up to the parking lot right outside of the high school gymnasium. He waved to me and I approached his side of the car. His smile dropped from his features, and he began frantically dialing Ray's cell phone. 

_

Ray's body was pulled from the old middle school that we had made so many memories in that night. His face was twisted into a permanent grimace of pain and despair. The firemen loaded him into the ambulance and covered his face. It was the last time I would see those bright hazel eyes. 

The back of his suit was shredded, and meaty ribbons of flesh had simultaneously released a steady stream of black blood and a view of his milky white spine. The same color as his teeth, bared in the mask of death. 

I stayed quiet. I couldn't tell them what I had heard, even when faced with Ray's father's relentless questions and his mother's unforgiving tears. I heard nothing, saw nothing. Because it was nothing that had whispered into my ear in that wretched stall. It had been nobody easing me in, and giggling as I shuffled through the forgotten halls. Hadn't it?

Ray is long since buried. He was local news for a week and two days, and then nothing was mentioned of his death in the media again. But for those few moments, Ray got his wish. He was known. He was somebody. 

Kandi didn't make the funeral. But me? I visit his grave every other afternoon, and together, we watch the sun go down. And when I slip into the sheets at night, and my eyes close, I can almost hear him tapping on the glass. Pulling the window up, up, slowly crawling in. Brushing a lock of hair back from my face, and whispering, whispering...

"Red cape or blue?"

_

Note: I have always loved studying Japanese culture, and one of the most interesting aspects of Japan is the long list of terrifying urban legends that the country believes in. This story was inspired by Aka Manto, or The Red Cape. Aka Manto is said to haunt bathroom stalls, slipping behind you and demanding you to select a red cape or a blue one. 

It is said selecting the blue cape will result in your death by strangulation or bloodletting. Choosing the red cape will leave your body bleeding onto the floor, the flesh of your back removed. 

So just how do you escape the clutches of Aka Manto? It is said you can confuse him by offering up a different color or simply refusing to answer as you make your escape. 

The line between superstition and reality is a blurry one. But I wonder, just how much realism has given light to these urban legends we know and allow our ears to become tickled with from around the world? Perhaps we'll never know...