"And why is the rifle going home with you?" Lisha nudged Abbie's shoulder as the five of them laughed their way down the dark quiet streets. "Anybody else you planning on killing tonight?"

"You'll never know," Abbie smirked and turned the wooden barrel at her best friend's head playfully.

"Dark out here, ain't it?" Ian noted as they turned down a residential side road, that had little in the ways of streetlights. The only things that were brightening their paths were the screens of their phones and the occasional house decorated for Halloween in ominous oranges and purples.

A cold chill rode up Abbie's spine as she turned her face into the autumn breeze. To say that 'fall was here' would be an insult to the being of reality. With the falling leaves, the shallow moonlight, and the sun gone before the day was, no one could deny the death of the summer for a more sinister season of school and devils' nights. One could hardly see twenty steps in front of them, even with their phone lights; the dark was so thick.

"Well that's what happens at," Lisha looked down at her phone. "9:44 pm, this time of year. It gets dark. Get with the times, Ian."

He rolled his eyes. "Psht, right."

Suddenly the group ground to a halt. At first wasn't sure why they had stopped, but then she heard it again, the ragged drone of a deep throated canidae shuddering its way down into their skulls. "Okay, what was that?" Abbie glanced around nervously, wrapping her hands tighter around her wooden rifle in anticipation. So what of it couldn't actually shoot anything? It could still cause blunt force trauma.

"The wolf people," Michael leaned down and whispered hoarsely in her ear. "You know how this works, Abbie. Every year a group of high school students goes missing in this state. Witnesses say they hear a ground shaking wolf drone, just before the students are never seen again."

"Yeah," Tony added in a vibradoing voice. "My papá says that Los chupacabras are moving north and hunting suburbs."

"Shut up," she growled as Ian took a step back and let out a bad imitation howl.

"Okay, guys, calm down," Lisha looked like she was trying not to laugh. "It was a dog, and y'all know it. What are you, a bunch of ten year olds?"

"Well, I can't speak for them," Abbie forced a laugh and started walking again, which spurred the group back into movement.

The dog howl seemed to put some pep into Tony's step, because suddenly he was dancing his way to the front of the group, making jerky zombie dances and doing cheap hip thrusts. Then, in an as out of tune voice as could possibly exist (and Abbie had heard out of tune) he started singing. "It's close to miiidnight! And something evil's lurking in the dark!" He clapped and spun around the beat of his own song. "Under the moooonlight!"

"You see a sight that almost stops your heart!" Ian joined in loudly.

Abbie shook her head and silently cursed the drama club for staging a musical so early in the school year. There was simply no end to all the horrible singing.

"You try to screeeam, but terror takes the sound before you make it!" Mike and Lisha joined them, Lisha making wild gestures for Abbie to join them. She just smiled and shook her head. As much as she actually did enjoy the song, she wasn't exactly keen on breaking into a full Broadway number down a dark street where anyone could hear her.

"You start to freeeeze! As horror looks you right between the eyes!" Ian, Michael, and Lisha half yelled half sang.

"YOU'RE PARALYYYZED!" Tony screamed and snapped both hands toward Abbie. She snorted, rolled her eyes, and just kept walking.

"C'mon Abbie, you know this song better than any of us!" Lisha called.

"Yeah, haha, sure," she laughed.

"C'mon, please," Ian added.

"Holy shít, Ian just said please," Tony gasped.

"Now you have to do it," Mike tacked on.

Abbie, just as surprised as the others that the trumpet player had remembered any kind of courtesy, promptly shoved her rifle into Michael's hands and strutted off the sidewalk and out into the middle of the street. If she had to do this, she would make it worth it.

She could hear the beat pulsing through her head, and instinctively her shoulders started bobbing along with it. And just like that, the music flooded her sense. "Cause this is thriller!" She threw her hands above her head, her head snapping well to the sides. "Thriller Night! And no one's gonna save ya from the beast about to strike!" Unsure of what exactly happened next, Abbie put what she felt was a satisfying zombie face as she shuffled her feet forward, knowing that it at least looked right. "You're fighting for your life inside a --" the words set her heels into a convincing spin that had her striking a freeze frame with every word. "Killer." Strike. "Thriller." Strike. Under the cover of her big finish, she smooth walked several steps toward her friends, then snapped her head at them with as much undead swagger as she humanly muster. "Tonight!" Whisper.

And just like that, the spotlights faded from her mind and Abbie found herself standing alone in the middle of the dark street.

"WOO Yeah girl, now that's what I'm talking about!" Tony threw his arm easily over her shoulder as Abbie made her way off the road. "She can dance. I suddenly understand what you see in her, Mikey!"

Abbie laughed as she shrugged his arm off her shoulder. She couldn't tell with the dark, but Michael seemed to be smiling as he handed her back her rifle. "That was great. You were great."

Lisha nudged Abbie's arm with her elbow while Ian just scoffed loudly. "I could've done that." He then proceeded to do some bad hip thrusting and áss shaking that would only have qualified as dancing at a baf party involving Miley Cyrus.

Once the four of them convinced Ian to stop embarrassing them (to which he argued that they'd never been afraid of public humiliation prior) they continued on toward the end of the road in a bundle of whispered tall tales and chuckles.

Through the heat of night's activity, Abbie felt a strange sense of darkness lingering over them as they laughed and screamed. The street seemed too quiet considering the time of night and the amount of noise they were making. Usually at this point, someone would have come out of their house with a shotgun and screamed at them to 'git your bums outa here and back to ya parents ya little misfits'.

But no one did, and that had Abbie wondering if it was just a coincidence that the night was so quiet.