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As Halloween draws near, a good number of the shops at the local mall have decided to take part in the festivities by handing out candy bars and bite-sized goodies to all of the customers who stop by. You score a fair amount of sweets while you're out and about.
After you consume a handful of them, though, you discover you don't feel.. quite right. You can't put your finger on why you don't feel right but soon the side effects from your candy munching come to light. When you sweat, your perspiration is noticeably brown and smells sickeningly sweet... almost like chocolate. In fact, your natural scent has seemed to take on a more sweet approach, as if you were a walking candy bar yourself. You've got no clue which shop handed out the cursed candy but the saccharine effect on you lasts for an entire day, until the candy has made it out of your system.
Noah liked Halloween for two things;
a) candy
and
b) the sexy costumes
The first of these was because candy was candy, and he was nothing if not a sucker for candy (who wasn't) and because eating candy was about the most dinner-ruining thing someone could do without actually cooking it badly, which he was okay with. And the second of these was because Noah was very okay with dressing up as something as mundane as a pirate or a vampire or whatever and getting to see all the hot girls dressed as sexy angels and demons and sexy nurses.
(He was pretty partial to the sexy angels in general.)
He himself wasn't exactly the most original of the dressing-up-kind, but this was okay, because Noah dressed up not for himself, but for the benefit of all the ladies, so it was important to look good while he was strutting his stuff around town. This year year he had decided on a particularly awesome piratical costume - not quite the same as the one he'd been a few years back - that involved an eyepatch and a sword, two things he knew chicks dug these days.
Except he was missing the eye patch, and this was a crucial part of his costume for the above reasons. Which was why, early on a Saturday morning, he found himself at the mall at a local Halloween store, digging through a bin of props in order to find said eyepatch. It was very, very important, after all. How was he supposed to score a hot chick without an eyepatch?
There was one in the corner of the second shop he found. Noah pulled it out triumphantly and hustled to the counter to pay for it, pulling out his card without even glancing at the price tag. There was a small container of candy beside the register with several chocolate bars sticking out of it and a sign that said Please take one! with a very happy looking smiley face next to it.
Noah plucked one up. Then, because the cashier wasn't looking, and he was hungry, slipped a second one into his pocket as well. He grabbed the bag he was given, flashed a cheerful grin, shoved his wallet back into the back pocket of his khakis, and ambled out of the shop, feeling pretty damn good about himself.
It was a cold day, and he had walked to the mall, rather than drive his very expensive car, because it was only a block or two away. Noah's laziness extended past the reasonable amount sometimes, but it was a brisk and clear autumn morning, and he had already passed several cute girls in beanies and fuzzy crocheted scarves on his way, all of whom he gave what he was pretty sure was a damn good looking smile, even if some of them did giggle at him as they walked on.
He pulled out one of the chocolate bars about halfway back and bit into it, feeling a sense of superiority as he bypassed a disgruntled looking man on the street who was bickering with someone else about the price of a coffee these days. Noah ducked under the man's arm and into the coffee shop on a whim, sidling up to the pretty barista at the counter with a grin on his face.
"One pumpkin spice latte, please," he declared brightly, giving his best cute boy smile.
She gave him an odd half smile in return, her brows a little furrowed as she nodded. Noah felt his spirits drop slightly, but, well. Maybe she had a boyfriend or something. He didn't like going after the ones who did, because cheating was super stupid, but the idea that she just wasn't interested didn't really cross his mind. They were all interested, after all, and really, who wouldn't be? He was good looking, rich, and went to a very fancy school. What was there not to like?
"Noah!" called one of the baristas near the end, pushing a cup onto the pickup counter. Noah wove his way through the crowds of people and picked up his drink, grinning cheerily at the girl, who glanced at him with a smile, and then recoiled slightly, her eyes widening.
He stared at her, but she was already bustling away, a look of consternation on her face. Noah watched her for a second longer, wondering what that had been all about, and then became aware that she was not the only one who was looking at him strangely. Several other people in the little coffee place were now watching him with a mixture of confusion and, in some cases, what appeared to be amusement - and then possibly disgust.
There had to be something on his face. Noah hurried out of the store and made his way down the street, frowning, and encountered a few more people blinking at him before he broke out into a half fast jog, keeping his head bent low until he reached the expensive dormitory building. He gave a nod to the doorman, who nodded back, then did a doubletake, and hastened into the blessedly empty elevator, which took him up to the second floor.
He had a roommate, because that's what most college kids had these days, but his roommate was out, which left Noah to drop his belongings onto the couch and retreat into the bathroom to stare at himself in the mirror.
Something brown and goopy was sliding out from under his hairline. Noah gaped at it, reached up to brush it away, and felt more brown liquid on his cheek, against his fingers. It smelled - sweet - strangely sweet? - and he recoiled, staring at it in horror, because what the hell. What the hell was this?
It was all over him. Noah stripped down without thinking and found himself staring blankly at himself in the mirror, bare skin, a fine line of brown liquid underneath the traditional auburn Gallo hair. He grabbed a washcloth and wiped himself down, found that he was still perspiring the damn stuff, and gave up, hopping into the shower for the second time that day at eleven o'clock in the morning.
It did not work. He continued to perspire the foul brown liquid for most of the day, Noah huddling in his bathrobe in his dormitory, trying to ignore the sweet, chocolately scent now radiating from him. He got a text from his roommate saying that he was sleeping over at his girlfriend's, which was a blessed relief, since Noah was by far not going to let himself be seen like this, ever, by anyone.
Maybe he was catching something.
Maybe he was getting sick.
Maybe he was getting the plague (the chocolate plague?).
He fell asleep on the bathroom floor and woke up to a sticky pile of brown goo that made him nearly lose what little he head in his stomach. Noah crawled into the shower again, washed down every inch of himself, and then stood in front of the mirror, staring suspiciously at the complete lack of anything brown on his skin anymore. He passed his hands over his face, down his arms, across his chest, but nothing.
It was done. It was gone.
"Just a bug," Noah told himself in the mirror. "Just a virus. You're fine now."
What was not fine was the gross bathroom floor, as indicated by his very grossed out and irate roommate who stepped in the pile of it after slouching home sometime in the afternoon.
"Noah! Man! Are you eating chocolate in the bathroom? That's disgusting, dude."
