Three Wishes Before Midnight: Monster Love Stories

Prologue - Three Wishes Mona, Izzy, and Sera The old house smelled like vanilla candles and cheap vodka. Someone’s eyeliner had rolled under the couch, Paramore was howling from a half-broken stereo, and three girls were getting ready as if the world might end before sunrise. The bedroom was a clusterfuck of make-up, accessories, and shoes; the large four-poster bed already buried and barely visible. Desdemona Vale—Mona to anyone who’d ever seen her roll her eyes at the name—was leaning close to the mirror, painting her mouth the color of wine. Her hair was newly black (but her blonde roots were already starting to show), her halo crooked, and her wings slightly singed from a curling-iron accident. She looked like the kind of angel who’d already fallen and decided to stay down here awhile. “Your name literally means ill-fated,” Isadora said, sprawled across the bed in a pair of white running shorts and bunny ears. Her costume might be considered low-effort by some, but it was both a statement and an inside joke. She was the resident female track star and always teased by the boys of the rugby team, who called her ‘rabbit’ and acted like it wasn’t condescending as hell. “You could’ve gone as something cheerful. Like a candy striper!” Mona smirked at her reflection. “If I’m cursed by birth certificate, I might as well commit to the aesthetic.” Seraphina Liu perched cross-legged on the desk, adjusting the ribbons on her red cancan dress. Her skull mask watched them from where it rested beside the makeup bag. “Besides,” she said, dramatic as always, “the angel of tragedy suits her. And I,” she declared, lifting her glass of cranberry vodka, “am Death itself. The Mask of the Red Death.” “Another hour and I would’ve shown up in my scrubs,” Izzy grumbled, adjusting her bunny ears. “If I have to read one more chapter on organic chemistry, my brain is going to liquefy. Tonight, I don’t want to think. At all. No rules, no regrets.” “Tell me about it,” Sera sighed, dabbing concealer under her eyes. “My Gothic Lit professor assigned, like, another thousand pages on ‘the sublime terror.’ For once, I’d like to experience a little sublime terror instead of just reading about it.” Mona stayed quiet, adding a final coat of gloss. Professor complaints felt trivial. It was the message from her ex, the one that still sat unread on her phone, that made her want to disappear into the night. “I just want one night that doesn’t feel like a repeat of the last one,” she said, her voice softer than she intended. Izzy’s expression softened. “Then we’ll make tonight legendary.” Her promise hung in the air as Paramore changed to Helena. All three shouted the lyrics into their hairbrushes until their throats hurt, the momentary weight lifting from their shoulders. By ten-thirty, the room was a glitter-coated disaster. Rummaging for a lost earring in an old nightstand, Izzy’s fingers brushed against something else. She pulled out a dusty pack of tarot cards. It wasn’t a modern deck. The box had long since disintegrated, and the cards were bound by a faded silk ribbon. The cardstock was thick and soft with age, the corners worn smooth from countless hands. The art was strange and medieval, all sharp angles and unsettling, knowing eyes. It smelled faintly of dust and dried roses. A bright, dangerous idea sparked in her eyes. “Halloween wishes,” she announced, already pouring shots. “C’mon. One wish each before we go. Think of it as a ritual.” Mona raised an eyebrow. “Do we have to sell our souls or anything?” “Only metaphorically,” Izzy grinned. “Are we sure about this?” Mona asked, tracing the unsettling image of a man falling from a lightning-struck tower on one of the cards. “Seems a little... potent for a pre-game.” “That’s the point!” Izzy insisted, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight they’d lit. “It’s Halloween. The one night the veil is thin. We’re not just wishing on birthday candles, we’re putting it out there. To... whatever’s listening.” She fanned the cards out on the floor. “One for each of us. Fate!” She laughed, flipping three over. The first showed a woman gently holding a lion’s jaws. The second was the tower Mona had just seen. The last was a single, brilliant star hanging over a kneeling figure. “Well that’s… dramatic,” Sera noted, peering at the tower. Mona just stared at the star, a strange sense of recognition settling deep in her bones. Izzy, however, shrugged it off. “Okay, wishes first.” She held her shot glass up, her voice ringing with defiance. “A wild night. No rules, no regrets.” Sera followed, resting the skull mask over her face as she spoke, her voice muffled and resonant. “Something dangerous enough to make me feel alive.” Then Mona, fingers toying with her crooked halo, her gaze distant. “Eternity. Or at least a night that feels like it.” They raised their glasses, tapped them together. The music from the stereo downstairs seemed to warp and fade. For one long second, the candle flames flickered sharply, inhaling all the oxygen in the room. The air went cold and tasted metallic—like blood and batteries before a storm. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to deepen, to stretch like listening things. Then Izzy gasped, laughed it off, and blew out the candles. “Okay, that was weird. Let’s go before we actually summon something.” The party was at the old Kappa house, a mansion just beyond the edge of campus. They piled into Izzy’s beat-up Honda and left the manicured college roads behind. The streetlights grew sparse, the woods pressing in closer to the road, their branches like skeletal fingers against a bruised purple sky. “Are you sure this is the place?” Izzy asked, peering through the windshield. “Has to be,” Sera replied, her phone’s GPS glowing. “The old Kappa house. Remember the stories? They say during that last hell week, a pledge went missing. They searched for days. Found his letterman jacket in the woods a month later, but never him.” “I heard they were doing some kind of ritual in the basement,” Izzy added, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “And that the new owner had to have the whole place exorcised before he could even get it insured.” When the mansion appeared, it looked almost unreal: ivy crawling up stone pillars, windows glowing amber through the fog, bass thrumming low and heavy enough to shake the gate. A line of students snaked toward the porch, their breath fogging in the chill. Most of them were familiar campus archetypes: glittering fairies, sheet-ghosts with beers, and at least a dozen different superheroes. But here and there, figures stood out. A man in a flawless plague doctor costume stood perfectly still, his masked head following their car. A woman dressed as a 1920s flapper had eyes that seemed too old, too knowing. They didn’t seem to be talking or drinking, merely… observing. Someone at the door marked each of their wrists with a different symbol in red ink that felt strangely warm against their skin—a star for Mona, a claw for Izzy, a flame for Sera. The inside of the mansion was a beautiful contradiction. A thunderous bassline shook dust from crystal chandeliers. Laser lights strafed across opulent, peeling wallpaper and portraits whose eyes were dark voids. It smelled of spilled beer, sweat, and something else—something cold and ancient, like stone from a deep well. The three girls pushed through the crowd, hand-in-hand for a moment. Then the crowd shifted, the music swallowed them, and they were pulled apart. Izzy was jostled by the crowd, but then she heard it—a raw, rhythmic drumming from the backyard that cut through the electronic music. It was primal, a heartbeat that seemed to sync with her own, pulling her toward the flickering orange light of a bonfire. A draft of cold air caught Sera’s attention. It carried a scent that silenced the stench of the party: old leather, dried ink, and bitter red wine. It was coming from a dark, wood-paneled hallway, where a single door stood ajar, spilling crimson light onto the floor, beckoning her closer. The noise and the bodies pressed in on Mona, making her feel claustrophobic. She instinctively looked for an escape, a quiet corner. Her eyes scanned the room and landed on a shadowy alcove beneath a grand staircase. There was a pocket of impossible stillness there, and a figure stood within it, almost invisible. She felt, more than saw, that he was looking right at her. By morning, none of them would be the same. But for now, the night was still young— and their wishes were listening. And deep within the heart of the house, three ancient things that had been waiting for centuries finally heard their names called.