Chains in the Concrete
Cut Deeper | Episode 01
Halloween night in the city. Not the kind with jack-o’-lanterns and porch lights. This is concrete blocks and busted streetlamps. Kids dart through corner stores and bodegas, plastic masks flashing in the pink and green glow of neon signs. The air smells like fried food, cheap cologne, and rain that has not fallen yet.
She is fourteen. Hoodie pulled tight, a cheap rubber mask slipping low over her face. Not trick or treating. She is hunting. She moves through the crowd with restless energy, eyes sharp, always searching for someone smaller, easier.
Her parents love her, but she does not feel it. They are always at work. Her mother pulling double shifts. Her father wrapped up in neighborhood obligations. The apartment is clean but quiet, too quiet, like she does not exist inside it. Out here on the street, at least she feels seen.
She does not knock on doors for candy. She takes. A phone out of another girl’s bag. A sack of chips from a boy with sticky fingers. Sneakers off a kid who could not fight back. He tries to hold on, but she shoves him down hard. His cheek hits the pavement, his voice breaking as she runs off with his shoes. She never looks back.
For a moment it feels like power.
Then the sound begins. Chains dragging across the pavement. Slow. Scraping. Heavy. She whips around, but there is nothing there. Only shadows under an orange streetlight and a small boy in a skeleton costume, dragging a pumpkin bucket heavy with candy.
The mask on her face feels tighter. The night feels colder.
She keeps walking, faster now, but the sound follows her. Chains on concrete. A clink that echoes in her chest. The links scrape against the moonlit pavement, catching the shimmer of oil-stained puddles as if the ground itself is alive.
She slips into a dark alley to escape it. The smell of rot and grease hits her nose. Trash bags split open, leaking across the cracked pavement. A dim security bulb flickers overhead, buzzing against the silence. Her sneakers crunch on broken glass.
The walls shift. Or maybe it is her mind. Because in a blink, she is not in the alley anymore. She is back in her own living room years ago. Smaller, curled up on the couch. Her parents there, smiling, laughing, brushing her hair back. The apartment warm. The sound of a pan clattering in the kitchen. The smell of food drifting through the air.
Then it fades. She blinks and the warmth is gone. She is back in the alley, breathing hard.
Another vision grips her. This time the present. She sees the boy she robbed earlier. His sneakers missing. His cheek swollen from where she shoved him down. He limps into a cramped apartment. Wallpaper peeling at the corners. A thin mattress pressed against the wall. Two younger siblings climb into his arms. He holds them close, eyes darting to the empty shelf where food should be.
Her stomach twists. She thought she only took a pair of shoes. But what she left him with was worse.
The scrape comes again. Chains grinding louder now. She turns and sees it. A figure at the mouth of the alley. A girl in a blank white mask, cracked like porcelain, holding the links in her hand. The bulb above her sputters, flashing shadow across her face.
She bolts, but the city warps around her. The buildings bend into shadows. The streets stretch and swallow the light. Neon bleeds into black. The figure follows, the chains dragging behind.
And then the future rushes in. She sees herself older. Same hoodie, same mask, but her face is hollow. She walks among people who do not see her. Invisible. Alone. Her voice is gone, her presence erased. She has become the very thing she feared in her own home.
She screams at the vision. She claws at the chains on her arms. Her wrists burn. Her breath shortens. The figure tightens its grip.
She drops to her knees. For once, she does not fight. The night is silent except for the chains.
Then she rises. She reaches under her hoodie and drags out the bag of stolen things she has been carrying. Sneakers. Food. Chips. Whatever she still has. She walks to the boy’s door and sets it down. She adds more. Whatever she can. Something to eat. Something to hold.
Later she slips back into her own building. The stairwell reeks of urine baked into the concrete. The light above the landing flickers, humming faintly as shadows jerk and stretch across the walls. For the first time tonight her shoulders ease.
Inside the apartment the air is warm. The television flickers against the wall. Her parents are home, curled up on the couch under a blanket, half watching an old horror movie, half watching each other. On the table sits a folded note in her mother’s handwriting.
Happy Halloween. Dinner is in the microwave plus a special treat for you.
She opens the lid and the smell of baked ziti fills her chest. Steam rises, warm and heavy, and next to it is a small slice of pumpkin pie. For a second she just stands there breathing it in.
From the couch her father calls out. “Do you want to join us? We’ve got popcorn.”
Her mother pats the spot between them. “Come watch with us.”
She smiles for real this time. “Let me change into my pajamas.”
She hurries down the hall. In her room she pulls off the mask. It drops on the bed. She slips into her softest clothes.
Then she pulls open her dresser drawer. At first it is just fabric. Then her breath catches. Beneath the shirts and pants are watches. Phones. Crumpled bills. Candy wrappers. A whole secret stash of what she has taken.
Her chest tightens. She shuts the drawer too fast.
That is when she hears it. The scrape of chains. Not faint this time. Close.
She turns toward the window. The figure is outside under the streetlight, faceless mask tilted up at her. The orange glow halos its shoulders as the links drag across the asphalt, rattling like teeth.
Her hands shake. She spins to run for the bedroom door.
The links coil tight around her ankles and yank hard. Her legs give out. She slams against the floor, the sound torn from her ragged breath. The bed swallows her as if it has been waiting, the chains grinding like teeth as they drag her below. She has dragged others down before. The chains simply finish what she has begun.
Cut Deeper is a collection of cinematic horror stories for voice and shadow.
Some rise from memory. Others from invention. Each one leaves its mark.
Need help bringing your own story to life?
We offer editing, consulting, and creative services for filmmakers, podcasters, and storytellers. Visit www.beyondcouturestudios.com to learn more.
If something in this stayed with you, feel free to show support through Buy Me a Coffee ☕️ Every cup goes toward the next piece I create. buymeacoffee.com/beyondcouturefilms