Nicole

Nicole blustered out of the front room, immediately full of fuss and concern. She was still in her Tinkerbell costume, her short dress riding up her pale thighs as she walked, but her manner was much more matronly.

"Oh my goodness, what happened? Did you find anything? Are you alright?" Her rapid fire questions were only interrupted when she saw Matt's arm, that was sticky with drying blood. Instantly, he became the focus of her inquisition. "Matt! How'd you get hurt? Did you fall?" She drew closer to him as she spoke, gently taking his wounded arm by the elbow and trying to get a look at his injury for herself.

While she fretted over Matt, Miranda and Sarah both exited the living room, the latter shivering in her skimpy bikini as the cold air of the hall struck her exposed skin. Despite the sticky situation they had just been in, John had to admit, he was glad that none of the girls had gotten changed. Seeing Sarah's big boobs filling out her tiny sea shells and Miranda's curvy body in a tight leotard, made the journey feel worth it.

Perhaps the left over adrenaline was turning him into a horny caveman, because even Nicole's petite shape in her skin hugging dress was enticing to him. His attention drifted to her slender thighs, shown off by the curtain of her dress rising as she focused on Matt. Tearing his eyes off of her pale legs, he opened his mouth to answer Nicole's questions.

"Matt got bit," Tom stated simply before John could say anything.

"Bit?!" Nicole and Miranda asked in shocked unison, whilst Sarah's red eyebrows shot up on her face.

"It's fine, it's fine," Matt tried his best to calm them, even as Nicole hauled up the sleeve of his coat to get a better look. "It's only a little cut, really."

"What happened was," John began again, "we walked out to the road, like you said to, and had a look around. When we didn't see anything we decided to head back, but on the way this wild dog came out of nowhere and pounced on Matt!" The girls hung on his every word, even Nicole, who kept looking up at him between worried glances at Matt's arm. John had to admit, being the center of attention for three hot young women felt pretty good, even if the reasons for it were pretty bad.

"It knocked him over and then ran off into the shadows again, then before I could think I just ran in between it and Matt. I shouted something at it to try and scare it off, but it didn't care, it just circled around and got ready to jump at us again!"

"And then what happened?" Miranda asked, looking equal parts worried and enraptured.

John paused for dramatic effect for a moment, thinking to himself that this must have been how medieval bards felt. Beautiful maidens, gathered quietly around you, hooked on every word of your tall tales (even though this tall tale was completely true).

"Then I kicked that bitch into the next state!" Tom jumped in, stealing the climax of John's story. He even mimed the finishing blow he had delivered, kicking the air and making a swooshing sound with his mouth. "After that, the little fucker just ran off and didn't come back."

"Oh, thank god you were there," Miranda sighed, smiling at Tom and resting a relieved hand on her chest. John's face soured at the theft of his story, but he couldn't say anything to dispute him. What Tom had said was largely the truth.

"Yeah, after that we pretty much just hurried back," John concluded bitterly, pouting at someone else saying the story's most dramatic detail.

"Ohh, that poor thing," Nicole sighed, sounding almost as sorry for the dog as she did for Matt. She always had a soft spot for dumb animals. "It must have been scared, or confused, or hurt. . . " Slowly, her demeanor shifted, her pale blue eyes widening and her delicate hands falling still on Matt's forearm. "Or rabid."

"Crap!" Nicole muttered, squeezing Matt's arm tightly. She must have been really worried, because that was the closest thing to a swear word John had ever heard her say. "Matt, you HAVE to go to the hospital," she stated, locking her eyes on him to emphasize the seriousness of her point, but her command fell on deaf ears.

"I'm not going to the emergency room right now," Matt snorted incredulously, "can you imagine how busy that place is right now? At midnight on Halloween?"

"Can you imagine how horrible it is to die from rabies?" Nicole countered, tilting her head condescendingly, in the way that Matt had seen her do many times when arguing with Tom or similar dumbasses. "Because if you don't go to the doctor to get a vaccination, you won't have to imagine it!"

"I won't drop dead by the morning," Matt argued, shrugging her off of his injured arm. "Besides, we don't even know if it had rabies, you might be worrying for nothing, again."

Nicole's pale face flushed red at his words, and she stamped her tiny foot down on to the wood of the hall floor. The two of them were at an impasse, that Nicole definitely wouldn't walk away from before elevating it to a full blown shouting match. Fortunately, John was already a seasoned professional at defusing her and Matt's annoying arguments.

"Look," he jumped in before Nicole could say anything more. He just hoped he could get through everything he wanted to say before either of them could interrupt him.

"Matt's obviously gotta go and get his shots," Nicole nodded at this.

"But he does have a point," now Matt nodded.

"Rabies isn't deadly until symptoms appear, and that takes a while, way more than 12 hours," John called upon his high school biology knowledge, hoping that would make his point seem more agreeable, "and if we were way out in the sticks when Matt got bit, then it might have been more than 24 hours before he could get treatment anyway. So, we can finish up the party here, and then first thing tomorrow, Matt can get his vaccine."

John hoped that his answer could find the middle ground between them, but based on the way Matt smiled and Nicole frowned, it seemed to have been received favorably by one more than the other.

"There, see?" Matt smiled at John for having his back, before turning to face Nicole again. "First thing tomorrow, I promise. I'll be back, I mean, I'll be there." Matt's impression of his costume helped to lighten the mood, but it didn't seem to have an effect on Nicole. Her cute button nose wrinkled in displeasure, and her blonde eyebrows knitted together on her face, but eventually she seemed to relent.

"Argh, fine," she sighed, stomping her small foot petulantly again and looking disarmingly cute in the process. John wondered if Matt would have agreed if she had tried using honey instead of vinegar to get her way. If Sarah had batted her eyelashes at Matt and then squeezed her big boobs together, he would have let her take him to the ER in hell and back, maybe Nicole could have tried doing the same. She might have lacked Sarah's full chest, but if she had tugged the plunging neckline of her dress a little lower, maybe Matt would have been too distracted to disagree.

Regardless, Nicole had never used her feminine wiles to get her way before, and she hadn’t started now. Instead, she resorted to her usual stubbornness and matter-of-fact nature to get at least some semblance of her way.

"You will let me have a look at it right now," she stated, with a self assuredness that brooked no arguments, "and then tomorrow morning I will come find you and drag you to the hospital."

Matt tried to throw his hands up, to make it clear that he wasn't fighting with her, but Nicole didn't let him. She now hung on to his wrist like a bracelet, holding his injured arm steady as she prepped to examine it.

"Sarah?" She asked, "can you tell me where you have a first aid kit, or at least some bandages?"

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Apologies for going so long without an upload. I was away and unable to post anything here on Saturday. This means that Patreon is now 3 steps ahead of here, since I was able to schedule an automatic post for over there. I will catch up CHYOA to it's usual one week delay eventually, but for now subscribing to the Patreon can get you even more ahead of viewing the story here.

I hope you're all enjoying the special Halloween thread.

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