(Originally posted October 10th, 2015.)
“Trick
This is all in my head right?
Or
Oh yes, indeed it is. But then again, isn’t everything?
Treat”
The door opens. The door opens. There’s a nice old lady. There’s an evil old witch. Oh, what a Halloween night. Oh…what a Halloween night.
Let me ask you something. Something personal. Something precious. Something wrong, twisted, or vile.
Do I have to answer?
Only if you want to survive.
Is that a choice?
Oh, honey. It’s always a choice.
I run down the street, and my shoes leave me in the rush. We’d been having issues getting along anyway. It’s best they just leave. Heaven knows I’m used to it.
The man or the monster follows me, tight in space, long in legs. The street echoes a branching path, it also goes both left and right.
I go right and I die. Present tense. Eviscerate. Eviscerated. Will eviscerate. That means my guts stain the grass red, and my head pops. It’s like strawberry candy vomited on the carpet.
So, I go left now, and the man has a mask. Everyone’s wearing one tonight, but Uncle Greg has two. I can only see the one. The one that looks like a wolf skinned from the throat. I think he wants to show me what’s under the second.
It’s a curious case for those nearby. The man chasing the child. Call the police! Except we look too much alike. Same shaky brown hair, and birds egg blue eye. The other’s green.
We look the same. That’s why they call him “father”, and me “son.”
We look the same and that’s why they’re wrong. If I looked the way they thought, I’d be ash grey.
So I run down the street and it spreads out into the scene you imagine. The cut grass cul-de-sac with the big trees dropping orange leaves that smell like fire and crunch like bones with the parked cars and the full moon shining upon the danger-free macabre and edgeless knives.
But what I see is a ghetto shithole. And a werewolf eager to eat, but mostly bite.
You’re losing it.
Oh tell me something I don’t know.
I can’t do that. I don’t know it.
We reach the edge of the world and my Monster Greg meets me there. Snarling, and digging his nails or claws into the surface of the stable ground. Beyond me is something which I can’t see. I’d call it nothing, but I’m pretty sure I know what it is.
My legs snap under me. Some would call it tripping. In any case my head hits the edge of the world and knocks stars into me. A green star and a blue star and werewolves drag me bodily. A claw, a hand, a gloved mitt, or maybe karma.
I’m on his back as we walk to my house. His house. Technically their house. Deeds pass by age, through death, but not logic.
And the door closes behind me with a bang. I probably screamed. Not that anyone would ever, ever hear me.
Eviscerate. Eviscerated. Will eviscerate.
Ready to answer the question now?
I suppose. No one ever bothered to give me it straight.
I can do that.
Fine, what is it?
Are you happy?
That’s the question? What a boring one.
That’s the most important. It always was. I suppose the more pertinent one is: did you really think you could run away from your problems?
Yes. I really did.
—
Coolerbs Writes 