Bite Sized Candy

Halloween

Photo by Emilia Willberg on Unsplash

The falling leaves made bizarre, ghostlike shapes through the window, ripples of beings, places and spirits unexplored.

Emily Cadroff felt like she was melting into them.

Something tapped her consciousness and she reemerged from the melt.

There was a real candle in the Jack-O-Lantern on the porch and it needed to be blown out.

She giggled at how high she had gotten, at the snippets of stoned conversation she had with the kids in the neighborhood.

Emily began to wish she had stuck to the kids candy and not the adult edibles. 

Then she giggled again and relaxed.

Out on the porch, the leaves falling were less eerie without the panes of glass to distort them, but she shivered when she blew out the candle in the pumpkin, as though she had extinguished a memory that would be foggy at best.

“Trick or treat.”

Emily pivoted and threw her back up against the house. Her left leg dangled off the porch, so she reached and grabbed the black hook on the mailbox where newspapers and magazines were placed.

Eeyore was standing at the foot of the steps.

A six foot tall Eeyore with a voice like a radio announcer.

“Trick or Treat,” the voice in the Milne donkey mask repeated.

Emily heard mischief.

There are any number of things she might have said if the edible hadn’t roped off the verbal part of her brain.

You scared me.

You’re too old to Trick or Treat.

It’s late.

She looked through the screen door.

There was some candy left in the plastic pumpkin.

Emily looked around the neighborhood. Some lights were still on, the Mazewskis were having their parents' only Malort porch gathering.

She reached through the door and grabbed a large handful of candy, lollipop stems sticking through her fingers, a peanut butter cup mushing slightly.

She pushed aside the cannabis ropes around the verbal part of the brain and spoke.

“I love Eeyore,” she said.

“I know,” the radio voice behind the big sad eyes said.

Emily stepped back.

Her brain began to step over folds of fog.

Lots of people knew she loved Eeyore, but which ones would show up in the costume, late trick or treating by themselves?

Tony from the Flint satellite office might, but that was not his voice.

Emily reached and dropped the candy in Eeyore’s pillowcase.

“Thank you,” Eeyore said, politely, smoothly.

Some leaves fell behind him and Emily saw stoned ghosts again.

“Happy Halloween,” she said and turned to go back inside. Whoever it was could reveal themselves tomor-

“I want to make love to you again.”

Emily pivoted, stumbled, put her hand to her chest.

Jacob Kemmle was her most recent ex. Probably wasn’t over her…would he ever say “make love”?

He was good with voices…

“Jacob, that’s creepy and I’m stoned. Goodnight.”

“It’s not Jacob,” Eeyore said.

Emily could tell in that sentence that it wasn’t Jacob.

Her high was dissipating like someone opened a Pixie Stick in the wind.

Larry Balmer was way too tall, and would never…

She took a deep breath, wondered if she looked scared when she did it–she didn’t want to, she wanted to be strong.

“I’m not making love to anyone tonight, thank you very much. The Eeyore costume is cute. Goodnight.”

Emily reached for the door and felt Eeyore’s shadow stepping on to the first step.

“You loved making love with me.”

Brian Mahoney. Only Brian Mahoney would be arrogant enough to say something like that.

Emily spun and began to chastise Brian, but before she could she saw pale Caucasian skin between the costume’s paws and the sleeves. Definitely not Brian Mahoney.

Emily shoved the door with her elbow,  reached into the plastic pumpkin and grabbed only lollipops, placing the stems between her fingers.

If whoever this was got on the porch she would poke his eyes out.

Then a sick thought gripped her.

The eyes of the costume aren’t the eyes of the person wearing it. The eyes are Eeyore’s nostrils.

She glared at Eeyore, trying to see into the nostrils, covered by mesh.

One last time she was going to tell whoever it was to leave before-

“It would be an honor if you made love to a broken down old donkey like me one last time.”

The person in the costume, for the first time, had done an Eeyore imitation. It wasn’t perfect, but close enough, in the costume, to be heartwarming, and authentically pathetic.

Emily Cadroff shook her head and started to laugh.

“Jimmy Doom, get your crazy ass away from my house. Great voice, sweetheart. Go home. Thanks for dropping by.”

The person in the costume took two steps back.

“You made love to Jimmy Doom?” they yelped. “Holy crap is that disappointing.”

Eeyore turned and ran off into the night, much more at a Tigger pace than the pace of a morose donkey.

Emily watched him go, his words echoing in her head.
“Tell me about it,” she said out loud.

***

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Happy Halloween Everybody. Thanks for being part of this fabulous fiction masquerade.