“Trick or treat!” the children yell as I open the door.
Smiling under my mask, I lower the bowl to their greedy hands. A ghost, a witch, a vampire, classics. A parent stands a little way off in the shadows. I wave at him. The little “monsters” are satisfied with my sacrifice and wander back toward the unseen man.
Closing the door, I set the candy down on the hall table and make my way back toward the tv. They’re paying all the black and white classics, the nonsensical, cheap films which endeared themselves to my parents’ generation. Flopping down into the soft cushions of the couch, I pull off my mask.
I don’t understand the movie; I haven’t really been following it, though. The volume is too low to hear the dialogue anyway, and all I can make out are the sexy screams of the girl in the torn dress. A guy lumbers after her dressed up as whatever monster of the week it was all those years ago, a devil or something.
Ding-dong, I hear my door-bell chime. Groaning, I pull myself back onto my feet. Once more unto the breach. The bowl is in my hand, and I open the door.
“Trick or . . . ” their words die away. A brother and sister, I’ve seen them around before, a princess and a batman, gaze up at me with big, brown eyes. I lower the bowl. Their tentative hands reach out for the treats.
“Come on, kids,” a mother says ushering her childer away. She sends them toward the sidewalk and steps back toward me. “It’s a little too much,” she whispers.
“What?”
“Your mask,” she explained. “It’s too realistic. I think you scared them.”
My hand reached up reflexively toward my cheek. “Oh,” I said. “Well, it is Halloween.”
There was an awkward silence. She started studying my face, her eyes peering at me.
“Chocolate?” I ask, holding up the bowl between us.
“No thanks,” she laughs a little too loudly and walks away with a hurried step.
I quickly close the door. Drats! I think. Setting the bowl aside, I rush back toward the living room. There upon the armrest the hollow skin of my mask lies like a deflated balloon. I snatch it up and pull it back over my head.
“Well,” I say to myself, “at least it’s Halloween.”
Tale Told 