Halloweenie

So I flew in from Toronto on October 30, unpacked my bags, did some laundry, picked up a ton of candy for Halloween the next day, and went to friends' house to polish off the two aforementioned bottles of Canadian wine.

I arrived home late and considered putting the candy in a bowl but couldn't bring myself to do it as the thought of it disappearing down a big Toad Roommate gob made me want to cry. I left the bag o'candy stashed in my closet.

I arrived at work somewhat late the next morning only to find a huge to do list waiting for me. I realized by about 5:00 that I was going to miss out on Halloween. Around 6:00, I gave in and decided it would be better to call and leave a message on the machine at home telling Toad where the candy was than to be stuck with an entire bag of bubble gum eyeballs. Yes, he'd eat a bunch, but the trick or treaters (tricks or treater?) would arrive fast and furious.

Meanwhile....

Toad Roommate turns onto the street that leads to the house looking forward to an evening of relaxing on my couch watching something stupid on my television and laughing loudly at things that are not funny. He is horrified to see more children than he has ever seen in our neighborhood. They are all in costume. Where did they all come from, scamming for free candy? Oh, ho. That doesn't seem right to him. Then, he makes an even more frightening realization. He will be the bad guy who has no candy! They will chastise him and play tricks. What can he do?

Being the clever Toad he is, he turns around and goes to a fast food establishment to get dinner and sit out the evening waiting for the terrifying children to leave.

9:55
I arrive home and find the place dark, make a fairly accurate guess at what has happened and catch the last carload of parents and kids who are about to leave.

"Wait! I have a ton of candy and worked so late I didn't get to give it out. Do you guys want one last trick or treat?"

Parents say yes and wait for me to trade bookbag for candybag. I fill up a last few ghoulish pillowcases and decorated HEB bags with as much candy as I can w/out being absurd and, of course, have a bunch left over.

I realize I really need to get the candy back into my room if I don't want untoward things to happen to it, but it's been a long day and I'm very tired. I sit on the couch and find a Halloween episode of Boston Legal. I laugh at the sight of William Shatner in a dress.

10:30
Toad Roommate arrives. He tells me what transpired and where he's been. Then he eyes the bags on the couch.

"Oh, candy." He stuffs his sticky toad fingers into the bags and draws out a great handful of candy. He asks me to fill him in on all the details of the Boston Legal that he has missed. I tell him I really just turned it on a few minutes ago and I'm not sure. He laughs loudly as William Shatner in a dress decides that James Spader in a dress might actually be sort of attractive. I can't really blame him there. He munches sweet tarts.

Absurdist Dream Sets In
I smile cruelly. Have some more sweet tarts, my sweet, I say. He munches and munches and blows up bigger and bigger before my eyes.

"Wh-what's happening to me? Oh, oh, I'm floating!" And sure enough, Toad Roommate is blowing up like a balloon and floating toward the ceiling, bob, bob, bobbing against the awful popcorn texture that I'm going to leave there forever and ever.

I open the sliding glass door and begin to shove him through.

"Oh no, no!" he says. "I'll float away!"

"Yes, my pretty, that's the idea" I say, shoving harder and harder, but he seems to be stuck. "Wait right here, silly Toad."

"Well, uh, okay, but you got more candy?"

"In good time. In good time."

I find my trusty crowbar and house-fixing tools and begin to work at the doorjam. He can take the whole squeaky thing with him by God, and I'll find a way to buy French doors. Unfortunately, I'm clumsy and unskilled and bits of plasterboard break away from the walls. I'll have to fix that later, dammit. Oh dear God! Dry rot! Please not dry rot! The cheap house siding crumbles away in my hands as I work, but I continue anyway. I will at least have this one pestilence gone! But he begins to shrink now, shrink back down to normal. He didn't eat enough to hold the spell.

"Eat more sweet tarts!" I order, fearing I'll never be rid of him

"But I don't want any. I want chocolate."

"Eat chocolate then!" I cackle.

This is much too easy. He puffs up again. Damn it all! Why didn't I shove him through first? Always doing things in the wrong order. I kick and kick at the doorjam, but it won't come loose from its moorings.

"Uh, you got any more of that chocolate?"

I kick one last time at something that looks like it could be moorings, stubbing and possibly breaking my toe. The doorframe does not move, but a large piece of siding falls off of the wall outside and crumbles on the porch.

"No!" I say, my voice infected by madness. "No, by God! It's all for me! I paid for it, it's all for me!"

I leave him where he is and step out onto the front porch, where I proceed to chew up an entire bag of bubble gum eyeballs. I begin to blow a bubble that is 2 feet, 3 feet, 6 feet wide! And it isn't done growing yet. Ten feet, 12 feet, 15 feet wide! But it won't rise up. The bubble is full of angry, bitter air and sinks down, roiling over the half-dead lawn and the garden that needs weeding and mulching.

There is no other choice. I begin to eat the chocolate. Oh, the cursed chocolate. Seratonin floods my brain and I am lifted by a lovely chemical calm. I barely notice as my body blows up to double it's proportions, triple, four times. Okay, probably triple would make me round and balloon-like, but let's just say four times.

The pounding in my toe subsides as I float up toward the calm, glowing moon. It's so soft and pleasing. So quiet and peaceful.

"Hey, you gonna eat the rest of that candy?" a loud voice belches from below. The words break my reverie as they are called out again and again, but they fade out of range, and then it is just me and the stars and an increasingly thin supply of oxygen. I look down on the earth and see all the cookie cutter rooftops, each filled with its own little monsters this night and I feel at peace, as all witches must, riding aloft on the delicious curses of All Hallows Eve.

The End

Okay, The End needs a little work, but maybe I should get back to those children's stories I'm always yammering about trying to write. Hm.

All events prior to the Absurdist Dream section are true. Names have been changed to protect the guilty, I suppose.