"...You never? Did the Kenosha kid?"

I make my way through a dark patch of forest guided by the yellow and orange lights of suburban homes and streets in the distance. When I arrive back in civilization, I find myself on a peaceful street filled with trick-or-treaters.

Mary Lou, you might say. You got the government, jocks, and greasers after you, shouldn’t you be making for that train as soon as possible and get the heck outta here?

You may be right, but Halloween only comes once a year. And it’s right here. And I’m not weird. I’m normal. Dr. Funny sez I could be the best psychic ever. I don’t want that. I wanna trick-or-treat on Halloween and eat turkey at Thanksgiving and give milk and cookies to Santa Claus on Christmas.

I walk down the sidewalk and act all casual-like outside a suburban house while studying how the kids currently on the porch do it. First they ring the doorbell. And then-

“Trick-or-treat!” the ghost, the witch, Johnny Unitas, and the 101st paratrooper with the little screaming eagle patch on his shoulder say in unison. They hold out their bags.

The middle-aged lady in the door chuckles. “What great costumes!” And she gives ‘em all candy bars. Just like that.

What an effing racket! All I have to do is that and I get free chocolate?

Once the kids leave, I make my way up to the door. Okay, Mary Lou, time to be normal.

I ring the doorbell. When the lady opens the door, I smile. “Trick-or-treat!”

She frowns. “Where’s your costume?”

Huh?

“Huh?”

“Your costume,” she sez. “What, you expect me to give out candy just because it’s Halloween? Candy for free? No, no, you gotta dress up. You know who gives out candy for free?”

“No, Jack, I don’t.”

“Moscow does, that’s who.”

I peer behind her. The bowl of candy is perched on a table just two feet away. “I, uh, don’t got a costume, sure. But isn’t the spirit of the season ‘sposed to be about giving or something?”

Her eyebrows furrow. “You dress up, I give candy. That’s the exchange. You can’t even do the bare minimum?”

“Lady, it’s just candy-”

“Just candy? JUST CANDY?! It’s the principle of the matter! You baby boomers expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter. Back in my day, I walked uphill to school both ways, through Hoovervilles as far as the eye could see, through Dust Storms and homeless Okies begging me for a buck, but I didn’t have a buck because my father took all my spending money for his alcoholism. Do you know what it’s like, little orphan Okies begging you for money, begging you so badly you gotta beat ‘em off with a stick sometimes? And then finally, finally, once the Okies all left and the Hoovervilles got torn down, you know what happened? Pearl Harbor happened. My generation lived through the nefarious schemes of Admiral Yamamoto, and you can’t even go through the effort of wearing a costume on Halloween.”

She slams the door shut on me. The sound thunders in my ears for a long while.

“Well, you know what?” I yell through the mahogany. “One day, us boomers are gonna be in charge, and we’re gonna be a hell of lot nicer to the next generation than you guys ever were!”

I stuff my hand in my jacket pockets and march off. Seeing two lovestruck teenagers dressed as a knight and a princess calms me down. That lady was probably just a rotten apple. I approach the next house.

“Trick-or-treat!”

The man in the door frowns. “Where’s your bag?”

Huh?

“Huh?”

“You’re bag! For the candy!”

“You know, I can just hold it in my hands or put in my pockets-”

“No bag? NO BAG?! It’s the principle of the matter! It’s Halloween, you use a bag. I didn’t want to haul my bag from Normandy to the Rhine, but I did. You know why? Because you’d be speaking Kraut right now otherwise. Are you saying that you want Adolf to put his hand up your heinie and make you talk like a Vichy puppet, hmm? My best friend got his entrails blown open at Saint-Malo. I tried, I tried so hard to put his organs back inside, but they just keep oozing and oozing through my fingers. Sometimes, late at night, I can still feel the slime. Did my friend die crying for his mother while making the sign of the cross with his own intestines just for some malt shop boomer like you to not use a bag on Halloween?”

“...uh-”

Another door slam.

As I descend the porch steps, I ‘spose I’ve learned a valuable lesson. To be normal, you truly have to be like everyone else. No exceptions.

A group of tween witches tell me where the nearest costume store is - fortunately, just a twenty minute walk to a small intersection. There are a dozen cars outside the costume store - it’s the last night of Halloween, so everything must go. Fortunately, no jocks or greasers in sight, so I slip inside. The store’s a big square, a decent amount of aisles with dressing rooms in the back.

Mary Lou, waddya wanna be for Halloween? I guess there’s some sort of societal metaphor thing here, about how I just wanna be normal, and all the normal people, since they’re already normal, want to be something weird for a night. I guess being weird is fun when everyone’s doing it - but if everyone’s being weird, then wouldn’t that make being weird not weird? I don’t know.

Not sure what to do with this information, I pass by costumes for Frankenstein, cowboys, football players, kings, the King. And then I pause and bury my face into a rack of scarecrow costumes, ‘cuz those two cheerleader friends of Connie are walking past me. I hold my breath. They’re focused on their conversation at the moment.

“I told Connie not to wait until the last minute to get her costume…”

“She’s been acting weird ever since we met up here…all giggly like…”

“Smelled kind of funny…”

“You don’t think…”

“No, not Connie, not ever…but she has been in that changing room for a while…”

They pass by. No alarm is raised. I sigh in relief, but there’s no rest for the weary. Several pickup trucks pull up, and a platoon of jocks and cheerleaders spill out. Before they can spot me, I sneak my way over to the changing room. I look both ways - nobody’s watching. As expected of a doper, she forgot to lock the door. I barge in and shut it tight behind me.

Connie looks in the mirror, judging her witch costume - black robe, black hat. “Golly, I look like a movie star…if Brad sees me, I bet-”

“Groovy costume, Connie.”

Connie nearly jumps out of her skin. Before she can scream, I place a hand tight over her mouth, just like Ingrid does when I want to cry out after the electroshock.

“Listen to me,” I say. “What happened? Is Bobby okay?”

When Connie calms down, I let go of her face. “He’s alright,” she sez. “I told him my friends and I were meeting up here to get costumes, so he did a few loops around town, lost the grays, and dropped me off here. He didn’t say where he was going.”

She frowns. “But what are you doing here, Mary Lou? Haven’t you ruined my hot teen life enough for one night?”

“I need a costume.” There’s a ventilation shaft at the top of the changing room, there are jocks and cheerleaders prowling around in the store now, and Connie has a costume on.

Mary Lou Sunday, that’s another bingo.

I look Connie in the eyes.

“Strip right now.”