Trick-Or-Treat
By
Pamela K. Kinney
Enjoy this new story by me. It is copyrighted to me, so please do not copy it and put it wherever you post or in a pdf file to give away free, as I own all rights to it. Just let your friends know the link so they too, can read it.
Janie and Bobby dressed in costumes, trudged up the sidewalk as they passed other similarly dressed children. It was Halloween, their favorite time of the year. Where all children could go door to door, knock, and candy were poured into their waiting bags after yelling, ‘trick or treat.’ If the adult refused, the kids could play tricks on them and get away with it.
Janie and Bobby loved the treats, but they loved doing the tricks even more. They loved doing nasty, terrible tricks.
“It’s tradition,” Mama told them. If the adults gave them candy, then fine and dandy, don’t do anything. But for that one who said, “No treats here, now go away!” they could go ahead and do what their family had been doing since the early 1900s.
Janie and Bobby couldn’t wait. The past couple of years they hadn’t been able to play any of their tricks, as every door they had knocked at the owners handed over candy, fruit, popcorn balls, and money. But when they woke up this morning, they sensed that this night would be different.
Nothing happened so far. Both of their bags laden heavy with the fruits of their labor, they stopped before the white picket fence that surrounded the yard of a pretty white Cape Cod home. It looked so normal and so . . . suburbia.
This was it. They felt it. They would finally get what was owed them.
Janie and Bobby looked at each other, shark grins flashing on their sweet, chubby faces. Then they pushed the gate open and wandered up the leaf strewn path to the front door. No Halloween decorations shown anywhere and no lit Jack-O-Lantern greeted them, just the closed door, painted a cheery blue.
They knocked and waited.
The door opened with nary a creak, and a little old lady stood on the other side. Her white hair was swept up in a bun and she wore a cheerful flowered print top and white pants. She peered at them, her eyes blinking behind glasses.
“Sorry,” she said, “but I forgot to buy candy to give out tonight.”
Bobby grinned. “That’s okay. We rather not have any treats. Tricks are oh so much cooler.” He threw aside his bag and sweets scattered across the front stoop.
He lifted his real axe. He had dressed as serial killer on purpose this morning. His sister was garbed as Lizzie Borden, her own axe gripped in her fist. She dropped her own bag and raised it high above her head.
The old lady stepped closer and smiled. “I know. I’ve been waiting for you, my dears. Human killers are not very smart. Not when inhuman ones have perfected their own bag of tricks for eons. My kind has been hunting their prey the hard way for centuries. Many still do. Not me, I found a much easier way. Usually I decorate my place to attract regular human children on this night, but when I moved here and heard of the murders that been going on in this town for a long time, I devised a different tactic.” She giggled. “It’s only justice for the humans in this town after all and delivery food for me.”
Her face cracked and it split, falling to the floor. The rest of the body followed. A giant shaggy wolf-like creature stood on clawed hind feet and with its upper paws, snatched both children to its breast. Bobby and Janie screamed, but were cut off when the door slammed shut.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
