A Short Story for Halloween

A Great Guy

There’s a damp chill in the air as I sit in my battered throne, wide-eyed, smiling… presiding. Such a good vantage point to watch the firework display.

The crowds are gathering in their families now. Small children brandishing wands of neon light, giggling as they leave brief imprints of lime green, turquoise and pink against the twilight sky.

There’s a buzz in the atmosphere, a buzz of bonhomie and expectation. The man with the microphone welcomes everyone and there is an excited hush. A fanfare of drums and trumpets and overhead, a dozen rockets explode, showering spangles of red, green and gold.

I look on, wide eyed and grinning, recollecting the night I was showered with spangles of light.

It was late evening, after the groups of children had returned home laden with ghostly chocolates, cakes oozing with strawberry and lime jam, slithery gum shapes of worms and snakes.

Thunk…thunk…thunk…

Considering myself to be a great guy, I opened my door for the last time to a lone figure dressed in a dark wool habit, his face half concealed by the over large hood. A faint aroma of overcooked cabbage and stale urine pervaded the hallway.

“Trick or treat?” he rasped.

“Sorry mate. No can do. I’m clean out of sweets now… Bye.”

I started to close the door when he spoke again.

“Trick or Treat?”

“Look. I can’t give you anything. Okay?”

He stared at me, spittle gathering on his thin lips, then slowly, he raised a gnarled hand, pointing his dirt ingrained fingertip towards me, “No treats? Then it would be customary to play a trick.”

I looked at him expectantly.

“I am, by trade, a Metamorpher.”

“’Scuse me?”

“A Metamorpher. I change things…centaurs, fauns, harpies… That was me in my youth.”

“You’re mad!” I tried to close the door again.

He glared at me with ancient rheumy eyes. “No! You must pay the price!!”

He drew his mouth back into a reptilian smile, “Let me demonstrate.”

He blew icy, putrid breath. The air around me shimmered, swaddling me with sparks of blue, lilac and silver, swirling around to a suffocating cocoon of light. Light suffusing my pores, my ears, my mouth...burning…burning… burning.

With morbid fascination I watched my reflection in the hall mirror. My face bloating. My cheeks puffing out, stretching and stretching to a glossy sheen. My lips pulled tightly, pulling so taut my mouth became a cavernous grin. My eyes widening in horrified disbelief.

Scales of skin flaked from my bones, floating up and away to the stars outside. My bones creaking as they crackled and splintered to a myriad straws. Rustling, my arms sprung level with shoulders and legs sprung wide from their shoes. I tottered, wobbled…backwards, forwards, precariously balancing on wicker tips. The visitor caught me, deftly swivelling me round, lifting and tossing me unceremoniously back first into his wheelbarrow outside. All the time I was grinning, the corners of my mouth pinned back, my face flushed to a bright orange.

I was left in a shed, forgotten, waiting…until today when the door opened. Bright light blinded me, but I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t frown. I smirked instead.

I was fastened into a chair, my backbone snapped so I could sit straight, and I watched the pile of wood grow higher. Bracken, branches, fencing…it would be a tremendous fire, my funeral pyre.

He said it was a trick. Tricks are supposed to be an illusion right? This isn’t an illusion. I am grasping at straws. I am straw.

The firework show is over and they have lit the fire. There is still a buzz in the atmosphere, a buzz of bonhomie and expectation, yet I, the chief spectator, am more petrified than I’ve ever been. Everyone is looking up at me. They think I am a great Guy dressed in my contemporary finery; Ted Baker jeans, ghoulish All Saints tee shirt, stone coloured cardigan and a jaunty black bowler hat. I like to look good. I smile back with my inane expression of wide eyed humour.

The wind whips up, fanning the flames higher. It won’t rain tonight. A loose sheet of newspaper flies up… flapping… fluttering, alighting on my face, gently as a butterfly.  I scan the article. It’s about a missing person, a local man. I recognise the photograph immediately, and my stomach crawls with a thousand caterpillars. The photograph is me.