Imagine being lost in the Forest of the Night with a pair of trick-or-treaters who are dressed as a Tin Man and a Scarecrow. You are in the middle of these two companions, locked arm-in-arm, skipping forth in the darkness. Your name is Dorothy the Farmgirl, and you’re dressed as an R&B singer. You and your friends begin to chant a lengthy list of fearful things, including lions, tigers, bears; ghosts and goblins; dungeons and dragons; sin and redemption. You yourselves admit to feeling scared, but you know that it’s your duty to frighten others — for you all took the solemn Halloween Oath, to “Always do harm”. Now you’re turning soft, in your old age. This leaves you troubled.
Suddenly, you come face-to-face with an actual lion. Your worst fears are realized. But, thank God, this beast turns out to be as cowardly as you all are. So you all roar against this lion, and, behold: he offers ye, from the innards of his costume, in lieu of Halloween treats, a swarm of bees and honey (Judges 14:5-8). You all therefore become fast friends with this shy predator: Now your trinity is a quaternity.
You skip for a while more; then eventually your team crosses paths with the prophet Malcolm X. He feels compassion and takes pity upon you all, when he notices that your whole band is quivering with fear, therefore he valiantly employs various means to protect you.
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I’m going to ask a question, now: May I join you for Halloween this year? Ah, thanks so much! It’s no fun being only the scribe — I’d rather participate in all history-making adventures. Now let’s do some trick-or-treating together…
The first house that we visit gives us King Size Fruity Pebbles Candy Bars (which consist of white chocolate with actual Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereal mixed in)! We thank the homeowner profusely, as he ushers us away from his barking dog & attempts to shut the door.
The next house that we visit has unfortunately run out of candy, for it’s quite late in the evening; so the woman who answers apologizes and offers us, as treat-substitutes, issues of the men’s magazine Maxim. We give thanks. Then, out of politeness, she asks us what we’re dressed as. “Take a guess!” we say. “Um, OK,” says the woman; “I’d guess that you are supposed to be Jennifer Love Hewitt…” (“That’s right!” you say.) “…and you are a piece of wood.” (“That’s right!” I say.)
The third house gives away a type of candy that is distasteful. It is sugar-free: nasty stuff. It tastes like butter made out of soap.
After a short while, however, the effects of that third house’s candy start to kick in, and we realize that it had been laced with a powerful drug. It is fortunate that we both are wearing bright, reflective stickers on our costumes’ exoskeletons, because the motorcars that keep zooming past and swerving around us at the last instant might otherwise hit us.
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The glowing, reflective stickers that we’re wearing leave swoopy trails wherever we go, indicating our path of travel. Look: we now wander into somebody’s pumpkin patch. The famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese comes out and yells at us for trespassing. But, when he shines his flashlight at our faces, we appear so sad (for teardrops are glistening down our cheeks) that Mr. Scorsese’s heartstrings break — he ends up using his walkie-talkie to instruct his assistants to “bring out some treats for these poor little kids.” Now two glamorous nudes emerge from the darkness and carefully crown us with stiff new baseball caps. As we are small children, the women’s waists are at our eye-level, so we can’t help but stare in awe at their neatly trimmed hair-triangles, during this brief ceremony.
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It isn’t clear whether the following was part of his intentional gift to us, because, by the time we discover it, Mr. Scorsese and his assistants are long gone; however, when you and I take off our new ball-caps and glance inside them, we each find a thick stack of $100 dollar bills slipped behind the inner sweatband.
“Whoa, we’re rich!” you say. “Let’s go find a way to spend this!”
“Good idea,” I say.
So we first go and buy ourselves new Halloween costumes, since now we can afford the ones that we truly desire. Then we use the rest of our inherited fortune to lease a haunted house for the night.
We show up at the front door of the dark, scary mansion and hesitantly bang the gargoyle knocker. We now hear footsteps echoing in crescendo, and, when this sound stops, the door slowly creaks open to reveal a robotic butler who bears a resemblance to Cary Grant in the film Notorious (1946). “My name is Count Devlin,” says the butler, while bowing, “Welcome to the Castle of Terror. Shall I show you around?”
“Oh, yes, thank you: we would love that,” we say. “But, first, Mister Devlin, can you try to guess what our costumes are supposed to be?”
Count Devlin adjusts his monocle and, after a moment, answers: “An organ and its organist?”
“That’s right!” we clap. “Nice job: first try!”
The interior of the haunted house is creepy. We both are so scared that our teeth will not stop chattering. I soon pass out, due to exhaustion from overstimulation; also there is a gas leak, and the place is filled with carbon monoxide.
After you and the butler wake me up by repeatedly slapping my face, we all continue the tour.
The final stop is a booth in one of the bedrooms where a clerk with green-painted skin is selling tickets to the mall. The sign on the booth reads “Visit the Mall of America for only $10 U.S. dollars.” Since that happens to be exactly how much cash you and I saved for ourselves in order to buy food, when we spent the rest of our earlier inheritance, we each decide to purchase a ticket. “These are our last two bills,” you announce, while handing the money to the clerk; “so this better be fun.”
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The bus stops before the main entrance of the mall. We get out and are immediately confronted by an older version of myself without any teeth. This elderly Real Me manages to mooch some pot from us; then you and I enter the mall and help each store’s staff install Halloweeen decorations on the inside of their windows. We use lime-hued construction paper to create silhouettes of Frankenstein monsters, affixing brass pins at their joints so that their poses are adjustable. This is the true meaning of the holiday.
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