"Jackie this is like the 15th house tonight, can't we just go? Look everyone else is leaving and they'll all be home soon!"

"One more house, let's make it an even 16 and we can both go home for the night."

"Fine but this is the last one..."

"You should be happier, I mean we did beat our record from last year."

"Yeah yeah, let's celebrate when we get home my arms are tired."

*Knock, Knock, Knock*

"Trick-or-treat"

"Happy Halloween, you got a killer costume but uh, Aren't you a little old for this sort of thing?"

"I'm 19"

"Exactly my point young lady, wouldn't you rather be out partying with your friends. I mean look all the lights are out and I was just about to turn mine off too."

"Don't worry we'll turn the lights out for you..."

"We?"

"Yeah we."

As those last few words left her lips she gestured to the figure standing behind the man and before he even had a chance to react a knife was being plunged into his back. Jackie quickly walked forward pushing him aside as she entered the house an closed the door behind her, looking at the man bleeding out on the floor with a somber expression and gently taking the knife out of her brothers hand. she flipped him over onto his back and put her foot on his neck almost crushing his windpipe a small smile crossing her face as he struggled under her weight.

"I may not like going to loud party's with the rest of my nicotine addicted generation but you were right about one thing, I have a killer costume indeed."

After everything was said and done she flipped off the porch light switch and the left out the backdoor skipping into the woods directly behind the mans house a bag full of candy in her hand and a bloody sack filled with eyes in her brothers. Quickly they left the neighborhood as screams of terror started to fill the dark void trampling over a newspaper with the heading : "BEWARE OF THE TWIN EYE THEIVES, YOU WON'T SEE THEM COMING!"

Another successful Halloween.

It was Halloween night. Or maybe the evening right before. My mind was as foggy as the day had been, but oncoming dusk made the lack of sight more acceptable. I was out trick or treating with my son. He was dressed as Indiana Jones, but looked nothing like Harrison Ford. In fatherhood, I’d learned to temper the onslaught of disappointment. He was six. The scene around me was picture perfect. It was nothing but a dreary October night, but the neighborhood was awake. More awake than it had ever been. Who’s neighborhood was this? My son and I weaved through the beaming children and reached the front of a house. It was an old man’s house, but a young man lived there. A young man had always lived there. To my son, it was just another slot machine with near-guaranteed odds.

My son raced to the door and rang the doorbell. With this action he chanted the famous associated words passed down through the haunted generations. A weathered young man answered the door. He smiled, but he didn’t want to. The moon showed me the outlines of angry clouds above his house. The moon wanted me to see. We had a relationship of taunts, myself and the moon, but only ever one-sided. The man, with an ever trembling hand, dropped a single fun sized snickers bar into my son’s raggedy burlap sack. He said to him, slowly, “you’re wearing a costume, but your father is the one truly wearing the mask.” My son blissfully ignored him, and I gently touched my face.

We walked on over to the next house and I found it eerily familiar. It was a splash of familiarity dropped onto a black canvas of the unknown. My son walked up to the front door, but before he got there he turned to me. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked.

“What?” I asked back. He simply smiled and turned back to the door. I got the feeling that he wasn’t referring to anything in the immediate moment. I did not smile. He had such a happy gait up to the doorbell of the familiar house. He had to avoid, well, no decorations at all. When he got to the doorbell, after ringing it, what he should have said was “trick or treat.” He should have said “trick or treat.” But instead he turned to me and asked, “why don’t I exist?”

Before I could answer, through the chills sent down my spine, the door opened. The man that opened the door was me. He was older and much more tired. His skin was grey and his eyes looked as though they’d conceded. They’d conceded everything. Despite these grisly differences, he was me. “No candy here,” the other me grunted out. He then slammed the door shut.

“What is and what could’ve been are so far away,” said my son. I was inclined to agree. To my left was an infinite row of houses decked out for Halloween, and I came to find that the same was situated to my right. I looked into my son’s emotionless eyes and then looked passed him. Passed him, in the familiar house, was a silhouette through the window of a man hanging from a noose. I screamed but it meant nothing.