The House and the One Before It

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.