Evergreen Summertime

This Is Halloween

The fright-seekers just finished getting the scare on, visiting haunted houses, riding haunted hayrides, and stumbling through cavernous corn mazes. Imagine one of your characters is hired to be a monster for one of these frightful events. Why does she take the job? Does she like scaring people, or does she just need the money? What does her costume look like? Does she feel guilty about frightening people?

She was to act like one of them. Talk like one of them, and be frightened like one of them, until her moment of gory glory came upon her. She waited anxiously in the center of the group as they neared the first part of her event at the large haunted house: the kitchen. The lights began to flicker, just as planned, and as some squealing girls blubbered profuse nonsense about not wanting to die, she acted to be the tough one in the group, telling them to calm down, and that this was a fake haunted house, and of course everyone would get out alive. She was dead wrong.

The lights turned off completely, and a maniacal, disturbing laughter rung in everyone's ears. They could hear the sound of knives sharpening, and then it was her que to start screaming. The lights began to flicker so the group could sort-of get a picture of to what was happening to her: a masked man with an axe lodged in his head was stabbing her in her stomach repeatedly with a kitchen knife. Well, of course the guy playing that madman actually wasn't. She had multiple packs of fake blood taped all across her stomach, from underneath her chest to her waist, and he was using a large, plastic butter knife that looked exactly like an actual knife. The fake blood squirted everywhere, scaring the absolute crap out of everyone in the group that was touring the house, causing them to run into a hallway filled with numerous doors, leaving her alone to the madman.

"That was successful." She said, relieved that the first group of the night thought that scene was very believable.

The madman lifted his mask for minute, to answer her. They both had ten minutes before they had to act out another scene in the "torture chamber" room. She was to be strapped into a fake torture-device spattered with blood behind a plastic wall, weakly calling for her previous groupmates to help her. That was when the madman would come in again, with a fake chainsaw, and turn it on. Before the group could see anything actually happen to her, they could only see the madman aiming for the middle of her body, before fake blood sprayed everywhere on the plastic wall, blocking the view.

"I still think we should cut off your leg and made a Bobecue with a ShishkaBob station." He replied, his white teeth shining as he smiled at her. She rolled her eyes in return, totally getting his television show reference, but secretly smiling to herself.

"Well," she said, "I guess I know what I'm having for dinner tonight." They both burst out laughing, and began to walk to the torture chamber room, making conversation about what would happen in the next episode. As actors, they both took their jobs seriously, not wanting to appear to feign emotions.

After their thrill night was over, they both headed back to their homes, on the same neighborhood, around three in the morning.

"Did you see their faces when the blood covered what happened in the torture room?" He asked her as they walked down the sidewalk.

"Heck yes! I feel terrible for thinking their reactions are hilarious!"

"Well, then why'd you decide to sign up?"

"It gives me eight hours of community service, and I'm good with prosthetics. Why'd you sign up?"

"You want to truth?"

"Yep." She answered, popping the 'p'.

"Well," he said, "You signed up."

*Extended Ending*

One year later, at the next Halloween festival in town, the they both decided to volunteer again for the haunted house. They didn't want that big of a part this time, so they signed up to be part of a group of cannibals in the backyard of the haunted house.

"The first group is coming in around ten minutes." He says to the small group of volunteers, and they nod their heads, grabbing chunks of cooked meat off of a grill. The chunks were actually large pieces of turkey jerky.

"M'kay, let me tie you to the wooden pole now." He says to her, a long piece of rope in his hands. She wrapped her arms around the stake in the ground, and he tied her wrists together. She couldn't move anywhere, for half of her right leg was literally in the ground. They had to dig a hole and put her lower leg into it, then fill it back up, and then wrap her knee in bandages splattered with blood to make the illusion that half of her leg was gone. There was a replica of the other half of her leg sitting on top of the grill, some parts already "eaten".

"Well," he said to her, "I guess we're having a Bobecue for our dinner date tonight."

Yes, yes, I know, it ain't Halloween, but this is a tribute to the TWD episode last and this Sunday. #RIPButtonsTheHorse