After Before and After

Phase 4: Chapter 110

October 31, 1993

Costumes, monster masks, swords and fairy wands, people wearing makeup that made it impossible to tell who they were underneath. There was something uncanny about Halloween, Ralph Langley thought. A holiday in which kids got to be someone else entirely for the evening, no matter how bizarre. A holiday where monsters and goblins and ghosts and zombies became real, and the general rule of not knocking on strangers' doors was obsolete.

Before the island, Ralph hadn't been more fond of the holiday than most elementary schoolers, but he did enjoy the free candy aspect, and getting to spend a night running around with his friends. In the years after the island, Ralph despised the thought of people dressing up as monsters. He experienced a real-life Halloween nightmare on the island with kids running wild and turning their backs on him in the face of the threat of a real monster. After surviving that, fake monsters were far less appealing to Ralph than they used to be.

But now that the trial was well underway and nearing its anticipated end, Ralph was actually excited for the Halloween weekend. Halloween of 1993 was penciled in on the calendar to occur on a Sunday this year, and court had been cancelled the following Monday due to scheduling conflict with Judge Eldeson. The Langley family (plus Jack) opted to return to East Point for the long weekend, the first weekend in four years that Jack and Ralph were planning to celebrate Halloween.

Jack and Ralph knew well that there would be no good Halloween costumes on the shelves by the time they got back to East Point for the weekend, so they'd gone shopping with Laurie to get their costumes two weekends before in Savannah. Jack, of course, decided to go as Michael Myers from Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers. Under his breath, Ralph smugly remarked that it was a fitting costume for him, to which Jack slapped him proudly over the head. Ralph, on the other hand, decided to go as a far less violent baseball player. Though, Jack had plans to change that element of the costume.

"I don't like where this is going" Ralph said nervously.

Currently, he and Jack were standing in the little bathroom across the hall from Ralph's bedroom. Jeffery and Laurie were out running errands of some sort, so the boys were alone. Why Jack felt the need to enclose them in the small bathroom was beyond Ralph, who stared at him with a lot of concern. To be fair, Jack was holding a very large pair of scissors and a jug of fake blood, and had just locked the door.

"I think you oughta learn to relax" Jack replied as he set the items down on the bathroom counter. He eyed Ralph's Halloween costume curiously the way a clothes tailor would when making a rough estimation of one's measurements.

"I don't know anyone who'd feel relaxed while locked in a small bathroom with someone holding a large pair of scissors and a container full of blood" Ralph pointed out as Jack lifted the other's arm and looked under it like he was looking for a lost object.

"Fake blood" Jack corrected him.

"Still, my point stands" Ralph rebutted.

"Alright, now hold still" Jack demanded as he grabbed the scissors and put his fingers through them. He cut the air a couple times and Ralph stepped back dramatically.

"Is this the part where you kill me and make it look like suicide?" Ralph questioned jokingly, but his face didn't suggest he was having any fun.

"Enough with the theatrics already" Jack scoffed. "Has anyone ever told you you should become a drama major? Now, hold still."