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HALLOWEEN WAS A TIME OF LAUGHTER. Children ran from house to house hoping for the inevitable fate of an abundance of empty candy wrappers at the end of their beds; painfully bloated stomachs, and groaning with each movement. And who could forget the less enthusiastic ceremonial brushing of the pearly whites, which would of course be monitored meticulously by the parents.
Except nowadays Halloween was just like every holiday, child-friendly, ergo, beyond boring.
Excluding the few rascals that decided that the hardcore rebellions began with egging and t-ping unsuspecting old ladies' houses.
Either way, it was just like everything else in Elizabeth Russell's life, uninteresting and exceptionally dull. The spark of childlike joy that once came in heaps during holidays such as these was dying out. Fading quickly before her eyes. And sadly, she was okay with that.
Halloween just wasn't her thing anymore, even though once upon a time she'd shouted from the top of her lungs in her parents' old beat-up car, that "Halloween was a hundred times better than any Christmas.". It didn't last. She'd soon started singing another tune when the day of Baby Jesus' Birthday arrived because to a child everything is better than something at some point. Doesn't mean it'll stay that way though.
In fact, at the slowly maddening age of just twenty-four, she'd swear an oath that she despised all holidays in the Roman calendar. Even the day of her own cursed birth into this world. So of course she was hiding from all the plastic masks, miraculously white bed sheets with two parallel holes for eyes and of course the annoying polystyrene faux swords. Otherwise, she would have passed the point of scraping what was left of her sanity long ago.
No, she would not stoop to the level that those woeful fools, otherwise known as parents, had been dragged to, most likely from their satan spawn. Instead, she was sitting comfortably, sipping her coffee and eating the remainder of her now cold fries, from the opposite side of the fortunate glass barriers. She got to watch all the joy being sucked out of their gullible, foolhardy faces, into the souls of their hyper maniac spawn before them. It truly was a dinner with a show, and it was a thoroughly amusing experience. Especially after the trying day she'd suffered.
Elizabeth deserved to watch those before her suffer as penance for their usually over-joyous everyday lives they loved to spread the word about and shove down your throats. She'd spent less than a week in this small, close-knit town. And she'd hated every millisecond of it. The people, if not just the place itself, would drive her to the breaking point with their passive aggression for one another and constant snobbish behaviour towards who had what.
