Back Home for Halloween

Victoria stared into the mirror of her childhood home, adjusting her eye shadow for the fierce angles she wanted. It really was a shame that she wouldn't be able to go out with her own friends like she'd planned, her costume was going to go entirely to waste underneath the puffy jacket her mother was forcing her to wear, but it wasn't that bad to come back and see her family after a few years. Somehow she'd missed all of the holidays since going off to college, not able to comfortably afford a plane ticket. This was an odd holiday to break that streak with, but waiting any longer felt like widening the gap too much.

"Vicky, are you almost done up there!?" Mom called from the first floor.

With one final second to run a comb through her long, black hair, Victoria stepped out to the top of the stairs. "I'm ready, already."

"Sweatpants, too, sweetie~ We talked about this."

It was going to be cold outside anyway, Victoria slipped the unflattering things on before making her way downstairs.

Brian was fitted away inside his homemade costume, going out as a robot for one of his last times trick-or-treating. The kid had gotten a lot taller since Victoria left, a cliche for good reason, but he still looked gangly within the painted cardboard. It wouldn't be long before he was too big for people to feel comfortable handing out candy to him, so Victoria prayed briefly that it wouldn't rain and turn his handiwork into mush while they were out.

Their mom grabbed him by the largest box, that was his head, and forced his peep holes down to see that she was handing him his grocery bag for the night. "Remember to be careful on curbs, and crossing the street, and don't turn too fast and bean some other poor kid in the head."

"Yes, mom." Brian had clearly been hearing the same thing for the last few weeks since he'd gotten caught cutting out cardboard with a snap-off safety knife.

"I know you're just going around the neighborhood, but don't go off with anybody you don't know or get too far away from the group. Victoria is going to be keeping track of you, and I don't want to hear any stories or you can forget about going back out next year. Understand?"

"Yes, mom."

"And don't accept anything that's not a branded candy. Those couple of cases of finding razor blades might have been flukes, but it's not worth the risk. And I bet you wouldn't want an apple anyway."

"Yes, mom."

"And the Stevensons say that after their party, you can throw out your costume in their recycling container. We don't need it taking up space in your room for the next five months, it's messy enough as it is."

"Yes, mom..."

Victoria stifled laughter behind her mother's back. Her little brother was lucky that he didn't have an ear out to pull for being so flippant. But that's just how teenagers were, and Mom had chosen to go through having one another time after Victoria, so sympathy was right out the window; she'd known what she was going in for.

She took her little brother by the hand as a clear sign to their mother that the time for overbearing was over and they had to head out soon if they were going to catch up to the group. The wavering lights of a half dozen kids and their handlers for the night were already twinkling in the window, so mom had only a few seconds before they'd be at her own door demanding candy.

"Alright, Bug, let's get going," Victoria said while twisting the handle of the front door right as the group of little ghosts and goblins... and princesses, and one mariachi, were about to knock.

Coming out and joining the touring group, Victoria was suddenly glad that she hadn't gone out in her first choice outfit. She pulled up the neck of her borrowed puffy coat to protect her cheeks from the autumn chill, not quite high enough to keep her nose from burning a little. At least it wasn't wet this year, that would have been a poor capstone to put on Brian's childhood: getting covered in cardboard mush.

Though, knowing Bug, he'd have just upgraded to using latex paint on his costume and been one of the few trick-or-treaters still taking part in the holiday. Victoria smiled; the kid she'd held as a baby now had hands that were bigger than hers...

She stood at the back of the group, reminding herself of her own trips out on Halloween. She'd never been one of those princesses; she'd been too lazy to do much more than a bedsheets ghost with hand-cut holes. At least, the holes had been hand-cut the first year until mom did some actual stitching on the outfit to make it comfortable (she'd been afraid that the holes would slip and Victoria would trip on something, into traffic).

As they went, one of the other handlers, a tall man in a plaid shirt, migrated toward her. He seemed like a hard worker, well-muscled with serious eyes and a trimmed beard that wouldn't get caught in his tools (a fate that Victoria's father had lost most of his own beard to once upon a time). It had been years, but one didn't forget an innocent crush.

"Mister Franklin?" she said.

And he looked at her fully for the first time that night. "Oh, it is Vicky. Then I suppose the lanky one dressed like a pile of boxes is Brian?"

"Don't let him hear you say that." She smiled, the elaborate circuitry on her brother's costume had been painted in the bright light of his room and wasn't so obvious unless he was standing directly underneath a lamppost. "And I see Gracie wanted to be the newest princess."

Paul Franklin chuckled deeply. "She's watched the movie at least a hundred times, but I'm just glad she's out of her zombie phase."

Victoria grimly remembered a sleepless night after babysitting the girl and Gracie had insisted on watching her favorites. "You should've dressed up too, had a little fun while you have the excuse. Pretty soon if you try to get into the spirit of things, you'll just be that creepy old guy dressed like... a serial killer? Maybe a slasher villain?"

"I'm a lumberjack," he said and snapped his suspenders. "Left the axe at home, didn't think that through before yesterday and there wasn't enough time to change into anything else."

"You just look like you're wearing your work clothes."

"Because I am. And I guess you wanted to dress up as a marshmallow monster?"

She scoffed. "As if. The costume I made wasn't to the old lady's liking, so she made me cover up as much as I could. It wouldn't have been inappropriate if my other plans hadn't fallen through, but I can always recycle it for next year, I guess."

"So, gonna leave me in the dark?"

"Yep." It would be far too embarrassing to go into, given the mass of parents they were a part of, and earshot.

They'd started walking to the next house, trailing the pack.

He said, "That's not fair at all, I told you what mine was."

"If you'd brought your axe, we could talk about it, but I know you just chose the easiest thing in your wardrobe you could call a costume."

"Not at all."

"No?"

"I have a closet, not a wardrobe." He smiled. Paul had subtly, thoughtfully, stepped to Victoria's other side to be buffeted by the wind in her stead, and she caught a whiff of his cologne. "But the holiday's not for us adults, is it? You have to be careful, you're headed the same way and the train doesn't stop to let anybody get off. But it is nice to see you here, instead of thinking about you getting drunk at some college kid's dorm and putting yourself in harm's way."

Victoria walked a bit closer to him. "You think about me often?"

"Of course, you're in my prayers every day. I know Gracie misses you being around to harass. Brian's a good kid, but the age gap is a little weird for them and his energy is a little too cold for her. That said, it'd be sweet if they became high school sweethearts or the like, it's only three years after all. I'd feel better if it was him instead of some stranger."

"Not something you get to choose," Victoria said, crossing her arms to think seriously. "Who knows, maybe Brian will turn out to be really good at sports in high school and turn all the way around."

They both laughed at that; no way that boy would put himself anywhere he'd be likely to be tackled. He'd snap in half.

Paul said, "Maybe, he's long enough, so if he eats enough meat he might fill out."

"There's still the issue of co-ordination."

"I'm pretty sure they let you get ordained by yourself these days."

"What?"

He reached over, planted his big, rough hand on her head, and ruffled her hair. "That's the part where you're supposed to laugh. Ha ha ha, like that."

"Dad joke, 'nuff said."

"Well, what about you?"

"I don't have any jokes about it," she said.

Paul chuckled. "No, I mean what kind of guy are you going for these days? I remember there was that one boy you came around with, the one who ended up going into football?"

Victoria shrugged, pulled her coat closer to her for warmth. The wind was cutting up the gap and slithering up her belly, piercing the fabric of her sweatpants with little effort. "He's still doing that, but he was never serious about me, see? These days, I don't tend to have time to go out with anyone."

"Well, it's nice that the two of you are still in touch. It's easy to fall out and lose friends when a relationship ends." Paul nodded as though he'd dropped some serious revelation but his smirk proved he understood how corny he sounded.

"And I was only with him for a couple of months in the first place," Victoria said. "That just happened to be the time when you saw us together. Those kind of, like, athletic guys aren't really my type in the first place; I prefer one who's strong in a natural way, right. If not, I could go for one of those stringy, nerdy guys too. Those ones tend to have interesting hobbies and they'll talk your ear off if you let them and you seem interested."

"You don't like sports? That's a bit odd for a cheerleader."

"Pfft- That's probably why I don't like them. Really takes out the mystique when you're just around these sweaty, grunting guys for hours."

The light at the end of the street they turned onto marked the end destination, where there was already a party going on and kids filtering in with their candy hauls. There would be a haunted house in the back, creepy music already making its way to Victoria's ears, mostly theremin. She'd have loved all of the pageantry when she was a kid, but the neighborhood hadn't gotten so sophisticated until the world went crazy for those few years and it became imperative for mental health to actually know each other. By the time she was out of the house, she'd been to all of one haunted house and not an impressive one at that.

From the screaming coming along with the music, somebody was doing something right.

Paul laughed. "Hope they're having a good time. It almost seems like a waste that the thing is only going to be in use for the one day, took most of the month to build in the first place."

"You were involved?"

"Me and a few of the other dads. Right now, Daniel should be the one out there in a mask and a fake chainsaw. It's a real chainsaw, actually, but we took off the chain and attached a bluetooth speaker to the main body instead of turning it on. Daniel thought it would be fine to just take off the chain and run it anyway, but that was a bit too loud for what we needed."

Victoria listened closely. "I can't hear it at all."

"Durn right you can't." Paul stood proudly with his hands on his hips. "Elliptical reflectors and sound damping. I can't take all the credit for the idea, Mark's son is a sound engineer as it turns out, but I'm the one who installed all of it. It really gives you bang for your buck with sound."

She watched Gracie and Brian comparing their candy stashes as they left the most recent house. Apparently they'd each gotten a full-sized candy bar, but trading and haggling would come later. Victoria entirely intended on finding a nice rock to put in her little brother's bag later on, after he'd tuckered himself out and gone to bed, but she doubted he'd get the joke. Those two were joined at the hip, or as close as Gracie could get without denting Brian's costume; it would be nice, Victoria thought, to have that cutie as a sister in law, maybe in a decade.

-o-

Brian and Gracie went running for the haunted house the moment they came in the door and Victoria lost sight of Paul on her own way to the kitchen for a drink. The hosts were serving hot dogs and chips with punch, things able to be endlessly provided throughout the night to kids hopped up on sugar and who would wake up in the morning with reason to thank god for their youthful metabolisms. As for Victoria, she took a cup of water and a handful of ruffled chips to snack on while standing at the periphery of the main room.

The "creepy" music playing on repeat was, at least, not the Monster Mash as it had been in Victoria's youth, tugging at the ears incessantly. It might have been a good song, but nothing was good the thirtieth time in a row. It was loud enough to hear over the roar of conversation and the happy screaming, in bits and pieces.

Nibbling at chips, mindful of her waistline but for what reason she didn't know, Victoria looked out at the neighborhood condensed into one room and recognized the faces of people she couldn't rightly say that she actually knew anymore. What a difference a couple of years made. Not that she'd been overly familiar with the kids in the area, except as a babysitter every week or so throughout her teen years, but she couldn't remember many names. Even Gracie had only been recognizable thanks to her father, and Victoria had come to understand that the older you get, the longer any change takes to show.

He was still the same way that she'd seen him when she looked up to him. Still a head taller than her, but she'd felt earlier that he was finally seeing her eye to eye, and maybe she'd been away long enough that she looked like a woman in his eyes...

She sighed and rolled her neck. That kind of thought wasn't going to go anywhere, and shouldn't.

Not many people of her own age in attendance, even in her own role. There had to be another, rowdier, party going on somewhere else in town where there would more than likely be a police visit before the night was over. Though Victoria didn't want to be there, either. Her target had been specifically to go out with others in her age range so she could flout her stuff and maybe reel someone in for a night or a lifetime, whichever was on offer.

What a story that would be to her own children, with omission as to what she'd been wearing that was so appealing to their father at the time. But she could put up with sweats. Her costume was stretchy; she could save it for next year.

"Vicky~" A pudgy older woman pushed through the crowd to hug Victoria and give her a smooch on each cheek. "Hold on, let me get a good look at you." She held Victoria at arm's length to survey the minor changes.

"Hi, miss Laurence," Victoria said. "How's-" she searched through her memories to pull up a name from this house, "-Johnathan? Is he still trying to become an astronaut?"

The woman smiled; pretty pink dimples. "Well, isn't that a blast from the past~ No, he came off of that when we told him that he'd probably have to join the air force if he wanted to go to space. Not part of the fantasy, you see; he just likes the idea of being there, not going there. These days he says he'd be interested in something to do with the deep ocean. Isn't that silly, going from one extreme to the other?"

Victoria shrugged with a smile. The kid would only be seven by this point, plenty of time to waffle back and forth. "Wait until he learns about the Navy, then."

Mutual laughter.

"And you? I never heard what you were going off to college for."

"Physical therapy." Victoria retreated with the woman to the comparable quiet of the kitchen where children were gently shepherded away from the doorway and back toward the party. "There's a lot more math than I thought there would be, and I feel like I'm training to be a nurse more than anything else, but if one more person asks whether I want to work with athletes, I'll lose it."

"No connection at all?" Miss Laurence took a few pieces from the front door's candy bowl. Good, this woman was always meant to be pleasingly plump, and she kept a happy husband for good reason.

Victoria said, "I picked it while I was getting therapy myself, but that's about it. You remember that one year I couldn't do cheerleading because of my leg?"

"Oh yes, there was something like that, wasn't there? It's good to know you're out there working on something practical anyway. All of these girls getting degrees that'll lead them nowhere but debt. Long as people keep hurting themselves, you'll have work, after all."

"I'd prefer they didn't, but they will." Victoria laughed.

"And when you're done, don't you think you'll be coming back around here? I know your little brother would love to have you around more, and," the woman added in a covert whisper, "that Erickson boy was asking around about you a little while back~"

Victoria remembered tall, red curls, and little more, not exactly her style. "Isn't he, like, seventeen?"

"Eighteen as of a few months ago. And by the time you're done with school, he'll be in the middle of a welding course, he says. Talking about stable work, the world will always need welders."

If you want me to start talking him up, you might at least get him to man up and call me himself, Victoria thought. I mean, no, but he should hear it from the horse's mouth instead of hanging on the word of the grapevine.

She said, "He has my number, and he's welcome to shoot his shot, miss-"

"Oh dearie, call me Nora, we're peers now after all. And, ahem, I'll let the boy know." She nodded with maternal understanding. "Just take my advice and don't take too long playing the field. A professional woman has more difficulty than you might think, in that area."

Victoria found a reason to casually disengage from the conversation and headed back toward the haunted house. It wasn't made for her sake, but she sure as heck wasn't about to stick her back to the wall for the next few hours while her brother tired himself out. Neither would she carry him home with all of those sharp corners he was wearing; he was already almost as tall as she was, so much that he could have come out as a pipe-cleaner monster instead of a robot.

One kid was running from the back of the experience to the front, seemingly for the third-plus time given the way the attendant at the entrance flap just stepped back to let him barrel in. Once Victoria was allowed to enter, one person or group at a time for timing the scares, it seemed, she heard a second later as the kid whined behind her, being forced to wait. Oh well, she'd have entered with the twerp if he'd been a second faster, but this run ended up being just for her.

Flashing lights, smoke machines, fake spider webs with fake spiders (one which happened to be mechanical and gave her a very real start). The opening act didn't include any persons in costumes, excepting the actors who were there to press their hands into the plastic walls for the creepy shadows and whoever else was needed to time the scares. Though Victoria did consider tearing down the fake spider and crushing it under her heel, she bubbled with laughter and let it go as part of the fun.

The second room was an actual room, the laundry room that would have jutted out into the backyard had been appropriated for a fake coffin that burst open as soon as she was wondering if it would. The pale-faced vampire within, mister Barnes the math teacher, was just gaunt enough in the face for the costume, seemed happy to see at least one new face and reached for her. Victoria waited to see what he would do, but he stopped as soon as he was sitting up.