Homesick Halloween

Ellie giggled, which was adorable. "Of course we do! But I can hardly say them in front of my mum, can I now?"

"'Pardon my French, sorry, English?'" Chad joked, feeling better than he had done all week. Though Paul arriving and switching the conversation to soccer reminded him how much he missed American sports. He wasn't a big fan of any, just liked the routine of hearing the baseball stats and the football news more than he'd thought.

He was most grateful when Mike and Shannon invited him over for an afternoon of American sports TV. "There'll be cold beer."

With doses of familiarity from them and from Claire's husband Bill, Chad started to feel a bit more settled in his new country. He felt welcome in their 'local' where he enjoyed pub lunches, and liked the curry house his colleagues took him to. The Indian food almost filled the gap left by the lack of Mexican.

Come October, he looked forward to the Halloween party at work: finally a familiar concept! Until the other Americans told him not to get his hopes up.

"Hokey decorations, a few masks, punch and red wine and warm beer, sorry, 'room temperature'..." Mike apologised.

That was when the homesickness really kicked in. The final straw was yet another Coke served without ice -- Dr Pepper wasn't available in any local stores, let alone pubs or the work cafeteria. At least he'd remembered in time to pay for the second one, the concept of free refills having not made it to this side of the Atlantic. It might be a small thing, but having to plead, 'more ice, please. And some more, please?' every time he ordered a drink anywhere, made him feel an outsider more than anything else.

He confided in Ellie, who seemed to actually want to check he was okay.

"They say it's a few plastic cups of punch in the office on a Friday night? I'm just feeling I'm missing out, I guess. It's Hallowe'en! It's this big holiday! Everyone celebrates it." He sighed. "Normally, it's my favourite day of the year." He didn't mention that the costumes on the girls, many dressing outrageously for one night only, was a big part of that.

Ellie confided in Liz. Who had a practical answer, as usual. "Sorted. We'll have to plan an actual Hallowe'en party to cheer him up!"

They called the other students and various friends to make it happen.

Chad's happy face when she told him the plan for Saturday night made the effort all worthwhile, Ellie thought. He really was a fine-looking guy: broad-shouldered, golden blond, with a 'chiselled jaw' like they said in the movies. Not that tall, but then she wouldn't want anyone too tall, being below-average height herself.

What was she saying? Any relationship with a housemate was always a bad idea; everybody knew that. And he was only here for a few months. So she reminded herself firmly she wasn't interested. She didn't even know what country she'd be in this time next year!

She'd started on her rounds of applications, and even filled in forms to apply for a couple prestigious funds which would enable her to work anywhere. Chance would be a fine thing!

In the meantime, she'd just subtly enjoy the glimpses of Chad emerging from the bathroom in a towel or his shorts...

Come Saturday, Liz hit the supermarket for food and drink, Ellie picked up some items from Poundland. A giant skeleton poster for the front room and some plastic bats on a string for the lounge should do it, plus a strand of purple felt vampire elephants she couldn't resist, along with few streamers and fake cobwebs.

Ellie greeted him after taking twenty minutes to decorate. "Chad! What do you think?

"Decor looks good! And you've got the pumpkin outside with candles, to alert trick-or-treaters."

He'd actually seen better decorations done last-minute in a kindergarten classroom, but didn't like to say.

Rachel arrived, bearing a pumpkin pie for some reason.

"Hi, Rach. Why the pumpkin pie?"

"You can get Libby's canned pumpkin in Waitrose, now," she said as some sort of explanation. "See, we really have adopted the whole pumpkin festival thing!"

Trying not to roll his eyes, Chad disappeared to change into his costume, and came back down in a carefully-folded white sheet. It was a skill he'd mastered during his bachelor degree.

"Do you want more bog roll for your mummy costume?" Liz asked.

"It's a toga," he retorted.

"I thought it was a toga. It's a good toga! Why a toga, though?"

Chad didn't seem to understand the question.

"I suppose those mad Roman emperors were pretty scary," Ellie tried to make sense of it.

Chad added a wreath of ivy to make it more obviously a toga. Romans in togas were traditional Hallowe'en costumes, just like soldiers and sluts and Little Red Riding Hood...

Various of the other students arrived. Some had token zombie facepaint or a Darth Vader robe, others were just in normal clothes. "What's the plan?"

"Typical Halloween party -- help Chad here feel a bit more at home. We'll put Rocky Horror on shortly, then set up the donut bobbing and apples. Then Paul said he'd bring a couple horror movies for later. Mulled wine for when it gets cold."

"Sounds good, Liz. Hi, you must be Chad."

The doorbell rang. Chad decided he'd answer it.

"Trick or treat!"

Three small children in ghost and zombie outfits chorused and waved their buckets up at him, while a man hovered paternally back by the gate.

At last, a proper bit of Hallowe'en. Chad reached for the bowl of candy and held it out, wanted to hug the kids for being so familiar.

"What sweets you got, mister?"

"Why you wearin' a sheet? Did your mummy head fall off?"

"Ta, mate!"

So much for the familiarity. Chad sighed, and picked out a piece of candy. It proved to be a foil-wrapped chocolate eyeball.

The next to arrive was Shannon and her husband.

"Hey, sweetheart! How ya doing!"

Chad never thought he'd be so glad to hear a Texan accent.

"Fine."

"Come on, show me where the beers are."

Shannon clearly knew damn well where the kitchen was, pulling Chad by the arm into it, acquiring a bottle of lager for each of them from the bottom of the refrigerator, then hauling him out the back door into the back yard. Garden, the Brits called it. It had a patio, then steps to a lush green lawn with flowerbeds at each side. Liz had explained they'd had to convince their landlord not to mow the lawn early on weekend mornings -- he lived next door so frequently appeared to dead-head the roses or otherwise keep the place up to the standard he wished to see out of his window. Chad had to admit it made for a nice view from his bedroom window, with the stereotypical English flowers and hedges.

He sighed.

"Spill," Shannon told him. "Actually, don't bother. You're homesick and they're doing Hallowe'en all wrong. Right?"

He nodded, and sat on a cast-iron patio chair.

"Yeah. They're being so kind, trying to hold a good party for me, but it's just... weird."

"Even if they got it right, it'd be weird anyways, how they all talk. You know?"

Shannon's husband Mike appeared. She continued, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And I don't mean wear a toga. Have you noticed, the Brits only wear scary costumes -- witches, zombies, monsters, perhaps a politician if they're being edgy?"

Suddenly Chad realised it was true, and cringed in embarrassment.

"Don't worry about it, honey. You've got the body for it. As I was saying, if you can't beat em, join em."

"She means," Mike interjected, "get roaring drunk."

"No, just a little bit buzzed!" Shannon protested. "Okay, drunk as a skunk helps!"

"Whatever. Come try their mulled wine -- you'll need to warm up -- and watch some Rocky Horror. There is no escape..." Mike added, "If you're lucky, some of the girls will be getting into the spirit of the thing with corsets and stockings and garters..."

"They invited Marion." Shannon predicted how the lairy Frenchwoman would be dressed.

"And Nadine. Ooh la la..." She was another French post-doc in the lab next to Chad's, with breasts to die for. "Should be some eye candy, if you like that sort of thing."

"Here you go, honey -- knock that back."

It tasted like mulled wine the world over. Only when he finished the cup did Chad detect much more alcohol than he was used to.

"Hey, Chad! Come watch a bit of the film! You know Rocky Horror, right?"

"Sure. I've taken my turn calling out at a big screen."

"Cool. Oi, move up guys, let our guest of honour sit down on the sofa!"

Chad sat, gratefully, in the middle of the couch, Ellie on one side, Paul on the other. He realised that Marion really had gone for the Magenta look, and tried not to shudder. He'd never be able to un-see, now. It wasn't that she was bad-looking -- quite the opposite, despite nearing forty -- but he'd never be able to see her as a wise authority figure again.

Someone passed him popcorn and another beer; people shouted abuse at the characters on-screen.

"Ooh, Brad!" Susan Sarandon cooed.

"Asshole," came a chorus of fake American accents.

"Ooh, Chad," shouted a wag.

"Okay!" yelled someone else, with the same intonation.

"Yeah!" came a chorus.

Chad relaxed slightly as he sipped his beer. These Brits -- and the other foreigners, like the madly-gyrating Marion -- were all mad, but they seemed to like him.

"A laser -- of pure anti-matter!"

"Then it's not a laser!" Chad exclaimed, realising happily that everyone else in the room had just called out the same words, and at least some things were the same the world over. Ellie held up her wine glass and clinked it against his beer bottle.

The final credits rolled.

Oh Cha-ad, Marion sang, just because he had a New England accent, he supposed. She was clearly hoping to pull him up for a close dance.

In terror, Chad glanced at Ellie, who put her arm round him.

"Bog off, Marion!" It was the closest to swearing at anyone he'd ever heard from Ellie.

"Ah, of course. You can be his Janet. Magenta would be all wrong for our sweet innocent Brad. Chad. Whatever."

Ellie looked nervously at Chad.

"Oh, so sweet!"

"Shut up, Marion," said Shannon, and Chad's voice chimed in.

Though now he thought about it, Ellie's soft wavy hair was reminiscent of the innocent young Susan Sarandon.

Though the way she was knocking back her wine wasn't. Chad shrugged, and forced himself to stop thinking about it.

Any dalliance with someone he had to live with for another three to five months would be a terrible idea. Or work with, which he would tell Marion if she kept at it.

"Guys! We've got the donut bobbing ready! Chad, you should be the expert -- show them how to do it."

Chad stood up, ensuring his sheet kept him decent over his shorts and wife-beater.

Time to try out that British swearing.

"What the everlasting bloody fuck is donut bobbing?"

Liz and Paul looked up in surprise. "We thought it was what you did... "

Back in the front room, two dining chairs were six feet apart, back to back, with a string between their top rungs. Hanging down from this were three more short strings, suspending a trio of sugared ring donuts in the air.

"You don't do this at your Hallowe'en parties?

Chad thought wistfully of candy corn, porches decorated for a week, girls dressed as sexy pizza slices, sexy princesses, sexy anything, and kegs of familiar beer.

"No. I've heard of apple bobbing, though," he added politely, seeing as they'd gone to the effort for him. Apple bobbing was the kind of thing a party for little kids might do.

"Ah, well. Have more punch and give it a go. Shannon, Mike, show him how it's done?"

Paul had to give instructions. The three of them knelt in front of their donuts. "OK, you have to eat it all without dropping any on the floor. No hands or arms allowed! Fastest wins, or least dropped if everyone fails. Three, two, one, munch!"

"She's good at licking holes out, eh, Mike!"

"Looks like he's used to getting a big fat round thing in his mouth!"

Mike, distracted by the rude heckling, bit his donut too hard. It cracked and fell to the newspapers on the floor. He raised a middle finger and proceeded to pick up his donut and eat it, sitting back to watch his wife nibbling round the edge of her own donut, presumably before an attempt to engulf the centre.

More crude comments about what she could do with her mouth distracted Chad, who had been trying to eat from the bottom up, but knocked the balancing semi-circle with his chin.

Chad shook his head sadly as his final chunk of donut fell to the floor rather than into his mouth. He picked it up and ate it, whilst Shannon managed to get one end of the remainder into her mouth, lie back, and slowly imbibe it all, minus large crumbs falling about her face, much to the amusement of the audience.

"Who's up next?"

There was a clamour of enthusiasm, more because it was time for everyone to appreciate sweet carbohydrate than a desire to make idiots of themselves. Marion and Shannon were taking pictures now; Chad was relieved to have escaped that.

Rachel did terribly, her donut batting her in the face repeatedly before falling to the floor, but her competition were little better. In the third round, Ellie was up against two other students Chad vaguely recognised.

She removed her glasses. In movie-like fashion, this suddenly revealed the shape of her face much better, especially with the various lamps casting shadows. Chad realised she really was pretty -- not that he hadn't noticed that before, but she'd made clear shortly after his arrival that she'd had enough of men and was going to be going free and single until her thesis was submitted, thank you very much.

He knew any messing around with someone he had to live with for another few months would be a terrible idea. He'd ended up in one woman's bed after a night out -- a Dutch colleague from another lab -- but the next day decided a one-night stand wasn't something he wanted to repeat.

He didn't want marriage at his age, mid-twenties, but neither did he want an emotionless encounter. Might just as well use his own hand.

He used his own hand a lot. Among the faces that passed through his mind were some of his new colleagues, but he felt his housemate should be off limits.

So far, he'd managed to avoid even thinking about it in the bathroom.

Chad accepted another drink and continued watching the entertainment.

A guy called Dave earned cheers for sending a donut swinging over the string and knocking Ellie's off before she'd got near it. Liz swiftly provided a replacement and loud bickering was heard over whether Dave should be disqualified.

"Doesn't make any difference. It's not like there's any prize," Paul spoke in Chad's ear.

Some "ooh!"s alerted Chad to watching events again.

Ellie had captured her donut in her lips, and was carefully nibbling all around it, especially on the underside, raising her head to show off her delicate throat. More tiny bites over the top of the baked ring had everyone in the room watching, mesmerised, at the controlled movements of her mouth. Dave and the other student were long out of the competition.

Finally, there was a fragile thin ring of dough on the string. Ellie knelt down, bent back like a limbo dancer, shuffled forwards until it hovered over her mouth -- then opened wide and gulped the circle into between her lips.

She closed her eyes and pulled backwards, her mouth still stretched open. A quiet nervous laugh came from somewhere in the room, but it was drowned in huge applause.

Mostly for the virtuoso donut-mastery performance, but Chad guessed he wasn't the only guy there who'd noticed the uncanny resemblance to a girl giving an expert blow job and showing off an ability to deep throat! He was quite relieved that his toga was loose over his lap, because his shorts underneath no longer were.

What made Ellie's actions so erotic was the certain knowledge that she was doing it totally innocently, her soft cocoa-brown hair falling back from her face, her look of concentration solely devoted to bakery product.

It wasn't that the girl was a total innocent -- she'd admitted on one of the household's many evening drinking sessions that she'd stayed longer than she should have with more than one of her crap boyfriends just so she could keep having sex of varying quality. She'd probably sucked off at least a couple guys. But sex wasn't something that you'd particularly associate with her, and kinks or sluttiness really weren't going to be her thing. It was clear to anyone that she was looking only for a nice boy for some sweet, nice sex, if he would actually be nice to her.

For the first time, Chad contemplated whether he might be that sort of guy.

In the meantime, the energetic Liz had had another great idea.

Apple bobbing. At least this was a familiar concept. Though instead of the dusty half a wooden barrel from someone's back yard, she'd nicked an old plastic distilled-water barrel from work, so it was a cylinder a couple feet across and somewhat more deep.

Marion was failing to sink her teeth into any of the apples in the barrel. Her glittery corset probably didn't help. Mike and various others similarly gave up after their own couple minutes of providing hilarity. Shannon clearly felt the need to impress the Brits -- not English, he had to remember that -- and determinedly shoved one apple into the side, took a deep breath and managed to capture it. Only it fell back into the water when she sat up in victory, splashing everywhere.

A few more failures, one eventual success biting into a stalk, and three apples remained.

"Come on, Chad!"

"Go on! Show them how it's done!" Shannon urged.

He noticed Ellie, her face still dripping, looking at him with a soft smile.

In that case, there was only one thing to do.

He downed his beer, set his sights on a rosy apple, took a deep breath, dived upon it from above, and pushed it to the bottom of the barrel, whereupon he could secure it in his teeth.

He rose up, feeling like a Greek god emerging from the sea. The toga might add to the effect, though in retrospect gods seemed to have magic automatic-drying fabric, whereas he didn't.

A round of applause.

"You are soaked, mate," Paul stated the obvious. "Best get that off before you catch your death!"

And this was why sensible guys like him wore T-shirt and shorts underneath. Chad tugged off the wet cloth that was tangling all round him, and hung it over the bannister to dry.

"You'll need to take that top off, too," Liz pointed out. "Don't want you getting a cold. What would I say to your mum, next time she calls?"

Chad obeyed. Someone tossed a towel to him, and he mopped his face and shoulders gratefully.

Suddenly conscious of his bare torso, he turned to run upstairs for a dry shirt, but was interrupted.

"The horror movie's starting!"

The original Hellraiser. What the hell. Watching it was clearly expected of him. He had seen it, years ago, but couldn't remember much. On the other hand, with the amount he'd drunk, he doubted he'd remember any more now. Sitting back quietly wasn't such a bad plan.

At least the Brits had popcorn.

"Come on! We're the hosts, we can bag the sofa!"

Ellie was gesturing him back into the living room. She shooed a couple people off her couch, claiming Chad was the guest of honour.

"Oh, yeah?" Paul replied sarcastically, while shifting himself to sit between Liz's feet on the floor.

Ellie felt her face burn hot, but she hoped the dark room was dim enough to hide it. She squeezed in between Chad and Liz, a post-doc with an injured leg remaining on Liz's other side.

It occurred to her that it did look like she'd engineered a chance to get up close and personal with Chad's bare chest.

She hadn't, honestly.

Though, given things had ended up that way, it was hardly a hardship.