Fifty Shades of Boo: A Grey Halloween

Trick-or-Treat

Part Two

"Are you Willie Nelson?" Old Man Derwin asks me as we stand on his porch steps holding out sacks for him to fill with candy. Phoebe has insisted I carry my own bag, which has an arched back black cat on it hissing at the moon. I'm not sure why the cat is so pissed at the moon. The moon has nothing on the idiot who thought up this holiday in the first place. Who was it? Satan? Because anyone who came up with a night where you walk for miles on end with your kids in ridiculous costumes, going house to house across wet lawns, begging for enough sugar to keep them up for seventeen days straight is straight from hell.

"How's that?" I ask. I can barely hear out of this thing. The only sounds I can clearly make out are sweat dripping off my eyebrows, my claustrophobic panting that sounds more Vader than Chewbacca, and the thud of my heart, all as a direct result of asphyxiation.

"Willie Nelson!" he shouts. Jesus, heard that one. So did the entire neighborhood. I half expect Willie to come running home for supper.

"Willie Nelson?" How the fuck does he think I'm Willie Nelson? I have hair on my ears and forehead. Come to think of it, maybe Willie does, too. But, since when did Willie Nelson ever wear a British parliamentary coat and hot pants?"

"Are your ears broken in there?" he asks.

"Kind of." I pull out some matted fur that got stuck in the ear hole. Ahh, better.

"Free the Willy!" Phoebe yells out at the top of her lungs.

"No, Phoebe! It's not Free the Willy, it's just Free Willy!" She always gets the title inappropriately wrong.

"Why is that different, Daddy?" she scrunches her nose and looks up at me, scratching at her blonde Elsa wig that's now halfway off her head.

"I'll tell you when you're thirty." I'm not getting into that talk tonight. "And don't ever say that to a boy!" I try to straighten her wig, but my paws won't cooperate. I think I made it worse.

"What happened to Willie?" Derwin asks, oddly invested in his worry for the singer's well being.

"He got caughted in a net...," Phoebe explains, demonstratively using her hands. "And he had to jump in shows, which made him sad and do naughty and then a little boy who also did naughty one time said "No, no. He's not a bad one! He wants to be free." She twirls around. "But, mean, bad guys wanted their millions and millions of dollars, so Willy jumped biggest jump ever, tooted goodbye and swam with the fishes." She punctuates the story with a wave bye-bye. "Until he did number two."

"You said he did number two," Teddy says, laughing. He sounds just like Elliot.

"Is Willie Nelson dead?" Derwin asks.

"She's talking about the whale," I say, trying to clarify.

"You're a whale?" he asks.

"I'm a Beast. The Beast. From Beauty and the Beast." By way of a galaxy far, far away and the eighteenth century British government.

He just looks at me for a minute. The minute goes on so long, I momentarily think he's had a stroke.

"I still say you make a good Willie Nelson."

"I'll think about it for next year." Get me the fuck out of this place.

He puts a handful of candy in each sack. I have to say they're awfully generous with their loads, although they're quite Butterfinger heavy this year. I prefer a chocolate without all the crispy add-ons. Vanilla chocolate, so to speak. Vanilla... God, I miss, Ana. She wouldn't be wearing panties under her hoop skirt right now.