Samhainophobia

Trick-or-treating in grade school,
we hunted the houses with the most
polyester cobwebs, strobe lights, bedsheet ghosts,
rubber-masked grim reapers with flashing eyes
that cackled and snapped their jaws;
the more obscured by tangles of twisted oaks
and brambles and shrubs the house was,
the faster we tore across its lawn.

Sophomore year of high school we ventured into
the deepest shadows of surburbia, costumes for armor:
a prom-queen ghost, a hanging victim, a zombie nun.
The firehouse siren blasted nine. We tramped across asphalt littered with toilet paper streamers, shaving cream spatters and dried leaves that crackled beneath the rubber soles of our sneakers
in the post-curfew silence. It was at the junction of Westwood
and Terbell Ave. that the prom queen's arm shot out,
fingers gripping plastic scepter until her knuckles turned white,
as her drooping jaw cracked the white foundation caked on her face
and her melting eyeballs streaked her mascara.

She prodded the rest of us with her scepter until
a rustle sounded in the distance; she shrieked and bolted,
and we followed suit, sprinting half a mile
straight to her house.

In between bites of bonbons and caramel chews
we learned from the prom queen sitting cross-legged on the carpet,
crown cocked to one angle and scepter on the piano stool,
that the two-story gray colonial with the unfinished driveway
at the end of Terbell, abandoned since the summer of sixth grade,
was home to a convicted rapist who had just been released
on parole the week before.

Inspired by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's perfume blend of the same name