The Halloween Party

Flash fiction

The Halloween Party

Night fell, and a harvest of stars emerged in the dusking sky.

Food service trucks pulled in and took positions near a raging bonfire.

Coyote packs snarled in the distance, strange songs sifting through silage husks on a shifting breeze.

Floodlights illuminated a horseshoe pit.

I was dressed in my best Davey Crockett outfit, with fringed buckskins and a coonskin cap. I walked through the barn's door. Unferth, the weasel launched off a gargoyle prop and landed on my head. 

"Mon Amour," he crooned, snuggling into the fur, "Ma Cherie." 

He snatched the cap from my head and leaped to the floor. I chased after, trying to run him down before he reached one of his hiding places, but a feedback blast from the stage caught me off-guard. I covered my ears. 

Throbbing music pulsed out of the speaker stacks.

Good grief, I'd gone to tamer metal concerts! 

Tuesday and Monique rushed about throwing switches and turning dials. With each beat, lightning flashed in the rafters. Fog poured out of wall vents, and laser light spun green patterns through the air. 

Tuesday leaped off the stage with Monique in tow, prancing the steps of a dance they called the Pony, shaking their heads. Their blonde hair flew in frozen frames, with blinding flashes strobing the dance floor. 

My cap streaked by, and I started the chase again. Unferth was going at it blind, gliding across the dance floor with the dragging coonskin tail, bumping into walls, and then whirling to start in random directions. 

"Unferth!" I yelled, unable to hear my voice over the ear-splitting roar. He headed straight for me, cutting through the fog, gaining velocity, and closing the gap as if launched from a submersible warship. I braced for the impact, but he veered off at the critical moment and came to a tumbling halt. I plucked my hat off the floor, and he flew into a mad war dance. 

Tuesday and Monique killed the music, then ran to meet Collen as she arrived with two barbacks. A powerfully built woman who'd thrown the shotput for Michigan State, she lifted Tuesday by the elbows and set her down, saying, "When's the last time you ate a meal, lady?"

"A girl's got to watch her figure." Tuesday threw her arms around Collen's neck.

"I'll say they do," said just-arriving Dizzy Heights, a svelte thirty-one-year-old dressed in pull-away flapper attire.

She'd abandoned a physics professorship at Kharkiv National University in Ukraine and moved to America to pursue a dream. Her burlesque routine at the horseshoe pit would surely raise eyebrows.

She sat at the bar while Collen's helpers fell to slicing limes.

"What'll it be?" Colleen asked Dizzy.

"The green fairy."

"Absinthe?" Collen reached for the bottle.

"Not too strong," Dizzy said, "Just enough to wet my beak."

"Coming straight up… Miss?"

 

“Stanislavsky, Natasha Stanislavsky,”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Meanwhile, Tuesday and Monique were back on the stage, going at it with a vengeance. Tuesday powered up the Jumbotron and it lit up like a starship. Monique hit a switch, opening a curtain to reveal Thor and Sally, his robotic Bo, astride Big Sid, Tuesday's mechanical bull.

Violent crash images flickered across the Jumbotron's screen: Thor and Sally strapped into a Corolla, crashing head-on into a cement truck, a multi-car pile-up with rollovers, and finally, Thor and Sally in a Cherokee being buried in the ash of an erupting volcano. 

Tuesday dropped a block of dry ice into a hundred-gallon cauldron and then ran to Sally with a microphone.

"Say your lines, Sally."

"Double, double toil, and trouble.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

Unferth leaped onto the stage, running frantic circles around the cauldron.

"Double, double," repeated Sally.

“Double…toil…double…trouble…toil.

"I think she's autistic," Monique said.

"Think of the research possibilities," returned Tuesday. "The first autistic artificial intelligence! I love you, Sally."

"Back off," Unferth yelled, "She's mine."

"Love, love, toil, and trouble. Sally loves and troubled bubbles." 

Monique hurried to Big Sid's variable speed control box, hit the power switch, and grabbed the joy stick.

Big Sid whirled clockwise and changed direction, gaining velocity as Monique laid harder into the joystick. Round they flew, faster and faster, until Thor and Sally became a single image, indistinguishable from playing cards in the hands of a card-sharp. 

Meanwhile, Unferth scampered to the balcony where an eighty-pound sandbag hung by a rope tied in the rafters. If his calculations were correct, he need only gnaw through a bit of twine to send the weight hurtling downward to knock Thor's indelicate block off, thereby eliminating the vulgarian's competition for Sally's affection.

But the crowd! Yes, the group must be assembled to witness his triumph over Thor!

Unferth would bide his time.

I glanced at my watch. We'd chartered buses for the guests, two hundred revelers if the number of R.S.V.P's was close to accurate.

Monique powered down Big Sid and repositioned the curtain.

Tuesday hit a switch, and a coronational blare of trumpets sounded. A sound check for the Kid's entrance, to which, once the crowd had assembled, The Kid would make his monarchical entrance dressed in the finest regalia: a jeweled crown, sparkling scepter, and trailing velvet cape. All eyes would be upon him, and he'd toss rose petals from a gilt basket.

The first of our guests stumbled in. Marshal Silverman, who'd recently changed his name to Maréchal Silver, was a poet and organizer of poetry jams on the Boulder literary circuit. He found his way to the bar without difficulty.

"What will you have, sir," Collen asked.

"Nothing less than whiskey, I should think." He bowed. "I have an announcement to make, my dear; I shall never be a great poet, but the stars are out tonight, and I might be inspired."

Natasha smiled. "You seem a kind man. Shouldn't we drink together?"

"By all means, madam," Maréchal said with another bow.

Partiers streamed in, crowding the bar and breaking into loquacious bouquets scattered about the lounge, shifting restlessly amongst the ghoulish props: a dozen life-sized zombies, much decayed in appearance, dressed in their burial rags, faces reflecting all the agonies of the undead, both real and imagined; a gigantic werewolf, poised to attack with salivating jaws. A swamp hag in a moldering shawl towered above our heads. The lounge was nearly bursting with guests, impatient for entertainment, given the length of their bus rides and the tequila shots they'd consumed along the way.

Maréchal grabbed a bullhorn from the bar top, then pushed his way to the balcony with Natasha.

"Prepare for the Kid!" he barked.

"And who might the Kid be?" shouted a drunken man in a karate uniform.

"Silence, posturing ninny!" exclaimed the excellent poet.

"The coronation," shouted Lonnie, a pie-eyed hairdresser with all the frozen exuberance of a window mannequin.

"Yes, bring the Kid!" shouted a man wearing a barrel with shoulder straps.

"Kid… Kid… Kid," chanted the crowd.

 Maréchal threw up his hands. The crowd quieted. "I call for restraint. Festivities are at hand. The Kid is the shepherd you shall not want."

"For righteous sake!" Lonnie shouted.

"Yay, though, I walk through the valley, valley, valley," Sally called from behind the curtain.

Suddenly, the Jumbotron lit up with images of the Kid. Trumpets blared. The crowd parted. A door flew open, and dazzling light projected to the opposite wall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls," Maréchal announced, "I give you, his majesty, The Kid!"

"Kid… Kid… Kid!"

Balloons fell from overhead. Confetti cannons shot their payloads, and the crowd threw rice they'd collected from servers on the buses. 

The music shifted from regal trumpets to fusion as Tuesday cranked an Average White Band Tune. 

"Pick up the pieces…pick up the pieces!" shouted the crowd.

The Kid strutted out, dressed in full regalia, a tilted crown, and a cape. He tossed rose petals left and right, then broke into a shuffling break dance as he made his way to the stage and climbed the stairs.

Tuesday lowered the music.

"Who came to party?" The Kid shouted.

"Kid… Kid."

The Jumbotron lit up, and images of Baron von Richthofen's flying circus filled the screen.

The whine of diving warplanes rumbled from the speakers, a montage of natural disasters and accompanying sounds: tornadoes, floods, hurricanes tossing boats and bending palms, earthquakes, and wildfires. 

Collen's barbacks entered the crowd carrying trays of Jell-O shots in Dixie Cups, while 

Tuesday and Monique loaded t-shirt cannons and threw bags of candy from the stage.

"We have special guests this evening," announced the Kid.

The Jumbotron's images switched to Thor and Sally crash scenes. After a collective gasp, the crowd fell silent. 

“Mesdames and Messieurs, Garcons and Filles, I give you Suicide Sally. She lives to die.”

"Don't forget to mention she's autistic," whispered Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Unferth had weaved through the crowd and gone to the balcony, poised to rid the world of Thor.

My heart is full, thought he.

The curtain slid back, and the crowd applauded as Big Sid started rotations with Thor and Sally astride.

Unferth gnawed the rope ferociously. 

The sandbag swung from the rafters, sending Sally careening into a wall, crushing her brain circuitry. With a thud, she fell to the floor.

"Toil…toil…boil…and bubble," said the Kid as the light faded from Sally's eyes.