It’s a mixed bag on our street but we’ve got it sorted out. The trick is to start with the Richardsons across from my house because they’re loaded and not chintzy with the sweets and buy nothing but Ghirardelli chocolate and oh man, it’s all King Size. Then it’s next door to the Shrewburys who are professional Christians but goddamn amateurs when it comes to trust and they naively leave their bountiful offerings out on a…

No one goes out this night. Here, the earth binds and bends, gives up its contents in oily vomit, wet worm stench and all. Building exteriors blister and boil, statues and facades exhibit carvings of sutured faces bathed in blue moonlight, avenues of blasted trees stretch like black boned fingers, their silhouettes clutching and grabbing at the maw of night. Unspeakable monstrosities loll in every corner, slither over…

For Fletcher Chapman, the little horrors of Halloween night are pure joy. He eagerly answers each knock, drops handfuls of candied treats into the outstretched bags, and savors the shrieks of ‘Trick or Trick’ and ‘Thank You!’ that echo around him in the October night. He is almost brought to tears as he watches them rustle away across his lawn like tumbling leaves.…

She calls well after midnight, tells me she’s going to be late. “Please don’t be mad,” she pouts. “It’s been so busy tonight.” Truthfully, I’m not mad, just spoiled and lazy after all these years. My girl will do anything for me; she’s a nurse down at the county hospital. She knows what I am and bless her heart… actually believes she’s saving lives by delivering what I crave.

Here in the rural outskirt, there’s a shadowed road that weaves like a long black snake through swamp and thicket marked with buckled shanties that sprout like boxwood along its roadside, and if by some mistake you’ve taken this road, found your way down round Wellman’s Bog, you will come upon a nameless trailer park - a ramshackle of disintegrating trailer homes contorted every which way like some abandoned train wreck.…

Okay… open your mouth, take a deep breath and let it out. Oh… no, no, no… you call that a scream? Please, try it again and this time really let it go, the louder the better. Don’t worry. No one can hear you. It’s only you… and me… and this most interesting room.

He will do his part this night, string up the clattering bones and frayed cobwebs, wire the crinkled spiders and worn leathered bats, and light the surgically carved pumpkin. Oh yes, he’ll put the usual work into it, hell, he believes a skull when properly painted can look quite real, almost like it could smile again. Inside the house, he’ll turn out the lights and wait in the quiet knowing that before long the heavy shout…

October 31, 1947: 

We, who live in the small hamlets along the northern territory shoreline may have seen something fall from the sky, crash into the deep bowl that was our lake; if we did see, nothing was said, only whispered.

October 31,…

The Crawley kids are talking to a therapist. I’d be too if I’d found what they did. Joey White and Donald Forrester buried a blood-smeared mannequin’s hand in the kiddies’ sandbox by the park, a cool Halloween prank for sure but the kids ran home crying, got their folks and police involved.

There’s something else going on out there; camera…

i-not-think-good-for-nice-words. body-sore-from-needle-holes-and-slice-parts. doctor-say-I-truly-alive. me-grateful-for-all-parts-him-give. only-hate-blue-jolt-him-repeat-send-through-my-being-while-him-laugh-crazy-to-sky. jolt-work-first-time-and-now-annoy-with-fry-brain-and-once-him-finish-with-new-hand-sew-i-help-remove-laugh-from-crazy-him-face.

On the slow days in simmering heat, Moe is content to lie in a loose heap and ponder the butterflies and bees that zigzag about, one-eye the few chickens that peck about the untended yard. The warm familiarity of the dog-eared porch is a steady comfort as he waits for the woman to return. There’s not much desire to stir things up, not much need to stretch out bony bones; those days are mostly behind him… but once in a…

That damn virus killed almost all of America, at least everyone I ever knew and loved, took our dreams and most of our wants. It left some alive… like those healthy slabs of red meat I see lurking behind the glass at the old butcher shop. I’ve seen what their guns can do; they’re heavily loaded but it doesn’t really matter because there are more of us than the bullets they are running out of. Oh Lord I hunger for the days…

He’ll tell you his sister is adopted even though she isn’t; he likes to tease her, that’s all - - an asshole brother will - - pounce on the younger, most innocent. In the sleepy car, on trips home from the city, they pass by the house on the hill, a penitentiary shaped gray stone monstrosity and he imagines it an asylum.…

Jack says to Mom in the kitchen, "I saw this ad in Popular Mechanics and I was wondering what Viagra is for?"

Mom goes to Mike in the computer room, "So, Mike, what specifically would you like me to tell him other than the truth?"

Mom goes back to Jack in the kitchen, "It's for older men who have trouble keeping an erection during sex, and this gives them a little boost."

"Oh my God, why would old men want to have sex, I thought that was just…