“Do you have your pumpkin planned?” He raises his eyebrows as he watches me in the mirror, and his cheeks rise with a half-smile.
“Of course she does.” My mother’s soothing Southern drawl calms us all. “Seleme always has a plan, don’t you, dear?” Her golden green eyes twinkle as she looks at me, and I nod.
“For pumpkins at least,” I say with a shrug.
The Halloween party and pumpkin carving contest has been a tradition for at least as long as I’ve been alive. My father’s law firm sponsors it, inviting local business people, celebrities and friends of the family, but they aren’t the focus of the party.
That’s the children. They’re brought in from homeless shelters and foster care, along with chronically ill or terminally ill kids from local public hospitals.
We provide the transportation, wicked Halloween swag bags, candy, pumpkin carving, games… The old estate is transformed into a haunted Halloween funhouse for just one night, and I’ve been the star of the pumpkin contest since I was seven and my parents first allowed me to wield the knife myself.
I don’t do it for the press, who always attend in droves. For me it’s all about the kids. When the pumpkins are auctioned off at the end of the party, I want to make sure mine raises some serious funds for the Eastern Michigan Food Bank as well as Children’s Hospital of Detroit.
It’s ironic, but we never dress in costume choosing instead a formal, elegant approach to the evening which I feel sets us apart in a different way. If only the world knew we are truly monster’s in our own right simply dressed up and packaged as pillars of the community.
As Papa accelerates past another car, the headlights from oncoming traffic make me squint, and I wonder for a moment if this is what it’s going to be like for me. My sensitivity to light has been more acute lately, and I worry that perhaps after Friday I’ll no longer be able to go out in direct sunlight, instead finding myself entombed in candlelit halls during the daylight hours like the Messinas.
There are so many unknowns.
“Ah, I do love this old place,” my mother remarks as we pull down the drive to the Israndia Estate. “Reminds me of the old grand plantations back home.”
My father smiles at her reminiscence as he circles the ornate marble fountain that dominates the drive, and a valet dressed as a classic, tuxedoed vampire, marches up to the side of the Bentley making us all smile.
A few minutes later, we ascend the steps hand in hand, people-watching and whispering as guests mill about in the great hall beyond the open doors.
Two
Maxim
WHAT THE FUCK AM I doing here?
I take a sip of champagne as five little kids run by, chased by a playful Frankenstein that could have stepped right out of the original black-and-white movie I remember watching when I was their age.
Seriously, I have no idea how much that costume alone must have cost—and I suspect whoever is inside is a professional entertainer, too—but my new neighbors must have spent a fortune on tonight’s event.
When the courier dropped off my invitation, complete with a wax-sealed white envelope presented on a silver tray, I figured it would be your typical fake cobwebs and smoke machines. Maybe a soundtrack of howling and ghostly moaning playing on repeat while a strobe light made my head hurt.
Man, was I wrong.
This is the real deal. There’s nearly a thousand people here but that’s not what’s so impressive.
The whole estate has been transformed into something straight out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the costumes on the staff working everything from the bar to the candy buffet are as real as I’ve ever seen. I keep half-expecting Bela Lugosi to come stalking down from the bedrooms or the Wolfman to snarl from the shadows. Special effects, make-up artists, costumes, prizes for the kids…we must be looking at close to a million, easy.
And it’s pretty clear that it’s all for the kids. The adults here, and there are plenty of them, are at best a secondary concern.
Seriously, if it wasn’t for the possibility she will be here sometime this evening, I’d leave right now.
I run my hand over my mouth on a sniff and try to calm the errant twitches in my dick at the mere thought of her. There’s a room full of kids that do not need to be terrified by my misbehaving hard-on.
The girl I’ve watched run by my house every night for the past two weeks has me thinking thoughts I never imagined I’d have. She’s occupied my every waking moment and taken center stage in every dream since I first caught a glimpse of her in the moonlight with that fucking cat on a leash.
A cat.
On a leash.
Running next to her.