As you may or may not know, I’m currently a creative writing intern at FOURALL Magazine, which is really fun and great for my short works productivity. I’m involved with creating creative pieces for the new issues–such as the special Halloween Issue which was released on 28th October. You can find it here! My piece in that issue was ‘The True Meaning Of Halloween’, a short flash fiction exploration of the idea that monsters can roam freely one night a year, pretending to be ordinary people dressed in Halloween costumes. It’s a spooky and fun read! Why not check it out below?
The True Meaning Of Halloween
It’s the one night when we can be free. Halloween. 31st October, every year. Reliable. Good old Halloween, when the kids dress up like Dracula and Harley Quinn and whatever’s ‘in’ that year. They traipse down residential street after residential street, begging for sweets and chocolates off strangers. The strangers, sometimes, also dress like monsters, making the whole ordeal a ‘stranger danger’ nightmare.
But it’s Halloween, so no one cares about a ghoul or a vampire.
Not even us, the real ones.
There’s always a little bit of fear lurking in the backs of our minds, as we don our comical capes and splatter ourselves with fake blood. Maybe we’ve gone too far. Someone might notice a stray glint of moonlight on fangs which look a little too realistic, or a nosy busybody might comment on skin seeming too grey–too dead. It hasn’t happened yet. But there’s a first time for everything.
The freedom feels so good, though. It’s almost as intoxicating as fresh venom from your creator’s lips–sorry for the odd comparison; it’s a ghoul thing. You wouldn’t understand. Just the same as you don’t understand how utterly amazing Halloween is.
Oh, you enjoy the endless sugary conquest of your neighbourhood, and the horror movie marathons (don’t bother with them, by the way, they get barely anything right), but the true meaning of Halloween?
Nope. You don’t get it. You never will–
Unless those rather convincingly-dressed trick-or-treaters take a particular liking to you, that is.
Oskar Leonard 