It was a dark and stormy night... Cassidy changes the channel- too cliché for this time of year. Eww, a Care Bears episode, even worse. Hamtaro's Halloween Special- well, she likes hamsters... She even has one. A few minutes satisfies her need for cutesy TV, and she hits the news during Hamtaro's commercial break. Amping the volume, she hops off the couch and goes to the kitchen to fix something to eat. The apartment is too lonely on her own, and she wishes now that she hadn't thrown out her roommate, Sarah, for getting busted doing E in the living room. It always made her less of an uptight prig anyway, so what exactly had been wrong with it? It got Sarah off her case.
Cassidy shakes her head looking into the fridge- Sarah had been the better cook, too, even if she was a meat-eater. She sighs and grabs some baby carrots and an Asian pear, munching as she makes her way to her hamster. He's so adorable when he's all curled up, and she opens his cage and gives him a couple carrot sticks and checks his water. She strokes his head and closes his cage door, finishing her snack.
She strips out of her clothes as she walks- after all, she doesn't have a neat-freak roommate to chide her for littering the floor with them anymore. Cassidy grabs her towel off the chair at her bedroom desk and hits the shower, washing up for the long night of candy-seekers ahead.
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Watching her in the shower is always the greatest pleasure. She's so unassuming, so sure of herself. It's poetry in motion, the way every move has a deliberate purpose. Her skin shines with her perspiration and the glimmer of her gel soap. Her hair darkens prettily to the most gorgeous auburn. Her eyes close in ecstasy as she rinses her face with warm water. Flawless, perfect. She's so alive... So beautiful... So warm and scented gently with the honey in her shampoo... So- unlike me...
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Cassidy steps out of the shower, unaware of ever being watched. Tiptoeing her feet on the closed toilet lid, she dries her legs with the fluffy aqua towel- the only towel Fat Louie hadn't chewed at least one hole in on his numerous forays from his cage. She wraps the towel around herself and sighs, again wishing she had more than a B-cup to hold it up.
As she blow dries her hair, she eyes her costume for the evening. She had spent a lot to get the navy crushed velvet and had taken a good amount of time with her sewing machine and an altered Simplicity costume pattern to get the form-fitting Salem witch look perfect. Taking her comb, she adds the streaks of green to her hair. Already posessing a fair complexion, she merely lines her eyes with black after applying a silvered deep blue eyeshadow. Of course, what always completes any Halloween witch's look is black lipstick, which she applies liberally.
She slips into her carefully-sewn dress right as the sun goes down. Perfect timing. She fills her cheap plastic cauldron with cheaper plastic toys- hey, she's a college student on a budget, and she doesn't believe in giving candy... Safe Halloween and poisoned taffy and all that.
She manages to drag it to the door and switch on the blacklight-bulb replaced porchlight right as the first kids knock on the door. Trick-or-treat! and an open door to twins dressed as an angel and a pink puffy princess, about five, accompanied by big brother- sixteen, and in gray sweats. A pair of glow-in-the-dark vampire fangs and a pumpkin sucky-straw to each of the girls.
The night drags on and eventually she gives out her last plastic skeleton and rubber bat. With a sigh of relief Cassidy checks her watch, good, only 8:30 pm. She pulls in the cauldron and flicks off the porchlight- remember to change the bulb back tomorrow! There's another knock at the door. She opens it without looking, hey, can't you see the light's off? I don't have anything el-hey, what's the big idea bitch?! Who are you guys? GET OFF ME! She screams, but no one comes to help, and the door has been shut and locked now anyway.
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I survey the scene below me. I'm angry at these five intruders into her home. My home. I'm furious at the woman in the kabuki mask and the scanty, generic sexy vampiress costume and her four goons in werewolf and zombie masks.
