"I hate Halloween!"
There on my dining room table sat the invitation. I haven't opened it. I can't bring myself to open it. I know what it is. Every year for the past seven years, I've received one. Every year it's the same damn thing. They want me to come and they want me to come alone. The invitation jumps off the table and lands in my hand. I toss it to the floor and jump up and down on it, stomping it.
"Hey, that hurts," says a voice coming from the invitation.
"Sorry." What am I nuts? I'm talking to an inanimate object. I'm talking to a spell. God, I hate this. This is so creepy. This is so spooky. Geez, it makes my skin crawl.
Really, they need to leave me alone and let me live my life. I've already rejected their lifestyle. I was plain when I told them that I wanted to live a normal life, a life without spells, potions, and witchcraft. I'm tired of them controlling my mind with their witchcraft, potions, and spells. For once, I want to think for myself without my mind being controlled by one of their spells.
"But no," I said out loud for no one to hear. I slammed my hand down hard on the granite countertop, "every time I think I am out, they pull me back in. Ow, that hurt."
Only, this year, I'm tricking them. This year, I'm asking my sister to come with me so that she can see for herself and be my witness to the tortuous abuse and emotional pressure that I must suffer and have endured every Halloween, since I can remember, rejecting their advances to be one of them.
I took a deep breath and picked up the invitation. My hands were shaking, my pulse quickened, and my heart pounded. I poured myself a stiff drink, a double, and gulped it down before opening the invitation.
"Trick or Treat!"
You are invited to our annual Halloween party. You are our very special guest. You must wear a costume. (You remember the year when you did not wear a costume and we supplied one for you.) "Ha! Ha!" So bring your sense of humor and get ready to have some fun.
Love, Mom
"Fuck! Double Fuck! Triple Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Yeah, I thought I was being smart the year that I refused to wear a costume and went to their party to tell them that I wasn't coming to their sick Halloween party and they turned me into a toad, a talking toad.
"Ha! Ha! Yeah, very fucking funny. I had warts in my mouth and up my ass for a year after they changed me back."
I can't believe this is happening to me, again. I was so clear about it last year. I calmly told them all what I thought of them. I told them all that I did not want to be part of their sick group and they just laughed at me in the high pitched cackling laugh that makes my skin crawl. I can't believe they won't let me live my own life and not participate in their incestuous games. I can't do this anymore. I just want to get on with my life.
As the days passed and the Halloween party drew nearer, my dread changed to excitement. I figured the three witches put a spell on me, for sure. More mind control, I'm sick of them controlling my thoughts. Otherwise, how could I be so vehemently against it one minute and excited about it the next. It made no sense. I figured they put some magic potion in the invitation that released itself in the air in and up in my nostrils, as soon as I opened it.
I mean, it is a fun time to a degree, if you are the type who enjoys seeing your mother, two aunts, and ten of their best friends naked. Besides, I have nothing else to do on Halloween. I have no other invitations. I have no friends. Since grammar school everyone has thought me weird and rightly so growing up in a household without the influence of a man, growing up in a household with three women, my mother and her two sisters, and growing up in a household with the original three witches of Eastwick, only in this case, they live in Salem, Massachusetts, the world capital of witches and witchcraft.
Let me tell you about my mother. My mother is the head honcho, the big cheese, and the chief, whatever they call the big wheel, the head witch of all witches in the United States and for the world, maybe, who knows. I, certainly, don't care but I am always surprised when other witches visit her and treat her like Don Corleone of the God Father. They are in awe of her and of her magic powers when I just think of her as my Mom.
Then, again, come to think of it, it is fun to rub elbows with all those celebrities. Oh, sorry, you didn't know that many celebrities are witches. Witches love having an audience and how better to practice their art than to become a movie star. Some of the most famous celebrities who attend my mother's Halloween party are witches, such as, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston. Let's see, Bette Davis was a witch before she took Elizabeth Montgomery's spirit. I have no idea who she is now, but some believe that she is Nicole Kidman. She's there every Halloween with, of course, John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston. I bet you did not know that Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Rachel Ray, and Martha Stewart, along with Judge Judy are all witchcraft practitioners. Did you really think that they could have such success through luck? C'mon, get real. Hocus pocus.
Do you remember when Stanley Kubrick (another practitioner of the black art) made that movie Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Well, the movie was a tribute to witchcraft and Tom Cruise, not one of them, never stopped poking fun at the movie. Much like Darrin on Be Witched, Tom Cruise did not know that his wife was one of them. She quickly replaced him with...one of them, yeah; Keith Urban is one of them, too.
Stephen King and J. K. Rowling are, you guessed it, believers in the dark science and in the occult. Where do you think Stephen King gets his talent for the macabre? Where do you think J. K. Rowling gets her information about the dark art of witchcraft? C'mon, you guys reading this are all writers and know that you can only write what you know.
Do you remember reading this when you were a kid?
The Witches Caldron
Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing
For a charm of powerful trouble Like a hell-broth boil and babble
Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Okay, maybe you didn't recite that as a kid like I did, as a bedtime prayer. Yet, you do know who wrote that? Don't you? Billie, himself, William Shakespeare, yep. What do you think of that? Well, I'll tell you. He was one of them, too.
Except for Spring, Halloween is the only holiday that my mother and her two sisters celebrate and they always made Halloween special. Halloween is their Christmas. Halloween is a month long celebration that culminates on October 31st. After everything was said and done, it was a fun and memorable time, especially when I was a kid growing up. Only, when I was a kid, I thought everything was make believe, magic or a trick or something. I had no idea that all of those illusions were not illusions, but real or, in their case, witchcraft. Shit! Fuck! I'm sick remembering some of the spells my mother and her two sisters put on people who they did not like.
As I got older, I knew immediately after the party, like all the other years, I'd be right back in therapy. Only, what's the use? My psycharitrist never believed me. He thought that I was delusional and wanted to write me prescriptions to help me deal with life. Yeah, okay, Doc, I'm delusional that my mother changed me into a toad.
I need a costume. I was running out of things to wear. Let's see, I dressed as a clown last year and I'll never do that, again. There was nothing funny about suddenly be transported and finding yourself at the circus with thousands of people waiting for you to do something funny. I went as a cowboy the year before and I'll never do that again either. They really liked the cowboy costume and that was fun until they put me in a rodeo and on a bucking bronco. I need to play it down. Maybe, I'll go as Superman. Nah, they'll have me flying over Manhattan or they'll be all over my bulge with their wrinkled hands and long fingernails. What to wear? What to wear? What to wear? Oh, I know. I'll go as an Arab. That way I can still wear clothes beneath my sheet and when they pull it off finally, I can bolt from the house before they seal the doors and windows and before they handcuff me, again.
Oh, I almost forgot, this time I'll have my kid sister with me. She's my insurance policy. This time, they'll be no monkey business. They won't try anything with her around, I'm sure of that, I hope. Fuck! Will they? God, I hope not.
Geez, why do I still call her my kid sister? She hates it when I do that. She's 18-years-old now. She's a woman and I'll be 25-years-old in July. God, I've been going to these screwball Halloween parties all of my adult life. The parties were fun to go to when I was a kid but, as soon as I turned 18-years-old, they turned kind of sexual. I mean, I never did a sexual act with my mother or my aunts but there was lots of nudity and if you saw the bodies on my mother and aunts, you would understand how traumatic an experience it is to see them naked. Geez, I have the cold chills just thinking about their sagging tits, pot bellies, and wrinkled asses. Witches are not beautiful women. I mean, some witches are but the real witches, the ones in charge, the practitioners of the art, like priests and rabbis, are not very attractive. The others, the ones who just follow the dark art of witchcraft are usually beautiful people.
It's not all bad, though. I get to rub more than elbows with Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman, if you know what I mean. And that Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, is still freakin' cute, although she is getting up there in age. Still, I remember her in Twins when she played Arnold's girlfriend, Marny. Oh, my God. She was so hot.
Oprah is scary. You don't want to get on her bad side, I'll tell you right now. Yeah, she looks good in black but when she dawns that black cloak, look out. She gets scary mean. Her real personality comes out and she is the devil in disguise.
I decided to call my sister and ask her to come with me.
"Hey, Sis, what you doin?"
