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The Newsletter >
Where the Devil Washes Up (Happy Halloween)
October 28, 2009
The children knew better than to trick-or-treat at the house at the end of Kissimmee Park Road. They knew better. As they walked down the driveway they noticed a pitchfork, its tines twisted and broken, a pile of mulch half grown over with weeds, cut grass resting like the lumps of bison bones strewn across the lawn, and the neglect of fading flowers withering along the walkway. The children knew better than to trick-or-treat at the house at the end of Kissimmee Park Road, but they went anyway.
A single light bulb flickered sadly on the front porch, covered by the halfhearted attempts of several Daddy-Long-Legged spiders, their webs looking like tattered napkins left too long in the rain, a tragic reminder of some ruined picnic. The children stood on the welcome mat staring at the front door where a giant tree frog hunkered on the door jam just over their heads, its throat quivering in silent rhythm to the anemic buzzing of cicadas. The frog pooped. The children knocked.
As the door opened a great bubble of air, pregnant with the smell of rotten eggs and methane, bulged out and over the children, breaking just over their heads with a silly popping noise.
Screaming, the boy turned to his sister and yelled, “Run! The house smells like a giant fart.”
The children, running back the way they had come, tried to hold their breath, in between screeching and flailing, the faint smell of sulfur clinging to their costumes and hair.
Turning to her husband, the lady of the house said, “Sherwood, we really need to do something about our well water. I’m afraid people are going to start thinking that the devil lives in our bathroom, where he flushes the potty a lot.”
Sherwood, the man of the house sighed, and said, “Yeah, it’s like soaking in hell’s hot tub for stinky sulfur water.” He sighed again. “I’ll put it on the list.”
The couple looked at the retreating trick-or-treaters, sniffed each other’s hair, shrugged their shoulders, and sifted through the Halloween candy, looking for the real chocolate.
Linda (Rotten Eggs) Zern
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