#20: your monthly tiny fiction
Microfiction for all your Halloween needs
Hi, spooky friends (and foes)!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year - Halloween city! The first holiday season in a new city can be tough, but like most things in Toulouse, acclimating’s been a breeze.
At a party my friend hosted, I got to show off my sheet ghost costume! It was everything I could’ve dreamed of in a costume and I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t grace Halloween parties for years to come.
In my little sheet ghost get-up (with zero peripheral vision), I danced with Barbie and Jacques Cousteau and ate possibly too many Carrefour-brand pringles with Orangina. But Halloween season’s incomplete without a trick or two, and the imp gods provided. On the way home, a brawl broke out inside my metro car! Drunk people are ding dongs. Don’t worry, it looked like everyone was okay (and probably very hungover with some good black eyes today).
Tl;dr, my first Halloween in France has been a success.
The art: the oldest Halloween card template
October’s historical mail was a Halloween card roundup, including a template for an 1891 Halloween card. It’s the oldest written source that references the tradition of Halloween cards1. So, a perpetual sucker for history, when the time came to make and mail my patrons their monthly art, there was really only one choice I could make.
I followed the instructions and crafted the Halloween card people first made 130 years ago. Even if…it is a drawing of a cabbage.
Apparently a cabbage was a symbol of the harvest season and used in some Halloween rituals for matchmaking. I cut these out so they’re free-floating cabbage shapes, which look really lovely in person. Cabbages may’ve fallen to the festive wayside, but now’s their year! Let’s bring it back!
The votes are in
Patrons and subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:
Action: eating candy corn
Word: midnight
Two of my favorite things!
This morning I kept last night’s dance party going (swapping coffee for Orangina) and boogied down to “The Monster Mash” and RHPS bops in my living room. I love Halloween. A celebration of our impish sides and handmade costumes, gorging ourselves on candy and squash? It’s the perfect holiday.
And that’s why I decided to write this month’s microfiction from the perspective of someone who hates it.
The story: Mary Louise Hates Halloween
I wrote the story on the back of this, which isn’t actually a postcard, but half of a Halloween card I repurposed:
And here’s the story:
Here’s the typed version:
Mary Louise hates the presumptuous little shits ringing her doorbell and demanding candy like she owes them something. If anything, they owe her. Whose tax dollars fund whose public school?
Her smile’s thinner than a candy-apple razor as she hands the 700th Spiderman one fun-size candy bar and slams the door in his face.
It’s like kids believe the world’s for them alone, just because they’re young and she’s not. 42 isn’t even old. Is it?
Teenagers are the worst - 13, 15, and still have the gall to come begging for candy. When she was that age, Mary Louise spent Halloween in this very house, scavenging a costume from her own closet for Ellie - look, you’re Princess Diana, El! - since their dad was too catatonic to recall the month, let alone the holiday. Emotionally the mother to her 6-year-old sister, Mary Louise had known responsibility, for chrissake.
The teenagers in this neighborhood today know shit about real life, but that doesn’t stop them from snickering at her unwashed hair or her eye bags. Well, one day they’ll wake up with grey hairs, too.
Nobody rings the bell for a minute. The black of Mary Louise’s unlit phone reflects her face back to her: unwashed, peering from the hoodie Dan had bought her: “Here for the boos.” Dan, the good cop to her bad, had taken their daughter trick-or-treating; Mary Louise had hidden in the bedroom til they left.
The phone lights up, erasing her reflection: “elliedoesgermany just posted.” Mary Louise’s thumb only hesitates a second before clicking. An image of Ellie floods the screen. She’s childfree, all lip filler and some marketing job in Berlin, and presently dressed as a slutty Red Riding Hood, surrounded by 6 people in wolf costumes. Which one’s she banging these days? It’s well past midnight there.
She hits the heart react and tosses her phone to the couch. The doorbell rings.
“Trick or treat!”
A modest Little Red Riding Hood flashes a braces-laden smile, holding her little brother’s hand. The full moon gleams on his plastic wolf ears.
They’re both so precious, Mary Louise feels physically ill. She covers her face. “Fuuuuck.”
The red-caped girl - same age as Mary Louise had been when she’d taken Ellie - pulls her brother closer, as if Mary Louise poses a threat. “You doing candy, or…”
“There’s a stain on your sweatshirt!” The Wolf boy points at Mary Louise’s stomach.
And scared as she may be, the teenage girl can’t help but smirk.
Mary Louise goes feral.
She smacks the girl’s candy bucket from her hand just as Dan and their daughter round the corner. Dan says, “the hell?” as his hand shoots up to cover their kids’s eyes. Something claws through Mary Louise’s chest. Scared of her? They’re scared of her? The boy is crying and the girl’s yanking him back towards the porch steps. Scared? Mary Louise is selfless, she’s given so much to ungrateful shits -
With a growl, Mary Louise snatches the boy’s candy bucket from his hand and runs. She shoves past trick-or-treaters and happy families, sprinting barefoot down streets she’s known all her life. Dan’s shouts fade. Her side cramps as she hurdles past the house where Ellie had her first kiss, and bombs beyond the cul-de-sac where Mary Louise taught Ellie how to rollerblade. Still running, Mary Louise careens between two houses and plunges into the woods.
The full moon dapples the path. Her gasps sound more like snarls, but she plows on and on - until she pinwheels to a stop. Her feet led her to her childhood treehouse. Her father had built it before the depression had gotten too far gone. The boards nailed to the trunk hold as she claws her way up the tree and hoists herself into the treehouse.
The moon shines brighter than ever and Mary Louise catches her breath. She’s still clutching the kid’s candy bucket. After a moment, she fishes out a pack of candy corn. Ellie’s favorite. Mary Louise had always given hers away to her sister.
Mary Louise’s heart rate slows. From here, she can’t hear any of the kids or their celebrating families.
Alone, she opens the pack, savoring the waxy candies one by one.
Your turn!
If you haven’t gotten your creative gears going for Halloween, you still got time! Write a short short story based on the prompt. Scribble it on the back of a card, a receipt, some flyer crowding your fridge - whatever you have lying around that’s barking for some new energy.
If you’re more of a Mary Louise, write me something Grinchy. You can comment here with your story, email it to me, or join my Patreon and post it there in private!
My favorite part of Snail Mail Sweethearts will always be reading the fiction y’all come up with <3.
As always, if you’re struggling to get started, read this article I wrote for NYC Midnight about the basics of microfiction.
Thanks for your spooky love, sweet devils. If you got a kick out Mary Louise, send the story to someone else who might love (or love to hate) her too.
All my love and spidery stamps forever,
Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart <3
In English, anyway.