I will be making a wonderful post today, pictures included, of the eventful and satisfying Hallowe’en weekend I’ve just lived through. I know you can’t wait.

Saturday afternoon.

I have work to do in the morning which bring me right up to the beginnings of the festivities. A group of eight meets at my high school alma mater to take in Corpse City, the drama department’s latest cunning trap for the scare-minded. We are amused by the spooky delights of a bleeding clown and a open-chested, walking corpse. Soon, though, our friend Dave is tormented once again by his own personal hell: two diminutive high school girls, dressed as the twins from The Shining. They know his name, and they (literally) have his number. Dave is chagrined. Last year, these girls truly terrified him, now he is playing along and trying to make the day fun for those of our friends who I call Alzheimer’s Friends. They have difficulty creating new memories, instead reveling in the few brief instances in college where they truly lived. So, now Dave is plagued with having been truly frightened last year and only being mildly creeped out for this, but wanting to fulfill the needs of these people to laugh at him again.

I am mildly nauseous. Dave asks me to come with him through the Haunted House. I agree, but I know that he just wants to go with someone who will enjoy it, and not people that will pester him about being scared all the time. I do not end up alongside him.

Dave and Dan leave, Chris Dunham and I are next, then Mike and Jess, then Clare. Alone. When I would first hear later that she went through alone, I would be very proud of her. When she would emerge from the Haunted House, I instead feel anger and sympathy.

Within the walls, it is a see-saw of silence and noise. A momentary lapse in sound is suddenly gunshot with the clamour of a slamming door and shrieks from patrons and performers. The lights flicker, and high school students sneer and growl from under caked flour and eyeliner. All in all, the effect is enjoyable. More startling than disturbing, of course, and difficult to fall into since so many of the actors are my students.

Then, there is the maze. It is pitch black, save a few eerie glowsticks along the floors. The walls are plywood, but as my fingertips drift along them for the comfort of enclosement, they feel like rough-hewn stone. As we get into the very boiler room of the building, I feel he difference, since the walls here are crackly concrete. I call out to Chris Dunham, and we accidentally skip a large portion of the maze, since we do not know where to head, and end up cutting through an actor’s portal. When we finally escape the maze, we are chased from the area by a (real) chainsaw-wielding, tattered homecoming queen. Playing along, and getting out some of the pent-up energy, the other Chris and I beat feet and run nearly two blocks with people chasing right behind us.

We are winded from laughing, screaming, running, and we’ve managed to get through before everyone else. As people come out, we greet them and laugh, most of us satisfied enough to donate, despite the entertainment being free through our association with the man in charge of the Drama Department.

Then, Clare comes out, and she looks unimpressed. She has a brave face on, but when she catches my eye, I can see something has gone wrong. I try to make it easier on her and take her somewhere private to talk, but my retarded friends think we’re leaving and make it a mad dash for the cars. I’m trying to figure out if she’s hurt, and she’s too frustrated and embarrassed by her tears to tell me about it. Later, I would find out that she was too night-blnid in the maze to really get anywhere, and because we were at the end of a shift, no one had led her through. This compounded with her being alone and not able to rely on someone else’s sight, and the stumbling that happens in such situations had enfuriated her and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

It was a long car ride for us both back to our apartment in separate cars.

Saturday night.

I beat Clare and Chris Dunham back to the apartment and started putting in my contact lenses so I could paint my head silver. Clare and Chris arrive, the mood now one of anticipation and laughter. Silently, I thank Chris Dunham for being a good enough friend that he can clear away the frustration of such a trying afternoon. We all dress, noting to one another how awesome each costume looks. I don’t even have too much trouble with my lenses. As expected, though, we and our friends dressing elsewhere, are running quite late. Our home is relaxed still, but I can only imagine the rushing at the other apartment.

Bedecked in our All Hallow’s Eve splendor, we pile into Dunham’s car and head to the Twisted Fork for pre-partying photos and dinner. All of the costumes are quite impressive, even those who are solo and not themed with the larger group. The boys (and Izzy) are happy to play war, and the girls relive days of longing to be garden sprites. All around , we nod to our childhoods while our costumes are decidedly adult. Hell, Cthulhu may be a plushie, but he’s still terrifying.

Dinner is filled with joking conversation and innuendo, and ends a little too soon. We are perhaps too much for the waitress as by the end of our meal, she is having difficulty standing and maintaining her professionalism. I postulate that she has become drunk, but I may be the only one who notices. Bellies full, we wander out into the street, to take in the holiday beer…er, cheer.

Our main goal in coming to this area is the large costume contest being held, so we go there to register. As always, there is a catch; we have to be seen at no less than 3 bars, since the judges are out at all the bars and waiting to see groups walk by. Our fearless leader, The Baroness, informs us that there are a few bars with no cover, and since some of our group does not drink, this seems to be the best way not to alienate them. In a move that would normally have bored me senseless in five minutes, we walk from bar to bar, attempting to shield our frillier friends from the wind, and stand around being seen.

In a moment of pure joy, we run across someone dressed as Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, complete with 8-inch platform shoes. He makes his way quickly across the street, with obvious effort, climbs up the curb on our side and to our cheers replies, “I wanna ROC-” and runs out of breath. This moment, our Cthulhu friend humping the leg of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and the number of people who “just want to shake Destro’s hand,” keep me from calling the firsst half of our outing a complete waste.

One hour later, our Chicago friends are off as are our more scantily dressed ones, and the rest of us are piling into cars to go to an dance club for *their* costume contest. The car I am in contains 75% of COBRA, and 25% of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Once we have paid our cover charge and pushed our way through the goth/industrial cluster, my phone vibrates in my pocket. At first, I cannot take the call, as the club is far too loud, so I hang up and excuse myself to the garden. I figure the other car is having difficulty finding the place, but in reality, the other car is going home, leaving us to our own devices.

Now, with music throbbing in our ears, sweat and smoke filing our lungs and light and dark forming an Escher painting across our retinas, the four of us that remain are astonished.

The costumes that we are wearing represent literally months of work and hundreds of dollars, and after a simple dinner and walkabout in them, we have lost more than 50% of the group. Having already paid our cover charge, we decide to dance for a while and wait for the costume contest anyway. (Of note: While we were dancing, we all noticed an impressively muscled blonde woman dancing in a red dress nearby; Izzy mentioned that he had met her before and that the woman was once an American Gladiator. She was the most interesting person to note there, actually, despite the attempts of other club kids to imply some level of depth.)

Club Anything, on this Hallowe’en’e’en, is astoundingly hot. And I, Destro, am wearing a leather winter coat. And dancing. My resistance is down, and despite myself, I spend most of my time outside breathing. I get to talk to a regular, who’s outside smoking in his convincing Hellboy costume. We talk about the contest, and he admits to not even knowing what an iPod (first prize) does. He seems a decent sort, and were he not in Hellboy attire, probably would not be quite as intimidating as he’s pulling off tonight.

After two hours of exposing my body to temperature extremes, the costume contest begins. We (COBRA) are out in the second of what seems countless rounds, despite cries of “Destro!” from the back and some brilliant improvised speaking from the Baroness regarding Cobra Commander’s death at our hands. Hellboy wins the iPod.

We retire for the evening, and after a short goodbye with my shiny silver reflection, I shower away Destro and spoon my pink-haired girlfriend until she falls asleep.

Sunday morning.

Clare and I have offered our services as volunteers at the children’s museum, so we deck ourselves out as pirates and head on over. Lori (Lemon Meringue) also is volunteering, though we end up seeing very little of her throughout the day. Our station is pumpkin decoration, where several foam pumpkins with holes can be given faces using Mr. Potato Head pieces.

After about an hour of giggly fun with toddlers, Clare and I are being asked repeatedly if we need elief from our posts so we can have sandwiches. We eventually cave and as we are nibbling at the offered food (Jimmy John’s subs, chips, soda, ice cream, fruit), Clare and I are feeling a little guilty about taking a break at all. Later, we would realize that the break was mostly for our tailbones’ sake as they began to ache furiously after sitting in steel chairs that long.

Clare got some shots of the bizarre pumpkin formations that children were creating, but the highlight of the experience was a bright-faced young Indian infant (from the region of India, at least. I was not certain of her nationality.) After creating her pumpkin with her mother and father, she returned several times to smilingly shoplift pieces from us. She did not try to hide this behaviour, of course, being pre-speech and pre-notions of property, and her charming little smile almost made me want to give her everything I owned anyway. If she had come back one more time, her quarter-sized, dark jewels of eyes would have walked away with my wallet and keys to my car. Bewitchingly cute that little one.

So, with a sense of charity established, and a sever case of the giggles, we rejoined with the other volunteers, including Lori, and were sent away with boxes of string cheese, ice cream sandwiches and candy. All in all, quite the haul. and I didnt even have to say “Trick or Treat.”

Sunday night.

After following a winding route through the parking lot, Lori, Clare and I adjourned to our apartment, affectionately referred to as the “C&C Music Factory.” We all threw on some sweats and the like, bundled in blankets and watched Clare’s perennial Hallowe’en classic, The Worst Witch.. Despite Tim Curry’s performance, we found ourselves salivating and headed over to the grocery for sushi, sodas and salads. Our plan was to eat the food and then watch Donnie Darko, since Lori unsurprisingly vetoed The Ring. As we ate, however, the conversation became more and more animated, and for several hours we babbled at each other about politics, parents, friendships, and (naturally) sex.

The night burned on in it’s Daylight Savings Time sort of way, and the time came for Lori to go home. We sent her away smiling, and Clare and I settled down for a wintry, theory-postulating showing of Donnie Darko all by our lonesome. Who could ask for anything more?