II

I was never so scared in my life.

Halloween’s supposed to be spooky, but I was monster-roller-coaster terrified. I felt like I was about to pee myself, and all I was doing was walking down the street. Little kids in costumes passed me going the other way, with their parents behind them. Everybody stared at me. At least that’s how it felt. The dads looked extra close. One of them whistled when he saw me, long and low, and he said something to Uncle Teddy, who followed a few steps behind me.

“What did he say?”

“That I’m lucky to have such a pretty niece.”

“Really?”

“More or less. Look, if this bothers you, we can go back.”

“No fucking way,” I said.

“Sweetie, you’re shivering.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s fantastic.”

We did the Dracula thing, like Uncle Teddy wanted. I had on a black tuxedo, a white ruffled shirt, and a red bow tie. My face was pancake white, with dark circles under my eyes and ruby-red lipstick. I’d painted my fingernails black. I had plastic fangs and fake blood dribbling from the corners of my mouth. My hair is long and light blond, and instead of dyeing it or covering it with a wig, we teased it and made it scraggly and put some mascara in it to make it look dirty. Uncle Teddy said it made me look more ghoulish.

He was right. I was a total ghoul, and I was totally naked. All I was really wearing was my black Mary Janes and a beautiful black velvet cape with a red lining that Uncle Teddy dug up somewhere. The rest of my costume was painted on.

My uncle is a freaking genius, and I swear, inside that repressed Catholic mama’s boy there’s a horny twelve-year-old playing with his hard-on. He took me down to his basement — “Step into my la-BOR-a-tory,” he said, flicking his tongue at me — and told me to take off my clothes. I happily obliged, while he switched on the air compressor he paints his model planes with. It’s got a thin blue hose with a nozzle at the end where he can screw in bottles of paint. He says it’s better than buying spray-paint in cans. Anyway, he sprayed me black from my neck to my feet. The rest — the shirt ruffles, the belt, the buttons, the bow tie, even a matching red handkerchief over my titty — he did with brushes. It took like two hours. It would have taken less, except we got distracted when he told me to sit on some newspapers and spread my legs so he could spray in there. He ended up sticking a couple fingers in my cunt and jiggling me off.

“See?” he said. “You’ve created a monster.”

“So have you,” I said.

The first test was getting past Grandma, who was sitting in the living room, watching “Jeopardy!” I tried to cover up till we got outside, but of course, the first thing she said was, “Well, pull the cape back and let me see.”

Uncle Teddy, who was behind me, reached around and held it open it like a curtain.

“Ecce vampira,” he said.

My knees almost gave out. I mean, I like showing off, but this was my fucking grandmother, for God’s sake. If she caught on I was naked, she wouldn’t just want to have sex with me like everybody else did. She’d be pissed.

But all she said was, “Oh, Teddy, she looks dead.”

“That’s the point,” he said.

She looked me up and down. It felt like it took forever, and Uncle Teddy didn’t let go of the cape.

“Where did you get the little suit?” she asked.

“It’s an old one of mine,” he lied. “I had to cut it up because she’s so little.”

“Oh, her face is awful,” she said, but she was smiling. “For such a pretty girl, too. I’d never recognize her.”

I was still shaking when we got outside.

“I can’t believe you let her look!” I said.

“I didn’t think she’d notice,” Uncle Teddy said. “Mom tends to see what she wants to see.”

We walked around the block while I worked up my courage. It was a damp, blustery night, perfect for Halloween. The rush of the wind in the treetops was thrilling, and I loved the way it filled the cape and bathed my bare ass. But inside, I was all knotted up.

We passed some more of the little trick-or-treaters, and finally Uncle Teddy stopped in front of a house on a corner.

“Here’s your big chance, Kid,” he said.

“Can’t we wait for some more kids to show up?”

“Nope. You go up alone. I’ll wait here.”

He lifted the cape off my shoulders, so it hung down my back. My titties pointed into the wind like a couple of sailboats.

“OK, here I go,” I said.

I patted his crotch for luck — yeah, he was hard in there — and started up the walk. The house was all done up for Halloween. There were real-looking tombstones in the yard, and a big dummy hanging from a gallows by a thick rope, with a green spotlight on him. The front door was open, but it was dark inside, except for a jack-o’-lantern that seemed to be floating in the storm-door window. There was ground fog, too, spraying out of a oversized version of Uncle Teddy’s compressor, and sounds — organ music and screams and witches laughing — from speakers hidden somewhere.

Uncle Teddy says the wonderful thing about Halloween is there’s no way to do it wrong. You can be as over the top as you want, and nobody thinks it’s too much, they way they do at Christmas. Nobody ever says, “Let’s put the Hallow back in Halloween.” That’s what I was thinking as I climbed the stoop. I was so nervous, and it was getting so hard to breathe, that I had to pull myself up by the railing, and before I could knock on the storm door, a voice that seemed to come from everywhere boomed out, “STATE YOUR BUSINESS!”

“Trick or treat?” I squeaked out.

“WHAT!?”

“Trick or treat!”

“ENTER!”

I looked back for Uncle Teddy, but the green spotlight was in my eyes.