Back in 2002, while living in Pennsylvania with Pudding and the Wolves, I spent the better part of two weeks looking for a fog machine.  I searched high and low for one in everything from the local stores of Carbondale, to the Steamtown Mall in Scranton, and even in the Super Walmart of Dickson City.  None of these places had an actual fog machine that I could use to blow creepy eerily colored fog through the mouth of the Jack-O-Lantern I wanted to carve and put on the front porch.

Then, about a week before Halloween we ventured to the Chuck E. Cheese that is in a strip mall behind the Walmart/Target complex off Commerce Boulevard.  A few doors down was a Party City.  Walking past the window I stopped in my tracks.  There, below a really crappy looking Freddy Kruger costume, was a fog machine.  I quickly walked into the store to find myself inundated with the cool misty smell of fake fog!  It was there that I spent $80 for a fog machine and $10 for a gallon of fog juice.  In order to make up that money, I worked an extra shift that very week because it was SO important for me to have a fog machine.  It’s not that I wanted it… I needed it…

The Jack-O-Lanterns that year were extravagant.  I bought three of those pumpkin carving kits from Walmart (hey, I lived in Pa, that’s where you go for stuff) that had different designs to trace, came with 2 different craving knives and a scoop for the pumpkin guts.  The pumpkins themselves came from a local store that specialized in seasonal agricultural items.  We got a whopping 6 of them, all a different size for $100.  Yeah, that was another tour I picked up for the OT.

That year, we had cobwebs over the bushes that were already hiding little blinking eye lights, a skeleton sitting on the porch, our porchlight had been replaced with a black light, 5 Jack-O-Lanterns atop the rail, and the 6th and final Jack-O-Lantern in a chair atop a body of straw.  Through the back of that final Jack-O-Lantern I had cut a carefully measured hole through which a hose ran down to the fog machine.  I had rigged the machine with a sense pad under a cheap rug so when someone approached and stepped on the pad a stream of flame colored fog (colored thanks to a 14 hour red glow stick from work) would shoot out, scaring the potty training right out of all the young children bound for the door!

Of course, as most things that I plan work out, I forgot the importance of securing the actual Jack-O-Lantern against porch vibrations.  The first group of children approached, and as expected set the fog machine off sending screams of terror into the night as I squealed with glee from behind a curtain.  The stampeding children ran so quickly off the porch… it dislodge the Jack-O-Lantern from its perch and he fell to the ground, rolled after the children, and finally came to rest at the bottom of the stairs.  Now, besides a dent in his head, he was pretty okay… but obviously we needed more work on the set-up.  No matter what I did… every time the machine went off and the kids ran… the damn pumpkin went with them.  After 5 ring and runs, calling it a Jack-O-Lantern would require a very active imagination.

So… one by one the pumpkins came off the rail… and one by one they rolled across the porch and down the steps while the carver looked on from behind the curtain and cheered.  Every single one… except for the last one… the smallest of them all… DJ‘s.  Sure, it looked like a shrunken head on that sized body, but it held fast through the rest of the night.  Heck, it even lasted for about two weeks after before succumbing to the environmental hazards that happens to pumpkins after their guts have been ripped out.

Maybe it was growing up 1.7 miles away from where Harry Houdini is buried, but I was into Halloween.  REALLY INTO HALLOWEEN.  That was then…

Then there is now…

I’m still sleeping with dream catchers in the room.  I’m afraid of the dreams that may come if I am without them.  My most haunting dream happened 16 months ago as I laid on a couch under the combined auspices of Nyquil and Vodka… there he was as last I had laid my eyes upon him… but his eyes were open and although the tube was in his mouth I clearly heard him say, “My eyes are blue because of you”… and indeed they were a frightful flaming azure… and then I woke up screaming… and dared not sleep until the next night when I was under “proper” sedatives.  My mother on the other hand had a dream of her Uncle Freddy (who by all accounts was a wonderful and loving man) and DJ walking hand in hand… and my aunt had a similar dream of my own Uncle Mike at a lakeside with DJ… and then my friends mother, who has always been “sensitive”, spoke to me of a woman she had no idea existed in my life… and it was her description of Yamel giving DJ piggyback rides that relieved me just a little bit more.  Still though, I haven’t really had any of these calming visions of specters dancing with glee in my dreams, and that kind of bothers me… alot.

Last year, on Halloween morning I sat in my “office”, looked out my big bay window, and watched all the kids in their costumes go to school for whatever delightful parties their teachers and parents were cooking up.  As each group or line passed by me, it was like another dagger into my chest.  While I am most proud of my “office” because when I tire of the view I have, I can change it… for whatever reason I just couldn’t do that.  The day blurred by until that night… which I have no recollection of… quite possibly thanks to an empty bottle of Absinthe I found a few days later under the couch.  Halloween now… is really nothing.

I thought I would start feeling better about what used to be my favorite holiday… but that’s just not the case.  I’m dragging my feet looking for a costume for Avitable’s Halloween Party… I thought it wasn’t intentional at first… but then I realized that every time I just thought about doing it, I became extremely tired (tired=depressed for those who may not have been able to keep up).  It’s only Monday night and ALREADY I am trying to come up with reasons not to go to New Jersey this upcoming weekend for a corn maze adventure with the Wolves.  I’m just wishing I could hibernate for a few months… because this is obviously the beginning of a downward spiral through the holidays.

This year for Halloween itself?  I’m making the run for south of the border so I totally avoid those lines of happy costumed kids walking down the street… but of course my brilliant idea was to go to Disney World that day.  I’m a glutton for punishment… and I really don’t even realize I’m setting myself up for the fall.  Sure things have changed from even just last year in that I have Poppy to hold my hand, and she is an awesome hand holder I assure you… but the biggest change has remained the same.

I hate Halloween because he’s not here to carve pumpkins, get dressed up, or go trick or treating.

I miss my buddy… alot.