Horror for Halloween

Early afternoon, the sun obeying daylight savings and dipping low in the sky, when along came a woman and two kids. Little kids, the kind that you have to hold their hands, or they go off climbing god only knows. Some high thing like a slide or a giraffe. That little collective walked up to me outside the library where we were doing curbside.

     "Do you have an appointment?" I said.

     The woman's eyes rose over her mask. It was a floral thing that made me think of my grandma's garden. Ugly and unkept and forgotten under a window made for dumping out ashes and regret. "No," she said. They wanted DVDs. 

     What kind of DVDs? We had all kinds written on a big board. People could not be allowed in. We gave them a choice. No longer could the rabble run through the stacks. Like good cooks, we kept them out of the kitchen. Only the rain and the cold.

     "Some kids. We like Legos. And horror for Halloween," she said.

     I left them. Kids bags were easy. I had no idea if the bags had legos in them, or movies with legos in them, or if the movies would explode and drive some entertainment by killing the family pet. All I knew was that the bag said "Kids," and someone had drawn what looked like a dying duck. I hope the family did not have a duck.

     There were no goddamn horror bags anywhere in the library. I checked. Twice. We checked them all out.

     I walked around the staging area for the bags. Scratched at my head, right up top where it itched. Why horror? Why now? Halloween is dead and gone for another year. Lost in the minds of children gazing forward to Christmas. Lost in the minds of adults thinking about the holidays. No traveling this year because there's a virus that might kill grandma. Might as well kill grandma by making her learn how to talk to her phone with pictures. Skype, WhatsApp, Hangouts, all the mess of phones now when the Jetsons made it look so simple. Now Halloween is dead and Thanksgiving will happen over a screen and somehow the bastards in charge are worrying about Target's next sales year.

     Some still have that Halloween spirit. The freaks, the weirdos, the goths, the splattergeeks, the open-minded just enough to dance among the wreckage of a summer camp they never wanted to go to or the bloody carnage of a suburban neighborhood they hated. My people. Those beautiful souls who look and feel just right with the world having dark corners to poke at. Dark corners filled with screams and holding someone close and knowing that while monsters exist in this world, the one on the screen can not get us. 

     Depends on the screen, I suppose. The bastard Trump shows up on more scenes than he has any right. Gotten a fair number of people. Casualties in this war for politeness stuck up there. The dead from a virus and the dead from racism and the plain dead. Ghosts who haunt Facebook wondering where their friends and family went. Ghosts who get no response.

     I had a kinship with this family. This woman with her hideous mask and two little girls who like movies with Legos.

     So I went about putting together some movies. But what do you put in a bag? Do I go with only movies I like, or the big commercial appeal? What kind of horror? The slow and the plodding, or the right out of the gate I'm gonna melt your face and violate your stuffed animal? How long had I been in here looking while the sun dropped even lower?

     I had to pick Crawl. Picture this: You're daddy is not picking up the phone, even though a swirl of atmospheric hell is coming at his house. You drive down there. You're a damn good swimmer and about to make the team at some Florida college. You are capable and love your daddy and what's that noise under the house? It's daddy and a goddamn pack of alligators! Enjoy that fight for your life.

     Second, something creepy and violent to offset alligators eating people in Florida. California. Sunny, bright. A black family goes to the beach and sings in the car and overall has a good time. Then come some people in red suits that look just like them. Attacking them. The followup to Get Out, Us is a damn good, slow burn, thinker of a movie that has some logical issues. In the spirit of most CHUD (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller) movies, it's best not to think about it and enjoy a damn well made movie.

     We had a copy of John Carpenter's The Thing. Throw that in there.

     One Cut of the Dead. I don't even know how we got a copy of that Japanese zombie flick, but I'll be damned if I will not throw it in. Funny, dark, fast moving, it's the best comedy zombies since Shaun of the Dead.

     Last, Invisible Man. It's new, it's stylish, and I will be damned if it is going to sit on a shelf in my library and collect the dead skin of library employees. Once slated to be a big part of a franchise release, Invisible Man was brought down to a simple story of a man torturing a woman. And he is invisible. It's not just a clever title. 

     So I threw those in a bag, checked out the lot of them, and headed outside. No idea how long it has been. One of the children is upside down on the bike rack hanging there like a christmas tree ornament. Told you they climb stuff.

     "Thank you," said the woman and fucked off with her two kids into the dwindling day.

     I never saw them again. I assume the Lego movies scared them off. Never trust movies with moving parts. Flesh and blood humans all the way.