Hi. It’s like the middle of November. Do you know where your holiday cards are?

Now’s a good time to start thinking about shit like that, you know? Get it out of the way so you have more time to get blitzed off egg nog. I’m currently running a promotion for my serial killer cards where you can get a set of 10 for $25. (They’re $5/ea, normally.) These cards are big and sturdy, made from heavy cardstock and some even come with a cute little poem to help further spread the holiday cheer. A lot of time and retardation is spent on these.

Choose from:

Lizzie Borden
Richard Ramirez
Albert Fish
Jeffrey Dahmer
Elizabeth Bathory
Ed Gein
John Wayne Gacy
Ted Bundy
BTK
Berkowitz

Check it out!

 “Don’t!” Oscar shouted at his mother-in-law. “Let me.” He took the plate out of her hands and replaced it on the table before she had a chance to pile it with food. His wife had long since died but he still ate at her parent’s house on the fourth Monday of every fifth month. Pulling a compartmentalized picnic tray from his messenger bag, he began the methodical process of separating his food. He always ate his meals in quarters: protein in one pocket, vegetables in another, starches touched only each other, and then condiments formed a pool in the final compartment. Or fruit if there was any to have, in which case he would forego the frivolous sauces.

Oscar kept his digital watch set to beep in fifteen minute intervals, a reminder to put a new TicTac in his mouth. He would only do this at work, though, because he lived above a slaughterhouse and sometimes the howling and the squealing of chains and the grinding of gears rendered it impossible for Oscar to hear his watch. If something else happened to be in his mouth when his watch would chime, he’d spit it out into the tiny wastebasket under his desk, which was emptied four times during his shift.

On Sundays, Oscar enjoyed going to the farmers market in the industrial district of town. A public parking garage was provided as a courtesy to the citizens, but Oscar preferred parking on the street. He loved the way the quarters sounded as their shiny disks slid into the metal slot of the meter. It was slightly arousing, but only Oscar’s therapist knew this.

“Sometimes I lick the quarters before they leave my hand, and often I feel pained to release them. But once I hear that sound, it makes me swell. You know. Swell. And that is one of the most rewarding sensations this life has to offer, I really think.” Oscar’s therapist copied this quote for his file in bright red ink.

One day, Oscar was granted a handsome bonus because the company had enjoyed a very successful quarter. He went home that night, scrubbed each limb with a vibrant pine-scented homemade bar of soap that he purchased from Ethel who worked on the twenty-fourth floor but was visiting her friend on the twenty-fifth floor at the time of purchase. Thumbing through the phone book, he found just the number he was looking for.

At exactly 9:41, his doorbell rang. He dawdled and stalled, pacing beneath the stately portrait of George Washington which hung in the foyer, and chugging on a quart of half-spoiled vitamin D milk, until 9:45, at which time he found it perfect to open the door and greet the four prostitutes he ordered.

For a quarter of an hour, they quietly noshed on tea sandwiches, which Oscar had meticulously de-crusted and quartered over top of his grandmother’s serving tray, which was conveniently divided into quadrants. He precisely slipped his Quarterflash album from it’s sleeve and placed it gently upon the record player. Then they moved to his slumber quarters, where Oscar requested that he be tied to each one of the bedposts. The four cocottes silently obliged. As Oscar lay there, mind soaring with the possibilities, wondering if he would become as tumescent as he did in the company of parking meters, one of the harlots brandished a chainsaw from her purse and by 11:15, Oscar’s post-quartering torso was left in the center of his bed, and his limbs were sold to the slaughterhouse below where they were wrapped in freezer paper and sold for a quarter a pound.

Henry called. He’s on his way home. Oh my god, please hurry.
I talked to Christina and she said I sounded like I have been stranded in the desert for the past three days with no water. It’s a wonder I’ve managed to dress myself these past few days (OK fine, he’s only really been gone for one full day). Christina said if Henry ever left me, I’d turn into the mom from that Spill Canvas song “The Tide,” in which the mom’s true love leaves her and she quits giving a shit about anything and stops paying attention to her kids and they’re swept away by the tide. I sighed and murmured, “I know, that’s a good comparison” and she yelled, “OH MY GOD stop talking like you’re dying!

”

In more uplifting news, I received my Pacman arm warmers in the mail and not only do they keep me toasty (cold office air be damned), but they’re fucking awesome too. Go get your own, she has a varied selection. Tell her Somnambulant sent ya.

A Nox Arcana song came on my Zen last night at work. It was an interlude with a child chanting “Satan come for me tonight, comfort me till morning light” and I swear ice cicles sprung off my spine.

Then Mandy Moore came on and I LOL’d.

Nothing tempers a chilling gothic chant quite like some Mandy Moore-brand bubble gum pop.

Oh my god I’m so sad. Fuck you, Faygo.

They do not care about us evening shifters here at work and we are left behind in the wake of the dayshifters to shiver and shake in the chilly office air.

So I have taken to wearing a hat.

Indoors. At work. Constantly. Keeps the heat in.
Also, Henry tried to send me a picture of his weener and I thought it was poop. I can’t believe he thought I was the type of girl who would appreciate camera-phoned genitalia.

Also part 2: I am going to print out my Franklin’s Bar story and staple it to telephone poles around town and then wait and see if something happens.

I hope something happens. Like, the townies erupting into a torch-bearing revolt.

Dear Diary,

Henry is leaving tonight for Detroit. This will be the first time in the rollicking history of our courtship that I’ll be on my own, fending for myself, foraging for berries in the woods behind the porn shop. Scratching my own back.

Oh Diary, it’s true that we’ve been apart before, when I’ve run off to visit Christina in Ohio, but when you boil that down, it’s basically leaving one Henry for another. All of my meals are prepared for me, just like at home. All of my whims are met, just like at home.
The freezer has been stocked with an assortment of frozen meals to help curb starvation.

Janna is bringing me Subway tomorrow. If we all come together, I just might make it.

He’ll be home sometime this Friday.

I hope he doesn’t find my son hunched over my dead body, pillaging my guts.

Yours,
Erin, quaking in the face of responsibility

I used to ride my bike past Franklin’s Bar every day on my way home from school. Sometimes we’d drive past it in mom’s car if we were going to the grocery store in the next town over, where no one would see Mom purchase large quantities of laxatives.

My best friend Stacy and I would sit on the stoop across from it in the summer, drinking slushies from the convenience store down the street and watching angry wives stomp inside and pull out their hammered husbands by cinched skin.

Franklin dated Dad’s cousin for awhile, so sometimes we’d have birthday parties in the bar’s back room and I would dream of the day I could walk in, sit at the bar, and have fat men buy me drinks.

No, not really. I hated that place. It was smoky and the men reeked of beef jerkey and a mysterious film coated the surface of every table. Franklin was a vile pig who would shove his hand down my mom’s shirt when Dad wasn’t looking and I rejoiced the day cousin Margie dumped him and we went back to celebrating birthdays and promotions and straight As down the street at the VFW.

Back then, if you would have told me that Franklin’s was where I’d meet the man I was going to rape, I’d have laughed at you.

Then kicked your ass.

But something made me go in there that night last week. Something made me pop open more buttons than usual and something made me wink at that traveling salesman sitting in a corner booth with a briefcase and lonely eyes. His breath was malodorous, like a fecal sausage wrapped in garlicky cabbage, and his effeminate hands were marred with paper cuts and hangnails. His once-white clothes now had the dirty yellow hue of coffee-stained enamel and a slight stench of a foreign fishing village wafted from his pits.
Something made me want to try out my new vagina.

In fourth grade, Stacy and I eavesdropped on her older brother and his friends, embroiled in a heated debate. One of the boys had his index finger extended; it was red and swollen under the pressure of a rubberband. Stacy’s brother pulled the slack taut and made to wrap it around once more.

“If you wrap it too tight, it’ll fall off!” his friend wailed, snatching back his hand.

I took the salesman back to his motel room, under the pretense of wanting to see the sea shell clocks he was peddling. He gave off the distinct impression that he was not well versed in the song of sex, averting his eyes any time my cleavage got too close, and emitting a sickly wheeze from his nostrils any time I’d touch him. I think, through his thick Slavic accent, that he was trying to say no, but I stuffed a broken sea shell into his flapping mouth.

I left him laying there naked on the bed when I had finished. Rummaging through my purse, I found the perfect way to cap off the evening.

I wrapped the rubberband tightly around his penis, laughing as he howled.

“They say if you wrap it too tight, it’ll fall off,” I whispered, pulling it back for one last snap. I didn’t stay to find out because I was about to be late for my soup-ladling gig at the shelter.

He never got to find out either, before I shot him in the head.

I brought one of my favorite Gary Numan cds to work with me tonight, hoping it would aid me in blocking out Eleanore’s persistent phone-bitching which lasts approximately 75% of the shift.
So far, it’s doing a smashing job, and has earned a bonus by providing the perfect soundtrack while I worked on the poem for my Elizabeth Bathory Christmas card.

One of things that has always struck a chord with me about this CD is the line “your nightmare is breathing.” I fell asleep to one of his albums once, sans “Cars”-homaging with the Tubeway Army, a long time ago, and one of the worst nightmares of my life ensued.

I was roller skating at night around a neighborhood that was unfamiliar but I seemed to know it well in my dream. I realized I was near a house that I was interested in renting (in real life, as well), so I skated up to it and let myself into the front porch. It was still scattered with boxes belonging to the previous owners. I stepped around them, wanting to peek into the window to get a look inside the house, when I noticed a young black-haired girl squatting in a corner.
The sight of her jolted me, but I laughed when I realized she was just a kid. I said hello and she returned it, using my name.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Marcy told me.” Her eyes lit up with flames and I woke up.

The next day, in real life, the realtor called and told me he was accepting my application, and I’ve lived there ever since.

With my breathing nightmare, <a href=”http://sinistermitch.livejournal.com”>Marcy</a>.

Ed. Note: I’ve always thought that Gary Numan knew what was up, because he also has a song called “She’s Got Claws” and could any title be more appropos of my Satanic cat?

“Please don’t butter my bread.”

Jimmy was going to play baseball that day. He liked playing baseball because his parents weren’t there with him on the field, arguing about taxes, Mother’s affair with the milkmaid, and his sister Janie who got knocked up by the Hispanic pool boy at the Y.

When the girls were watching from the fence, he would make sure to run real fast, heels clipping the backs of his thighs as he manuevered between the bases. If the girls weren’t there, and it was just Orvil and Petey, the two retarded kids who wore back braces and were not allowed on the field, he would jog lazily around the outfield, pretending like the low-hanging sun was blinding him if he tried to catch fly balls.

Sometimes he would write cuss words like fuck and cooze in the dust, coating the toe of his shoe with a camel-colored powder. If Alastair came too close, Jimmy could erase the evidence with one swift movement.

“Please don’t butter my bread.”

Alastair was a snitch. He told Sam, the school bully, that Jake stole a piece of bubblegum from Sam’s cubby during recess, and Sam punished Jake with a black eye and made him choke on his own tongue as a final piece of retribution.

Jake had a problem with swallowing his tongue.

“Please don’t butter my bread!”

Jimmy hoped it didn’t rain today, like the weatherman said it would. He wanted to go down to the creek after everyone tired of baseball (usually after two innings) and fish for guppies. That’s what he would tell Mother, anyhow, but once he got down to the woods, he would climb into a tree and pull out Father’s dirty magazines from his satchel.

That’s how he got the best vocabulary out of everyone in his class.

“Mother, please don’t butter my bread!” Jimmy begged one last time, watching her collect the freshly browned slices of bread from the toaster.

Jimmy liked playing baseball, and he liked sneakily etching swear words on the field and he liked the excitement of watching Jake swallow his tongue.

He liked clandestinely pouring over his Father’s dirty magazines and learning words like “pulsating” and “cocktease” and “titty fucking.” Jimmy wanted to continue doing all of these things, but he wouldn’t be able to if his bread was buttered.

“Jimmy, what’s gotten in to you?” Mother yelled, as he wrestled the tub of butter from her hands.

“I watched Father sprinkle rat poison in the butter last night,” Jimmy said, grabbing his dry toast and running off for the baseball field. Mother silently dropped the tub into the garbage can.

OK, I was seriously locked out of the house for two hours on Saturday. I didn’t know that Henry wasn’t going to be home when I came home from class, so I left my purse in the house. And my cell phone.

I got home at 11 and sat on the cold porch steps for about thirty minutes, doing some Calculus and attempting to manage my anger. Fake Nurse (The Original, not the New Neighbor Edition) came home but we’re still doing that Mexican Standoff thing so I didn’t dare ask to use her phone. Then I was afraid I’d get hemmorhoids, so I moved back inside the car, which was surprisingly toasty thanks to the late morning sun.

11:35: I stared at my Calculus book.
11:40: Played with split ends.
11:41: Sucked on hair.
11:45: Cried.
11:50: Fell asleep.
11:57: Woke up, remembered, cried.
12:00: Almost peed.
12:01: Felt sorry for myself.
12:03: Shot at joggers with my finger gun.
12:05: Practiced finger-snapping. (Still can’t.)

This cycle continued until 1pm, when I finally broke down and knocked on the door to Robin’s Meth Lab. Fortunately, Henry pulled up to the curb just then, looking confused by my whereabouts.

Of course I blamed him.

“Why didn’t you go to a payphone and call me?” he asked, trying not to laugh.

I didn’t have my wallet!

“Why didn’t you drive down the street to McDonald’s to use their bathroom?”

Because…*^*(&*(&)(*!!

And then he just started laughing. Laughing in the face of my tears.
“You would die. You know that? You would die out there.” He said he wished I had a camera on my head, like the survivor guy on that Discovery Channel show, so he could see me kicking around pebbles and roaming the yard in tight circles.
Henry’s going to Detroit for two days this week for job training. Please send someone to feed me and my child.

Today, I am thankful that I have friends who will proofread my writing for me, as my brain appears to be slowly devouring itself. Thank you guys, for preventing me from turning in 11 pages of missing prepositions and technical slights. I do NOT have the attention span to do this on my own.

Knockin’ bitches down.

I went to my first roller derby bout last night and it was awesome. Except that Henry was there. And Janna. And I learned within five minutes to never ever again take my son with us and expect to get any watching done. He can come back when he’s eleven, and not determined to run the length of the bleachers, tripping over purses and camera bags, and bucking in anguish during the National Anthem. Henry’s son Blake came too and I was happy because with him there, I wasn’t cheering alone. He is welcome to come back with me, because he knows how to get excited.

I have the uncanny ability to always choose the worst seats: In the movie theaters, at concerts, in classes. So I was not unamused to find that I had guided my group straight to the Cleveland side of the bleachers.

It was fantastic. I jeered and booed every time the Ohioans around me waved their ugly poster board signs that looked like three-year-old blind kids designed them with half-dried out markers from 1996.

“Go, Full Throttle! Go, Stroker!” the husky-voiced broad behind me bellowed the entire time. I would boo and Henry would toss me disapproving looks.

Has he never been to a sporting event before?

And Janna was oblivious. “Hehe, what? Hehe, huh?” All she cared about was her friend’s girlfriend, Stephi.

“Matt said that Stephi and her friend are really into roller derby,” Janna said as we walked into Bladerunners. Oh really? That’s cool.

“I wonder if Stephi is here tonight, actually,” Janna said two seconds after we got situated on the bleachers. Yeah, I wonder, Janna.

“I saw Stephi! She’s here!” Janna said breathlessly, returning from the snack bar with pizza for me and fries for herself. Hooray for Stephi.

“There goes Stephi! She’s on the other side of the bleachers. Did you see her?!” Janna yelled, pointing across my chest. Sorry to have missed her. Perhaps security can put out an APB?

Distracting Hair.

My friend Rhonda is a derby girl and she was there working the entertainment. She stopped by to chat with me briefly and also to break the horrible news that my favorite roller girl with the hot pink hair was going to be benched that night due to an injury. I was really sad. Janna wanted me to go talk to her, but I was like, “Uh, that’s not going to happen.” Erin doesn’t talk to crushes. Erin stutters and spits on crushes. (Just the girl ones.) So instead, I stayed on my side of the smeared plexiglass and took stalkery pictures of her all night long, and when our girls formed a line and circled the rink while having their names announced, I let out an obnoxious cat call for my pink-haired girl Mel Practice. I asked Rhonda if I could expect lots of blood, maybe an occasional protruding bone, but she assured me that they promote safety. I was kind of sad. Only because I wanted to see some orange bitches get broke.

The snack bar pizza brought back a wave of nostalgia from the adult skate nights Henry, Janna and I used to go to. (And by ‘used to,’ I mean that we went about four times in the span of two months.) Admittedly, it was the snack bar pizza that kept me going back and strapping wheels to my feet.

This is the life, I thought as I wiped sauce from my chin. Who ever would have thought that I could pig out on delicious snack bar pizza without any pretenses?

Our Pittsburgh team was outstanding. I didn’t think I would really give a shit, but I quickly found myself gesticulating wildly with black and gold pride and spewing venomous insults at those  Cleveland broads. The one I particularly wished to engage in a downright alley cat brawl was a slutty hoe in white shorts by the name of CoCo Sparx. She was one of the jammers and never failed to excite the gay Ohio fans behind me. They’d stomp on the bleachers and holler her name every time she would skate past and I wanted to knock her down so bad. I might try to get on our team for that sole purpose. Janna kept saying, “I can totally see you out there, too” which I think is implying that I have a foul temper and like to be a bully. Which is the truth, but I was kind of sad because she never says that when we go to the ballet.

Henry put out five dollars for something called a 50/50 raffle (and then he belittled me for having little knowledge of raffles; sorry but I’m not a senior citizen at a church fair) and also tossed in one of my Moo cards and one of his (lame) business cards in a fish bowl for some other raffle (after I put them in the slit of this three-foot-tall coffin, because I can’t follow directions; I don’t know what that coffin was for, but it has two out-of-place business cards in it now). The drawings took place right before the third period and Henry couldn’t wait any longer because Chooch was like, “Oh my shit, I want to go to bed, you assholes.” So Henry reluctantly handed over his wand of raffle tickets and begged me not to fuck it up.

He didn’t win, but I won the business card raffle (because my moo cards are the shit) for two free tickets to the next bout. As I made my way down to collect them, Rhonda yelled out, “You remembered your business cards!” because I’m notorious for never having them on my person. This is my paltry excuse for inconsistent art sales.

Janna and I left after I claimed my prize. We stopped at Denny’s, the entrance of which Janna passed up three times, and Janna ordered a french toast special.

“How do you want your eggs?”

“Sure.”

Oh, Janna.
—————————————————

I’m coming for you, CoCo Sparx.

Everything changed after that February night in 1996. When I returned to school, I was met with sympathetic faces and had faux-friendly exchanges with girls I hadn’t spoken with all year, like Keri, who was always too spineless and weak-willed to create her own judgements of people. I wonder if I would have taken her back if the situation was different, if I hadn’t been reduced to a despirited girl barely floating down highschool hallways; all I know is that at that time, under a current situation bogged down by gravity, I was willing to latch on to anyone for support, even those I wasn’t sure I should trust. And Keri has proved that she is not, and was not ever, one to be trusted. Justin broke off our second attempt at coupledom. Said it was the long-distance thing. He transferred out of my high school the previous year, and even though he only lived a few miles away, neither of us had cars. But I know he couldn’t handle it, was tired of trying to find the right words to comfort me in lieu of his protective arms. I had become emotionally taxing and burdensome, always wanting to hash out the whys of the situation, always wanting to find other things to cry about. "No, this movie is really sad. Really, I’m crying about the movie. Not….that." I greedily tore through an entire box of Kleenex while watching Higher Learning on Lisa’s bed that winter. "I mean, it’s sad, but c’mon, Erin," she said in disbelief. Home life was more chaotic than ever. No one was really talking to each other, tongues paralyzed and brains drained of normal comfort responses and the capacity to show compassion and empathy. Rather than unite in tragedy, we all drifted apart. Susie and Mark and my mom and step-dad all began the slow, excruciating path winding down to the bowels of slander and divorce. Easter was the first holiday in the history of my family that no one greased a casserole dish, brandished a carving knife, or capped pies with a dollop of whipped cream. I didn’t care. It gave me more time to cry uninterrupted into my pillow. Me, I started falling asleep in classes, my As morphing into Ds and Fs, and I was sneaking off a lot to hang out with Jessie, the "bad girl" who smoked pot and slept with possible gang members. She lived down the road, the adoptive daughter of a couple with a big house, big dogs and big mob ties. We would skip school together, dye Easter eggs and drink liquor with her boyfriend’s older friends. Six months later, I met Mike. He came with the appealing factor of attending a different school. My friend Christy knew him. She begged me to leave him alone. "He’s an arsonist! He’s been locked up for it! Please stop using such poor judgement." But poor judgement and I, we were inseparable like two young boys who had just smeared each others’ fingertip blood into a Rorschach picture. I spent a year and a half being emotionally ravished and scarred by Mike, I dropped out of high school, I picked up hitchhikers, quit jobs after a day, drank myself stupid, had sex with reckless abandon, one nervous breakdown always waiting in the wings. Things would have been different if that night never happened, sure. But I wouldn’t have Henry. I wouldn’t have Chooch. It’s enough to drive a person crazy, dwelling on cause and effect, wondering if it was some sort of subliminal swap with God. Him for them. This for that. But I wonder, if my Pappap was alive to celebrate his birthday today, would I have still managed to spend two hours locked out of my house? Probably.

A few weeks ago, I was literally 2 minutes late and my meter expired. A nice pink ticket waved in the breeze, tucked behind my windshield. Those damn meter maids are GOOD.

My immediate instinct is that of defiance and entitlement. I was TWO MINUTES LATE. I would have been there on time if I hadn’t run into my writing teacher in the hall!

“I’m not paying,” I told Henry smugly.

The next day, I was still stewing over it.

We were on our way to a nice leisurely stroll through a haunted house and I was spewing rabid foam from the mouth. “I will fight this to my death! You know what? I’m calling them. The parking brigade, I’m calling them. I’m telling them I was late to the meter because I was HAVING A MISCARRIAGE.”

“You can’t do that,” Henry said calmly, keeping his eyes on the road.

I made an urgent call to Christina. “Here’s a better idea,” she began, after suffering through my petulant spiel. “You could, I don’t know, pay the sixteen dollars.”

Surrender? Absolutely not.

Then I forgot about it. It’s somewhere in my purse. But my purse is big. Like Mary Poppin’s tapestry bag big.

Today, I got a bill in the mail. With the accumulated late fees, my new fine is $39. I flew into a righteous rage.

“Just pay it, please!” Henry yelled; there was no amusement in his face.

Oh, I paid it alright. But not the late fees. And I furiously scribbled out a note in a serial killer-esque scrawl that said “I am SO SORRY that one of your people was forced to take the time out of their day to print out a ticket, while I was too busy having a miscarriage to make it to the meter in time. You will get the sixteen dollars from me, and not a penny more.”

Envelope sealed and stamped.

Henry shook his head and said, “Why do you always have to make things worse? Your angry letters never get you anywhere.” (Perhaps one day jail, though.

)

Fucking authority.

Today marks the first time ever that I submitted something to a literary magazine and I feel vomitous.

I didn’t do it so much to get published, because I have realistic expectations, but more to get myself over this fear so that maybe in the future I can do it again.

I don’t know how confident I am about the essays I submitted, but I like the bio I wrote!

Erin Kelly is a student and a full-time employee of both a data processing company and her maniacal toddler.

She’s not afraid of turning 30; has a penchant for pumpkin pie Blizzards and collecting art that scares her; and has celebrated Christmas in a cemetery, complete with convenience store egg nog and Moon Pies. At least once a day, she hears the phrase, “Oh honestly, Erin.”

Ha-ha.

Janna said she wants to celebrate the fact that I finally traded in my diaper for training pants.

Last year, I bought Riley’s first Halloween costume during the peak of a summer scorch fest. People thought I was crazy, but I wanted to be prepared. He was an ice cream cone, and it rained. Luckily, he was only six months old then and had no clue he was missing anything anyway.

This year, though, I started sending myself mental memos in July. “Don’t forget to start thinking about Riley’s Halloween costume” they’d say, with the ‘Don’t’ underlined three times in an urgent red. Unfortunately, those memos got buried under the “Write that damn essay!” and “Pay the fucking gas bill, asshole!” memos.

Before I knew it, is was October. My friend Amelia gave me the ingenious idea of dressing him as Charlie Brown. It was perfect what with his hair-challenged pate and chubby cheeks, and it would be a snap to pull off. All I had to do was buy a yellow t-shirt and toss some black felt and a needle in Henry’s lap and tell him to get crackin’.

It’s just a yellow t-shirt, it won’t be hard to find. I can wait until the last minute.

Oh hindsight, you sick son of a bitch.

So, instead we used Merry’s idea: bearded him up, slapped a fedora on his head and shifted nervously when people asked what he was supposed to be. I think we were going for old fashioned pimp, but by the end of night we accepted everyone else’s interpretation that he was the “most cutest hobo.”

I spent a lot of energy these past few days trying to teach Riley how to say trick-or-treat, employing a melange of accents hoping that one would tickle his linguistic fancy and make him think, “Wow, now I really need to pump up my ambition and learn this totally awesome phrase.” Never mind the fact that the consequence of that demand is a pillowsack full of cavities, say it because it sounds cool with a Barbarian/Portugese accent hybrid.

On the way to my grandma’s (for photo-op purposes), Henry stopped at RiteAid to get batteries for the camera, but when he got back in the car, he extracted a king sized Nestle’s Crunch.

“Um…you do realize that Chooch is trick-or-treating tonight, right? So in an hour, this orange pumpkin here is going to turn into a receptacle overflowing with delightful candybars that will kick the ass of your plain old Nestle’s Crunch.” Henry is so frivolous sometimes.

After visiting my grandma, we drove over to the street my aunt Susie lives on, hoping to park in her driveway and ransack her neighbors since we were already in the area. (And trick-or-treating in the suburbs is more appealing that the city.) Now, I haven’t spoken with Susie in about three years. No real reason, other than we’ve never been very close and she’s embroiled in a perpetual feud with her older sister, Sharon. I’m sure most everyone has fucked up families bogged down with in-fighting and different members boycotting holidays each year, but mine is pretty bizarre. I’d say they’re a few degrees worse than “Grey Gardens” but not quite “The Devil’s Rejects.” I mean, my mother lives two houses down from my grandmother, but for the second year in a row skipped out on coming over to see her grandson in all his costumed glory. A little disheartening to say the least.

Sharon told us to go right ahead and park in Susie’s driveway. “She’s never home anyway!” she laughed, but it was a strained laugh, the laugh someone emits when they’re thinking about the person they want to kill.

Sharon and Susie have been fighting for as long as I can remember. Holidays were always filled with the merry cheer of one of them running off to their bedroom and slamming the door behind them. I don’t know why they hate each other so much. Jealousy? But I know that Sharon recently said she would murder her if she ever saw her on the street. So when she said she would call Susie and let her know we were parking in her driveway, I sort of doubted it.

When we pulled into Susie’s driveway, she was outside with one of her dogs. She stood in the backyard and squinted as we emerged from the car. She looked nervous and afraid. I said hello and she murmured an unsure salutory retaliation. It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized it was me, the niece she hadn’t seen in three years.

“Oh!” she laughed, placing her hand on her chest. “I was afraid you were a trick-or-treater. I’m not ready yet!” I explained to her that we were, in fact, trick-or-treating and would it be OK if we parked there. She said it was no problem, but then she gave me a judgemental once-over.

“Aren’t you a little…not dressed up…to be trick-or-treating?”

“I’m not going! We’re taking him!” I laughed, nodding at Chooch, who was being undetained from the backseat. Susie laughed, realizing her idiocy.

Then came the awkward moment of her meeting her great-nephew for the first time. Her voice took on a shrill lilt as she said all the things she thought a baby would want to hear. Chooch was more interested in her dog.

As we walked down her driveway to embark on a night of candy-collecting, Henry whipsered, “She’s not a kid person, is she? I could tell because she talked to Chooch the same way you talk to other kids.”

I always thought that Susie was my real mother. It makes sense when you think about it: we both come packing the same wicked temper, we’re both egotistical assholes, we’re both man-eaters with a penchant for art and tennis. She was a freshman at Kent when I was born. My theory was that she got knocked up, my grandma had a nuclear-level meltdown (“What will the neighbors say?!”), and I was pawned off on the woman I’ve called Mom for the past twenty-eight years.

(OK, that’s a lie: I call her Val.)

I recently divulged this to my grandma and she laughed (nervously, I might add) and said, “Oh honestly, Erin.”

If Susie really is my mom, I’m pissed that I didn’t inherit her sickeningly quick metabolism (she’s a size 0!).

Chooch really seemed to enjoy trick-or-treating. Mainly because he finally got his wish of walking through the yards of strangers (he never wants to stay on the sidewalk when we go on jaunts around our ‘hood) and lots of older women fawned over him.

He stole the show, which really seemed to irritate two older boys who scowled at him every time we wound up on the same stoop as them.

Sorry you look so average in your non-descript K-Mart masks, you little assholes. Go cry to mommy.

I really hate kids.

I escorted Chooch to two or three houses, and then switched with Henry because it was too much work and people wanted to talk to me which makes me feel sick. We skipped all the houses that required us to walk up steps or hills.

We canvassed two streets before calling it a night. Chooch seemed to enjoy himself and I was pleased to see a generous allottment of Reese’s peanut butter cups in his little pumpkin carrier. No orange drink, though.