Chris Krovatin is a twice-published teen author and a journalist for Revolver Magazine, as well as the singer for Queens-based metal band Flaming Tusk. He lives in New York City, which he loves even though he is almost positive it is trying to kill him.
When you stumble out of your room, your eyelids heavy with liquor and your stomach great with candy, the sight of the starved pumpkin almost offends you. Its color, the ruddy organic orange of a turning leaf in the light of a setting sun, hits you with a sneer when for the past month it has sparked in you nothing short of giddy life-affirming excitement. As you shower and brush your teeth, you wonder if the cockroach you saw the other day was attracted by the rotting gourd. The Internet said no, and you were so full of holiday spirit that you decided that you’d rather live with roaches than without a jack-o-lantern, but now you’re suspicious. Better throw it out by tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. It might stink up the place.
I'm in your house!
One glance at the fridge makes you shudder—you could not drink a Post Road Pumpkin Ale for the rest of your days. As you head out to buy milk and coffee (good job getting it on the way home, retard), you take stock of the things sitting in front of your apartment door—a plastic skull, two rubber rats, a latex severed hand, a pumpkin pail, and a large rubber bat dangling from the burglar hole. Those you can stand to leave around a day or two; they’re metal enough to not evoke the holiday and the holiday only. Outside, the streets are littered with the expected detritus: broken eggs, a paper Frankenstein mask, candy wrappers, scraps of streamers, and a single red vinyl high heeled shoe. At C-Town, you get the basics, the whole time smiling sadly at the paper ghosts and witches that dangle overhead. Bulk chocolate is half price today. You wonder how cheap things are going for at Abracadabra. Maybe you should swing by and get some make-up stuff while the prices are still down.
Back home, you’re stunned by the sheer amount of work you’ve let back up. There are a ton of reviews to write, e-mails to send, invoices to check on. You wish you had no idea how this happened, but you’re no fool, you know. The work went undone while you hauled cases of Post Road back to your place from Eagle Provisions, while you pushed through the racks at Ricky’s around the city trying to discover if they had snap-on shark teeth, while you were out at the dry cleaners’ getting your black tux cleaned, while you were sitting on the couch watching one Simpsons Treehouse of Horror after another. And your slacking wasn’t even out of ignorance. You knew you had this work to do the whole month. It came to your mind immediately today. You just didn’t care. Wasn’t creepy, kooky, mysterious, or spooky. It would have to wait.
Your mailbox contains the late-arrival copy of Young Frankenstein from Netflix, and you immediately seal it up without watching it. Not in the mood. A glance at your DVD queue brings about a similar sense of aimless annoyance. Tossed down are Zombie Holocaust, Children Of The Night, and Slaughterhouse, and bumped up are Thor, Michael Clayton, and Total Recall. Sitting on the can, you find yourself with nothing to read except two trade paperbacks of The Walking Dead and a book of foreing horror movie posters, none of which you particularly want to read. Again, you can’t help but smile at the difference. You wouldn’t have read anything else yesterday. If someone had offered you the book of your life, you would’ve handed it back and asked for something by Clive Barker. Now look at you.
In the next room, the cat knocks something breakable to the floor, and you spray-bottle that little fucker into a corner before picking up the two items that’ve fallen, a collins glass now dissected into a million shards and your mask from last night, a simple plastic children’s goat mask. It had looked amazing on top of your black tux, somewhere between Eyes Wide Shut and The Devil Rides Out. Even with your drained holiday spirit, you have the nerve to put it back on, and immediately you see why you wore it so sparingly at the Sleep No More after-party last night—the wide-set eyes give you a Hell of a blind spot in the middle. You’re surprised you didn’t slip on some dog shit and break your neck walking around in this thing last night. If you do something similar to Sleep No More next year, you have to find something with the eye holes a little closer together.
Your forearm stings, and you remember that oh yeah, you got a tattoo yesterday, dumbass. In the bathroom, you wash, apply ointment, and then give it a good look in the mirror. It’s the mask from the first chapter of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree, your favorite book of all time. Each chapter has a scare mask over its title, and you intend to get a new one added to your arm every year. This one’s a skull, one eye outlined white and hollow, the other outlined black and dotted with a maniacal pupil. The strings of the mask flutter in the air next to it, and its mouth is opened in a childishly disturbing cackle, as though it’s flying through the air at you, screaming that death is here, he’s arrived for one night only, and they’re having a big party for him downtown, you should come, wear a mask.
Put an apple in the pillowcase, bitch. I dare you.
And that’s when it hits you—the good feeling, the release. All day, you’ve been wrestling with the leftovers of your holiday cheer, the hangover that’ll make you puke if you so much as smell Frankenstein or candy corn. But this tattoo is your reminder that you can head into winter with your head down and your chin up. Your monster muscle should be tired after the week you’ve given it, the marathon of ghoulishness that you’ve undertaken over all of October. It’ll be here next year, ready and rejuvenated; around July you’ll begin to get postcards from it, and by Labor Day, you and the Specter of November’s Eve will be in serious talks about costumes and microbrews. For now, the Reaper can toss his cloak and scythe in the corner, throw on some PJ pants, slump back in an armchair with a cheap watery beer, and throw on some football or a superhero movie.
Tags: Chris Krovatin, Halloween, See You In Hell
