Happy Halloween!

Some days you look in the mirror and it is not your face that looks back. You are a demon on those days, and you carry your strangeness out into the streets. You find on those days that all your friends are monsters, their backs twisted, their faces evil and malicious. Your fingers are curled to scratch and to tear, to rend to shreds the faces of the passersby.

You have money in your pocket. Power and hate and cunning. You see a bird and you smash it to paste with a brick. A policeman looks on with his thumbs in his belt loops and laughs and laughs. Children run past and pelt you with stones and excrement. You howl at them like an animal and gnash your teeth until bloody froth bubbles from your lips.

In the evening dark shapes pass overhead between you and the moon. They trail backwards over the sky and where they pass the stars die out. You run through the town smashing windows and lighting fires. You come to the house where your family lives and you burn that, too, to the ground.

Someday s you look in the mirror and it is not your face.