Trick or Treat
By P



A preview of the winter to come, the chill night at the end of October was
cold and dark. The turgid darkness was broken only by the bright flashlights
and raucous voices of the small knots of trick-or-treaters who braved the cold
and made their noisy way from house to house in celebration of the age-old
holiday, Halloween.

Margo had taken her own granddaughter trick or treating earlier in the
evening. The girl, exhausted and stuffed with Halloween treats, was finally
fast asleep, still in her beloved ballerina costume. She simply wouldn't take
it off and change into her pajamas. Her face, now at relaxed in sleep, was
smeared by chocolate. Margo smiled at the enormous will concealed in such a
petite, vulnerable 5 year-old body.

Most of the trick-or-treaters had already come, shown off their varied
costumes, claimed their candy, and gone. However, now, as in the past, the
late night belonged to the teenagers, the next generation. What pranks would
they think of this year? Margo sat beside her fireplace and tried to read
despite the interruptions. Despite her best efforts, her mind wandered and she
thought of years past, chuckling. She would give them one more hour before she
herself went to bed.

Like many of her generation, Margo worried about today's young peoples' lack
of judgment. She and her friends discussed their many obvious shortcomings
endlessly. Margo, unlike some of her friends, also admired their energy and
daring, though she rarely admitted it to her peers. Only after a glass of wine
or two, could she finally admit to herself and to her friends that she did
feel a tinge of envy at their youth and prospects. All in all, though, she was
glad that her daughter was no longer a teenager and had somehow transformed
into a serious, responsible adult with a healthy, bright, and lovely daughter.

The doorbell rang once more. Margo shook her head and wondered when it would
ever stop. She grabbed a handful of candy bars and walked to the door
wondering wryly what wonder of art or nature would confront her this time. She
had seen witches, ballerinas, princesses, dinosaurs, and rock and roll stars.
She had even seen a robot, a pirate, a baker, a hunter, and a cartoon mouse or
two.

She readied herself as best as she was able for whatever might confront her,
braced herself against the cold, and flung open the door. She jumped back
gasping! She staggered, almost tripping on the rug and looked again before her
mind would fully accept the sight that stood before her. No cacophonous chorus
of "treat-or-treats" greeted her. No colorful gang of wildly attired urchins
stoodd before her, loosely shepherded by parents and older siblings.

Before her stood a massive male, obscenely naked. His large frame practically
filled the door-way from door post to door post and top to bottom. By reflex,
she grabbed for the door handle. She must close the door and keep the monster
out of her house - away from her sleeping granddaughter. Would even the thick
wooden door stop him? Suddenly clumsy, she just couldn't grasp the damned door
knob. At first, she couldn't even seem to find it and then she somehow
couldn't close her suddenly trembling, feeble hand around the motherless,
suddenly, inexplicably, all too elusive knob. She screamed silently at
herself, "Close the damned door, Margo! This doesn't happen anymore! Slam the
door! Slam the damned motherless door!" Try as she might, she couldn't close
the damned door and interpose its sturdy oak panels between this monstrosity
and herself and her sleeping granddaughter upstairs.

Abruptly and without warning, the male lurched forward, crossed the threshold,
and actually stood both feet inside her house. This wasn't supposed to happen
any more. This was a nightmare from which the world had long awaken. Margo
stood frozen, like a bird ensorcelled by a snake or a deer transfixed by
headlights. She knew with her entire being that she must protect her precious
granddaughter asleep upstairs, but her arms and legs just wouldn't move.
Simply staying on her feet and not fainting dead away was an achievement of
sorts, but she had no opportunity to celebrate her most modest accomplishment.
She couldn't even catch her breath to scream.

His gaping mouth was half-open and a fat red tongue protruded grotesquely. His
twisted, misshapen face filled her vision. She looked away in revulsion.
Thick, heavily muscled arms hung from his massive shoulders. Her eyes trailed
down over his thickly muscled chest and belly and then to his coarsely hirsute
groin from which his massive, gnarled sex rose arrogantly and pointed
obscenely at her face. Still, he did not speak or make any sound. Slowly and
awkwardly, he reached out toward her. Margo stood absolutely motionless,
literally frozen in terror.

Suddenly, a disgusting glob of viscous fluid spurted from his erect member and
flew directly at her face!

Margo jumped out of the way with a quickness and agility that she had thought
she long had lost. As she struggled to maintain her balance, both to avoid a
painful fall and a more painful back injury, she heard a high- pitched voice
call out pleasantly, "Trick or treat!" and then dissolve into laughter. The
torso's thick arms still hung from thick muscled shoulders motionless at his
sides.

Only then, she looked back at the 'male' and saw the thin thighs in peach
colored tights, shaded with black marker to resemble a male's body hair,
projecting incongruously from the thickly muscular torso. The legs were too
short for the torso as well as much too thin and the tights were not quite the
right color. Now that she could see, she saw that they ended in small magenta
tennis shoes instead of feet.

Margo shook her head. The disguise simply did not stand up to close
examination - not now at least. At first glance, though, it had been more than
adequate. She looked again and saw the thin line of stitches that closed the
belly. She saw the sharp lines that demarcated differing skin tones of his
neck and chest and belly and groin.

Every since the Revolution, males simply did not run about like this,
terrorizing women. The Hunt and ongoing culling operations kept males to less
than ten percent of the adult population. Those at large were carefully
monitored and knew their ultimate fate should they manifest any slightest
evidence of the historical male alacrity for violence.

Now Margo could put a name on it. "He" had simply smelled wrong. He smelled of
wild flowers. She had had little to do with males, but when remembered the
males that her mother kept in the pens on her ranch or thought of the young
ones whom some of her friends kept at home, she had never encountered one who
used perfume. Cleanliness alone was a rarely achieved accomplishment for
males.

Margo then looked up again and saw young Phyllis, the teenage daughter of her
neighbor down the street, lift off the heavy headpiece and laugh. Phyllis held
a grotesque mask by its ill-kempt hair in one hand and a rubber bulb in the
other.

She laughed until she lost her breath, her petite, fine-featured head
surmounting the large, ridiculously muscled torso. She coughed and gasped to
catch her breath. Her paroxysms did not conceal her beautiful cheekbones,
which were the envy of her friends. "I laughed so hard, Margo, I'd have I
pee'd in my pants, if I'd have laughed any harder!" she admitted, shaking her
neat pixie hair cut free of the odd shape imposed by the confining mask. The
base of the skull had rested on the crown of her head and she had somehow
peered out through the half-opened mouth.

Margo considered protesting that she had never been fooled, but decided that
she was unlikely to be very convincing.

"You weren't the only one I fooled!" Phyllis explained, seeing the ambivalence
on the older woman's face and trying to make her feel a little better. "Are
you mad at me? Please, don't be mad at me. It's Halloween!"

In truth, Margo was more relieved than angry. She tried to look outraged, but
she simply could not maintain her stern demeanor either. Finally, she laughed
aloud too. "Are you trying to kill a poor old lady? I almost tripped on my
manskin rug. No, I'm not mad at you. Just tell me who else you fooled.
Please," she pleaded, "help me win back some self respect?"

Phyllis smiled with pure glee without a trace of uneasiness and pointed to the
torso. "Bozo and I fooled just about everyone."

"Let me see your friend," Margo went on, now determined to share in the joke.
She reached out her hand to touch the torso's nipple. "Leather or rubber?"

"Don't hurt my feelings, now! He sure cost enough. A real male skin, stretched
over a styrofoam form," Phyllis answered. "See! In good light you can see
where they stitched up his belly." She ran the red point of her carefully
shaped nail over the line of stitches. "If you look carefully where the bikini
line would be, you can see where they sewed on the male apparatus. I don't
think that my Bozo was the original owner." She shook her head in mock regret,
then brightened. "He works well enough now with a little plastic plumbing, of
course, and gelatin." She squeezed the scrotum firmly, grimacing theatrically
with the effort, then milked the penis and pinched the glans to expel the last
dribbles and show of what she was speaking. She rubbed her thumb across the
pee hole and popped it in her mouth, "Gelatin! Vanilla gelatin."

"Here's a candy bar for your trouble," Margo grinned warmly, running her
finger over the fine line of stitches. "No, here's two, one for you and one
for your friend Bozo. Try that costume out on Ellen, next store. I hope that
she's got her nitroglycerine handy. By the way, did you see where that gob of
gelatin landed?"

" There, on your shoe. It'll wipe clean off without a mark." Phyllis allowed
after a moment's uncomfortable hesitation. "Happy Halloween!" Phyllis jammed
one candy bar in Bozo's partially open mouth and unpeeled the other. "Here,
Bozo will hold it for me!" She turned and walked out the door.

Margo decided to allow herself an hour to calm down before trying to go to
sleep. She returned to the comfort of her overstuffed easy chair beside the
blazing fireplace and wrapped herself tightly in her wool shawl. She picked up
her book and returned to her reading hoping to calm down before bedtime. She
just couldn't believe it. Phyllis had purchased that monstrosity. In her day,
her mother would have made her go out to the pen and pick out a jack. Then she
would have had to put down him and skin him herself. This younger generation
doesn't know how good they have it - buy him in a store! Three pairs of
unseeing eyes stared out blankly from three artfully preserved and mounted
male heads over the fireplace. In the coming year, Margo and her daughter
hoped to add a fourth.