Candy

(Before and after Leditor)

Ray sat by the front door, glancing through the window. The TV was on, as was the porch light and a few decorations outside. Nothing else was lit, so the house looked creepy.

And no one was knocking at the door.

"Why is everyone going PAST the house?" he asked. He took the King Kong helmet off of his suit and wiped sweat off his brow. He glanced down at Annie as he asked. She wore a blond wig and the clingy sacrifice dress Jessica Lange had worn in her Kong movie.

"I dunno," she said with a shrug. Something in her tone drew Ray's attention.

"What did you do?"

"What COULD I do?" she asked. She twisted a bit on her feet, glancing at the TV show. Vincent Price was doing something with Muppets.

"The mind boggles," Ray said. He glanced down at the bowl of candy. He'd laid in significant supplies since the neighborhood was full of children.

Annie had even promised not to sneak candy out of the bowl until after all the Trick Or Treaters had come and gone. If she behaved, Ray promised her at least 50% of the leftovers.

It was nearly 8:00 now, and no one had even knocked. Some shadows scurried past the front sidewalk. It's like the kids were avoiding their house.

"Did you unplug the decorations?" he asked.

"The outdoor plugs are a foot up from the ground," she replied. The tone was gone. Now she was confident in her answers. "Assuming that I could get out of the house itself, and survive walking around the Great Dangerous Out Of Doors, past the red ant hills and spider webs and so on, I'd need to get three body lengths up in the air, and have the leverage to pull a wall plug the size of a barrel out of the wall socket."

"Alright, alright," he muttered.

She played with her shell necklace. "If I could unplug anything, Ray, it'd be your damned alarm clock, not decorations."

"Noted," he said.

By nine o'clock, there weren't even shadows scurrying past the front yard. Ray gave up.

"Okay, what did you do?"

"I'm innocent, Master, she said innocently," in an apparently sincere voice.

"Amnesty," he said. "For full disclosure, and 40% of the candy-"

"You promised fifty!"

"Forty percent of what I bought is far greater than 50% of what I thought we'd have left," he pointed out.

"True," she admitted. "Okay. Did you know there's a national association of dentists?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well, if you call them and say that you want to hand out little toothpaste tubes on Halloween, they will send you a crate of the stuff."

"You haven't received any crates," he said in a low tone, almost a growl.

"No, but Mom has a key to your house," she said. His eyes widened. "And MOM already has Amnesty!" she added quickly.

"True," he admitted.

"ALL she did was accept delivery and bring me the box and let me out. Then she watched TV until it was time to let me back in and lock the door."

"That's why you stayed home today?" He rubbed his forehead. "So there's a box of little toothpaste tubes scattered on the sidewalk?"

"And little toothbrushes!" she said cheerfully. "They just threw those in!"

"And I always come into the house through the garage…"

"So you wouldn't see anything until well after the kids had marked our house as terra non-treata."

He glared for a moment but her expression remained cheerful. She had Amnesty, so any thoughts he had of punishments would never go past the daydreaming stage.

"You know," he said slowly. "There's a really good chance that could have gotten our house egged."

"Oh," she said, her smile fading.

"And I cannot punish you for the trick, but if we did get egged, you're going to clean it up with one of those toothbrushes."

"Yes, sir, she said, properly repentant."

"Yeah, well, don't ever do this again."

"It was a one-time deal, sir," she said.

"Well, of course," he said. "We're going to be 'the house of toothpaste' for-"

"And toothbrushes!"

"And toothbrushes," he agreed, "until all of tonight's trick-or-treaters forget or get too old."

"Really?" she asked as if surprised. He snorted and turned off the porch light. Then he took his little native sacrifice and the candy to the kitchen where he started sorting the haul. She watched patiently as he drew all the Almond Joys out first. He knew she hated those.

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There were almost no kids at the door for the next two years. The second year, Ray (dressed as one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge) handed out handfuls of candy, asking the kids to 'tell all your friends where you got them.'

Annie, dressed as Tonya Roberts' character from View To A Kill, stood on one of his cables and watched her share of candy deplete in a desperate attempt at getting good PR.

Something had to be done.

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And it was. The next year, Ray dressed as a castle tower. Annie was Buttercup from Princess Bride.

And no one came to the door…

"Honestly, Master," Annie said for the tenth time, "I didn't even write to any dentist association. I didn't scatter any toothpaste on the walk!"

Ray stared at through his arrow slits. "I should have walked the sidewalk before sunset," he moaned. Now, he could barely move in the costume and didn't want to wander around with a flashlight.

"Fine," he said with a shrug. She grabbed the rampart as she tower shook. Then he lifted the whole thing off and set it down by the bowl of candy. "What DID you do?"

She opened her mouth to protest once more. "Amnesty," he said.

"You know those little fundamentalist comic books people leave laying around? On shelves at the bookstore, or on top of toilets at the mall?"

"The Littering Missionaries," he said. "Yeah?"

"Well, you can order those for about 3 cents each if you get them in bulk."

"My mother would not stoop so low," he said.

"Of course not!" Annie said. "But you have to call Dad and tell him how it worked out."

"Okay, yeah, Dad would do that. In fact," he mused, "Dad probably scattered half the comics at their house, didn't he?"

"He laughed and laughed," she said with a smile.

"Okay," he shrugged again. "We'll tell him. After I get the camera." He pulled the camera case up from behind his chair.

"What, you're going to take a picture of the sidewalk?"

"No," he said, setting the flash. "I'm told Buttercup wants to see how you look as Buttercup. Smile for posterity!"

She smiled easily. She'd made sure Pet's mom was okay with the choice of costume well in advance. Just before he took the picture, though, he asked: "I wonder how her family will feel about using religious tracts for a joke?"

"Oh… I hadn't thought of that." And it was her slightly worried expression that was captured on film.



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