a halloween ritual.

The trucked creaked and groaned as it dragged him down the road. He scratched at the wisps of hair on his chin, graying and thinning. His fingers cracked and popped and the truck's muffler did the same. They were identical and that pissed him off. Rain could bounce off the hood and it remind him his hair will be gone soon. He hated that. Ten years and it would start falling out. He rubbed his eyes and stretched the crow's feet on his eyes back before releasing it back into place. Everything was a sign of his age.

Outside the sky was filled with rain and gray and looked like hair falling out of a skull. He tired of this association. If the sky split open and revealed the orange burst of apocalypse, he'd die with a smile on his face, because he would see color before he died. Vibrant and vivid. Unlike his life.

He looked over his shoulder into the bed of his seventies era truck. The black bag roughly the size of a large dog was starting to show signs of absorption and he needed to pull over to the side of the road to protect it. He couldn't let the child's corpse spoil before he got a chance to let the blood. Elizabeth Bathory didn't go out of her way to right the exact instructions for how to preserve youthfulness so that he could fuck it up. Oh his wife would be so upset with him if she knew.

The car scratched across the road as he pulled to the side of the dirt. Falling out of the driver's side, he half-ran half-walked to the passenger's seat and opened the door. He lifted the bag up on the side and it fell from his hands, the weight pulling the body out of his hands. He cursed in wisps and climbed into the truck bed. With a couple of awkward shuffles and ten minutes wasted, he had brought the body to leaning out of the bed and throwing up from the flu. Then the bag hit the ground with a thud and his teeth ground against each other. That would leave and unnecessary mark. It could ruin the ritual. Another ten minutes and the body was half-seated half-falling, but nonetheless inside the cab.

Quickly, he shuffled back into the cab and pulled back onto the road. There was a time line he had to follow he needed to get the barn so he could start letting the blood before he was old and the girl decayed. He had thirty minutes and not one of them could be spared. Breathe grew precious.

The clouds above him ripped open and dumped rain onto the windshield worse than going through a car wash and he would blame god if he believed in him. Cursing he pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. The paper slightly moist and he fumbled for a lighter while straining to see through the windshield. The dirt was turning to mud and he struggled with the wheel to remain in control of the truck. The Chevy was the only thing that stayed with him through time.

He cracked the window open to flick some ash out the side and put the cigarette back between his lips and grabbed the wheel with both hands. The barn appeared on the horizon and he knew it wouldn't be long now.

Please don't fuck anything up along the way.

He leaned forward and the rain's intensity increased. The speedometer's needle leaned right and the wheels spun through the mud flinging it behind the truck. So close now. He could get started. He wouldn't worry about being old. His mind would be on the ritual. He could enjoy those few hours. All the worries would fade. The wife, gone. The thinning hair, gone. The thoughts, gone. The cow in front of the truck, gone. Cow?

He didn't have enough time to react. The cow's carcass flew up into the windshield and cracked it in open, shattering glass into his face and onto the bag. The carcass unaware that it was dead, flapped its lower jaw and the truck swerved in the mud and rolled over. The old man grasped at his eyes and wouldn't let the sockets go even when his throat was cut by a shard of glass during the roll.

The truck laid upside down in the ditch and his tears fell off his forehead and onto the ceiling of the cab. He failed. His wife in the wheelchair at the barn would die, because he couldn't perform the ritual in time, not with this body. He released his belt and fell onto the bag.

Unzipping the bag, the blond hair of a seven year old girl appeared and although he couldn't see it anymore, he could touch it. He touched the face of the young girl and tried to remember her face while unzipping his pants. The flames of hell raising around his body and he knew the heat deserved. The passion forbidden and he lowered himself into the bag. He gasped, the last of his breath pushing through the windpipes and his blood matting in the dead girl's hair. She'd die, that bitch of a wife, always reminding him about his age. Making him perform the rituals, killing innocent children. She deserved it and he smiled.


The rain stopped and although the sun didn't shine the jack o'laterns would grin.




HAPPY HALLOWEEN! another halloween, another halloweenie story.