When you were a child, you loved Halloween. The autumn and Halloween were wrapped together in near-perfect harmony. Hot apple cider, carving pumpkins and baking the seeds, haunted corn mazes, picking out a ghastly latex mask at the seasonal Halloween store. And of course, your favorite thing of all: Trick-or-treating. The treasure chest you’d fill with candy of all shapes, sizes, and colors. The way each candy brought a sense of excitement to the world around you. Reminded you of the bright future that lay wide open ahead. It was all so wonderful and simpler in those days.
But as you grew older, the season began to lose its luster just as quickly as the 31st of October approached on the calendar. What you perceived as important to your life gradually changed, and trick or treating became something of a relic as you blindly careened through your adolescent years, more focused on getting high and getting girls. Then, all the cracks in your time and attention got filled in with deadlines, as you started working and all your friends went away to college.
Your life became composed of an endless stream of senseless motions and rhythms. You fell into a pattern with a woman you’d known for a long time, more out of habit and comfort, but you didn’t openly admit this to yourself. You told yourself you loved her, but it was so much easier to convince her of that. Time passed as though you existed in a void. Soon you were just as much a part of her family as she was of yours. Your individual idiosyncrasies melded into one. It was far too late for a clean break. And soon she began pressuring you into getting married.
Eventually, you gave in, and you dragged yourself through the same boring routine, a deep wagon rut created by countless others and propped up by the world of social media. They asked you what kind of ring you got, and how you proposed. You didn’t really care. She wanted to hire a professional photographer for engagement photos. You didn’t care about that either, but you said yes anyway because it was easier than arguing. She wanted the photos taken at some tiny parcel of nature preserve surrounded by the encroaching suburban nightmarescape in which you lived.
You had no one to talk to and no one who would understand. If you did express your true feelings, they would ask: Why did you let yourself get to this point if you were so unhappy? Your answer would be that it happened so gradually and so quickly at the same time, and now that you were here, you may as well have asked her those four enchanting words and figure the rest out later. And that is just what you did.
But no one asked you how you got here because they didn’t know how you felt. They knew that you proposed to her in a pumpkin patch shortly before Halloween, and that it was nothing short of marvelous, especially because Halloween was her favorite holiday. They only looked at the first three of the fifty engagement photos your new fiancé posted on her social media page, as each one was just another iteration of her unsubtle ring finger placement at the center.
A year later, you got married following the standard procedure. The Best Man and Maid of Honor speeches were like stock photographs found on the internet. There was minor drama involving two ex’s who were both invited to the wedding, which led to a small but sensational spike in gossip among the wedding guests. But it was all very boring. The reception venue, the food, and the DJ were all just okay. Your brother-in-law got too drunk, but otherwise there were no major mishaps. Everyone was so happy for you, and behind your smile at the head table was a searching glance for any possible exit angle.
You got a stable job, took on a mortgage, leased a car, and your wife got pregnant. Professional pregnancy photos ensued. The newborn looked like an alien in a jar, as most do. People told you he was cute, and you knew they were lying. Still, you loved the child. Now you would stay in this marriage, but only for the child. It would only be 18 years, then you’d be free again and still somewhat young. Then you could backpack around Southeast Asia as you’d always dreamed.
A year passed in what felt like a day or two. Then another few years. The kid was growing up and that part was incredible. Everything else was misery. You did Disney World with the family in matching Mickey Mouse outfits, and little pieces of you died and fluttered away like the autumn leaves. You participated in social media challenges where you filmed yourselves dumping buckets of cold water on each other and nominated your parents-in-law to do the same, your shared cultural narcissism eclipsing whatever group of tremendous sufferers you were supposedly trying to build awareness around. The two of you had couples’ dinner parties where you discussed vacuous topics at length and listened patiently to the male cohort of the group comparing dick sizes over who got himself out of a more dangerous mugging scenario while traveling in a third world country. You’d heard these stories before, and the details seemed to creep toward ever more fantastical heights with each new telling.
You and your wife argued about everything from sex to financial decisions, from why you weren’t proactive about buying a shoe rack to why you didn’t keep said shoe rack organized once you bought it. Then your wife wanted another kid, but you didn’t want to extend your prison sentence under any circumstances. You argued back and forth. Time simply bled and you just wanted to disappear into the garage and find solace in strumming away tired tunes on your guitar.
Then suddenly you met someone, a waitress named Candice. She was also a part-time community college student. She wanted to be a millionaire influencer one day like her social media idols. You didn’t know what major that would equate to. You went along with it because she was attractive and perky in all the ways your wife was now becoming saggy and drab. You would make any concession for what she had between those two long and flawless legs. You were in love. Was it love? Or was it just infatuation/lust/desire? It’s everything, you said to yourself. You lived for her now. It was still early, but you had a good feeling about this one.
There was only one hang up.
She didn’t know you were married. You somehow managed a great juggling act. You were a busy man, you’d say, implying some importance to your career that in no way existed. You told her that you came to town frequently for work. The waitress had no idea you lived just one town over from her, and with your family, no less. You were living a dual life that was both exhilarating and anxiety-inducing, but at least you were finally feeling something. Who knew where all of this was going? It felt good to abandon convention. Did you dare use the word freedom?
Then it was Halloween time again. You no longer loved the season, as it reminded you too much of your wife. But you were in love with this amazing younger girl with whom you had so much in common. A month in and you hadn’t had a single argument. Your wife, by contrast, argued with you every day about stuff that no longer interested you. The newest argument was about gathering her family and your family together for a fun outing at the pumpkin patch over the weekend.
“You remember,” she said, “Where you proposed to me?”
You had meticulously planned an excuse that day so that you could go see Candice in secret. Now you had to tell her that you couldn’t see her, something came up with work.
You went to the pumpkin patch with your family, your parents, your sister’s family, as well as your wife’s parents and her brother and his family. Being with all of them was dreadful. It took all your energy to feign the slightest interest. Instead, you tuned out and thought of Candice. She was all you could think about. The only bit of oxygen left in the coffin you called your life. Your mind flickered to the fantasy of what you could have been doing in that motel room with her right at that moment. You thought about it while all of you were posing for a family picture at the pumpkin patch, slowly feeling the tingling in your groin.
“Smile,” your wife said to you.
“I am smiling,” you said as your sultry thought-bubble disappeared.
“Like you mean it,” she said.
You thought to yourself: That’s it, I want a divorce.
After the dreadful family picture, your wife wanted to take a hayride. You resisted. She insisted. You relented. As you approached the hayride depot, you saw Candice with one of her friends standing at the end of the queue. Your stomach herniated into your chest. You violently wanted to pull away and run like a frightened horse, but your wife and child were already walking ahead of you, and your mother-in-law was hobbling just behind you with her bad knee. You were desperate, but you resigned yourself like the gazelle in the jaws of a lion because you were in shock. You knew what was about to happen and it was a fate worse than death.
“Jim?” Candice said.
“Hi, Candice,” you replied. You thought to yourself: Is this rock bottom?
“You know this girl?” your wife asked.
“Oh, my God,” Candice said in her moment of realization. “Oh, my God. Is this… Is this your WIFE… and your SON?”
Defeated, you replied, “Yeah.”
“This is the guy you told me about?” Candice’s cute friend said to her in an audible whisper.
Somewhere deep in your brain, for a fraction of a second, you lamented that a threesome with her and her cute friend was now completely out of the picture.
Your humiliation reached a fever pitch because you forgot in your panic that your mother-in-law was behind you, and she had just caught up.
“And this is my mother-in-law, Janet,” you said as the poor woman entered the mess you yourself created, thus shattering all integrity that your in-laws once perceived of you. You realized then that, no, this was rock bottom.
*
You tossed everything upside down. Home life would never be the same, for however much of it remained. If you thought you were a prisoner before, you’d have to think again. Halloween arrived two painful weeks later. The state of your marriage was ugly. Your sister did you the kindness of taking your son with her kids to go trick-or-treating, but she hated you now. Your brother-in-law was talking about putting a price on your head, but you weren’t so worried about that because he was one of those guys who would sit on his riding lawn mower all day, baking in the sun, and making up excuses as to why he didn’t become a U.S. Marine to protect his country against so-called terrorists.
As for Candice, she was gone from your grasp. Vanished from your dreams. Blocked your number. She would forget about you before long. Other, far shinier guys would come along and replace you.
And your wife was acting strangely normal after several days spent seething with rage. You didn’t like her new normal because you had difficulty interpreting it. Just the other day she smashed your acoustic guitar and the glass dining table. Funny you didn’t feel any guilt until the moment you were caught, and she knew it.
*
“You are only sorry because you got caught,” she said.
“I was wrong,” you said. “Please forgive me.”
“You’re a piece of shit,” she said.
You knew she was right. And at the same time, you wanted to hold on to some small piece of your dignity.
You said, “You know, the problems in our marriage are not just my fault.”
You could see you were starting to go too far, but your emotions were flaring.
“You never give me any freedom!” you shouted. “With Candice, I could be myself. With her, I wasn’t suffocating.”
What you said negated your apology, and your wife knew this too. She held all the cards. And now the dining table was splintering into several million pieces, and your “little” guitar was next.
*
But tonight was different. Tonight, she was calm. Was this the calm after the storm or, conversely, the eye of the hurricane?
“Are you getting hungry for dinner?” she asked.
“Um, yeah, I guess,” you replied.
“I’ll put together something for us.”
You wondered if perhaps she was trying to make amends.
Trick-or-treaters rang the doorbell. You answered. For a moment, you forgot about the tumult in your life as you handed out candy one-by-one to the three costumed children.
“Let’s see,” you said. “We have a witch, a jack-o’-lantern, and a skeleton! How scary! Here you go. Happy Halloween!”
You were extra generous handing out candy into their little pails, obliquely aware that you were saying a fond hello-in-passing to a former version of yourself, like that fleeting dream you always had of meeting yourself as a child. There was so much you wished you could say to these kids about their bright futures, but they were off to the next house in the blink of an eye. You took from the bowl a few pieces of candy for yourself and ate them. They tasted different than when you were a kid because your palate had changed, but you ate them anyway to help alleviate the bitter taste left over from this whole pathetic affair.
Dinner was ready. You and your wife ate on the kitchen counter now that the dining table was obliterated. You didn’t have much of an appetite, all things considered. The tension in the room was occasionally interrupted by surprisingly light conversation. Maybe you were making headway. Maybe there was some way to pick up the pieces. She had always been reasonable overall. Perhaps she understood that it was not just your fault that everything ended up this way.
After dinner you reclined in your chair in the living room, idly watching a horror film on television. You remembered this one from a long time ago. It was about an insanely ambitious individual who came up with a deranged plan to kill off all the kids in America on Halloween night. You couldn’t concentrate on the movie because you were glowing with shame, even in your own home where only a month ago you felt safe and comfortable. Now you were that cockroach whose rock roof was overturned, leaving you exposed to the world.
Your son came home at 8 pm. Your sister didn’t come inside. You continued to watch the movie to its dismal and nihilistic ending, where the protagonist fails to hinder the villain’s sinister plot, and thus, all the children in America were going to suffer and die.
You heard your son’s bag of Halloween candy being poured onto the kitchen counter and your wife saying, “Ok, Honey, let me check your candy.”
After a moment she said, “Looks good. Why don’t you go say goodbye to your dad and get ready for bed?”
The bottomless pit in your stomach deepened; she was planning to throw you out of the house.
“Can I have another piece of candy?” your son asked.
“You’ve had enough for one night. Tomorrow.”
“But I want it. Why can’t I have it?” You heard your son’s voice trailing off in exquisite pain, almost like a death-cry. “CANDY!” he shouted again in anger.
“Just like your dad,” your wife sighed. “Wants his candy, while your poor mom is busy taking care of the both of you, the house, all the boring stuff so he doesn’t have to worry about anything, so he can go off gallivanting with some slut who works at the Golden Egg.”
There was real rage in her voice, and it unsettled you. Your son ran to his room in tears after being denied more Halloween candy. Things were quiet again and you didn’t dare break the silence.
Your wife came and sat on the arm of your chair. She offered you some Halloween candy. A curated selection of your favorite candy bars as a kid, in bite-sized portions. You just had that candy before dinner, but you couldn’t possibly turn it down given the situation at hand.
She watched you eat the candy. It tasted even worse than before.
You both sat in silence for a long time, and you waited for her to make the next move. You knew it was coming, that you’d be packing your bags before the night was over.
Finally, your wife took your hand. Some irreparable change occurred. Her pupils were two black holes. Something was wrong.
“All is forgiven,” she said with a smile of relief. And then you knew it was too late to go back and change any of it.
*
It turned out that death was anticlimactic like just about every other major event in life.
The most frightening thing was letting go, but your brain was too preoccupied with dying to pay much attention to the fear. You were cold and perspiring, the pressure building up as if you were sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Every alarm in your body went off at once. The agony stretched on like the centuries. Then, suddenly, clarity: this was your life. This was your brief spark that connected two infinite stretches of nothingness. You enjoyed some of it. Some of it mattered. Then, none of it at all. Everything you held in your head and carried close to your heart amounted to nothing more than dog food.
Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Whiskey Tit, Call Me Brackets, Maudlin House, HAD, Carmen et Error, Bending Genres, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. You can read more at www.eliotsku.com
