A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous by ed. Shane McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

Christ do with that symbol? They took the egg, and…
    —Here is your innocence. Here is your unblemished whiteness. Let’s harden it with scalding water and then make it up with dyes and paints and bits of glitter and then we’ll break it open and peel away its alluring costume before we devour it whole.
    YOU DON’T WANT TO stain your pretty white dress. Take it off.
    ONE EGG DROWNED IN the blue dye and another soaked up green pigment like toxic waste. These were the last two. The once-white shells were now stained sickly pastels. After they dried, Sally would attack them with the glue stick and the glitter. She’d use the pre-printed decals and the paint pens to finish them off.
    Normally, decorating and hiding the eggs was Eric’s job. Sally had made it clear that she would have none of it, but this year Eric had pleaded with her. He’d been called into the hospital three days running and he hadn’t had the chance to decorate eggs for their daughter. Sally had insisted that the ritual was unnecessary, but the misery in Eric’s eyes and the sadness in his voice when he asked her to “please reconsider,” had clearly indicated how important the ritual was to him, so Sally had relented.
    Her eggs would never look as nice as the ones her husband made. He used crayons to create relief in the dyed color and expertly stenciled intricate designs. Eric made genuinely beautiful holiday eggs—a feat well beyond her capabilities. But she had to try. Despite her disgust with the holiday, she still wanted everything to be perfect for her daughter. Sally was just happy she’d remembered to use the wire egg ladle, paper towels and some latex gloves (a benefit of having a doctor in the house) so her fingers didn’t get decorated as well.
    The cracked egg nestled in a kitchen towel, unaccompanied. The broken thing rested alone, as if Sally feared its damage was contagious.
    Later in the afternoon, Mary would hunt eggs in the backyard of her grandmother’s house, along with her cousins and second cousins. As far as Sally was concerned, one hunt should have been more than enough, but Eric was a creature of habit. Traditionally, he gave their daughter a special gift at Easter, and this year was no different. He’d bought Mary a lovely silver bracelet and a cheap plastic egg in which to hide it. Since he didn’t want to take the chance of another child finding the prized egg and throwing a fit when they couldn’t keep the treasure inside, a pre-extended-family backyard hunt was his answer. The bracelet was yet another extravagance and something else Sally would have to keep track of. Mary was too young to understand the value of jewelry beyond the aesthetic pleasure of sparkling metals and glittering stones. The bracelet, like the earrings Eric had bought his little girl for Christmas, would go in Sally’s jewelry box to be issued to her daughter for special occasions.
    A little girl shouldn’t have to worry about losing such things.
    THE KITCHEN IS TOO hot. It is always too hot.
    Her mother and aunts race from oven to Frigidaire to counter to oven again. The air is honeyed with the scent of ham glaze and rich with the earthy scent of baking sweet potato casserole. Sugar cookies cool on wire racks. But the wonderful smells are tainted by the tangy stink of cigarette smoke. All of the grownups smoke, it seems. Aunt Sheila stirs the ambrosia salad. A cigarette teeters precariously on her lower lip as she scoops great spoonfuls of Cool Whip and canned fruit. Sheila’s husband sits in the corner; Henry adds nothing to the women’s babble. He smokes a cigarette of his own as he’d done in the side yard the night before, staring up through Sally’s window. With a penknife he cleans his fingernails and pauses only to ash his cigarette in the bulky glass tray on the windowsill.
    Sally tries to not look at the man. Every time she does, he is looking back at her, and his eyes still look fiery, his front teeth are still too large.