All Hallows E'en

  It’s All Hallows E’en and the witches are dancing, they’re leaping and cackling ‘round the dark crimson flames…

  “Louie, be quiet!” Poppy shouted at her little brother, accentuating her order with a shoe thrown at the door.  The eight year old’s cackling laugh faded away quickly as he ran back down the hall.  Poppy groaned and flopped down backwards onto her bed. 

  Her brother’s song was appropriate, at least.  It was Halloween, a Halloween like the sleepy little town of Willington had never before seen.  A strange wind blew through the streets, stripping the dry leaves off of the trees and whirling them into little spiraling eddies of air.  Swing sets creaked eerily and old trees cast dark, frightening shadows onto the ground.  Even the sky seemed to have joined the Halloween celebration, bathing everything in a strange green glow and bearing down on the townspeople with an unearthly pressure.  It was just the sort of night in which a coven of witches might convene in the woods.

  I won’t be going trick-or-treating tonight, that’s for sure, Poppy thought as she peered out the window from her position on the bed.  That morning, after eagerly trying on the genie costume her mother had made for her, she had thrown it across her desk chair.  There it still lay, the plastic red stones that had been lovingly attached to her headband looking frighteningly like spying eyes, reflecting the odd light from outside.

  Why was she so nervous?  Poppy wasn’t the type of girl to become anxious about silly things; she had learned long ago to take the bad things as they came.  As a cloud skittered over the setting sun, however, she still found herself looking nervously out of the window. 

It’s All Hallow’s E’en and the witches are dancing…

  The door suddenly opened and Louie appeared in its outline in his pirate costume, still singing his creepy Halloween song.  A hollow plastic jack-o-lantern hung from his wrist.  “You’re not even dressed yet!” he cried, and Poppy sighed in relief at the sudden break from her brother’s song.  “We’re going to  the Miller’s house so we can go trick-or-treating with Greg and Sarah.  We’re leaving in ten minutes.” 

  “I’m not going trick-or-treating at all,” she answered.  “Now get out of my room.”

  Louie narrowed his eyes at her and then ran off, shouting for their mother.  Poppy groaned as she heard her mother trudge up the stairs and knock quietly on her doorframe. 

  “I don’t want to go trick-or-treating tonight, Mom.  I don’t feel well.”  She saw her mother eyeing the genie outfit she had worked so hard on, and quickly added, “I can still wear your outfit to my school party tomorrow.  That’s where everyone will see it, anyways, tonight I’d have to wear a jacket over it.”

  Her mother nodded resignedly, giving up.  Only a few minutes later, Poppy heard the car start and drive down the street.



  An hour later, Poppy sat in front of the fire’s red glow, wondering why she had been nervous for her induction.  This was where she belonged.  Even as she thought this, an elder witch beckoned her to join the dance, and she rose, ready to leap about the dark crimson flames.

  It’s All Hallows E’en and the witches are dancing…



Word Count: 149