7-13: Post Halloween Anonymous

Canis the werewolf and group moderator set up the punch and dairy, egg and gluten free cookies for attendees. He counted chairs surely twenty should be enough for all the monsters coming. After making sure there wasn't anything offensive like fake skeletons, jack-o-lanterns or crooked straw brooms, Canis opened the door.

He placed a sandwich outside the hotel ballroom that read "Post Halloween Group tonite 9pm-12am! Monsters, witches and ghosts only."

Within minutes all sorts of creatures filtered into the room. They socialized for a while and Canis had to howl to settle the room. "Welcome to Post Halloween Group, Winchester, Pennsylvania branch. My name is Canis White, I'm a werewolf. This is my seventh October as a Lycanthrope," he said.

There was a murmur of acknowledgement from the assembled supernaturals. Canis continued sharing. "The first Halloween after I was turned, I was so psyched to be a monster. It meant I didn't need to waste money on a costume. Well, as long as the moon was full anyways. By the second or third, I was tired of toddlers yanking on my tail. Parents making their kids cross the street on their Trick or Treat routes. It was painful! I may be a man-wolf but I still need love and acceptance."

"I'm so glad I found Post Halloween. Here I can mingle with others like me. Here I can be myself. Now, I'll open up the floor for anyone else who wants to share."

After the mix of applause, ghostly jazz hands and enthusiastic supportive ululations subsided; a young witch with a ferret walked up to the podium.

"My name's Helen. This little cutie is Binky, my familiar. This is our first Halloween since we discovered I was a hereditary witch," she said. "I was that kid, you know, the one who loved spooky stuff and Trick-or-Treat. Then I discovered I was a witch when I was sixteen and ascended. Like literally nobody told me. I was all 'OMG, what the actual heck? Mom, why didn't you tell me?' And mom was all 'we're a good Protestant family! We don't talk about your 7th great grandmother, Goody Hepsibah.' Seriously, thats so un-woke. Now I've had to find a coven on my own with zero help. And like I feel all out of place at all the moon rituals and at Samhain gatherings. I know literally nothing about The Craft. And all those Halloween decorations that look like brooms and witches crash into the ground? Totes offensive! So anyways, thanks for letting me share."

Helen almost ran into the large swarm of bats fluttering up to the podium. She shrieked "not my hair!" as they fluttered around her. They hovered around the microphone and with a puff of smoke, the swarm merged into one sharply dressed vampire in a tuxedo.

"I am John Smith and this is my four hundred and twenty-fifth Halloween."

There was quiet chatter amongst those assembled.

"Yes I am that famous John Smith, from Fort James, Virginia, long before it had become Jamestown. I became a Vampire during my captivity in Transylvania. It was Vampirism that freed me from the man who enslaved me. When people started begging house to house in England for food every All Hallows Eve, I thought it loathsome. People should work for their food, not scrounge and beg! It was a relief to come to the colony of Virginia. For a long time, we were too busy fighting or starving to note any holidays. I wasn't well liked but I helped those colonists survive. Then someone, not realizing I'm immortal, put gun powder in my boat and tried to blow me up!"

"Fine, I know when I'm not wanted. So I went back to London and wrote books until the time came where people started to get suspicious. In the mid 18th century, I faked my own death and moved to Pennsylvania—Penn's Woods as it was known back then. Things were grand until that death obsessed Edgar Allen Poe brought spooky back in the 19th century. Then the Irish brought all the Halloween traditions over here with them! No offense to any banshees or Leprechauns out there..."

A heavily accented voice piped up "None taken, Boy-o!" From somewhere in the audience.

"It's simply marvelous to be able to attend a meeting like this. I feel like a weight has lifted from my shoulders."

The meeting was going swimmingly. A swamp creature had just gotten up when somebody noticed a shocking interloper. "Is that a mortal human?" A re-animated corpse asked.

At the refreshment table an adolescent in a flannel shirt and ripped jeans loaded a couple of cookies onto a napkin. He was trying to figure out how to operate the ladle in the punch bowl when he finally noticed all the eyes staring at him.

"Oh hi!" The boy said. "Wait is this not a Halloween party? My bad, I'll just take my snacks and leave."

The teen casually walked toward the exit. In a blur, Canis got up slammed the door and locked the deadbolt. "I'm afraid thats impossible," Canis said.

Unconsciously, the boy dropped his loot. "What the—so like are you guys really monsters? Oh, man my mom's going to kill me. Please just let me go."

"Sorry, thats not an option," John Smith said. "Now that you know we're real, you have to join us. So choose, Werewolf, Zombie or Vampire? I'd go with the latter, we have good dental."

Prompt: "So how come Halloween is such a big yawner? I mean, do the demons just hate how commercial it's become?” —Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer