Love and Hate Halloween by Debra Anastasia

Ah Halloween. I have such a love/hate relationship with it.  It scares the shisters out of me.  And there’s free candy. I love anything free, but candy? I’ll wrestle a stranger for it. If it’s chocolate free candy, I’ll win.

Just the other day I stopped by a local cutesy craft store to help my daughter pick out a birthday present for a friend. These are my favorite type of stores during Halloween because all their holiday nonsense is cute. Like stuffed-black-cats-wearing-witch-costumes-and-scarecrows-with-button-eyes kind of cute. Plus, they have little bowls of candy lying around free for the taking! Or at least I thought they were free? Gee whiz, I hope I didn’t munch my way through their candy stock.

Oh well. Anyway, here my daughter and I were, being lulled into a sweet coma, smiling at the nonthreatening things, when BAM!

Out of the corner of our eyes we see a super scary, dead-head-shaped thing. It looked like it was out of a horror movie prop closet. It was all white with grippy skeleton hands, real greasy gray hair, and glass red eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it in stores. This sucker wasn’t mass-produced. It looked like it was lovingly hand-crafted by the Devil, the Loch Ness Monster, and Dracula.

My girl huddled into me as I pretended that I didn’t just almost poop my pants. I inched past the thing while watching it the entire time.  I was not trusting it at all to stay put.

When we finally made it up to the check out, the elderly lady there smiled, “Find everything okay?”

She began ringing up our little pile of happy birthday gifts.

“Yeah, I also found that scary nightmare thing you had waiting for me. And I hated it.” I took out my credit card.

“I know? Isn’t that thing horrible?” The grandma-type lady tisked as she wrapped the guinea pig stuffed animal with tissue.

At first, I was kind of pissed at the store for even having this thing, but now I had a bit of sympathy. This poor woman had obviously been cursed by a witch or had been held at gunpoint to be forced to display this atrocity in her formally quaint, cute store. As she bagged my items I waited for her story, nodding.

“I went to a yard sale and my son wanted a black light. The person wouldn’t sell us the light unless we took that thing too.”

Then she giggled.

She giggled.

Isn’t that precious? I wanted to choke her out. I wanted to get all up in her face and explain with a little extra spittle that my daughter would be awake for the next FOUR years because of that crazy piece of scenery. I wanted this lady’s phone number so I could call her and she could explain to my girl that the hunk of rubber and glass was fake at 3:30am every night until 2015.

But then she did something magical.

She said: “Free chocolate?”

And I said, “Why, don’t mind if I do.”

She pulled her basket of Hershey’s away and said, “You can have two pieces if you take that horrible decoration with you.”

I looked from the chocolate to my daughter’s terrified face.

And I did what I had to do.

I went back and got Bob, our brand new realistic Zombie bust.

I’m the author of Crushed Seraphim, a novel about a cursing angel who has to save the world. I’m currently writing the sequel to the series. One of the commenters to this post will get a free e-Copy of Crushed Seraphim and Bob, the scariest nightmare ever found in a craft store that also sells Yankee Candle and Webkins.

Okay, not really Bob. You didn’t think I would subject myself to that thing up close and personal, did you? Plus, I do like sleep on occasion, so the daughter needed not to see that thing riding home next to her in the minivan.

I moved faster than the old woman, took the candy, and booked it out of her store with my girl and our purchases! The storekeeper may have tricked me, but I’ll be damned if I don’t get my treats.

Happy Halloween and a huge thank you to Annie at Paranormal Romantics for having this amazing blog event!

~Debra

Link to Crushed Seraphim : http://omnificpublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21&products_id=50

Crushed Seraphim on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Crushed-Seraphim-ebook/dp/B0051AN6BO

YouTube Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oifs13WO9AY