SAMHAIN

Every year I'm the zombie.  I get tired of it, but as they point out, I'm tall and have a slight twist in my back that makes me loom in a sinister way.  Lily is the vampire, type cast also, but she seems to relish it. She looks beautiful in her red dress, her black hair flowing down.  James is our axe wielding ghoul and Alice with her crooked nose and piercing eyes is the witch.
"Are we ready?" she asks us and we nod.

At precisely midnight we hit the street to blend with the raucous students and the shop girls who've been wearing their fancy dress and drinking cider all day.  We don't stay among them, we are looking for a fancier place.
"It's this way," says James.
"I've looked forward to this," Lily adds.
We enter and walk by the concierge who doesn't even look at us.  The carpeted corridor leads to the lift and the lift takes us to the penthouse.  We knock on the door and hand the youth that answers a bottle of wine, he invites us in immediately.
"See anyone you know here?" Alice asks with a low chuckle.
I nod smiling, thinking how funny it is that they're having the same conversations.  Jason Derrin is discussing property with Phillip Timpson in the usual Derrin versus Timpson portfolio competition.  There is Caroline Bundy on and on about the yacht her Daddy has bought her.  The Bundys always spoiled their children.
"Hey!" she cries coming over to me, "that severed head you're carrying looks real!"
I put it carefully on the table, reach forward with both my hands and snap her neck before she can protest.  Then I turn on her friend.  Screams and cries fill the room, but no-one comes.  Lily is flying about, tearing throats with her teeth and James is cutting heads with his axe.  Alice has done her part, her magic has sealed the doors, no-one can get in and no-one can get out.

I remember being a lad and asking Cora Bundy to play with me and she refused because I wore rags, was poor, was not good enough.  I recall Josh Derrin running poor Lily down with his horse when she stepped in the road to beg for money to feed her children and how Paul Timpson accused Alice of being a witch when she'd refused his advances.  Off to the gallows she had gone, her family having to pull at her legs to end her suffering.

It's funny how so little changes, money stays in the same families and guising still gets done, although they call it trick or treating now.  What they call Hallowe'en is Samhain to us, the night when the partition falls away and the dead come from the dark.  Tonight we came looking for the blood of those that hurt us and we found them the same as they've ever been.