Trick and Treat, Losers

Dude, I fucked up so bad. Now I’m in the hospital waiting for the cops to ask their questions that I don’t even really know the answers to. Trying to help me get my story straight? Alright man, here goes nothing.

So, Ben and I got stuck working an overnight shift at the liquor store since Pops got the bright idea that trick or treaters might stop by throughout the night. We knew it was bogus, but the old dude had his heart in the right place. Ben was pissed. I didn’t care too much because I don’t really do shit anyway. Took it as a free soda kinda night.

I got a little stoned before my shift because I could only listen to Ben bitch and complain so much. “Why the hell didn’t you clean the bathroom?!” That was one of his daily gripes followed by a symphony of cuss words directed at yours truly. I just shrug my shoulders every time which really pissed him off. Never seen a guy turn so red.

Anyway, Ben and I were standing behind the register when this kid in a raccoon costume walked in all by himself. We both looked at each other, then up at the clock. It was fucking three in the morning on Halloween. The little raccoon kid stopped in front of the counter before dropping his big ass candy bag down in front of us. Ben, being the adult he is, went to go lay into the kid for being out so late, so I cut him off before he could say anything.

“What’s up little dude? You lost or something?” I asked, but the kid just shook his head. He pointed at the bathroom with his furry little hand, then shot his beady fucking eyes between us and his candy bag. I THOUGHT I knew what he meant.

Told him, “By all means, little man. Piss your furry heart away.” The little raccoon boy nodded his head, then went to the back where the bathrooms were. I looked over at Ben to see him beet red. I was just like, “What?”

Ben did that thing where he yells without yelling. You know, like talking through gritted teeth. “You invite an underaged child into our workplace bathroom, which is a liquor store for fucks sake, at three in the morning. What else would I be pissed about, Jay?”

I looked Ben dead in the eyes, and shrugged my shoulders. He lost it. Went out to the floor to start violently wiping the fridge windows while muttering his angry bullshit under his breath. That’s when I fucked everything up. The little dude was still in the bathroom and Ben had his back turned to me, so I took a couple suckers from the kid’s big ass bag thinking he wouldn’t notice.

Ben came back behind the counter before the kid got out of the bathroom. He took a bit longer than I thought and, “hope those geese didn’t give you a hard time in there,” came out of my mouth before I knew it. Ben just slapped his forehead, but I’m pretty sure he does that instead of punching me. The little raccoon kid didn’t say a word though. He just picked up his bag of candy, and walked right out.

That’s when I pulled out the candy I ‘borrowed’ from the kid. Ben asked where I got it from, and I just gave him the shoulder shrug. I could see the angry hamster running on that treadmill in his head slowly come to a stop. Instead of yelling he just shrugged his shoulders too, and said, “fuck it. It’s Halloween.”

At first I was excited. We both unwrapped the generic ass suckers, and tried to enjoy the rest of our boring night. Ben was the first to feel anything. He stared at me with pupils that looked like they held a small galaxy in each one. I was like, “ohhhhhhhh, these must have acid in them or something!”

Ben looked uncomfortable as hell talking about how I kept changing my shape. I wasn’t sure what he meant until I started to feel the shit myself. He went from being a light post, to a kangaroo, then he was a skinless banana man before he finally became a fucking candy dispensing machine. You know, like the ones you put quarters in and whatnot. I wasn’t too sure what I was turning into, but I ended up as a blue jay at the end of that wacky shapeshifting bullshit.

We knew we were tripping, well at least I thought we were. Ben was just a panicking mess. Took a second to help  get his marbles straight considering how hard it was to talk to him when all I could focus on was see through his glass head. Really tripped me out.

Ben looked like he was about to yack all the candy that filled his glass head. I told him, “go to the bathroom if you’re going to yack, dude. It’s not that serious.” He ran off covering his mouth, leaving a trail of hard fruity candy behind him.

Then it hit me. I forgot to tell him not to look in the mirror! I knew he hated it when I bug him in the bathroom, but I said fuck it. I ran over to try to catch him before he did it to see him staring at a fucking yellow pipe sticking out of the bathroom floor like the ones from that plumbing simulator. I wasn’t sure if people shared trips or not, so I didn’t say anything in case he was just.

“This crap real?” were the only words to come out of his mouth, and I knew he was seeing what I was seeing. I walked past him to get a better look at it. Even gave it a kick that hurt my damn long ass bird toe. I turned around, gave him the shoulder shrug.

We blankly stared at each other for a second. I didn’t know what he was looking at, but I was watching the candy inside his head swishing around every time he moved. Shit made me woozy before I started to peak again. Like, it felt like someone was flooring the gas pedal on my high at that moment.

Everything started spinning; the walls, the ceiling, Ben. His glass head started to melt as candy started pouring out of the slot where his crotch would be. I could hear him talking in a deep distorted voice with rainbow text inflating from his mouth as he spoke. “Might as well check out what’s inside while we’re still tripping, right?”

The words bounced off the walls like an old DVD player’s waiting screen until they knocked my ass to the ground. Those freaky words grew arms before stretching out my ear holes big enough so they could crawl inside. Like that, everything was back to normal except for ourselves who still looked all weird and shit. Ben was standing over me, repeating what he said as if it was for the first time.

“Might as well check out what’s inside while we’re tripping, right?” he asked while helping me up from that nasty ass bathroom floor. I said, “fuck it,” and we jumped in.

Now, I thought it was like that game. Jump on the hole of the pipe, duck and you get taken somewhere else. Dude, I was totally wrong. I climbed up on the pipe and fell straight down. It felt like I was falling for ages before finally crashing onto a ground that had hotdogs instead of grass. Yes, you heard that right. Hotdogs instead of grass.

I think Ben rolling down the pipe the way that he did kept him from getting hurt like I did. The first thing he did when he entered that weird fucking world was cover his face while pointing at mine saying, “your beak is broken.” Didn’t even notice the hotdogs between his metal toes. My first instinct was to touch it to see what he meant. He meant what he said.

My upper beak was barely hanging on with blood squirting everywhere. Then came the pain. I got up in a panic while Ben looked for something to…patch me up. I just remembered jumping up and down screaming. “Yo, you gotta help me, man! I never broke my beak before!”

He looked around at the trees made of licorice with random shit hanging from the branches. Some had toilet paper rolls, others had different candies or snacks, but the one he was looking at was covered in those gummy ants with assorted colors. He was like, “don’t panic. I saw this in a movie before.”

My candy machine co-worker held the ants to my beak until they bit down to hold it in place before he ripped their tiny little bodies off. It fucking worked though. We finally got our shit together enough to explore that weird ass place. Picked off pieces of the trees to eat them, laid on the ground to gnaw on the hotdogs for a while and even found a river.

The river wasn’t made of water though. As much as we wished it was. I got down so quick when we found it, and scooped up a handful into my mouth just to realize it was fucking motor oil. Ben thought it was the funniest shit in the world. Shit made me laugh too after watching his glass head spin around and around until some chattering caught our attention.

I thought I was peaking again because his head was backwards to the point where I was only able to see his eyes above the candy in his head on the other side of the glass, but we were so focused on where the chatter came from I didn’t want to worry him. That’s when we saw a group of ducklings floating down the motor oil river talking shit to each other. Now, I wasn’t sure how to address it, and good thing I didn’t have to. “Take a look at those two losers over there,” is what they said when they saw us.

We were dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say, and Ben just stood there with his backwards head so I wasn’t even sure if he was thinking clearly. One of the ducklings looked Ben up and down, then yelled, “I’m gonna smack your head straight!” The little dude jumped up to karate chop Ben across the back of his head! At least that’s what it looked like.

Ben’s head spun around until he caught it with his hands. His eyes rolled to the back of his head before he yacked all over them. It was gross, and the ducklings were pissed the fuck off. They started swinging at the both of us. Caught a karate chop to the beak, and all I could do was scream in pain, dude. That shit hurt so bad.

Ben grabbed one of the ducklings, and gave them the boot. Little dude skipped across the oil river while the others went to help him out. They all started crying before running off. Felt kinda bad, but it wasn’t my fault they were being little jerks.

The whole situation started giving Ben a bad trip. I tried to calm him down by trying to make him laugh. Picked a couple hotdogs from the ground, and started playing drums on his head with them. It was working until we heard a weird noise. We looked around to see nothing but licorice trees and cotton candy bushes.

Someone, or something was watching us from the cotton candy bush to our left. We could see orange and blue feathers poking out from inside the pink bush. “Don’t move a muscle,” is what came out of my mouth as if that was going to save us.

This greenish man in a loincloth popped out with a blowgun, yelling at us in mumbles and groans. He was wearing an orange decorated wooden mask with colorful feathers sticking out from the top. More and more of those creepy guys started popping up from behind the trees and stuff. We fucking booked it until we ran into a wizard in a blue robe playing on a red keyboard.

Ben started yelling at the guy. “Where’s a safe place to hide?!” The wizard disappeared in a puff of smoke with his keyboard dropping to the ground. I picked it up and felt the power.

I pointed to a cave out in the distance yelling at Ben, “dude, we have to make a break for it!” One of the dudes walked up to me with his hand out, so I busted him across his face with the keyboard. His mask went flying as he fell to the ground, screaming in their weird ass language.

Another came around trying to pry the keyboard from my hands. Good thing Ben was there. The candy machine man tackled the creepy green guy to the ground. I started beating the crap out of him to help out when I got hit by one of the hard candies they shot from their blowgun. It must have been spicy because it burned when it hit me.

I threw the keyboard at his face so hard that the dude fell back onto the ground. I jumped on top of him, ripping off his mask. The dude was so green he made me feel sick. I started shoving handfuls of hotdogs down his throat while Ben ran over and picked up the blowgun.

He was like, “don’t worry. I saw how these work on TV.” The rest of those weirdos started to panic. They kept ducking behind the pink bushes and the red trees to hide from Ben while he just pointed it at them yelling, “back the fuck off!”

A bunch of giant heads with only arms and legs popped out of nowhere. They were running around screaming on the other side of the river in what sounded like Dutch but backwards. I noticed I started peaking again when they sucked their skin into their mouths. Straight up puckered their lips and slurped that shit right up. They started screaming, making me scream, then bam!

Ben was shaking me while yelling at me. “We gotta get to the cave to patch you up, man!” I looked down to see a stream of confetti spraying out my side. Shit really tripped me out, man. Not cool.

We took off to the cave, but they didn’t bother chasing us since Ben had the blowgun. Felt like we ran for miles, man. We fell to the ground as soon as we stepped into that cave. Freaking slid into a bunch of ice sheets that ended up breaking on us. Damn things cut us the fuck up, but we couldn’t worry about it.

Two big ass chip trolls came out of nowhere! One straight up grabbed me by my wings, and started whipping me around. Good thing Ben had that blowgun because he dropped that dude. I was on my hands and knees catching my breath when I saw the other chip troll running up behind Ben.

I was like, “dude, behind you!” I threw a piece of ice at the foo’s eye just in time for Ben to move to the side, but the fucking thing grabbed him on his way down. I stomped that damn piece of glass into that fucker’s head before checking on my candy machine buddy. He was laying in the ice sheet, pretty banged up.

I helped the poor dude up off that crap before we just plopped against the candy wall to take a minute to collect ourselves. He had candy spilling out of his little door thing on his stomach like the hole in my side that was still leaking confetti. We both looked at each other, and just started laughing.

We started peaking again as soon as I thought we were about to sober up. I was trying to focus my eyes on the blowgun in front of me to keep everything from spinning. The blowgun got all sticky in my hands when I picked it up. I looked over at Ben who was all distorted again with his voice all deep and creepy and crap.

He was like, “be careful with that thing, man. You’re going to poke an eye out,” then burst into laughter. I did the same while swinging that damn blowgun around until I heard a loud clap, making me drop it to the floor. I think that’s when I finally started to sober up.

Shit kept going back and forth between my trip and reality. We were still in the gas station, and that blowgun was actually a big ass gun. Ben’s shattered glass head was spilling candy everywhere, but when I rubbed my eyes I saw his limp body laying next to me with his brains covering the shelves we were leaning against. Rubbing my eyes hurts so fucking bad. I gently touched my face to feel staples holding it together, man. Fucking staples!

Then, when I looked over to my right to see how fucked up my face was in the reflection of the window I saw a big ass dude laying in a puddle of blood on the floor. I kept telling myself I was still tripping out until I saw the door swing open. It was a fucking cop. Full on uniform with his sunglasses and everything.

He walked up slowly, snacking on a bag of chips and just stood there. “Rough night?” was all he asked. Like, what the fuck, dude? I didn’t know what to say, so I just shrugged my shoulders.

He was like, “figured as much. Well good thing I stopped by when I did.” He unbuttoned his shirt, and opened it up to show a huge mouth with his ribs as sharp teeth. The thing opened up with two tongues! One wrapped around Ben’s ankle while the other licked up the blood off the floor. It was so gross, man.

All while he just ate chips, and watched everything like it was a normal Tuesday or something. Ben was gone. Just like that. The cop closed up his tummy mouth before buttoning his shirt back up. He stuck a chip in his mouth, and said, “you should get that checked out,” before turning around to walk out the door.

That fucking little raccoon boy was standing in the window watching us the whole time. Little dude was smearing drool all over it like some sort of weirdo. Now that I think about it, I don’t think that kid was wearing a costume. Anyway, the cop walked out shooting the kid with finger guns. They started a handshake, then stopped when they saw me watching them.

They turned their backs to me to finish that ritualistically elaborate handshake, and a giant eyeball ripped through the fabric of reality right in front of them. They both bowed their heads before two babies crawled out from inside the bottom eyelid. The babies helped tuck in the little raccoon boy and the cop into the fucking eyelid they crawled out from before the eye closed and disappeared.

After that the babies pulled out cigarettes, then walked off having a conversation about whatever the fuck babies have conversations about. Clearly, I couldn’t stay there. I ran as fast as I could to the nearest hospital, and now we’re all caught up. Thank you so much for letting me trauma dump on you like that, dude.

You seem pretty stressed, so I think you’re good to head out now that I have my story straight. You’re the man, man. Little word of advice though. I’d watch out for that giant white ape thing that’s been skipping around the parking lot.

PS- Hope my love letter to J. G. Quintel’s work was just as entertaining for you as it was for me. Happy Halloween, losers!