I. The Offering

“I just want to be a monster,” I said,
stamping my feet up the wooden stairs
slamming the door against my parents
who raised their voices higher than the hands
that they raised up to praise god. 

Instead, I handed out pamphlets in my Sunday suit
in front of our house, watching the other kids in costume
strolling by, staring, the sadness their eyes held for me,
that I cannot possibly know what they know:
the freedom and liberation of becoming a beast,
a witch, a skeleton, a monster, for a little while,
for a spell, for one enchanted evening.

But, there I sat, my parents on either side
like stuffy book ends, pressing
their one precious tome together, flat,
cover-to-cover, threatened that
at any moment I might just fall off the shelf
all together — take to the trees in screaming infernal ecstasy,
ride with the witch-souls whose brooms sweep stardust from clouds,
or cough up chthonic demons that carry me — eyes aglow with pumpkin fire —
to the streets, where I might disappear —  

An elbow to the ribs deposited me back into my seat
as one of the neighbor kids in the guise (under the guidance?) of death himself
stood across from me looming above the materials on display;
absurd things like “HOLLOWeen” and “SICK or TREAT!”,
offenses to the wild-haired gods whose voices sonify the cutting wind
on this day of feasts and merry-making. Then, an invitation.
A black-gloved hand proffered from the matching robes,
reached toward me, and, hidden within, a token — a handful of candy corn — 

One tremulous touch of the tempting sweets and my parents became shadows,
drawn through a dark curtain and ushered out of view.
The mid-autumn sun burned through the sky like a bubble on old film,
leaving behind the moon in it’s stead, beheld by a calyx of warm breath
dissipating on the abrupt chill of night air. 

Muted cries and laughter swelled up around me.
My own face lost among a-thousand-and-one masks,
swallowed like paper lanterns in an estuary of fog.
Only to surface in that place that is neither death nor dream —
where that which is ‘costume’ becomes flesh,
where that which was human becomes dust,
and thus, the creatures of Samhain emerge.

II. Through an Inverted Landscape

To float and to creep
and to whistle and to dream,
to fly and to dance
and to slither and to scream,
to frighten and to dazzle
and to cackle and to choke
to fizzle and to flicker
and to crawl and to croak.

A funerary parade spilled upon the world–a stirring abyss,
whose voices sowed riddles, jinxes, rumors, and myth,
who took to the winds, disappeared from my sight
as they stepped through the doors that opened to night.
They left me behind without sword, without wing, armor, or bone,
to wander the other, to tarry alone. 

It was then in my travels, on a candlelit road,
I was pulled toward a clearing where a great darkness flowed.
Careful and calculated, gentle and tragic,
he tended the fires of mischief and magic.
Formidable and tall, he beckoned without sound,
as his robes fell in waves all over the ground.

“Are you really him?” I asked. “The oldest one?
As old as the moon, as young as the sun?
Why pumpkins have their enchanted glow
when the lights are gone, and darkness grows?
The one from which we hide in disguises and tricks?
Whose scythe claims wheat with precision and quick?
The last punctuation in all that we do?
Is it you? Is it really you?”
“What is it that you want, child?” said Death,
unmoving, as I stood my ground, held my breath.
He stoked the logs — they burned onward without pall.
“Speak now, let your voice be the death knell over all.”

I held my gaze a moment, transfixed by the fire.
I spoke from the heart, my words felt dire.
“I just want to be a monster,” I said. The words came before thought,
and pressed wide my edges, they hammered and wrought.
“I want to run with the beasts, and laugh in the trees,
terrorize the lovers and inspire their dreams,
collapse into wonder and explode into sparks,
rain down on dreamers in strangeness and farce,
spook the old biddies that step over cracks,
and burst into ravens and banshees and bats.
I wanna be a monster from my foot to my ear,
cross my heart in All Hallows, and keep it all year!”

If a shadow could grin, Death did so, and laughed,
hoisted me up, and left me aghast.
He reached in his robes for a treat or a trick?
Then he proffered a candle and tilted the wick.
I held out my hand and he filled it with wax,
and covered the scars, the lines, and the cracks.
He set it just so in the midst of my palm,
whistled a trill that filled me with calm.
Lifted my chin, he called me by name,
took a deep breath and snuffed out the flame.

I awoke as I lay on the town’s jagged edge
and watched the stars shift from that rustic green hedge.
As the lights below twinkled in twilight effervesce,
I felt a strange stirring deep down in my breast.
Searching my mantle, I heard distant cheer,
for I knew once again ’twas the witch’s new year. 

The autumn wind gestured to the roads there ahead
yet I moved quite uneasy and muddled my stead.
Hand to my face, I found a carving in a gourd,
and my hands, they were bones, my eyes untoward –
each a flame that would flicker in its hollow in my head;
it was real, it was true, that which was, was now dead!
That feeling, once more, it stirred in my chest,
I sat down, inquired, and discovered a nest.
And a pipe tucked near, my calling, my wyrd!
Naught but a song to soothe little birds.
Strangeness my blood, my breath like a frost,
I took up my pipe to play for the lost,
to play for the broken – the kids of the night,
I got to my feet and steadied my sight. 

Slow was the march, unsteady the going,
roused by the murder that followed me crowing.
The streetlights all glowed and bowed as I went,
the strength in me grew, ’twas just as I dreamt.
I began to dance as I played down the street,
and on came running the ghosts in white sheets,
the devils, the angels, the witches, the ghouls,
the kings and the vampires in want of the fools.

I ran with the beasts, and laughed in the trees,
startled the lovers and inspired their dreams,
collapsed into wonder and burst into sparks,
rained over dreamers in strangeness and farce,
spooked the old biddies that stepped over cracks,
and burst into ravens and banshees and bats!
I played all the night for the strange ones unseen,
we were there, I tell you, and on each Hallowe’en.

[Silvatiicus Riddle was nominated for the 2023 Rhysling Award for his poem “Exulansis”, which appeared in the penultimate issue of Liquid Imagination. He’s a Dark Fantasy & Speculative Fiction Writer from New York City, that hosts a glaring of cthonic gods disguised as cats, a hoard of books, and all of his imaginary friends. He studied English and Literature at Kingsborough. He’s appeared in Abyss & Apex, Dreams & Nightmares, Enchanted Living, Spectral Realms, among others. You may find him on Twitter and Instagram @silvatiicus ]