12. Shtick
or Conceit?
Algernon carried his bundle to the center
of the front lawn and dumped the contents. He set to work arranging several
inflatable Halloween figures. He plugged them in and Frankenstein’s Monster
towered above him. Dracula held his cape wide. The Wolf Man snarled. A witch
stirred her cauldron. He set up flood lights, and turned on eerie organ music
just loud enough to set the mood, Bach’s toccata and fugue in D minor. This
year he decided to attract some attention.
He went inside to dress. White face
paint first, then hues of gray to accentuate the hollows in his face. Blood red
surrounded his eyes and stained his mouth. His clothes were not those of any
typical zombie, tattered and stained. He wore an authentic Civil War Union
uniform jacket, a deep navy blue with the gold braid of a captain, purchased on
the internet. He grabbed a large bowl of
assorted candy and stationed himself outside, seated in front of one of the
flood lights.
There was no visible moon. The wind
was dead calm. Algernon waited in vain for any activity on his side of the
street. No costumed visitors approached. He stood, stretched, then staggered
toward the right, narrowly missing Dracula. He pressed his hand to his side in
response to sharp pain below his ribs. The wool of his coat was saturated with
blood. He searched the surface and found a musket ball hole. Alarm speared his
chest.
Algernon discovered that his legs
would not operate normally. He stumbled forward trying to keep his balance with
outstretched arms, all movement caught in the flood lights. A group of
teenagers across the way noticed his actions and sauntered over to watch the
show. His voice sounded like a croaking howl as he tried to summon their aid.
They laughed and murmured among themselves. He felt himself losing
conscious-ness. He heard applause as he landed face down on the dewy grass.
A neighbor called an ambulance after
she discovered that Algernon was unresponsive to her shouts over the fence.
Fearing some prank gone bad, she brought a blanket to cover him until help
arrived. She could not rouse him and turned him over on his side. She gasped at
the pool of blood beneath him. It was then she knew he was dead.
The EMTs rushed onto the scene. As
they lifted his body onto the stretcher the fabric of his coat began to fall
apart as if the thread of the seams had disintegrated. An EMT pulled away the
sodden cloth, which fell to the ground. They loaded the stretcher in the ambulance
and sped away. Algernon lay still under a dark covering.
The ambulance arrived at the
emergency entrance. The EMTs prepared to remove the stretcher and were
astounded to see Algernon sitting erect. His ghoulish face paint accentuated
his staring eyes. In emergency, the doctors could find nothing wrong with him,
despite the repeated avowals of the EMTs that they had seen a hole in his
abdomen that had caused him to bleed out. The doctors and nurses laughed
ruefully that they had been the object of a Halloween scam. The EMTs looked
ashen and felt an urgent need for strong coffee. Algernon asked for his uniform
jacket. More nervous laughter followed him as he left wearing an abandoned
hoodie.
At home, he could find no sign of
the Captain’s coat. The four lawn figures were all deflated, each with a small
hole in the front. A dark stain muddied the grass. Algernon grinned. He’d had a
fittin’ Hallows E’en.
(604 words)
(conceit
= an elaborate metaphor)
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