95. Michael’s Freudian Halloween Party

 The Halloween party Michael gave this year is referred to by those who want to recall it as the Freudian Halloween Party. But before I explain why, I will start at the beginning.

First to arrive at the party were the black cats. Some were real black cats and others came costumed as such.They came from everywhere and there were about five hundred of them. A bowl of fresh cream awaited each cat. As guests, they were very decorative.

                  

Next to arrive were Heather and Thistle. They came as little ghosts, tugging a wheelbarrow  loaded with delicious cookies they had baked for the event. The white sheets under which they hid sometimes got caught in the wheels of the wheelbarrow, but they reached their destination without accident.

Fiona had arrived much earlier than my sisters because she was the official caterer. Because she and her sister were no longer practicing vampires, they decided it would be funny if they came as famous members of their species. Fiona was Dracula’s relative, the Countess Dolingen of Gratz, wearing her hair up in curls and a hoopskirt and a pearl choker and earrings.

      

Dark, jade-eyed Branna looked very beautiful too, dressed as the English post-Elizabethan vampire Sarah Kenyon. Her pet dog, Arcane, came as Sarah’s pet wolf.

The twins’ parents also played on the vampire theme. They came as Lady Adelina Ducayne and the doctor who kept the French dame eternally alive.

            

Aislene’s make-up made her look as if she had aged gracefully, but for some reason her elfin ears kept slipping out of her blue velvet hood. Perhaps this was because the local gossips had come disguised as garlic bulbs on a string.

The gossips were mainly concerned that night with maligning Fiona. Her sudden ascent to luxurious spa owner had provoked their envy and their envy had in turn provoked their animosity. Salty’s disappearance in strange circumstances gave them an excuse to murmur Fiona was an equalkiller, a magical being who has neutralized another magical being. They are not always well considered.

                       

           

Mrs. Parry had come as the ghost of a walled up woman. Only her hands and her head were visible, the rest of her costume was of very authentic looking cardboard bricks.

Perhaps because walls have ears what the gossips had to say soon reached her. Ah, but the doyenne of fairy society was more than willing to defend Fiona. She was the spa’s most faithful client, having found there comfort for her bones and her nerves. And she had reason to like its new owner better than the former. The pirate Boogerbeard had gifted her son Henny with a lamborghini only to spite her for not promoting his casino. Hence, Mrs. Parry was delighted that this bogeyman had been destroyed.  

“Don’t you worry, child. I am who controls society here. And I will tell you what you must do.”

“But there’s more...” whispered Fiona, who felt she ought to tell Mrs. Parry about the baby found in the magic oven, whom she had kept as well hidden in her home as the Salty biscuit in the safe. But before she could, Mr. Binky interrupted them, decided to help her too, more than relieved at the pirate’s demise himself.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Parry, but I have to ask Fiona something really important. Fiona, if I ever found a police corps, would you like to be the chief of police?”

“I?” replied Fiona. “But I  faltered when I could have saved Salty Boogerbeard.”

“Precisely,” nodded Mr. Binky.

Mr. Binky had not come dressed as a vampire, doubtlessly to avoid being the butt of trite jokes because he was a politician. Although he was not a big eater himself, he had quite a few semi-human false friends with unsatiable appetites. Hence he opted for Frankenstein’s creature.

It was at about this moment that my parents arrived, fashionably late to make a grand entrance.

Oberon came dressed as a black spider. His web was a huge marshmallow-like sweet. He invited everyone to pull pieces of it and eat them. They were delicious, and appropriately sticky.

My mother’s spies had told her what he would come as, so to disgruntle him she came dressed as a black widow spider. She wore a magnificent hourglass-shaped ruby on her breast. The butterflies and bees and ants and leaves trapped in the silk thread web on her back with little jet spiders waiting on the edges of it were made of marzipan and could be eaten too.

  

Mum and Dad bumped into each other and their webs became entangled. And before they could break loose I emerged from within the hollow of a tree where I had been waiting silently.

"Now or never!"