It seemed that the other partygoers had also taken notice of the thing’s sudden appearance, as many huddled together and witnessed my approach. It lifted its magnanimous head, bigger than even my own bulbous invention, and acknowledged my presence. “Are you here for the party” I said, “or just dropping by?”

The thing had to rev up its response, and the sound of cicadas began to reverberate from inside its maw. “Hello,” a chattering voice arose, with a pitch and cadence moderately high and steeped in arrogance, “we are here for the party, yes, but we have yet to sense one in this pitiful hovel.”

Closer now, I could see that the outfit was even more elaborate that I could have imagined. In the pit of its mouth were dozens of barely visible, rubbery eyes. Obviously, a person’s head would have to be in the chest with accordance to the height, but some black mass, slightly undulating with the eyes, had to be hiding something. I could now see that there were many membranous black fibers overhanging its spruce teeth, and as they vibrated with each syllable I supposed that some sort of speaker system was hidden in the head.

“Well of course it isn’t a party without you,” I said, “What did you expect leaving me here to do it all?”

“No,” the fibers began to vibrate, “we suppose very little may be expected from the strawberry.”

What the hell Garrett? I thought, how could you say that to me? “Well Garrett,” I said, trying to express my hurt as well as I could through the mask, “it’s not much of a party either if you’re going to treat me like that.”

The cicadas’ chatter boomed in a few sequential bursts, something that I assumed was laughter. “Not one of us is your lover,” it said, “we simply received invitation within our domain. We are not inclined to deny such festivities, you know.”

This thing, so strange and professional in design, had as well its own little act, a joke that I was forced to be a part of. “Fine,” I said, “then what should I call your majesty?”

“Please,” it spoke, “we are no such thing as royalty. If it then pleases you, you might call us an old-fashioned ‘trick or treater.’”

“Ah!” it exclaimed with a sudden excitement, “speaking of such, we were all wondering what sort of treats we might expect of our dear host.”

Of everything up to this point, this sudden exuberance sent a greater chill down my spine. For a few seconds I really wondered what this thing might truly be. “Well,” I said, “we have some refreshments over by the television.” I indicated the table adorned with punch, caramel apples, and many wrapped confections.

“Perhaps later,” it chortled, “our current appetite is not one for sweets, no, it is for something much more savory.” It had no lips to lick, but the fibers vibrated more vigorously, even after it finished its comment.

Before I could ask what sort of treat the ‘trick or treater’ was referring to, my friend Jennifer crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I swiveled the strawberry around to look at here, and she whispered through the layers that the frog suit was making her uncomfortable and that she would like to leave.

“Leaving so soon, fellow guest?” it boomed, tilting its head in front of the banister, “we would hate to see you go without a treat!”

Jennifer was paralyzed at the sound of its voice, her mouth agape, and even through the skin of my suit the panic was infectious. She could not move anything but her now bulging eyes, focused on the webbed claws reaching into its childish basket. Delicately it presented a moth, similarly paralyzed to Jennifer, crafted so that its wings and exoskeleton were that of an uncannily luminescent ivory. With its other paw it covered the moth before crushing it, ‘causing a viscous black sludge to splash onto the carpet and drip from its webbing. Opening its hands once more, it produced a pristine black rose that contrasted with the soiled brown rags of its costume. The ichor was gone, recalled almost as quickly as it had appeared.

“Here you are madam,” it said with a magician’s bravado, gently placing the rose in Jennifer’s spiderweb-patterned dress while the short bursts of chattering reappeared. “A minor trick, yes, but still one of our favorites.”

Jennifer slowly backed into the corner where she had come from, sneaking out later without ceremony. In about a week’s time she was willing to discuss what had happened immediately after her acquisition of the rose. She did not throw it away, she feared the consequences that might result from such action, so instead she placed it in a vase of water on her writing desk. The next day the flower had wilted and turned to a sour, pale grey. And the day after, she found a charcoal black moth fluttering in her closet, which she caught and let out the back door.

“Know that we never mean to be a nuisance,” it addressed me again, “but you must understand what sustenance we require.”

“What?!?” I exclaimed.

“Are you thick man?!” it shouted back at me, approximating my tone as much as a voice engulfed in cicadas can, “we have been vulgarly obvious with you. We seek a tonic of the psyche, a frothy beverage that supercharges the mind and sends crystalline adrenaline throughout the imagination. We eternally seek a grotesque beauty, a fractured and exaggerated facsimile of what we all once were.”

“Must we spell it out for you?” It shook its head now, softly and without effort, “you of all entities should know, strawberry, that simply telling will putrefy it. We have appeared in a form fitting your requirements, and all good hosts must provide for their guests, yes?”
Behind my mask my mouth was ajar, I did not know how to respond to the thing…

“No,” it said mournfully, “no of course you wouldn’t. We apologize. It is in your best interest, though, to discover our treats. You should not be too hasty in joining our ranks.”

I felt the heat of a swamp rise within the chamber of my artificial head, hot and itchy as if accompanied by bog mosquitoes. I felt my strawberry encasing and almost began ripping it apart; however, I had enough presence of mind to simply remove the mask. As soon as my head was free the heat and itch had disappeared, and along with it the ‘trick or treater.’ The least I could glimpse at the top of the stairs was a bright white beetle that scurried quickly over the door frame. For the remaining half-hour of what was left of the party, I asked around to know if anyone had seen it leave. The truth of the matter was that to everyone, except me and Jennifer, the thing had been a stationary and silent decoration, albeit an unsettling one.

I spoke to Garrett the next day, and it turned out that, soon after finishing his costume, his sister had been bitten by a spider. She was taken to the emergency room, as no one knew what sort of spider it was, just that it had a shiny pearl carapace and looked big enough to be deadly. In the end, Garrett’s sister was fine, but by the time he had gotten back it was two in the morning and his costume had disappeared. During the whole ordeal, as well, his cell phone was nowhere to be found, only discovering it under his pillow once he returned home. I forgave him. We stayed together for the rest of the school year, but it seemed whatever affinity we once had for each other had evaporated that Halloween night. We went our separate ways as we both went off to college.

Now, this would’ve been the end of this strange story had I not kept my costume. Even with everything I had seen through those pinhole eyes, I still couldn’t bring myself to discard the thing I had spent so much work and creativity on. It came with me to college, and I found that, as soon as the semester had started, anomalous things began to occur with it. A week in I found the thing propped up against the toilet of my apartment, filled almost to burst with multi-colored tissue paper. I imagined it must’ve been a simple prank, but began to doubt this as it continued to pop out from the closet in different positions, filled with coffee filters, tea bags, and dead flowers.

These happenings only increased in frequency as October 31st drew nearer. That Halloween I attended another party, one that was all-in-all underwhelming. I only slightly entertained the idea of wearing the lovely strawberry again, for I must admit that I was spooked with everything that had happened. Instead, I went as special agent Dale Cooper and critiqued the state of the host’s coffee. When I got back to my apartment I could smell the rotting scent of something sweet coming from the bathroom. The strawberry was lying in one end of the bathtub, legs hanging over the side. Fat, black flies flew over it and the bath, swarming but never touching down on what was inside.

“How do I taste?” was written in the same black substance I had seen when the ‘trick or treater’ had performed its trick. I don’t know what came over me, but I bended over and scooped some of the substance with my index finger. It had the consistency of molasses, and it tasted just like strawberry jam.

Rising from my trance, I decided I did not want to know what was stuffed in the costume this time, so I hefted it out into the dumpster behind my building. By the time I got back in, the flies were nowhere to be seen, and neither was the inky syrup. I stopped taking baths for a while, but I would be lying if I said the experience had turned me off of horror or Halloween at all. If anything, I found that the following years were more tirelessly mundane because of it. Before garbage day, I recovered the costume completely empty, and found that it never mysteriously moved of inflated afterwards. I kept on searching for the macabre online, still looking up those costumes of decades past. Despite his ominous appearance, I suspect a certain affinity for that odd ‘trick or treater,’ whomever or (more likely) whatever it was. Perhaps you too, can sense their passion. Either way, I at the very least found recounting this story a real treat.