The Dentist on Halloween

He fills a bowl with healthy snacks and waits for the trick-or-treaters. But they're never what he expects. Sometimes it's a burned out Crest kid -- just a skeleton blackened everywhere but her pearly whites. Sometimes it's a poor child who had no insurance -- groaning "trigg or deef" with his cancerous rictus. Sometimes it's just his lawyer chattering incoherently about malpractice. Sometimes it's an incredible human drill, screeching in his doorway, its head spinning exorcist-style and so fast he can see no features but knows that it's smiling with braces bending like the gates of hell. Sometimes it's just…

A Good Enough Box

He wants to put his head inside a cardboard box to keep him company. But it's problematic. Getting the right-sized carton is proving difficult because they make them for hats not heads, and he tumbles and thuds inside every one he's tried so far, bruising him ugly. Then there's matter of which side to face up since sometimes he doesn't want to look him in the eyes when they talk and at other times he wants to pull him out by the hair and pretend it's his birthday. And the cardboard is weak and the bottom keeps getting so soggy…