Jordan Ekart
All Hallows Eve and our first year of middle school. Moms picked out our costumes and coats the same as always, shocked when we fought them for costume freedoms. Two of us won our tantrums, and one of us lost. Regardless, the night’s prospects excited us: cold breeze, black cats, early dinner, boys, trick-or-treaters, witches, princesses, splattered eggs, pumpkin guts, dead leaves.
Before the school year started, we saw each other once at a parent-family resource group for single mothers, hosted by Webber Middle School. The principal and teachers reassured our mothers of the network available to give us support and financial assistance at school. On the first day of class, we met again in the locker room before Physical Education. Other girls already wore padded bras and reapplied glitter to lips or dark liner to eyelids. We clustered our lockers together to hide our barren and flat bodies from their view. When we saw each other again at lunch, we decided to sit together since we were new to the area, or departing from elementary school friendships, or going to school outside our neighborhood. We were together now. Trading expensive Lunchables for Cosmic Brownies, sharing notebooks filled with secret messages written in Draconic, and preparing complementary costumes for Halloween.
We met on my front lawn just as the full-moon bloomed over the neighborhood’s shuttering elms and cottonwoods; it was our time now. My friends were waiting for me, each of them smeared festively with corn syrup. Agate was a green Bride of Frankenstein in a red-stained thrift store wedding dress while Opal wore a V-neck black dress and stuffed bra with a red corset, her mouth filled with plastic teeth, the elongated canines dipped with red. My tea-stained mummy wrappings were in my mom’s closet and instead I wore a ballerina outfit with opaque white nylons, soft pink flats, and a matching leotard. My hair was pulled so tightly into a crisp bun, I could feel it gripping the edges of my face like a mask.
“Pearl, you’re not wearing your costume,” Opal complained.
“Sorry. At least I convinced my mom to let me leave my coat.”
At our first sleepover, we went to Opal’s house. The walls of her room were decorated with D.A.R.E. posters and smelled like incense. We gave each other makeovers and rated all the boys in our grade from kissable to never-in-a-million-years.
“If anyone wants more blood, I brought an extra bottle,” Agate held up her corn syrup stained, moth-eaten pillowcase so we could see the bottle protruding at the bottom.
“My mom would kill me if I got ‘blood’ on her old leotard,” I said.
Our second sleepover was at Agate’s apartment. She and her mom shared one bedroom so they felt safer. We slept on the floor together that night after watching Dracula’s Daughter and The Mummy’s Tomb. On the ground beside us were the empty cans of our first Pabst beers.
The suburbs I lived in were, strategically, the best choice for trick-or-treating in both quality and quantity of candy. On the sidewalks, we were surrounded by small creatures in search of sweets, all chaperoned by at least one parent. Teenagers dressed as zombies, aliens, cat women, and cheerleaders loitered in groups on the street without a pillowcase in sight.
“Cute costume, Margot,” a teenager called. He was covered in brown makeup and fake hair, sporting bloody jeans and a ripped flannel shirt. The other boys silently watched us.
“That’s not her name,” Opal said.
“Anthony is such a jerk. Just ignore them,” Agate said, and we quickened our pace to escape their predatory eyes.
At the back-to-school dance, Opal bled right through her dress. The fabric clung to the back of her legs and the other girls whispered and laughed. In the bathroom stalls, we decided to cast off the names our fathers gave us, men who abandoned us because of their problems with drug abuse, sexual assault, or chronic infidelity. They never did anything for us, and wherever they were, they couldn’t help us anyway. We renamed ourselves: Opal, Agate, and Pearl.
In September, while on a P.E. field trip at Mulberry Pool, Agate’s period started in the water. Light red tendrils surrounded her narrow hips and reached out at nearby swimmers. The other girls screamed and swam away. The boys covered their eyes like they were bearing witness to something forbidden. Opal and I blocked Agate from them and took her to the first aid room.
When we changed at sleepovers, we showed each other the fresh, angry stretch marks burgeoning on our breasts and thighs. It made us think of the grievous wounds our mother’s bore from our own births. Our once–beautiful mothers, ruined by us, their splendor and youth eaten away by the acid of their bodies, by the weaknesses of our fathers. Talk of babies in health class conjured images of aliens ready to burst forth from our chests. Maybe it’s selfish, but we were glad to be only children.
The moon had shrunk during its trek through the black sky and our pillowcases bore the weight of sugary treats. Five blocks from my house I felt a dampness between my legs. The heat filled my underwear and crept through to stain the leotard. At the next house, I asked to use the bathroom and stuffed my underwear with toilet paper. It made my leotard lumpy. From the reflection of the gold gilded mirror, I could see the pale red stain falling down my tights. There was nothing else to do.
Outside Opal and Agate laughed jovially, their breath sweet with candy. As I rejoined them, little tears bubbled and fell down my cheeks, “I think my period just started.”
“Are you okay?” Opal said.
“Do you want to use a tampon?” Agate asked.
“Um, I don’t know how to use one. I think I should just go home now. Sorry to ruin the night.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll go together,” Agate said.
The toilet paper bunched as I walked, the dampness pooled and spread again. Younger children had thinned out and more porch lights were flicking off by the time we made it back to my neighborhood. Running around the street leaving candy wrappers and soda cans in his wake, Anthony was still stalking the night. He kicked a soda can in our direction and approached us.
“Looks like the curse has visited Margot tonight. Must be bad luck,” he said.
“Not as bad as your costume, what are you supposed to be? Cousin It?” Opal snapped.
“I’m the Wolfman. Who do you think you’re fooling with those fake boobs anyway?”
We bared our teeth and went rabid, screaming like banshees with claws outstretched, the three of us chased him through groups of trick-or-treaters, across streets, and into the quiet of Troutman Park.
“Where did he go?” I asked.
“I think somewhere on the other side of the soccer field?” Agate said.
“What a chicken. Come on, Pearl,” Opal said, and the three of us joined hands while moving deeper into the abyss before us. In the darkness of the park, illuminated only by moonbeams, Opal and Agate baptized me. Agate dug through crinkling candy wrappers and took the bottle of red corn syrup out of her pillowcase. They stained my neck with blood and let it run down my soiled leotard. It ran down my back, over my breasts, and between my thighs–it consumed me. “Red queen, red queen,” they chanted.
Tonight it was me, my turn. Opal reigned first and Agate crowned second. Now here I was–a woman–on Halloween. I was the red queen. We swung from the black bars of the jungle gym and howled up at the Samhain moon. It watched over us while we laughed and splashed more blood on each other. We were cannibals as we finally devoured the children we’d been before.
Jordan Ekart
Jordan Ekart is an Archaeology student at Colorado University in Boulder with minors in Art History and Creative Writing. She has worked as a Student Editor for the 2020 issue of Plains Paradox Literary Arts Journal at Front Range Community College, and emceed their 2019 Working Writers Reading Workshop. As a native of Colorado, Jordan is influenced by its people, social dilemmas, and distinct geography. Her favorite genres to both read and write are gothic, fantasy, science-fiction, and speculative fiction. In her free time, Jordan enjoys embroidering, collecting rocks, and pondering the origins of human cultures. Her work has been published in CU Boulder’s 2021 Walkabout Creative Arts Journal.