I had planned this big ambitious Halloween story that I would be working on over the month of October-would involve all sorts of demons and monsters and fun characters. Unfortunately I'm a procrastinating asshole, so that became difficult to impossible very quickly.

But I needn't have worried, because there was another story I wanted to write-a short, funny little story about a kid on Halloween, counting his candies and thinking about urban legends and the kind of adults who give out dark chocolate to ten year olds. I've had good Halloween memories-all cold, cloudless fall afternoons and candy stashes to last for months-so this was fun for me to write. Hope you all like it!

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Sunny Appleby had finished trick-or-treating about fifteen minutes ago, and he had only just started sorting through all the candy he had gotten. He had covered all the houses on his walk home from school, methodically making his way down the street, ringing doorbells and giving a sweet grin and a cheery “trick-or-treat!” to whoever answered the door. That would get him two or three pieces of candy; whenever possible, he went up to houses with a please-take-one bowl on the stoop and took a big, greedy handful. Once he got close to his house, he covered the blocks around it, not stopping until almost nine o’clock at night.

He had dressed as a demon-of sorts. He decided not to wear a fancy cape or carry around a plastic red pitchfork, instead dressing in his school uniform of navy blue trousers and a neatly-creased white shirt. A small golden cross hung from a thin chain around his neck, resting just over his heart. The only sign that he was wearing a costume was the pair of cherry-red devil horns he wore atop his head. Some of Sunny’s other friends wore more elaborate costumes (Oliver Perkins was going as Captain America, while Patty Staples’ dad got her an expensive, shimmery angel outfit), but he didn’t see the point. They weren’t allowed to wear costumes at school, anyway; what was the point of walking home and changing when you could just put on a pair of horns and start trick-or-treating right away?

As he looked over the imposing mountain of treats that he had piled on his bedroom floor, the Shinx’s glinting, greedy eyes said all that needed to be said. Forget Thanksgiving, this haul could last him til almost Christmas! He started to pick through the candies, sorting them and counting them and sneaking one or two before Mom decided that she needed to “check” them. He was wise to that-the wastepaper basket filled with Milky Way wrappers gave him all the proof he needed that this wasn’t about searching for phantom razors.

There were plenty of Milky Ways to be found, of course. There were also Snickers, Twix, Butterfingers, Mounds, Rolos, 3 Musketeers, 100 Grands, Mr. Goodbars, Pay Days, Whatchamacallits, and Hershey’s, both milk and dark chocolate. (Sunny vividly recalled getting a tossed handful of dark chocolate from a smiling, elderly Persian on her shabby front stoop, and briefly wondered exactly how old she had to be to think that ten year olds ate dark chocolate.) He organized all the chocolates into their separate piles, taking a handful of 3 Musketeers to munch on as he did so. They had always been his favorite kind of chocolate bar-he met his current best friend by punching him in the stomach over a 3 Musketeers bar, but that’s a story for another day.

After all the chocolates were accounted for, it was time to take stock of the fruity candies. Jason (the stocky, rough-edged Zangoose who first met Sunny via a 3 Musketeers-induced fight) hated fruity candies, and always gave his Shinx friend the ones he had. Sunny didn’t mind them-sweets were sweets, and he had always kinda liked Swedish Fish. Dots, too, though he was disappointed the first time he had them a couple of years ago.

An older kid at his school-a Zigzagoon named Jesse with eyes that always shot back and forth like he was watching an invisible ping-pong match-had told him that they sometimes disguised acid as Dots. “Yeah, man,” he said, giving a toothy grin and running his fingers through tangled, unruly headfur. “They make ‘em and put ‘em in those little boxes. If you eat one-woo! You’ll go to another world, I bet!” That Halloween, Sunny got a box of Dots at his very first house-the Becker household, right by the school. Sunny was surprised that they’d let someone who could make psychedelic drugs live right near a school-maybe he knew a guy who pulled strings? He popped the box open almost immediately, and, popping a pink one in his mouth, was disappointed to find that he wasn’t taken to another world-or, if he was taken to another world, that that world looked a lot like Silver Pines, Illinois. (Mr. Becker, for his part, was a corporate accountant who had taken nothing stronger than Zoloft.)

After the fruity candies, there was the refuse. That pile was smaller than those of the chocolates and fruity candies, but still far too big for Sunny’s tastes. This was for things that weren’t candy, even if some of them were, strictly speaking, candy. He remembered where he got each one, and quickly developed a sharp, almost personal dislike for the people who handed them out.

This year’s refuse pile included a mint-green toothbrush (handed out by a perpetually beaming young Flareon with frizzy hair who seemed far too proud of herself), an apple (handed out by his old first grade teacher, a Ninetales who banned the concept of fun for a week as punishment), a small box of raisins (handed out by a sixty-seven year old Raticate who muttered unrepeatable things under his breath as he regarded each new batch of trick-or-treaters), a couple of wrapped-up butterscotch candies (handed out by a ninety-five year old Clefable who last had her wits about her during the Ford administration), and a handful of change (from a few different people who blended into one composite of a person who somehow thought a ten year old boy would find use for exactly twenty-eight cents).

The refuse was placed into a plastic bag and thrown into the garbage, and the other piles of candy got put into big, heavy-duty Ziplocs and thrown in the cupboard. Sunny sighed as he settled down on his bed, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the low drone of the TV from downstairs. The brisk autumn afternoon faded into a cool, windy night, and the whispers and hisses from the tree branches outside filled Sunny with an odd sort of warmth; the warmth of a holiday well-spent, the warmth of Thanksgiving and Christmas to come, the warmth of many more Halloweens in the future. He shut his eyes and exhaled through his nose.