Friday: Halloween

Make a list of ten sensations that you associate with Hallowe'en. They can incorporate sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, mood, or all six.


1) Flickering streetlamps you'd only notice this time of year.
2) Tales and stories that raise gooseflesh.
3) The slightly sweet earthy smell of carved pumpkin.
4) A bright light illuminating a kitchen table.
5) An unknown knock at the door.
6) Chocolate that no one else eats.
7) A cross between too-dark and too-light.
8) Excitement and absence.
9) Quietened thrills.
10) Humanity in nature.

(I liked 'durst' too much as a word to change it, so pretend it means something.)

Now, seek out other peoples' lists until you find one that interests you. Choose as many items from that list as you like, and combine them to make a drabble or poem. You can combine items from as many lists as you like. Post your finished drabble or poem, along with links to the lists you selected your sensory prompts from.

1 Rustling leaves
2 Rusty creaking from old gates
3 Drowning in the bob apple tub
4 Lots and lots of screaming

My favourite part of Halloween, is not the gathering crowds,
Nor the obsessive fondlings of capes, swords and stars.
It isn't the buff of the leaves beneath this winter's boots,
Or the creak of rusted hinges when they're moved,
For once. No, it's the press of an absence. The stone-chilling cold
In every leader's bones as they head onward. As they come quick.
Whether they dance in patios or run slightly sick hands 
Under sleeves, when they rustle the leaves.
When they tell each other tales and decide that tonight,
They won't believe. That their shadows snapping heels beneath the moon
Are only the same shadows they've ever known. 
I believe them. I think that they're smart for believing.

I agree that every year, there is a chance. A fall-back
Method, within every person's hands.
To push a little harder on the gate as they pass through.
To push heads under the ice of an apple stew.
To take charge of a tale just as it becomes a need
And make that need into laughter, laughter that seems
Serious. Cold and caustic, fallen into cables,
And when they realise, it won't be a squall that they run into,
Or a grandmother, poised with charms or the snap of a camera too,
It will be a long, dead road with no end,
A neighbourhood, cloaked and rent
Nigh-on invisible. A truly durst Halloween.
An eve of a night on which people are not what they seem.

But honest to god, I wish it were more frequently,
If only to cure them so swimmingly.