It's my turn...and I'm bringing you an excerpt of the latest version of my sequel to Mixter Twizzle's Breakfast! Right now it's called Trick-or-Treating With Twizzle, but that's not it's final title. For that, you'll have to wait for the eventual cover reveal. For now, enjoy the ever-evolving story that takes place on Halloween...

Trick-or-Treating With Twizzle (excerpt)
by Regan W. H. Macaulay

It happens to be that time of year,
In the neighbourhood of kale
Where ornamental cabbages adorn
The gardens and boulevards,
Mini demon and imp extraordinaire
Mixter Twizzle does conjure his friends
For the one time of year they might
Galavant in the public square
Both disguised and on full public display!

It is Halloween,
The eve of thin veils
Between the world of peoples and animals,
And the land of shadows where monsters do dwell--
When they are not cavorting with chickens
And other farm friends.

It is this time of year,
Mixter Twizzle’s hundred and thirteenth,
He dresses his young chick--
Now well on her way to henhood--
In the garb of a spooky creature
So she might go forth with Twizzle and
Their farm cat friend, known as Mei Mei,
And the mash of Mixter's monsters
Into the night of revels and treats.
This is also the night he tells the young hen
Halloween lets you be
Any old thing, but the best thing you can be
Is your very best self.

“So, is Halloween for being someone else,
Or for being yourself?” Harley enquires.
Mixter tells the young chicken that it is her choice
To escape into something she’s very much not
Or to fully be what you sometimes choose to hide--
For that part of yourself you choose to keep hidden…
“…sometimes it is’lls the most truest you.”
Mei Mei nods sagely after Mixter explains.

When his little hen is dressed and ready
He casts his invocation spell
To call on his friends from beyond the veil
Who do not live beneath a coop at Riverdale Farm
Like Mixter does.
All the while, Harley wonders if there is something
Inside of herself that she needs to show the world.

A dash of witch hazel into a pot of hot water,
A splash of pumpkin spice latte
With cinnamon-sprinkled whipped cream,
A pinch of petrified candy corn,
A smash of smirking jack-o-lantern
To make the water ripple through time.
Then Mixter mixes, one, two, three…

…the froth bubbles forth
And explodes with light and smoke.
Then it is the right time for Mixter’s chant…
“On Gnazzlebook Aaron,
On Cinobrillow Brawn,
On Shockofane Jack’s Son,
On Swizzfizzbinn Roarfaction,
…and Frank!
Sallies forthwith and meets with me
For Halloween treatses and revelses of glee!”
...

And without further ado, let's launch right into Part 2 of...

Every Day is Halloween (Part 2)
by Kit Daven

—AUGUST--
 
After Rebecca disappeared, Esther started lying more to her mother. She lied about her phone being missing. She lied about where she spent her time during the day. White lies were one thing, but now Esther was being purposely deceptive toward her mother. Even though Esther felt ashamed for doing this, she knew searching for her best friend was the right thing to do.
 
Whenever Esther’s mother drove her somewhere, the library or the movies or the comic bookstore, Esther sneaked out. She’d search for as long as she could before returning to the drop-off point just as her mother arrived to drive her back home. Being masked made it easier for Esther to avoid her mother’s looks, but she didn’t want her mother to know. Some things Esther needed to learn to handle on her own.
 
With the temperature rising into the low thirties, Esther stayed home, camped in her bedroom at her desk. Video chat was open on her laptop, but no one appeared on the screen. Beside the laptop, Esther reviewed the phone monitoring app on the burner phone. So far, no texts had been sent; no posts or calls either.
 
Hope that means Lefty hasn’t cracked the security screen. Jerk!
 
New to the account as of last week, a GPS tracker. The effort made by Rebecca’s parents only led police to Rebecca’s purse, which they found abandoned one street over from St. Jacob’s church. When Mrs. Chow told Esther the news, Esther had to pretend she didn’t know about the monitoring app or the GPS tracker, and her gut twisted into a tighter knot than usual.
 
“You still there?” Esther mumbled at her laptop, hearing the dull murmur of a movie playing in the background.
 
Carter wandered back into view on the screen and collapsed in his chair.
 
“Huh?” he said as he leaned forward, resting his head on his hand.
 
“IMHO the police aren’t doing squat to find Rebecca,” she complained. “Searched in the area the other day, woods near the cemetery. Couldn’t see anyone dressed in red. The ghouls didn’t even notice me…at first.”
 
She remembered the way the ghosts and ghouls swivelled their heads toward her, cataract eyes leering.
 
“But no one approached me. Weird, eh?”
 
Carter huffed.
 
Esther figured it had to do with her appearance. She satisfied their need for death dominance in the world by embodying Death itself. Yes, she reflected them in image, and by proxy, she represented their philosophy, religion, agenda—whatever those might be. They wouldn’t bother her anymore. No one would; not the dead or the living.
 
“Find anything?” Carter asked.
 
Nothing red had ambled among the headstones and mausoleums beyond the iron fence. Only gauzy white and grey blurs had zoomed about the trees, ghosts and orbs chasing each other. And at a distance, a couple of skeletal soldiers had sat on a columbarium, taking turns scratching out the names on the tarnished plaques and laughing.
 
“No.” Esther pouted. “She could be anywhere. Anywhere! Alone, frightened…trapped! There’s still a chance she’s alive. I won’t give up on her. I won’t.”
 
“So what’s next?”
 
Esther brought up an image on her computer, a screen capture of a digital map of the town. Using her photo editor app, she’d placed red dots at certain places in the downtown area.
 
“She’s probably at the ice cream shop. The one with the Rocky Road to die for. Her words, not mine.” Esther tried to sound cool and casual, but her voice stuck in places. She did her best to gulp them away, to hide her urgency. “There’s a room in the back she always sneaks into whenever she goes to the washroom. It’s near the kitchen. They keep sprinkles in there. C’mon, let’s go. There’s time before the sun goes down.”
 
“Na-uh,” Carter said glumly. Even without his mask, he seemed more withdrawn than usual.
 
Mm, if I kissed you, Esther wondered, Would that bring you back to life?
 
Carter’s focus drifted somewhere off-screen. “It’s too hot. And it’s too dangerous.” Then his lips moved, and faraway sounding words became his own. “‘Living? Not a word you’d know a lot about, is it Mr. Bannister?’”
 
Esther recognized the movie dialogue. “Watching The Frighteners again?”
 
Carter nodded.
 
“How many times now?”
 
He shrugged.
 
Too many, I’m sure, Esther thought. “Chat later,” she told him and hung up so she wouldn’t have to watch him watch something else.
 
She tried Addie next. Oddly, Addie wasn’t lurking online. Her status always said ‘Inactive’ yet she was usually present. Instead, her status read ‘Offline’. She always had a profile pic, a drawn cartoon of herself.
 
Esther frowned at the placeholder default image. Nothing of Addie showed up except old messages and her name, and she didn’t respond no matter how many times Esther sent her gifs. Addie simply wasn’t there anymore, only a digital shadow of her.
 
Only a handful of other students she knew were online. None of them wanted to brave the search in a heatwave dressed head to toe in a costume. Esther regarded the Death robe hanging from the door of her closet, freshly washed the evening before. She’d yet to clean the skull mask, so she wiped it down with a wet cloth. Black paint on the plastic bubbled up in places inside the eye sockets. Instead of leaving them, she tried to pick them away.
 
Maybe this’ll make the mask more convincing. Maybe there’s something hidden underneath, buried treasure, or just a body.
 
She knew what she wanted to find. Something heartwarming and vivacious, something uplifting. All she discovered was more dull white plastic, a wall of impassable fake bone. She touched up the spots with black nail polish. 
 
Slipping into the safe harbour of her costume, Esther covered up every part of herself, giving in to the ritual of dressing this way. She became the costume as she tiptoed partway down the stairs, then stopped to listen for her mother. Through the railings of the banister, Esther spotted her mother reclining on the sofa, feet on the coffee table. Zombie makeup stained the sleeve of her blouse where her arm draped over her face, blocking out the daylight.
 
As soon as her mother started snoring, Esther crept down the stairs and out the front door into the humid weather. She would deal with the consequences of her mother realizing she had gone out alone later.
 
Death streaked past the ghouls and the ghosts and headed downtown. Death searched the ice cream parlour first, asking everyone questions about Rebecca. No one had seen her there. The next day, Miss Tess’s hair salon. Death asked Tess and the ladies sitting in the salon chairs if they’d seen Rebecca; no one had. The next day, the comic store near the cinema. The day after that, Bea’s Teas cafe. More questions. No answers. Rebecca hadn’t been to any of them. Not hiding, not cowering, not showing off her legs and arms or flicking her ponytail.
 
Finally, Death attended St. Jacob’s Church. Someone there must’ve seen what had happened to her during the potluck.
 
Death strolled down the aisle toward the altar, red and white Vans squeaking on the shiny black and white linoleum. On one side of the aisle, a man knelt before a pew, his hands clasped together in prayer. On the other side sat two young women dressed in regular clothes and zombie makeup, twins with smudged eyes and blood smeared across their lips.
 
No one’s even trying to be creative anymore.
 
The women watched as Death approached the priest, and Death enjoyed their bearing witness. “What happened to Rebecca Chow before she disappeared?”
 
Father Juan shook his head solemnly. His soulful eyes sagged with unshed tears. “She mingled with the other students. Lingered at the food and beverage table, showing off her pretty dress, like the other girls she spoke to.”
 
“So it’s true what the newspaper reported. She wasn’t wearing a costume? No zombie makeup?”
 
He sighed, nodding his head again. “She looked normal.” With a gentle cough, he pointed toward the side of the building where a hallway led toward the back. “The girls she chatted to said she excused herself to go to the washroom. Then she was…” He bowed his head in shame, as if he’d been the one to make her disappear.
 
“Just like that? Gone? No one saw her at all?”
 
Behind her, the man sat up on the bench, finished with his prayer. “I saw her.”
 
Death turned about and faced him. The man bowed his head in reverence. Weariness deepened the wrinkles around his eyes, weighed down his shoulders and every part of his being.
 
“Where did you see her?”
 
“At the potluck,” he mumbled. “I was there with my son.” Pointing toward a stained glass window, he sniffed. “Out there. I saw Rebecca dancing in the church graveyard in her red dress, looking…”
 
“Looking what?”
 
The man sucked in a deep breath. It took all his energy. “Amazingly alive. Beautiful!” He said this word with such desperate longing.
 
Death was about to march back down the aisle and out the door when she stopped herself. Addressing Father Juan again, she asked, “Is the graveyard protected by sigils and stuff?”
 
Father Juan shook his head.
 
“Don’t you think it should’ve been?”
 
Father Juan finally cried a bit.
 
Not yet satisfied, Death asked one last question. “If Last Rites is about the living saying goodbye to the deceased, then why in hell are the dead coming back?”
 
The question stumped Father Juan. He blinked profusely before he answered. “They’re…Well, I suppose…” He frowned and finally admitted, “I don’t know.”
 
Dissatisfied, Death fled the church and searched the tiny graveyard beside it. English ivy snaked about headstones blurred by time. Among the graves, a mausoleum stood. Death entered and found the spirits of several faded priests huddled together in a corner, whispering among themselves.
 
“Did you see Rebecca Chow dancing out here?”
 
The faded priests grinned. They needn’t say anything. Death knew they’d seen her. She also knew they had no intention of helping her.

* * *

By the end of August, the days had shortened. Esther appreciated every moment of daylight as she continued the search for her bestie. In the evenings, the chill of autumn descended, and she started texting Rebecca on her laptop like old times.
 
Rebecca never replied. 
 
Then, a week before school started, Esther and Carter chatted online. After a couple of hours, they came to an undeniably grisly conclusion: No one had given Rebecca Last Rites. Even worse, the ghouls had devoured every part of Rebecca until nothing remained; that’s why no one could find her.

Today and tomorrow, I have a special treat for you--a terrorifically long short story by new-to-this-blog author Kit Daven. Enjoy Part 1 of ...

Every Day is Halloween
By Kit Daven
 
—MAY--
 
Esther knelt before the retaining wall and clipped off six new tulip blooms before their tangerine blush drew unwanted attention to her home. She wasn’t the only one who worried about the flowers, though. None of the other houses on Wolfe Street bothered to garden after the first week of spring.
 
Her bestie, Rebecca, who lived a few houses down, had helped her parents dig up all their rose bushes. In Rebecca’s words: “Frickin’ no way we’re choppin’ off every flower as soon as it blooms. My mom’ll be in tears all the time.”
 
Farther down, where Wolfe Street dead-ended at the edge of a jetty of trees, even Hope Cemetery looked dreary. The caretakers had removed flowers and wreaths from every grave site. It was safer that way. Less to worry about. Less work.
 
For Esther, the risk of nurturing the tulips was worth the effort. This way she could enjoy, however briefly, a remnant of the world that existed before Halloween had come to town last year, before Halloween came to stay. She just had to be quick about disposing the blooms.
 
Each bloom she cut fell and rolled gently over the ground, remaining vibrant after its decapitation.
 
It’s not right, them dying this way. They ought to go in their own way, in their own time, like nature intended, Esther thought bravely. She scratched at the skull mask covering her face, knowing she’d never say those words out loud. Not now; at least, not until Halloween ended.
 
Esther wished life didn’t have to be this way. She missed walking with Rebecca to school, joking and laughing and acting like fools. Now, if they didn’t want to be bussed or driven to school, they had to walk in groups. They had to look over their shoulders, be mindful of every little thing they did or said or wore as they walked past the cemetery’s back gate.
 
Whenever they started down the dirt path at the end of the road, they had to rush angst-filled through the woods to avoid encounters. Only when the path veered away from the cemetery’s iron fence and exited onto Hazel Street did they feel relief. And they always had to be dressed in some kind of Halloween costume, so they wouldn’t get heckled or yelled at, pinched, punched…or worse.
 
This morning, no one wandered the streets. This absence had provided Esther a rare opportunity earlier, before the decapitations. She’d snapped a photo of the tulips with her emergency phone and returned it to a secret pocket in her black robe. Later, after school, she would settle down with her laptop—her preferred device for communication—and share the image with her friends. Eternalizing the blossoms on their stalks this way wasn’t quite the same as enjoying them in real life, but it was close enough.
 
A stirring in the bush beside her neighbour’s garage. Mishu, a skinny black cat, crawled stiffly out from beneath the branches and limped toward her. The cat stopped at the retaining wall and leered at the row of rigid headless stems among the others tipped with fat buds, ready to bloom in the next day or two.
 
Esther counted the buds. A dozen more blooms to behead. A dozen more rectangular holes to dig, each with its own pile of dirt next to it; little graves big enough to hold one blossom.
 
Mishu wheezed a raspy growl of disgust.
 
With a shiver, Esther did her best to ignore Mishu’s dissatisfaction.
 
I’m safe. The pumpkins on the stoop are holding it together. They haven’t rotted entirely yet.
 
To be sure, she glanced at them over her shoulder. Squirrels had gnawed at the eyes and mouths, creating irregular shapes. The sacred symbols carved on the inside, however, remained whole and functional, protecting the front door to her house. Other sigils marked the windows along the side of the house and an altar in the backyard shielded the back door.
 
Tomorrow morning, I won’t bother to take a picture of the tulips. I’ll just get on with the beheadings. Maybe if I get up early enough, Mishu’ll be clawing at Mrs. Avery’s door. Or maybe she’ll be wandering all the way down at the other end of the street, past Rebecca’s place, past Devesh’s. I’ll make more time with the tulips; I will.
 
But Mishu was here, now. Staring at her.
 
On impulse, Esther clasped the chin of her mask. She meant to push it upwards a bit on her sweaty face but stopped herself. The skull mask hid most of her features, except for her eyes, clear and bright, a dead giveaway that she was very much alive.
 
Mishu didn’t seem to notice.
 
Or maybe you don’t care. Just as long as we all look dead, that’s enough, right? One of these days, Esther promised herself, I’ll move my mask around, see if you’ll screech and make the dead come running. Or maybe you’ll attack me.
 
Esther hiked the robe’s threadbare sleeves past her elbows so they wouldn’t snag on the bricks in the retaining wall. The long sleeves of the black jersey she wore beneath revealed painted bones on the fabric that were cracked and faded and needed repainting soon.
 
Esther endured the scrutiny of Mishu’s milky almond eyes as she gathered up the decapitated blossoms and laid them in their individual graves. One by one, she covered each with a pile of loose dirt, then gently patted the mounds flat.
 
Mishu purred with delight—a raspy, unearthly sound. “Saaay wooords.”
 
Esther’s breath hitched. Hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Hearing Mishu speak human words again unsettled her, and Esther flushed with a warm kind of fear. Her instinct to cool down dulled her reasoning at first, but she stopped herself from doing anything dangerous. Instead, she pulled the sleeves of her black robe back down, adding an extra layer of protection and security.
 
Weird! Why would she wanna give Last Rites to a flower? Esther thought.
 
Culling the tulips, burying them: that was important. By squashing out life, she proved to Mishu that she shared this value with the cat, even if deep down she didn’t. Otherwise, Mishu and her friends might swarm her house like they had the day after Halloween last year…
 
“Esther! Get your butt down here! The doughnuts’ll be gone if we don’t get to the market five minutes ago.”
 
Esther flew down the stairs, slipping into her favourite fall jacket. She patted the front pocket, felt the outline of the emergency phone there.
 
I wanna kiss Carter.
 
The thought popped out of nowhere as she tugged on a pair of red and white Vans and laced them up. Weird! I mean, there’s cuter guys, right?
 
Esther’s mother led the way out the front door onto the stoop. Esther followed her and shut the door, sucking in a breath of cold air while listening to the whir of the locking mechanism behind her.
 
She admired the pile of leaves in the side yard that she raked into a bigger pile whenever more leaves fell from the trees. Also impressive was the pumpkin she and her mom had carved together. It sat beside the stoop looking dopey with its wide, toothy smile and perfectly slanted eyes.
 
She waited for her mom to climb down the step toward the car in the driveway, but her mom stayed on the stoop.
 
“Mom?”
 
“What the—”
 
Esther peered around her mother and gawped at the strange-looking people dressed in old clothes, dirty clothes. They trailed out of the back gate of the cemetery and along the street. Grief ringed their eyes.
 
“Must’ve been a big funeral…” Esther mumbled until a man dressed in a black suit and a top hat turned slightly. Tiny beams of sunlight sliced through his body.
 
“Mom?” Esther tugged on the back of her mother’s jacket. “Mom? Why can I see through that man? Mom? Mom?”
 
The procession shambled toward Mrs. Avery’s house first, her property being the closest. Esther watched her English teacher squatting in front of the bay window there, yanking out weeds. The closer the cemetery people got to her, the more they perked up. When the man in the top hat was within arm’s reach, Mrs. Avery jumped up, yelped, and ran back into the house like she was a young girl again.
 
Esther’s mother gasped. “B-back in the house.”
 
Across the street, the people in the procession heard her. They turned to stare at her. Some walked toward her; others flew across the ground. Esther clutched her mom’s jacket.
 
“Now, Esther!”
 
Esther spun around. Her fingers hovered before the keypad; her mind blanked.
 
“Unlock the door! ESTHER!”
 
Esther couldn’t remember the key code.
 
“Saaay wooords!” Mishu’s voice, more forceful this time.
 
Esther didn’t think it was possible to say Last Rites for flowers, but she knew better than to deny the request. After a deep breath—another give away of her being alive—Esther whispered, “Rest in peace.”
 
Mishu’s wide eyes made a soft, sandpapery sound when she blinked her approval. Then, as though losing interest, her gaze wandered away from Esther and toward Mrs. Avery’s house across the street.
 
The black cat stood with a creak and limped down to the sidewalk, the tip of a thigh bone jutting from her haunch. Dried blood matted the fur along her ribcage. Esther estimated Mishu had been dead for as long as she’d been reported missing to the Hope Times by Mrs Avery, about two weeks now; and by the looks of her, probably hit by a car.
 
* * *
 
Esther found her mother in the kitchen, sitting at the bistro table, deeply absorbed in a magazine. Inky coffee steamed from the Rick & Morty mug she white-knuckled. Dressed in a silk blouse with jeans and no makeup, Esther couldn’t help but worry about her mother’s lack of a costume.
 
The last time Esther’s mom had gone into the office, she’d worn a lab coat with dress pants and dark makeup around her eyes. Fake blood had dripped from the corner of her blackened lips, giving her a dead mad scientist vibe that passed the scrutiny of Mishu and the other corpse folk.
 
“Working at home today?” Esther asked, helping herself to a slice of pumpkin bread.
 
“Yup.” Her mom looked up sleepily, then set the mug down near a yet to be read edition of the Hope Times.
 
Esther slipped her mask off, feeling naked as she sat at the bistro table. “Watcha reading?”
 
After a moment, Esther’s mom raised the magazine so Esther could read the lead article headline on the front cover of Living Today: Ghoul or Ghost? Where Do Your Loved Ones Fall on the Death Spectrum?
 
Esther snorted at the absurdity of the media. Or did the media reflect the absurdity of the world? She couldn’t tell. Maybe her mom was absurd for reading opinion pieces.
 
“Interesting editorial?”
 
“Hm, insightful opinion, yeah.”
 
Esther laughed. Her mother glared at her over the magazine. “Care to share?”
 
“Just that, I mean, how does expressing an opinion actually do anything? Actions actually get things done, you think?”
 
Her mother blinked a few times. “When did you get so smart?”
 
Esther didn’t feel smart. She felt exhausted, and she’d been pretending to be someone else going on six months: always acting, always role-playing, always hiding; the edges of her existence ever-so slowly beginning to blur.
 
She wasn’t the only one to notice this. Rebecca, even Carter and Addie, moaned about feeling nebulous, wanting to retreat from the shell of their costumes and go somewhere. By the dark circles around everyone’s eyes, Esther guessed they were living their lives online.
 
Her mother finally eyed her costume. “Remember when you used to wear other costumes, a new one almost every day?”
 
Esther nodded, remembering that of all her costumes, the Death robe had been the first one she’d bought. She’d worn the black hooded robe and the skull mask to her first high school Halloween dance, back when they thought Halloween was normal. She’d scoffed at Rebecca’s sexy nurse costume. But then, Rebecca didn’t trip over her short skirt’s hemline when she danced, the way Esther did with her robe because it dragged on the floor. Thankfully, she’d grown taller since then. Now the robe hung just above her ankles, her alter ego ratty and faded, helping her fit in even more with the treacherous dead.
 
Once they’d figured out it was safer to wear costumes, she and her friends had a lot of fun coming up with new ones. More costume shops opened up in town, and as the months passed by and Halloween persisted, the demand for costumes grew. Prices went up, and yet it was still more convenient to buy them than make them from scratch, because fabric had become scarce.
 
By mid-winter, Rebecca fought the winter-blahs by suggesting they trade costumes. This began a feverish trend in the high school that lasted a month. Then just before spring, a fatigue came over them, and everyone settled into wearing the same costume day in and day out.
 
Esther didn’t mind. In the early days, being creative had helped her to cope. It kept her mind off the dead, as did puzzling out who was who at school, until it all became tedious. Now, she’d settled into the embodiment of Death, and Rebecca into a dead version of her sexy nurse outfit because, in her words, “I’m not hiding this hot bod.” Esther preferred the predictability of it. Her friends were easily identifiable again, beacons of safety among so much uncertainty.
 
“It’s easier this way,” Esther told her mom. “Less to worry about, you know. Less work.”
 
“Mm, I like the efficiency of that.” Her mother glanced at the time on her phone and frowned. “Rebecca’s running late. Speaking of Rebecca, I may need to work Saturday. Are you getting together with her this weekend?”
 
“No.” Esther unfolded that morning’s newspaper and glanced at the Lost & Found column on the left side. At one time, the column had been buried in the back classified ads, listing pets and bikes. Nowadays, it mostly featured people.
 
“Rebecca’s dad’s birthday is on Saturday. Then church Sunday,” she explained.
 
“I get a weekend free of taxi service? Sweet!”
 
Esther stopped midway through the column, numb to the repetition of the word ‘missing’. Most of the names she didn’t recognize, and if she did, that’s because she’d heard about them in the media. No one she knew directly or even indirectly had gone missing until now.
 
Esther coughed up a bite of pumpkin bread and spit it out on the table.
 
“What is it?” Esther’s mom asked, only mildly alarmed. Last year, she’d been just as upset to read about the missing people and those same people later found either ‘dead dead’ as she called it or turned to ghouls. With the passing of every month, her alarm had lessened, fading into an accepting ennui about the fate of the living world and its decreasing numbers.
 
“It’s…” Esther had a difficult time saying the person’s name. She didn’t want to. Mrs. Avery hadn’t been her favourite neighbour or teacher; still, she was someone she actually knew firsthand. She affected both her and her mother’s lives directly. Her mother had spoken to her often, even had tea with Mrs. Avery.
 
A knock at the front door broke Esther’s concentration. She set the newspaper down in front of her mother, grabbed her backpack, and left her mother to read the announcement. While opening the front door, she heard her mother swear.
 
On the stoop, Rebecca stood fussing with the straps of her backpack. Her nurse uniform smelled of soap, and she’d hand-drawn a Sally-esque skull on her face, teeth spanning her upper and lower lips. Her bleached hair swooped high into a perfect ponytail, as Esther expected. Oddly, though, Rebecca wore nothing on her legs or arms. No white stockings with blood stains and gashes, no long gloves marked up in the same way, not even any FX makeup.
 
As they started down the street, a short, stocky wolf ran toward them. “W-wait! Wait up!”
 
“Devesh,” Rebecca acknowledged him coldly.
 
Rebecca didn’t like Devesh much, but Esther did. He always talked about interesting obscure subjects; then he’d disappear for days and whenever he returned, their conversation magically resumed, like time hadn’t passed.
 
“Hey!” Esther said warmly.
 
“D-did you hear?”
 
Esther and Rebecca exchanged a knowing glance. With a sigh, Esther answered him.
 
“Yeah, we know Mrs. Avery’s gone missing.”
 
* * *

Esther hoped to avoid detection as she, Rebecca, and Devesh neared the back gate of Hope Cemetery. They stayed close to one another on the far side of the street for as long as possible. Unfortunately, this tactic didn’t work. Several ghouls outfitted in soldier uniforms leered at them through the iron pickets, making howling sounds--Wooo! Awooooo!
 
Devesh trembled, eyes wide, chin quivering. “See you at school!” he shouted as he raced toward the woods and vanished between the trees.
 
“Seen ‘em before,” Rebecca whispered. “On the other side of the cemetery, near the war memorial. See that one on the gatepost? He keeps staring at us. Creep!”
 
Esther peered at the soldier sitting atop the granite gatepost. One of his legs hung down while the other was bent, the heel boot cradled in a loop of yellow caution tape tied off around the stone. The caution tape was all that remained from last year, when the town didn’t know what else to do but barricade the cemeteries.
 
The ghoul rested his hand on his knee, a cigarette pinched between his fingers. Dark eye sockets stared at her as he took a long haul. Smoke billowed out of his skull, from his ear holes, the slits where a nose had been, his eye sockets, even his neck just above the stiff buttoned collar of a dusty shirt. 
 
“Maybe cover yourself?” Esther suggested. While she admired her friend’s bravery, she resented Rebecca for being so careless. She put both of them at risk.
 
“It’s too warm,” Rebecca complained. “I’ll just sweat all day.”
 
Esther might have told her friend to get used to sweating, but her curiosity about the ghoul tempered her annoyance. Squinting, she noted details about the soldier uniform, like the two pins on each lapel of his jacket.
 
Turning her back to the cemetery, she discreetly retrieved her phone to search the Internet for information on the uniform. She tried to be quick, but her thumbs were clumsy typers.
 
“Hey! Put that away before a ghoul tries to steal it!”
 
Esther couldn’t. She saw how the dead soldier fixated on Rebecca’s tawny, unblemished skin. He gazed at Rebecca’s legs and arms with that same love-hate expression her mother got whenever her dad visited every other weekend. Her mom still loved her dad, but she hated him for making her feel that way, and for leaving.
 
Rebecca huddled next to Esther. “Let’s go!”
 
Researching on the Internet calmed Esther, gave her focus. Then she found what she was looking for: World War I Canadian uniform…Insignia…Two pins designate a Lieutenant. Interesting. No name tag though. Guess Lefty’ll do.
 
While trying to show Rebecca what she’d learned on the phone, Esther shivered as though something else besides the ghoul soldiers watched her.
 
Rebecca tugged on Esther’s robe and whined, “C’mon, let’s go!”
 
Esther regarded the ghouls again. A ghost had joined them—a smudgy looking woman dressed in an ankle length paisley maxi dress floated in the air next to the soldier sitting on the gatepost. She held her hand up to her mouth, whispered in his ear, not having died long enough ago to show signs of fading.
 
Esther pocketed her phone and led Rebecca through the woods and out the other side. Hazel Street was a busy bus route, so they crossed at an intersection. Only a few more blocks and they’d be at Howell High. Esther imagined Devesh had run all the way there because no wolf waddled ahead of them, only a ghost.
 
A gently faded lady dressed in a stately Victorian gown glided toward them along the sidewalk. The ghost’s gaze fell on Rebecca. Her clouded eyes squinted, lecherous and hungry looking. She showed no signs of moving out of the way, and when their paths met, the ghost veered toward Rebecca, lingering close, smelling like rotten potatoes.
 
Rebecca shivered as the ghost leaned in, snarling, gliding her tongue along the edge of her lower teeth. Finally, as the woman turned to leave, she dragged a dark fingernail along Rebecca’s naked arm before she whooshed away into the woods.
 
“She touched me, Esther. I felt her.” Rebecca was almost in tears. She cringed as she showed the red mark on her forearm.
 
“Cover up,” Esther insisted, hoping Rebecca had stashed leggings in her backpack.
 
“No! On sheer principle, I absolutely refuse,” Rebecca fumed. “You know, Cosmopolitan wrote a truly insightful article. Dead Gaze: Understanding the Dead’s Fascination with the Living. They know we’re not dead, but they force us to cover up anyway. Assholes!” She examined her arm again. The mark was already fading. “I mean, they’ve killed people for wearing nothing. If this is the worst they’re going to do to me dressed the way I am, then you know what that means? All this time I could’ve been wearing…less.”
 
Esther stayed quiet the rest of the way to school, not caring that they arrived late. No one else cared either, because a vigil was being held for Mrs. Avery in the gymnasium.
 
“But she’s only just missing,” Esther mumbled, disappointed that everyone presumed the worst about Mrs. Avery.
 
“Shh,” Rebecca said sadly.
 
* * *

After school, Esther agreed to walk with Rebecca only if Rebecca agreed to wear the tights she had in her locker and one of Addie’s hoodies. Outside Esther’s home, they parted ways. Esther waited until Rebecca turned down the driveway to her home before she trudged up the walkway to her house and got a whiff of herself.
 
Ew! Time to wash this robe.
 
Esther stopped by the retaining wall, taking in her mother sitting on the stoop. Dressed as a cowgirl, complete with hat and boots and a flimsy plastic cowgirl mask, Esther’s mother stared off down the street at nothing in particular, a carving knife in hand. Beside her sat a new pumpkin. Clean cut eyes and a wide saw-like grin revealed fresh sigils on the inside. And when she finally noticed Esther, she raised the knife and pointed it at the retaining wall.
 
The tulips Esther buried had returned. They floated above the stems, darkened to a burnt orange. She reached down to touch them. The petals remained soft, their edges gently curled and wrinkled.
 
“That’s never happened before,” her mom mumbled.
 
“Mishu made me give them Last Rites.”
 
“How’s that possible? They’re flowers.”
 
Esther shrugged, bothered by how the ghoul tulips wobbled about in a gentle breeze while nothing else around them stirred.

Without further ado, here is Chapter 2 from Allison McWood's I Broke the World: A Rollicking Dystopian Comedy...

TWO of my picture books are RE-LAUNCHING TOMORROW! 
“Tamara Turtle’s Life So Far” & “Chloe the Unfeathered Parrot”!!!
🐢 🦜 
Saturday, October 28th, 12pm - 2pm 
at the Toronto Public Library’s Northern District Branch: 
40 Orchard View Blvd. (near Yonge and Eglinton) 
🌟🌟🌟
This is a GROUP BOOK LAUNCH that includes 15 authors - members of and sponsored by Authors’ Booking Service. So, come on out and support all the great books for young people by Canadian children’s authors, including me! And there’s a rumour there will be some nibblies...  
🎊 🍾 🎉 
“Tamara” and “Chloe’s” new publisher is Pandamonium Publishing House! 
The illustrations for “Tamara” have been re-imagined by Wei Lu, illustrator for “Chloe”, activities have been added to both books, and some new details included. 
🌟🌟🌟
Partial proceeds of net sales and my royalties for each book are donated to Little RES Q Reptile Rescue, and The Parrot Sanctuary. 
🦜 🐢
I hope to see you there!   

Today, Day 9, I welcome back another repeat guest - Allison McWood. On offer today, an excerpt from I Broke the World: A Rollicking Dystopian Comedy. Stay today for Chapter 1...Come back tomorrow for Chapter 2!

And another repeat guest today - author Tonya Cartmell!

The End
by Tonya Cartmell

He watched her from outside the dining room window as she checked her watch again.  His heart ached as he watched her drain the white wine from her glass in one long sip before wiping the tears away from her eyes. She checked her watch once more and he could almost hear the sigh laced with so much sorrow come through the glass on the night breeze. She slid her chair back and stood up from the table.

Big surprise. He broke his promise. I spent so much time making this dinner and of course, he didn’t come home on time.  Why did I let myself believe him this morning? I am such a fool. Why should our 20th anniversary be different than any other night?  Why would it be important?  I am so tired of trying. I have nothing more to give if he can’t even meet me halfway. Not even halfway. I just wanted him home for one dinner. One night to make me feel like I mattered. Like I was important to him. After all these years.  Just one night to remember, laugh and find our love again.

She started to gather up the dishes from the table. Looking at the china dishes her mind wondered back to planning their wedding. They were so young and madly in love. They registered for the dishes even though they never thought they would use them.

She remembered opening the gift boxes and seeing the dishes in them. They were so afraid to use them and now twenty years later, she felt like throwing them out with the food on them rather than packing all the food into the fridge and washing them. 

Part of her wanted to throw the roast platter at him when he walked in. Of course, she would not do that though, but she didn’t think she could face having to hear about his day when he had hurt her this way.

Outside the window, he hung his head and whispered, “If I could only go in and comfort her. If I could just explain what kept me from being on time. I never wanted to hurt her this way. I love her and she means the world to me. Now there is nothing I can do.  It is too late.” 

His thoughts drifted back to a time where the days seemed endless as they hiked hand in hand; exploring the woods looking for hidden waterfalls. Things seemed easier then, before the mortgage, kids, car payments and high stress jobs.  Back then they would sit and talk for hours over pizza. They would fantasize about the future and what it would look like. He never thought it would come to this. That it would end like this.

He heard a guttural scream followed by a loud crash and ran around to the side of the house to peer into the kitchen window. 

The site inside startled him. Her mascara ran black down her cheeks, yet she stood with a surprisingly satisfied look on her face. The roast she had made was smeared on the wall above the open garbage can. Pieces of the platter lay broken around the floor. As he watched, she picked up the bowl of mashed potatoes and throw it at the wall. She whooped with delight as the bowl shattered and the potatoes slid in a mass down the grey wall. 

“What are you doing?” he yelled and pounded his fist on the window. She froze and turned her head to look at the glass but only saw her reflection looking back. She started to laugh. Quietly at first but it grew as she realized she had scared herself and was possibly close to losing it. “Get a grip and calm down.” she said to herself, hugging her arms tightly across her chest. 

She looked back at her brown and white masterpiece on the wall and started to cry again. She pulled her cellphone out of the pocket of her dress and dialed his number like she had 100 times already tonight. Again, it went straight to voicemail. She slid down the wall and slumped on the floor. Folding her arms around her legs and resting her head on knees, she prayed, “Please God, I know it has been a long time since I have come to you but please, I’m begging you, just let him come or even just call me.  Anything to let me know he is still thinking about me. To let me know he still loves me. I promise, I will try to do better, to be better. I don’t know how we drifted so far apart or why we have let other things come between us but I know we can get back to what we had before. It is not too late. Please, just let us have one more chance. I just need to know he wants it too. That he loves me too. That he believes we can get over this hump. I just need some sign or indication from him.  Please...” She wiped her eyes and got to her feet. Looking at the wall, she muttered “I better get this cleaned up before he comes home.” 

Outside with tears streaming down his face he yelled “I do love you. From the moment I met you. I have never stopped. Please don’t every doubt that.” His breath fogged the window and in it he drew a heart before stepping away and disappearing into the night.

Hearing his voice coming from outside she  turned to look at the window over the sink, and smiled when she saw the heart.

He must have seen the light on and come around to surprise me she thought, glowing in the warmth that he still loved her and things could be ok again.

She ran through the house to the front door and threw it open. The “Happy Anniversary” came out before she realized it was not him on the porch. 

Standing on the porch was a police officer holding her husband’s wallet, cellphone, wedding ring and a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Another stood on the path leading to the porch.  She didn’t understand what was going on until he started to tell her about the accident on the highway.

The driver had been going too fast and rolled his vehicle as he swerved to miss something on the road. The officer was deeply sorry to have to tell her that her husband was pronounced deceased at the scene. 

They brought a few of his items for her to identify. She would be able to see him in the morgue once he was transported there. 

She thanked them and shut the door when they asked if there was anyone they could call for her to come sit with her. 

She sat down at the dining room table again holding his wedding ring in her hand. Moving it between her fingers. The shock of the heart she had seen on the window as well as the news she just received drew ragged breaths from her lungs. 

With trembling hands, she opened the envelope with the flowers. Never one to be overly emotional with what he said in cards, he had written “To my love. Then, now, forever. Let’s make this a new beginning not the end.” Her scream of tormented anguish ripped from her lips and pierced the night before she fainted.

Not only is 🐢TAMARA TURTLE’S LIFE SO FAR🐢 🌟#85🌟 on the Amazon.ca Best Sellers List for Children’s Books on Turtles…
🍾🎊🎉 It’s also 🌟#1🌟 on the 🔥Hot New Releases🔥 in Children’s Books on Turtles 🎉🎊🍾