The Last Dead Person On Earth, Part 2
by Brandon D. Christopher
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In the second part of his Being 13 Halloween tale, Brandon discusses his continuing annoyance at his grand height, the existence of green camel toe, the motherly qualities of Daisy Duke, and kisses with secret prizes from teenage girls.
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Don't you dare go any further without heading over to part one first.
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We started down my block, where everyone already knew me but pretended to shriek in terror at the sight of a deceased ball player with his vampire and transvestite friends beside him. My block was a relatively good score, as it was each year, with plenty of Hershey’s and Snickers to go around. The house on the corner of my street, like it did every year, handed out small bags of carrots, which we immediately threw in their backyard, also like we did every year, as we traveled to the next street over. You would think they would have gotten the message by now.
After a little detour behind some bushes, where we ate half of what we were carrying in our bags, the trio of us approached our first house on the unfamiliar street. We waited for four other trick-or-treaters to finish up their business on the porch before walking across the lawn and knocking on the front door seconds after it shut.
A caped woman in her 40’s opened the door with a huge bowl of candy in her hands. We could see her husband watching TV in the background, and we were more interested in seeing what was on the screen than acknowledging the middle-aged witch when she screamed “Boo!”
“Trick or treat!” we exclaimed after refocusing our attention on her, and we jettisoned our candy bags toward her in one, connected move.
“Oh, what do we have here?” She inquired as she reached into the bowl and revealed a full-size Kit-Kat bar! Full-size candy was almost unheard of in the young-family district. It would have been a good idea to write down their address for next year, but who in the hell carries a pen on Halloween?
The caped woman dangled the enormous treat above Marshall’s open pillow case and called out, “A Vampire! How terrific!” She dropped the candy bar into his bag, reached into the bowl, and pulled out a full-size Snickers! She held it above Javier’s opened pillow case and asked, “Aren’t you the prettiest little girl I’ve ever seen? Witches love little girls,” and she dropped the weighty candy bar into his bag with a rustling of wrappers as it landed. She then pulled out a Rocky Road bar from her bowl and pointed it toward me, and upon seeing how tall I was and how much higher my pillow case was, she proceeded to raise the candy bar a foot higher to reach the opening of my bag. “I’ve never heard of a father trick-or-treating with his children before.”
“I’m not their father!” I shrieked.
“Well, that’s sweet you’re taking them around the neighborhood,” she remarked. “Are you the older brother?”
“No,” I exclaimed, “For Christ’s sake! We’re in the same class!”
“He’s just very tall,” Javier explained to the woman.
“Ohhh,” she replied, “Well, kids shouldn’t use the lord’s name in vain.”
And with a thud, the Rocky Road bar hit the bottom of my sack of candy. After taking one more glance at me, the woman smirked and shut the door on us.
“What a bitch!” Marshall said.“I got half a mind to throw this candy bar through her window,” I warned my friends. “Who in the hell would think I’m your dad?”
“You are tall,” Marshall said. “You’re actually taller than my dad.”
“Taller than mine, too,” Javier stated.
“It’s not my fault.”
We exited her porch and walked across her lawn toward the next house, and along the way, as we passed through her rose garden, I kicked two plants out of the soil to show the woman the consequences of messing with a tall kid.
The house next door was no better. The man who lived there actually asked me how I made it up his steps on stilts. I told him that I was just tall for my age, and he demanded I lift up my pant leg before he would give me any candy. The next house down from him, the woman who opened the door asked me, “Don’t you think you’re a bit too old to be trick-or-treating?” I explained to her that I was only twelve years old and that I had at least two or three more good years in me before I worried about such things. She asked to see my driver’s license to prove my age, and I told her I had no idea what a driver’s license was.
“This sucks!” I told Marshall and Javier as we reached the sidewalk. “This isn’t fun. I have to keep explaining to everybody that I’m only twelve. This is like begging.”
“I guess these are just some of the drawbacks to being tall,” Javier said. “You have to take the good with the bad.”
“Drawbacks?” I asked disbelievingly. “Where’s the draw-forwards … the draw-fronts … the good fronts? Where’s the good points to being tall? I get my ass kicked all day at school, I hit my head on everything, I’m always the last in line! So far, there are no good points to being tall. I can’t even trick-or-treat anymore.”
“Just crouch down at the next house,” Marshall replied. “Bend your knees a little.”
“Yeah, okay. Let me get in the middle of you two when we get up there,” I told them. “You’ll be my cover.”
After we knocked on the door, I bent my knees and curled my spine to the point of almost snapping, but I was now nearly the same height as Marshall. A pretty, blond woman opened the door in a green leotard outfit that stretched from her neck all the way down to her toes. Where the leotard ended was green make-up, which covered her neck, face, and hands. Once our eyes adjusted to all the green ahead of us, our eyes then realized that the woman wasn’t wearing anything under the green leotard, made quite obvious by her huge, bulbous breasts with nipples the size of thumbs.
“Trick or treat,” Marshall and I stared at them and exclaimed. Javier was silent beside us. His eyes were bulging from under his curly wig and eyeliner.
“Ohhhh, aren’t you kids the cutest!” The green woman sighed, and she squatted down to the ground to where a bowl of candy was set by the door.
As she squatted, with her knees spread and thighs wide open, we concluded that she was not wearing any panties under the leotard either. She had what Marshall would later explain to us was a camel toe. Even without knowing what its name was at the time, all three of us knew exactly what it did and now what it looked like.
Still in her squatting position, the woman emptied handfuls of candy into our pillow cases before Javier began making the strangest of laughing sounds and ran away. Marshall and I thanked her repeatedly and even bowed to her before walking backwards down the steps and to the sidewalk without taking our eyes off of her the whole way. It took us several minutes of frantic questions and anxious explanations before we could wipe the smiles from our faces and make it to the next house. I can’t speak for Marshall and Javier, but I know I would have traded all the candy in my bag to see a green camel toe just one more time that night.
We finished out the rest of the block in a series of little victories by devising new plans to conceal the extra foot in height I had. For the houses that had steps in front of their porches, I would stand on the middle step and Marshall and Javier would stand at the top, and we would all squeeze together and hold out our bags. And for the homes that didn’t have steps I would simply kneel down onto one knee and hold out my candy bag like I was the most chivalrous trick-or-treater they had ever seen.
As the height concealment grew better, the closer we got to the wealthy part of town. The treats improved with each passing house. At the far end of the wealthy district, past the precarious Riverside Drive, Bob Hope lived in a great, big mansion, and his wife always handed out silver dollars to the kids. And past him, the actor who played The Fonze in Happy Days, he always gave out toys and stickers and huge candy bars. Right past this street was the Shangri-La of Toluca Lake. This was the part of town that could make you famous on the playground.
As we waited for the crosswalk to Moneyville to turn green, Marshall asked Javier and me a sobering question—the most sobering of the night. He watched us for several seconds before finally asking, “Sergeant Dee Dee McCall or Daisy Duke?”
“Daisy is very pretty but Sergeant McCall, well, I like her skills with a pistol,” I replied without having to even think about it. “I would definitely choose Dee Dee.”
“Javier, how about you?” Marshall asked.
“I think Daisy Duke would be nicer. She’s very sweet. I think she’d make a better mother, in the long run.”
“A better mother?” Marshall pushed Javier’s shoulder and asked in shock. “What the shit? A better mother? She’s totally hot! Who the hell cares about what a mother she would make? At least Brandon had a valid point why he chose Dee Dee. I mean, not only is she like totally hot, Dee Dee can blow you away! Did you see Hunter last night when she crashed her car like ten times and then got out and shot that heroin dealer, the one that attacked her? That’s hot! I don’t mean to be coming down hard on you, Javier. I’d choose Daisy Duke myself, but not because of her motherly abilities, but because of her tits, dude!”
“Sergeant McCall has way bigger boobs than Daisy does!” I jumped in. 
Before Javier could finish his side of the argument, a big red truck appeared out of nowhere and screeched to a halt inches from the curb next to us, scaring us all out of the argument. There were two long-haired teenagers with cigarettes in the front of the truck and two cute girls in the back staring at us. One of them blew a kiss at us and the other laughed.
“Where are you hot guys going?” The laughing girl asked us.“Probably a party at Bob Hope’s house,” Marshall quickly answered.
“Why don’t you come over here and give me a kiss?” She then asked.
“Oh, come on, don’t,” the other girl shook her friend’s arm and whispered to her.
“No, I want to be kissed by a vampire tonight,” the laugher said and puckered her red lips at Marshall.
“Go on, kid, give her a kiss!” One of the guys from the front of the truck yelled. “She wants you.”
Marshall turned to me and smirked, as if saying “I told you I was the handsome one”, and walked toward the truck. As he neared the girl in the back, he cupped his hand over his mouth and pretended to smell his breath.“I might even let you suck my blood,” she said as she leaned out of the truck toward him.
“Now!” The guy in the front yelled, and from the bed of the truck, hidden to us until that moment, sprang a teenager with a moustache and long hair and a fire extinguisher. The last thing I saw was an AC/DC logo on his T-shirt before a huge spray of white, foamy liquid engulfed the three of us on the sidewalk. After a series of laughs and “Yeah's” from the truck, an onslaught of eggs were hurled our way that exploded everywhere around us.
SCREEEEEECH
The truck peeled out in a blaze of laughter and rock and roll music, and after forty or fifty seconds, most of the white cloud dissipated enough so that Marshall, Javier, and I could all see each other. We were still standing in the same exact positions we had been in before the attack, only now wet and completely white. Behind each one of us was an asphalt shadow on the ground where the white spray never reached. In addition to the white, Javier got hit by one egg in the shoulder. Marshall got two in the chest. I came out unscathed by egg but white nonetheless.
Silently, Marshall stepped back up onto the sidewalk and walked over to Javier and me a few feet away. We stared at each other in an awkward stillness for close to a minute before attempting to wipe away some of the white liquid from our faces and costumes.
“Man, I can’t wait to be a teenager!” Marshall exclaimed. “Did you see those chicks?”
“Do you think they’ll come back?” Javier asked.
“A criminal rarely returns to the scene of the crime,” I replied. “If Hunter is right, they won’t be coming back.”
“That one chick that I was making-out with, she was way cuter than Sergeant Dee Dee McCall,” Marshall clarified. “I’d choose the chick in the truck any day over that chick from Hunter.”
“You have got to be kidding!” Javier exclaimed, finally cleaning enough of the white foam from his face to see his dark skin underneath. “The lady in the truck had nothing on Dee Dee McCall! And the lady in the truck shot you with fire extinguisher stuff!”
“I really don’t think she had any choice in the matter,” he replied.
The crosswalk light finally turned green, and we walked across the street with a faint white trail of noxious liquid following each footstep to the other side. It would take more than a handful of sadistic teenagers with eggs and a fire extinguisher to put a close on Halloween for us. We were optimists, and we were twelve years old. And even though we were wet and shivering from the cold October night, we walked around for another two hours until our pillow cases were too heavy to continue any further.
Sure, I was tall, but I was also soaking wet and unexplainably cream-colored. And each house we went to after the red truck never once questioned my age or dedication to childhood; they never once said I was too tall or somebody’s dad. In the rich part of town, I was just some soupy kid covered in a thick, white paste and shivering my ass off, but I was twelve, goddamnit. I was twelve.
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A native of Los Angeles, Brandon D. Christopher has survived 41 jobs, 7 cars, 4 days in jail, and completed a 3-hour Learning Annex seminar to become a private investigator. He is the author of several published essays and short stories, and is currently searching for a publisher for his latest novel Dirty Little Altar Boy. He can be reached at BrandonDChristopher@hotmail.com.
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