VELVETEEN vs. Trick and Treat #4
“Don’t growl at me,” she said. “Hailey does this shit all the time. She’d make a great superhero. We’re all about the dramatic entrances. Tell Scream Queen I’m done fucking around and being tested. I have a solution that works for us both.”
The great beast dwindled, drawing back into itself, until the little boy in the homemade cat costume was standing in its place, watching her through narrowed eyes. “You were supposed to be a hunt and a chase and a kill,” he said accusingly.
“And now I’m not,” she said. “Sorry. Not my problem. Tell Scream Queen it’s time.”
“Tell me yourself,” said Scream Queen, stepping out of the trees.
Her arms were full of dead roses, and her eyes were full of shadows.
She looked to Scaredy. “Run along, little boy. This isn’t your place and it isn’t your problem, and if you didn’t get your moment in the sun, well, that’s too damn bad. ”
Scaredy Cat glared, but he was smart enough not to argue with the woman who controlled his season. Sullen, he turned and walked away into the wood. Scream Queen looked back to Velveteen.
“Well?” she said. “I warn you, I don’t have much patience for grandstanding. There’s only room for one prom queen in this wood, and it’s me until someone bigger and badder comes along.”
“I’m not grandstanding,” said Velveteen. She sat down on the branch before easing herself down to the ground. Human flesh and blood broke a lot more easily than rag-doll floppiness. “I just didn’t want to come down until the big bad whatever the fuck Scaredy actually is was gone. What is he?”
“The thing children fear when they walk in the woods. Fewer woods, less fear, less reason to have something that dangerous running free. It’s almost midnight, little girl. What do you have to say to me?”
“I want to go home.” The words seemed somehow fragile, small, like they belonged in a different sort of story.
A rabbit-eared headband wasn’t so different from a red hood, not really, and there were wolves in this wood.
Velveteen squared her shoulders, refusing to shrink in on herself, and looked Scream Queen in the eye.
“I want to be able to be Velma Martinez, not just Velveteen. I want friends, and a bed, and a chance to live my life on my own terms, not because the story says so. I want to be myself again.”
“I see. You realize that by saying this, you’re denying me my treat, and I’m within my rights to trick you.
” Scream Queen’s smile was toothier than it should have been.
Whoever handled Halloween’s orthodontia must have been making a fortune.
“What’s to stop me keeping you past midnight, and making your choice a foregone conclusion? ”
“Did I say I wasn’t giving you a treat?” Velveteen snapped her fingers. Something else dropped from the tree and moved to stand beside her.
It wasn’t a woman, although it was shaped like one: it had two legs, two arms, a torso, and a smiling muslin mask of a face.
It crinkled when it moved, like dead leaves crunching together.
It wore a frilled dress, like all good dolls did, and as it turned its blank button eyes toward Scream Queen, it was impossible to avoid the sensation of being watched.
“See, I was in Halloween when I learned that if I animate something that’s supposed to be a superhero, it gets their powers. Dolly here is supposed to be me.” Velveteen looked at her creation. “Dolly?”
The rag doll waved her hand. A corn jenny scurried out of the woods on cornhusk legs, pressing herself against Dolly’s ankle. Velveteen turned back to Scream Queen.
“She can watch the corn for you,” she said. “You don’t need me.”
“And when you stop animating her?” Scream Queen asked.
Velveteen shook her head. “I already did. This is Halloween. She’s a living doll. Your narrative says she won’t die until she’s done her job, and it’s her job to protect the corn. You can let me go.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Scream Queen, and stepped closer. “Last chance, hero. Stay or go?”
Velveteen looked at the doll she’d made from her own shed skin. Looked at the haunted wood around her. And finally, reluctantly, looked back to Scream Queen. “I want to go home,” she said again.
“Very well,” said Scream Queen. She snapped her fingers. Velveteen collapsed. The rag doll remained standing.
Scream Queen raised an eyebrow. “She was telling the truth, huh? Well, then. Let’s take care of this, shall we?”
She waved her hand. A door formed from the branches of the nearby trees. Together, Scream Queen and the doll hoisted Velveteen’s body and tossed it through, into the void beyond. Then, still together, they walked into the trees, and Halloween went on around them, eternal as only a holiday can be.
* * *
First there was no door and then there was a door, a paradox of a thing, standing unsupported in the middle of a suburban lawn.
The door opened against the wind—a wind that was too cold, a wind that smelled like blood.
There was a long pause, like the world was waiting for something, before the body of a woman tumbled out of thin air and collapsed on the grass.
She lay there, motionless, unaware of the world around her.
For better or for worse, Velveteen had come home.