Cowboy Halloween

Jim Martin

He sat on his front step. Something... something wasn't right. There was a taste in the air, like maple syrup and binge drinking and sweat and illicit sex in public, and it floated with a quiet anger through the streets like some dark, Stephen King demon fog. Was that a note of next day regret and unplanned pregnancy? The subtle pang of looming divorce and lives teetering on a precipice of stupidity? And then it hit him... memories of day drunk executives... an awful, unrelenting twang in every corner... the neverending social media scroll of deep fried foods-that-should-not-be-deep-fried. The horrific shudders began, like big, heaving sobs of fear and pain and sadness. He felt disdain hoist herself unlovingly upon his chest, saw her smile wryly as she shat a coil of sugar-coated mini donuts all down the front of him. And he could hear it, light on the afternoon breeze, taunting him. Cowboy Halloween. Cowboy Halloween. Cowboy Halloween.