MEGAN PRICE: Halloween
Megan Price is a self-published writer who lives in Trafalgar on the KZN South Coast.
Orange leaves and pine needles covered the ground. The wind had blown them in from the forest and rattled them off the trees. Everyone was still sleeping, the cold air keeping them inside, but soon the world would change. The sky would turn orange and bleed into night, and the magic would wake them up.
The smell of rain hung in the air, though it never came. October was a world of its own. Ghosts walked beside us and we didn’t hide, devils knocked on our doors and we greeted them with a smile. The air was sweet and the sky felt lower. It came and went as fast as it could, but we never forgot it. We put up the lights and lit the candles. Carved faces and baked pies.
We did it to escape from the world, to think of something more magical than what the rest of the year had to offer. Tonight the sky would be darker and the moon would be bigger. Devils and ghosts and walking dead men would run around the streets and we would let them. Laughing and singing beside them.
Ravens would watch from their perches and tell those in charge that we followed the rules. We lit the lanterns and threw no sweets away, we lit the big fire and toasted to those who couldn’t make it. The streets were dead for a night before we all had to go back to living, before the magic faded and the monsters hid again.
We sang songs and wore masks and pretended our worries away. I felt the heat of the bonfire in the square as it lit up the night, orange sparks reaching for the endlessness above us. Music played and warm wind blew and the dead felt welcome. When the hands were on the twelve, we would say goodbye and the world would go to sleep. The magic nothing more than a secret we all kept safe. But tonight, the magic was alive.
* Megan Price is a self-published writer who lives in Trafalgar on the KZN South Coast. She has written numerous flash fiction stories, one of which won The Creative Writing Ink Short Story Competition in 2022. She has also written and self-published a number of longer short stories and has sold copies all over the world.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
