Excerpt: Eyeball Soup (rewrite)

“Sure you want to throw this all away?” He stands and stretches a strong and ready arm toward the bulging can, waiting for my approval to drag it all to destruction.

I swallow hard and stuff the tiny spider under the lid, cramming it in a gap between a grinning paper-mâché skeleton and a tumble of full-sized candy bars. “I don’t need it.” I choke out. “I’m a terrible witch.”

And then he grins at me. Sideways, with a secretive curl to his mouth and a slow knowing blink. “Really? A witch?” He pauses to survey the rumpled black witch getup I’ve obviously slept in. “You look more like a princess to me.”

“No!” I shout and to my surprise sock him hard in the shoulder, directly on the well-worn embroidered all-capital letters nametag indicating his name is actually “STANISLAV”. He’s thick, muscular, cold, and the rough impact hurts my knuckles. “I’m supposed to be a witch! A Terrible Witch! Can’t you tell? Look at all this stuff!” The lid crashes away noisily on the cracked cobblestones as I grab the edge of the trash can and jerk it toward my body, yanking bags out of it, strewing post-traumatic Halloween Holiday letdown across the driveway. “See these candy bars? Full-sized candy bars!” I brandish a fan of candy in his face. “What stupid kid wouldn’t want a full-sized candy bar?” I drop them and dive back in. “And these, look at these decorations! Twinkle lights, streamers, glow-in-the-dark webs!” I become hopelessly entangled as my frenzy mounts. “Here!” My fingers close on something slick and silver. “Here’s a scary graveyard sounds CD!” I wind up and whip the CD across the yard like a ninja throwing star, then turn back to the can, leaning in, shoving my arm toward the bottom, fingers grasping desperately for a woefully discarded jack-o-lantern as I fix Stan with an expression of glazed hysteria. “Wouldn’t you want to trick-or-treat at the house with the scary graveyard sounds CD? ‘Cause THIS is the house with the full-sized candy bars! ‘Cause THIS is the house with the Terrible Witch!” I come up with a damp handful of half a pumpkin face, realizing my own face is wet with angry tears and hot with embarrassment. I look across the street, where clucking neighborhood mothers shield their silent gape-mouthed children; unexpected spectators to my trash can theatrics.

The school bus arrives, a timely curtain to my tantrum, intervening, indicating a scene change. Before the students are settled in their seats and the parents have had pause to speculate, Stan has pulled me into the gloom of the garage. We wait in the wings for the audience to disperse.