Chapter 2

Reality came crashing back when he placed his hands at my hips and thrust. Forced forward to squint, clench my teeth and clutch at the edges of the dirty sink, I was fucked hard and without mercy. Steadying myself, I jabbed a hand down to my crotch, stabbing a pair of fingers into an already sodden cunt. A fire rippled through my thighs as he slammed against me. The pressure was tremendous. Our moans melded—me growling as he growled, groaning as he gritted his teeth and opened his mouth.

When he came, he told me. I visualized the spurting weapon ejecting deep within my bowels as he shook and whimpered. I couldn’t even remember how it’d begun, now so readily colliding with its feverish climax. Yes, a fucking miracle, and had I come with him, it just might have been enough.

Later, as I lay draped across a loveseat in the back of the bar, inebriated and listening to the kissing, touching ghosts, I was overcome by a revolting body. My own. I shivered and clung to myself. Playing a man had taken its toll. I was Cinderella’s wet dream, and midnight was nearing.

A man came to me in a violent dream. He slid a stubby revolver into his long-tailed coat and beckoned me to follow. We slipped like shadows into a theater, slinking over plush carpets and pushing aside blood-red curtains as we went. All at once, I saw a tall man who sat alone in his private box. His beard was as scraggly as it was phony. He was tapping his knee in time to the rhythm of a melody being hummed by the costumed actors below. I stood stone-faced as the man beside me withdrew the revolver from his coat, grinning a grin at me and whispering, “The trick is the treat.” When his victim toppled to the floor, I recognized the costumed man as Abraham Lincoln.

I heard the call in my sleep, and when I woke staggeringly sober, I knew what I must do. I was stronger than I’d ever taken credit for, myself capable of throwing off the yoke of oppression and leading my fellow man beyond a night of rotten candy and childish pranks. I would stake our claim on November and carry Halloween to the Promised Land. I could make the world remember when men were masked avengers, crusaders with secrets we proudly kept, leaders of all, slaves to no-one and nothing.

A cigarette was stuck in my face and I took a drag off it. “Be rid of her,” I said. “I could do it.”

The shadow before me Jack Selig. He was broad-shouldered and bear-like. He was JFK. Beautiful. He leaned back and eyed me cautiously. After all, I’d just proposed he do his wife and have done. We sat across from one another, the table a clutter of beer bottles and a smoldering ashtray, the night dying to wane but for our refusal to give in. Jack knew I was serious, and the way he looked at me I knew it too.

“She’s home now. I could pay you to do it. I will pay.”

I’d rung the doorbell all of seventeen times before a youngish woman with brown hair stood before me in a nightgown. She was disheveled and upset.

“The trick is the treat,” I said and forced myself inside. Jack’s wife screamed and collapsed to the floor where I fell on top of her. But she was strong, and she clung to my jacket and pulled me to the floor beside her.

“Who are you?” she cried, clawing my face and mussing my costume. My hair came unfastened and fell over my shoulders. She gathered it into her fingers and yanked.

“Christ!” I shouted, trying to get my arms free of her nightgown.

“You’re just a girl,” she said and I froze. She let go of my hair and reached out to caress my face. I felt tense and angry, as though I’d betrayed myself and my order. Her touch was indescribable, gentle and yielding.

“Leave me alone,” I said feebly. My brain pulsed, and I felt aflush with liquid heat and blood-red confusion.

I could not be sure, but it seemed as though she was unbuttoning my shirt, running her fingers over the rough gauze wrapped around my chest. When the lengths of bandage fell away, we gazed together at my breasts. The sharp nipples and small bulbs blushed from where they endured the shell of the man I’d worn like a cloak.

“It was awfully tight,” said Jack’s wife, kissing between my breasts.

I closed my eyes, feeling her supple body beneath mine. “It was.”

“Yes. So tight.” She kissed my nipples and circled them with her tongue.

We moved with purpose, hurried and awkward, tearing one another’s undergarments, climbing and pressing ourselves together. Her pale flesh was coursing with heat and trembling tendons. I pressed myself between her legs, grinding hard as she bucked and hooked her ankles through mine.

Glossy green eyes stared up at me. Her breasts heaved and pancaked. I gazed down at our cunts, twisted and tangled, her blood-filled lips peeking out beneath the coarse thatch—grinding, splitting and fraying my nerves with every impassioned grunt.

She rolled her eyes and purred, grinning and whimpering at me. Her arm snaked out and felt through my discarded jacket. In a moment, she had my knife open and was leaning back, tracing the blade over her belly.

“You’d have killed me,” she teased.

“Show me. Show me how you’d have slain me on such a night.” She drew the sharp tip between her breasts and fucked me harder.

“Don’t be stupid,” I hissed. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

She put an arm around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss, but I turned my head. I felt the sting of cold steel when the knife touched my skin. “Don’t be that way,” she groaned into my ear. I didn’t want to kiss her, wanted only to come, to be done. I’d not gone to Selig’s house to fuck his wife—I’d gone for the sake of destiny. My destiny. Was the hope of a new November to be dried up?

She was close, digging her heels into my butt, gasping for breath. “Yes, yes, yes.” Her hand was between us, fingers suddenly inside me. I cried out as my stomach twisted into knots and my whole body went tight. A flood of searing moisture swept outward from my core.

“You lovely girl. You sweet, sweet thing.” Her brown hair was matted to her forehead, and I felt such hatred for her—hatred I’d reserved for myself—the thing within the costume—but couldn’t own.

“Shut up,” I groaned.

“You wouldn’t hurt a soul,” she whispered, taking my hand from her breast and guiding it to the knife pressed to her skin. She closed her hand tight over mine, forcing me to clutch the hilt.

“Stop,” I growled. My head was pounding, vision blurring and I thought I saw her face as the sagging jack o’-lantern outside the black door of that Dallas bar.

“You’re not a man. You’re a woman. Just a girl. They knew. At the bar, they all knew. Jack told me you were coming.”

“No,” I said, gripping the knife, tears welling in my eyes. I couldn’t tell what was real, nor why she insisted on punishing me. I was John Wilkes Booth, I was Lee Harvey Oswald. A man of destiny. I was the farmer who lifted the tractor from Lady Liberty’s broken back. I had not come with candy. I’d come with poison for anyone who’d ever spat at us and forced us into drag.

“I’m a man,” I told her.

Her blushing expression turned dark, and she sneered. “You fucking idiot! I want you, don’t you see? You came on behalf of Jack? What about me? What about what I had to endure? You don’t know me, where I came from! He sent you to me as my Halloween present. They all know about you, my girl. ” She grabbed my hand hard. “You want to do it? Carve me like a gourd? You’re drugged out. What’s the matter with you? You’re no man. You’re not even a boy! You’re completely revealed! The night is over.”

“Stupid girl. Wake up!” She started to push away.

The extra syllable—like extra baggage—woe. The extra syllable—homonym for rejection—whoa. I leaned forward and felt the blade go in. I watched the eyes widen with surprise, the mouth open and go tight, and I braced myself for the scream. But it didn’t come. And the candlelight in her lantern-eyes flickered and went out.

“You’re wrong,” I screeched. “I bear the weight of the world. I am the last man of a disgraceful October!”