Irreverent Tales - 1. It’s a Dreadful Life – a Halloween Classic

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It’s a Dreadful Life –

a Halloween Classic

 

As he trundles through the split-pea fog, the man realizes he’s just in time. He’d read tomorrow, November 1st, they’d start installing the butterfly nets below the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge. With the bone-chilling grayness driving off even the most dogged of tourists, his might be the last suicide of this famous suicidal landmark.

The despondent banker’s course is a sad one, led by vermillion lights along the pedestrians’ walkway towards the place over the deepest part of the channel.

A foghorn sounds from somewhere in the Marina District, and the man stops. He’s now near the center, so stumbles to the large handrail. Placing his fingers on the orange steel, its angled sides feel sturdy and oh-so cold.

The banker softly murmurs, “So, this is it; my end. This is how I die.”

He climbs up, letting the heels of his handmade Italian shoes lock into the slope of the handrail. Secure, the man slowly rises up to full posture, prepared to kill himself.

He’d had a miserable walk from his mansion on Pacific Heights, through the throngs of office workers, hot and sweaty after a long day in enforced costumes: young witches and Harry Potter wannabes merely seeking to get home and prepare for the fun later by chasing Ritalin down with straight Johnnie Walker.

The entire length of this journey tonight he kept going over his meeting with the bank’s lead attorney early that evening. The news had not been good; in fact, it represented the worst possible outcome. He’d learned the Department of Justice was pursuing a RICO case – or, a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations suit – against him for some shady-but-profitable banking ‘irregularities.’

He inhales deeply, hearing the foghorn moan softly in the distance, and begins to bend his knees.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you….”

The man freezes. He dares to glance behind him, trying to peer into the gray batting of air, but sees no one.

The jovial voice sounds again. “I said, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Gregory Bailiff.”

Gradually, a caped figure comes into focus as he passes beneath one of the bridge’s nearby streetlights.

“How do you know my name?”

“Heavens! I know a lot more about you, Greggy Boy, and I say come down before you hurt yourself; hurt yourself.”

The accent addressing the banker is fey but redolent with snide laughter in its shimmering bass tones. Finally the person steps close enough for him to make out details.

Gregory relaxes, observing it’s no security guard or cop, but merely a random guy in a diabolical costume, complete down to red skin and gnarly walking staff.

“You still didn’t tell me how you know my name.” The banker now notices the intruder’s walking stick is stuck on top with a pair of hanging fuzzy dice, the tacky cubes one usually sees adorning jalopy interiors. “Who are you?”

“A friend. A friend who knows you are scared of going to federal prison for robbing tens of thousands of bank customers in underhanded – dare I say – evil ways; evil ways.”

“That still doesn’t—”

“And I know you’re feeling lost and betrayed, but you don’t have to.” His tone brightens. “Take a look at yourself. A spry sixty-year-old; the bad life has been good to you! Your years on Earth have not been wasted, and my master has a message for you.”

The banker tires of straining his glance to the right, so straightens up fully and turns at the waist.

“Your master?”

“Yes, Mr. Beelzebub, or just plain Bub to his fiends.” The hellion giggles. “I mean friends.”

Gregory’s face scrunches in confusion. “You’re pals with the devil?”

“Heavens!” curses the costumed figure brightly. “Acquaintances for sure. By the way, glad to make your acquaintance, Gregory. I’m a red-skinned Oni named Terrance, a demon-in-training; in training.”

“Demon in what?”

“I’m still earning my horns, my boy. And to do that, I’m sent out and about, spreading a little fear and loathing in the world, just like you.”

A flush of pride runs up Gregory’s neck and cheeks. “Ah, you’re just saying that.”

“No! No, no – you’re exceptional. Believe me, the higher-ups Down Below have taken note; taken note. That’s why I’m here.”

The banker realizes this character’s lilt has a bit of a stammer to it. “To drag me to Hell.”

“Heavens, no! To keep you on Earth, my boy, doing His bad works.”

“You mean, after all…I am special…?”

“Very. So now, come down from there.”

Full of himself, Gregory casually shifts left foot over right to stand facing Terrance – back to the Bay. “You do seem to know a lot about me, demon, if that’s what you truly are.”

“You have your doubts, but how else would I know so much about your life story, Gregory Bailiff, Senior Vice President of Customer Maximization at Shells-Cargo Bank, a venerable San Francisco institution. But say, what does ‘customer maximization’ really mean anyway?”

The banker puffs with pride. “Simple. It means I’m the one who comes up with new fees and charges for the same old services.”

The Oni’s mouth yawns into a toothsome maw. “Yes, and do it with such callous flair. As I said, Bub is impressed; is impressed. But the craven lengths humans will go to screw one another over is an inspiration to all of us.”

“You’re saying, He approves of my efforts…?”

“Does he, and how! You’ve got a gaggle of infernal viewers Down Below glued to the live-streaming feeds from Earth. There’s lots of note-taking too, believe you me; you me.”

Gregory’s despondency overtakes him again. “Then you also know why I’m up here….”

Terrance takes a step forward, extending a flame-red hand in reassurance. “So what if one of your lowdown little schemes backfired?! You made the bank’s – quote-un-quote – ‘shareholders’ tens of billions in ill-gotten gains. How exactly did the con work again?”

“Well, pardon me for not having the time or strength to go into all the details, but the bank took pains to make it clear that I was being thrown under the bus. Or, ‘You’re expendable,’ was their exact wording.”

“The nerve! Your bosses have balls of steel.”

“Hey, who’s side are you on? None of this is my fault anyway. I was just following orders.” The banker can barely suppress a chuckle.

“Save it for the tribunal. You know you were hurting people.”

Gregory blushes. “Well, yes.”

An atrocious chortle splits from the demon-in-training like a lava vent. It soon plays itself out, leaving Terrance a little short of breath. Leaning heavily on his staff, he manages to eke out, “Impressive organization. Truly demonic.”

“Yeah, well, I face a choice now: hell, Down Below, as you put it; or the hell of a federal prison.” Gregory glances around the fog, lowering his voice. “You know, I hear they treat bankers even worse than pedophiles inside.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised; be surprised,” Terrance confirms with a glint in his eye. “Think how rare it is to see any crooked moneyman behind bars – rarer than hens’ teeth; rarer than a snowy 4th of July!”

Horror-shaken, Gregory splutters, “Yeah….”

Terrance nonchalantly takes another step. Now he’s within grabbing distance of the human.

“You can stop right there, Oni-in-training, or whoever you are. Did Humphries in Customer Distending send you as a joke?! A dying man confronted by a middle-aged yuckster in face paint and a tacky, hipster Halloween costume?!”

Terrance finds this amusing and starts to laugh again. This time it begins as a rumbling growl in the throat, but grows in intensity like the creaking hatch of a Bessemer furnace…. All at once, the denizen of the nether regions sputters asthmatic. His wheezings stoop him slightly, and a devilish hand reaches into a cape pocket to pull out an inhaler.

Following a long deep puff by the intruder, Gregory asks, “You okay?”

“Yes, yes, fine. You know how they tell you ‘don’t inhale’? Well, let’s just say, I’ve been around too many hell-fires in my day.”

The banker flashes with anger, standing fully erect. “Look, still on this demon BS? Give it a rest…a…reSTTTTT!”

Gregory starts to fall backwards; his arms helicopter wildly, but it’s too little, too late. A millisecond later, he’s free of the bridge and freefalling through the fog.

Simultaneously quick and deadly slow, time itself seems to whoosh past his ears. He can see the orange-glowing roadway of the bridge lengthen across his field of vision, and the two lumbering towers come from his periphery into center focus like a pair of tossed javelins.

‘So, this is how I die,’ he thinks calmly. ‘Good.’

And then, with diabolic alacrity, he makes out the figure of Terrance lean over the handrail and peer down at him.

Gregory knows the force of impact will break his back, shatter his skull, hopefully kill him outright – and do it any second now – but then he sees a light.

It comes from where Terrance extends his staff over the side of the bridge, from where his two fuzzy dice begin to glow coal-red.

The banker closes his eyes, refusing to accept the feeling of his terminal velocity slow; slow so much, he barely perceives he’s descending anymore.

He lands in the Bay as gently as on a pillow. The cold wetness shocks his eyes open, but after only a brief dunking, Gregory’s body begins to rise again.

Up, up, towards the two illuminated cubes Terrance holds out over the water. In reverse fashion, the bridge’s vertical supports slink behind the reach of his periphery, and the roadway looms larger and larger.

Within another thirty seconds, the Shells-Cargo Senior VP for Screwing Clients Over stands a dripping mess in front of the demon-in-training.

Terrance blows on his molten dice like a lady with a curling iron. “How ya believe me now?”

            

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The abandoned Tollbooth Operators’ break room might be sparse, but at least it contains a sofa.

Here Gregory Bailiff sits, down to his silk drawers, under a smelly old afghan, shivering while Terrance hums and rustles them up some instant coffee.

The banker’s hand-tailored Hong Kong suit steams gently. It, along with his tie and Egyptian cotton shirt, array themselves across the backs of chairs with the Oni’s glowing dice standing in the center, drying them.

“Genius. Pure evil genius,” Terrance says, placing a hot mug in Gregory’s hands.

“What is?” the man asks after taking a sip.

“This place. They both raise the toll to a ludicrously high amount AND fire all the tollbooth operators! Hundreds of good-paying jobs with family health insurance – gone; poof. Vanished; vanished. Now the automated system runs for a penny a day, issuing $100 citations for ‘toll violations’ 24/7. And to think, the bridge was built and paid for by tax-payers as public property. But do the people say peep now about getting a raw deal from the bridge’s corporate owners? Nooo, they just pay and go along with it like there’s nothing to be done; be done! They’re like sheep driving to a lamb luau.”

“You sound pretty well informed.”

“In Demon School we devote an entire semester to studying avaricious human plots.” The malevolent wink appears again, evidently tying up his wickedness and Pollyanna traits in a fey little twist. “We learn all the classic scams: GM/Firestone buying up every light-rail system in North America to scrap ‘em for buses; the bill of goods saying Artificial Intelligence will help people, ha! Oh, oh, the 2016 Elections! – Heavens! All the big ripoffs.”

The banker nods his head. “Yep, but you be careful and remember to act naïve while you’re tooling around on Earth. Being well informed makes you no friends these days.”

“Oh, yes,” the evildoer says in total innocence. “We’re warned by our professors not to venture up here on our own; our own. You can never tell what’s on a man’s mind, and you’re likely to be out-deviled at any moment.”

As Gregory bundles up tighter, then sips and starts to feel more alive again, he takes a good gander at his rescuer.

Now that the pair sit inside, the banker can see Terrance’s age is indeterminate. But with its store of wrinkled frown lines, the solidly middle-aged face expresses a long, experienced life already lived.

He also notes the novice hellion’s curly black hair steps away from two bony plates on his skull. They’re in line with Terrance’s temples, and remind Gregory of the protrusions from which deer antlers grow.

The remainder of the Oni’s appearance is less interesting. Besides his flame-red skin and yellow cat eyes tricked out with mascara, his tubby beer gut is ill disguised beneath a 70’s era leisure suit. The brown triple-knit polyester – a truly hellacious fabric – looks hella uncomfortable and clashes style-wise with the black satin cape he wears. It has a standing velvet collar in back of his head.

“So, what’s being a demon-in-training all involve?”

“Well, ya see; ya see, we have to pass our final exams and then go out into the world and spread a little wickedness around. You know, make sure people feel sufficiently hopeless. And then, like me, to graduate to a fulltime, tenured demon position, we’re assigned a testcase for our final thesis.”

“So I’m your testcase.”

“Yep.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning, I help you see things clearly again, and I’ll get my horns.”

“Horns?”

“Yes! Teacher says every time a banker shouts ‘Get a job!’ at a homeless person, a demon gets his horns.”

“That’s all very well and good,” Gregory says, totally self-absorbed, “but in case you haven’t noticed, I want to die.”

After a half minute of despondently looking down in his lap, Gregory sees a fiendish hand settle atop his own.

“And I’m here to help,” Terrance says as soft as a malicious notion come to a person on the crapper.

“How can you help, demon?”

“By raising your chin. By cheering you up, by making you see there’s still so much bad left to do in the world.”

“You think?”

“Yes. And don’t worry about Hell. It’ll always be there, waiting for you. Why, just the other day, Bub himself was saying ‘If there’s one man I need more than any other up there on Earth, it’s Gregory Bailiff. He’s an awesome dude!”

“Beelzebub said that, about me?’”

“Yep. He’s a big fan of your work.”

“Look, thanks for the evil pep talk, but I’m just a banker. Just a humble…money changer.”

Suddenly Terrance sounds like Mr. Paul Lynde. “Oh, you’re so much more than that.”

“I still don’t know—”

“Don’t know if you should trade one hell for the other?”

“Yes, if—”

“Look, right now your P.E.I., Personal Evil Index, is low. You’re being exhausted by all these sham do-gooders, raising a stink about a few puny billion dollars; billion dollars. But if you think about it, with your naturally crooked nature, and your amazing skills at lying, manipulating and deceiving – you know, being a banker! – you’ll go into Leavenworth and wind up running the joint in three months.”

“Ya think?”

Terrance sits back confidently, hands locking behind his head. “I know it. You’re one wicked son of a bitch.”

Gregory demurs. “Ah, you’re just saying that.”

“No! You are. So I propose we take a look at three special Halloweens: one past, one present and one future. Then you can make your final decision.”

“Um – Isn’t that from a different holiday movie—”

“Shush”—he glances over his shoulder—“they’ll never notice the difference. Plus, they not paying that much attention anyway.”

The banker thinks the proposition over but still hems. “I don’t know.”

Terrance pops to his feet. “Oh, come on, Greggy Boy – help an Oni out. You decide if you want to live or die, and maybe I’ll be promoted to fulltime demon in the process; the process.”

“Well, what do I have to lose?”

“That’s the evil spirit!” Terrance runs and gathers Gregory’s clothes as the man stands to dress.

Once they’re all set, Terrance chirps, “Excellent. Now, grab the hem of my cape and we’ll be off.”

Gregory does so, thinking they will be whooshed up into the air. Instead, Terrance hoofs it for the door.

“Aren’t we – you know – gonna fly?”

“Heavens, no! That’s Fallen Angel College, and it takes several millennia to be that bad.”

“But if we’re walking, why do I have to hold your cape?”

“Atmospherics, and just for chuckles. Now, shall we?”

“Lead the way.”

Both go back out into the gray blanket of air and start heading for the Marina District. What Gregory can’t know, is they are also stepping back in time.

            

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The fog lifts on an unexpected sight for the banker. A cool wind blows the smell of small-town burning leaves into Gregory’s nostrils. On the currents can also be detected sweet apples getting dipped in molten caramel, and pumpkin pies cooling on windowsills.

The wide sidewalks are punctuated with alternating hundred-year-old oak trees and acorn-topped streetlamps all aglow. Sights and smells – both familiar and forgotten – tell him he’s not in California anymore.

“Is this,” Gregory asks, “my—”

“Hometown? Yes, and it’s Halloween of a very crucial year for human malcontentery. It was a close one too, but Bub and his buddies nudged things to the dark side through the standard tools: fear and deception.”

“So, when are we?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Come, follow me.”

The sudden sound of a doorbell makes Gregory turn to his left. There a glorious tableau of midwestern life half a century ago can be seen. The door of the house creaks open and a collection of children on the porch sing out “Trick-or-Treat!”

“That’s Old Man Winkelmann’s place.” Gregory hops a pace ahead of Terrance; he feels like a kid again.

At his door, Old Man Winkelmann feigns surprise and shock at the marauding horde of candy-seekers. Each wears a costume straight out of the Ben Cooper box. For under $2.00 at Woolworth’s, parents could dress their offspring as Goldilocks or princesses; as pirates or Batman. Helpfully, for the Old Man Winkelmanns of the world, the gaily colored satinette smocks had writing on the front to identify ‘what you are.’

Tarrying their pace, the demon and banker hear another characteristic sound of the period. Candy striking the bottom of plastic pumpkins like drums. Each child carries one for the ‘loot,’ and each kid in turn says “Thank you.”

The eye-mask-wearing teenage boy chaperoning the group heads the trick-or-treaters down the steps and back out to the walkway.

“Watch this,” Gregory says expectantly to Terrance.

After the little ones file past the retiree’s Oldsmobile, the teen hoodlum takes something from his bag. A moment later, a raw egg drips and oozes from where he’d smashed it on Winkelmann’s back fender.

“Ah,” the demon sighs contentedly. “Humans are so ungrateful.”

“I know, right! The egg removes the paint, so the old guy had to drive around with a bald spot on his car for two years. It was funny!” Now Gregory sighs. “I miss the good old days.”

“Bad old days, you mean.”

“Yes. So, show me more, demon.”

Terrance lifts the flap of his cape and leads Gregory on a tour of the sights and smells of this Halloween.

In living rooms across town, people settle down to watch only the third broadcast of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. At the local cinema downtown, older teens slouch in the balcony and back rows of Rosemary’s Baby to get to second base.

In homes, flat scaredy-cat and skeleton decorations are pinned to walls or taped to windows. Black and orange streamers twist together and flare from corners of family rooms to festoon central lighting fixtures. In such Halloween party spaces, parents encourage younger teens – from 13 to 15 – to experiment with vaguely sexual games. There’s the handless ball-pass by only the chin and chest, lips coming so close together the kids could kiss. There’s the belt-shimmy, where a pair of leather straps are attached as one big loop and blindfolded adolescents in two – always a boy and girl – have to shake rattle and roll to get it from over their heads, down each other’s bodies, and onto the floor. And most suggestively of all, Twister! Parents watch on approvingly as the spinning game introduces their barefoot or bare-socked kids to the contorted acts of sex itself.

“It was such an ‘innocent’ time,” Gregory comments with an hypocraful nudge-wink.

“But it wasn’t fun and games for all the children.” The Oni’s tone suddenly rings forlorn. “While all the other kids were trick-or-treating, one little boy was left behind, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.” As Gregory feels awash with a sudden sadness, Terrance lifts his cloak, and both of them stand in a classroom.

“Oh, my God,” Gregory says, seeing a solitary ten-year-old at his desk in the otherwise abandoned school.

“Know where you are?”

The banker spies all the colorful decoration the pupils had made attached to the walls. “This is my 5th grade classroom.”

When the man seems hesitant to approach the boy’s desk, Terrance reassures him. “Relax. He cannot see or hear us; they are mere shadows of Halloweens that have been!” The Oni starts a laughing fit that teeters asthmatic until Gregory helps with a few choice back-slaps.

They proceed up to the child and watch. He’s diligently cutting out the word ‘fornication’ from a classmate’s bible. Magazines lay open with similar rectangles of missing text; the kid’s pastepot stands by at the ready.

“What exactly is it you’re doing?” Terrance inquires.

Gregory replies with a faraway expression. “I’d discovered Mrs. Dawson, my math teacher, was shagging the brains out of the studly janitor every lunch period.” He turns wistful eyes on the demon-in-training. “I’m making my first blackmail note.” The man bites a crooked finger to suppress tears.

“Awwww….”

“Yep. I posted it with an envelope in the supply closet where they smashed their pumpkin spice and told them”—he nearly gets bogged down in emotion—“to pay up, or else.”

Terrance shakes head in slow admiration. “From such humble beginnings, but look at you now. The epitome of wickedness.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, no. I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.”

The man places an appreciative hand on Terrance’s shoulder. “Thank you for reminding me of this. It was the first hundred-dollar bill I ever earned all on my own.”

“But you didn’t stop there, did you?”

Gregory removes his grip to do another sprightly hop. “Oh, no. By the end of 8th grade, I had enough cash to peddle influence in high school – buy exam answers; have kids beaten up for calling me names; bribe teachers – the whole shebang.”

“So you were a crooked little big shot even back then.”

Just realizing it, Gregory murmurs, “I was, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, Greggy Boy. You had ambition, and even young, a knack for making those around you miserable.”

While the Shells-Cargo Senior VP for Ripping People Off gazes back on his ten-year-old self, the demon gently suggests: “It’d be a shame to throw it all away, wouldn’t it?”

With another swoosh of his cape, the two find themselves outside again, standing on someone’s porch.

“What are we doing now?”

“Watch.” The denizen of infernal regions gestures to a middle-aged man climbing the steps.

This person strides to the door and places something wicked on the knob before stealing back into the night like a thief.

“Remember,” Terrance says, “I mentioned a decisive event about to befall mankind? Behold what I mean!”

Gregory bends slightly to look at the orange cardboard cutout of a jack-o-lantern swinging on the door. On it are printed the totally inappropriate words: “Even the Great Pumpkin’s Voting Nixon-Agnew this Election!”

The shocked banker staggers backwards. “Oh, good grief!”

“Yes, it was a hard row to hoe – took a lot of assassinations – but in the end, a man no one wanted for President was elected.”

Gregory finally gets it. “Paved the way for current times, huh?”

“Yes, my boy”—a malignant rattle in the demon’s throat begins to emerge—“Trump was no accident. It takes evil balls of steel to pull off something that diabolical!” The hellion laughs so profoundly, he doubles over in breath-stealing wheezes. As he takes a hit from his inhaler, the fog returns.

A moment later, the smells in the air change. By the time the haze clears again, the disinfectant-like odor of eucalyptus tells Gregory they are back in San Francisco. “When are we now?”

“Take a look.” Terrance motions, and they’re suddenly on top of the city; stunning views of downtown glint between mansions and mature trees.

“Is this Dolores Heights? This was the first neighborhood I lived in San Francisco. Moved here right after the Texas Savings and Loan scandal earned me my first cool ten million in tax-payer money.”

“But it wasn’t the last, was it; was it?”

The banker farts out a chortle. “Nooo! Are you kidding me; not by a long shot.”

Terrance points with his walking staff and dice.

Trick-or-treaters run up to the door of a sprawling Spanish Colonial Revival demesne, leaving their father pacing the sidewalk. He has a flip phone to his ear and barely minds his kids with half an eye.

“Know when we are now, exactly?” the demon-in-training asks.

“That’s me, likely twenty years ago.”

Terrance glances around. “Yes, but what type of area is this?”

“A rich one. One overrun with men who are near-senior-citizens, raising small tikes from their 3rd, 4th or 5th marriages.” Gregory archly chuckles. “My Gay friends joke Noe Valley and Dolores Heights are where breeders are sent out to stud pasture.”

The younger version of Gregory on the mobile utters a long and loud sentence in Mandarin.

“What is it you are doing on the phone?”

“Business. Maneuvering a mega deal with shady Chinese shell groups who may – or, let’s face it – definitely work for the Commie, so-called People’s Army. They’re always looking for ‘uncomplicated’ ways to pump billions into their war machine.”

“Sounds tricky.”

Gregory laughs again. “With our trade laws being wormed out like swiss cheese by conservative administrations, it’s not. However, when dealing with totalitarian China, you have to memorize one phrase: 天安門廣場大屠殺? 從來沒有聽說過。Meaning: Tiananmen Square massacre?” The banker shrugs “Never heard of it.”

Two bright-eyed boys in their costumes rejoin their dad. One’s dressed as that season's most frightening hobgoblin – Linda Tripp – while his brother makes a liver-spot-wearing juvenile dead-ringer for America’s record holder of wasting tax-payer money – special persecutor, Kenneth Starr.

The family unit moves on to the next oversized McMansion, squatting on a meager slice of city property, with the spectral visitors from the future following close behind.

“The children of your…?”

“Third marriage.”

“Smart-looking youngsters.”

Gregory says flatly: “I’d rather not think what a drab disappointment they became.”

Terrance understands and tut-tuts in commiseration. “I know – ungrateful, if you ask me. Take a perfectly evil upbringing and squander it on being a Doctor-without-Borders. Please! And, Garrett – what’s the younger one now…?”

Gregory can hardly bring himself to say it. But after swallowing a lip-biting lump of bitterness, he ekes out, “A social worker.”

Terrance engages in more tut-tutting. “Heavens! It’s only right those boys should be dead to you; to you.”

He nods, like he appreciates the unholy validation, but as the Halloween boys return to their distracted father, Gregory covers his eyes in shame. “Oh, evil spirit, take me from here. I can bear this wicked wholesomeness no more!”

            

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The distant groan of a foghorn makes him uncover his face. “What’s going on?”

“Life, my boy! This is Halloween Present. While some poor schmuck is contemplating jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, reckless fun is going on all around him; around him.”

“But where are we?” The banker sees they are in the living room of a dingy apartment. In the corners, plastic cauldrons spew dry-ice smoke, and blacklight spiders crawl up the walls. Studly young men in bedsheet togas flash nips and pecs to get the attention of high-school girls – and a few guys too – who wear Cosplay and ‘Hello Sexy Kitty’ outfits. All are freely drinking from red plastic cups.

“Bub just loves how careless this time of year makes humans. Imagine the number of STDs about to be passed around tonight like salmonella-laced candy bars.” Terrance sighs contentedly, “Ah!”

“That’s all very well and good, but you did not tell me where we are.”

“We’re at a frat house party on Lone Mountain.”

“Oh.” After several beats, Gregory adds, “Why?”

“Because you need to see something. Follow me.”

The fiend from h-e-double-hockey-sticks leads the way to the corridor. More college students hang around there, but between them slips a slippery looking geek in a Ninja Turtle costume. He holds something in his hand, and periodically stops to push up his glasses.

“What’s he doing there, Terrance?”

“That’s a wireless scanner,” he replies with a wink. “That guy’s stealing data from peoples’ cellphones.”

On a whim, Gregory extracts his. Just like at the Tollbooth Operators’ break room, it’s dead. The saltwater must have played havoc with the battery. Distractedly, he asks, “What’s he going to do with peoples’ data?”

Terrance’s dice shake a little bit, he’s so flabbergasted. “And you call yourself a banker?! That sexually frustrated wallflower’s gonna take his pilfered passcodes, account names, birthdays, etcetera and cash in with North Korean government hackers. Ca-Ching!”

Gregory catches on warmly. “Ah, so there’s still young, ambitious malcontentery left in the world, huh?”

“You’re catching on. Heavens! There may be hope for you still; you still. But now come. Let’s go see how others are celebrating this Halloween.”

With a flamboyant swoosh of his satin mantle, the frat party disappears and the moist air of the street chills Gregory’s cheeks. “Is this, Union Street?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Funny. I was just here earlier this evening and didn’t notice all the details.”

The higher-end shopping street’s awash with lights pouring through store windows. As they stroll, miserable, overstressed, overworked people bob in and out to get last-minute necessaries for the night of debauchery ahead. The corner liquor store’s a-grumble with folks picking up cases of vodka and lime-rita mixes. The drugstore buzzes with people purchasing cheap chocolate, styrofoam grave markers, and other tacky dayglow decorations. In addition, they slink through the condom aisle, pretending to be distracted, but in reality, picking up prophylactics that will get utterly forgotten when costumed grunts ring out the season at midnight.

“Bub wishes everyday were Halloween,” Terrance says with a grin. “Imagine the amount of inappropriate behavior that will happen just a few hours from now.”

“Yeah,” Gregory affirms, feeling the flush of wickedness enliven his step a tad. He’s getting into the evil swing of things.

“Yes, indeedy. It took a lot of effort, but finally our gang Down Below managed to wreck this holiday; steal it from the kids and turn it into the blood-curdling, horrifying property of borderline adults!” The Oni’s smirk turns ashy as his mouth widens into a ghastly fumarole of corrosive laughter.

Gregory halts his step, knowing what’s coming.

The fuzzy dice bounce as Terrance gasps and leans heavily on his staff. His wheezing increases, so he reaches for his hellacious inhaler.

While he waits, the banker realizes where they’ve stopped. “But this…” he sputters. “It’s—”

“The place you had your hush-hush, off the record meeting this evening?”

“Yes.”

Terrance snaps his fingers, and the next thing Gregory knows, he’s back in the conference room with Shells-Cargo’s chief criminal lawyer. He gazes at his own self, appearing pale, sitting at the table as the attorney speaks.

“Look, the firebreak strategy to save heads from rolling at the top has already culled 5,300 rank-and-file scapegoats who were just doing their jobs. And more are getting ‘let go’ every day, but it’s not working. The Justice Department is sniffing around, and the Board has decided you need to fall on your sword. They’ll take care of you – pump a few more million into your Aruba and Zurich accounts – but publicly, they’ll be saying it’s all your fault once the government lays charges.” The man of the Law waits a few beats, glancing at his watch. “Have any questions?”

The ghostly Gregory sitting across the table from him shakes his head.

The lawyer stands and starts shoving files in his attaché case.

“Well,” the pallid Gregory says, “maybe I do have just one question. So, I mastermind the opening of tens of millions of unauthorized checking and credit card accounts for bank customers without their knowledge, pulling in billions of dollars for the flagging institution, and earn our CEO a string of $40 million-dollar bonuses from all the fake charges people pay, then help Shells-Cargo illegally repossess thousands of automobiles from people who needed them to get to their low-paying blue-collar jobs, because of our sham-non-existent car loans on them, then help engineer the cover up, engendering a ‘Papers, please’ policy of blackmail and mob-style intimidation of bank mid-level worker drones just in case one of them decides to turn whistle-blower, THEN, in the midst of the exploding scandal – to fund the coverup itself – I figure out how to charge 570,000 customers for auto and home insurance policies they didn’t need, while still defrauding another 2,000 on fake car loans, allowing the bank to dig its heels in on overcharging hundreds of millions of small businesses with excessive fees to process our credit card payments, THEN, we ensured another 110,000 hapless mortgage customers were fined for missed deadlines they never actually missed…not to mention our decades’ long scam of overselling market value in minority neighborhoods simply so we could foreclose and declare major losses for tax evasion purposes…and the bank is leaving me high and dry – after all I’ve done for them? A fallguy, a patsy – red meat thrown to the lions?”[1]

The corporate eagle had packed and now stands with his hand doorknob. “Gregory. Gregor – GREG! Wake up! You know as well as I do, your position with the bank is ‘at will,’ a product of the ‘Right to Work’ movement, meaning you can be fired at any time, and for no reason at all. You’re just as expendable as all the scum in the rank and file, and that’s why they owe you nothing.”

He walks out.

“Da-Aaammm,” Terrance exclaims, “and I thought Hell was a cold-hearted place. We have so much to learn from you guys.”

“Look at him.” Gregory gestures to his suicidal self. “A Senior VP is not a piece of fruit. You can’t pick him out of your teeth and toss him away like an apple peel.”

Following the shadow of Halloween Present as he rises from the table and begins to walk through the building, more zombie than man, the visitors encounter several costumed office workers who examine Gregory in his banker’s getup and probe the misery plastered on his face.

“Look, Terrance. They can all see the crushed spirit in his eyes, hear his crestfallen shuffle. I wonder how no one can tell he’s in trouble and reach out to help. How none of them can see he’s suicidal.”

“Maybe they do see, Greggy Boy, but everyone nowadays is so wrapped up in their own problems, they just don’t give a damn.”

Gregory stops then in them in the building’s lobby. “No one cares? Is that what we’ve made of the world? Brought it to such dire straits?”

The Oni beams. “Yep. You sure have.”

They catch up with the suicidal man in the sidewalk. He turns right to meet his destiny on the Golden Gate Bridge.

When Gregory starts to follow, the demon lays a red hand on his arm.

“But, Terrance! I want to watch – want to see me going home for the last time, and then successfully kill myself. I want to die.”

“Why exactly did you go home again, instead of heading straight to the bridge?”

“Oh.” The bank’s patsy’s emotionally distracted. “I went there first to ensure my sons were entirely cut out of my will. All my vast pilings of financial nuts and real estate nuggets will go to a charity.”

The hellion inhales, waiting for the…. “To…which one, exactly?”

“The NRA, of course.”

Terrance’s eyes grow round as red-hot waffle irons. He slowly sputters out his breath in astounded admiration. “Wicked.”

Gregory makes to move again. “So I want to watch.”

The demon-in-training pulls him the other way. “No, not yet; not yet. Remember, I said three Halloweens. We have one more to witness before you make your ultimate decision.”

            

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The Oni swishes his cape, and the next thing Gregory can see are burning tires. They are arrayed like a giant jack-o-lantern, yawning across the entire width of Lombard Street. Hellish pollution stings his eyes, and everywhere – everywhere! – empty plastic water bottles drown the streetscape. “Where, I mean, when are we?”

“We’re only a little bit in the future, Greggy Boy.”

“But it looks so dystopian….”

“Oh, it is. This Halloween Future is positively dreadful.”

“What has happened to the world?”

“Well, corporate Artificial Intelligence has finally done it: eliminated all the jobs. Now the mean streets of Frisco Town are ruled by murdering gangs of unemployed software developers and part-time Uber drivers.”

“There are”—the banker scowls in confusion—“still Uber drivers…?”

The demon’s lips twitter with fright. “You don’t expect software developers to take the bus, do you?”

“No, I see. But this world…. It’s horrifying.”

“That it is.” He cautiously peers over both shoulders, sounding again like Mr. Paul Lynde. “Now there’s really no place to park.”

The Senior VP for Bleeding People Dry anxiously clutches at Terrance’s mantle. “Demon, tell me these are but shadows of things that might be; tell me that I could still make a difference.”

The denizen of Hell grins. “Oh, my boy, you’re wicked – it’s true – but the world has passed an ethical/moral/intellectual tipping point and it’s all down hill from there; from there. It’s going to Hades on a handtruck with or without you. You’re just not that important when weighed against all the human avarice splitting the world apart right now.”

“So,” Gregory asks with baited breath, “in my lifetime I could see us go from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown to a dog-eat-dog Mad Max reality?”

Terrance plays it cool. “Heavens, no! Not if you kill yourself, you won’t.” He winks.

Looking around as eager as a kid before a Christmas tree, Gregory surveys the carnage in open-mouthed wonder. “But, Terrance, you misunderstand. I want to live. I want to play a part in making this nightmare come true…oh, think of the money to be made…. Please. Terrance, please; I want to live!”

Such glad tidings cause the demon-in-training inhale sharply. It then erupts again in boiling geysers of laughter.

The human spins around to face his rescuer, but while the sounds of the Oni ring on in his ear as a fading asthmatic wheeze, Gregory sees only water and fog.

            

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

He’s back standing on the handrail near the middle of the Golden gate Bridge. “I’m alive,” he whispers. “I’ve made it!”

Feeling his heart beat frantically due to all the possibilities of the morbid time to come, Gregory climbs down and paces in an excited little circle. Eventually he stops, glancing up one of the bridge’s vermillion towers.

“Thank you, Terrance, wherever you are. You’ve shown me there is still so much bad left in the world. I won’t let you down, I promise you that.”

He could almost hear Terrance reply: “Atta boy, Greggy. Get in there and make ‘em wish you were dead!”

The man begins to jog, first off the bridge and then up into his Pacific Heights neighborhood. Slowly, the fog lifts and a few pollution-stained stars start to twinkle.

Gregory knows it’s not going to be easy, but he also knows his demonic protector’s right: the banker will own whichever prison he’s sent to, as he’s never backed down from a challenge.

The Senior Vice President’s so distracted with these notions, he barely acknowledges the craziness of Adult Halloween in full swing around him. One party, that’s spilled noisily onto the sidewalk, clearly required all in attendance to don giant yellow emoji costumes. Gregory’s only slightly amused to see – you know it – one wisenheimer to show up as a smiling brown pile.

Turning the corner for his house, the man with his distracted thoughts of the federal pen, nearly runs into a pitiful teenage boy with a begging board. He wears only a pair of boxers and a sheepskin coat. The young man mutters something about being robbed and needing help.

Gregory walks right past the transient, feeling nothing in particular. ‘San Francisco is full of scuzz,’ he muses, more concerned – naturally – about the sorry state of his own plight.

Back home, he notices the light flashing on his landline. He presses the button.

 

Bailiff! Where the hell are you?!

 

It’s the cantankerous voice of his boss, Mr. Snotter, bank president.

 

I’ve been calling and calling your cell, but you never pick up. Anyway, great news. The Republicans in Congress attached a piece of pork rind to an emergency relief bill for hurricane victims. They’ve made it so no one can ever go to jail for robbing people! I mean, as long as you’re a fatcat financial institution…. You know what I mean—slowly, the fatcat gets choked up—it…it just, it makes you proud to be an American, don’t it.

 

His boss makes a jowl-shaking grumble to get back to business.

 

But anyway, text me as soon as you get this, because Boogle called and they want to talk to us about the future of A.I.

 

Into the quiet after the message clicks off, Gregory murmurs, “It’s a Halloween miracle….” Suddenly he drops his keys and starts running. By the corner of the next block, he finds the nearly naked homeless boy.

Gleefully, he shouts at the top of his lungs, “Get a job, ya scuzzball!”

A moment later, he glances above the head of the sobbing teen, gazing wistfully at the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge. Deep within in his coal-black heart, he knows Terrance had just gotten his horns.

 

                     

~