---

The 2016 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

 

Parade time again.

It’s a little darker this year.

The nights, drawing, a little further than they have before. There’s still a crowd. Still a big one, but there’s a little more tension to them than usual. The laughs are louder, more brittle, and the music a little bit angrier.

This is a celebration still.

But it’s also a refuge.

And, maybe that’s why the clowns are so unsettling.

You see the thing about the clowns is… not that they’re at the front of the parade. It’s that they’re all around us. They step out of the woods. Step out of the crowd. Walk silently into formation to form the first float.

They’re all immaculate. They’re all clean.  They are all unsmiling. None of them are carrying weapons…

But we know that all of them could.

We know that all of them want to.

That’s maybe why the kid with the goggles is such a relief – there’s not much to him: three feet maybe 80 pounds soaking wet but the goggles and the light spilling out from behind them that’s … strong, powerful, reassuring even.

He walks next to his dad who’s clearly terrified and clearly not moving from his side. Behind them a shorter thicker set man walks backwards, eyes on the other floats, on the crowd, on anything that could threaten the kid and the lights behind his eyes.

Lights that illuminate an advert.

A huge honest to god advert on a float that drives past, and as it goes by you hear groans from your fellow audience members: It’s come to this, adverts in the Halloween parade. But then you hear those groans… fade as people, as you take a look at just what is being advertised: A high-rise building.

An impossibly futuristic and yet somehow horrifically out of date high-rise building.

There are things… spread on the out…things that you choose not to look at. Especially as there’s a very tall very elfin man who is shirtless, on the float, waving to you as he barbecues something. You realise as the smell reaches you, you do not want to know what that is.

The car comes next. And as ever, the two brothers are in the front. In the back. The blonde man with a trench coat tries a few different versions of his face on precise features shifting as he turns and waves. Sitting next to him as a woman in sweatpants and the white top eyes wide laptop on her knees focusing. You realise not on the noise around her but the movement.

When she gets closer, he realised she’s deaf. And she is more aware, more awake than anyone else you’ve seen in this parade so far.

Except, perhaps, for the man in the smiling mask, walking carefully in the cars blind spot.

He looks at us.

Mimes: shh.

And you can tell he’s smiling.

But even he doesn’t quite see the young man with the odd gate and the hospital gown behind him or the scientist, the one in full decontamination gear, carrying an assault rifle.

The one who only seems visible from certain angles.

You’re still trying to figure out what’s going on when you realise it’s time for a little light music or a little heavy music, whichever works.

The band are loud, raucous, and know all the classics and run at them with all the enthusiasm of an over caffeinated puppy. They even hit a few.

They know them so well that they sprint through the ones that they do hit, moving so fast we can’t quite see the wounds …every band member has.

The maimed right hand of the lead guitarist,

The holes in the back of another’s shirt.

Behind them a group of very large, very angry, very tattooed men walk surrounding a small polite looking grandfather figure. They are all staring at the band. None of them are smiling.

Unlike the folks surrounding the full size wedding cake float that’s next in line and the floats stuffed with food that they’re handing out to parade goers – and I’m not just talking any food here. I’m talking primo, full-on, badass, gourmet food that’s got its fingers dirty, knows all the words to every Faith No More song, as well as how to both order and prepare steak tartare.

You see one chef, icing war paint on her cheeks throwing cupcakes out to the crowd.

Nearby you see a short intense looking man in a Billy Jack t-shirt next to a tall black woman, a human speed blur and the largest man you have EVER seen. All of whom are holding a shirtless Irish gentleman up, and arguing about knife fights. The Irish gentleman is yelling at the blonde man in the car further down the parade. Something about how he owes him 50 quid.

You catch a cupcake by the way. It tastes great.

And behind the food come the spiders.

Nothing you can see, just a whisper of silk on air on skin. Shadows moving like water. The Impossible clack of an impossible amount of mandibles.

The scent of meat.

An FBI agent – you can tell by how bad his suit is – and an academic walk back to back down the road.

The shadows surround them.

The shadows don’t pounce. Not yet.

You are distracted, thankfully, by an argument.

Two men, both huge, both muscled, both immaculately dressed and both wearing luchador masks or having a blazing row. The row appears to be the about best way to interrogate the terrified men dangling from one each of their meaty fists. There’s also something about bacon wrapped hot dogs but…you figure that’s on them.

The man walking behind them is alone. At first. He casts a very long, very large shadow. He is dressed like an old fashioned PI: hands in pockets, head down low, 30 seconds from opening a conversation with the phrase “It was raining in the city by the bay” But he’s glowering. He’s glowering at a spot right in front of him.

There’s something in that look, something other than rage, loneliness, horror.

Something that drives him.

You find yourself looking at the same spot and that’s why you don’t notice the pair of children when they step out of his shadow. They walk hand in hand and they’re careful not to make eye contact or getting close to the man. They’re not together. But they are… and you don’t want anything to do with anyone stupid enough to try and get between them.

The zombies arrive next. Only two of them this year, flanked by a man whose bearing says police officer and another taller man who’s bearing says ‘born this way’ who is holding a cup of tea in a fine china cup.

You can see his hands are shaking a bit, until the woman next to him steadies them.

Behind her: The second zombie float arrives. A legion of White haired, oilskins, men and women smiling and waving… and not a single one of them without dreadful churning feral hunger in their eyes.

And at last, the director, always immaculate, always precisely dressed and always invisible until she’s right in front of you. She strides down the centre of the road. Heels clacking, shoulders back. You watch her leave.

Make sure she does, and as the parade turns the corner: She turns and faces you all.

You didn’t see her put the clown nose on…or the makeup.

She bows, turns again and follows her collections of monsters and ghosts, horrors and victims, stories and myths off to the next town.

They have a lot of ground to cover.

Happy Halloween everyone form everyone here at PseudoPod Towers.