Fucked Up

I just found a book of old Halloween photos called Haunted Air by Ossian Brown. It turns out that back in the day, kids knew about horror! How else could you explain these freaky costumes. Nowadays it's princesses and spiderman. Once in a while you see a zombie or an ax in the side of the head, but there's not too much that makes you uncomfortable. I grew up in an apartment building with an elevator and I remember running into it with our paper bags and rustling clothes, standing there breathless and pumped  on crack going up and down; 20 floors with 10 apartments on each: we'd have candy for months. When we moved to the suburbs, we still travelled as a group, but there was something more every-man-for-himself about it. Someone was always falling or getting their cape stuck in the thorns. I remember the way I could hear my own breath behind the mask, how my face would sweat if it was a rubber one, the way my voice sounded when I yelled, Wait Up! There was one year where someone's Dad hid under the hedge and grabbed kid's ankles as they walked up with their bags open. It was completely random and sometimes he wouldn't grab at all, he'd just shake the hedge. Someone else, it sounded like a parent but was probably one of the older kids said, "That's fucked up", and for some reason, the way he said it, without any humor, was the scariest part of all.