All week Maddie and her friend Alyssa (Not the one mentioned in the last post. This one’s name is actually pronounced the way it looks.) have been planning to trick-or-treat together in our neighborhood. So we picked up Alyssa about 5 o’clock and they spent the next hour getting dressed up and roasting pumpkin seeds.

After passing out candy for about 30 minutes, they headed out around 6:30. When Alyssa’s along, there is never a dull moment and tonight was no exception. She started off the evening by nearly doing a face-plant on the front walk of the first house they stopped at. Then topped off the night by…well….this will need a little more explanation.

There is this family a few streets down that always puts up scary decorations and likes to, shall we say, interact with the trick-or-treaters. When we got to their house tonight, we were a little disappointed because there were very few decorations. But the mom told the girls they had to go through the “haunted house” before they got candy. Then we noticed that they had hung some black plastic over the opening to their garage leaving a small door to go in on the right side and there was scary music coming from inside.

Well, Alyssa immediately said “No way.” But Maddie grabbed her arm and told her to “come on, it ‘ll be fun.” I watched them walk into the garage and then they turned to the left and  went out of sight. Not 10 seconds later I hear a scream and suddenly Alyssa bursts through the black plastic like a football player running through the homecoming banner! Right behind her was Maddie with the Grim Reaper hot on her heels.

Alyssa stumbled out onto the driveway and, after taking a few seconds to catch her breath, began apologizing for wrecking the haunted house. The mom told her not to worry about it, that Grimmy would just staple it back up. Sure enough, Grimmy pulled a staple gun out of his cloak (scaring Alyssa half to death again) and started stapling up the gaping hole in the plastic. I haven’t laughed that hard in a LONG time. Hell, I’m still laughing as I type this.

Poor Alyssa is still traumatized. Maddie is spending the night with her and they planned to watch horror movies all night. Betcha ten bucks they’re watching Barney instead.