Bathroom Monologue: Halloween Exposition

"Are you still pouting about the costume? Because I'm not going as a sexy vampiress. My nipples will freeze off."

"It's not that."

"Then what? Reese's doesn't make vegan peanut butter cups."

"It's not that either."

"Move over. You've been getting grumpier every day all month. I thought you were going to turn into a pumpkin for a while."

"I haven't been entirely honest about Halloween."

"You don't say."

"I have a sister."

"I met your whole family. You don't have a sister. Or is this Halloween roleplaying?"

"You met almost my whole family."

"So you haven't been entirely honest about Halloween or your family."

"We don't talk about her much."

"Mark, that is messed up."

"Well, she's got issues."

"You look down on her for some psychological problems? I thought you were better than that."

"Every Halloween she tries to kill me."

"I might look down on her for that."

"It started when she turned thirteen. She got her period on Halloween night, and put on this mask, and-- please stop laughing."

"I'm sorry, just, really? Do you have a hidden camera in here? Am I being punked?"

"She killed my two best friends."

"Oh, Mark."

"We only found them two days later. I think she was coming after me, and they just got in the way. Her fingerprints were everywhere. All over the bodies. She used a machete, where she didn't use her hands."

"Honey. Come here."

"I'm not saying it for sympathy. Randi disappeared the next morning. We didn't find a trace of her until the next year. I was at a party, at a friend's house. I wanted to be around as many people as possible. There were so many that nobody noticed that Zach was gone."

"No."

"I went down to the basement for more wine. He was propped up against the racks. She was waiting down there for me."

"Where is she now?"

"This house doesn't have a basement, does it?"

"I'm not kidding, Mark."

"I killed her the next Halloween. That was nineteen-ninety-nine. Slept with a gun under my bed every night for the next year, never really thinking what I'd do with it. She came in through my window at midnight, and it just seemed... apparent. It was too obvious, what to do. And then she came back the next year."

"You said you killed her."

"Three in the chest, one in her green witch mask. The next year, she wore the same mask so I could see the holes. That year I just got in the car and drove. I didn't stop going until November second. Cops found me asleep on the wheel. She doesn't come after me on the first, though. She only comes on this day. And she's never stopped coming, no matter what I do. I've slept in churches, gotten locked up in police stations, even rented a fallout shelter. The only thing that's ever worked is to keep moving. To keep driving. She keeps chasing me; I've seen her in the woods, or just standing out in the dessert, her head following my car. In two-thousand-six, I lingered too long in a rest stop up. I saw her around the side of the pumps."

"You could have told me sooner."

"I wanted to. I mean it. I was just afraid, you know. That you'd think I was crazy."

"You should have told me sooner. Then I could have gassed up this morning."

"What?"

"Maybe you are crazy, Mark. But you're paying for drive-thru either way. This'll beat dressing up like a sexy vampiress."