It seemed that the thoughts of many of Destiny City’s shops had turned to Halloween. Ever since the last days of September when some shops had started sporting pumpkin-themed banners, it seemed pumpkins and ghosts and skeleton-themed banners and merchandise had started appearing little by little until suddenly – with the first full week off the month almost over – it appeared that you couldn’t really go anywhere without seeing something Halloween-themed. And it seemed that some of the trick-or-treaters had decided to get into the spirit early – in a nasty way. Apparently some of the houses in town had been subjected to the egg and flour treatment and it had been bad enough that some of the smaller stores stocking groceries were now refusing to sell them to anyone under 16 (or who looked under 16 and didn’t have ID).

Arian had ended up falling afoul off his local store when the little store near the apartment – where he went when they’d run out of groceries and had to get some in a hurry – had refused to sell him flour, the manager refusing to believe that he was not 14 – the dark-haired teen believed it was because of heightism, after all he hadn’t been 14 for almost three whole years – but he’d still ended up having to go up to the big store to go get the flour. The poster up in the shop window warning that the shop was not selling eggs or flour to the under-16s had been pretty neat, especially with the way that they’d managed to make the word ‘flour’ look like it was made out of flour and the word ‘egg’ look eggy. The goopy sludge covering the zombie, mummy, ghost, skeleton and Frankenstein monster at the bottom of the poster had been an especially nice touch, although it didn’t male having to go to the big store suck any less.

Arian was in two minds about trying to do anything special for Halloween – well apart from work on an entry for the Garden’s Halloween contest (but that was different – that was a shot at a month’s supply of free beads) – he hadn’t been invited to any Halloween parties and Saffy had decided that she was going to use her vacation time spending that week visiting a couple of her girlfriends from out of town. In fact the dark-haired teen had been considering maybe renting a few dvds from the video store, baking some treats the night before and watching a few movies before bed on the night itself.

Funnily enough, it was Mr Green (call me David), who finally gave him some plans for Halloween. It was his fifth or so class – one that had been much more mixed gender-wise than his first class – and they’d just finished putting away the smaller mats that made up the large training mat when his Aikido instructor had mentioned that given that explained that the community hall would be hosting a small Halloween party on the Thursday and so Aikido classes would start and finish a hour earlier for those who wanted to attend the party. Most of the people in the Aikido class appeared to be going and given his lack of anything to do on that night – apart from school homework – Arian figured he could try checking it out, even if it ended up being just for an hour or so.

Of course if he was going to go to the community hall party then he probably was going to need to find something suitably Halloween-themed to change into. There was his last year’s costume – a dark fae-themed costume, complete with paste jewel and glitter covered bat wings, although maybe it was better to wear something new. Oh the decisions, decisions. After a thoughtful frown Arian went back to sorting through the beads he wanted for his entry into the Garden’s contest. Maybe it was just as well that Halloween was still a few weeks off – there was time to go hit up the shops in search of a new costume if he wanted. The deadline for the Garden’s contest was this Wednesday which meant he had to get a move on and finish his entry if he wanted a chance at those free beads.

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