A Lost Trick or Treater

On a chilly Halloween evening, a young family finishes up their long night of trick-or-treating. The oldest son begs his mother to keep going, insisting on going into an abandoned mansion.  Despite his mother’s best efforts to get him to just come home, he goes off to explore on his own. As he enters the house, he is immediately greeted by a pungent odor. “Trick or treat,” he calls out to the empty hallways while plugging his nose. He walks around the tight hallways as the floorboards creak beneath his feet. Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling as the boy held his pillowcase close to his chest and shivered. As he looked around the rooms, he noticed that there were scattered belongings, as if the people who lived there had to leave in a hurry. He quickly realized that finding some more Halloween candy would be the least of his worries, as approached a staircase leading to a pitch-black basement. He knew his mother would tell him not to go down there, so of course, he started down the steps into the cool damp room below. Wishing he had a flashlight, he slowly walked through the basement with his arms stretched out in front of him. As he walked, he realized the floor was covered in some kind of sludge. He knelt down, swiping a single finger across the floorboards. He picked up his finger and held it up to a glimmer of light shining in from a crack in the wooden walls. The boy's jaw dropped in horror as he saw fresh blood dripping down his finger. He gasped and jumped to his feet as he heard scurrying footsteps upstairs. While he knew the only way out of the house was to run up the basement steps and straight towards the front door, the thought of whatever was waiting for him upstairs made him freeze in place. As he looked around the room for a hiding spot, he saw a rusted bathtub in the corner where light shone through the walls. He could hear the footsteps upstairs coming closer to the basement door, so he hopped into the bathtub and used his pillowcase full of candy to cover his eyes. As soon as he had gotten in the bathtub, he realized he had made a huge mistake. He felt around and grabbed onto what he soon realized were human bones. Without thinking, he yelped in terror as he simultaneously heard the door to the basement open and slam shut. The footsteps descended slowly down the basement stairs, as the hairs on the back of the boy's neck stood up with each step. Whoever, or whatever, had just entered the basement turned on the light and began to pace around the room. With the pillowcase still covering his eyes, the boy had no idea what was down there with him, but he knew he had to face it. Ready to run, the boy threw the pillowcase off of his body and jumped up out of the bathtub. The boy tilted his head in confusion as he saw his mother standing in front of him. The boy screamed in horror as she began to melt into a pile of goo. He reached out for her, but he was too late. All that remained was a pile of her bones lying on the cold, concrete floor. After a moment of hesitation, the boy grabbed his mother's bones and put them in his pillowcase. He sprinted from the house and ran through the street, the sack of his mother’s bones colliding with his legs with every stride. He finally reached his house, and with tears streaming down his eyes he ran into his father's arms. As they embraced, his father began to wobble, and he too disintegrated into a pile of gelatinous flesh and bones. The boy, in utter shock, searched for a phone to call 911. Suddenly, his vision began to blur as his arms grew weak and he dropped the phone - he too was destined to the same fate as his parents. The boy's little sister, curious about all of the commotion, hurried down the stairs in her Halloween-themed pajamas. The last words she heard her brother utter were, “Goodbye cruel world,” as he fell to the floor in a fleshy mass.