She had always hated Halloween. For some reason, all the death themed decorations spooked her. Plastic skeletons and fake spiders didn’t scare her, but she knew the build up of black, white and orange house ornating knickknacks was the countdown to the actual celebration…
Celebration, what a word! She didn’t understand how people could enjoy this evelish night of little ones crawling everywhere in the city’s streets.
Children… Children scared her to death. She could barely accept that she had been one, once! That thought alone gave her goosebumps. She was so terrified of kids and toddlers, that she had taken the habit of locking herself in a couple of days prior to Halloween, and made sure to have enough food and entertainment to stay put at least until one or two days after…
People knew better than to come knock at her door on October 31st. She didn’t really mind if they thought she was crazy… She probably was. But there was no controlling it, so she hid, every year, and just let Halloween go by.
Until this year, when she had heard the knock of a child on her door, despite the lights that were off, the pulled curtains and the obvious lack of pumpkin and the like on her porch…
Someone kept on knocking at the door, demanding an answer, she hesitiently walked to the door, reaching for the handle when the banging suddenly stopped…
“Well, why would they suddenly stop after making all that noise”, she thought. Glancing into the mirror by the door she realized she was still in her nightrail. She rushed back towards her bedroom to throw on the first thing she could find. The banging at the front door started up again…more demanding this time.
She tried to ignore it, hoping it was only the wind. Of course she knew it wasn’t, there was no breeze, just an eerie foggy night outside that door. She rose from her bed, leaving that comforting space to step hesitatingly to the window.
Then our home star did throw suddenly impatient sunbeams through the closed windows leading to the market place of the beautiful ancient town. So she opened the windows for a better view in order to discover the open stage being erected over the night where she would act tonight in her first classic drama as Athene in Sophokles’ “Ajax”. For a further thorough preparation she studied her character again in her mind thinking in detail about how she will struck Ajax with pure madness after his attempt to kill Odysseus who inherited the weapons of Achilles after his death in the Trojan war. Her weapons were only mental ones, and she used them carefully and with clear distinct. What would the audience think of her performance tonight? Still 10 hours till the spectacle would start, and her stagefright would let them feel like a small eternity. Better to take another small nap in the time being.
This is the result of the first “cadavre exquis” experience in The Cove. I would like to thank Colin, Suze, The Bag Lady and Urban Liaisons for their participation! I really enjoyed the experience, and I am looking forward to try it again!
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