Happy Halloween

by Lisa Mccourt Hollar

Covered in mud, Sandra trudged down the road, the hazard lights from her car blinking through the dark behind her. She didn’t turn to look at their mocking blink, imagining each flicker of light a laugh from the car that had mocked her, before sputtering and coughing its last breath out there in the middle of bum fucked Egypt. She had cursed at it, the rain pouring down and thought she could hear the engine, as it cranked trying to start, whirring, “Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat,” at her. She’d gotten out in the rain, kicked the side of the car and was rewarded when her foot slipped on the wet pavement, causing her to land on her back. “Happy effin Halloween to me,” she thought, refusing to give into the huge joke the galaxy was playing on her. 

Pushing herself to her feet, she slogged to the back of the car, lifted the trunk and looked down at George. The hole in his head had made a mess of the sheet she’d wrapped him in and she was glad she’d chosen the one his mother had given them for their wedding night. They were an ugly, unromantic shade of putrid green and Sandra imagined that was why the old bitch had bought them. She’d always hated Sandra and when George had proposed, his fat, pig-eyed mother had the freakin’ nerve to have a heart attack. Three months later and a triple bi-pass surgery, she was dressed in black as Sandra walked down the aisle. That was five years ago and George was still a mama’s boy.

“Well, not anymore,” Sandra had thought, looking down at his bloody head. “Dick head may not have a spine, but he certainly had a brain. God, that’s gross.” Trying to avoid getting grey matter on her, Sandra pulled him from the car and shrieked when his body fell out of the sheet, landing in the mud and splattering it all over her. “Just great George,” she snapped, kicking him in the side and rolling him back onto the sheet. “Always got to make a mess for me to clean up. Fuckin’ pig.”

 Reaching back into the trunk, Sandra pulled out the shovel and laid it on top of her dead husband. Taking hold of the corners, she dragged him off the side of the road and into the woods. She wasn’t worried about anyone coming along and finding her car, one of the reasons she had chosen this route was because of how secluded it was. Once she was far enough out she began to dig a hole, thankful for her headstrong determination to stick with the fitness routine set up for her at the gym. That and how damn sexy Larry, her personal trainer was.

 “Should have brought him along,” Sandra thought, but she knew that wouldn’t have done any good. He had to be seen at the gym so he could alibi her to the police later. It wouldn’t matter if no one else saw her there; chances are they wouldn’t ask anyone beyond Larry. 

Having dug the hole deep enough to keep the scavengers out, Sandra rolled George into the pit and looked down at his lifeless body. If it wasn’t for all the blood, the huge gash in his skull and the unnatural angle of his head, he would look pretty much the same as always. 

“Too bad for you, mama aint around to protect you anymore,” Sandra laughed. God, how hard it had been to stay married to him and pretend to love him, enduring his hands touching her at night as he attempted to fuck her and make an heir for his mama. Of course he didn’t know Sandra was on the pill. She wasn’t about to risk that he might actually succeed at something. Then, finally, mama had died, leaving George all her millions and by default, his wife. 

Of course there wss the problem of the pre-nup, she couldn’t just divorce him. But if her were to disappear…and even if his body were found, she’d been careful enough to make sure she wouldn’t be blamed. 

 Sandra thought she'd heard a noise in the woods, behind her, and turned to look. Nothing was there. Finishing burying her husband, she placed the trunk back in the car and began her trek home. She would clean up, then call the police and report her husband missing, along with his car. She wondered if she should dummy up a ransom note, but then decided against it. 

There was a flash of lightning and Sandra thought she saw someone standing down the road, watching her. Shaking her head, she decided she was losing it; the figure resembled her mother-in-law. Then another flash and the shape was closer, short, fat and wearing a moo moo, just like her husband’s pig mama. 

Sandra stopped, uncertain. She was sure she could hear the woman, who had passed away with a little help from sleeping pills and a pillow that Sandra had held over her face, breathing, her raspy breath from years of smoking filled with phlegm. “It couldn’t be,” Sandra thought. T


Sandra turned back towards the car, now wishing she hadn’t chosen someplace where her cell didn’t work. Maybe she could make a run for it. Maybe this time the car would start. She stopped again and stared, a scream catching in her throat. George filled the void between her and the car, his body looming ahead, his head turned at an unnatural angle. In his hands, the shovel.

“George,” Sandra croaked and he smiled at her, the blood caked around his mouth cracking as he chuckled. “I told you, you’d get my money over my dead body,” his mother rasped. 

“Happy Halloween,” George croaked, then raised the shovel and brought it down over his wife’s head.