Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Little Mabel couldn’t wait till Halloween: As the youngest in her yard, it was the only night of the year she could come out and play with other girls her own age without being noticed. 

Every year on the evening of the 31^st of October, groups of children roamed the streets dressed as zombies, vampires, and witches. They sported masks or painted faces so that usually, the person walking beside them was totally unrecognisable.

That night, as always on Halloween, Mabel stepped out gingerly in the moonlight, stretching out her scrawny, aching limbs and bending down to brush off the soil from her raggedy dress. A distant firework lit up her white face, still cut and disfigured from the accident, and her eyes that still showed a pattern of criss-crossed, broken veins bulging from sunken sockets. 

“No need for a mask or a wig,” she laughed to herself. What little hair she had left was matted and grey and played house to a family of hairy spiders — at least that’s what she assumed caused the constant twitching on her scalp.

A gang of giggling Brownies were coming up the street, their Brown Owl trying vainly to keep them from tumbling into the road. 

“Keep to the path girls!” the Owl called. But no one took a blind bit of notice. 

A twitter of voices filled the air as cute pointy hats, pig tails, and stripey coloured tights tumbled over each other amid the home-made capes and broomsticks. Stained, ripped trousers and coats covered others — unwanted treasures their parents had recently discovered in a charity shop. 

Painted white and green faces crossed with felt-tip scars or cartoon stitches dripped with fake crimson blood. A Frankenstein walked with them, hand-in-hand with a chubby little body completely wrapped in crepe bandages. At least three time-stretched mums had donated an old sheet with cut-out eyeholes to be flung over their child as an easy option.

Mabel grinned. Just the sort of group she had hoped to find. She jumped over a short hedge and merged into the middle of them. Two naughty little girls, a thin-legged little witch and a black, two-legged cat, immediately grabbed her arm and pulled her back from the others.

“Come on! Let’s wake up some old dears!”

They ran off with Mabel limping after them — they’d not reattached her foot correctly at the hospital. Reaching some houses, the girls rang two neighbouring doorbells and then hid behind a bush between them. They tried to stifle their giggles with hands over each others’ mouths, and Mabel quickly ducked down with them. 

As soon as the doors opened, the three little girls jumped up. “Boo!” they shouted, then darted back to their group with the satisfying sight of the old ladies’ shocked faces in their heads.

Some girls in the group carried hollowed pumpkins with torches glowing through carved-out faces. These swung about as their owners walked or ran from door to door and grabbed up handfuls of sweets. 

After each house, the girls compared their goodies and swapped them about so each girl had her favourites. Mabel loved the white chocolate mice most. When she’d “trick or treated” a man at his front door, he’d given her some toffees. She easily exchanged them with a little zombie who didn’t like chocolate. 

The gaggle of girls continued up the street, boisterously pushing into each other and laughing as they went. They grabbed at each others’ costumes to distract attention from the hands sneaking into goody bags. 

Brown Owl followed them, keeping a watchful eye for any deserters while dodging flying rubber bats and spider missiles, purchased earlier from the corner shop.

Two hours later, twelve excited little girls, now chilled through by the wintery air, tumbled back to the Brownie hut where their mums and dads had gathered, waiting to take them home. 

Suddenly tired and ready for a warm supper, one by one they found and attached themselves to their grown-ups, who duly confiscated the goody bags before anyone had a chance to make themselves sick. 

Good nights abounded, then the family cars revved up and drove off, red lights fading into the distance. Not for Mabel, though. She joined group after group of diminishing Brownies, not wanting the evening to end. But the density of the crowd lessened, revealing lonely spaces where once had stood a happy little girl. At last, Mabel turned to begin her solitary walk home.                                                                                        

Then somebody in the darkness under a tree caught her eye. Another little girl stood there, all by herself. She wore a stained yellow lace party dress which hung dishevelled on her frail body. Baggy socks flopping over her ankles revealed huge bruises and splatters of dirt on her battered legs — legs which looked as though they would snap at any time. 

Their sad eyes met, and Mabel had the sensation of looking in a mirror. 

Both faces were sallow and pitted with peeling areas of skin. Protruding cheekbones caught the cool glow of the moon from between the branches. The sores on the little girl’s flesh were real, not fake, and as Mabel walked towards her, the familiar odour of damp soil and rotting body parts made her recognise another of her own kind. 

“It was fun tonight, wasn’t it?” the girl said. 

“It sure was,” said Mabel. “Which way are you going?”

“The yard down Creepers Lane. You?” 

Mabel laughed. “Same,” she said.

With a grin, Mabel took hold of her new friend’s hand. Shadowless and smooth, they floated down Creepers Lane towards the graveyard. They made plans for midnight play-dates and giggled as they came up with ideas for naughty-girl hauntings; the coming weeks were going to be so much fun! 

Later, Mabel pushed away the freshly spun cobwebs and resident cockroaches that scurried over her arms as she lowered herself into her damp coffin. She struggled to slide the decaying wooden lid over her — it protected her from the foxes while she slept, so it had to be tight — and squinted as an earthworm dropped onto her left eye, cold and wet. 

She felt so happy, happier than she’d felt in many years. The familiar misery that would usually sweep over her now at the prospect of a desolate, freezing winter passed her by. Mabel was no longer alone, and she knew that somewhere in a grave nearby, another little girl was feeling the same.

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