Eye Candy

“It’s a wombat. And yes, I Photoshopped a wombat, the ShamWow guy, and the Virgin Mary into our family’s Christmas picture from last year. Don’t judge me. I’m trying to get my creative juices flowing so I can get as much work done as I can before I go on maternity leave,” she tells me.

Noel got a job working for Seduction and Snacks two years ago on Valentine’s Day. It’s a huge company with chains all over the U.S. One side sells sex toys, and the other side is a bakery. They hired Noel to design inappropriate greeting cards for their stores. The popularity of Noel’s cards grew so quickly, the owners made her a partner last Easter, changed the name of the store to Seduction and Snacks and Salutations, and let her add whatever she wanted to the line, like T-shirts, pens, notepads, and a bunch of other shit, all with inappropriate sayings on them.

“What is all that stuff?” Noel asks, looking away from her laptop and noticing the two huge duffel bags I brought home from work.

“Don’t ask. Your dad called me earlier in a panic, asking me to bring a bunch of stuff home for him. He’s taking this Halloween-decorating contest to an extreme level,” I tell her.

“If he doesn’t win that thing this year, we’re all going to suffer, Sam.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat and let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh.

“Why wouldn’t he win? He’s totally going to win. Everyone knows he’s going to win. He wins every year. Why would this year be any different? He’s going to win. Should we update our passports just in case? I’ve heard Belize is a nice place to live,” I ramble.

Noel stares at me, her brow furrowed questioningly.

“Are you okay? If you don’t want to go to my parents’ house to help put together the treat bags, I can call my mom and make something up.”

I laugh again, all weird and girly, wondering why in the hell I can’t just laugh like a fucking man when I’m nervous and hiding something from my wife.

“I’m fine! Excellent. Everything is good. Give me five minutes to jump in the shower and then we can go.”

Giving Noel a kiss on the top of her head, I leave her to her wombats and ShamWow guy and head to the bathroom, hoping she’s not getting suspicious and that my surprise will still be a surprise, even though now I’m starting to worry that once everyone finds out what I’ve done, this family will go a hell of a lot more insane.

*

“Get your shit together, Sam! I thought you said you’d done this before. Stop acting like a pansy-ass little girl!” Reggie whisper-yells as our feet crunch through the leaves and we gingerly step over pumpkins and extension cords.

“I HAVE done this before. IN A FUCKING WAR ZONE, not for breaking and entering!” I whisper back angrily.

When Reggie called me at work earlier and told me to bring over night-vision goggles, tactical vests, camo face-paint sticks, a Ka-Bar knife, and combat helmets, I thought he needed these items for another asinine decorating idea for his front yard. I had no idea, when Noel and I got here for dinner and to help put together candy bags for wedding favors and trick-or-treat, that Reggie would drag me out to the garage, make me suit up, and threaten to cut off my balls if I didn’t do exactly as he said.

“I still can’t believe you didn’t bring the rifles. The ONE thing I told you was most important, and you conveniently forgot them,” he complains. I let out a groan when he kicks a jack-o’-lantern out of the way, caving in the front of the intricately carved thing.

“That took someone over two hours to carve, and you just ruined it!” I complain. “And I may be an idiot, but I’m not dumb enough to give you a loaded weapon.”

Reggie crouches down behind a shrub, grabs my arm, and yanks me down next to him. Since the sun set over an hour ago, the neighborhood is shrouded in darkness, making me feel like I’m in the middle of a scary movie gone wrong, and that a deranged killer will any minute jump out from behind a nearby tree and try to kill us.

“You have no idea how long that ugly-ass thing took to carve. It looked stupid and I put it out of its misery.”

“It was an exact replica of the DVD cover of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was artistic and genius,” I mutter like a petulant child.

“Do you need Midol? Are you on your man period? Quit your bitching and get your head in the game. We’re here to see what kind of lowlife scum moved into this house and is trying to take my title away from me.”

I can’t believe this is what my life has become. I used to be a strong, badass Marine. Now I’m wearing tactical gear, my face is covered in camo paint, and I’m lurking in shrubbery with my insane father-in-law, hoping none of the neighbors catch us and call the cops.

“Obviously these people aren’t lowlife scum. Lowlife scum wouldn’t decorate for Halloween with such attention to detail and fantastically lifelike figurines.”

Reggie glares at me over his shoulder before shuffling away from me in a crouched position.

“What are you doing?! Get back here!” I whisper loudly as Reggie walks right through the landscaping on the side of the house and up to one of the windows.

I have no choice but to follow him, studying my surroundings as I look for neighbors out on evening walks, or cops driving by to make sure a crazy man wearing a tactical vest over his wife’s pink, frilly bathrobe isn’t attempting to break into a house.

When I make it up to Reggie, the orange glow of the lights strung around the frame of the window highlights his face, giving his profile a creepy look. He cups his hands around his eyes and leans forward, pressing them against the window.

“There isn’t even any furniture in there. They’ve owned this house for a month and there’s no furniture. I bet they’re serial killers and they’re using this house to dismember the bodies in the basement,” Reggie mutters.

“Yes, because serial killers always get into the Halloween-decorating spirit,” I reply sarcastically.

“I bet they roofie their victims at a local bar; put them in the back of a white, nondescript van with dirty windows that someone wrote the word penis on; pull into the garage and close the door; drag the unconscious body inside and down into the basement; and put it onto a metal hospital table. Then they put on white butchering aprons and, using a knife from Paula Deen’s Walmart collection, chop up the body, starting with the fingers and finishing with the ears. Then they store everything in Halloween-themed Ziploc bags in seven chest freezers,” Reggie says.

“That was strangely specific . . . and horrifying.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this,” he replies.

“Clearly. Can we go back across the street now? I’d much rather watch Aunt Bobbie get drunk and try to put pot cookies into the kids’ treat bags than have to explain to the police that you’re not a sociopath who dreams about how his neighbors chop up people and put them in baggies with pumpkins and ghosts on them.”