I’m happy to have author Feind Gottes here to give us his thoughts on his favorite holiday, Halloween.
Listen up all you whining little whippersnappers! First, I am not an old man but I’m probably older than you so listen up and listen good! I need to get a few things off my chest about the most glorious holiday ever created by man. You can have your gimme, gimme, gimme Xmas celebration. You can stuff your face with copious amounts of the ugliest bird on the planet and a mountain of dried bread and mashed taters covered in a lake of your momma’s gravy. You can drink yourself into a coma to “celebrate” the birth of your nation while blowing off appendages so you remember it forever. You can have it all! I’m here to tell you about the only holiday that matters and I’m here to tell you to stop being a bunch of whining little wussies about it! That’s right, Old Man Feind needs to sound off on Halloween!
Back in my day Halloween was fun! We made our own costumes! We didn’t need all your fancy schmancy “Ooh Mommy this is my favorite” store bought get ups! NO! We were poor and we liked it! You kids today think you have to be whatever little damn princess was in the last movie you saw or the latest shiny superhero. Why, in my day if my sisters wanted to be princesses they better hope Mom could build a tiara out of Elmer’s glue and bits of broken glass and if I wanted to be Captain America my dad needed to have an old hubcap lying around. We didn’t spend hundreds of dollars in Spirit Halloween… there was no Spirit Halloween! We had to actually get in the holiday spirit all by our damn selves! Buy a costume? Y’all are a bunch a spoiled rotten little turd sandwiches nowadays! And don’t you even start to laugh parents! I’m just gettin warmed up on you!
Parents of these little wussy pricks now it’s your turn! Wipe that stupid smile of your stupid face! Your kids are a bunch of wussies but just how did that get that way? Hmmm? Go look in the mirror numbnuts! You mollycoddle those little SOBs never teaching them the meaning of a good hard NO. Little Johnny wants to be Iron Man? Back in my day you got handed a bunch of cardboard, a pair of scissors and some crayons and got told, “Go ahead make yourself an Iron Man suit!” Now all little Johnny has to do is pout for half a second and your dumbass is in the store buying it. Little Susie wants to be Elsa from the most annoying movie ever made? Well hand her some white paint and blue tissue paper and tell her to go ahead! But NOOOO, today little Susie pulls a sad face and you have her at the salon getting her hair did followed by a trip to the damn dress shop! Tell Johnny and Susie if you want it then you better bloody well make it! Maybe, just maybe, then your little namesakes wouldn’t grow up into whiny little bitches. Your kids suck because you suck, Damn it!
Now let me tell ya about Trick or Treating! Back in my day my parents handed us an old pillowcase that smelled like moth balls and old farts and we were happy to have it! Then they kicked our butts out the door! They didn’t hold our hands while we walked up to one strangers’ door after another begging for candy. They said “Get Out and don’t come back until 9pm!” They didn’t brag to the neighbors about how precious little Johnny and Susie looked. They didn’t care! It was Halloween! The one night a year they could put their children at the mercy of strangers while they sat around with their friends drinking beer and telling dirty sex jokes. And we liked it that way! These days you pansy parents stand around all afraid of your own neighbors! Oh someone might put a razor blade in an apple or slip little Suzie into a van never to be seen again! In my day our parents only dreamed of the day one of us would be taken away never to be seen again! We got razor blades in our candy apples, pins in our 3 Musketeers and we liked it! That’s how you learned to be careful! We learned responsibility and if we learned that lesson because little Billy was found beaten and left for dead in a ditch then so be it! Little Billy should’ve been more careful! He was always a little sonofabitch anyway! Good Riddance we said! These days you wussies cry over every little accident. That’s life damn it! Survival of the fittest! It’s EVOLUTION! Little Billy didn’t survive Halloween because he was stupid and then his parents would go make another little Billy and teach him better! In my day parents learned from their mistakes! Now you want to put a cage around little Suzie so nothing bad can ever happen to her. That’s how you build a nation of whiny little bitches! Damn it!
Then there is the absolute worst thing you damn wussies want to do to MY Halloween! You want to completely take it away, make it a homogenized holiday where every little Suzie and Johnny has a “safe” place. Some of you want to move Halloween to a different day! Yes, just change the damn date to make it more freaking convenient for your little manufactured lives and turn Halloween into just some new wussy version of a “play date.” Play date! In my day we didn’t have play dates! Mom or Dad kicked your butt out the door and said “Go Play! I’ll call you for dinner. Now get out!” AND WE LIKED IT! Have you heard this latest BS? They want to take away October 31st as Halloween and move it to the last Saturday of October! Halloween is October 31st you damn pansies! Ooh but it’s dark and inconvenient. Yeah? Well life is a long string of inconveniences so quit yer bitchin! Ooh but my babies have to go out in the dark. Yes! They have to learn to get over their fear of the dark. They have to learn that Mommy isn’t always going to be there to hold their hand through life even though you keep trying, STOP IT! Did you learn to stop being afraid of the dark by never going out into the dark? Hell No! So why would your little mini-mes be any flippin different?!? Halloween is a day to celebrate spooky, to celebrate the things that go bump in the night. It’s a day to look your fears dead in the face and scream, “You’re a freakin pussy and I’m not afraid of you!” Don’t take that away from kids. It’s an important lesson to learn!
Yes, I’m screaming because you mollycoddling idiots ruin things for the rest of us. Yes, I know times have changed since I was a young boy dressing up as a “hobo” for the fifth year in a row with a pillowcase trick or treat bag. I grew up in a time before school shootings. I grew up in a time when the “razor blade in the apple” was a hoax along with poisoned candy or pins stuffed into mini Snickers bars. I grew up in a time when the guy in the van was named Joe and he was a pothead but otherwise harmless and everyone knew him. I grew up in a time when you could let your kids run the streets of the town and our parents didn’t have to worry that someone would snatch us away. Now stop for a moment and think about why that is and how it could be that way or, at least, close to it again. When I was a kid my parents knew our neighbors. They might not be best friends but they knew Joe down the street worked at the mechanic shop, Jane up the way was a beautician, Vanessa next door was a widow, Jack two doors down drove truck and made the best BBQ for five counties. Everyone knew each other, perhaps not well but well enough to say “Hello, how’s your wife” or some such friendliness. I rarely see that sense of community anymore and that’s the real shame. Don’t blame Halloween. Don’t take Halloween away. Instead maybe get to know your neighbors so you don’t have to be so damn afraid of them and they don’t have to be afraid of you. That’s all this Old Man has to say about it. Now GET OFF MY DAMN LAWN!
Feind Gottes [Fee-nd Gotz] is a horror nut, metal lover and an award winning horror author. Feind currently resides near Omaha, NE with his girlfriend, son, and two crazy cats.
Feind has short stories and flash fiction appearing in over a dozen anthologies with several more scheduled for release including his first ever published poem.
The first draft of Feind’s debut novel won the 2016 Dark Chapter Press Prize followed in 2017 by a Top Ten finish in The Next Great Horror Writer Contest and winning the Vincent Price Scariest Writer Award from Tell-Tale Publishing.
2018 marked a milestone for Feind with the publication of his first solo work with the unleashing of his novella, Essence Asunder, by Hellbound Books. Feind’s debut novel, Piece It All Back Together, is currently being edited for a late 2019 release by Hellbound Books.
A gut-wrenching, stomach-churning journey into one man’s private hell – Essence Asunder is one brutal novella!
One man. Two fiends. A cold, dark basement. A table of torture devices. A garrote chair. Jacob Falgoust has woken into his own private Hell where Pain and Misery greet him with open arms. A reason wrapped in riddles of beauty and pain may be his only chance to escape the suffering. Jacob must find the answer before his very essence is torn asunder.
Meghan's House of Books 