Gather around, my friends, and I will share with you my tale of Halloween Horror.  It all begins innocently enough in a small town in southern Maine, with my family.  On the surface we look normal enough.  We go about our lives not bothering anyone, wave at the neighbors, and do what any other family in small town America would do day in and day out.  That is until Halloween!  Every year on that fateful night Mom turns into a deranged lunatic!

It all started a few years ago when Mom purchased a pumpkin Halloween costume for my older brother, Lemmy.  It looked harmless enough, a hat and a collar, and Lemmy didn’t mind too badly having to wear it.  Little did my family realize though, that small purchase would awaken Mom’s hidden insanity!  From that year forward Mom’s deviant behavior escalated.  The costumes got more and more elaborate, and with that more and more humiliating for us.  Dad was helpless to stop her, in fact he enabled her deranged behavior by parading us in public at the Portsmouth Halloween Parade for the whole world to see!

Not all the costumes were bad.  I rather enjoyed the year I was “Count Chuckula,” the vampire.  And who could forget Lemmy as “Super Dog,” ready to fight the brain tumor that invaded his body.  But Mom’s twisted sense of humor took a dark turn when she purchased the bumble bee costume.  You see, Lemmy had a morbid fear of bees ever since he tried to eat one.  So to see his little brother dressed as one, sent a chill down his spine.  But that was nothing compared to the horror I had to endure as “Chuck Beely.”  Everywhere I went that year, people would stop and comment on how cute I looked.  Worst yet, many took photos of me!  For days after that fateful Halloween, I searched Facebook trying to find these embarrassing photos, but alas could not erase them.

Then Asa joined our family.  Perhaps I should have warned him about the horror that awaited him on his first Halloween.  But I didn’t want to ruin his carefree, idyllic puppyhood.  That all changed though the day the mailman delivered a package to the door.  As he handed it to Mom, he gave me a sinister wink.  I knew right then what was in the box!  No wonder dogs hate mailmen.  They are the henchmen of dog halloween costume designers!  Mom quickly ran to the kitchen to open the box, and that’s when the most terrifying thing happened…she reached into the box and revealed…a caterpillar costume for Asa!  But that’s isn’t the scariest part.  Oh no, the scariest part of this tale of Halloween Horror is that Asa likes the costume, and is looking forward to being Mom’s “Cuddle Bug” this Halloween!!!!!  Oh the horror!