Writings and Reflections

The Last Halloween

by Lloyd B. Abrams

The massive publicity campaign from the Centers for Disease Control that everyone – especially seniors and those with compromised immune systems – was to be immediately vaccinated against a newly-discovered virulent variant of influenza, was being thwarted by the fanaticism of anti-vaxxers who dominated the headlines, fueled by the unwitting assistance of fair-reporting advocates.

But this time, there was no ho-humming the threat, no turning a blind eye to the catastrophe. This time, there was no critical mass of vaccinations that could minimize the rampant spread of this twenty-first century black death. This time, whole families, whole neighborhoods, were being decimated.

Where in previous years, throngs of wound-up, sugar-drunk kids and hordes of hormonally-laden teenagers roamed their blissful suburban neighborhoods on All Hallow’s Eve, now the lanes and the terraces and the manicured walkways are as empty as graveyards. Only if you dare to look through your peep hole, or scan the hi-def output of your video doorbell, might you spot a hazy image of a solitary hooded figure, solemnly going from door to door. Sort of like an Electrolux or Fuller Brush salesman of old. But not. Sort of like a uniformed girl scout eagerly selling cookies while her Mom sits in her SUV gabbing on her cell phone. But not. Sort of like a Jehovah Witnesses couple spreading the word of God and the promise of everlasting life. But … definitely not.

There are no magazine subscription purchases to be made, no contracts for chimney cleaning to be signed, no politicians campaigning and yammering and flashing their pearly-whites. Even the emissaries of their faith in God remain home behind double-locked doors.

This time, this time, Azrael, the malakh ha-mavet, the grim reaper, with scythe in hand, is out gathering his special kind of treats: all the souls that are to be returned to his supreme master. This time, the Angel of Death is working with no hope of respite. There are so many souls, so impossibly many souls, to categorize and collect.

And as you sit on your lounger, swilling from the glass of Coors Lite in hand, your eyes glued on yet another “live update” on the screen, you’ve sort of been able to push the enormity of what’s going on out of your head.

But now you’re starting to get it. You’re now starting to comprehend the severity of the horror outside your door. And you’re now starting to feel the burning of mass hysteria deep in your belly, an acidic bitterness that no over-the-counter palliative could possibly remedy.

People, your neighbors, strangers in the emptied-shelf Safeway, truck drivers on the interstate, are turning against each other.

Fewer of your colleagues are bothering to report to work and so you don’t either, anymore.

Your so-called friends and golf buddies are no longer in contact.

Your relatives don’t return your calls, so they’re dead to you. Probably for real.

You know … oh you damn well know … that things will never be the same.

If you’re unlucky enough to live to see it through.

For the first time in a very long time, you reach for your Bible, and it just happens to open to the Book of Isaiah.

And you read, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.”

– Isaiah 2:11-12
— Appeared in The Bard's email publication, 13 Days of Halloween 2019, and later in a print version

Rev 3 / October 4, 2019

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October 4, 2019 … Copyright © 2019, Lloyd B. Abrams
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