This is a short story for everyone to enjoy. This is my own creative fiction about a spooky Halloween night. I think you'll enjoy this original tale. It is probably unlike any you have ever heard before.
The Last Trick and Treat of Halloween
Mylanphis hid inside the garbage bin most days. Covered in soda cans, water bottles, and candy wrappers, nobody suspected the tiny troll. In the past, Mylanphis enjoyed hearing the sounds of the birds, the chipmunks, and the occasional deer. Nowadays, he would overhear the stressed conversations of parents scolding naughty children, girlfriends arguing with their boyfriends about their relationship problems, or even long time friends gossiping about politics at their place of work. The things he heard often disgusted him more than the trash that was heaping upon him.
What people don't understand is that trolls are a mystical creature that can come in many different varieties. We have all heard of the guardian trolls that live under bridges. Some people tell stories of swamp trolls that lash out when people bother them in their mucky homes. In modern times, trolls are difficult to find, because they have the magical ability to sleep inside of ancient trees and rocks. This particular forest troll had been in hibernation within an old yew tree for nearly 300 hundred years.
Trolls are very clever creatures with a bit of magic in them. Often they act as protectors of the land. Tales of trolls with large muscles and sharp claws are often overly exaggerated. Little forest trolls are more like a gnomes and goblins. A troll is a miniature person with greenish grey skin, black button eyes, and a large bulbous nose the shape of a rutabaga. A smart troll will never let you know it is there. Mylanphis hiding the trash can, the troll knew was not likely to draw any attention to himself from the messy, selfish creatures he spied on.
At night, Mylanphis often explored beyond the forest. What was once a glorious realm extending for hundreds of miles was now a small sequestered park within suburban city, not far from a booming metropolis. The Ash, the Cedar, the Oak, the Birch, and all of the ancient groves were replaced with box shaped structures and asphalt roads. Inside the city it was not hard to hide at all. There was garbage everywhere with trash bins on every corner. He could have hid in plain sight underneath the mounds of paper and plastic that were piled on the sidewalks.
Mylanphis witnessed unspeakable horrors. Frightening lights flashing on vehicles with sirens blasting louder than a thousand screeching eagles. Gangs of men spraying poisonous lead paints onto rock and stone walls with devilish arcane symbols. Voodoo powders and elixirs being sold and imbibed, which caused the intoxicated person to go into a deliriously psychotic rage. Knives, guns, and cars were all being used to murder and destroy. Every horrific event was always followed by an arrival of the awful cars with sirens.
The people of the world had truly become the monsters. They would have to be eradicated. Mylanphis knew what must be done.
In past ages when Mylanphis woke from his slumber, that land was relatively untouched. He could use his magic to cast more beneficial spells. He know how to make edible mushrooms appear overnight. He knew how to warm the soil, and cause the snowdrop flowers to bloom through a blanket of icy snow. One of his favorite tricks was to slide the mud and stones of the streams to divert the flow of water into glittering waterfalls.
In this age, he knew his normal tricks would not be enough to protect his forest from harm. His purpose since the beginning of time has been to preserve the land, and to ensure that the garden of holy trees and plants would remain until the end of time. Time moves so fast, the troll thought. All of these artificial buildings and garbage that suddenly sprung up while he slumbered to recharge his magic, it would set back his progress for thousands of years.
Mylanphis would need to reach in and manifest his darkest magic to right the wrongs committed against the land, and he would need help to do it. More importantly, he would need lots of help if he hoped to overcome the sprawl of these people who had so quickly transformed his peaceful abode into a zone of evil.
The next night Mylanphis used his enormous nose to find a particular sweet scent he often enjoyed at this time of year. It was many miles of running and hopping across dangerous highways. Often he had to melt into the concrete road in order to not be run over by the speeding death trucks. The thought of all the animals that likely failed to cross these dangerous roadways gave him nightmares. Eventually he found the grassy fields he was looking for. In perfect, neat rows he saw the golden orange pumpkins waiting for him.
Together Mylanphis and the other forest trolls he awakened early from their slumber began to sing and dance through the pumpkin patch. They threw glitter that turned into water the moment they hit the ground. Some of them threw inky sap with a honey wand, which turned into spiders when it fell. A few of the trolls were throwing what looked like wet spaghetti noodles into the air. As they landed on the rind of the pumpkins, they began to writhe and crawl, becoming worms.
Halloween night had finally arrived. Samhain the garden harvest festival, or so it used to be known as, until it was paganized into a holiday to celebrate the dead ancestors of those who transformed the wild lands into stone kingdoms. Tonight would be a night not easily forgotten.
Tittering in the shadows of a mailbox, Mylanphis withdrew a dark crystal globe. He whistled softly, and a ghostly light glowed within, revealing the strange sights and sounds of the neighborhood for him to witness. Devils, princesses, robots, ninjas, witches, cats, and a zoo of other heinous creatures were flooding the avenues and knocking on doors, begging for candy. The adults simply watched in silent approval. It was disgusting.
Each time, the little monsters uttered the expected words, "Trick or Treat", and each time the candles inside the pumpkins began to flicker more and more in the growing wind. This simple spell proved to be extremely effective, because the number of times that the fools chanted the lines of the spell, the more powerful its magic became.
Stronger and stronger the wind became. In the distance, a tree fell, breaking the power lines. The neighborhood was swelled in darkness, except for the smiling grins of the candle-lit pumpkins. Flashlights searched the streets. Shouts filled the air. Soon they were screams. Lightning split the air, and a mighty tree tipped over a nearby slope, crashing onto a parked car, blocking the road exit. The rain was flooding now, and a massive mudslide followed the path of the destruction engulfing the homes in a black moat.
Next came the rocks, the boulder, and the fallen trees all sliding down the hillside. They pulverized the houses, slamming into them as battering rams. The pumpkins rolled too. Belching flames onto the dry leaves, and up along the dry wood fences. Soon the buildings crumbled, leaving only cinders and black ash piled under the menacing flames dancing in the wind.
Red dragons on wheels arrived, and knights with round helmets poured out carrying axes and and water hoses. The floodwaters were rising though, and the wreckage of the painted mansions soon overwhelmed the knights of the red dragon. As more rocks and boulders fell into the area, the muddy waters rose nearly a hundred feet.
More vehicles, and now flying machines arrived, shinning beams of light.
On the ground the remaining heroes would not last long on this cursed night. Howls of wolves, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. With no clearing to see them coming, the beasts now had the advantage. In small packs they picked off their foes and dragged their victims into their dens. Gunpowder smoke filled the air, but nobody could accurately hunt the wolves that were so much better attuned to the midnight shadows.
As for the flying machines, they too were overwhelmed. A tornado of wings and feathers swirled around them. Perhaps millions of birds, bats, and insects swarmed the men futilely attempting to control the hovering machines. They tilted and rolled out of control. The chopping blades became projectiles, disrupting the spinning wings of the other flying choppers. Not one escaped the mayhem.
Through the swampy waters, tentacles rose up and out, searching. The reaching vines eagerly coiled around the bodies of the unconscious beasts and swallowed them up.
There were no survivors.
Days passed. Weeks passed. Months. Years. Time slowed down, and the land remained mostly untouched.
In the wreckage of the suburban neighborhood near the forest park, there were no bones found. There were no signs of what happened to the children that night. Investigators and scientists initially arrived to discern what had happened and what must be done. They found the wreckage of houses, cars, helicopters, fire trucks, and police vehicles. Yet there were no bones. None of the victims whose lives were claimed could ever be found. Some believed they were dragged away into the woods by wild animals, but not even so much as paw prints to be found to support such a wild theory.
What they found, and it was the strangest thing, were the vines of fresh pumpkins growing across the field of mud. They had grown there somehow overnight, as if they had always been there. Thousands of orange pumpkins claimed the land. All of them fresh, healthy, and ripe... except for one.
Between the pumpkins were children's costumes, unwrinkled and untarnished by the rains and cinders of the hellish events the night before. It was if the the bodies had vanished in thin air and the costumes fell neatly to the ground. Either that, or someone very sadistically laid them out, a very sick prank indeed.
At the end of the muddy field, one exceptionally large rotting jack-o-lantern smiling with moldy teeth was eventually found by investigators. It was filled to the brim with nothing but candy wrappers.
In the years following, the city decided not to redevelop the land. It was set aside, never to be used again. Not only to commemorate those who were lost, but also because people now whispered that the land was cursed. Not even the richest developers wanted anything to do with the ruinous lands, and the realtors all feared what might happen if they sold it.
Mylanphis had to admit, the crispy rice and marshmallow snack cake was a delicious achievement, and an honestly won reward. Licking his stubby fingers one last time, he ended with a loud clap of his hands. In an instant, he suddenly winked out. He would spend the next three hundred years slumbering inside an old oak tree. In his dreams, Mylanphis would always be scheming and plotting ways to hex these monstrous people again, if need be, to ensure that they never again desecrate the sacred forest of his domain.
Today, the only people who visit the dead city are the children of the newest families who recently moved into the nearby town. The kind of kids who play hooky when they are supposed to be at school learning. They leave the little tiny wrappers on the forest floor and carve their names into the bark of the old trees, not even knowing that they are angering the trolls who slumber inside.
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