I told them I was too old to be scared. My older cousins, herded into each room of the High School of Horrors, laughed, screamed, laughed again, but the masks and strobes terrified me.

Rushing from one room, cardboard coffins spilling vampires onto my screaming/laughing cousins, I got snatched. I wailed, struggled, but a black-wigged teenager yanked me into her standing coffin while my cousins fled.

“Quiet, kid. You’ll go with the next group.”

She crushed my face in her breasts. 

I was quiet as a pumpkin. 

I had strange sensations.

“Act scared,” she said, as the next party entered.