Matilda Hates Halloween

Matilda hated all of the idiotic people who went around dressed in their ghoulish costumes. She hated the witchy and ghostly decorations appearing in stores and on houses. She hated Halloween!

“It’s childish!” she muttered.

It isn’t that Matilda’s views on Halloween are original. Many people from many parts of the world share Matilda’s view on the holiday. However, there is only one slight difference: Matilda is a witch.

Mortimer, the Warlock, claimed Halloween was a day set aside to remember and honor the Warlocks and Witches.

“Make fun of them, you mean!” Matilda would argue. “Do they honestly believe we cackle like that? We laugh just like they do!”

Then there were her Ghost friends, who, though they haunted old houses, buildings and graveyards year ‘round, seemed to put on extra special shows this time of year. This year’s event went as far to schedule “rehearsals” as though they were putting on a play.

“You should really see those humans jump!” Ollie, her closest ghost-friend, would laugh. “They prepare themselves for the usual table levitation or footsteps down the hall. Just when they think they got everything under control, I appear hanging from a chandelier in a dining room.”

“It isn’t funny, Ollie!” Matilda protested. “It’s undignified to put on a show for those…”

“Don’t tell me you’ve finally run out of names for those slanderers! Those promoters of injustice! Those agonizing, asinine, vacuous pinheads!”

It was just good-natured teasing, typical of Ollie, but the fact that Matilda felt she was the only one taking this seriously grated her nerves.

Here it was, the morning of Halloween and she forced herself from her bed. As she made her way to her mirror, she took a good look at her raven hair and cream complexion. To look at her sharp features and hallow cheeks, she knew she was no beauty, but at least she wasn’t green and full of warts!

After pinning her hair up in the back, she decided she would take her broom out for a spin today. Perhaps a ride in the fresh air would take away her gloom!

She reached to the side of her vanity where her hat normally lay, but instead of a hat her hand landed on something hard and round. Looking in that direction, she found her hand rested on a pumpkin.

Tilting it back and forth in search for her hat which she was sure was underneath. After a thorough search around the vanity, she gave up on the idea of locating her hat in her room and decided to try the living room instead.

There was no hat, and to her utter dismay, no broom either. For the corner in which she usually kept her broom now stood a corn stalk.

“What’s going on around here?!”

With a wave of hands, she tried to change the stalk back to a broom, but nothing happened. Back to her vanity, she waved her hands over the pumpkin, realizing this used to be her hat. It would not change back. Near tears, she hurried down to the cellar. To her horror, her large, black caldron that used to be in the middle of the room was replaced with a large, candy-filled bowl.

She collapsed on the bottom step and cried like a child. She knew this was just some cruel joke. She cried more over the hurt pride that someone got the better of her like this.

She heard chuckling from the corner of the room, and looked up to see Mortimer standing there and Ollie hovering just a few feet off of the ground.

“I should have known you two would be behind this!” she sniffled.

"Of course, child, I’m the only one in these parts with the power to remove everyone else’s power.” Mortimer glowered.

“You know, I think I like her better this way!” commented Ollie in his teasing tone. “Humbled like she is, she’s much easier to get along with!”

While she may not have had her powers, she did still have a good throwing arm. She grabbed the nearest pot she could find, and hurled it at Ollie. Little good it did since it went right through him. Angrily, she crossed her arms and glared at them both.

“Well?” she demanded, “Have you had your fun now?”

“Matty!” Mortimer had a fatherly smile upon his face, “Every year at this time, we go through the same thing with you. Everybody gets excited and starts making their Halloween plans. At every meeting, if someone dares to mention Halloween around you, you go off in a lecture.”

“Sure, Matilda,” Ollie added, in his rare moment of seriousness, “A few members of our committee wanted to vote to keep you out of all meetings because…well, frankly…you were a wet blanket.”

“Those of us who love you didn’t want to see that happen,” Mortimer continued, “So we decided to…teach you a lesson.”
Matilda wiped her face with the back of her hand. There stood a humbled witch.

“We understand how you feel.” Mortimer said, “You have the right to feel that way, and even to express it. But…”

“Not be obnoxious about it.” Matilda finished for him, “I understand. I’m sorry.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, her caldron returned. She smiled as relief flooded over her.

“You’ll find your hat and broom back in their rightful place.” Mortimer said with a smile, and quickly disappeared.

“You’re not still mad, are you Matilda?” Ollie asked.

“No!” she said, “It’s just what I would expect from a clown like you!”
With a wave of her hands, a clown costume appeared on the ghost along with a painted face.

“Awe, Matilda!” Ollie moaned with a frown on his face. But the frown was quickly replaced with an impish smile, and in an excited tone he declared, “Hey! Nothing creeps out those humans more than a ghostly clown. Thanks, Matilda!” and he also disappeared to take his part in the spirit of Halloween.