AN:: Written for a "Halloween" challenge. Thank you for reading! Comments are loved. :)

I hate Halloween. Oh, sure, it's my birthday, but even as a kid I could only muster up so much excitement for a day shared with the weakening of the barrier that keeps most of the big, bad, nasty, slimy, and somewhat evil creatures of the Nevernever out of the regular mortal world. All of those costumed children in the streets at night could be the best cover an Earthside demon could hope for. Toad demon? What a great costume! Give it candy! (Don't ever give them candy.) Evil slobbering demon overlord? My, aren't we scary, says somebody's grandmother, just as she is devoured along with that tray of candy apples.

See what I mean? Halloween is no fun at all.

This year, however, I've found myself forced to at least pretend. Why? Because on this most frightening of days, Murphy has somehow conned me into taking Anna around the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating.

I like Anna. We have had a good time together on the rare occasions that I've seen her. And when it turned out that Murphy was going to be working on Halloween night along with the rest of Chicago's finest, she decided that I would be a great choice for kid duty. After all, who better as a Halloween chauffeur than a guy who says he's a wizard? Murphy called me over under false pretenses of a dire emergency, and appealed to my ego and talked me into it with a coy "but Harry, I could only trust you to take care of my little girl on a night like this. She's got a crush on you, you know." And, finally, she left us with an "I know you guys will have a wonderful time."

We sat on Anna's doorstep for a few minutes. I think we were both a little bit stunned at our change of fortunes for the night. Probably for different reasons, though. But the sun was definitely going down, and I wanted us back behind a threshold before full dark, so as soon as I recovered from the initial shock of babysitting, Anna the fairy and me (the wizard) set out on our quest for free candy.

Anna pulled in a very impressive load of candy. Seriously, I had to carry an extra pillowcase just to get the entire load back to the house. Of course, it probably helped that the actual fairies liked Anna's costume and kept sneaking more candy into her bag. It more than made up for the bits they swiped for themselves.

We got back to the casa de Murphy, and I let Anna pass out candy to the neighborhood kids on the condition that she didn't step across the threshold. Surprisingly, I think I only saw a couple of actual demons in the crowd, and those were more sugar imps. Sometimes I forget that the imps serve a purpose. Somebody's got to pick up the dropped candy, and I suppose that's only fair. They're probably more excited about Halloween than any of the kids out there.

When Murphy got home, I'm ashamed to admit, she found me and Anna asleep on the couch surrounded by candy wrappers. What can I say? It was necessary to sample as many different candies as possible. We must know that the candy is good! Murphy woke me up, and I helped her put Anna to bed and stash the candy. We lingered on her threshold a little longer than necessary, and Murphy gave me a smile that I'm not really sure I've seen before. She put a warm hand on my arm and wished me a happy birthday, though I hadn't known she knew, and I went home feeling something completely new and strangely, comfortably warm. For the moment I thought Halloween might not be so bad.

But now it's the first of November, and my stomach is killing me. Some of you will probably say it's because I ate too much candy, and you'd probably have a point. Bob and I have agreed that it's Halloween getting the last word in and reminding me that it's a horrible horrible day. I hate Halloween.