Trick or Treat

Officer Crispin hated doing the Halloween shift.

He'd never liked Halloween, period. As a young kid, he'd never liked answering the door to see children older than him dressed up like monsters, before his parents shooed him away so they could pay their candy ransom. When he was a bit older, and taken out trick or treating with his friends, he hadn't enjoyed that either. The whole "trick or treat" idea felt like a form of extortion, saying "give us candy, or we'll pelt you with rotten eggs." As he got slightly older, and moved out of the trick or treating phase, he got even more confused as to the meaning of the holiday. Easter? Death and resurrection. Christmas? Birth of Jesus. Thanksgiving? Give thanks to what you have, and try and forget what happened to the natives in the years that followed. But Halloween? What was there to celebrate exactly? What momentous occasion was there to mark bar Hallow's Eve, and how did that translate to "give me candy?"

He didn't know. He'd long stopped asking. But now, patrolling the streets, he was reminded of it, because he was reminded why he hated doing the Halloween shift. He was tired of kids acting like hooligans. Tired of having his patrol car pelted with eggs, before grim reapers, ghosts, clowns, and all manner of costumed twats scattered to the four winds. He was tired of hearing screams and being forced to investigate them, even in the knowledge that no-one was really getting murdered. He was tired of being…well, tired. Tired enough that he was now just resting his head back against the seat, mentally counting down the remaining hours of his shift. The window was open, letting the summer breeze of Los Angeles reach him.

"Trick or treat?"

He opened an eye and turned it towards the source of the voice.

"Trick or treat?"

Now two eyes opened to see the source.

The hell?

Kids. Three of them. One dressed up as a zombie, one as a vampire, one as a mummy.

"Trick or treat?" the vampire asked.

"Piss off," he murmured. He closed his eyes again.

"I'll eat you," the zombie said. "I'll eat your brains and-"

He closed the window – weren't zombies meant to be incapable of speech? And what use would they have for candy? Heck, that wasn't even touching mummy kid, who had bandages around his/her (he couldn't tell) face, so even if they did get to eat their candy, what use would they have for it in the afterlife? Maybe Anubis wanted it, and-

Fuck.

Here they came – the eggs. Chickens had died for these kids' fun, and right now, he was partly tempted to stop them from being undead, and just plain dead-dead. Instead, he just rolled off, getting out of their range. Course if this was an actual vampire he was dealing with he was completely screwed, but he wasn't counting on that being an issue.

Little shits.

He kept driving. He knew he was supposed to stay in the suburbs, but it was past 11 – most kids would be at home by now, or at least on their way. If they wanted to stay out this long, that was their problem. Yeah yeah, protect and serve, but his job description only went so far as humans. Not monsters, or undead, or undead monsters (were there any other kind), or clowns. Because fuck clowns.

No aliens these days.

He didn't know why people didn't dress up as aliens. Granted, aliens weren't supernatural beings, but still, had any of the crap on the streets been around in Hallow's Eve? If you were going to dress up, you might as well dress up as something cool. He pulled the car to the stop and walked out, stretching his legs. One more hour, and he could head back to the 41st precinct, sign out, and call it a night, greeting November with the same indifference he gave every month (except February). He glanced up at the night sky, and the night sky glanced down at him, in all its emptiness. Among the things that didn't change in the world were Halloween being tedious, October being cold, and light pollution being constant.

Bam.

Another thing that was constant was the sound of gunshots.

He reached for his pistol – was that really a gunshot? Could have been a car backfiring, or even if it was a single shot, well, what of it? This was the US of bloody A. Guns and using them came with the territory.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

No. Definitely gunshots. Lots of them. Followed by screams. Young screams.

Fuck.

He ran down the side alley to the source. Silently he kicked himself – he was running into God knew what, without even calling for backup. Sometimes that got you made a hero, other times it made you dead. He'd been alive in 97, he'd seen the shit the city had gone through back then, how cops had fallen as quickly as the thugs tearing the streets apart. But-

"Help me! Somebody help me!"

But he couldn't turn back now. He'd heard many screams this night. But none of them like this. And none with the sound of gunfire.

Bam.

He ran faster.

Bam.

Turned the corner.

Bam.

Drew his pistol at the trio and yelled "freeze!"

"…holy shit, a blueshirt."

And really, really, really felt like pulling the trigger.

Three kids. Teenagers technically, but right now they were like kids in his eyes. Two of them were dressed up like cowboys, carrying mock rifles. The third, the girl (and the one who'd been screaming most likely) was dressed up as a native American, cowering from the White Man. Only the cowering was just in jest, and the shooting was nothing but blanks. Cowboys and Indians, idiocy included.

"What's up dude?" one of the cowboys asked. "Trick or treat?"

"That's funny," Crispin murmured, holstering his pistol. "Really funny."

"Yeah, it is. Out of time Grandpa. Ain't no police in the Wild West."

"And there aren't many idiots on the streets either."

"Oh, there's one," said the girl.

The way she slurred her words told her that she was drunk. His first instinct was to offer her (and even her friends) a lift, but-

"Anyway, piss off cop. Ain't you got a black guy to shoot or something?"

But that instinct was getting suppressed as the not-so-magnificent three (please don't let there be four more arseholes I need to deal with) stood in a line, smirking. Roleplay. It was just roleplay. Either they didn't know about the context of the night, or the times, or the use of blanks meant to sound like the real thing, or they just didn't care.

"Yeah, piss off," said the second cowboy. "Still Halloween…got…got candy ta eat."

He clenched his fist, before unclenching it. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction. But he would say one last thing.

"Fine," he said. "But little history lesson – cowboys don't use laser sights."

He began to turn, but-

"What you on about?"

Fine, I'll play. He looked back at the first cowboy. "Laser sights. They weren't around back then doofus."

"The fuck you on about?"

He sighed, pointing at the cowboy's chest. "Laser sights. Tri-barrelled. I…"

There was a trio of dots on the centre cowboy's chest. But now that he was looking at it, where exactly were they coming from? Only the cowboys were holding weapons, and both were pointing them downwards. Even if one of them had a laser pointer, the angle was all wrong – it should be on his side, not his chest. And while he had little reason to trust them, the look of surprise on their faces indicated that they genuinely had no idea what was going on. But the look of terror…

"The fuck?" one of the asked.

The laser dots had faded, but Crispin barely noticed as he turned around. All he could see was the alleyway before him. An emptiness. An emptiness with a flash of blue light. An emptiness that moved.

"Go," he whispered. He took a step back, drawing out his pistol. "Go!"

The air shimmered. The air moved. The air took a step towards him, as if a ghost. Not one of those kids wearing sheets, an actual ghost. A ghost that he fired at, praying that he was insane, yet praying that he wasn't. Ghosts were incorporeal. Bullets didn't hit ghosts with a 'clang' sound, telling him that there was something there, but 9mm rounds were doing nothing.

"The fuck are you?" He kept firing, kept moving backward. Kept feeling his heart race, kept feeling the sweat trickle down his neck, keep feeling like a child again. Alone on Halloween. "What are you?"

He got his answer as he saw a blade materialize out of the air. As it ploughed through the air, and into his stomach. He answered back as he screamed, being lifted into the air, as his insides were torn apart by the blade.

He didn't die. His body was dead, but his mind didn't know it. As the air shifted once again, as he saw the ghost look at him, his mind said, an alien.

An alien on Halloween. Someone had broken from the norm, just as they…it…broke his body. Proving that aliens weren't cool.

They were terrifying.

"The fuck…"

Blood trickled out of his mouth, landing on the ghost…no, alien's mask. It tilted its head, like a cat might study a bird. Like…like any predator.

"…are…"

"Trick or treat?" the creature asked. Its words human, yet not. As if composited from any number of utterances, put together by a being with no true tongue for them.

He tried to answer, but couldn't. The world was going dark. Halloween was nearly over. Tried to spit, to fight, to fire…to do anything as a creature of prey in their final moments.

But he couldn't.

He was dead long before his head was removed from his body.

A/N

So, am I the only one who watched the trailer for The Predator and think "wait, has Shane Black set a film around a festive event that isn't Christmas?" Granted, it may not actually be set at Halloween, since there's only one scene in the trailer that shows kids out in costume, but, meh. Gave me the idea to drabble this up.