Word Count: 400
Disclaimer: Don't own; don't profit.Do sing in the shower. Implied death. Un-beta'd, alas.

Everything Falls

The night air is so, so, so cold against my face its almost cruel, and ah-ha-ha – I do love this time of year. The kids are treat-a-trickin' in their little maskies and hoods and capes; my heart just thaws, melt, warps with joy. Sweets in their pockets and rot in their mouths. They understand it, they do; they understand something: the freedom of a little anonymity; yes, it just opens something deep inside. I can feel it - the tipping, twisting, tearing of expectations, our boring, banal expectations, -it, it, it's something bubbling under the surface of things; something anarchic. There's something unleashed in every falling dusk, at this time of year.

Everything's falling; falling and lying; that which was once so high, holy and wholly towering lying underfoot. Under my foot, in my beaut-iful, brutish boots. The red leaves clag in the treetops in scattered between the branches like a score of piano music, discordant and staccato: duh – duh- duh – duh duhduh duh...yeah, you get the picture. Like when I used to play... So, look, look at the beautiful patches of pure colour, wonderful. Wondrous, until they have been crunched, crushed, compressed down into the dead, damp heaps on the roadside. I can smell them, even before I kick them into the air; kick them, kick them across the sidewalk, into the road, over a body. Veritable mountains of mildew. Pinnacles of decay. I – oh, ho – I see the, hu ha ha - irony there.

Maybe it would be better, the wiser choice, to burn than to rot. More right, rational, reasonable to go out in a dazzling blaze, phosphorous-white and searing; quicker, and with more, uh, flare for the theatrical. A blaze of glory, I think they call it. But, listen, what's glory got to do with anything these days? What's glory got to do with the price of gasoline? Glory, glory hallelujah! – I thought we'd gotten past all of that, that sacrosanct idealism. As a good friend of mine once said, self-betterment is for losers. Aspiring upwards, trying so-so-so hard to be anything but the human animal, reaching past those carnal little h-h-hun-gers and desires – well, you'll come crashin' back to earth soon enough. Even the best of us fall. Sometimes – we, oh, deep breath, we fall in the Fall!

Ah ha ha. Ha. Ha. Aha. Hahah-uh. Oh, uh, please, do excuse me. It's just the time of year.