Halloween is for the Birds

It was quite a sight to behold, truly. Halloween night was abuzz with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of trick-or-treaters roaming the chilly fall streets of the northern Arizona town. It had always been one of Jeff’s favorite nights of the year to spend with his family and his neighbors. All the quintessential lights and decorations and colored leaves in front yards scattered across the safe, sleepy suburban neighborhood were right on that fair edge of fear between Disney and Dracula. It was always just the right balance of creepy and comedy that gave the young kids in the neighborhood a fright, without giving them nightmares. Even his yard, although less festive than his younger years, was decorated well with several pumpkins, inflatables, and heartfelt horrors that he thought the neighbor kids would enjoy. And unintentionally hidden behind one of those pumpkins just out of sight sat a strange, unmarked box, wrapped in brown paper.

Yes, the warmth that filled his seasonal heart turned this always cold autumn night into a memory that he’d cherish. Only, this year, the trick-or-treaters that had historically been cute little ghouls and goblins from toddlers to teens were now an army of consumer-grade drones, flying down the streets, home to home, with open sacks tied to their plastic legs. To the credit of the vast majority of the drone owners, most sacks and even some drones had some kind of Halloween design or even costume. Some were as simple as a pair of fangs hanging from the “face” of the drone. Others were more complex and at least a little creativity with the seasonal spirit. The best Jeff saw that night was a drone, noticeably larger than the others, which had been painted green but had purple pants drawn onto the legs. The Hulk, of course. That made him chuckle. But the rest of it most certainly did not. He was from a different era, where kids as young as five could go off on their own on Halloween night and have an adventure they’d never forget. Over the last few decades, he’d seen the holiday get softer and softer. But now this? This was bullshit.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked a drone hovering at his doorstep, not a single piece of Halloween decoration on it. He reached into his bowl of candy next to the doorway, grabbed a king-sized Snickers bar (he really loved this holiday), and whipped it with Randy Johnson velocity at the lifeless, black drone with one blinking, red-eye. His aim was true. But drones had come a long way from the models that broke the first time you accidentally flew it into the wall. It wobbled momentarily and then steadied. Jeff could hear its motor wind to a higher pitch and his eyes widened. Its rotor tilted toward him and flew its blades roughly three inches from Jeff’s face. As he fell to the floor, the drone retreated a few inches, almost seemed to chuckle at him, and then drifted all the way to the street where it continued its quest for candy in what Jeff considered the emptiest way possible.

“Fuckin’ asshole.” He got to his feet and shut the door, not sure how he felt about continuing to hand out candy tonight. He wasn’t even angry enough to chase the damned thing. Not that he could catch it if he tried. This whole situation was really disheartening. He’d raised three kids on this block. Each of them now grown with families of their own spread across the country. They’d had some magical Halloweens, though. They used to dress to the nines, from the Avengers to Dawn of the Dead and everywhere in between. The whole family. And they wouldn’t return home until the last house in the neighborhood had their lights off. It was a tradition. Now he looked outside and saw nothing but tedium and monotony. The shell of a life that had been emptied by the wonders of technology. “What a magical time to be alive!” he shouted to his empty house.

He grabbed a beer from his fridge and sat on his couch where could completely ignore a hockey game that was muted on TV. He stewed. He got another beer. He began to boil. He took a shot of whiskey. Then one more for good measure. Now his apathetic disenfranchisement with the current generation became a rage, a personal vendetta against all that was this Wall-E Halloween. He wouldn’t stand for it, by God! It wasn’t right!

He went to the garage where he found the baseball gear his sons used to use and found “The Humiliator.” The Humiliator was the bat his oldest son had used all through high school when they had won three consecutive state championships and he had led the league in home runs. Jeff held it up above his head like Excalibur for just a moment, staring at it, taking in the memories of a bygone era of his fatherhood, of the world being real.

Then, like a Knight of the Round Table, only without a trusty steed, Jeff did something that he’d never in a million years imagined he’d do. He pressed the garage opener of his suburban, cookie-cutter home, which broke not a few Halloween decorations he’d placed on the garage door, and marched outside. He looked left. He looked right. Still plenty of drones as far as the eye could see. Zooming to and fro. The hum was now deafening to him. It tensed every nerve in his fist, then his jaw, then his entire body. With his bat firmly clenched in his right hand, which was down at his side, he raised it to the sky and began running down the brightly decorated lane. The first drone was easy. It flew unassumingly toward him, just about chest-high and to his right. Perfect high-and-tight fastball, just like his son used to knock out of the ballpark every time. And Jeff had been no slouch in his high school baseball days, either. No, if that drone had been a baseball it would have been long gone. But as it was, it was decimated in an instant. Sparks flew across the street as propeller blades and motors went flying into lawns and gutters. Motion-activated skeletons cheered Jeff on to go get the next one. And so he did. It took a surprisingly long time for the drones and their at-home pilots to figure out what was going on. Longer than even Jeff expected. In total, he knocked at least a dozen out of the air before the drones started to take evasive action. Most went up, being the obvious direction to avoid this vertically challenged human. But a few - presumably the french fries and mayonnaise crowd - tried a zig-zag motion at head level that Jeff, four drinks in or not, still had no problem tearing out of the sky.

But then something else happened that Jeff didn’t expect. As he tomahawked another drone that was flying a diagonal pattern over his head and smashed it into parts that could only be reassembled in China, a small drone crashed into the back of Jeff’s head, knocking him down to his knees and ringing his bell hard enough for him to see spots. He stood up holding the back of his head where there was more than a lazy stream of blood pouring out. He began to feel woozy as he turned to watch the offending drone fly off skyward. As he did, another drone, this one felt bigger, smashed into his Achilles tendon, shredding it to pieces and bringing him down like a Confederate statue in 2020. He cried out, confused, and now actually quite scared. What had he gotten himself into?

He heard the steady drone of the second offender peel away into the night. He rolled and howled, clutching for his achilles tendon, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to walk for months with this injury. He’d seen it before on the baseball field. But he’d never seen it done by, was that right? A drone? Jesus, what the fuck had this world come to? First Halloween. Now attacking your neighbor.

Moments passed and he finally gained the strength to first put his palms on the ground, then roll up to his butt. He sat there for just a moment, considering the night. Contemplating his decisions and how he had wound up here. All his sons, now hundreds or even thousands of miles away. And what to show for it? Some trophies and baseball gear. A divorce document and an ex-wife he rarely spoke to. Neighbors who mostly disliked him, if not simply felt nothing for him at all. Maybe it wasn’t the world-changing that was the problem. Maybe it was Jeff.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. To himself. To the world. To the drones. And just as he did, he heard it. A buzz of a magnitude far greater than anything he’d heard that night. He looked up and saw dozens, hundreds of drones hovering in military-like coordination, moving toward him in a malevolent death hum that scared him to his core. His bowels loosened as the drones neared. They were not flying fast, only gaining position. This was clear with their synchronicity. And then the hum rose, like the swarm of a million bees, and like lightning, they flew directly at him in a kamikaze plunge.

The last thing Jeff saw were hundreds of stupid, red, flashing eyes.

And back at his house, sitting in an unmarked box wrapped in brown paper, a gift sat near his doorstep, partially hidden from view by an oversized pumpkin. Inside was a top-of-the-line drone, decorated for Halloween. A baseball uniform, of course. And a message etched into the side. A simple one. “To Dad, Love, Your Sons.”