I Want To Believe...

Halloween is my Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of the year, the only month my fiancée can't protest to me watching horror movies every night or critique the fact that the window in our apartment I decorated with fake spider webs and little pumpkins looks out onto a dark alley where no one will even see. So when he casually remarked his work was having a Halloween Party the next weekend, I lit up like a Christmas tree.

"We need costumes! You, me, and Scully!" I squealed, alerting our newly adopted dachshund/beagle mix puppy.

"How about Scully be a hotdog again and we just be normal people?" He replied casually. Scully had been riding high (emotionally, not physically unfortunately) from her second place win at a local bar's Pet Costume Contest the week before in a hotdog costume. (Loosing only to a pure-bred dachshund in a Pope costume complete with papal tiara.) But truly, since the advent of dachshunds, is there anything more delightful to see than a wiener dog in a fake hotdog bun?

An oldie, but a goodie. Hard to turn down, but my aspirations for our costumes were beyond mere food humor.

"No, we've got to step it up. Group costume." I insisted.

"Group?" He winced at the word.

"Yeah, like we dress up as Skeksis and Scully be a Gelfling. She already has the ears." Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance was the hot thing on Netflix at the time.

"Please, PLEASE nothing with elaborate robes or bird heads." He pleaded, not unfairly.

"OK- how about we're all Stephen King characters? I'll be Annie Wilkes from Misery, Scully is Cujo, and you be Pennywise from IT." A classic, fool-proof plan.

"Did I mention my boss said she'd talk to me about a promotion after this quarter?" He asked, staring blankly at me.

"You did."

"Please don't make me talk to her at the party dressed as a demonic clown."

Fair again.

I sighed. "Ok, do you have any grand ideas?"

He paused for a moment.

"Well, there is the obvious choice."

"What?"

"How about we do her namesake." The fiancée shrugged back. "I'll be Fox Mulder, You be Dana Scully, and Scully be an alien."

"Shouldn't Scully be Scully?" I noted. "What if you be Fox, Scully is Scully, and I'll be an alien?" Meanwhile, our Scully was going haywire with us constantly saying her name.

"Because that would just be weird."

"What would be weird?" I asked.

He shuffled for a moment, then said, "Because it'd be like...I'm dating my dog."

In a conversation about Halloween costumes-- or ANY conversation about ANYTHING, actually-- never did I think that sentence would come out of his mouth.

"...Come again?"

"Because Mulder and Scully are an item! So I don't want to dress up my dog in a little wig and skirt and be her main TV love interest!"

I dragged my hands over my face. "You do know dressing up in costumes is playing pretend, right? It's not real." I couldn't believe I had to go over this.

"Yeah, but still..." was his eloquent retort. But I had to hand it to him, the idea was good.

So that next weekend, I donned a "flapper girl" style wig I owned (since I could never recreate Gillian Anderson's 90's bob myself), made badges, got Scully a monster costume, and we dressed up as the X-Files squad off-duty and ready to party.

Ultimately my wig got itchy and Scully ripped off her costume almost immediately after arriving, but for the few moments we were all put together the guests (and his boss) loved it.

That was last year, which now in this Twilight Zone of a world feels like a hundred years ago. This year for Halloween, I think we'll just stay at home watching X-Files reruns and leave the badges and alien-wrangling to the professionals.