On the second day of Halloween my true love gave to me: two unblinking orange eyes in the darkness at the edge of the field.
On the third day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: three witches, upon the heath, in thunder, lightning, and rain.
On the fourth day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: the four horsemen of the apocalypse (climate change, ebola, selfies, and kale)
On the fifth day of Halloween, my true love gave to me:
FIVE! PUMPKIN SPICE! LATTES!!
FIVE! PUMPKIN SPICE! LATTES!!
On the sixth day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: six blue-black ravens on the telephone wire, silently watching you, judging you.
On the 7th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: Seven abandoned strip mall storefronts, reanimated, shambling, spilling out a viscera of cheap injection-molded bats and spiders.
On the eighth day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: Eight articulated legs on a spider constructed of gears, pulleys, and a tiny wet mammalian brain.
On the 9th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: The nine circles of hell (walking while texting, autoplay video ads, Gritty, comic sans, mansplaining, political memes, anything-"gate," the US Senate, and kale).
On the 10th day of Halloween, true love gave to me: Ten monsters under the bed. If you’re very very still in the early morning you can hear the mandibles clicking.
On the 11th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: eleven dark shadows on the white stucco wall, in the shape of children. I reach out to touch one and my fingers come back coated in ash.
On the 12th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: Twelve spiders on the ceiling above the bed as I wake up. Twelve pale webs spun in the night while I was sleeping. 96 luminescent bead-like eyes turning to watch as I slide out from under the covers and flee the room.
On the 13th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: Thirteen black cats. They aren’t evil cats or omens of bad luck or demon familiars or anything like that. They are just cats. I like cats.
On the 14th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: The 14 years in which Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye terrier, faithfully guarded the grave of his human. Good boy. 
On the 15th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: 15 creaky steep narrow steps into the basement, lit by a dim and dusty light bulb, and smelling of kerosene and damp and rot.
On the 16th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: a submarine, 16 fathoms deep on the sea floor, half-buried in mud. A diver reports it appears to be made of leather and bone. There is one window, broken. The diver is looking in and
On the 17th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: The 17-year cicada, which in 1845 emerged in especially large numbers and completely devoured an entire village in upstate New York, leaving 28 dead. Local folklore still refers to “the year of the buzz of death.”
On the 18th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: eighteen snowdrops, blooming at the wrong time of the year over the spot in the garden where I buried his body. I keep pulling them up, but they keep coming back.
On the 19th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: The age of consent for the Strczach peoples of the planet Eridani 8b, which is 19 earth-years. The extra year is to ensure the ovipositor is fully-formed.
On the 20th day of Halloween, by true love gave to me: 20 jars of homemade pickles on the pantry shelves in the basement. One of them appears to contain eyeballs and a finger.
On the 21st day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: twenty-one gravestones at the edge of the field, overgrown with weeds. The birth dates range over fifty years, but all of them have the same day of death.
On the 22nd day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: Twenty-two stars in the sky. *Only* 22 stars in the sky. All the others, including our sun, have been winking out over the last year as the universe falls away into darkness.
On the 23rd day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: 23 television sets in the Sunnyvale Emporium department store after hours. Night watchmen have reported seeing a woman’s face in the darkened screens, frightened, knocking on the TV from the inside as if it were a window.
On the 24th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me:
“What’s that on your back?” he said. “It looks like something bit you. You have…like …24 nasty bug bites on your back."
I craned to look. The bites were red, and itchy.
“Wait…” he said, looking closer. “Is that…an eye?”
“What’s that on your back?” he said. “It looks like something bit you. You have…like …24 nasty bug bites on your back."
I craned to look. The bites were red, and itchy.
“Wait…” he said, looking closer. “Is that…an eye?”
On the 25th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: A 25 mile drive at night on a lonely country road. The headlights illuminate a scarecrow on the side of the road. As the car passes by the scarecrow smiles, and its mouth is full of sharp teeth.
On the 26th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: A recipe for opening a portal to a demon dimension? But he got it off the internet and I think I mixed up t and T in the ingredients and now there are actually 26 portals? There are a lot of demons here? Uh, oops?
On the 27th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: 27 hours without sleep and there are shadows following me. Someone is giggling. Someone is crying. Someone is shouting. Someone is drowning. Someone is moaning. Someone is
On the 28th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: 28 new Twitter notifications. They all say "You have been followed by T̴̹͆̈́͜ḥ̴̬̥̀e̶̱̒ B̷͈͎̂l̶̮͂ḁ̸̢͝c̶̬͎̅ḱ̵̮̰̐ñ̷̙̭̯̑ę̴̯͒s̶͕̖̕ș̸̃ f̶͎̝̖̽͝r̷̰̓͊͘o̴̞͆̀̕m̶̪̝̏ ̷t̸̤̞̏͐h̷͇͙̎͜e̶̹̓͝ S̴͎̉̓͠t̷͈̬̀͝ă̵͖r̸͙̀̆̃s̴̤̆."
On the 29th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: The 29 miners who died in the Blue River mine explosion of 1844, and whose bodies were never recovered. It is said that the ghosts of the miners still roam the area around the old mine, searching for a way back home.
On the 30th day of Halloween, my true love gave to me: A small heart-shaped box left on my doorstep, which contains 30 bloody teeth. After all this time it seems that my true love has found me again.
On the HALLOWEENth day of HALLOWEEN my true love gave to me: HALLOWEEN!🖤🖤🦇🕷🖤 🎃🦇🎃👻🖤🕷👻🎃🕷🎃💀 🦇🦇💀🖤🎃🕷🎃💀💀🎉🖤🖤🥑🦆🍕🔌
Thank you all for following along on my tiny-story halloween game. I hadn't intended to go the whole 31 days but it kind of steamrolled as it went. I highly recommend a forced creative exercise like this one, it really cleans out the cobwebs in your brain.
