“Trick or treat,” I said, when the poor man opened his door. Dogs were barking from somewhere upstairs.

“Come in,” he said, looking something like happy. He wore shorts, had knobby looking red knees. When I stepped inside the smells almost knocked me down. His walls were mottled, wallpaper flapping. It seemed as if last year’s flood had eaten his entire living room, then flung it back out, undigested.

“I’ll bet your Mama told you not to come. But you decided, that ain’t the way to have fun,” he said.

Nobody appeared to come or go from here, ever—which is why I came. From the street, the old house looked like a dying memory. It felt as if somebody had to break the spell, and this had to be me.

“When you knocked on my door, today, it almost fainted.”

He laughed. I laughed too. It was funny. On the ceiling, a spider flashed me its belly. There were no pumpkins, hardly any lights.

“A door doesn’t faint,” I said.

“This one still could,” he said.

“And hey, I get it, kid. You didn’t want your Mama to tell you what to do for the rest of your life. I’ll bet your almost a teenager,” he said.

“Damn right. If I get flack later on that’s fine,” I said.

I flopped down on his hairy sofa.

“I’m Annie,” I said. “I live down the block. Since my sister ran away a few years ago, my Mama tells me what to do all day long.”

“Ran away,” he said, and the echo of our words forked up a feeling of stuckness. The dog hair on his sofa was so thick it was almost a net.