The Haunting of M. P.

The first time Margerie was haunted it was the one year anniversary to her marriage. She was getting married to Benjamin Russle on her 23rd October 25th. It was a date I recommended to her on the eve of my honeymoon while we both cascaded significance through painkiller cocktail torpor. As I bit lazily the dead skin at the base of my cuticles, peeling off strands, pretending to get ready and spit them out of my mouth in haste, but primarily swallowing them down, I assured Margerie that as her father I was an authority on each October 25th in her short life's catalog. All save the last, her 21st, which occurred while she was, as she told me, studying diligently at school. Little did she know that I checked all the credit card bills that came into my addresses, including those which contained purchases on the card I had co-signed with her. The card was for emergencies. It was her first time away from New England, away from the town in New England she grew up in. And as a responsible and progressive parent I nodded off under the gulp of a pill for back pain the strange, minute charges for soda, trail mix, and condoms over in Flagstaff. How she made it all the way over to the other side of this country without using her plastic is a phenomenon even to me, her omniscience. It would be a lie if I told you I hadn't screamed WHORE to a beige living room wall at least once after the weekly, alcohol-soaked social. But this is not about me. This is about Margerie Pacingfield, and her haunted existence.

October 25, numbers one through twenty, were important dates for all of us. We always prepared for Halloween in our own ways, starting on the 25th of the month with a bang. Here is a brief composite of Margerie's explosive wind-up prep periods:

1) Ba-ba.
2) Da-da.
3) More cookie dough please!
4) I don't want that.
5) When are we going to the store? The doll!
6) I need more makeup!
7) I miss Kelly. (this was her school friend, a female)
8) I miss Bobby. (this was her school friend, a male)
9) The bad kids told me they'll egg me if I go out there.
10) But what if I just made a costume this year!
11) I'm gonna get more candy than anyone else out there!
12) Can I go trick or treating with Bruce this year? (her first boyfriend)
13) Mima's having a party and yes her parents will be there so can I please go? Please please pretty please?
14) I don't want to talk about it to any of you.
15) Halloween? Halloween is for losers!
16) Halloween is so fucking awesome! This year will be the best! (and I don't care WHO you are, I said, I told her, but watch your god damn mouth when you're under my roof)
17) Halloween is against my religion
18) I'm just gonna stick around here this year.
19) If God is dead, then Halloween is dead too.
20) (most recently) Josh and I will stay home and watch the candy. You guys go have some fun. (her first "steady" relationship)

Josh was the last one. With him came the haunting. He held the ladder when I fell from it and injured my spine all over. He was okay in my book otherwise. The association still paralyzes. The purple pills paralyze. Unfortunately despite Josh's good intentions he failed at severing the cord attached to the failed relationship with Margerie. Following the breakup, exactly two weeks after Margerie's 20th Halloween, Josh began his frenzy. There was reclusion. There was aggression. There was anger and pain. Like many hauntings, there was a lack of evidence, and a victim. There: Margerie smiling despite everything wrong inside the picture.