October Rust

I walk the streets with my camera, dodging dog walkers and families strolling the autumn afternoon. Leaves dance with the wind and cast a crimson, yellow, umber, and viridian strobing cascade of shadow and sunlight. The color is intoxicating. The air is intoxicating. I capture what I can on my camera, but it cannot convey the truth about this time. The feelings of nostalgia and joy are vibrant, but followed by a subtle sense of dread as I witness trees turn and the northern hemisphere tilting further into space, gradually plunging this place into the short, dark, and cold days of winter.

A maple, still green, but blushing red at the leaf tips. I snap a shot of it from afar, but it doesn’t do it justice. From underneath, looking from the ground, up the trunk, to see the vastness of this ancient plant, that is how to photograph it. I crouch near the earth, put the camera on the bark of the tree, and shoot. Elms, golden, shimmer nearby. I catch their leaves, contrasted against the blue sky. Linden, walnut, catalpa, oak, chestnut, and gigantic cottonwood. These are my muses. These are my idols, these are the palaces of insects and squirrels, rich with the gifts of earth and sun.

From behind a fence, a ghoul stares at me, its plastic face rotted into a frozen scream.  He’s dressed for a wedding, it appears, with tux and bowtie.  He’s bound to the ground, or climbing up from it and gotten stuck.  To his right are headstones, many of them.  A mummy claws it’s way free, and the corpse of a dead woman gasps for breath further down the lawn.  The beautiful autumn day becomes horrific.  I photograph the dead on my neighbors lawn, hoping they do not wake and follow me home.  Monstrous pumpkins leer from porches, their fanged grimaces taunting passersby.  I walk on, documenting my travels and these grotesque displays.  

I come to a house adorned with the skeleton of a giant viper.  Thankfully this one is clearly dead.  Giant spiders survey the street, perched atop shrubs, and a dragon exhales flame from the veranda of an apartment building.  I marvel at this, yet my fellow pedestrians walk by unfazed.  I envy their stoic reactions to the onslaught of zombies, skeletons, and werewolves, and homes now swarming with arachnids.  How do they saunter past a rotted tree that reaches for them, whose face contorts and utters threats of doom and despair, without a second glance? 

This is the end of the world we’ve been warned about.  The zombie apocalypse.  The attack of the giant spiders.  The day of the triffids.  The evil dead.  Dead bodies everywhere.  I go home and show my partner the photos.  We share them with family and friends.  Delightful.  They’re delighted.  Delighted by the gore and those abominable things lurking on porches, in living room windows, and front lawns. 

Later, I venture out after dark.  I walk down a dead end street.  A dazzling spectacle of light beckons me.  I go towards it.  I see glints of metal swinging from a catalpa tree, like giant tinsel, and ornaments all about its branches.  As I move closer, I see the tree is draped in chains and ornamented with severed hands and feet dripping blood, and spotlighted with green and purple lamps.  Vampire bats nest there, and skeletons swing from the limbs, once more returning to their arboreal nature.  

Behind the tree is a house from hell. Monstrous flaming skulls framed by gilded rococo leaves adorn the fenced perimeter. A family of pumpkin people laughs maniacally as they loom over another skeleton. There are skeletons everywhere, scaling the walls of the two flat apartment building, floating into the air and cackling with nocturnal delight. A cat the size of a hippopotamus waits ready to pounce from behind smoking radioactive barrels. Overwhelmed with terror, I try to steady my hand and photograph what I can. I train the camera on the pumpkin people, the skeletons, the cat, and that macabre tree. I must show others. The end is nigh!

“It’s beautiful!”  Hollars a woman in a surgical mask. 

A man in a tank top, holding a ladder, walks towards the tree.  “Oh thanks.  I decided to go all out this year.” 

He sets his ladder near the catalpa and climbs up.  He takes hold of a bat and moves it.  The bat is unresponsive.  He adjusts the chain of bloody severed feet.  

I stare, amazed at this collection of gore. 

“Happy Halloween!” shouts the woman. 

“Happy Halloween!” he says in return as he descends the ladder.