Cardboard Robot

A Halloween Tale

Last year, I waited until closer to actual Halloween day to publish the holiday-appropriate Digging Santo. This year, I’ve got a contest to win, so we’re gonna call Friday the 13th good enough.

Enjoy!

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Cardboard Robot

She was wearing a robot costume made out of cardboard the first time Eli saw her on Halloween night.

One of the other moms in the neighborhood had told Eli Bennett’s mom that her son Jake would be happy to take Eli with him and his friends trick-or-treating, but Eli knew better. It was no surprise at all when they ditched him barely two blocks away from his house.

He told himself that being abandoned was better than being bullied, and he almost believed it.

Walking alone down in the fading twilight, Eli spat his stupid plastic teeth into the otherwise empty pillowcase he carried for candy, and then crammed the vampire cape he’d worn for the third straight year into a big trashcan on the side of the road.

He was about ready to call it a night when he saw another group of six or seven kids careen around a corner, past some other kid who clearly wasn't one of them, peering off in their direction through the box on her head.

Her robot costume went all the way to her knees, while her arms in white linen stuck out through two holes in the side of the big body box. In Eli's experience, homemade costumes like that didn't win a lot of cool points from peers.

"Hey!" he called out.

The head swiveled, revealing a girl about his age behind a little window cut out of the crude robot head.

"Are you...out here with anyone?" He was making a bet she wasn't a total weirdo.

"Beep-beep boop, beep!" she said, forcing him to recalibrate his odds.

Eli laughed politely. "Did you make that costume yourself?"

"Beep-boop."

Eli laughed again, but thought this bit would get old really fast. "Do you have a, uh, different setting? Where you speak English?"

"Boop," she said, shaking her head.

Suppressing a sigh, Eli decided he might as well soldier on. "You wanna come trick or treating with me? I don't have a group either."

She gave a little hop, and beeped some more.

"Great, well my name's Eli. What should I call you?"

More beeping. More booping.

"I’ll call you Bee. So... you live around here?"

He immediately regretted the question. Mercifully, halfway through a fresh stream of fake robot noises, they had arrived at a house with its porch lights on.

"I guess I'll do the talking," he said, trotting up the driveway.

He didn't realize Bee wasn't with him anymore until the door opened. "Trick or treat..." he said distractedly, glancing behind him. Had he offended her?

"Oh, a zombie!" The middle aged woman at the door held a bucket of full-sized candy bars. "Scary!"

Eli didn't correct her as he grabbed a bar. For that kind of loot, she could call him whatever she wanted.

"Don't eat too many brains!" the woman called after him.

Bee hopped out from behind a hedge that separated the houses, surprising Eli so bad he almost fell over.

She held out two full-sized candy bars, beeping enthusiastically.

"Oh, uh," he said, "I got one already."

But she kept beeping until he relented and took the bars with a muttered “thanks,” and dropped them into his bag.

At the end of the next driveway, Bee pulled herself inside big box of her costume like a turtle. Once again, Eli approached the door alone, and wondered if it would be like this all night.

"What's up, uh, Neo," said the guy who opened the door. It was a fair guess. Without the cape and the teeth, Eli was just a kid dressed in black. Alone.

Once the door had closed, Bee popped back out of her cardboard shell.

"Might be more fun if you came up to the door," he suggested.

In response, Bee held out two wads of cash.

"Where did you get that!"

Bee grabbed his pillow case, stuffed the cash in, then handed it back.

Eli peered inside. Three full candy bars, plastic vampire teeth, some lame hard candy from that last guy, and more money than he could count at a glance.

Bee giggled and skipped toward the next house, then promptly collapsed inside of her costume as soon as Eli started toward the front door.

No one answered this time. Instead, there was an empty tray sitting on the porch with a sign next to it that said PLEASE ONLY TAKE ONE.

"You can come out," Eli said. "No one's home."

But Bee’s box didn't move.

It had gotten pretty dark, so it was hard to see anything, but if he got closer he could look into the armholes and—

One of Bee’s hands popped out and gave Eli his second jump scare of the night.

This time, it wasn't candy or money she offered him. It was a watch and a thick gold chain. Before he could react, she snatched his pillowcase and dropped the loot inside.

"What is this? What are you doing?" Eli said.

But she only stood there, holding out the pillowcase.

Until a car pulled into the driveway of the house he had just knocked. Bee pulled back into her box and slurped the pillowcase through an armhole after her.

Eli waved awkwardly at the old couple giving him funny looks. They closed the door behind them without bothering to collect their empty tray.

Bee was still turtled.

"Hey!" Eli hissed.

Nothing.

He leaned closer. "I'm just gonna keep walking. You can keep the bag."

Still nothing.

Feeling salty, Eli knocked on the box. "Hello? Anyone in there?"

The box rang hollow, exactly as though no one was inside.

Eli shivered.

"Hello?" he squeaked.

Slowly, he worked up the courage to put his finger on the box, and push.

When it fell over, Eli jumped back like it was full of spiders.

But it was empty.

It had fallen so that one of the arm holes faced the porch light, but the inside was still pitch black. No light at all.

Eli remembered the pillowcase, wondered if it was in there. It felt like a clue he might not be crazy.

It took a great steeling of his nerves to get closer.

To crouch down.

To reach inside...

He could feel the four walls of the box, but he couldn't feel the neck hole. Maybe his arms just weren't long enough. He ducked his head down to scoot in a little further.

Soon, he was all the way inside the box, and still hadn't found the other end.

Gripped by fatal curiosity, Eli kept crawling, one arm stretched out in front of him, expecting to feel the rough edged neck hole at any moment.

Instead, a faint glow lit the cardboard walls as they curved ahead…to an exit.

Eli wiggles out, and backs away.

The box is magic. Is it the good kind?

Something feels wrong. It's the light. He rubs his eyes.

A terrible ache for home sinks into his gut, like he's lost in a dark forrest. Except he knows exactly where he is — home is down that way, just a few blocks.

Eli starts walking. Everything will be fine if he can just see his mom.

He ignores the conspicuous absence of trick-or-treaters.

Just get home, he tells himself. It's not Michigan, but it’ll be good enough.

Less than a block to go, Eli gets the feeling he's being watched. Figures move at the edges of his vision, but when he turns to look, there's no one there.

He fights a growing temptation to lay down and curl up on the ground.

But there's his house! His mom's car is in the driveway. Stabs of relief punctuate his panting. Already succumbing to tears, he grabs at the handle, pushes the door open.

There are no lights on, but he can see just fine.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He shouts "Mom!" through a clenched throat. "Mom, I'm home, where are you!"

Every room is empty of life. All their stuff is there — even those unpacked boxes of books and family pictures in the corner of the living room — but no sign of his mother, or anyone else.

Finally, he shuts himself into his own room, sits on the edge of his bed, and tries to wake up. It helps to feel the fabric of the fitted sheet under his palms.

But he can't wake up.

His mind races faster than his heart. He doesn't know what to do.

Wait.

Over on the floor, under one of two windows that look down onto the backyard… that’s his pillowcase. Inside, the candy bars, the watch and chain, the cash... those plastic teeth. It's all so vivid, down to the small print on the Snickers.

Eli glances out the window and suffers yet another jump scare.

There are people down there, staring up at him.

"OK," he says out loud. He reminds himself that you never win by running away. It's a principle that has saved him from plenty of nightmares before. Face the thing, and it disappears, or it transforms into something less terrible.

But when Eli steps outside, there are a lot more of them, and they don't have eyes.

He thinks maybe he made a mistake.

Whenever he looks where the eyes should be, he sees flashes of emotion — rictuses of rage, pleading, pain. They all want something from him. He can feel the desperation.

He can't see them move, but every time he looks from one to another, the others are closer.

Now he wants to run. He wants to run as fast as he can, but he can’t move. His brain shouts for him to move, to get away, but his body won't respond. There is a creeping numbness, and great, gray cloud that makes it harder and harder to think, to decide what to do…

Suddenly, a hand grabs his wrist, breaking the spell.

It's a kid, a girl his age.

No eyes.

A shriek of terror cuts through him before, by some miracle, he recognizes her sleeves.

It's Bee.

She's pulling him back toward the house, away from all the other figures. There are many more of them now, and they are very close.

He follows as Bee leads him through the house and out the front door. There are more figures in the front yard, but Eli and Bee are running now, away from the house and up the street.

Back toward the box.

Of course. It's a portal. This is not his world. Why didn't he realize that right away?

Suddenly there is a terrible howling in his ears, in his head, in his bones. He can't see, he can't move, he can't breathe. It is as though hundreds of hands have reached inside of him to grab at whatever they can find. His body fills to bursting with emotions he is too young to understand. His sense of self diffuses into them like a drop of dye in a pot of boiling water.

At the brink of annihilation, one more hand grabs him, and yanks forward.

Eli stumbles across the asphalt. Bee has his wrist again.

Behind him, figures in disfigurement — grey and white and black, twisted faces and limbs, contorting into one another.

He runs as hard as he can.

The box is close, but there are hundreds of figures — ghosts? — crowding around it. There's no way he can make it back inside without going through them.

Eli knows he cannot go through them.

Bee lets go, opens her mouth, and releases a scream so wretched that it tears Eli's heart from his chest.

The sound draws the ghosts like moths to flame.

A path has opened. He dives for the box, and discovers that the arm Bee held in her grip has gone entirely numb. He uses the other to hobble inside.

He wants to look back, he fears for Bee, but he knows he must not stop.

As Jack crawled out of the box, whimpers of fear and sorrow spilled out into the familiar light.

"Hey man," Jake said as he and his friends watched. "Watcha doin in there?"

Then one of the other boys ran up and kicked the box across the road, where others followed.

Eli tried to tell them to stop, but it didn't work.

Eventually, after the cardboard costume had been thoroughly torn and broken, Jake said, "OK come on, cut it out." Then, to Eli, "Sorry bro, we've been eating too much candy."

When they were gone, Eli gathered up the mess of cardboard and carried it home.

His mom wondered why he was home so early. He said something about missing Michigan, which was true enough.

Back in his room again, the first thing Eli noticed was the pillowcase. It was sitting exactly where he had found and left it in the other world. How had it gotten there to begin with? Bee must have done it somehow.

Eli got right to work. With tape, and other pieces of cardboard, he did his best to reassemble robot costume.

When he'd done as well as he could, he sat back on the edge of his bed, and waited.

He had no idea how this magic worked, but what else could he do? He opened up one of the candy bars and ate it while he stared intently at the boxes in the middle of his room.

Just before he popped the last bite into his mouth, two familiar arms poked through the armholes, then reached up to hold the smaller box on top in place while Bee pushed her head into it.

"Beep boop."

Eli was so relieved he almost cried again, but managed to hold it together. “Thank you,” he said.

Bee rocked back and forth.

He had a lot of questions, but first, he held out the pillowcase full of loot. "Will you please put all this back where you found it?"

After a long moment, she took it from him, and nodded behind the little window through which they regarded one another.

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I’m serious about winning, and I’ve got a few days before the submission deadline, so if you’ve got notes to help me make it better, GIVE THEM TO ME.

Thanks you’re the best!