♛ Merci, visage gris. It was a long night, with different chapters, always one of my favorite nights of the year. We drink in the revelry of everyone dressed as their favorite monsters and characters… and there are always at least a few extra of “me” strolling around NOLA every year.

This is also the one night of the year I can truly smile widely, show my fangs, and get compliments on how very real they look, and which fangsmith did I get them from? I’ll answer, always with a little bitterness: “Magnus, but he’s long since retired.” I’ll allow admirers to touch them, if I’m in a generous mood.

Sometimes the coven gathers together at a costumed ball for just ourselves, or we’ll decide to throw a charity ball and invite our mortal friends. This year Louis and I stayed in NOLA and spent it doing our own thing.

I don’t carve pumpkins, but Louis does, he’ll do the simple toothy smile style, to let the kids of the neighborhood know we’re open for business, but we also love going to carving contests to see what the truly talented artists can do with just knives and vegetables. 

Years ago, we found our pumpkins unceremoniously destroyed, and the culprit in the courtyard, none other than our dearest Mojo, still licking the innards of his victims off his muzzle! After that, we fed him

pieces of raw pumpkin as a treat whenever they were in season, and set the pumpkins for display out of his reach.

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I shook Louis awake earlier than he’s accustomed to so that we could catch as much of the parade as possible. He knows this is the annual drill so he kept his complaints to a minimum. Rushing through the flat, throwing on whatever, there’s little time to dress up, as the parade begins very close to sunset. No matter, there would be three wardrobe changes later on… We caught up with it on Canal.

After that, we dressed up for the trick-or-treaters, and handed out candy at the flat, of course. Candy corn? A strange invention, and some say it tastes awful, but you have to realize there has always been candy that’s been seen as lower-class or disgusting, especially for those who can afford better. I buy it anyway, it’s pretty and smells pleasant. 

Louis dressed as a black cat, complete with ears and tail (a costume he recycles far too much) and I, being a witch, got into a heated debate with a precocious little bat-child about which Hogwarts house I belonged to. Louis intervened, gave the child a full-size bar of something she wanted, and shooed her away. At any rate, it’s not resolved.

We changed into the more adult costumes for the clubs and bars, and played the game of chasing eachother from one to another, picking up dinner in the midst of the crowd, no death delivered tonight, a taste of a delicious David Bowie here, a bite of a sexy nun there. Louis says I have a preference for religiously-costumed people, and he’s very right. Holy water for my evil little soul! 

For the third costume change of the evening, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination, but it was back home, an intimate moment together *winks*