The morning before Halloween, I opened my front door—and froze. My car looked like it had been through a sticky apocalypse: egg yolk sliding down the windshield, toilet paper streaming from the antenna like ghostly confetti.
“Mommy… is the car sick?” my son Noah whispered, eyes wide.
I forced a calm smile. “A little,” I said. “But we’ll fix it.”
I’m Emily—36, a nurse, and a single mom of three: Lily, Max, and little Noah. Life is usually a blur of night shifts, school drop-offs, and bedtime stories. I don’t start trouble. I barely have time to breathe. The night before, I parked in the only open spot I could find—right in front of my neighbor Derek’s house.
Derek, for context, treats Halloween like the Olympics. His yard is a haunted carnival—fog machines, skeleton armies, glowing tombstones, and enough speakers to shake the street. It used to be fun. Lately, it’s just loud.
That morning, as I followed a trail of eggshells down the driveway, they led straight to Derek’s house. I told the kids to stay inside, slipped into my slippers, and knocked.
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