Once upon a chill October evening, kids in costumes darted from door to door, their laughter a sweet melody in the autumn air.
Among them, one child wore a ghost costume with too many eye holes—seven to be exact.
It was an earnest mistake, a snip-snip here and a snip-snip there, each cut representing impulsiveness and vulnerability.
The costume, a mess of perforations, conveyed confusion and yet a poignant charm.
You see, this particular child buzzed with energy, a constant whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, as if a storm was perpetually brewing inside.
Distractions tumbled through the young mind like leaves in a frenzied wind, settling nowhere, achieving nothing. Intentions were good, yet the hands never quite matched the heart’s intricate choreography.
Children ahead gleefully opened pillowcases and plastic pumpkins, revealing heaps of candy—paper tubes of flavored sugar, worms of sour gummies, and peanut butter hidden within all manners of coatings.
It was a momentary elixir, that sense of normalcy and inclusion.
But for our little ghost with the excessive eyeholes, the experience took on a different hue.
Hand after hand reached into buckets and produced, not treats, but ordinary rocks.
Each stone felt heavier than it looked, its weight a metaphor for misunderstood feelings and misplaced actions.
While others found sugar highs, this child collected stony lows. Each rock was like an emotional spike, triggering bouts of internal unease—sometimes sadness, sometimes a restless urgency.
Around and around the thoughts spiraled, each circling notion cutting its own hole in the fabric of well-being.
But alongside the anguish, the child carried a flicker of hope. It was the same thread of spirit that led to seven holes in a single costume—a testament to an extraordinary capacity for feeling, even when those feelings sometimes overwhelmed.
As the moon rode high and the evening came to its conclusion, the children returned to their homes.
Costumes were discarded, pillowcases emptied, and normalcy restored, but for our young ghost, those collected rocks were carefully placed on a bedroom shelf. A reminder, not of failure, but of persistence and the beautiful, flawed humanity within.
Over time, the child learned to see each rock as a chapter in a complicated but invaluable life story—each hole a window, not into a haunted spirit, but into a soul yearning for understanding and a chance to be loved for who it truly was.
And so, the rocks stayed.
The holes remained.
But most importantly, the heart continued to beat with the same fervent hope that next Halloween, and every ordinary day that followed, would be just a little bit better.
And in that hope, there was something sweeter than any candy—there was life, in all its messy, magnificent glory.
AI EDITOR NOTES:
- “Representing” was misspelled as “represeting” (corrected).
- “Flavored” was misspelled as “flaored” (corrected).
- “Normalcy” was misspelled as “normalty” (corrected).
There are no egregious grammatical issues that seem unintentional. The creative voice and tone feel deliberate throughout.