"The Alien-Devil Who Came to Dinner"

He came masked, drank with style, and stayed past midnight. I served trout. He served change.

He arrived just after dusk, when the streetlamps flicker like dying stars and the wind carries whispers from the alley. I had invited him—the Alien-Devil—though I can’t recall why. Maybe it was the season. October, when masks are currency and monsters walk freely. I was born in that season in November. I belong to it.

The trout was my offering. A foolish choice. Its bones were like secrets—too many, too sharp. I cooked it anyway, sweating under the kitchen light like a man preparing a final confession. He ate with a kind of reverence, as if the fish held meaning beyond flesh. But the eye—the eye stared back. I saw myself in it. Not the host. Not the man. Something else.
​
The martini was a ritual. Shaken, not stirred. A nod to Bond, to elegance, to the illusion of control. He held the glass like a relic, sniffed it like a warning. When he finally drank, I knew: his world was not mine. His toast was not to life as I thought I knew it.

The Morning After (Balcony Refrain)
He stayed. Of course he did. Monsters don’t leave until they’ve finished their work. I stepped onto the balcony, the city still asleep, and lit a cigarette I didn’t want. Smoke curled like memory. I had changed. Not visibly. Not yet. But inside, something had shifted. A bone out of place. A shadow where light used to be.

I am the monster now.

And Halloween is home.