It’s Friday, September 22nd, the 1st official day of Fall when Mckenna wakes up to the dreaded beep of her alarm. After hitting snooze about 3 times she manages to stumble out of bed and start her day. She begins each day with tidying up her room. She pulls up her light pink comforter and tucks it into the base of her bed. Aligning her pillows covered in flowery pillow cases perfectly and neatly placing her two favorite stuffed animals; Willow the pig and Fluffy the bunny up against them to guard her bed while she’s at school. These are her two favorites as her grandmother bought her the pig for her 7th birthday and she won Fluffy at the carnival over the summer. She comes to an abrupt stop as she notices something that immediately fills her with joy. She can smell the aroma of her dad’s famous apple cinnamon pancakes! Mckenna’s mouth starts to water and a smile starts to stretch across her face as she remembers it’s her favorite time of the year! Fall! There’s nothing she loves more than the way the colors of the leaves slowly change from green to bright red, orange, yellow, and her favorite color; pink! She also adores the 50-60 degree weather where she is able to comfortably wear sweaters, and the many aromas of apples, cinnamon, and pumpkin fill the air. However, there’s one thing that she absolutely despises. Halloween.

Mckenna didn’t always hate Halloween. In fact, it actually used to be her favorite holiday. She loved dressing up in costumes and going around her maze like neighborhood trick or treating with her friends. Every Halloween for the past 5 years her family has hosted a party prior to trick or treating. They would spend the week prior cleaning and decorating the house. Caution tape was taped along the staircase, creases of the walls, and across doors, decorations were placed throughout the whole house, and don’t even start with the outside. There were carved pumpkins with lights inside to create jack o lanterns, skeletons hanging from trees, cobwebs covering the bushes, and a noisy smoke machine that releases colored smoke by the front door as guests walk by. The hours leading up to the party were always filled with excitement and finishing the final touches of setting up the house. Mckenna’s neighborhood friends Olivia, Paige, Carter, and Myles would arrive at around five. They would have cheese or pepperoni pizza that her mom got delivered to their house followed by scrumptious desserts like frosted brownies, cupcakes, and cookies before they head out on their venture. 

As Mckenna follows the scent of apples and cinnamon downstairs she is greeted by her dad and her sister who has already started eating the perfectly golden and fluffy pancakes. “Hey Mack! Happy Fall! The bus comes in about 30 minutes and I've already made your lunch so come join us!” I grab two pancakes, pour myself a glass of apple cider and join them at the table. “Are you girls excited for Halloween?” “Yeah!” My younger sister, Katie replies. She’s 6, about 3 years younger than I am. “Eh” I reply. “C’mon Mckenna, you’ll have a great time!” “Mmm I'm not so sure. I really don’t like Halloween.” My opinion about the joyful holiday changed last year when I was trick or treating with my friends and we approached the Mcquire’s house. They have 3 teenage boys. Timmy, Tommy, and Tony. They are all triplets in their sophomore year. It’s obvious that they’re pretty troubled and only care about having a good time even if it involves ruining someone else's. The Mcquire’s go all out for Hallwoeen as it’s the boys favorite holiday. They set up a huge haunted house in their yard and trick or treaters have to go through it in order to get to the door. On the night of Halloween, the three boys dress up and run the haunted house. Normally, Tommy dresses up as the classic zombie with the chainsaw, Timmy the scary, bloody vampire, and Tony the skeleton. Last year, my friends and I were just casually walking through like we do every year. By now, we know the haunted house inside and out. Except last year, right as we were about to exit. I heard a noise unfamiliar to me. The “errrrrrrrr” of what sounded like a chainsaw started to fill my ears. I looked at my friends whose eyes all mimicked my own. As we tried to turn back to run out of the house, we realized we were trapped as Timmy and Tony were coming up slowly behind us and Tommy was now in front of us holding a real chainsaw that was turned on and ready to go. “Awwwww, is there a problem here?” Tommy asked in his most creepy sounding voice. He started getting closer and closer to us. I immediately burst into tears and started screaming. Nothing happened. No one could hear me over the loud music that the boys had purposely put on to drown out the sound. It wasn’t until another group of kids came in that the torture stopped. The boys didn’t know the new group of kids like they knew us. The second the other group of kids appeared, the boys got nervous and immediately stopped. Once they stopped paying attention to us I bolted out of there so fast that I ended up falling and spilling all my candy from my bucket all over the road. I was still so nervous from what I had just encountered that I didn’t pick any of it up. Leaving me with no halloween candy last year.

Once the clock striked 8:25 it was time for my sister and I to head to the bus stop to catch our 8:30 bus. As we were walking over we were greeted by Carter and Myles. “Mckenna!! I have an idea!” Myles says. “Oh, great another one of Myles great ideas” I thought. “There’s a Fall Festival this weekend and I think you, me, Carter, Liv, and Paige should all go!” “I’ll go, but there must be no Halloween things.” “Relax, relax, don't worry it will be fine.” “Myles, I’m serious. If there’s anything haunted at all; I’m not going.” 

That Saturday Myles' mom picked us up around 6:00 P.M and we stopped at Wendy’s for a quick dinner before we went to the Fall Festival. I was told by Myles that there was going to be nothing spooky. He said that there would be tons of people from just our grade going and there would be competitions like bobbing for apples, bean bag toss, and other small competitions like that. There was also going to be hot apple cider (my favorite!), freshly popped kettle corn, apple cider donuts, a pumpkin patch, a hay ride, and everything else you could think of. Everything was going great! I got my usual order of chicken nuggets and fries at Wendy’s and I was with my friends on my way to what was supposed to be a fun SPOOKY FREE fall festival. However, as we were driving into the parking lot; my heart stopped, my stomach started to churn, my face started to turn bright red, and I started to sweat profusely. This was not just people from our grade and I noticed a tall, black, stone building covered in cobwebs. This was NOT a fall festival. It was actually far from it. Myles lied to me. This was clearly a haunted house. It was actually one of the scariest haunted houses in our state of Delaware. I wanted to scream at Myles and tell him how angry I was, but I refrained from doing so as his mom was in the car. So, instead, I went quiet. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it so I nervously sat there and didn’t say anything. I could see Myles looking at me out of the corner of my eye and he had a big smirk across his face. I took a deep breath and let the adventure begin.