Halloween is Not My Favorite Holiday - Stephen Piazza
The blonde screamed as Jason disemboweled her, but I was preoccupied with my phone, sucking chocolate out of wafer.
No one was talking in the Snapchat group chat. I’d been opening and reopening it for months. My friends were on each other’s stories a lot. At the lake, at Cheesecake Factory. I was at home. Waiting for a birthday text. Waiting for someone to start typing, so I could answer.
There was a growing pile of Kit-Kat wrappers on the couch. Mom had left the door open just in case any trick-or-treaters came to ring the doorbell. The cold was seeping in and stiffening my black-painted toenails. No one ever came anyways- I was the youngest person on Carpenter Avenue. Just barely sixteen. Puddles was chirping along to the movie.
Jessica had a party on Friday. I only knew this because the morning of, in Algebra II, Sky asked me what I was going to wear and only realized her mistake when I didn't answer and I forced the air out of my lungs because if I inhaled my eyes would start to water.
Puddles was wheezing again. We took her to the avian vet earlier that summer to treat her respiratory infections. Budgerigars are susceptible to tumors; she had one for years, in the space between her lungs and her ribs, bulging from her side.
I didn't go on Snapchat Friday night. Saturday morning, I caught a glimpse of purple strobe lights on Sarah’s story and kept my eyes still on one spot on the bedroom ceiling until the white began to flicker black.
No one rang the doorbell and I finished all the Kit-Kats. I went to bed at 9 and kissed Puddles on her barred head. She was hot against my lips. Mom buried her in the tomato garden while I was at school the next day.
Stephen Piazza is a sophomore English student from Mount Kisco. His writing has previously been featured in ARCH magazine (Fall 2024) and performed at Fresh Acts! (2025). One of ARCH’s Spring 2025 interns, his work usually concerns Catholic-American intersections, the intimate lives of transgender men, and the flora and fauna of New York State.