"Bad Things Happen on Halloween" (1995) Lucy Taylor

100 Wicked Little Witch Stories (2000) edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert A. Weinberg

Readers unfamiliar with "Bad Things Happen on Halloween" (1995) Lucy Taylor may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.

Like much genre fiction Barnes and Noble packed like spam into these anthologies in the 1990s, "Bad Things Happen on Halloween" is a quick and enjoyable read: a clever holiday flash conte cruel.

Taylor employs a lean, slick style, letting dialogue move the weight of action. Narrator Matt, a busker newly arrived in Boulder, CO from Texas, is on a Halloween night date with the lovely Lillian. She confesses her fears about the influence of witchcraft and Satanism on this night, and asks if he will keep her company at home. Will he!

The story's brevity only adds to the eloquence of Taylor's climax.

This is the kind of story Bierce would have tossed off to fill an empty half-column in the back pages, where elixirs fortified with cocaine were advertised. Strong, droll stuff.

Jay