Ninja Turtle Dreams
Mama zipped me in a Ninja Turtle shell—Michelangelo, the laughing one, 'cause I giggled through gunfire and dreamed in technicolor even when sirens split the night like wishbones.
Sweat glued the mask to my face, plastic breath, cinnamon gum, and that hum of danger, a tuning fork struck wrong. But outside, Crenshaw was Dracula in khakis. No cape, just jheri curl slick and a stare sharp enough to chalk outlines 'round lil’ boys.
We skipped the house on 51st, boarded windows yawning coffin-wide, where whispers said a girl vanished, swallowed whole by walls that still exhale her name like she might crawl back through the vents on cold nights when the wind turns hungry.
Trick-or-treat became warfare, pillowcase heavy with contraband candy and the weight of watching our backs, our shadows, our six-year-old necks.
Milky Way melted in one fist, the other welded to my cousin's sleeve like flesh to hot metal, like prayer sealed behind clenched teeth.
I remember the cold, not October's bite but 1989's gut-cold, marrow-deep freeze that lived in concrete's pores, in the pause between muzzle flashes, in the bass line that swallowed screams.
We didn’t swap ghost stories; we carried them in our bones.
Ask Darnell—thirteen, shot twice in the back, returned to school wrapped in hospital starch and silence, hoodie stiff as a shroud. His eyes fixed groundward, searching concrete for answers it would never surrender, for a map back to the boy who used to run without checking who was behind him. Said his dreams still hemorrhaged red.
But his mama's voice cut clean. "Boys don't weep—just reload."
That Halloween, I saw a clown—not the birthday kind. He was bone-pale under streetlamp fever. Makeup streaked like mascara tears. His nose? Not rubber, just raw blood threading down his chin in crimson ribbons thick as ribbon candy. The man lurched when he waved, bones rattling loose in his skin, a belt cinched tight 'round his arm like a tourniquet. His eyes rolled back to white moons, showing nothing but the void that swallowed him whole.
My cousin cackled and called it a costume. But I knew that man wasn't playing dress-up. He was drowning upright, floating between sugar rush and flatline. His smile stretched too wide, teeth yellow as porch light, as old newspapers, as the lies we told ourselves about safety.
I flinched so hard the taste of pennies flooded my mouth. Knees knocked a percussion drowning out my cousin's wheeze.
That night, I asked Mama why folks hang spider webs for decoration when real webs mean roaches, and roaches mean the lights got cut off—again.
She said, “Baby, sometimes pretendin’ is all people got. Let them have their Halloween.”
But what happens when pretend bleeds into real?
When the monster under your bed sports a badge and flashlight, and says your daddy "matched the description"?
When Halloween candy hits the trash 'cause trust got murdered somewhere between the front door and the neighbor with the Jesus pumpkin?
We didn't wear costumes to terrify. We dressed up to survive. I was a turtle, but my shell was tissue paper. Hope is as thin as onion skin—wishful thinking in plastic form. We wore costumes to pretend we weren't prey. But the real monsters kept banker's hours, knocked at 4 p.m. in uniform when kids walked home alone, and mothers counted heartbeats instead of sheep.
October bled into November. Nightmares took root, grew thick as kudzu between our ribs.
They lie when they say the hood numbs you. Truth is, it makes you radioactive with awareness. It teaches you shadow languages, how silence weighs heavy as bodies, how fear tastes like bleach burning the back of your throat, how Halloween is just Tuesday—with better masks.
