username + id: captain dude 1003555
kalon name: Dakota “Cody”
favorite candy:
peanut butter cups candy corn
“I’m too old for Halloween!”
Now that he was a teenager, Dakota pretended he was over it. But his brother was far from it. “C’mon!”
Jake begged. “You have to dress up. Mom would want it.”
A twinge of pain struck him. Yes, his mom would have wanted him to be fun, for them. After death had taken his last living parental figure, things had been hard on them. But holidays were the one reprieve their makeshift family had.
“Okay, you’re right. You win.” He said, throwing his paws up in mock defeat. “Let me go find something.”
With his wardrobe already leaning towards the punk side of things, it wasn’t hard to make a little goth vampire costume out of the ratty old tees, ear studs, and some fake fangs that he already had. He had spent the last bit of extra money they had on a pristine white sheet for Jake’s ghost costume. “You ready, little ghost?”
His brother nodded from under the sheet.
Their walkable home city made it easy to go from place to place collecting sweets and dodging the larger kits who tried their best to strongarm treats away from anyone unlucky enough to cross their paths. Occasionally, they’d stop, duck into an alleyway to shovel down some of the treats in the off chance their loot got lost, dropped, or stolen before continuing on their way. It wasn’t too common, when scraping by as orphans, for them to able to afford such luxuries. Candy was like a little piece of Heaven to Dakota. The peanut butter cups’ stomach-filling richness, the mint creams’ refreshing coolness, and the popcorn balls’s sticky sugar all combined, making him feel an endearing combination between sick and satisfied. The decorations seemed like blurs of colour, the chiaroscuro blends between the lights and darkness, whirls of fear and fun all at the same time. It was all like a dizzying, sweetness-filled carnival of dazzling joy on display.
That is, until they felt themselves run into a thick wall of fur with a thud. Looking up as he picked himself up, Cody stared into the taunting eyes of his age-old rival.
Jack.
“Whatcha doing so far into our neighborhood, street kid?” He asked with a sneer and the flick of a tail.
Cody composed himself for a moment, gathering his strength. “I was just about to ask you the same thing. We seem to be on a border, you see.”
“You know what, punk? You’ve got quite the mouth on you, what for your rag-tag little outfit and your brother hiding under a sheet,” the larger foe said, menacingly. “But considering it’s a holiday, I suppose that I should be nice to you. I’ll let you off with half your candy or…”
“Or what?” Cody asked, meeting his eyeline. He could tell this was all going south pretty quickly. He glanced over at Jake, who was still trembling beneath his ghost costume. Maybe if I tell him to run, he might actually be able to make it off with some of it. I don’t want his only memory of this Halloween being getting robbed of his candy.
“Or I make you hand it over.” Jack said, shoving a shoulder into him and knocking him back down. Dakota still had a good grip on his candy. He glanced over at his brother. “Jake, run!”
It was a blur of wrestling in the dirt, of swiping paws and wriggling and punching, of which Jack came out with a busted-up brow and a slash on his tail and Dakota with a busted lip and a gash across his eye. When all was said and done, he was lying on the ground with one less bag of candy. He was glad that Jake wasn’t around to watch him get it handed to him.
When he had dusted himself off and was back on his feet, he went to look for his brother who was huddled over his bag of candy. “Did he beat you up again?” He asked softly.
“Oh, nah, I just sucked Jack’s blood and left him there for dead”, Cody said coolly, wiping the blood from his lip with a smile. “Anyways, you know who’s probably having a better Halloween than us? Ramus.”
They found Cody’s friend in his garage watching Scream with one paw in a bowl of popcorn. “Hey, hey, hey, well if it isn’t the two trick-or-treaters! Oof, looks like someone took the whole vampire thing a little too literally. Maybe you should have used fake blood?”
Ramus said.
“Can it, Ram, and scoot over,” Cody told him. And there they stayed for the rest of the night, sitting on the couch watching campy horror.
Halfway through Friday the 13th, Jake reached over to Cody, pressing something into his paws. “Hey, Cody? When I ran, um, my bag ripped. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be mad, but all I have left is this.”
It was a little bag of candy corns.
“I know you aren’t the biggest fan of-“
“It’s perfect. Thank you, Jake. That’s really thoughtful of you,” he said, slipping one into his mouth.
And as the tears streamed down his face, glistening in the light of the slasher flick, it didn’t matter what kind of candy it was. It was his favorite simply because it meant his brother loved him.
[900/900]
by black water » Tue Oct 11, 2022 4:47 pm 
