Costume Change - SCP Foundation

I love Halloween. It's my favorite time of year, one of the few days I can just go out and mingle with the normal people for an entire night without anyone being the wiser. The pain's not so bad when I can change so often, it's dark with plenty of places to hide and change in secret, and the candy makes up for it.

There's an astronaut over there. I think I'll be an astronaut too now.

It's so easy, not at all like having to make up a shape and hold on to it, keeping it in my head and on my body until it hurts too much to bear. There's so many other people in costumes, I can just copy one of them and then I only need to keep the picture outside from changing.

That little boy is a pirate. I like pirates, I'm going to be a pirate.

Oh, and the candy. I do so love candy, but the rest of the year, it's so hard to get. You need money to buy candy, and even if I could get money, I can't keep it, I always drop it when I change. So I have to steal it, and that's even harder, because even if I get some, I have to drop it too when I change to get away.

A ballerina? That could make a nice shape to be, I'll try that.

Tonight, you don't have to buy or steal candy, they just give it away. They don't like to give you candy more than once, but that's not a problem for me, not if I see someone I want to be and get to a house before they do. I can clean out a house in minutes if I'm lucky, and have a whole bag of candy to go hide somewhere and eat it all up without any shape at all.

Policemen are scary. I don't like them, they like to chase me and shoot at me. But my head hurts, so I'll be a policeman now.

I took a chance once, and went up to a house without a shape. I don't know why I did it, maybe I'd eaten too much candy and gotten silly on the sugar. It never goes right most days, people always scream and run when they see me without a shape, or they try to hurt me and I have to run. But on Halloween, I'm a ghost, or Rorschach (who's Rorschach?), or a swamp monster, or a Shoggoth (don't know what that is either). They aren't scared, they tell me what a great costume I have and give me extra candy.

Should I be a vampire? Or a werewolf? Or a mummy? I see all of them, and I can't decide.

But I can't be myself very often, because I know Mr. Redd is after me. He's always been chasing me, but he can't ever find me. I know how much it makes him angry, though - every since that one night, he knows I spend all of Halloween out and vulnerable, but I wear so many different shapes he never knows what I am and I'm always picking a new one. He get so angry, and it's funny.

Ooh, there's a spy. I see them a lot, even when it's not Halloween. They don't look like spies, they look like normal people, but no one's better than me at seeing someone whose outside is changed. I know they're all friends, because inside they all look similar, and I can see that too. I'll be a spy, and go talk to him. Maybe I can get him to think I'm a spy like he is too. Maybe he'll give me candy.