Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 08:14:57 MDT From: Robyn Meta Herrington Subject: SUB:CONTEST: The Rocky Horror Halloween Party Remember -- critiques are welcomed, but send 'em to ME, and not the list! Robyn H. ================================================== The Rocky Horror Halloween Party =========================== My blonde wig hung askew. The hatchet I was carrying had been designated by the police as "evidence". I was out of breath and bewildered. Yet it was after three in the morning and I had not yet been interviewed by the detective. "How you holding out," Jason asked me. He held out a small paper cup of water, the only refreshments the cops would allow. I gulped it down in one swallow and handed it back to Jason. "Please, I need more." Jason smiled and loped off into the crowd. I walked over to a vacant chair and wearily assumed a seat. I surveyed the area in my surround and marveled that just eight hours ago it was a happy place, a party place, a laughing place. "Plan to arrive by 9:00 pm," my friend Shawna told me via telephone and a week before her planned Halloween party. "Please stick with the party theme. Come dressed as someone who is "terrible", either living or dead, but a REAL person." I jotted down all the major details, hung up the phone, and sighed. Last year, Shawna made everyone dress as a cartoon character. This year, it was the "terrible person" theme. If that girl didn't throw the best Halloween party in town, I'd tell her to get off it with these costume themes. My irritation wasn't assuaged any by the fact that I had a perfectly good Roaring Twenties Flapper outfit in my closet that I hadn't been able to use for the past three years due to Shawna and her "themed" Halloween parties. Now I had to figure out a costume of somebody "terrible". When Jason picked me up the night of the party, he laughed at my costume and I almost hit him over the head with my hatchet. Lizzie Borden was a terrible person. She murdered her parents in their sleep with an axe after all. At least everyone thought she did. Jason had a lot of right to laugh at my outfit. He wore a perfectly normal business suit. Over the top of his pin-striped trousers, he sported a frilly pink pair of ladies underwear. He wore an NBC pin on his suit lapel and carried a microphone in his hand. On his head, he had an outrageous wig that caused him to look like a cross between Dave Letterman and Medusa. "Marv Albert", read his name tag. I laughed. Jason was a bit more up to date than me. We could hear the laughter and see the lights just as soon as Jason and I pulled into the tiny cul-de-sac. Shawna's parties were always gregarious and huge affairs. They'd always been huge shindigs, even when we were both best friends in high school. Now the old gang was all in their early twenties, and we still attended Shawna's soirees with the enthusiasm of high school freshmen. "Come on in! Oh, Jason! Aren't you just outrageous. Come here gang, and look at this!" I smiled weakly as a gang of party attendees were summoned from the bowels of Shawna's house to review Jason's funny suit. "Who're you supposed to be?" Shawna finally asked me. I sniffed and asked why she didn't recognize a perfectly good Lizzie Borden. "Who's she?" Shawna asked, and I shrugged at the futilitiy of it all. Sure, Jason and his Marv Albert outfit was more original than my tired one. And judging by the celebrants around me, there were quite a few other interesting costumes that adhered to Shawna's stated theme. Morose as I was, I couldn't stifle a giggle at big Timmy Martin dressed as Bill Clinton. When I asked him what was up, he snorted, "I think he's a terrible person." The big mac he held as prop completed his outfit of jogging outfit, Tshirt centered by a presidential tie tac , and wig of wild and wooly red hair. Bob Willoughby was dressed as a woman, but of what terrible person persuasion, I could not easily ascertain. "I'm my ex-wife," he explained. "She's really a terrible person." One innovative party participant was costumed as Adolph Hitler. I identified Jack the Ripper from across the room, his bloody apron loaded down with surgical instruments. Tommy Chang was a convincing Ivan the Terrible. Then two rather plainly dressed fellows passed me by and I followed them to the patio before asking them just who they were supposed to be. "I'm Ted Bundy," Joey Longwood told me. I snapped my fingers. Bundy was at his finest serial killing moments when most of us were in junior high. We teased Joey unmercifully about his resemblence to Bundy, and now he was paying back our teases with the clever costume of his own body. "I'm my next door neighbor," John Sibinski told me. "There's no more terrible person on this earth." I raised a jaundiced eyebrow at this revelation. It seemed a cheap way to attend the party, uncostumed. "Jesus," I said, and grabbed Jason's arm. "Isn't that Jesus Christ?" Sure enough, a bewigged and sandalled Harvey Schneider walked by, a crown of thorns on his bloody head. "Hey Harvey. What, you think Jesus is one of the bad guys?" Jason called after him. Harvey turned and waved acknowledgement to Jason and myself. "Nothing's sacred with this bunch," I laughed to Jason. The party attendees milled about. Shawna had gone all out, as usual, in her decorating scheme. Mechanical rats rolled around the floor, powered by batteries. Fake bats flew overhead, tethered by thin strings to a revolving fan. Lumenescent blood shone from random splatterings on the walls. I was having a good time, especially after a few of Shawna's famous "blood martinis", really a martini that she somehow managed to transform into the exact color of fresh blood. The costumes were original and interesting. Although I cursed Shawna for forcing us into these themed costumes, I had to admit it bought out the ingenuity in us. Susie Lincoln gave me a perky HI, and I leaned back to study her outfit. She had on a stretch sweater top over a pair of stretch leggings. On her head, she wore a black wig in complete contrast to her blonde hair. "I'm Patsy Ramsey," she told me with a giggle. I had to ask just who this was. "The mother of that little girl murdered in Colorado. I think she's a terrible person. And all I had to do was borrow my mother's wig and clothes for the costume." I also explained my costume as the infamous Lizzie Borden, who had at least been tried for her crime. Patsy Ramsey, as I recalled to Susie, was not even arrested for the murder of her daughter. "I bet more people recognize my character than yours," was Susie's smart reply. Before I could assimilate that my famous murderer costume was less recognizable than the matronly Patsy Ramsey, OJ Simpson passed me by. "Ralph? Ralph Winston?" I asked OJ. Ralph was the only black student in our graduating class. Our town was small, rural and solidly middle-class. We got so used to Ralph we often forgot he was black. I had to stifle a giggle at Ralph, wearing a number 32 jersey, a modified Afro, and carrying a golf club in one hand and a knife in the other. "Okay...okay...time for the costume vote," Shawna shouted to the celebrants, now three deep in blood martinis and ready to rumble. "No one was forced to enter the costume contest," I heard someone telling the detective. "It was all a personal choice." Jason had by now returned with my second cup of water. I rubbed his forehead and fretted about putting ice on the huge bump emerging from it. "Aw, I'll be okay," Jason responded in that engaging way of his. Jason was one of the nicest guys in our graduation class, although I admit prejudice as he is my boyfriend. This is why I still could not understand the crowd's reaction to him. Someone, and in the melee we couldn't figure out who, smacked him hard across the head with OJ's golf club. And I knew that someone wasn't Ralph Winston, because he was already in the local shock trauma unit, my Lizzie Borden hatchet buried deep within his chest. I strained to hear the Detective's questions. I wanted to be prepared. "When did things start getting out of hand?" the Detective asked Janie Barker, who was dressed as Queen Elizabeth II. I mentally reviewed the events of the night to develop my own personal answer to the query. And I couldn't come to a conclusion. The crowd was throwing plums, cherries and grapes at the costume contestants. But this was nothing new with our group. Shawna put out a huge bowl of such soft fruit just for this Rocky Horror show type of response. Last year, Donald Duck got pelted with rotten tomatoes. It was part of it, the fruit throwing. Which ever contestant got pelted with the most fruit was the winner. It was our way of voting. I guess I started to get concerned when my own Jason walked across Shawna's makeshift stage in his silly Marv Albert outfit. I threw about twenty grapes at him myself. I wanted him to win, most because I really loved the guy but also because I thought his costume darn cute and original. Only the fruit kept flying, and after a while, Jason had a struggle to get off of that platform alive. I followed Jason on stage and the fruit languidly whistled by , few and far between. They definitely weren't impressed by my Lizzie Borden outfit. Susie Lincoln came on the stage directly behind me, and the punch bowl that flew through the air almost hit me. Fortunately, I ducked in time, and the bowl hit Susie-come-Patsy Ramsey square in the face. At the same time, Ralph Winston walked on the stage, acting campy and outrageous in his OJ costume. For effect, he carried a sign offering $100,000 to find the "real" killer. This was when someone grabbed the hatchet prop from my hand and hurled it through the air at "OJ". This was also when someone smacked Jason across the head with OJ's golf club. In my haste to protect him, I pulled him down to the floor. This was a wise move because there was no stopping the crowd. Jason and I huddled on the floor, hidden by the many legs and frightened by the screams. Blood streamed down Jason's face, as we both "duck-walked" towards the front door . "There goes Marv Albert. Let's get him!" I heard, just as Jason and I cleared the last pair of legs and made it out the door. We both ran across Shawna's lawn and ducked into a garden shed. The crowd lost interest in Jason, however, when Susie Lincoln ran out the door, screaming that she was blinded by the flying punchbowl. Someone else dragged Ralph Winston's body- my hatchet sticking up horribly from his chest- out onto the lawn. Voices screamed to call the police. Now the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. Shawna still sobbed uncontrollably. Susie Lincoln was driven to the community hospital, than transferred to Grant General Hospital's brain trauma center. The punch bowl caused a severe concussion from which her temporary blindness was a minor problem. Ralph Winston was not expected to survive. The Detective glanced at the sobbing Shawna, shrugged his shoulders, and walked over to me for my interview. "I don't know why anyone would have it in for any of these people," I said, in my well-rehearsed response. "Especially, Jason. Everyone likes Jason. It was the characters, I guess," I calmly told the detective. "Marv Albert, Patsy Ramsey, and OJ Simpson. These were the ones that were attacked and injured. And I have no idea why." ==================================================== -- ---------------------------------*=*=*=*=*=*-------------------------------- Robyn Herrington,Editor rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca InfoServe www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin New Currents in Teaching and Technology Communications Media MacKimmie Library University of Calgary Ph: 220-3716 (temporary) == Inter tormentia latitia == ---------------------------------*=*=*=*=*=*--------------------------------