It’s another Tuesday, which means another edition of Tuesday Tales! This week’s flash story is centered around the picture below:

We’ve gone a little silly this week, so please bear with me.

Winston Julius Damascus, III and his wife Isobel stood on their porch and looked out at the gaudy, garish Halloween decorations adorning their neighbors’ houses. They both hated this time of year for this very reason…the decorations. When Winston chose this neighborhood so many years ago, he’d done so with the hope that it would be a normal, civilized place to live.

“Darling,” Isobel said with a sigh and curled into her husband’s side, “why is it that these dreadful people cannot show respect for the dead?”

“Because, mon Coeur” Winston replied, “they have never been dead before.”

The house across the street particularly annoyed him with its giant spiderwebs and pitifully comical mannequins. The worst part, however, was the cleverly hidden, motion-activated Dracula statue. The ridiculous Bela Lugosi imitation voice made his skin crawl every time the absurd thing spoke. From out of nowhere a child ran down the street past the house, and the ghastly thing went off. Winston huffed.

“I know, love. It is absolutely atrocious,” Isobel continued with a delicate shudder.

Winston laughed. “Don’t be too hard on the humans, my dear.”

“Why not?” she asked with the sweetest pout. Winston laid his arm across his wife’s shoulders and kissed her forehead tenderly. “You would think by the way they act that they have never seen a vampire before.”

“Sweetness,” Winston replied, picking up his glass from the porch rail and draining the thick, metallic-tasting fluid in one smooth sip. When he smiled, the blood dripping from the tips of his bright white fangs glinted in the sallow orange light issuing from across the street. “Most of the poor fools do not realize that they have.”

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Be sure to check out all the other great stories at the Tuesday Tales blog!