Fiction Outtake: Needing Candy (The Early Days)

Warning: This outtake contains lots of foul language and men in women’s clothing. Happy Halloween!

“Trevor, you may not go trick-or-treating!”

“Aww, Mom, why not?”

Mitchell dove for the safety of his room. If Ma wasn’t going to let Trevor out of the house in spandex pants and a vest, she sure as shit wasn’t going to let him out. Not with his hair spray-painted orange and while he was wearing one of Amy’s old bras. Aim would kill him when she saw him in her only long skirt, too. Hopefully she’d stay up at school tonight and hit up those stupid frat house parties she’d been raving about. As if he’d go to college, let alone join a fucking fraternity.

Trevor showed up a minute later, looking glum. “Mom threatened to barricade the door.”

“Did you ask if we can hand out the candy?”

Trev shook his head. “She’s on to that trick, dude.”

“So let’s fuck with her and really hand out the candy.”

“What are you going to do about your hair?”

Mitchell shrugged. “We’ve got a gig tonight, right?”

“And no candy to throw during it.” Trevor sat down on the bed and dropped his chin into his hand.

“Eric’ll cover for us.”

Trevor sat up and snapped his head around. He narrowed his eyes at Mitchell, who raised his eyebrows in surprise at the extreme reaction and waited. “What happened to pulling our own weight?” the bass player demanded. He jumped up and started waving his arms around, occasionally pointing at Mitchell. “We’re a band and we rely on each other but that doesn’t mean we slack off. It means we all work our asses off to be the best fucking band we can be. That doesn’t mean you sit on your pampered ass and wait for Eric to show up with the fucking candy. That means you use my escape route out that window of yours and we go fucking trick-or-treat so we have something to give our fans, dumbfuck!”

“Not in a skirt,” Mitchell said calmly, picking at a fold. Really, he thought, these things weren’t so bad, once you got used to them. It was sort of free inside there, not all caught up inside a denim casing like a sausage or something.

Trevor jumped up and down, his eyes screwed shut, his motorcycle boots thunking on the floor. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Fuck off. I’m the one giving a fuck around here.”

“No,” Mitchell said, sitting up and adjusting the bra. They’d stuffed it with socks, of course, although Trevor had sniggered and suggested using underwear. It didn’t matter what was in there; Mitchell now had a much better idea of why they called them knockers. “It’s not about whether or not I give a fuck. It’s about how long we have to wait to pull off my plan.”

“Oh, a plan,” Trevor said with an exaggerated sniff and wag of his head.

Mitchell stared at the ceiling and asked whoever was hanging out up there for some patience. “Yes, a plan, you dumbass,” he said. “It’s simple. We hand out candy. One to the kids, one to us. By the time we need to split, we’re set.”

“And how are you planning on getting that past Mom? You know she won’t go for it.”

“It’s simple. Either we take it, or we eat it. Remember what happened last time you hit a sugar high?”

“Fuckhead.”

Mitchell laughed. He stood up and held his arms out. “So tell me. Do my boots go with the skirt?”

For more Scandalous happenings, check out this week’s Sunday Scribblings.