The more he squirmed and tried to free himself, the more Dan's tiny body sank into the sludge of chocolate. He had now sank to his hips in the mess. Dan had never before had reason to appreciate Pat’s size. His spouse had been slighter and shorter ever since their first meeting 11 years ago. Now Pat looked enormous, albeit somewhat silly, wearing a cheap pair of devil horns and a red tail that ended in a triangular tip.
“Pat! Help me!” Dan shouted from the depths of a bowl that looked as enormous as a sports arena. “It was that damn Billy Blaylocke! He… he shrunk me! Help!”
Pat never for a moment suspected the proximity of a shrunken husband. It also didn’t help that their youngest adopted son chose that moment to appear on the scene.
“I want to hand out treats,” Adam said. “Can I?”
“Wouldn’t you rather collect treats around the neighborhood?” Pat asked.
“No, I want to give out the treats,” Adam said. With a laugh, he added, “Cause I won’t give out any to the kids who are mean to me!”
Dan listened to Pat’s thunderous laughter. “That’s not very nice, Adam,” Pat said.
“Well, they’re not nice to me,” Adam said.
“Halloween’s not a time to settle scores, young man!”
Dan agreed. He wondered what their older son, Greg, had done to piss off Billy. He remembered the giant’s words. Billy had come to the house hoping to use his strange-looking device to shrink Greg, but Dan had gotten in the way.
“Please,” Adam’s wheedling slammed into Dan’s panicked thoughts. “Can I?”
“I promise that you can hand out some of the treats,” Pat said, “but you can’t withhold one just because you don’t like someone.”
“Okay,” Adam agreed grumpily.
"No!" Dan screamed with renewed effort to pull himself from the entrapping melted chocolate. He only ended up sinking to his chest in the enormous block.
Although in great shape for a man of 37, Dan had exhausted himself in trying to free himself from the concrete-like sludge of chocolate. Pat had never made fudge, and the debut of Pat’s version of the confection left a little to be desire in consistency. The softening bars had been the perfect trap for the tiny man once he had found himself shrunken and dropped into the colosseum-sized bowl. Only his head, now the size of those plastic balls atop push pins, and his shoulders showed outside the gooey mess.
And Adam had just made another of Dan's fears very tangible. What if he ended up inside some youngster's bag of Halloween treats?