Halloween Dare

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the words: trespassing, barrel, gate

Halloween Dare

The taste wasn’t what Kyle had expected, not that he spent much time thinking about such things. Vinegary? No, that wasn’t it. Salty with a woody sort of background flavor was closer.

His eyes drifted off to his right where an old gate banged back and forth in the windy autumn twilight. A gust of wind disturbed a pile of multicolored leaves off to his left; his eyes quickly and involuntarily swung over in that direction.

Of course his nose continued to point East by North East.

He loved this time of year, usually. He especially loved Halloween, usually.

At a younger age, there was trick-or-treating and costumes. As he grew older, he left the candy behind, albeit reluctantly. Now days, it was pranks and dares. Last year, they had covered the principal’s house with toilet paper. The year before that, they had sneaked into the cemetery after dark to touch the haunted tombstone of the late Shelby Dickerson.

This year, the dare had been to paint the front door of Old Man Perkins’ house a bright red. That would have been a hoot.

He had almost made it. Although he still had the brush in his hand, Kyle wisely resisted an urge to lift his arm up and paint the leg in front of him. He thought it would be bad form to paint the leg attached to the body that was holding a shotgun, the barrel of which, was currently resting in Kyle’s mouth.

“Blah, blah, trespassing, blah, blah…”

Nothing.

The silence was abrupt, like a slap in the face.

It seemed that after fifteen minutes of lecturing, Old Man Perkins had run out of steam.

“Now git!”

As Kyle sprinted through the gate, he was surprised that his only thought was, Oak. It tasted oakish.