A Halloween visit to the Magic Costume Tree brings flying bones, unexpected powers, and a very unusual ride home.

The night is Halloween.

The moon is bright and full, and you find yourself walking down a quiet sidewalk, candy bags swinging at your side.

There's still a whole bunch of other kids running from house to house, gathering as much candy as they possibly can. As you walk, you see a kid who, well, doesn't look like he's being very nice, running around with his big scary dog and sort of jumping towards other kids and scaring them.

"Some people," you think. You bend down, realizing that your shoe is untied, and tie it back up quickly.

When you stand up and look around you, you find yourself, well, in a completely different place in the middle of a forest.

You turn around and see it. The Magic Costume Tree. Well, you didn't think you'd see this tonight. A huge ancient tree with glowing lanterns hanging from the branches and a large door on the front.

You quickly run towards the tree, knowing exactly what you'll find inside.

You open up the door, jump inside, and you find yourself inside a tree with row upon row upon row of costumes all the way up the hollow trunk inside.

As usual, one of the costumes is glowing. You walk over to the rack and right between a ghost costume, one you've tried on before, and a vampire costume or something like it, you find a skeleton costume.

A plain black costume with a picture of a skeleton on the front. It honestly doesn't look like much, and you're not sure exactly what kind of powers a costume like this could have, but the Magic Costume Tree has never steered you wrong before.

You take the costume off the rack, unzip the back of it, and step inside. Both legs, both arms. You pull up the zipper and then you pull the mask, which kind of works like a hood, over top of your head. You feel a strange tingling sensation as the costume suddenly tightens around your body and then you transform.

Your arms turn into skeleton arms. I mean, real skeleton arms. You can see your skeleton fingers. You look down to see you no longer have a stomach. Just a spine and a big opening. Skeleton legs, skeleton feet, skeleton toes. Weird.

You take in a deep breath and find that you still somehow feel completely normal, like you can easily breathe. You hear something over to the side and you see a costume falling off the rack.

Instinctively, you shoot your arm out towards it to catch the costume. But to your surprise, your arm flies right off of your body. It zings over towards the costume, catches it in midair, and hangs it back up. Before you can get too worried about your body part suddenly shooting across the room and picking up a costume, it shoots back and attaches to your body again.

That is so weird.

But there's no reason not to try it again. This time you try to do it on purpose. You reach your arm out and just kind of think about sending your hand flying. Sure enough, it does. Your hand detaches from its wrist and starts floating around the room.

You find that you can still control it with your mind. It just feels like it's further away. You can move your fingers and thumbs. It can fly around wherever you want it to. And as soon as you think the thought, your hand snaps back towards you and attaches to your wrist.

That's pretty cool. But maybe you should go outside. You swing the door open, see the opening outside, and think about walking towards it. Only another strange feeling comes over your body. And instead of walking, your body suddenly breaks apart. It floats up in the air, shoots through the door, and reforms itself outside.

The whole thing was pretty disorienting, but it's given you the obvious conclusion that you can somehow break your entire body apart and fly around.

This could be useful. This could be very, very useful. You see your bag of candy, which you must have dropped on the ground outside, and pick it up. You think about your whole trick-or-treating thing. Wait a second. How are you going to get back there? As if in answer to your question, your body separates once more and you find yourself flying up through the air. A strange pile of spinning bones and a floating head. You soar up over the forest until you see the very street you were on last.

You float back down towards it and your body snaps itself back together on the sidewalk. Kind of like a skeleton teleport or something. When you land, there's some other sense you have as well. You can feel other bones. You have a sense that all bones, at least ones that don't belong to other people, are now under your control.

You feel a number of them sitting in garbage cans, chicken bones, ribs, you know, that sort of thing. Nothing too weird. You continue walking down the street. A girl dressed as a witch passes you and gasps. "That costume is amazing," she says. You just wave politely and keep on walking. You walk up to the door of the next house, knock on it, accidentally detaching your hand from your wrist once again.

But luckily snapping it back before the door opens. A man with a big bowl of candy stands behind it. "Whoa, you really went all out this year. I don't even know how you're pulling this thing off," he says. You hold your bag out. "Trick or treat," you say. He drops a handful of candy in without hesitation, though he looks a little pale when your finger bones rattle as you grip the bag.

"Ah, great job on the skeleton makeup," he mutters, and then closes the door rather quickly. You laugh, kind of do your whole floating thing and reform yourself at the sidewalk.

You move from house to house, collecting candy as usual, only faster because you can literally fly and just kind of reform yourself in front of the next house. Luckily, it's dark enough that not too many people notice.

You spin through the night sky, a swirl of bones, landing softly on porches, calling "Trick or treat," and then swooping off. After a few minutes, you're pretty sure you've doubled your candy stash.

You notice a little boy up ahead. He's dressed like a superhero, but his candy bag has torn open. Candy is scattered all over the street.

He's trying to pick it up, but cars start to roll by. Without thinking, you sort of pop off your right hand and send it flying. The hand zips through the air like a tiny drone, scooping candy off of the pavement with quick bony fingers and gathers it all up. It picks up the bag and floats it over to the boy. The boy looks up and freezes.

Your floating skeleton hand waves politely and the boy screams so loud that he drops the bag again and runs off into the night. "Well, that could have gone better," you say. You shrug and drop the extra candy into your own bag. Finders keepers, I guess. You continue down the road and notice that your bones kind of glow softly in the moonlight. The air feels colder now, though. Maybe it's because you don't have any skin.

Either way, you have more candy than ever, and you're feeling kind of unstoppable.

That's when you hear it. A bark. Loud, sharp, and angry. You turn around. At the end of the street stands a big dog with its teeth bared and growling. Beside him is the same tall bully of a boy with a monster mask you saw before the whole Magic Costume Tree appearing thing happened.

The dog growls. The bully grins under his mask. "Nice costume, loser. Hand over the candy."

"How about no?" you say. You suddenly break apart your entire body, fly through the air, and reform right beside the bully between him and the boy he's trying to steal the candy from.

"Hey, that's not very nice of you," you say.

"This is none of your business," the boy says. "Plus, my dog could use a meal. Scram or I'll have him attack."

"Oh, you'll have him attack, will you? Well, that could be interesting." And then an idea pops into your head.

The sense you had for bones kicks in once again. You focus on a very, very tasty-looking steak bone, one a dog would love that you can sense in a nearby trash can. You summon the steak bone forward. It flies through the air and floats in front of you. You dangle the bone in front of the dog.

"Does the doggy want a bone?" you say, bobbing it up and down. The dog starts to drool and pulls on the leash harder and harder. You send the bone flying off into the distance. The dog breaks away from his owner and chases it down the street.

"You're going to pay for that," he says.

"What do you mean by that exactly?" you ask.

"I'll show you what I mean." The boy lunges towards you. Luckily, your body just kind of breaks apart and reforms behind him.

"Hey, how do you do that?" the bully says, turning around. He swings his hand through the air, but once again, you simply break your body apart and reform behind him.

Attack after attack after attack, and every single one fails to land. On the last one, when you appear behind the boy, you notice his underpants sticking out just a little bit.

You know, it's not very adult-like of you, but you grab a hold of them and yank upwards, giving the bully a wedgie, a taste of his own medicine, perhaps.

"Hey!" the bully yells and turns around behind him to see only your two hands left behind. The bully looks in front of him at you. You've reformed standing directly in front of him, only without your hands as they're currently giving the bully a wedgie still. He looks back and forth and then just decides to run away to who knows where.

"Thanks," the little boy who's dressed as a superhero says. "That guy wasn't very nice."

"You're welcome," you say, helping the poor kid up off of the ground once again using your floating skeleton hands.

"Are you a real skeleton?" the boy asks.

"Only for tonight," you respond. "But don't worry, I'm nice."

"Do you want to go trick-or-treating with me?" the boy asks.

"Sure," you say, and the two of you continue to walk from house to house, gathering as much candy as you possibly can.

It's all pretty uneventful until you see the bully once again. Only this time, he isn't alone.

He's surrounded by an older brother who looks just as bullyish and a father who looks even more bullyish and a mother who looks the most bullyish of all. The bully, his older brother, and their father are each holding a baseball bat, while the mother has brought out a gigantic wooden rolling pin or something like it. "So, are you the kid who scared my son?" the father asks.

"I'm the one who stopped your son from bullying this kid and stealing all his candy," you answer. The man looks over at his son, who just sort of turns away.

"Either way, you shouldn't have given him a wedgie. That's not very nice."

"Yeah, honestly, you're right. I probably shouldn't have done that, but he was being way meaner than I was."

"If you want to see mean, I'll show you mean," the father says. You quickly start to think. After all, you are only one skeleton, and these people look really serious.

Your senses move outwards towards all of the garbage cans in the area, all of the discarded bones, and an idea appears to you. First, you summon some of the bones which shoot out of the garbage cans and snap themselves into a large bone shield.

Then into your other hand is a large bone sword made of an amalgamation of different bones.

Then seeing what you were able to create, another idea pops into your head. You continue to summon as many bones as you can find. Chicken bones, steak bones, rib bones, and any other bones that happen to be in people's garbage for some reason.

The bones fly from all over the neighborhood. They swirl around like a tornado and you slowly form them together using your mind into a gigantic skeleton chicken.

The chicken looks down at the family of bullies and says, "Bawk."

The bullies look at you and they look up at the giant chicken made out of bones. Then they all scream and run away in the other direction. "Well, I guess that problem's solved."

"Yeah. That was really weird. Hey, I think I probably better go home now."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you want a ride?" you ask, looking at the giant chicken.

"Sure," the boy says.

You send your arms flying to pick up the boy underneath his armpits and float him up onto the back of the gigantic chicken. You then send the rest of your body and reform atop the thing as well. You give the gigantic chicken a little nudge with both of your heels as one would a horse, and the chicken begins running down the street, flapping its garbage bone wings and making strange rattling noises as he goes. People everywhere look at you. And you can't imagine what the news is going to say about this tomorrow, either. "That's my house up there," the boy says. You pull back on the bone chicken and it comes to a halt.

"Thanks for the ride," the kid says as he slides down off of the creature. "It was really, well, memorable." You wave goodbye as the boy runs towards his own house. His mother comes out to greet him. And when she sees the chicken, she steps between it and the boy and shoves him inside.

"Hi there," you say, waving quickly.

In answer to that, the woman runs inside, slams the door, and turns off all the lights.

Maybe it's not such a good idea to run around town with a giant chicken made of garbage bones, you realize. So with a swipe of your fingers, the bones all break apart, fly through the air, and make their way back to their own garbage cans.

You look down at your bag, completely full of candy, and you decide that maybe it's time to go home as well.

You start to feel a bit of a tug, as if something invisible is pulling you. You know exactly what that means. The Magic Costume Tree is calling the costume back.

You give in to the pulling sensation.

Your bones break apart and you fly through the air once again. Floating high above the neighborhoods, high above the houses and over top of the forest.

You land in front of the Magic Costume Tree and walk inside.

You reach back to unzip the zipper. And as soon as you attempt that, the costume kind of reappears around your body.

You unzip it, take the costume off, hang it up, and put it back on the rack carefully.

You look down at your hands and you're happy to see that you have normal human hands, non-skeleton ones once again. The costume was a fun time, but you're not really sure it's your kind of thing. You walk out the door to the Magic Costume Tree and down the path across from it.

As soon as you walk out of the little pathway, you find yourself standing beside your house. You look back and the pathway to the forest has once again disappeared.

You head inside your home and drop the candy on top of your kitchen table. Your parents always insist on inspecting it after Halloween. Of course, you're pretty sure they do it to take the best candy for themselves, but they always tell you it's for safety.

Eh, oh well, you have enough candy anyways. You're happy to share it.

You head straight for your bedroom, turn off the lights, and jump into your bed.

You pull the covers up to your chin, close your eyes, and allow your head to crash on the pillow.

You begin taking slow, deep breaths. And with each one, you sink down a little bit deeper into the bed.

And your mind begins to wander off to thoughts of new dreams and new adventures to come.

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