He lingered near the entrance to the ballroom, watching the guests in their Halloween costumes come and go. A man in a tuxedo ported a large, silver tray arrayed with tantalizing beverages. Behind him was a robot in a horse mask, its gimbaled arm bearing a platter of cookies and dainty squares of cake.

The annual Lake County Halloween Gala provided an open bar, but Alan wasn’t drinking. Instead, he decided to judge the costumes. With two days to go until the election, the most popular getups were political. In a subtle simile, a man in drag with bulging biceps entered the hall disguised as Jane Allgood, à la vampire. His skinny date portrayed President Knutson as a mummy. Moments later, the Constitution, in fabric flames, skipped past, nibbling on an hors d’oeuvre. A raucous group of young men wearing AR glasses, white, billowy shirts, and short black skirts over fishnet stockings giggled their way onto the dance floor.

Perhaps just one drink to calm the nerves?

Alan had come as himself, a role he found increasingly challenging to maintain as the party progressed.

“What the hell is this?” he asked when a pretty server extended her tray.

“Pumpkin spice champagne, sir,” the girl replied.

“Jesus, that is tragic.” He snagged a glass and pressed the rim under his nose. It smelled like a seasonal latte.

“The Mission Valley Winery donated two hundred bottles for charity. You can buy them in the coat room if you want to take one home.”

“Why would I do that?”

“It’s for the People of the Earth. They’re setting up a tent city in Pablo for the winter.” She turned to a group of girls staring upward at some digital image in their glasses, their fairy wings and wispy dresses drooping to the floor.

Just a sip.

The bubbly washed over his tongue in a tsunami of infused vanilla and cloves. It finished with an aftertaste of cinnamon.

“Christ,” he muttered to no one, drained the glass, then strolled to the server and plucked another.

“Not bad, huh?” she said.

He mentally edited the self-imposed rule of not-gonna-drink to not-gonna-drink-much. With this bit of liquid courage warming his stomach, he decided to test his toes and, as a last favor to Murphy, do a lap around the perimeter of the party before calling it a night.

The centerpiece of the ballroom was a large round table bearing a gigantic cornucopia that spilled its bountiful assortment of crackers with ham and cheese, olive skewers, miniature vegan dogs, pumpkin pie topped with chocolate mousse, little bottles of flavored vodka, and a phalanx of the glittering champagne.

He executed a casual walk-by of the table while bobbing his head to the haunted hits soundtrack blaring over the speaker system. No one paid him any mind except for his own broken willpower, shaking its head like a disappointed parent.

He stole one of the vodka bottles, slipped it neatly into the internal pocket of his blazer, and then rewarded himself with a fresh glass of champagne.

Near the far wall by the door, he took a holding position where he could observe the crowd and run an inspection of the decor. At first glance, the walls of the ballroom seemed made up to be either a dungeon or a castle, but on closer review he saw how in a few weeks the same façade could be altered into Santa’s workshop.

“Doc!” Mickey, dressed as Count Dracula, and the beautiful waitress from the diner waltzed through the mix. “It’s a beautiful night, is it not?” said the lawyer in a bad Transylvanian accent. He was shorter than the waitress by a good six inches, his arm around her hip, his hand encroaching on its target.

“Happy Halloween, Dr. Smith,” said Foxy. She was a fairytale princess with two garish puncture wounds on her neck and fake blood stains on her dress. Her breasts looked like they might pop from her bodice at any moment.

“Eyes forward, Doc! This one has been bitten.”

Mickey brazenly kissed the swell of her chest at the very moment a boy dressed like Zorro pushed by, brandishing a plastic sword. The youth’s eyes zeroed in on the womanly mounds as “Monster Mash” started to play, and Mickey raised his arms up and down to its rhythm.

“Shall we donce, my dear?”

Foxy let the bald, chubby lawyer sweep her in a circle.

“See ya around, Alan. Go easy on that stuff. It’ll lay you out.” The couple swirled away into the crowd.

Mist from a fog machine concealed beneath one of the tables gave the illusion that everyone was floating. His stomach churned a bitter, lonely rumble, and the happy music grated on him. He had considered asking his landlady to attend—a homely and grumpy gal, fonder of her cat than any human—but, God bless her, that would have made him feel… old.

He scanned the crowd for one of his colleagues and spotted Jan Oliver (family therapy) with her partner, Rose. Jan, who made it a practice not to speak to Alan, had come as a mutilated vagina, and Rose was a badly circumcised penis. Through the crowd at the opposite end of the ballroom, Stephen Shunter (personality disorders) floated around with an obscenely young and gorgeous woman on his arm.

And then there was Rebecca Madison (victim therapy). Becky, like himself, was always alone. She briefly emerged from a group of laughers and toasters before vanishing back in. She was the one person he did not want to bump into on this night, or any other night, for that matter.

He backed up against the wall and turned his face away from the crowd.

“Alan, you came!”

He jumped, spilling wine on his hand.

Paul Murphy, beard dyed green, was a praying mantis. He wore a green tuxedo with long coattails that had been rigged to stick out behind him like wings. He’d wrapped ski poles in felt for his legs, and his thorax was a tall, green top hat atop which should have been the mantis’s head.

Murphy pointed to the empty spot. “My wife took my head. Get it?” He laughed heartily, coughing up a lung in the process. “It’s great to see you. Enjoying the party?”

“Yeah, you know me, social butterfly,” said Alan.

“More like a moth.” Murphy laughed. “Try to have a good time. Lots of sponsors here tonight. Maybe you can let them see you talking to some of the other shrinks. No one knows you retired.”

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“Is that what you’re going to call it?”

Murphy looked at the glass in Alan’s hand.

“Don’t worry. I’ve already set my limit.”

“That’s what concerns me.” Murphy slapped him on the back, sending another splash of champagne overboard, this one wetting his shirt cuff.

“If you’re telling me not to get drunk, that’s why I bought a self-driver. Autopilot is set for home.”

Murphy sighed. “The future is now. I’m afraid mankind is going to forget what it’s like to almost freeze—” He stopped short. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

Alan gulped the remainder of the champagne, then replaced his empty glass with a full one from the top of a passing robot server, and in a final, deft move, he snagged one for Murphy.

“It’s alright, Paul. I’m not the thought police.” He handed his old mentor the glass. “Happy Halloween, Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. I won’t be doing this again anytime soon.”

“Cheers. Linda and I worry about you a lot these days. Take some time. Go see your sister. How long has it been?”

“A decade... and some change.”

“Christ. You know how to do them.”

“I’ll save them the wreckage of my life.”

Murphy put a heavy hand on his. The ski pole looked like a bone.

“How is Linda?” Alan asked.

“She’s good. Just finished a new book, a murder mystery. She’s around here somewhere. Look for a wicked Mantodea bitch carrying my head.”

“I’m sure you deserved it.”

“Talk to someone. It’s what we do,” implored Murphy.

“Are you serious?” He stared at the old psychiatrist with his beard and face painted green. “You think I need to take the couch?”

“I think it would help. Shame can be crippling.”

“In vino veritas.” He held up his drink to toast the changing of the subject.

“What about the boy?” said Murphy.

“Last chance, Paul. It shouldn’t be me,” Alan said. He sipped his champagne, forcing himself not to turn the flute upside down and open his throat.

“It’s either you or Becky, and we know where she stands on the male issue.”

“On their cocks—in stilettos.”

“What I’ve always respected about you, Alan, is that you never caved to the rat-maze psychologists. You never bent your knee to the hysteria.”

Murphy was a mystic, more an artist than a scientist, a rare adherent to a school that traced an ethereal thread of Depth Psychology back to the mythical stones of Delphi, to a place where dreams mattered. The man had groomed a handful of disciples in his long career, but they had all either been obliterated by the politically correct mental health industry or surrendered their tomes of Freud and Jung to the pockets of big pharma and AI analysis. Alan had been the last holdout, but he had gambled it all on the spin—and he’d lost.

“Someone hurt him bad, Paul. He got into the gears, and now it’s grinding, just like it was designed to.”

“Analysis?”

“I need more time with him. Maybe he has a delusion of fantastical thinking. He says he was helping the girl, guiding her, or something.” He took another sip.

“Guiding her, huh? We all create our own fictions, and either cast ourselves as the hero or the victim.”

“Those scars. I can’t get them out of my head. If I ever find the sadistic fuck who did that…”

“Don’t take the sexual angle.” The old man shook his green head. “You know what they’ll do with that.”

The music in the background transitioned from classical to an old Halloween creep.

“Okay, I need to mingle,” said Murphy. “I’m here if you want to talk… about the boy, about anything.”

The old shrink gave his arm a warm squeeze and lifted his glass for a toast. As he was leaving, he paused. “You know, there’s another possibility. Maybe Francis is telling the truth.” Then he turned, shaking hands and giving thanks as he went. From behind, he truly did resemble a massive, headless praying mantis.

Adjacent to the ballroom, near the doors that led out to the valet, the resort’s art gallery had been transformed into a coat room for the evening.

Champagne in hand, under the pretense of inspecting the art, he tried to disappear into the forest of jackets while the doorman with a serious jawline kept a wary eye on him.

The exhibit showcased a selection of early Western painters. Horses, bison heads, studies of First Peoples, and cowboys with guns lined the walls. In the center of the room, a wide column displayed miniature works of a minor artist mounted under track lights. On the far side of this column, he could drink and be alone.

Stay here and wait it out, don’t make a scene, and exit with grace—a simple plan for a simple man.

To steady himself, he examined a watercolor painting no larger than a postcard. The painting depicted a starving pony on a snowy field in the frozen dead of a winter storm, its hip bones and rib cage visible beneath its hide, while hungry wolves circled in the background, waiting for the animal to succumb so they could feed.

“It’s a bleak portrayal.”

He startled, and a splash of wine landed on his shoe.

“I’m sorry, Alan. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” he said. He did not turn to look at her.

“Do you know the artist?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Karl Rutherford, cowboy artist. Not a native cowboy, but he moved out West and pretended to be. He soon earned the reputation of being a layabout. He always seemed to disappear with his drawings when there was real work to be done.”

“Maybe he was just following his true calling.”

“Oh, for sure. As soon as he made a name for himself, he hung up his boots and took to the salons of Livingston. I’m not a fan of his style. It’s too appropriative. But this piece I really like. Do you know why?”

“Because it’s cold and dead with a creature suffering in it?” He sipped his drink.

Becky Madison chuckled. “Not exactly. You know, Alan, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re avoiding me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t make the effort.”

He wanted to look at her, but his neck felt stiff, and he feared turning would damage something internal. Instead, he studied the painting—the circling wolves, the hunger in their jaws, the focus in their eyes. In the background shadow of snow and night, he thought he could detect another, more sinister creature.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. But we have a lot in common, more than most coworkers.”

“That was a long time ago. Things change.”

“Goddamnit. I miss her, too. She was…”

There was a quiver in her voice, like a string about to snap.

“I don’t talk about it,” he said.

“Right.” She crossed her arms and regarded the painting, or him—he couldn’t tell.

“I hear you have a new patient. A real live one this time.”

“You think you’re better for the job?”

“No, I don’t counsel sexual predators. I help their victims.”

“What makes you think he’s a predator?”

“What makes you think he’s not?”

“Fuck you, Becky!”

He did not anticipate that he would say that, nor that it would roll off his tongue so loudly, so easily. The doorman stepped into the room to inspect. He gave Alan a distrustful look and went back to his work.

“Here’s the thing, Alan,” she said with venom, “I don’t think you should be working with people, let alone children. The Escape fucked you up, but you’re hiding it, and when you break, explode, or whatever’s going to happen, I don’t think other people should have to suffer for your mistakes.”

He looked at her for the first. She was tall and lean with fine, beautiful features. Her blonde hair was cut short and tucked behind her ears. She wore a black dress and a pair of wire-frame glasses that lent her an air of sophistication.

“I protested with Paul,” she said. “He doesn’t seem to care. I also filed a complaint in Helena, but no doubt it’s all going to be over before the bureaucracy gets around to it.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to quit. I want you to find a different career. I want you to suffer every fucking day.”

“I am suffering.”

“I want to know you’re suffering.”

He flicked his wrist. It happened so fast. Pumpkin spice champagne spotted her glasses and ran down her chin. Becky, empress of her emotions, clenched her jaw.

“Okay, buddy.” The coat man marched in, walky-talky in hand. “I think you’ve had enough. Miss, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She stood for a few more seconds, eyes latched onto Alan, then walked out of the room.

“Sir, why don’t you call it a night? That pumpkin spice is a bit strong.”

“Yeah. Call it a night,” he mumbled.

He looked around. A little boy was pulling on mittens. His mother stooped to help him, placing herself between the unstable man and her son. An Elvira, unaware or modest enough to ignore his disgrace, worked her red lipstick in a compact mirror.

He would leave, and this would be his last engagement in polite society. But first, he gave himself the mission of making it to the cornucopia and retrieving a supply of miniature vodka bottles for the ride home through the dark corridor of Pablo, where the Gretas huddled in ditches, and the People of the Earth peered out the windows of their broken-down RVs.