I missed being back home. New York City was so strange and foreign to me. This was my first Halloween since I had moved. I hadn’t had much luck making friends yet so I was surprised I found a party to go to. Everyone seemed to know each other here though. For a city of so many people, I felt completely alone.

I walked over to the punch bowl and raised my mask as I took a drink. A large brown horse wearing some sort of ill fitting green getup walked over. He lifted a hoof and stared at me. After what seemed like an eternity, I figured he was trying to introduce himself so I grabbed his hoof and shook.

“Shake Hands…yup…” he said.

“So uh, what are you supposed to be?” I asked.

He looked at me impatiently and muttered “frog”.

Finally, some common ground. “Ah yeah! My girlfriend… well, ex girlfriend, was a frog last year. What did you dress up as last year?”

“I was a 475 pound cab driver,” he replied.

There was an awkward silence before he reached over and stroked my Superman costume. He looked at me longingly and said “It s pretty impressive material dude… Unfortunately I am married but if I”

He was interrupted by a man dressed as what I can only describe as a sexy cop. He kissed the horse on the nuzzle and started rolling a white cylinder over the horse’s costume.

The horse laughed nervously. “There is nothing more embarrassing than having your husband go at you with the lint brush”

His husband noticed the punch staining the fur around the horse’s mouth. “Honey, go and wash up. You’ve got punch all over you.”

“I ll wash my face when I damn” He stopped mid sentence and started doing breathing exercises to calm down. 

The husband handed me a drink. “Go ahead.” He said, with a smile. I sat down on a chair as the horse and his husband looked on.

“Sit back. Sip on your favorite beverage. Relax and imagine how good” were the last words I heard before waking up 12 hours later in a Queens apartment bathtub, missing a kidney.