Do you really want to know what went on behind “The Gates of Hell?”
I sent the request through his publicist and spokesperson like I did every year figuring that the worst that could happen was that he would once again say “No!” Much to my surprise, however, this year when the publicist called back, rather than a polite refusal, he instead said, “Mr. Summerfield has agreed to see you.”
I had first asked Marvin Summerfield to meet with me six years ago for what I hoped would be a thirty-fifth anniversary article about the events which caused him to become a recluse. He said, “No.” I asked again the next year, and the next, and the next... and he said “No” each time. It is now 41 years since that infamous Halloween party which forced him into seclusion. For some reason, this year, he said, “Yes.”
I got it! I couldn’t believe my luck. This was going to be the interview that would make my career and establish me as a serious journalist. Marvin H. Summerfield hadn’t spoken to the press in over forty years, and I was going to get a private interview with him!
Before disappearing from the public eye, M. H. Summerfield had been the editor, publisher, and owner of The Modern Hedonist magazine. While Hefner had pushed the boundaries of social acceptability with Playboy’s artistic sexuality, and Guccione had pushed the boundaries of taste with Penthouse’s outright sex, Summerfield had gone beyond either of them and pushed the societal limits of acceptability, taste, and legality with graphic depictions of bondage, discipline, and all-out sado-masochism.
The cries to shut him down came not only from the expected sources– the offended Bible-thumpers and nervous law enforcement officials– but also from some of the more liberal voices of society who felt that Summerfield’s excesses would create a severe back-lash of public opinion that would undo everything that had been gained in the previous decade.
And Summerfield’s excesses were not limited to the pages of his magazine. Rumors of what went on at his mansion, which was also his center of operations, swirled through the tabloids. The New York Times, in a scathing editorial about the parties and events held there, called the mansion a “Dungeon of Hedonism.”
It was intended as a rebuke, but Marvin had so liked that description that he replaced the large M. H. S. which was worked into the filigreed iron arch above the mansion’s ornate gates with those exact words.
In smaller letters beneath “Dungeon of Hedonism,” he also added, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", which is what Dante said was the inscription over the gates of Hell. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
It was behind those wrought iron gates that Marvin Summerfield held his final party on Halloween night, forty-one years ago. No one is quite sure what happened on that night. There were only twelve people present and none of them has ever spoken with the press. There were rumors. And there was speculation. But there were no facts. Now all that was going to change. I was going to talk to the man himself, and I was going to be the first person ever to be able to tell the world what really happened.
Some facts were already known. Initial reports had indicated that during the early afternoon on Halloween day, Mr. Summerfield had released all of the servants and grounds keepers for the evening. He instructed them and their families not to return to their residences on the grounds until morning, but to stay in the hotel rooms which he had especially booked for them in one of the downtown luxury hotels.
They, of course, did as instructed and stayed away until the next morning. When they arrived back at the mansion, there were still five cars parked in the circular driveway. From the bright windows shining behind the shrubbery, they could see that the lights were still on in the basement “play area.”
Upon entering the house, they discovered Jane Woodman lying on the floor near the door. She was dressed in thigh-high boots, long, black leather gloves, a black leather bustier, and a black cowl mask. She was obviously dead.
The servants went no further into the house, but instead went to their own quarters and called the police. The police carefully entered and searched the mansion but found no one else until they reached the basement play room. Harold Overton was also dead. Marie Donald, Frank Wilson, and Sharon Wood, close associates of Marvin Summerfield who shared his twisted interests, were on the floor in the center of the room... alive, but catatonic and totally insane. Marvin was sitting in a leather overstuffed chair staring at the back wall of the dungeon. Shackled to that wall, three facing it, three facing out into the room, were six young Hispanic women.
All of the girls were naked. They had been severely beaten and apparently sexually abused in horrific ways. All six of them were crying and babbling in a mixture of an odd Spanish and strange Indio-Mexican that none of the officers could understand.
When the officers cut them loose and began to cover them with blankets, however, the women seemed to understand that they were being rescued. Since the concern was for their health and well-being, they were immediately taken to the hospital... along with Marie, Frank, Sharon, and, of course, Marvin Summerfield himself.
By the time the police were able to find an interpreter who could comprehend the dialect the girls were speaking, lawyers for The Modern Hedonist had stepped in and no one was saying anything to anyone about what had happened. There was a great deal of speculation in the news media about what might have happened at the Halloween party, but the true nature of the events of that night could never be proven.
The next morning, the girls were returned to their villages somewhere in the depths of rural southern Mexico. Requests to the Mexican authorities to locate the women were met with polite refusals. Finally one Mexican official explained that in those remote areas, even the drug lords have a very tenuous hold over local tribes and villages. No government official would risk going back into those mountains for something as trivial as a request for information from Estados Unidos.
The official coroner’s report said that both deaths were due to heart failure, but could not explain why the hearts of two apparently very healthy, middle-aged people had suddenly stopped. There were no drugs other than alcohol in either person’s system, so the cause of death remained unexplained. Nor was there any explanation as to why the other three were completely deranged. The final result was an “open verdict,” meaning that something was suspicious in the deaths, but there was no way to establish cause of death or definitively decide for or against foul play.
The magazine published one final issue– it was already at the printers a the time of the party– and then the great Marvin Summerfield empire faded back into the muck and mire from which it had arisen. Shortly thereafter, all Modern Hedonist clubs were also closed, and Marvin himself retired completely from public life, refusing all requests for interviews or public appearances... that is, until tonight.
Tonight, I was going to interview the great Marvin H. Summerfield and tell the world the true story of the Halloween party that was held behind the gates of Hell.
***
I arrived at the mansion at 9:00 pm on Halloween. He had been specific. It had to be 9:00 pm on this night or not at all. I knew from an invitation which had been found at the scene that 9:00 pm was the time the party was supposed to start that night.
When I arrived, I was ushered into a rather dimly-lit study by a silent, morose man who merely nodded at me when I said who I was. He directed me to an overstuffed chair that was drawn up to a small coffee table. Across from me was a divan, and on the divan sat the frail husk of what had once been one of the most feared– and loathed– men in publishing.
Marvin looked around the room as if to make sure that we were alone. Then he whispered quietly, “Shut the door.”
When I had done so and returned to my chair he said in a slightly louder, but still very subdued voice, “Put your recorder on the desk and take out the battery. Same with your cellphone.”
I was more than a little confused, but I complied. Then he said, “I am going to tell you the truth, but you can never publish it... not while I’m alive. One, no one will believe you. And two...” He paused to laugh. It was the kind of laugh that causes your blood to run cold; the kind of laugh that you normally do not hear anywhere but behind the locked doors of a psychiatric ward. Then he looked directly at me and continued, “... and two, you don’t want a visit from Saint Michael.”
He grinned at me. It was not a normal grin. It was as if he were holding tenuously onto the very edge of sanity. “I’ve never told anyone this story,” he said. “You can tell it after I’m dead. Maybe it will be a warning to others.”
He settled back slightly into his chair and began, “It was supposed to be a snuff party.”
His eyes widened at my reaction to what he had said. “You look surprised and shocked,” he said. “But where do you go when you have already gone beyond everything? It was time for us to experience the ultimate depravity, fatal Sado-masochism.”
He exhaled in a short burst through his nose that was almost a snort. “Or, at least, that is what was eventually supposed to happen that night. I had procured six virgins from deep in the rural areas of southern Mexico. It was easy to entice them to come north. They were offered jobs as maids and promised that they would receive citizenship within a year.”
He laughed and then smiled at me. “People can be so trusting and naive when they don’t really know what is going to happen to them... can’t they?”
The fear that comment caused to rise within me was not assuaged as he grinned crazily at me as if expecting an answer. I had no idea what he had meant or what he possibly expected as an answer, so I remained silent.
“Their first realizations that things were not what they expected were when Frank, Harold, and I overpowered them and shackled them to the wall of the dungeon. There were six of them and six of us, but it wasn’t going to be a one-on-one evening. Where is the terror and helplessness of that? No, acting all together we tormented each of them in turn.”
He made snipping motions with his hands as if cutting something with a pair of scissors. “Even the simple act of cutting off someone’s clothing can be so exhilarating if done slowly and by overwhelming force.”
That smile again. “Oh, I don’t mean that we weren’t very gentle about it. This was early in the evening. Nothing touched their skin except the cold feel of the little scissors we each held. We were the overwhelming force. The scissors were gentle little mice, slowly gnawing away at their modesty.
“The girls were all blindfolded at this point, so the others did not know what was happening until it began to happen to them. Imagine, standing shackled hand and foot to a wall hearing your childhood friends scream and cry out and beg for mercy.”
He stared at me for a moment. His eyes were wild. “Heh... heh... heh...” That insane laugh began to bubble from within him and he fought to hold it back. Finally regaining control, he set his hands on his lap like a prim old lady at tea and continued. “These girls were absolute virgins... virgin to nakedness... virgin to humiliation... virgin to pain... virgin front, back, and mouth... and, of course, virgin to death. Our plan was to take each of their virginities from them one at a time.”
He gave a deep sigh. “I don’t know if we actually would have been able to take that last virginity from them. I often wonder if we would have truly done it even if he had not stopped us.” Again he gave me that crazy smile. His mouth was held tightly shut, but the edges of his mouth seemed to curve up almost to his ears, distorting his face into a clownish grimace. Each time I witnessed that smile, the image burned deeper into my memory.
“But I am getting ahead of myself,” he said calmly. “We were still at that first virginity... nakedness. We took our time, slowly cutting their clothing from their bodies. For someone who came from an almost tropical area, they wore a surprising number of layers of clothing. All of their clothing was hand made. There was no elastic or metal in anything. And everything, even their crude brasiers, was tied with homemade soft rope or strips of fabric.
“We experimented with what brought the most screams. The first girl we stripped layer by layer until she was wearing nothing but her fabric brasier and what looked like thin baggy swim shorts. She screamed and thrashed when we cut the straps holding her bra in place, and then screamed even more when we cut the tie on those shorts and let them slide down her legs revealing her sex. She continued to scream as we cut them from her body.”
Time for another crazy smile. “None of us could understand what they were saying, but there was enough true Spanish to know that she was begging for mercy. She was also calling upon someone to help her. It sounded something like ‘Mickey Choo Choo,’ but none of us could really make out the name.
“With the second girl we changed the order and cut the boxy underwear away before we removed the bra. The effect was the same, so it was apparently total nakedness that was most terrifying. I had thought that we should have left two of them unblindfolded to see if being blindfolded increased the terror of being stripped naked. But Harold and Jane both convinced me that they had enough experience with humiliation and forced nakedness to know that not being able to tell when eyes were actually looking at you, or how many eyes, heightened the sense of absolute, helpless, nakedness.
“With the third girl, we cut away everything from the waist up before beginning below the waist. Surprisingly, that led to a double peak of terror. When the thin material of the bra was cut away, she screamed as loudly and thrashed as violently– or more so– as had the first two. And then her screams and cries for mercy continued to mount as we snipped away at her lower clothing. She, too, was crying out that ‘Mickey Choo Choo’ name, but also was calling for ‘Santa Morty.’”
We repeated that same sequence on the fourth girl. She also screamed and cried out for both ‘Choo Choo’ and ‘Morty’, but I noticed that her nipples were engorging and starting to stand out stiff from her breasts. I kept the dungeon room quite warm so that I could be comfortable without clothing, so it wasn’t the cold that was causing her nipples to become erect. Despite her terror, or perhaps because of it, she was becoming sexually aroused. That was confirmed when we finally dropped her drawers and cut them from her legs. The hair of her crotch was glistening with moisture, and the smell of hot cunt was evident in the room.”
He stopped and with closed eyes tilted his head slightly upward as if he were savoring that particular image or memory. Then he continued. “The other two were just as enjoyable to watch and listen to, but neither of them became aroused. By the time we got to the last girl, she was chanting continuously, ‘Mickey Choo Choo, Mickey Choo Choo, Mickey Choo Choo...’”
He remained silent and stared at me with the ghost of that crazy smile still on his face. It was obvious that he was waiting for a response. I asked, “So, I assume that you next took their virginity of pain?”
“Ah,” he responded, “you are forgetting humiliation.”
He folded his hands in his lap once again and continued, “Being naked is humiliating, but true humiliation is being naked and having to face those who have stripped you. Next we took off their blindfolds– again one by one. Frank would untie the cloth carefully, holding it tight against their faces until that moment when he could suddenly whip it away and leave them blinking in the light.”
That crazy smile was starting to irritate– no, unnerve me.
“We were still dressed in our formal attire at that point,” he said. “The contrast between full regalia and full nakedness was thus even greater. We let them tremble for a bit, and then stroked their skin and tweaked their nipples and ran our hands between their legs. They couldn’t move away from us, but oh, they tried. Yes, they tried... except number four. She pulled away at first, but then stood there with tears running down her face and let us feel her up. She even pushed back slightly against my hand as I slid it between her legs. For some reason that caused her to burst into tears of shame.”
Again he savored the moment before saying suddenly and quickly,“Then we introduced them to pain. Their screams were to be the entr’acte as we changed our clothing in preparation for the next act. Jane had been wearing a long, formal, opera dress over her dominatrix attire, so she stepped out of the room for but a second to strip off and immediately returned.
“None of the girls knew what to expect when this masked woman appeared suddenly before them with her bullwhip in her hands. She chose number five as her first intended for this intermission interlude of screams and the whip began to dance over the young girl’s flesh.”
A deep sigh and closed eyes indicated that once again he was relishing a memory of that night. “Jane was a master of the whip. I had once watched her strike a victim a dozen times and touch nothing but the naked woman’s clit and nipples. That night, she extended her record. It wasn’t until the thirtieth lash that the tip of the whip touched anything but the unfortunate girl’s most tender spots. ‘Merde,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to be able to make it to an even three dozen.’”
By the time she had finished, we were all changed. Marie was also in a dom’s outfit, but less elaborate than Jane’s. Sharon was nude... well as nude as you can be with a full body tattoo that covers your entire torso from knees to elbows. Her horimona was done in the traditional Japanese fashion, but it depicted Dante’s nine circles of Hell. The face of the akuma himself covered her entire abdomen with the lower portion of the face placed so that her cunt formed the devil’s mouth.”
He laughed. This time it was almost a normal laugh, but it was still tinged with a touch of hysteria. “They all knew what that meant. Half of them were crying ‘Ahh-pook, Ahh-pook.’ The others were screaming ‘Il Diabla.’ Number six returned to her chant of ‘Mickey-choo-choo’ just as Sharon’s flogger began to strike. Something about that chant must have angered Sharon because she seemed to lose control and slashed wildly until the girl was finally hanging limp in her chains.”
He looked around the room suddenly as if he had heard someone, or something moving in the darkness beyond the circle of light where we sat. His face was filled with fear, but then he seemed to calm himself and continued. “Then it was time for the second act. We unchained the girls one at a time and brought them into the center of the room where we had a padded bench and table and stocks.
“Numbers one and two were forced to their knees and made to use their mouths. Number one did not quite understand what she was to do for Marie, but when her head was forced against Marie’s cunt and held there until she nearly passed out from lack of breath, she got the idea and began to nuzzle and lap. Marie remained standing with her legs spread and her hands firmly grasping the girl’s head. When she climaxed, she held the girl’s face against her sloppy sex for so long, that when she released her grip, the girl fell to the floor unconscious. We shackled her back in place facing the wall before she regained her senses.
“Number two knew what was expected of her when she was forced to kneel before Harold. She kept mumbling ‘Santa Morty’ even as he thrust his quite impressive member in an out of her throat. He, too, held her tightly against his groin as he spurted into her stomach. She was weak and wobbly as we put her back on the wall, but she did not lose consciousness.
“Three and four were destined to lose their anal virginity in this round. I especially looked forward to seeing how number four would react as I plunged into her ass. Frank and Sharon were obviously surprised when instead of screams of pain, she began panting and moaning as I buggered her. I had expected it, but they had not.”
He gave me what had to be the most maniacal of his smiles and said, “There is a pleasure that comes from forcing pain upon an unwilling victim that many people do not understand. And there is a different pleasure that comes from forcing pleasure on an unwilling victim. But there is nothing that can compare with forcing painful pleasure on someone like number four. I knew that what I was doing was terribly painful, but she could not control her body as she moaned and writhed beneath me. She strained against the restraints of the bench as I finally drove her into orgasm. Her long, drawn out cry of release was ‘Micky-choo-choo’ and then some other words that were not Spanish. They were no language I had ever heard in any of my travels in old Mexico.
“Five and six were just fucks. Frank, as usual, didn’t last very long, but Jane continued forever, driving her strap-on into number six until the poor girl was reduced to nonsensical babbling.”
Another smile. “Then it was time for the second entr’acte . One, three and four were now chained facing the wall. Two, five and six were still hanging with their backs to the wall. The screams were beautiful until we got to number four. I was using a long, flat, single strand, flexible whip that looked like a tawse, except that it was nearly six feet long. I don’t know the official name for it, but we called it ‘the snake’s tongue.’
“The snake’s tongue licked at number four’s body as I moved it from her wrists to her ankles and then back up to whip around her middle and snap at the tenderness between her legs. She was crying out in pain, but her cries were mixed with moans, and I was possessed with the idea of making her cum just from the pain.”
This time he sighed deeply two or three times. The memory was obviously overwhelmingly pleasurable for him. “Her body was red and purple from top to bottom, but she still would not climax. I turned the whip and flipped it upward between her legs so that the snake’s tongue could nibble directly on her slit and clit.”
He stared out into the room over my head. All expression was gone from his face. There was no smile. There was no laughter. There was no emotion in his voice. “And then she said it. ... She screamed out ‘Saint Michael save me!’”
The maniacal laughter overwhelmed him before he could force it back down within himself. It was several minutes before he could again gain control of himself and sit quietly. After a few quiet moments he smiled again at me and said in an almost child-like voice, “She spoke in English. I know she did. She said very clearly and distinctly, ‘Saint Michael, save me.’”
He paused and his voice became not much more than a whisper. “I mocked her with her own words.” Then he spoke in a mocking, sing-song voice, “‘Saint Michael, save me. Saint Michael, save me. Saint Michael, save me.’”
He stopped and suddenly looked around the room as if in terror of what he might see. “That’s when he first appeared... or at least that is when he first spoke. He may have been standing there in the darkness for much longer than that, but it was not until he spoke from the darkness behind me that we knew of his presence.
“It was a very pleasant and polite voice. ‘Thank you Mr. Summerfield,’ he said. ‘A single voice may call upon me a thousand times, and I am helpless to act, but when the seventh voice calls my name for the third time on the day of the dead, I am bound to intercede.’”
Marvin sat very quietly with his eyes closed and his head tilted slightly upward. He was seeing something in his memory as he spoke. “He was a very handsome young man... and very polite. He said that since it was now after midnight, it was the day of the dead and he could act to bring vengeance and justice.
“‘You must choose,’ he said.”
“‘Choose what?’ I replied.
“‘Which young woman,’ he answered. ‘The vengeance I bring is this, you must change places with the one whom you have harmed.’ He turned to point at each of us. ‘Each of you must choose.’
“‘And if we don’t?’ Harold said defiantly.
“‘The choice will be made,’ he answered. ‘If not by you, then by me.’”
Marvin Summerfield’s eyes were now wide and almost pleading. “None of the others would choose. I knew that we were doomed, and thought perhaps I could lessen the intensity of my punishment by my choice. ‘Number four,’ I said quickly, remembering that she had, at least received pleasure from her pain. The others remained silent.
“After a long silence the polite stranger spoke. ‘So it shall be,’ he said.
“Suddenly I was against the wall... but I was not me. When he had said, ‘change places,’ I thought that it would be done to me as I had done to her, but it was more than that. I was her. It was me against that wall, but I was in her body. The entire evening was replayed as if it were some demented movie.”
He stared at me with wide open eyes. His face quivered. Again a memory was going through his mind, but this memory he was not savoring. “And then it repeated... again, and again, and again, and again. Seven times I was stripped. Seven times I was fondled. Seven times I was raped. Seven times I was lashed with the snake’s tongue. Seven times I was forced to orgasm by my thirst for pain.”
His voice had climbed in intensity and pitch as he spoke. His words again dissolved into that hideous, maniacal laughter which had been bubbling under the surface throughout the interview. It seemed to go on for hours until it finally faded into silence.
“And then it was morning,” he said flatly. “The others were screaming and holding their heads. Jane ran upstairs screaming and yelling in absolute terror. Harold clutched his chest and fell to the floor. Marie, Frank, and Sharon fell to their knees and began pounding their heads against the floor and screaming until their voices finally failed them.”
He was suddenly very calm and looked almost normal as he said to me, “People said I was lucky to have survived.”
Then he laughed, not quite so crazily this time, and said, “Jane and Harold were the lucky ones. It was over for them.
“In a way it was also over for Marie, Frank, and Sharon. Their minds were totally gone. They have spent the past four decades basically unaware of their true punishment. Even if they remember as our punishment comes to a close, at least all they must endure is the memory of that night.”
He looked at me with pleading eyes. “For me it has been more than a memory. I became her, and when I returned to being me, I had more than the memory of her pain. I brought back into myself her thirst for pain... her need for pain... her addiction to pain which I had released within her that night.”
He held out his hands. There were bruises around his wrists. “Sometimes I can go a week before the hunger becomes too great,” he said in a shaking voice. “Sometimes it is every night that I must succumb to my addiction. When I can stand it no longer, I order my maid and butler to tie me to that wall and lash me with the snake’s tongue until I finally find release.”
He wept. These were tears of despair not mania. “I do not want it. I do not desire it. But I need that pain as surely as a heroin addict needs his daily fix.”
He snorted, “They have come to enjoy it. Sometimes as I am hanging there afterwards, I can hear them having sex in the darkness behind me.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Seven years for each of the six girls. That was my sentence from that terrible angel of vengeance... seven years without release from the hell I, alone, had created.”
He paused and smiled again. “I will be released soon. One more year and I will be released. One more year and then you can tell my story. Remember, one more year... but not until then.”
He sat back in his chair and became silent. The morose butler appeared by my side and said quietly, “I think it is time that you should leave.”
I picked up my cell phone and recorder from the table and followed him to the entrance. As I left the mansion my heart was very heavy. I had more than enough for my interview. It was not recorded, but I have a precise memory. I could write out what was spoken verbatim when I got home... but would I?
What purpose would it serve? No one would ever publish it! No one would ever believe me. And why should they? After all my hopes and expectation, all I had were the delusional ramblings of a sick, old man.
To my editor and others who knew that I was coming here tonight for an interview, I would explain that it had been hard to view the disintegrated shell of what had once been such a powerful and great man. I would tell them that it had been troubling to see what the ravages of age could do to such a brilliant mind. So, out of respect for all that Marvin H. Summerfield had once been, I would tell only of what he had once accomplished, not what he had currently become.
Such a non-interview wouldn’t get published either.
As I reached my car, a soft voice spoke from next to me. “You have my permission to tell the story once Marvin is gone. That will be just before next Halloween.”
He laughed slightly. It was a chilling laugh, but I could not say why. He continued in a slightly stronger voice. “In fact, I insist that you tell it.”
I turned and there was a very handsome young man standing next to me. “And you are?” I said somewhat angrily.
“Names are so unimportant,” he replied in his calm, sweet voice. “All that is important is that you release the story.”
I replied, “My editor will never publish it.”
He laughed again and pushed his finger against the pocket of my coat. For the slightest of moments it looked as if his hand were just skeletal bones pressing against my jacket.
My smart phone chimed, beeped and chirped all at the same time. “I sent you some links,” he explained. “Post the story on those sites. They all have contests for Halloween. They will publish it even if your editor will not.”
His voice changed. It became higher pitched and almost cold as he said. “In fact, I insist that you publish this story as a warning to others. Remember, you have until the day of the dead next year. If I do not see it on all of those sites, I will return.”
“Who are you?” I asked. This time it was not so much a question as a statement of shock and fear.
He smiled at me and said, “My ancient name is “Mictlantecuhtli” or “Mictecacihuatl” if you would rather think of me as a woman. When the invaders stole my people’s native tongue, I became known as “Santa Muerte.” As he turned and began to walk away, he added, “... but you can call me Michael.”
The handsome young man was gone. In his place was a robed figure walking away from me. As he walked, I could see skeletal feet beneath the robe and skeletal hands protruding from the sleeves. He turned again to face me– if you could call what turned to me a face. An old woman’s voice came from the skull within the hood. “Remember, the story must be told before next year’s day of the dead.”
He... she... it... laughed once again. The image of the open mouth of that skull as it laughed is burned into my memory forever . So are the final words it spoke, “... or you will find out what it means to receive a visit from Saint Michael.”
***
That is the true story of what happened at that infamous Halloween party behind the gates of hell at the mansion called The Dungeon of Hedonism. Perhaps I should have warned you at the beginning not to read it aloud... especially not to say the names aloud... most especially not to repeat Mickey-choo-choo or Santa Morty or Saint Michael aloud... and most, most especially not to do so after midnight when Halloween becomes The Day of the Dead.
Who knows? You might be the seventh person to repeat those names on that day. And believe me, you do NOT want a visit from Saint Michael.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
END OF STORY
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
You can also leave feedback & comments for this story on the Plaza Forum
30.10.14