He pulled the straw from his belly button until his arm was fully extended, but there was still more inside him. The yellow strands came out in clumps, warm and damp, like something that had been growing in the dark of his guts for the whole week.

“Stop doing that!” his mother said.

“I want to take it off,” Justin said.

Silence swallowed the kitchen.

“Mommy, I want a different costume. Please,” he said. “This one is really itchy.”

“It’s the one you have to wear,” she said, her voice thin. “Just like your brother had to.”

His mother adjusted the costume. The touch sent shivers down her spine.

“I miss Tommy,” the boy said.

She nodded, biting her lower lip. Desperate to hide the lump in her throat, she looked away and began peeling potatoes with a violence that wasn’t hers. That masked the tears that were escaping. She couldn’t bear to see a son of hers in that costume. Not again.

They ate dinner in silence. Tommy’s empty chair was there—though his mother still set a plate for him: “He’s still with us,” she would say.

Everything finally fell apart for the Wrights few days earlier, on October 25th, during the elementary school’s annual drawing. That morning, neither had mentioned it, but both felt that happiness was about to return to the family after a whole year of waiting.

The scarecrow costume and the wooden box sat in the center of the gym, just as always. The principal reached into the box. He pulled out a slip of paper and read aloud: “Justin Wright.”

The silence was devastating. No one could even feel the relief of having lost. The prevailing sensation was the same: “Twice in a row.”

That very afternoon, he had to wear the costume for the first time. “It’s to get used to it,” his mother said. As soon as he put it on, the straw pressed against his chest and back. Justin felt the costume shifting, molding itself to his shape. The itching began almost immediately.

With every passing hour, he could feel the straw tips growing inside, struggling to pierce his skin and break through to the surface.

The day before Halloween, Justin asked his mother if they could go for a walk. He felt deep down that the only way to stop the costume’s pain was to walk through the park.

With every step he took, his body emitted a faint rustling sound. Justin’s breathing sounded like the wind blowing through dry straw.

The older kids in town knew. When they saw the boy in the scarecrow costume walking through the neighborhood the week before Halloween, they grabbed their younger brothers and sisters and pulled them away.

“Is that him?”

“Don’t look.”

The only one who didn’t back away upon seeing him was Jim, “the fool”. Jim, his face pockmarked with acne scars, stared at him with the vacant expression that had earned him his nickname. When his mother saw Jim, she couldn’t hold back a sob. That was the first time Justin felt fear. When he understood, he looked toward the center of the town park. There, the town’s scarecrow stood out, even amidst the many decorations and pumpkins. The itching worsened and he could see tiny bits of straw tearing out from beneath his fingernails.

By Halloween evening, he could barely speak. He made only a raspy sound, choked by the straw growing in his windpipe. The mask had fused to his face.

Mr. and Mrs. Wright took their little boy by the hand and walked with him to the square. The streets were crowded. The other children —wearing Halloween costumes and carrying pillowcases full of candy— froze when they saw the little scarecrow. No one dared to say “trick or treat” near them.

They walked on until a group of teenagers sounded the warning.

“He’s coming.”

On the streets, the adults stopped talking. The children stopped running. Everyone cleared the way to let him pass. Justin let go of his parents when he saw him arrive.

From the center of the park, a boy walked along the path lined with pumpkins, his clothes torn. He stared ahead with an absolute, terrifying vacancy. The skin of his face was mottled with spots that looked like healing scars, though they would never fully go away. Tommy walked calmly, with the same grace he had possessed in the past. He coughed and spat out dry, rotted straw on the street until none remained inside him.

Halfway there, he stopped in front of the boy in the scarecrow costume who had approached him. Tommy scratched himself listlessly with both hands and said:

“It’s itchy.”

Mr. and Mrs. Wright waited stiffly at the far end of the sidewalk, holding hands. This time, no one expected them to run and embrace their returning son. The Wrights had to watch their eldest son slowly make his way back, while right behind him, their youngest son lost every trace of his identity, yearning to walk toward the platform where the town scarecrow had stood just moments before.

A suffocating gravity drew Justin to the center of the square. He climbed onto the platform his brother had just vacated. He looked up at the empty post. The pain worsened, yet his rigid features could not betray it. The costume peeled away like dead skin and fell to the ground. Beneath it, nothing of Justin remained —only the fibrous network the costume had been cultivating all week, weaving through his marrow, replacing blood with straw.

Without a word, the scarecrow climbed the wooden post, driven by absolute certainty: everything would be better once he was up there, keeping watch.

The townspeople watched, just as they did every year. Some lifted their children up so they could see this year’s chosen boy settle into place, extend his stiff arms to his sides, and stare into the darkness with a vacant smile.

Beneath him, Halloween went on.

​

Federico Pereyra (1992) is from Mar del Plata, Argentina. Has published flash fiction in digital media from Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. Has been published in folk horror and cosmic horror anthologies. He got the 8th place in cosmic horror contest with the story "La noche sin estrellas" ("The Starless Night") and his story "Perfecto" (Perfect)was one of the five winners of the Editorial Thelema contest, both of them became part of their respective anthologies.