text: [Themes: mystery / thriller, action]
  
  Shedding your costume to take advantage of the fact that very few individuals can see spirits you follow the shady figure wrapped in a trench coat down the isolated side street. Turning the man sighs in relief--he then turns up another side street to reconnect with the All Souls Procession. Carefully you follow your nefarious friend; he keeps his face mostly covered by the collar of his trench coat--invisible among the commotion of the parade.
  
  Glancing over his shoulder he plucks a hard candy from his bag and places it in a young girl's tiny hand without slowing his pace. Curious the girl examines the candy: it is a cylindrical red, enticing, glass candy like a Jolly Rancher. She shrugs and slowly unwraps the candy; meanwhile, her candy supplier has moved through the crowd quickly passing out more candies to every child that will take one.
  
  Something seems off--both with the candies and the man handing them out. You need to get to the bottom of what is happening, but the little girl is seconds away from eating her sweet surprise and the man is slowly disappearing into the crowd.
  
  > follow the man
  You can not lose track of this guy, even if you question the red treat he gave to an innocent child. You rush past the girl as she swallows the candy whole; continuing as you hear her fall to the ground and her mother's harrowing scream. As the man continues through the crowd kids continue to drop around you--their mothers wailing becoming a part of the All Souls Procession like it was meant to happen. Even so the man moves quickly, and you struggle to keep up.
  
  Finally, the man empties his bag and turns sharply onto a deserted side street. Leaving the noise and the commotion behind you and continue your pursuit; he leads you to a narrow alley that looms before you--it's darker than your grave.
  
  Alone you would never enter the treacherous passage; for once you are thankful for the mysterious man's presence--and even he hesitates at the mouth of the alley. With a deep breath, you both force yourself to step into the pitch-blackness; you soon find yourself standing in a dead-end with only a rusty set of double doors under a dim-red fog light.
  
  Quickly the man produces a key and opens the rusted shut the door, careful to avoid the sharp edges of the jagged broken half of the doorknob he grabs. Inside the doors a factory is running full tilt; noisy machinery runs an assembly line that is churning out small wrapped hard candies into a large oil-drum. Your companion quickly ducks inside a door labeled CEOs Office.
  
  > search the office
  Rather than try the door, you simply walk through it--accidentally colliding with your mysterious friend as he locks the door. You phase-in easily, and the world completely changes. A sense of pride and satisfaction wells up in you; a strong feeling that tonight your actions were justified bombards your brain.
  
  "No!" you shout out loud, clearing your mind.
  
  Stopping you realize you are in control of the man's body; you look around the messy office, which seems strangely familiar. Your eyes fall on a large file-folder on the broken-down desk in the middle of the room. This is important--it is your life's work--you think as you flip it open on the desk.
  
  Beginning to read your manifesto made from newspaper clippings it all comes back to you: it describes the time you lost your greatest love--Stephanie--to an unsafe hard candy obtained on Halloween. Also included is an early draft of your plan to manufacture a hard candy coated in poison that is both potent and difficult to trace once ingested. A picture of a fifteen-year-old Mexican child is included in a section titled "successful test-batches" along with several other children.
  
  That's you, the boy in the picture is you. Shaking you head to clear it you cry realizing you have done. It wasn't you--why you need to remind yourself that is beyond you. Getting out of this distorted mind and body must be made a priority. Reaching into your pocket you pull out his cell phone, type in your password, and fumble with the unfamiliar buttons on his phone; eventually, one of you successfully call the police.
  
  > Epilogue
  His name is Ernesto Medya, the owner of a small chemical processing plant that shut down after his wife Stephanie died on the day of the dead. Apparently, she ate an unwrapped candy that had been tampered with and died. His goal was poetic justice--a goal that killed hundreds of children over the last two years. Officially, he got a guilty conscious and turned himself in; unofficially, you gained closure for your mother who always suspected your death wasn't natural.
  
  News of the killings put the All Souls Procession on hold while police searched the plant and later the event site for any unmarked candies. This gives you enough time to walk to The Urn where your mother and father have built you an altar with a letter. Taking that to read later you celebrate your life with your parents. They can you see you, but you swear your mother looks directly at you as she burns chicken enchiladas at the altar.
  
  After that you return to the graveyard; there you sit with your grandfather and watch The Urn burn. Minutes before midnight you open the letter and cry as your mother tells you what you missed over the last year--for the first time you are thankful she stayed true to her heritage. All that is left to do is lay down and wait for the next All Souls Procession, which you vow to spend celebrating another Day of the Dead with your mother.