text: All Hallows Eve, a perfect night for revenge. Halloween, a night that represents candy and fun to some and demons and witchcraft to others. While the children and adults alike walk around the neighborhoods in costumes varying from rotting zombies to pretty princesses, teens sit in their basement, summoning ghosts and performing rituals, thinking they are too cool for trick or treating. Which is exactly what makes this night the perfect night for revenge. We have been planning this for months. We all knew that popularly obnoxious Finn would be throwing his annual Halloween party, not that any of us had ever actually been invited. It has been this way for years. We are considered the weird kids. We are the artists, theater kids, gamers, tech wizards, pranksters, and sci-fi nerds. We may be weird, but we are not a group to be messed with, and frankly, we are tired of being bullied. It was time for us to have our revenge. Everything was planned to the letter. We had an operative on the inside, Maddy, who technically wasn’t one of the “weird kids” but was the older sister of one. She was sick of watching her baby brother get bullied at school and agreed to help us. She was on the inside, having actually been invited to the party, dressed as you might guess in a skintight spandex suit, leather jacket, and DIY utility belt as a secret agent (so discreet). Her job was to bolster a little bit of fear into the party goers. She was going to just happen to stumble upon a website that shows the spooky history of houses. Of course, this information was being fed to her by Rachel, our resident ghost writer who was currently sick at home. Rachel had an unhealthy fascination with horror. She had seen movies so scary and intense it would not be allowed in my house. She seemed cold and distant to most, and I will admit, she scared me at first. She mostly stuck to her own company, but she had become fond and accepting of our group. We at least knew none of us would turn up dead in one of her novels. While Rachel was at home inventing stories, I was walking by the house, monitoring the goings on. I was playing the role of outside surveillance, keeping things in line, and making sure everything went according to plan. I figured no one was bound to recognize me in my inflatable T-rex costume. I probably looked so ridiculous that I would be easily overlooked, which is exactly what I was going for. The costume was hot, especially in this Florida heat, but it was great for hiding my surveillance gear. I had my binoculars out as I spied through the plastic covered eye hole in my costume. Honestly, this house was the perfect setting for our little prank. It was a two-story wooden looking home painted a light grey that appeared spooky in the dark. The trees and shrubs were well trimmed, and the grass cut. The house stood proud with its little porch and its rocking chairs, the balcony hanging over and shading the porch, and shutters lining the windows. It looked like the stereotypical haunted house, just before the haunting. It even had fake cobwebs and plastic skeletons climbing the railings. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to read the message, the light blinding in the surrounding darkness. From Rachel. They asked about the house. Teenagers were too predictable. We gave Maddy a simple job. All she had to do was introduce the idea of a website that came up the with the spooky origins of each house and then read the made-up stories that were fed to her by Rachel. We gave her one rule. No matter what, she was never to bring up the idea of searching Finn’s house. This was to protect her, so they would never figure out she was an accomplice. We knew she didn’t have to bring it up anyways. You know what they say, curiosity killed the cat. We were relying on that same curiosity. Someone was bound to ask the spooky origins of Finn’s house, and when they did, it would be the death of them. It seems we had predicted right. My fingers flew across the keyboard on my phone and I pressed send. On cue, the lights of the house went out, and a collective scream rang out from the house. The fun had only just begun. We were riding on the premise that not one of the teenagers in that house knew what a circuit breaker was, where it was, or what to do with it. It was not exactly a stretch, and our hypothesis was quickly proven to be true. With the house blanketed in complete darkness it was time to send in the skeletons. The wide eyes of the teenagers peeked out the windows as they crowded together to get a closer look. I knew as of right now, all they saw was a T-rex standing in the middle of the street, facing the house. They couldn’t see me, or my binoculars. And besides, Halloween was the one day where standing in the street in an inflatable T-rex costume wasn’t considered suspicious. I hit send. Connor, our theater kid parkour artist, creeped to the edge of the balcony, let loose a couple of plastic skeletons he had tied to the railings, so they looked like they were dropping off the roof. He also dropped some plastic bones by themselves for an extra effect. Connor was a very athletic boy with a background in gymnastics. He was constantly jumping over things and climbing up places that probably shouldn’t be climbed. He had a love for musical theater, which is why he was considered one of the weird kids. He was good too as he could both sing and dance beautifully. It was too bad he was shamed for it. But his climbing skills had come into good use, especially since none of the rest of us could dream of climbing the roof. The teens were startled by the skeletons, but no screams emerged. We knew this was only the beginning of our revenge plan. We had more in store for them, they would just have to wait and see. It was time to bring in the ghosts. Now, when I say ghosts, I do not mean the sheet ghosts that you see in that popular trend they just brought back. What I mean by ghosts is a couple of nerds dressed up in ripped grey clothing and white face and body paint. There was a street light close enough to the house that would give just enough light to make their backyard creepy and give us an eerie look. This was my cue. I exited the street and quickly dumped my T-rex costume, with help from Ollie, a gamer who just happened to know how a circuit breaker works. Ollie was actually really funny, though most people would never know. He loved to game, and we would often come over to his house to play. We were terrible, but he never said a word. He liked to crack jokes and he was full of knowledge most people would find useless. Who would have thought we would need someone who knew how a circuit breaker worked? I certainly didn’t, but it is incredibly useful. We entered the backyard, clothed in our ghost costumes with a little bit of fluorescent silver glitter to make up appear shimmery in the darkness, like a mirage, our phone blasting your top of the line “ghost sounds,” like anyone knew what a ghost sounded like. The sounds drew the teenagers to the window where they met their second horror. This time we got screams as we were noticed, shimmering in and out of the darkness. In sync, we turned our heads and marched to the windows. Of course, we were only the distraction. We had given Maddy one more important job in all of this, to open the door. So, while we had all the teenagers inside distracted by the skeletons and the ghosts, she was to leave the door open for our last crew of nightmares. We set the last part of our plan in motion. We sent in Liz and Jackie, our tech girl and our prankster. They built things with their hands and made things work. Their job was probably the hardest, they had to make things happen and we did not give them much time to do it. They were dressed to blend in with the party, in pirate couple costumes, and had previously gone unnoticed. Given only the few minutes Connor, Ollie, and I made for them, they set to work setting up a holographic projector at the end of one of the halls, setting things up to fall, and creating the greatest part of our illusion. They had to scurry around in the chaos without drawing attention. They could be called out if someone just happened to catch them moving around the house while everyone else was concerned with the hauntings going on outside. Luckily, those two are good at sneaking around and avoiding detection. They get themselves into a lot of trouble, but they rarely ever get caught. Everyone knows it is those two, but the teachers and principal can hardly ever prove it. Without evidence, they get off quite often, much more than they should. Once again, we put our climber to use. Remember that streetlight I mentioned earlier. Guess who had just climbed the pole and was messing with the light? We didn’t want to accidentally break the light, so Connor was just supposed to cover the light with a dark blanket for a few seconds to create a flickering effect. As soon as that happened, the yard would go dark, and we would have about two seconds to bail out of sight in complete darkness. The light flickered and we dashed away from the sight of the window. We only knew we had been successful from the blood curdling screams that shook the house. Time to bring this party to a close. We scurried around the side of the house to the front door, where a sliver of light peeked from the thin opening. I watched a couple of kids fade into the night as they bailed from the party. Smart kids. They would probably survive a horror film, unlike the other idiots in the house. We grabbed our sheets from Connor who met us at the door, and we slinked into the chaos, just in time too. Liz and Jackie had done an absolutely beautiful job. The show had just begun. A cascade of plastic cups came sliding off the countertops onto the tile flooring. Heads turned and teens jumped. They were trembling, mumbling prayers or complete nonsense (I’m not sure which) under their breaths, holding up finger crosses, and hiding behind a few brave or stupid (it really is a fine line) people. One poor soul had passed out on the floor. I felt kind of bad, but at the same time, not really. The group turned and rushed for the door, which I quickly slammed shut with my foot. It was almost pitch black and they were too concerned with the door to see me. No one bothered to check to see if the door had actually locked. Predictable. They just turned and ran up the stairs, only to be met by our holographic ghost, which really wasn’t all that great, but it didn’t have to be, they were already scared to death. The faded whispers of ghosts echoes through the room. The sentences and phrases could barely be made out, but if anyone listened closely enough, they would only hear a stupid conversation we had with each other in what he thought was a ghost whisper. We had agreed that this was more of a realistic ghost sound than the stereotypical moaning. It seems the party goers agreed. They scuffled down the stairs, tripping and trampling over each other. Several tumbled down the stairs as they were tripped or pushed. Utter chaos had erupted, mixed with the screams, whimpers, and tears of the scared to death teens. Our extravaganza had finally reached its finale. Liz and Jackie had planned from the beginning where the most important pieces of our show would be placed in the house. We all knew our places. We took the stage and turned this cookie cutter house on the block into a real nightmare. The house was dark with plenty of hiding places. It didn’t take much setting up, only needing a few key cords in place to create the illusion. We created the perfect house haunting, pulling and pushing furniture, swinging and slamming doors, knocking non-breakable objects onto the floor (we weren’t monsters), moving things, and overall, just making a lot of noise and chaos. One final ear-splitting scream emerged from the crowd. Girlfriends clung to their boyfriends necks, people trembled in fear, several covered their eyes or ear mumbling under their breaths, and one idiot demanded to know what the ghosts wanted. This was it, our time to make an appearance. Connor, Ollie, and I dubbed our other ghost costumes, throwing the sheets over our heads and stepping from our hiding places. Ollie held up a tablet that was currently video chatting with Rachel, who had also dubbed a sheet over her head. It was this moment that these gullible teens finally figured out this whole thing was a prank. Liz and Jackie stomped down the stairs in sheet ghost disguise. Liz was holding the holographic projector and Jackie a spool of string. They stared at us, eyes wide and mouths agape, in shock and realization of what had actually just happened. No one moved, fearful of the other tricks we might have up our sleeves. We didn’t have to say a word. They all probably knew who we were, even with our ghost disguises, though I bet not one of them knew our names. Rachel, Connor, Ollie, Liz, Jackie, and me, Aubrey. The artist, theater kid, gamer, tech wiz, prankster, and sci-fi nerd. We were the outcasts and the troublemakers. They all knew this was payback for the years of torment they made us go through. So, not one of us said a word, because we didn’t have to. We had shown them tonight what we were made of. We had put our collective skills to work and created a Halloween extravaganza no one was likely to soon forget. Of course, we knew things would not end here. The bullying would never end, but we had had our moment and we were proud. We had tasted revenge and it was sweet. We could hear the sirens in the distance as one of the neighbors apparently called the cops. I wonder why? We figured it was our time to depart. Like after every great performance, we joined hands and took a bow, before marching straight out that door and into the night.