HALLOWEEN SYNDROME 1 | PROLOGUE | SCI-FI SHORT STORY

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HALLOWEEN SYNDROME

The Halloween syndrome, that’s what they called it in the start. The ones who were affected began to wear costumes, like they would on Halloween, at home, at their jobs, children in the school, everywhere they went they were in these costumes. They hated their own faces and liked to wear faces that were not their own, faces that were of their favorite cartoon characters, or their favorite movie or game character’s. The ones affected were at first put in quarantine for inspection, but then the worst happened. Zackary Sunder and Helena Holmes, the most well-known and loved celebrities of the age became infected and they turned it into a trend. Other celebrities became infected and it began to spread like a virus, even people who were not infected began to act like the infected, because they liked it and the whole world began to change.

Today in the year 2320, wearing your real face to work or anywhere else is a federal offence and is punishable by Law for over ten years and of course the person is taken to facilities that consider him infected by some disease. You have to wear a costume and a mask on your face everywhere, in order to recognize people a paper is pasted on their chest with their name. Now nobody talks of the days it never existed, the history books were all edited and everyone thinks that this way of life existed long before humans began to write. As they say in books that it was a hunter-gatherer technique to avoid attacks from other tribes, how wearing a different face helped to avoid attacks is a mystery to me, but everyone believes it without any problem and read the history books quite happily.

How do I know it if the history books don’t? I was told by my grandpa, in his time it had already become a way of life and laws had already been made. But in his grandpa’s time it had just begun, his grandpa was in his late thirties and had a teenager son at the time who was my grandpa’s father. He, my great great grandpa did not take to the new trend but his son, my great grandpa, as he was a great fan of the celebrities who had turned it into a trend, quite enjoyed following this trend and happily wore his favorite cartoon character’s costumes and other characters he liked. My grandpa followed this new way of the world but still he knew that it was not always like this. Once the whole world was normal and then this came, the whole world knew that the world was not like this, then people began to forget, the government began to change the books in order to make sure that everyone forgets. And today, nobody remembers what the world actually was like once, except some, most of whom are considered criminals of the state and are fugitives from the law. Many are still trying to change the world and holding on to the old ways but they cannot do it in public or they would be arrested and taken away to the facility where “the abnormal” are kept.

The people who try to bring this change or people wearing their real faces are called “the abnormal”. They are kept in the medical facility of Marks Medicines Inc. where they are jailed for years and experimented on. The law is that they must be imprisoned for ten years and no more, but in case they are found abnormal positive, they are experimented on, in the medical facility and almost everyone taken to the facility is abnormal positive.

I am Andrew Shaw, a young boy of sixteen, but my father says I sometimes speak like a man who is elder than even him who is thirty-three. My father is a patrolman, meaning he goes around the city to arrest lunatics who decide to break the law in any way, but mostly it is people who wear their real face and not wearing a costume.

Many times, I would ask my father if the world was always like this, everyone always wore costumes rather than their real faces, and all he would reply is, “It is not about what used to be, it is about what is. The law is the law and we must always abide by the law or we are not better than savage beasts that roam the jungles.” I just could not ask anything else but I had many questions. One day, I asked my history teacher the same question and got detention for it, while another time I asked my philosophy teacher, “What is wrong with walking around with our own face?” while he replied with a smile, that was hardly visible behind his classic joker make up, “What is wrong with walking around naked?” I did not get detention for it but I was laughed at, that day and many other times other days.

But still my questions were not answered, and many other questions came to me which many times made people quite angry at me and would have landed me in jail or worse in the medical facility if my father was not a patrolman.

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