“I could see their menfolk patrolling nervously up and down toting sub-machine guns and draped in cartridge belts. They were wearing their trademark sunglasses, those gold rimmed feminine accessories which should look comic on a man but instead manage to look as sinister as the wedding dresses and blonde wigs worn by Liberia's drugged fighters. They are the modern equivalent of the wooden masks donned around night fires by warriors preparing to do battle, which turn their wearers into something utterly alien -- faceless instruments of violence capable of unspeakable acts.”

“Some of the men and older boys were trained in firing the cannon, but since there wasn’t any gun powder to spare for actually firing any more of the things, they made do with pushing wooden cartridges into the barrel and shouting, “Bang!” They got quite good at that, and were proud at the speed with which “Bang!” could be shouted. Daphne said she hoped the enemy would be trained to say “Aargh!”

“I was kidnapped by aliens, they came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped.”

“Evil is no faceless stranger, living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.”

“I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.”

“I looked up. Mom looked down at me with the compassion/practicality combo that was her trademark.”