One Strange Street

You walk one street on Halloween night. Twelve houses, in order, from the gate at number one to whatever is at the end. At each door you roll two dice and read the House Oracle to find out who answered, then write two or three sentences about it before you move on. Most doors are ordinary. A man in socks holds the bowl out at arm's length and gets your costume wrong. A teenager hands you a fistful without looking up from their phone. Someone's dog gets out, is delighted, and goes nowhere. Then there are the houses that are all show, and the ones with the porch light off that open anyway. Keep walking long enough and you will find a narrow door between number fourteen and number sixteen that you have walked past your whole life. Two tracks run under the walk: The Candy Tally is twenty boxes that fill as the bag does. Fill them all and you go home. Wonder & Dread is twelve lights that climb as the street stops behaving. The meter adds to the row die, so the doors get stranger because you kept knocking. There is no damage and nothing to lose. The street just stops being yours. When the bag is full or the meter tops out, you walk home, and the last page asks which houses you will actually remember. The book is 22 pages. Six of them are write-on sheets covering the walker, the street, the two tracks, the twelve doors and the walk home, and you can reprint those on their own for the next walk. One door takes two or three minutes. A whole street is an evening.