I love Halloween. It’s the one day of the year my inner theatre kid gets to run wild, and my office takes the costume contest absurdly seriously. First prize is a £250 gift card and, more importantly, a full year of bragging rights.
Three weeks before Halloween, I sketched out my costume: a Victorian vampire queen — high black collar, blood-red velvet gown, hand-painted porcelain mask. I’d been collecting the pieces since August. The collar came from a charity shop in town; the velvet I ordered off a remnant site and hand-stitched for four evenings straight; the mask took two weekends of painting, layering pearl-white over bone, shading the eye sockets until they looked properly haunted. I told exactly one person about it: my desk neighbour, Priya. We’d been friendly for months. She asked to see my mood board. She ooh-ed and aah-ed over the collar design. She said, “That’s so you, you’re going to crush it.”
On contest day, Priya walked in wearing a Victorian vampire queen costume. High black collar. Blood-red velvet gown. Hand-painted porcelain mask. She’d even copied the little bat brooch I’d pinned to my mood board — a brooch I’d made by hand from a thrifted earring.
I stood there in the corridor in my backup option — a hastily assembled “dead IT intern” outfit of ripped shirt and fake lanyard — and watched her take the applause. She won. Of course she won. She was wearing MY costume.
When I confronted her, she laughed. “Great minds think alike,” she said. “Besides, you can’t copyright a vibe.”
She was right, technically. But here’s the thing about offices: everyone sees everything. Our team lead, Marcus, pulled me aside that afternoon. He’d overheard us in the break room three weeks earlier when I described the whole costume to Priya. So had two other people.
That evening I went home and cried a little, I’m not ashamed to say. It wasn’t really about the costume — it was the smallness of it. I’d shared something I was excited about with someone I trusted, and she’d treated it like a shopping list.
Monday morning, Marcus announced a change to the contest rules: from now on, winners would be chosen by a panel, and there’d be a new category — “Most Original Concept.” Then he asked me, in front of everyone, to walk them through my original design process for the vampire queen.
Priya’s face went white. Nobody booed her. Nobody needed to. She spent the rest of the day avoiding the kitchen.
The gift card stayed hers — rules are rules — but I got something better. Three people from the finance team asked me to help with their costumes next year. And Priya? She sent me a long apology text last night. I haven’t replied yet. I think I’ll let her sit with it until after Halloween.
Some lessons: never show your mood board to the competition, and never underestimate how many witnesses a break room has. And if your brilliant idea is worth stealing, it’s worth making twice as good the second time.
I’ve started documenting my ideas now — dated sketches, saved messages, the lot. Not because I’m paranoid, but because the creative part of me deserves a paper trail. Priya and I are still civil. We have to be; she sits four feet away. But the friendship has a hairline fracture now, and we both know it. Next Halloween, I’m keeping my costume a secret until the day. And Marcus has already asked me to judge the “Most Original Concept” category. I said yes, obviously. Somebody has to protect the mood boards.