Families across the London borough of Ealing were left paralysed with fear, unable to go outside last night after receiving a visit from a group of synchronised trick-or-treaters who performed complex dance interpretations of 'Double-dip recession', 'Losing your job', and 'House reposession' on their gravel drives if not given appropriate treats.
Forgoing the years-old Hallowe'en tradition of donning vampire and ghost costumes, the street dance group, who call themselves Straight Up, said that just as people's fears have moved on, so too must trick-or-treating, and interpretive street dance was the obvious medium.
Other routines that confronted residents of the affluent, leafy suburb with what truly haunts them included 'Your skill-set is utterly worthless, you are seen as a joke among your colleagues at work' and 'The value of your pension has been significantly eroded, and your retirement will be spent in monotonous poverty.'
One Ealing resident came home from a pilates class to find her husband sitting on the hall floor, hugging his knees and sobbing 'make them go away...just...make them go away', and many other households gave the dance troupe not just all their Haribo, but anything else they wanted from their houses to stop the body-popping poppets from reminding them of their barely suppressed nightmares with their carefully choreographed body movements.
JoJo D, the leader of Straight Up, said that their recently devised break-dance versions of 'Food price surge and population growth leads us to have to eat insects', and 'China offer to bail out Euro a clear signal that we'll all be speaking Mandarin in 10 years' also sent home-owners into choking panic attacks of terror.
As for next year, JoJo D says they are already working on some new material including 'We know you shagged your mate's wife' and 'The contents of your hard-drive are known to the police'.
