Hello, kiddies. It’s me, the Ghost with the Post. The Ghoul with the Tool.
I. Okay. Sorry. We kinda thought these rhymes about a ghost with a big penis would be scary. But they’re just gross. Apologies. Especially with the “Hey, kiddies” thing up top.
Hello, Adults of Consenting Age. It’s me, the Mr. Mausoleum. And I’m here with a story that will chill your bones!
Or should I say…KILL your bones!?
No, wait. Chill works. Chill makes more sense.
Tonight, or should I say to-fright, we have a suite of spooky tales, or should I say a “sweet” of spooky tales? Because nothing’s scarier than the dentist and diabetes. Or a lecture about soda pop.
Nothing!
Except a wolfman! And a skeleton! And a mummy, who may or may not be a mummified wolfman! You seen under those bandages? How do you know what’s under there?
Truthfully, there are lots of things scarier than a dentist. Last night I sprayed a spider with Tilex, and he reared back and put his legs up like he was doing a curse on me and shit. Cree-pee.
Anyway, enough with the words and whether they’re spookier than other words. Let’s get on with it.
This first morality SLAY is all about a young man who pays the price for a costume that’s not so nice.
I call it: The Hook!
Whenever you go to the ARC, you gotta check out that barrel of canes. That was what Mark always said. None of his friends believed him, but they were a bunch of dumbdicks who didn’t know the value of a set of wooden crutches or a shiny, purple cane.
And Mark’s whole scheme was confirmed when he found his grand prize, his white whale. Mark didn’t know the origin of the term “white whale”, but what he did know is that today, at the ARC, the cane barrel held a prosthetic arm. What Mark knew is that this was a fucking win! with a capital F-U-C-K-I-N-G and a capital exclamation point, if that’s a thing. Again, Mark isn’t super smart. He’s got other good qualities, but Jesus, dumb dumb dumb asshole we’re dealing with here.
Mark didn’t hesitate. He bought the arm, and he hugged it to his body and ran all the way home. Like that kid in the movie about the Chocolate Factory. The old, good one that Mark’s dad duplicated on tape and cut out the scary part in the hell tunnel because, seriously, what the fuck was that all about?
Mark set the arm on his desk. It was a full prosthetic, but one of those sweet ones with the arm and then the weird hook jobbers on the end. The hooks were almost supernaturally shiny and clean, and the arm was in great shape. The forearm part was a little bit of a problem. It must have belonged to a black man, because the fake skin part was painted dark, dark brown.
Before he left for a sweet party, Mark wanted to test his new arm. He strapped it across his back and his chest, and he slipped the fake forearm over his hand.
It fit like a glove. Or a stump glove. Or something. It fit good. That’s the takeaway. And it’s supposed to be spooky how well it fit, like it was maaaaade for Mark. For some reason, that’s a spooky thing that happens. If you find a wedding dress in an attic and put it on and it fits just right, then it’s a curse. Always. Stuff that fits right is always a curse. Except jeans. That’s a blessing. A downright miracle.
Anyway, Mark flexed all his arm muscles, and the hook split into two hooks and opened up. When Mark stopped, the hooks snapped shut. Open, shut. Mark set a full beer bottle on his desk. He squeezed hard to get the hooks far enough apart to fit around the bottle’s base, and then let go. The hooks snapped together, and the bottle shattered in Mark’s hook hand.
“Whoa,” he said.
Then Mark said something about what he’d better make sure and not do to any “chicks” he picked up at the Halloween party. The remark was pretty grotesque and rude, and not something Mark should have worried about. This is a guy who has a regular thrift store route and rules that govern how he thrifts. Not a poonhound here. Not swimming in the ‘tang.
Mark put on his best longsleeve flannel, and he thanked fucking god that these things were back in. He was a heavier dude in the middle, and this whole v-neck tshirt trend was killing him. But with fall back in swing, he was fashionable once more. Chunky glasses were in style, and chunky dudes were sure to follow.
As a last touch, Mark put a black leather glove over his hook to maintain the surprise.
Just then, Mark’s mom yelled up the stairs. “Mark? Your friends are here.”
Mark yelled back, “Coming, mom!”
And Mark’s father yelled, “Jesus fucking christ, do we all need to yell all the time in this house? Maybe walk your fat ass up the stairs and just talk normal. Or be downstairs when you know your friends are coming. I can’t take this house anymore. I’m going to go in the laundry room and put my head in the washing machine and blow my fucking head off. At least that way you can just run the washer and clean up most of the mess, since no one seems to give a shit that this house has become a total sty. Those little white bumps on your eyelid, not the place where pigs live. Pigs are actually much cleaner than people think.”
Mark’s dad was kind of a shithead. Mark was too, but you’d feel a little sympathy for him if you know his dad was like this. One time Mark let the car run all the way out of gas, and Mark’s dad made an entire Powerpoint about why that was a problem and how the gaskets get dry and cracked, and he gave a full presentation to Mark and a few of Mark’s friends one night. That’s the kind of dickhead we’re talking about.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mark’s friends were waiting. Dale was dressed as Frankenstein. The doctor, not the monster. He was prepared for a long night of arguments and corrections. Mark’s other friend, Chip, was dressed as a werewolf, except there wasn’t a full moon, and because Chip demanded total accuracy when it came to werewolf lore, he just had on pretty much regular clothes and had a moon chart in his pocket, also prepared to spend most of the party arguing.
When Mark made it to the bottom of the stairs, Chip said, “So, what are you supposed to be?”
Mark said, “Get a load of THIS!” and he grabbed the fingers of his glove and pulled it off to reveal the hook.
Dale said, “Whoa.”
Chip said, “Yeah. Whoa. Where did you get that?”
Mark said, “The ARC, man! Remember the rule? Always check that barrel with the-”
Chip said, “Yes, we know the rule. You’ve told us the rule many times. You made a mixtape that was just a rap song where you rapped over the top of Tag Team’s ‘Whoop! There it Is” and all the words were about checking the cane barrel at the ARC.”
Mark said, “Upside down and inside out, is how you check that cane barrel, check it out!”
“Yes, that,” Dale said.
“And it’s ‘whooMp’,” Mark said.
“Can we go now?” Dale said.
~
The boys drove the quiet streets of their neighborhood towards the other neighborhood where the party was.
Chip and Dale sat up front, and Mark sat in the back. Chip whispered something to Dale, and they went back and forth a few times before Mark leaned forward between their seats and said, “Guys, what’s up?”
Chip said, “Listen, man. It’s the arm.”
Dale kept his eyes on the road, hands at 2 and 10. He said, “Yeah, man. It’s just. I think maybe that’s not cool to wear for a costume.”
Mark took the glove off again, and he snapped the hooks by flexing his hand. He said, “What in the fuck are you talking about?” He snapped the hooks near Dale’s ear, and Dale swatted Mark’s arm away.
Chip said, “Listen, man. It’s like. It’s like if your costume was just you in a wheelchair.”
“Or like you were retarded or something,” Dale said. “Or homeless.”
“Wait,” Mark said. “People go as homeless all the time.”
“Dude, not in 2015,” Chip said. “And Dale, don’t say retarded.”
“Sorry,” Chip said. “I meant differently-tarded.”
“Goddamnit,” Dale said.
“What?” Chip said.
Mark rolled back his sleeve, and he reached up and he flexed his arm so the hook opened, and he clamped it around the steering wheel.
Dale said, “Dude, what are you…is your arm black?”
Mark laughed and jiggled the wheel. “Yeah,” he said.
Dale said, “That’s like black face! Black arm. Black arm face. Dude, you CAN’T wear that to the party.”
Chip grabbed the arm, and he pulled it off the wheel. Then he tried to yank it off Mark’s body.
He said, “Yeah, man. That’s kinda fucked up.”
Mark pulled back, and Chip let go. Mark sat back in his chair. He said, “But what the fuck am I supposed to wear?”
~
Dale convinced Mark to wear the red clown nose that was always in his glovebox. He always had it in there, and sometimes he drove with it. Sometimes he even wore a shirt and tie and the clown nose, and at a stoplight, he’d have a coffee cup with a travel lid, and he’d try to drink from it with the nose on. And he’d just watch the driver next to him flip. That’s the kind of asshole Dale was, but at least he had a clown nose for Mark.
Mark put the nose on. It smelled like old coffee breath, but he figured he could rinse it out when he got to the party. Plus, his nose was kind of giant, so maybe this was the best when it came to picking up chicks. By the time this nose went back in Dale’s glovebox, it’d smell like all the pussy Mark ate out that night.
Sorry. That was from inside Mark’s head. Sometimes his shit just slips through. Gross. And untrue. Apologies.
The three boys arrived at the party. They locked the door, adjusted their costumes, and headed in. Dale repeated Mary Shelley’s prose under his breath. “Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea…”
Chip repeated moon phases to himself. “Full, waxing gibbous..”
Mark took a deep breath of coffee clown nose smell. He realized he still had the hook in his hand. He turned and ran back to the car. It was locked. Dale was responsible as fuck. Which is when Mark got an idea. He ran to another car parked on the block, and he hung the hook in the car’s door handle.
“Happy Halloween,” he said. Then he sneezed in his nose and it was either full of boogers or not. Kind of like when you fart and shit, sometimes it feels like it’s a lot, but really it’s not big deal. Mark figured it best to not check. No reason to shake his confidence now.