Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The morning after a date always looks the same: sugar crash, questionable life choices, and a pile of Halloween plushies that judge me harder than any priest ever could.
“Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Bones,” I mutter, shoving a plush skeleton face-down into the blankets. “You’d have run too.”
By ten a.m., I’m upright. By noon, I’m dressed.
Progress. I tug on an oversized sweater that says Peek-a-Boo with a ghost flashing her tits, pair it with a leather mini skirt and ripped tights, and call it balance.
The neighbors probably call it a cry for help.
Whatever. Their porches don’t even have pumpkins.
Detective Clawson greets me in the kitchen—one of my skeletons dressed in a thrift-store trench coat—a plastic magnifying glass duct-taped to his hand.
He guards the pantry like a gumshoe on a stakeout.
“Morning, Detective,” I chirp, ruffling his hat.
“You missed the action last night. Another perp fled the scene.”
Clawson stares stoically ahead. I salute him with my mug. “That’s what I thought too. Jumpy. Couldn’t handle the spiders.”
Breakfast is—don’t laugh—pumpkin hot chocolate. With candy eyeballs floating on top. It’s liquid cavity, but coffee tastes like regret, and I’m not in the mood to punish myself today.
Laptop open, I log into MournHub. Inbox: full. My fingers wiggle like I’m about to play a concerto. Obituaries are my love language.
Geraldine P., age 83. Survived two husbands, one heart bypass, and four hip replacements before meeting her ultimate foe: a rogue Roomba on hardwood floors.
Beautiful. Concise. Poetic. I wipe chocolate foam off my nose and cackle, which is exactly when the doorbell rings.
“Of course,” I mutter, sucking marshmallow fluff off my spoon. “No one respects art.”
I peek at the Ring camera feed—my front porch is draped in orange-and-purple lights, with motion-activated ghosts dangling from the awning, shrieking every time the wind so much as sneezes.
Three animatronic zombies are permanently frozen mid-lurch on the steps, jaws clacking like they’re trying to gnaw their way inside.
The fog machine churns out mist so thick the whole yard looks like Silent Hill with better lighting.
And then there are the skeletons. Dozens of them.
Big ones, small ones, dog ones, all planted across the porch and into the yard like a bone militia.
Some sit in the graveyard I built in the grass, propped against tombstones with cute epitaphs like Here Lies Carl—He Never Called Back.
Others lean casually against the porch railing, as if waiting for trick-or-treaters to show up three weeks early.
And then there are the big boys. Not one, not two, but five twelve-foot skeletons loom over my lawn like horny guardians of hell. The first stands like a sentinel by the walkway, arms crossed, skull tilted at just the right angle to radiate judgment. The other four? Well…they’re busy.
I’ve dressed them in wigs and lingerie, fishnets stretched over plastic femurs, neon lace cupping their bony hips.
One’s wearing a platinum-blonde wig and a push-up bra that could double as a hammock.
Another has on a mullet and crotchless panties.
One has on a leather jacket that cost me a small fortune, and jeans unbelted and hanging at his knees.
And the last one is wearing a gorilla suit with a convenient velcro system that leaves his pelvis exposed.
Together they’re posed in what I can only describe as a full-blown skeleton orgy tableau: one girl skeleton on all fours, three guy skeletons in various positions beneath and above her, all locked in a bone-on-bone pile straight out of a very confused Pornhub search.
And because I believe in art direction, the scene is guarded.
Around them stands a ring of smaller skeletons dressed like warriors—Viking helmets, plastic swords, even a gladiator shield I hot-glued rhinestones to.
They’re frozen mid-battle stance, like anyone approaching the bone orgy better come correct or not come at all.
Honestly? It’s my best work.
The doorbell rings again, sharp and impatient, and I don’t even need eyes to know who it is. Only one person in this world would have the sheer audacity to stand beneath my skeleton orgy display and ring like the Avon lady.
“October Halloway!” Comes the sharp voice of my mother, already shrill enough to rattle my pink bone chandelier in the next room. “Open this door right now!”
I smirk, propping my chin in my palm, watching her tiny, horrified silhouette on the Ring camera as she cranes her neck to stare up at the twelve-foot orgy. She actually slaps a hand over her eyes like they’re going to jump down and give her a lap dance.
“October!” She shouts, voice muffled by her palm.
I coo sweetly at the screen. “Aw, Mommy’s uncomfortable.”
But then something far more exciting pops up on the feed: the mailman, trudging up the walkway in his little shorts and knee socks, clutching a stack of envelopes like they might save him. Poor thing doesn’t know he’s about to be part of the show.
“Hold on, Mother!” I sing, bouncing off the couch. “Priority business!”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “What priority business could possibly-”
Click.
I press the remote on my keychain, and the front yard comes alive like hell just got a fog machine sponsorship.
The three lurching zombies spring forward with a synchronized groan.
The motion-activated ghosts drop from the awning and screech in chorus.
And my pièce de résistance? Two giant bat animatronics rigged to a pulley system swoop down from the porch roof with glowing red eyes, shrieking like banshees as they dive-bomb the poor mailman.
He screams—a high, beautiful falsetto that echoes all the way through the feed—flings the entire stack of envelopes into the fog, and bolts down the walkway like Satan himself is on his tail.
I collapse against the door, laughing so hard I nearly choke. “Oh my God, he ran faster than last week’s UPS guy! Ten out of ten! Olympic potential!”
Through the door, my mother shrieks, “What is wrong with you?!”
I beam, wiping tears from my eyes, and fling the door open like it’s a Broadway reveal. She immediately pushes past me into the house, clutching a Tupperware like a weapon. “Hi, Mom! You look…beige.”
She sniffs, her gaze immediately snagging on the bar cart, where my bottles of gin and rum are labeled in glitter vinyl—Witch’s Brew, Vampire Tears, Corpse Reviver. “Honestly,” she huffs. “Don’t you ever get tired of…this?” She waves her free hand at the liquor like it’s actively possessed.
“Which part?” I beam, sweeping an arm down the hallway where fog curls low across the carpet, then gesture to the neon Rest In Pieces sign flickering pink above the cart. “The ambiance? The commitment? The branding?”
Her eyes narrow, scanning farther until they land on the wall of framed obituary clippings I’ve carefully arranged like family portraits. She actually staggers. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’ve decorated with dead people now?”
“Correction,” I chirp, plopping onto the coffin coffee table like it’s my throne. “I’ve decorated for them. It’s called respect.”
She sighs, the kind of sigh that suggests she’s auditioning for sainthood. “You’re impossible.”
“Correct!” I pop the lid of the Tupperware she shoves into my hands, trying not to grimace at the quinoa and boiled chicken. “But at least I’m memorable. Can you honestly say that about your beige cardigans and…whatever this is?”
Her eyes narrow, and for a moment I swear she considers gouging out my eyes with her boring, blunt, and polish-free nails. Honestly, it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to her.
Boa Gary rattles faintly in the corner, like he’s laughing with me. I pat his skull in solidarity. “See? Even Gary agrees. Beige is a sin.”
Mom groans. “You named the skeleton Gary.”
“Named?” I gasp, wounded. “Mother, that’s Gary. He has a boa, a backstory, and more personality than half the men I’ve dated. Show some respect.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re twenty-something years old. You can’t live like this forever.”
I grin, sharp and sweet. “Twenty-something? Wow. Thanks, Mom. Nothing like being reduced to a vague demographic bracket by the woman who literally pushed me out of her vagina.”
She winces. “Do you have to be so vulgar?”
“Absolutely,” I chirp, taking a bite of the food when she gestures at me to eat. I instantly start gagging and spit it out before grabbing my own cauldron shaped container off of my counter, completely abandoning the monstrosity that she calls food.
I return to her with my prize—triple chocolate cookies—and continue talking as if I didn’t have to find a way to purge the memory of quinoa from my tastebuds.
“Besides, I’m twenty-five. Halfway to spinster, three-fourths to crypt keeper, and fully committed to the aesthetic.
Peak chaos. Prime time for bad decisions. ”
“That’s not prime time, sweetheart.” Her voice softens, face slackening with exhaustion, which is worse than yelling. “That’s almost thirty. Most women your age are thinking about stability. Marriage. Families. Your sisters are all-”
The cookie turns to dust in my mouth. But I laugh anyway, too loud, too bright, cutting her off. “Please. I am stable. Look at Gus and Petunia—healthiest pumpkin family on the block.”
“Pumpkins,” she says flatly.
“They’re very supportive!”
She just looks at me, and it’s that look that does it. The quiet, assessing one. Like she’s cataloguing my flaws for later. Like she’s already picturing the before photo of my life and praying for an after.
“You can’t hide behind Halloween forever,” she murmurs finally. “It’s cute now, but what happens when it isn’t?”
The words land sharper than I want them to. Cute now, but what happens when it isn’t?