Chapter 5 #3
Skully groans. “If I had a humerus for every time I heard that, I’d…actually, never mind, I do have a humerus.” Then he uses one arm to just…remove the other, and starts swinging it around.
The sky’s bleeding from black into gray when we round the corner, my cart squealing like a demon guinea pig every few feet.
Bonehead clomps behind me with his headstone still in hand, Skully drags his own arm along the sidewalk just to make noise, and Marrow keeps whispering shit like “The horizon weeps for us, darling” like we’re in a Gothic opera instead of bum-fucking suburbia.
“Almost there,” I whisper, dragging the cart over a crack in the pavement that makes it look like the world is splitting open.
That’s when he appears.
The jogger.
Middle-aged, neon windbreaker, earbuds in, moving at the speed of a hungover snail. His face is all serene, the zen of cardio. Until he sees us.
Four figures emerging from the fog. One half-naked girl in a glitter-smeared nightgown pushing a cart full of cupcakes and plastic bones and three skeletons trailing behind her like a nightmare Home Depot commercial.
He freezes mid-step, mouth falling open.
I wave brightly. “Morning!”
Bonehead perks up and waves back—except his wave involves hurling the headstone into the nearest yard like he’s signing autographs. It crushes a garden gnome with a sound like a toddler’s soul leaving its body.
The jogger screams.
Skully loses his shit. Doubles over, clutching his ribcage. “Christ almighty, mate, you sound like a kettle getting fucked.”
Jogger bolts, sneakers slapping pavement like gunfire.
“Oh no you don’t!” Bonehead bellows, and starts chasing him.
“Bonehead!” I shriek, tearing after them, my nightgown flapping indecently. “We don’t traumatize before breakfast!”
Marrow doesn’t run. He glides. Of course he fucking glides. He appears right in front of the poor man like an aristocratic jump scare, arms wide, voice velvet death: “Do not flee. The dawn itself cannot save you.”
The jogger lets out a scream so high-pitched it could shatter glass before faceplanting onto someone’s driveway.
Bonehead stomps to a stop over him, looking down, baffled. “He broke?”
Skully’s wheezing on the curb, tears in his empty sockets. “Oh, God, that’s the best cardio I’ve had since ’89.”
I scramble up, grab the jogger’s neon windbreaker, and haul him up with all the authority of a drunk kindergarten teacher corralling feral toddlers. His eyes are bugging, spit foaming on his lip.
I slap his cheeks lightly. “Hey. Shhh. It’s okay. You didn’t see skeletons. You saw…uh…trick-or-treaters.”
“It’s not Halloween,” he gasps.
“Early birds,” I chirp. Then I grab his earbuds and shove them back in his ears. “Go jog your trauma out, champ. Hydrate.”
The poor man stumbles away, muttering prayers, his neon windbreaker blinking in the dawn light like an emergency beacon.
I whirl on the boys, hands on hips. “Okay, rule number one: no chasing cardio dads before I’ve had my spooky latte. Got it?”
Bonehead looks disappointed, skull tilted. “But smash.”
Skully’s still cackling. “Fuckin’ priceless. He’s gonna tell his wife about us, and she’s gonna think he finally cracked from SoulCycle.”
Marrow, of course, bows. “Forgive us, beloved. We are…unused to the mortal world.”
I sigh, pussy fluttering as I watch my romantic skeleton bow to me. “God, I love you idiots.”
Bonehead perks up instantly. “Love?”
I nod enthusiastically. “Of course! What else could this warm, full feeling in my chest be? I’ve never loved anything before, but I assume that’s what this is.”
Bonehead straightens, puffing up his ribcage like he just won prom king. “She loves me!” he bellows, smacking his own sternum so hard it echoes down the street. “Bonehead win!”
“Christ, calm down,” Skully groans, dragging a bony hand down his empty sockets like he’s massaging a hangover he doesn’t even have the organs for. “She said idiots—plural. That means all three of us, you daft slab.”
Marrow, though—Marrow lowers himself onto one knee like a knight kneeling before his queen, mist curling reverently around his femurs.
“If this is love, then I shall cherish it with every fracture of my soul.” He takes my hand in both his skeletal ones, thumb bones stroking reverently across my knuckles.
“Allow me to devote myself to you, here, before the sun.”
I’m giggling so hard I almost fall over, glitter sticking to the sweat on my thighs. “Oh my God, stop, you’re killing me. This is—it’s like being courted by a Shakespearean skeleton, a WWE skeleton, and a skeleton who just realized he lost his dick.”
Skully points at me with a sharp clatter. “Oi. Don’t reduce me to me missing tackle. I’ve got charm, wit, and killer cheekbones. Or I would, if I had cheeks.”
“You’ve got nothing,” Bonehead snorts, stomping one massive foot. “No dick. No smash. Just talk.”
“Talking gets more pussy than smashing, mate,” Skully fires back.
I gasp like they just dropped the nuclear option. “Incorrect. This Halloween pussy is an equal opportunity employer.”
They all pause. The street is quiet except for my words hanging there like a neon sign in the mist.
Then Bonehead lets out a bellowing laugh, bending so low his skull nearly smacks the pavement. “Pussy!” he crows, like he just learned his favorite new word. “Mine!”
“Mine!” Skully argues immediately, clattering to his feet, chest puffed out like he’s about to square up.
Marrow just stares at me, sockets full of reverence, voice low and dramatic. “If she is the pussy of Halloween itself, then she belongs to no one. She is ours only as long as she allows it. She is the moon. She is the grave’s whisper. She is-”
“Okay,” I cut in, waving both hands, my nightgown slipping scandalously down one shoulder. “Wow. Yes. Beautiful. Ten out of ten monologue. But, uh, can we maybe not scream about Halloween pussy in the middle of my cul-de-sac at sunrise? I’m already on thin ice with the HOA.”
Bonehead blinks. “HOA smash?”
“Yes,” I sigh, tugging the cart toward home again. “Smash the HOA. Later. First, let’s get you boys inside before someone calls the cops.”
Skully snorts, sauntering after me like a punk rocker with too much time to kill. “Yeah, right. Imagine the report: ‘Three skeletons spotted with a half-naked woman pushing a haunted shopping cart.’ They’d lock him up, not us.”
Bonehead thunders after me, muttering, “Halloween pussy mine…”
And Marrow glides silently behind, murmuring poetry to my spine like it’s scripture.