Chapter 6 #2
I toss my hair, mini skirt riding up scandalously with the motion. “Correction: it’s festive. Besides, Target is a temple. I’d get married there if the state allowed it. Until then, this is foreplay.”
“Foreplay?” Skully groans again, melodramatic as hell. “Darlin’, you can’t keep dangling words like that around me when I’m basically a head on stilts.”
“You’re a hot head on stilts,” I counter, sashaying up the sidewalk like this is my runway. “Now quit whining and look dangerous. We’re about to enter public society, and I want to see fear in suburban eyes.”
Bonehead throws both arms up like he’s winning a wrestling match. “Fear!” he bellows. A door slams shut down the street, someone’s dog starts barking, and I cackle.
By the time we hit the Target parking lot, the boys are already causing a scene.
Bonehead tries to smash carts by ramming two together so hard they squeal across the asphalt.
Skully steals a baseball cap off a car dash and perches it crookedly on his bare skull.
Marrow just…stands there, moonlight catching on his witch hat like he’s posing for a gothic romance cover no one asked for.
I clap my hands like a kindergarten teacher herding feral toddlers. “Alright, squad! Formation. We go in, we buy ritual supplies, we don’t eat the cashier. Skully, that’s aimed at you.”
He snorts. “Please. I’d never eat a cashier. Maybe sacrifice them for a new cock, though.”
“Progress!” I chirp.
The automatic doors whoosh open in front of us, and I march inside like I own the place, my skeleton boy band clattering and stomping behind me. The greeter drops his clipboard. A toddler points and screams. A soccer mom visibly crosses herself.
I flash them all my brightest doll-eyed smile. “What? Haven’t you ever seen a girl bring her boyfriends to Target?”
Target is lit like an alien mothership inside, bright white beams that make my mascara smudges look like war paint. My skeleton boy band clatters in behind me, disguises hanging on by sheer audacity.
Bonehead instantly veers into the dollar section, scooping up three plastic pumpkins and trying to wear them like jewelry. They fall straight through his chest cavity, thunking onto the floor. “Broken,” he declares, deeply offended.
Skully’s sunglasses slide off his face the second the air conditioning hits him, clattering to the tile. He stomps on them in protest, then grabs a novelty witch broom and straddles it. “Oi, darlin’, look—I’m a fuckin’ wizard reject.”
“Focus!” I hiss, grabbing his broom tail before he can joust a toddler. “We need binding supplies. Candles, chalk, rope, maybe some hot glue if things get kinky.”
“Glue?” Bonehead perks up. “Smash glue?”
“Not for smashing, baby.” I pat his rib. “For rituals.”
He tilts his head, sockets blank but eager. “Ritual smash?”
“Sure.”
Marrow, meanwhile, has gravitated to the home décor aisle like a moth to a gothic flame.
He lifts a throw pillow embroidered with Live, Laugh, Love and stares at it like it personally insulted him.
“This…is an abomination. Hallow! Bereft of soul. No poetry, no grace.” He crushes it in both skeletal hands until the seams burst, foam guts spilling onto the floor.
“I shall cleanse the world of its offense.”
A passing employee freezes, eyes wide, mouth opening on some version of “Can I help you?” but I step in fast, flashing my brightest, doll-eyed grin.
“Hi! Don’t mind us, just…filming a TikTok.” I wave vaguely at the skeleton trio. “Performance art. Very avant-garde. Hashtag viral.”
The kid stares another beat, then flees, leaving the foam pillow entrails scattered at our feet.
Skully snorts. “Viral’s right, love. We’re a walking infection.”
I ignore him, dragging my cart into seasonal décor where plastic skulls grin down at me like cousins at a family reunion. “Okay, boys. Rule of thumb: if it looks spooky and vaguely cult-y, we’re buying it.”
Bonehead immediately sweeps six bags of fake spiderwebs into the cart. Skully snags a scented candle labeled “Harvest Apple” and groans, “This smells like your nan’s arsehole.” He throws it at Bonehead, who catches it like a baseball and tries to bite it open. Wax shards rain onto the floor.
Marrow is kneeling in front of a shelf of black pillar candles, stroking one reverently. “Ah,” he intones. “This one whispers to me of eternity.”
“It’s five ninety-nine,” I point out.
“Eternity at a bargain,” he breathes.
I throw it in the cart.
By the time we hit checkout, the cart is overflowing: chalk, rope, a suspiciously large box of knives Bonehead insisted were battle supplies, and an entire collection of spray paint that Skully promised to use artistically—translation: dicks on everything.
Marrow has contributed three black candles shaped like crying cherubs and a roll of lace ribbon he declared fit for a funeral.
And somewhere along the way Bonehead added a rubber chicken, swearing it was: “Totem, very important.”
There’s also a crate of edible glitter and a gallon of edible fake blood rattling around in the corner, because I blacked out for a second and suddenly I own it.
The cart squeals like a dying pig as I push it, every turn leaving a trail of loose sequins, spilled candy corn, and what might actually be dirt from the grave-themed potting soil Marrow insisted we needed for symbolism.
People stare. Mothers clutch their children. A guy in cargo shorts mutters “cosplay freaks” under his breath, and all three skeletons freeze to glare at him until he power-walks down the aisle like his Crocs are on fire.
We roll up to the register, and the cashier’s face does that thing where she’s not sure if she should ask questions or call security. Bonehead slams his pile of deviled egg supplies, fake blood, and the rubber chicken onto the belt, crowing, “Totem!” like it explains everything.
“Shhh, baby,” I coo, patting his ribs like he’s a rowdy golden retriever. “Let Mommy handle this.”
Bonehead preens at the word Mommy so hard he knocks over the impulse-buy magazine rack.
Meanwhile, Marrow is gently placing the black cherub candles on the counter one by one, like holy relics. He turns his skull toward me, sockets burning with reverence. “They pale beside you, beloved.”
I melt on the spot.
Skully, of course, lounges against the card reader, bony elbows propped, his sockets never leaving me. “Tell me again, October-Baby,” he drawls, voice low and smoky. “Which of us gets bound to your flesh first? Candlelight, rope, your pretty little hands chalking the floor—I want the picture.”
My thighs actually press together hard enough to squeak. The cashier makes a small strangled sound, like maybe she’s seen enough weird TikToks to know this is above her pay grade.
“Uh…” she says, trying to scan the gallon of fake blood without looking anyone in the eye. “Big plans tonight?”
“Yes,” all three skeletons answer at once, in three completely different tones—Bonehead booming, Skully purring, Marrow reverent.
The cashier freezes, caught between a horror movie and a fever dream. Her scanner beeps weakly against the gallon of blood like it’s crying for help.
I lean in, glossy lips curling too wide. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s consensual.”
Her hand slips. She scans the edible glitter twice, too rattled to fix it. I don’t correct her.
Bonehead slams his rubber chicken on the conveyor again like a judge’s gavel. “Totem!” he bellows. Everyone in line jumps.
“Shhh, baby,” I croon, patting his ribs. “We’ll worship your chicken later.”
Skully leans over the card reader, sockets locked on me, bony voice dropping low enough to vibrate the gum rack. “Careful, October-Baby,” Skully drawls, sockets flicking down my body. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll forget we’re in Target.”
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper. “If I keep looking at you like this, everyone will forget we’re in Target.”
Meanwhile, Marrow places the gallon of fake blood gently between two candles, like it’s sacramental wine. “This crimson, though false, will spill for you as truly as my own would. Let it baptize our resurrection. Let it christen your flesh.”
I grab the nearest pack of Twizzlers, clutching it like a rosary. “Father, forgive me, for I’m about to fuck a skeleton on a cash register.”
The woman behind us whispers, “What the fuck,” to her husband, who mutters back, “Performance art.”
By the time my card goes through—on the third try, because my hands are shaking from horny hysteria—Bonehead is hugging a couple bags to his chest like they’re babies.
Skully is loudly accusing the cashier of being jealous of my slutty necromancer energy as he snatches the chicken out of another bag.
And Marrow, well he’s serenading me with Shakespearean death sonnets while trying to sweep me into a classic ballroom dance.
I blow the cashier a kiss as I swipe the receipt straight into my bra. “Thanks, doll. If you see a Yelp review about a blood-soaked binding orgy, five stars only.”
She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t breathe. She might be dead.
I clap my hands. “Okay, boys! Cart’s full, livers are empty, and we’ve got rope to sanctify. March!”
Bonehead stomps so hard the floor shakes. Skully gives me a mock salute with the rubber chicken. Marrow tips his witch hat at me like a Victorian corpse groom.
I strut out first, heels clicking like gunshots, while my bone boy band parades behind me like the worst possible Macy’s float.