I’m leaving this one hanging at the end not because I’m tired and I need to catch up on my sleep… okay not just because of that, but because I deliberately want to come back to these characters later.

“Excuse me,” the guy in the Hawaiian shirt started. “I’m looking for dismembered fingers?”

“Oh,” Raymond said, “I know exactly where those are – this aisle over here.” Raymond led the man past plastic witches and through an aisle of dinosaur masks, past life-size plastic skeletons. “Here they are,” he said taking a plastic bag of fake-blood stained rubber fingers complete with white bone sticking out the stump-end.

“Dude, this is perfect! Thanks!”

“You bet! Happy Halloween!”

“Why are you so chipper,” said the animatronic witch at the end of the aisle.

“Margarita stop playing around,” Raymond said.

“I don’t know who you’re talking to. There’s no Margarita here,” the witch said. “There’s just a spooky witch! Hahahahaha,” the rubber-faced witch cackled.

“Margarita get out of there. Last time you jumped into the wolfman you screwed up the electronics.”

The animatronic witch stopped abruptly, and a luminescent light shimmered out of it and then solidified into the shape of a teenage girl wearing a “Halloween Store!” apron and a surly expression. “Jesus, Raymond, when’d you get so uptight? Just trying to have a little fun!”

“Fun is breaking expensive merchandise?”

“Actually,” a genuine smile stole across her face, “Yeah.”

Raymond rolled his eyes and turned away sighing.

“Oh, come on, Raymond, you know I wasn’t going to break it.”

“Uh, wolfman?”

“That thing was unshielded crappy wiring from the shady part of China. You can’t blame that on me.”

“Well I do.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What are you going to do? Fire me?”

“Maybe I should,” he said weakly.

“Seriously, mano, we’re dead. What more can they do to us? Deport us?”

“Don’t even joke about that,” he said overly serious. “If Trump could find a way to deport dead illegals, don’t think he wouldn’t! I bet he’s got that pendejo Stephen Miller dressed in a black cloak around a pentagram trying to figure out how to exorcise us back to Guadalajara!”

Margarita snickered.

“I’m not even kidding! If they knew that we were taking jobs from not just Americans, but live, breathing white people,” he shook his head sadly. “They’d replace the presidential limo with Ecto-1 and come gunning for us with proton packs.”

Margarita outright snorted. “Mano, you’re loco. Besides, it’s not like we’re taking actual paying jobs.”

“Sure, but you’ve got a choice to hang out our there,” he pointed to the sunlit front door, “in the shadows, or actually interact with people in here.”

“Ma’am,” a woman and her daughter approached Margarita. “Does this Jasmine costume come in a larger size?”

“Uh, no, sorry, ma’am. What is on the rack is all we have.”

“Are you sure? I mean, aren’t you haven’t even going to check in back?”

“Ma’am, I’m sure. We don’t hold inventory back there. Everything is on the floor.”

The woman rolled her eyes in frustration. “That doesn’t sound right. Can I speak to your manager?”

“All yours, mano,” she said to Raymond and then abruptly vanished. The woman dropped the costume she was holding and her daughter started to cry.

“Ha, ha, ha, great joke,” Raymond tried to cover. “Let me check in back for that Jasmine costume, ma’am…”

Margarita materialized on the other side of the store in the costume makeup aisle.

“Careful,” a voice came, “You’re going to scare the living.”

Margarita looked for the source of the voice. A man stood at the end of the aisle looking at her with a half-smile. “Isn’t that half the point,” she said. “Do I know you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m, uh, new. It’s my first Halloween and I thought, I don’t know, the Halloween store seemed like it might be a pretty good place for a ghost,” he gave a weak smile.

“New? When’d you die?”

“You get right to the point, don’t you?” he laughed nervously. “Six months ago. About. Car crash. Well, the car crashed. I mean, into me. Hit by the car. Sorry,” he nervously scratched the back of his head, “I’m not used to talking about it…”

“Don’t hang out with ghosts much?”

“Well, I mean, uh… no. No I don’t.”

“What’s wrong, you ghostist?” she said accusingly. He backed up palms raised in defense. She laughed. “I’m messing with you, man. What’s your name?”

“Augie.”

“Augie? They still name kids that?”

“Well, me, yes. August – it’s a family name.”

“It’s a season.”

“Well, fair, fair.” He stared at his feet. “What’s your name?”

“Margarita.”

“That’s a drink.”

“Hi season,” she said stepping forward raising her hand, “I’m a drink.”

Augie smiled, shook her hand, “Hi drink. I’m a season.”

“Please to meet you, Augie,” she smiled. “I don’t run into too many ghosts.”

“Well, honestly, you’re my first,” Augie said.

“You want to, I don’t know, go haunt some place?”

“Like right now?”

“We’re not getting any deader, you know?”

Augie thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, let’s go haunting.”

“Let me tell my brother first.”

Margarita found Raymond still talking to the woman about the lack of a large size Jasmine costume. The woman’s back to her, Margarita decided to walk right through the woman. Unsurprisingly, the woman shrieked. “I’m going out for a bit, mano. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Margarita!” Raymond yelled. “Ma’am, that was a pretty neat trick, wasn’t it? Sorry she startled you with that illusion…”

“Come on, Augie, let’s go.”

“Lead on,” he smiled and followed her out the door.

To be continued…