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CRAPPY HALLOWEEN STORES
by Ashley 'Danger' Meeks
The conference room at the Holiday Inn was packed. Was it the monthly membership meeting of the Friends of the Indoor Pool? Was it the banquet committee, there to rally for fewer cello-wrapped donuts and more thin plastic containers of Honeycombs in the continental breakfast?
No. The shuffling men and women, in their cheap Fashion Bug suits and Rite Aid cologne, sweat-stained pits covered by dark jackets, they clutched the bright orange fliers that had been folded into their windshield wipers while they parked outside the Dollar Queen one gloomy Wednesday: Open A Crappy Halloween Store And Make A Few Bucks! They were there to see the ad's promise made good - they were there because deep in their cold stressy hearts they all nurtured a sacred dream, to open up their own Crappy Halloween Stores...
As all who attend the social destination The Mall know, the Crappy Halloween Store Chain is an easy way for its owners to make money pirate claw over severed vinyl foot. Overhead costs include nothing more than:
- $47 in initial investment into raw plastic and acrylics
- outlets in which to plug in the life-size Freddys and spider-covered mummies
- an 88 cent tape of ghoulish sounds
Aside from a really keen selection of gruesome masks, a wall of chalky facepaints, a selection of plastic wigs so ratty you're guaranteed to look like a Rastafarian or a rape victim if you don't sit perfectly still all night, The Crappy Halloween Store's costume packages are inspired by the fever dreams of suffocating ants.
Couple's costumes include: Plug and Socket, Two Planes Refueling and the always popular Butter Churn and Dowel.
Costumes for men include: Whoopee Cushion, Harry Potter, Spiderman, Caveman, Viking, Pirate and Vampire.
Costumes for girls have disappeared and have been replaced entirely with stripper costume stock deemed too tired and cliched for the pole-dancing crowd: Officer Pussy Police Chick, Naughty Nurse Ratchet, Shaggedy Anne, Sister Mary Fornication, Alice in Underwearland.
In the wake of the recent bombing of France into a giant, Roquefort-and-champagne-scented crater, the U.S. took all possibly French costumes, such as Hippy, Beatnik, and Lady Liberty out into the street and shot them. This also made room for Lady La Vaca plus-sized costumes - Big Bo Peep, Husky Red Riding Hood, and Austin Holy Crap You're Huge! among them.
By the end of the night, each of the 12 coffee-jittery over-made-up aspiring entrepreneurs had bitten their lips, their nails, and their cuticles to bleeding with the anticipation of making 900 percent markup on non-returnable degrading plastic drek. With the seminar organizers' receipt of those dozens of certified checks, the sound of heart murmurs humming like a mothership, all received a key to a hollow metal door in a mall in the tri-state area, a key to a register. As celebration, like drinking pulque made from the fermented glass-shredding vomit of a homeless Jack o'Lantern man, all the new Crappy Halloween Costume Store Managers took a dozen burny swigs from a gallon bottle of Candy Corn flavored Schnapps. The man with the most myocardial infractions screwed up his face to toss back the styro cup.
"Here's to one hell of a holiday season."
About the author
Ptiza Odelay was created in a factory by Nazi scientists during World
War II. She was to be the ultimate weapon against the Allies, but
before she grew into maturity in her birthing tank, the war ended and
the project was scrapped. Years later, she was found still in her tank
in a hidden sub-basement of a warehouse in Berlin and inadvertently
shipped to the United States. During transit the casing of the tank
was ruptured and she was born seemingly in her early twenties with all
of the knowledge of mankind programmed into her brain. She speaks
eighty languages and has been known to crush diamonds with her bare
hands. She is wanted in twenty countries and was last seen diving into
an active volcano somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In her spare time,
she writes popular children's fiction, erotica and groundbreaking
journalism under the name Ashley "Danger" Meeks.Read her 'Confessions of a Recovering Teenager' column
