Page 2 of The HalloQueen

The Halloween store opening was to me like what I assume the lighting of the town Christmas tree is to people who weren’t raised by two pagan lesbians. And, thanks to millennial elder emos and gen-z witches, almost every store now carried spooky stuff in the fall, which has allowed me to hone the aesthetic of the brand even further.

“Do you need anything while I’m out?” I asked standing by her station.

A groan escaped her, clearly trying to alleviate the pressure in her skull, and she shook her head, causing the little white blonde spikes in her hair to dance like a porcupine.

“Are you sure? I’m happy to get you some greasy food or coffee. You’re no use to me hungover.”

“Oh god, Bels, I’m sorry. I didn’t know when I went out last night that I’d be this hungover. It was karaoke night and my date was a little extra. Shots were had. Bad decisions were made. Journey was sung.”

“Mmmmhmmm, and does that explain the hair too? Did you at least make the poor boy breakfast before you kicked him out?”

Shannon snorted and shook her head, her round face blushing to a shade of strawberry, “Of course not. I was at his house.Hefedme.”

I cackled and headed to the door, “alright, I’m heading out. I left a list for you of what I need done today. Drink some coffee, shake it off and get at it.”

“Yes, boss. Love you!”

I headed towards my black jeep, admiring her freshly washed shine, and noticed Shannon closing the window blinds behind me. I’d known Shannon for about ten years, having met in a sewing class at the local fabric store the summer before I started college and we’d become quick friends. Now, at 29, I found myself back in my hometown to help care for my moms, and Shannon found herself a single mom of two in need of a flexible job. We reconnected over pastries and since she’s the only adult I see regularly, so I supposed that made her my best friend. And by a regular basis, I meant at all. Since moving back to Quaker’s Wharf, schedules, families, and traveling had made it near impossible to reconnect with anyone I’d known from before I moved to Chicago. My phone was full of thread after thread of canceled, rescheduled, and forgotten meet-ups. Being an adult was busy for anyone, but owning your own boutique and posting your ass on the internet four times a day was more time consuming than anyone would think.

I started my car and inhaled the scent of pennyroyal and sage emanating from the small herb bundle hanging from my rearview mirror and headed toward the shopping district. Our small Boston suburb has very segmented districts due to the historical sites around town. After all, it wasn’t like the town would allow a developer to rip out a colonizer graveyard to put up a burger joint. Ergo, all the burger joints were on the outside of town, along with all of the shopping, which left the historic parts of the city to cater to the witch trial tourists and gave the locals a workaround so we could avoid said witch trial tourists. Cause, no, Deborah, I don’t want to take a picture of you with your head on a chopping block while your husband “ironically” cheers in the background, I want to go buy toilet paper.

The layout of the town worked well enough. My office was in the in-between, not quite in the shopping district where the rent is astronomical and not quite in the city center where you have to have a retail front for the tourists to paw through your shit. Maybe someday I’d be able to manage a brick-and-mortar for Deborah to wander through, but for now, I was happy in my office suite spending my days shaking my ass on the internet to hawk pleated skirts.

I pulled into the abandoned big box building and avoided ocean-sized potholes, trying to find a safe place to park so I could go into the pop-up store, already fearing that my credit card was going to catch on fire. I was in desperate need of almost everything - fabric, skulls, flowers, bones, bats, netting… I couldn’t even wrap my head around how much replacing all of it would cost, but thanks to Tim and the curtain rod, I was now firmly in the “spend money to make money” phase of my little boutique. There was nothing worse than finding an influencer who said they had an online boutique and then you clicked on their bio only to find a sloppy cash app site with grainy phone pictures - or worse, online stock photos. It made me want to shudder just thinking about it, and I refused for someone to think that about me.

It didn't help my credit card that I was just genuinely excited to head into the store for the first time this year. Adult Annabel in a Halloween store was about as bad as kid Annabel in a candy store. I tried to remind myself to stay focused and not go into a manic shopping spree with stars in my eyes and a crazy grin glued to my face, and to stick to list I’d planned. I was there on a mission. Buy the props, reintroduce myself to Andrew, flirt with him a bit, and mention the possibility of being able to order wholesale from him or purchase things at a discount at the end of the season. Get out of there and get back to work. I needed to keep my eye on the prize, and my lists were the easiest way to eliminate the distractions and keep my anxiety in check. I was easily distracted by shiny things.

I smoothed out my black skirtall dress and off-the-shoulder black and white striped crop top, pausing to make sure my leatherette choker with a black cat charm was centered, and triple checking I had business cards in my wallet. A spooky business boss should never walk into a Halloween store unprepared to borrow their customers. I snapped my knee-high socks to make sure there was enough of my fishnets peeking out between them and my skirt, and opened my car door. It was time to shop.

2

THOMAS

Opening day. How the fuck had I fallen so far from grace? How did I go from ? owner of the Herses’ Haunts, the number one walking ghost tour company in all of Boston, to commandeering a gods damned seasonal shop in Quaker's Wharf? I leaned against the counter and scratched my scalp, rustling the chin-length espresso strands out of their natural wave pattern, and sighed.

My hair was annoyingly shiny and kept catching my attention in my periphery, almost like my body somehow knew that mortals would be surrounding me for the next two months so I must be in peak predator mode.Oh, look at the scary demon - he’s so beautiful. What I would give to look like hell for just a minute! I yearned to be able to look like the abandoned piece of shit I was. It was my first season alone in 230 years and I didn’t want to be hunting for sources. I merely wanted to wallow in my heartbreak a little bit more. I wanted stained sweatpants and a beer belly. I wanted my outsides to match my insides. The magic that made me appear as a perfect lure all of the time was making me extraordinarily cranky lately, and that was saying something since I was never a particularly un-cranky kind of man.

I used a remote to turn on the LED open sign in the window and got myself comfortable for the ten-hour shift ahead. I took a moment to spin my fingers full of silver and turquoise rings and to scratch the disgustingly beautiful dusting of facial hair that was forever frozen in a perfect five o’clock shadow. I didn’t want to be sitting on a wobbly stool in an abandoned shell of a store. All I wanted was to go read a book, have a drink and forget about my ex-partners, butnon, I needed money, so I had to sell superhero costumes and slutty animal accessories to the insipid mortals of Quaker's Wharf. All. Damnsed. Day.

I didn’t bother to look up when the bell rang, signaling the arrival of the first stupid human of the morning. I’d been open five minutes - who the fuck spent their days waiting for the Halloween store to open?Like that was possibly the best way to spend their time.

“Bonjour,” I called out, picking up my worn copy of Edgar Allen Poe poems. Stereotypical, I know, but forgive me for missing the broody bastard.

“Good Morning,” a woman’s voice called back and I heard the carts rustle and clang as she removed one from the queue. The smell of sage slightly burned my nostrils, having wafted in with the woman, so I turned on my oil diffuser without even looking at it. I was always prepared. Some mortals smelled intoxicatingly delicious, but most? Most seem to have forgotten basic hygiene. The number of times I’d been assaulted by revolting body odors and rotten teeth could be counted as cruel and unusual punishment. The fact that I was created to appear as a perfectly beautiful man, designed as a quintessential predator, and yet the gods expected me to hunt unwashed, greasy snails was almost insulting.

I didn’t understand the need for my appearance to stand out in any room, it only drew unwanted attention to myself, especially when I prefer to be alone, but I also didn’t understand the need for such a drastic gap in aesthetic between us. I hadn’t even fed from a mortal in fifty years as I’d lost the taste for their unwashed flesh - hospital bags only for this guy - so why must I stick out like a fucking boy band member all the time?

Modern times were simpler for us and I appreciated the ease of ordering a set amount of blood and having it delivered in unmarked crates to whatever shop I was running at the time. We’d been doing it since the invention of the modern security system in Boston when it became dangerous to hunt. Blood delivery was safe and easy and kept us out of harm's way. Sure, there had been that one night when I’d been drunk off a bad bag and I scoured the streets of Boston to find a mortal to cure the burning thirst, but bad bags were rare, and that was the only one I’d personally come across. The experience only validated the expense of delivery when I was revolted by the salty tang of the mortal’s sweat that mixed with the acrid droplets of his bottom shelf body spray. I’d never gone back to the hunt for a meal after that, but sometimes I did have to get my hands dirty as I did in my acquisition of this establishment. Murders were few and far between for me in 2022. I’d learned a lot of lessons over my time as a vampire. One certainly being the lack of mortal hygiene, and the oil diffuser worked for both stinky and alluring kinds of mortals and helped me stay level-headed.

“Hey, I’m so sorry to bother you, but can you point me towards the decor section? I wasn’t expecting this place to be so big!” The woman stopped at the counter and her voice sent a snake sliding down my back creating a line of chill. From under my book, I could see the toes of black boots.

“There is a sign over there,” I said, pointing without putting my book down at the eight-by-four banner hanging from the ceiling. I appreciated that when I acquired the franchise the man had already ordered everything from the shelves to the signage, and my only task had been to hire a crew to assemble it, a team to help run the store, and set up a cash register. I’d created many businesses in Boston, so the basic tasks were not new to me, but in our many years I’d always been the man behind the curtain. Monique had been the one to lead the mortals in dumbstruck awe at her beauty through the streets of the city, or the woman behind the counter to seduce them into spending more money. Yusuf handled whatever slack needed to be picked up. I handled the business. She was the face, he was the filler, I was the fixer. It worked beautifully for us and yet, here I was, alone, sitting on this fucking stool, huffing essential oils and pointing at clearly marked signs while they were gods-only-knew where.

“Thanks,” She drew out the word like I’d offended her, which, fuck off if I had, go buy your coffin-shaped glue-on nails and leave me in peace. “Hey,” she spoke again, placing her hand atop the spine of my book causing me to release a small growl.

“What?” I snapped, before looking up and freezing at the lush ivy green eyes of the woman. She was of medium height and had obvious rolls and mounds under her fitted black dress. Overalls? Dress overalls? Whatever they were, they were fantastic on her supple form. Her clavicles were pronounced above her huge bust and she had a black metal outline of a cat’s head sitting directly on her jugular.

“Hi, good morning, are you the owner?” She asked, assessing me quickly, at least I’m sure she thought it was quickly. Her evaluation from my hair to belt probably only lasted a moment, but I saw the entire judgment pass over her face, first curious, then attracted, then confused, and finally accepting.

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