All Hallows Mixup

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She looked down her long wart-humped nose at the ghoul sitting beside her, “Yeah. Sort of.”

They were commiserating over glasses of Spider Leg Lager at the local brew pub two weeks before the traditional All Hallows Eve haunting.
She was on her third trying hard to forget what she had witnessed. She was doing her best to get over the sense of fear and betrayal that permeated through her withering green-grey skin; trying to understand the reason for what they had done to her, what they made her see. And why? Why now? Perhaps at that winter gift-giving holiday a few weeks away she could see them acting like this; when that chubby little red-suited guy came calling with his message of peace and good cheer. Maybe then. But not now. Not two weeks before they were expected to do what they do every year.

Her faceless companion turned his presence her way, “It can’t be all that bad,” he breathed as the fog drifted around the room. “Surely we can fix it. What exactly is the problem?”

She took another swig of her Spider Leg and sighed, “It’s the cats, my lovely black cats. They’re not crossing unsuspecting paths, they’re not shape-shifting, and they’re not even drawing their claws as innocent children walk by. In fact, as they started across the step of a rather lucrative human kill earlier today, they started to purr and wound themselves around his ankles. One of them even released a mouse this morning as I was filling the cauldron. What am I going to do? I’ve got two weeks to fix this.

“You’ll be fine, they’ll come around. But for now, let’s paint a big white stripe down their black backsides. That’ll make everyone scream!”