Wanna hear something really scary?
This week's rant will not be written by M.P., who is currently wringing his hands and gnashing his teeth over his '73 Maverick, which finally sputtered out sometime last night. Nor will it be written by Rev. G.D. Flantantino, who is currently being prevented by M.P. from doing a "bonafide slick, sweet laying on of aww yeah healin hands" upon said car.
This week's rant will be some garbage we found.
Literally.
Wanna hear something even scarier?
Last week, the dumpster at the Inconvenience Store was finally emptied. First time in over two centuries.
At the bottom of the trash, a leatherbound book was found. Upon its yellowed, handwritten pages we discovered the Conveninomicron, the long-lost Book of Inconvenience Stores. This week's rant comes from an incident enshrined in the book, from the year 1732. In the flowery scribbles of His Honor the Clerk Hammishious, we discovered a terrifying tale.
You may have heard that Halloween is a warmed over pagan holiday, something about dressing up in costumes to drive away evil spirits.
This is not true.
The actual origin of Halloween comes from an old Inconvenience Store rite, dating back from the tradeposts in the American Colonies.
Every year, on October 31, the clerks would get their revenge.
Shoplifting was then, as is now, a big problem. And once a year, the clerks would dress up in scary, devilish costumes and go door-to-door, scaring the thieving colonists into dropping all the candy and crap they'd stolen into the clerks' open sacks.
"Give us our cripe back ir we demons will put a pox upon your house," the clerks would scream. Somehow, today, this has been bastardized into "trick or treat".
And one year, late at night and still in his horrid costume, Hammishious was happily returning the stolen candy back to his shelves. Everyone else was asleep, and Hamm had nothing but the TV - well, actually, TV hadn't been invented so they just carved a face into a pumpkin and stuck a candle in and called it big entertainment - for company.
And then Hammishious heard the voice.
Eerie, unearthly, it was coming from...
The noise; he looked down, realized it was coming from...
His smock. "Wash me," it moaned. "Wash me."
"Shut thy arse up." Hammishious went back to stocking his shelves.
"Wash me." The smock crept up his chest, around his neck. "Wash me..."
"Oh, all right." Hammishious unwrapped the stinking, fetid deerskin smock from his neck, carried it to the well out back. "Down ye go," he lowered it in the bucket.
But when he reeled the bucket back up, the smock was nowhere to be seen. "Hello?" he called down in the well. No answer.
"Good riddance to ye, then." Hammishious walked back in the store, continued stocking the shelves.
OUTSIDE SHOT: THE SMOCK CRAWLING BACK UP THE WELL, ITS EYES (THE COMPANY WAS TOO CHEAP TO REMOVE THE HEADS FROM THE DEERSKIN) GLOWING GREEN. IT ADVANCES THROUGH THE MUCK, TO THE FRONT DOOR.
"Ah, I am tired." Hamm yawns, puts more candy up, kneeling in the aisle.
WIDE SHOT: HAMM IN AISLE, SMOCK CREEPING UP SHELF BEHIND HIM.
"I think I'll go to bed soon." Hamm struggles with the morality of putting a half-eaten chocolate bar on the shelf.
"Oh, what the Hades." He reaches over, screams.
SHOT FROM ABOVE: THE SMOCK JUMPS ON HAMMISHIOUS, STRANGLES HIM. HE FIGHTS IN VAIN.
"Beware... the red door..." Hammishious says with his last dying breath.
"The red door? What's that?" The smock looks round the store, notices two doors. One, the stockroom door, is painted red. The other, to parts unknown, is blue but has the word "red" painted on it.
"Great." The smock kicks Hammishious's corpse. "Mind telling which red door?"
ENTER M.P. MADDENSTEIN. HE SPOTS THE MURDEROUS SMOCK, WAVES A BROOM AT IT.
"Damn ye! That's the third clerk ye killed this week! And we still have established nae motivation for ye doin it, since Hammishious fulfilled yer request!!"
Maddenstein uses the broom to smite the smock. During the course of the battle, Maddenstein reaches over, grabs a bottle of Ye Old Catsup and pours it upon the smock.
"Fake blood," he explains.
"Ah," the smock says. Amidst a long rant about how cheap the special effects are, it perishes.
M.P. then took the smock and carried it into the blue door marked "red". He shut it behind him.
His screams echoed through the empty store, still do to this day.
Okay, so that's a lie.
"Hello?" Enter Random Drunken Townsman. "Is it too late to purchase ye old lager?"
The townsman, upon hearing the screams coming from the blue door marked "red", promptly raced to the red stockroom door.
His fingers shook as he opened it. "I think I smell beer," he said.
He stumbled inside.
"Weird." Maddenstein exits the blue door, mumbling about stupid company policy that requires him to scream loudly every time he enters a door which is an obvious plot device. "But what's that?"
Hanging from the red stockroom door is a bloody hook.
"Perhaps I'll wander into the cellar. If only I can find a lantern which refuses to light..."
Maddenstein creeps into the dark cellar. Loud animalistic rumblings can be heard.
CLOSE UP OF MADDENSTEIN'S FACE, TERRIFIED AND SCREAMING, BLOOD UBIQUITOUSLY DOUSING IT.
Maddenstein fell to the floor lifeless.
The floor, I mean. The floor was lifeless. M.P. is still alive. Barely.
He crawls back up the cellar stairs. Standing there is a woman wearing a red ribbon round her neck.
"Do not remove my ribbon..." she moans.
"Yeah, yeah, ir yir head'll fall off. Been there, done that." M.P. removes the ribbon.
Behind him, something dark and furry crawls up the stairs.
The Drunken Townsman comes back out from the stockroom. "Hey," he picks the head off the floor, "How much for this cool severed head?"
Just after making the transaction of selling the bloody head for once pence, M.P. tosses himself to the Dark Furry Thing from the Basement.
And thus the first Halloween decoration was sold.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ALL!!! AND STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY STORE, YOU SMELLY DISNEY-GARBED LITTLE RUGRATS!!!!