Something Old, Something New
(A “Brainwave of Horror” story with foreword by Jafar.)
by Letcher Kimes
Prequel
It’s been almost 20 years since the last Brainwave of Horror. When my friend Letcher said he’d finished a Halloween story ... just three weeks too late, I offered to write a cheesy “wrapper” for the story for him, in traditional BoH format. Please don’t let that detract from his story, though! I have a penchant for bad puns (okay, make that: puns that may even cause stomach upset) that Letcher does not let himself stoop to. The little punstorm I scribbled should not reflect badly on Letcher.
A pumpkin walks into a bar. It’s not Halloween night—that was three weeks ago—but he looks pretty ragged.
The bartender nods to him, “Brandy?”
“A fine girl. But any type of boos you’ve got, Dave. Just make it strong.”
He sits down beside a man with a patch over one eye, waits for his glass, downs it in one toss, and signals the bartender for another.
“You look like something the Halloween dragged in,” the man with the patch mutters. “No offense intended.”
“None taken. And I’ve been running for my life since that night.”
The man with the patch raises his eyebrows, one of them peeking over the top of his patch. “You jafaren’t serious, are you? Running for your life?”
Jack nods, downs the second shot and signals for a third. “My name’s Jack, by the way. Jack Lantern.”
“Heh,” the guy nods, “me too.”
Jack looks at him. “You’re ... one-eyed Jack, then?”
“Guess I am. So ... been rough since Halloween, hungh?”
“Well, I had a little battery-powered lantern as part of my costume. But I must have drained the juice from the batteries, and was just walking down the street in the dark.”
“Bummer.”
“Some kids came up, and I gave the dead batteries away. They were free of charge.”
One-eyed Jack winced. “That was kind of you.”
“I didn’t want to keep walking in the dark, so I hitched a ride with a guy dressed as Kermit the Frog. But his car broke down, and he had to have it toad.”
The other man rolled his eye. “That one was painful.”
“I rode along with them to the gas station, next door to a Starbucks. A zombie walk must have paused there for refreshments, because there must have been 500 zombies milling around in the parking lot, all drinking lattes.”
“A sight to behold.”
“It made me a little nervous, and I backed up into a stack of Delco parts and knocked them over. One of the zombies jabbed a finger toward me and yelled, ‘Pumpkin break pads!’ All those latte-ed up zombies looked at me and moaned—something about their wives liking pumpkin-scented anything. Then they all came at me.”
“That ... would be disconcerting.”
“And I’ve been running for my life from them since then. I just now managed to duck around a corner and finally lose them.”
Dave the bartender snapped his fingers. “I’ll bet I know what caused it. You remember that joke you came in here and told, about your and your brother’s and your chiropractor’s spines?”