Mixed & Matched

Triggers: death, ghosts, blood, implied violence and sickness, accidental misgendering of a non-binary character.

Mitch’s answer to “what the hell happened here?” was a sheepish, “We acquired a wedding dress this afternoon.” And that was enough of an explanation, I didn’t need anything else, but I still asked, “Oh, did we now?” because I was feeling frustrated and I wanted to make him feel guilty. Judging by the way his shoulders slumped, it worked very well.

“And how did that happen?”

“Sam thought it was pretty.”

“At which point you informed your kid we no longer accept wedding dresses, so it didn’t matter how pretty the dress was.”

He gnawed on his lips before saying, “Sure.”

Bless his soul. He cannot tell a lie.

I sighed. “Mitch-”

“It was in such good condition!” he exploded, looking equally stubborn and repentant. “I mean, look at it! They don’t make dresses like this anymore, Max. Look at the lace, the pearls on the hem, the-”

“The gigantic bloodstain on the back,” I cut in.

“No, no. The bloodstain is strictly metaphysical and should not affect the value of the dress.”

“Do you think the ghost inside the dress might?”

I saw a curtain of long, black hair flicker in the corner of my eye. I’d learned long ago not to look at the apparitions directly. Ghostly beings are easier to catch with sideway glances; otherwise, they vanish. Or get confrontational.

God, I hate it when they get confrontational.

Mitch urgently informed me under his breath, “I’d avoid using the G-word around this one. Or the D-word, for that matter. Or the GITL phrase.”

I stared.

“Go into the light.”

“Right.”

“I tried to gently nudge her toward the light and, well-”

He motioned at the thrown about racks and the very visible crack on the wall that Sam would have to fix in the morning. One of our fluorescent lights was flickering and I only hoped this one wouldn’t explode. You wouldn’t believe the amount of light bulbs a haunted shop has to go through, especially when one of the owners insists on buying deeply personal items because they are in “such good condition”.

Honestly, you’d have thought he’d know better after two years, but Mitch can’t think straight when he’s excited. And everything excites him.

I counted to ten in my head, then slowly exhaled through my nose.

“Did Tom go anywhere near it?”

Tom cleared his throat and adjusted his red coat, the very picture of a proper gentleman. “If by ‘it’ you mean ‘her’, I resent the implication.”

“Oh, do forgive me, Tomás!” I snapped. “Maybe I should ask the ghost lady her preferred pronouns before we proceed!”

I saw their eyes double in size and felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Is she looking at me?”

It was a dumb question. There were few things as unpleasant as finding yourself as the focus of ghostly attention. By now I was more than familiarized with the feeling, but that didn’t mean I hated it any less. Mitch, however, was fighting the excitement away from his face, cocking his head slightly to maybe glance at the soul that was currently glaring at me. I couldn’t help resenting the fact that he was standing on the other side of the counter.

Tom said, “Yes. Just… don’t move.”

I didn’t. I was rooted in place, reciting prayers I’d been taught in childhood by a myriad of priests with red, tired eyes who spoke in monotones that often lulled me to sleep in church. I knew it didn’t really help, but I did so the same way one might press a button when in a hurry: I just had to feel that a was doing something.

Then, the feeling on the back of my neck eased and Mitch motioned discreetly that the lady in the wedding dress had moved on to something else. I exhaled slowly.

“I meant the dress,” I said, still feeling my heart racing in my chest. “Did Tom go anywhere near the wedding dress?”

“I didn’t know it was in the box and I might have… walked right through it.”

To his credit, he looked like he knew he’d screwed up.

“Great. Just great. What are we dealing with, exactly?”

Mitch scratched the back of his head, the way he always did when he was thinking. I didn’t think he was itching. It was just a matter of habit at that point. After a moment, he answered, “I’m not entirely sure. She got a little emotional, but other than that, she’s just been… roaming. With any luck, she turns out to be just a Lost Tourist.”

That was what Mitch had called our very first ghost.

“That’s it, Max. A lost tourist. They simply couldn’t find their way to Union Station and needed a little guidance.”

He’d been rubbing my back and shushing me for a good thirty minutes by the time he came up with that one. My breathing was returning to normal and my atheist brain was slowly working through the fact that I’d witnessed something impossible. Strangely, all that I managed to answer was, “If the TTC is heaven, I’d rather burn in hell.”

Mitch laughed though I wasn’t trying to be funny.

“Maybe that’s just purgatory, then,” he said, kind blue eyes crinkling in the corners as he smiled at me, a reassuring hand on my lower back, warm and firm and real. I focused on that and let the rest fade away as I struggled to catch my breath.

By the time our first ghost had presented itself, I was already starting to think there was something wrong with our little shop. Nothing supernatural; there had to be a logical explanation for the constant feeling of being watched, or the goosebumps going down my arms in certain spots, or even the things I thought I’d seen in my peripheral vision.

I was never a great believer in otherworldly beings and other such superstitions, but certain things are indisputable. Old buildings have a quality to them, something that makes you feel uneasy and forces you to look over your shoulder to make sure you are alone. Maybe the fact that they’ve stood their ground for so long just makes you vulnerable to intrusive, unpleasant thoughts. A chill of memento mori, if you will. Our century-old townhouse had that quality, a certain character. Mitch insisted it gave it charm.

There was only one thing that I couldn’t rationally brush away, and that was the sickly-looking child whose feet dragged a few inches above the floor and who stared at me with vacant eyes, asking where his mommy was while clutching a teddy bear to his chest.

The eyes were a dead giveaway - no pun intended. They were hollow. I don’t mean empty sockets or a white-out stare, nothing as simple as that. In fact, if I didn’t think too much about it, his eyes would’ve probably looked normal and dull. But he was looking right at me and there was no way for me to ignore them. The eyes of ghosts are endless. It is as though their pupils have opened up into a long tunnel that leads someplace. Except that you know you’ll never reach it, no matter how long you stare. And you stare. You can’t help yourself.

If I’d been alone in the shop at that time, I’d have convinced my husband to commit me to a psychiatric hospital. Thankfully, Mitch had been standing right next to me and, as luck would have it, he was the kind of person who could believe twenty impossible things before he even put on his slippers in the morning. Literally. He really trusts his horoscope.

Mitch was the first to recover from the shock and stammered, “Sweetheart, I… I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”

“Oh!” the boy said, eyes suddenly wide with surprise, somehow making those tunnels even darker and longer. There were circles underneath his eyes and clumps of hair were missing from his head. Those little toes dragging on the floor were blue from the cold. Somewhere behind the fright, I felt a pang of sadness.

That was probably how I finally managed to break away from his gaze, that feeling of pity splitting my heart in two. I focused on the ragged teddy bear in his hands instead. I remembered taking that teddy bear out of a donation box the previous month.

The sickly boy said, “Oh…” again, a meek little sound. When he vanished into thin air, Teddy was the only thing that remained. It thumped softly on the linoleum floor and looked up at me with a glass stare that eerily reminded me of his previous owner.

Mitch, being the spouse who believed in zodiac signs and the healing powers of crystals, chuckled softly, mouth agape with fascination and childish excitement. He was sweating and I could see a little tremor on the tips of his fingers, but his voice was animated when he asked, “Did… did that really happen, Max? Did we actually see that?”

I, being the practical spouse who analyzed every angle and always came up with the perfect solution to our every problem, reacted the way one should in such a situation: I had a panic attack.

I still believe my reaction was the most appropriate.

Mitch had seen the experience as a great privilege. In his opinion, to come as close to something few people had had the chance to see was a sign of good fortune and a feature of our new shop-slash-home.

Needless to say, I fell on the opposite side of that spectrum. I was ready to chase down the lesbian witches who’d sold us that cursed townhouse and get our money back. Surely there had to be some kind of law that protected unsuspecting buyers from ghost-infected buildings? I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but I was a lawyer, and hell if I wasn’t going to find out.

That was the first serious fight we’d ever had in five years of relationship. The funny thing is that I don’t even remember half of the things that were said. We started arguing over what to do with the house, then moved on to unrelated petty annoyances and old grievances that had been left unaddressed for too long. We shouted and cried and hurt each other the way only people who deeply loved each other could. And then we settled on a compromise, as married people often do.

We agreed to give our shop another month and if the ghostly roommate reappeared, we’d revisit the issue of what to do with the house. Well, Mitch said we’d revisit the issue; I said I’d set the house on fire and move into a condo. I also got rid of that damned teddy bear. At least for the time being, Mitch and Max’s Mix and Match Discount Shop would remain open.

And no, Mitch didn’t come up with that name. Sam did. They’ve inherited their father’s sense of humor and, in the end, I was outvoted. Mitch likes to greet our patrons with a cheery, “Hello! Welcome to Mitch and Max’s Mix and Match! I’m Mitch and he is…” then he motions to me with excitement. I roll my eyes and say, “Married to you. God knows why.”

That always makes people laugh. Mitch laughs too. He’s long chosen to see my perpetual grumpiness as a humorous trait. He is sweet that way.

In the end, Mitch got me on a technicality - which, as a lawyer, I am embarrassed not to have foreseen. The sickly boy never returned, but there wasn’t a shortage of apparitions. I suppose I didn’t go through with my promise to set the building on fire because most of them were just what Mitch had described to me: a lost tourist. They were simply confused, bewildered spirits that didn’t want to be there, they’d just gone through the wrong door on their way out of this world and ended up at our shop.

You could feel them more often than you could see them and they caused your stomach to drop whenever they were near you. They’d wander around for a day, roaming the one object they’d become attached to and hardly ever came into contact with you. If they did, it was to say something unremarkable that made little sense. Most of the time, you could ignore their endless eyes.

Mitch absolutely loved those moments. I did not. Whatever they said, I always replied the same way, my eyes firmly on the linoleum.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Nine out of ten times, that’d get them to find their way out, never to be seen again. I’d caught sight of a few of them over the last two years and, in the end, even I had to admit that it wasn’t that bad. At least, not bad enough to sell our beloved shop.

Besides, there were ways of minimizing the risk of a haunting. Not purchasing deeply personal items, for one.

“We’re way past a Lost Tourist,” I told Mitch, “if she’s throwing things around.”

“She threw one rack,” Mitch argued.

“How many does she have to throw?” I snapped back. “Besides, you can’t get any more personal than a wedding dress. And nothing holds a grudge like a snubbed bride.”

“Maybe,” Tom said, leveled and urgent, “we should lower our voices while she’s, uhn, browsing.”

I closed my mouth. Behind me, the bride was making a whining sound. The same as always. An empty-sounding vowel that was stripped of any emotion. Like a toddler discovering their voice for the first time. I deeply disliked how eerie it was.

I turned my eyes towards her cautiously. She’d knelt on the floor and was paying attention to a pair of black Mary Janes we were selling for five dollars. A wrinkle had appeared between her eyebrows, almost forming an expression on a young, plump face that was otherwise impassive. Her black hair covered all of her back and a red bloodstain seemed to still be dripping from the front of her dress. It was hard to tell what had been the cause of death because she was drenched, but my guess would be stab wounds. Angry stab wounds.

“And the dress was in good condition?” I whispered.

Mitch said, “She didn’t die in the dress. You know how this works.”

“Yes, yes. They return to items they have a particular attachment to.” I threw him a glance. “Which is why Tom will spend the rest of eternity as a gay Mountie.”

“Excuse me!” Tom snapped, straightening up so quickly that his brimmed hat should have dropped from his head. “I’ll spend eternity as a bisexual Mountie, thank you very- oh! Oh… no.”

I felt it. A most imperceptible wave of frustration emanating from him and coming right through me.

I think people on TV describe cold spots when dealing with ghosts, but that’s not exactly true. More often than not, you go through these bursts of emotion that take hold of your heart. It’s inexplicable. You can’t tell where it came from, but you know that it doesn’t belong to you. Suddenly, you’re angry or tired or sad and you don’t understand why.

The living can barely feel it. It lasts maybe a heartbeat. If you’re susceptible to this kind of thing, it might linger and make you an asshole for a while. And if you’re dead, well… the dead soak that kind of energy and let it consume them, which was why Tom was looking at me with wide, horrified eyes, warning me, “Don’t move. She’s looking at you.”

I froze on my spot and looked for Mitch’s reassuring eyes. On the other side of the counter, my husband took a step back.

Shit.

Lost Tourists came and went in the quiet hours of the shop. Ghosts don’t like crowds or noise, though neither Mitch nor I - nor Tom, for that matter - could tell you why. They never performed for cameras and any attempt to capture proof of their existence was pointless. The one supernatural investigator Mitch found online declared the shop clean after fifteen minutes, saying it was all in our heads and that we probably had issues with noisy pipes.

I laughed in his face and kicked him out.

One can get used to anything, including ghosts. In the end, a Lost Tourist is just as annoying as a cold draft or a loud neighbor, and, about eight months into our new line of work, I finally felt like I was returning to my normal, not-jumpy-all-the-time self.

And then I met our very first Frustrated Traveler.

Ironically, he came with a beloved backpack that had been all over the world with him. He materialized right next to Sam as soon as the shop was closed. Sam jumped back and immediately took out their phone, showing the enthusiasm they’d taken after their father.

“No way! No - way! This is so cool!”

At the age of nineteen, they hadn’t yet developed their father’s (often insufficient) self-preservation instincts and they pushed the phone right into the face of the hitchhiker. The Traveler looked at them, then at the shop around him, then at me - hiding behind a Christmas tree I’d proudly constructed out of shoeboxes that morning.

“I… need to get back on the Bruce Trail.”

“Amazing!” Sam said, eyes on the phone, not paying attention to what was right in front of them.

“Where is…” he spun around, looking and looking. “Where is the…”

“Dad’s gonna love this.”

“Sam…” I warned them from behind my tree. Something felt off, though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was until after it was over: there was emotion in this ghost’s voice, something frustrated and tense that seemed to be coiling in his soul, about to snap at any moment. “Sam, you need to take a step back.”

“No, no, no, they wouldn’t,” said the Traveler, taking dirt-covered hands to his red hair and pulling. “They left… they wouldn’t leave… where is the trail…”

“That’s okay, sweetie,” Sam said, soothing the Traveler but giving no indication that the distress in his voice was giving them any cause for alarm. “Just go into the light.”

He spun and spun, eyes on the floor. He muttered, “Light… light… light-light-light-lightlightlightlightlight-” repeatedly.

“Sam, get back here now!” I shouted.

The traveler growled. This time, Sam did take a step back.

“I can’t find it-”

Sam finally looked up from the screen. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I can’t find the trail!” he said, loud and angry. And his eyes found Sam’s tiny, scrawny, breakable frame. “Where - is - the - TRAIL!”

His hand swooped up. A pile of books on the other side of the shop tumbled to the floor. I heard Sam squeal and - most alarming! - their phone clatter on the floor. This was serious. I jumped from my hiding place, shouting, “Hey, you stay away from my kid!”

And that was when my shoe-box Christmas tree came down on my head.

Twenty minutes later, Sam settled on the title of Frustrated Traveler - that was while their dad was holding a bag of frozen peas to my head, reminding me that placing that heavy glass angel on top of my beautiful box tree had been bad planning on my part.

“You know how sometimes a Lost Tourist gets irritated,” Sam was explaining, “because they can’t find their way out of the shop, or they’re late for their tour, or whatever, and they take their anger out on the staff? Well, that is what that guy was. Once it was out of his system, he moved on.”

They weren’t frightened anymore. In fact, they were rambling excitedly at their dad, young face lit up with a smile.

I remember thinking, What kind of family did I marry into?

Mitch said, “I think that’s a brilliant way of putting it, sweetie.”

“And it wasn’t even scary or anything, dad. It was, like, sad?”

“Yes, I know.”

“When you mentioned it to me, I thought it’d be scary, but they look so human, you know? Like, I wasn’t expecting chains or a white sheet, but it looks almost like you can touch them.”

“Was he floating? The ones I see are usually floating.”

“I don’t think so. Too bad I didn’t get footage of it.”

“Did you break your phone?”

They looked horrified at the prospect. “No! Ugh, that’d suck. It’s just not there. But maybe if I put a filter on?”

“Yes, that might work. Or you could try to-”

“Is nobody going to acknowledge that the ghosts are getting out of hand?!”

They both stared at me, surprised that I’d raised my voice. I stared right back, expecting any sort of agreement, but they seemed to be at a loss for words. Finally, Sam said, “Max, it was one ghost. I wouldn’t call that ‘out of hand’.”

I gave Mitch the “talk to your kid” look.

To his credit, he did start by saying, “I know you have a point, Max. We’re just saying it’s-”

“It’s out of hand!”

“…becoming a little difficult.”

“Which means it’s out of hand!”

“We can handle it, Max!” Sam said, pure excitement and pleading eyes. They looked so young they still held on to some little-kid charm, and that would just break your heart if you weren’t careful.

I humphed and looked at their dad, who had a matching expression in his eyes. I had to remind myself that that was how I ended up in this situation, to begin with.

“We agreed we’d move out if the problem got worse.”

“Yes, but- but!” Sam cut in. “How can you quantify worse?”

I pointed sharply at the bump on my head.

Sam deflated. “Okay, that’s… fair. But! But all of the money you guys put into the shop. And you wanted to do something good for the community!”

“Yes!” Mitch jumped in, seeing a window of opportunity. “Why did we leave our soulless corporate jobs if we, ourselves, have become soulless?”

“And afraid of souls!”

“So very afraid of souls that we can’t find it in our souls to help them out of their soulless existence-”

“So many souls!”

“Stop saying souls!” I said, rubbing my eyes. I swear those two will give you such a headache when they team up. I shook my head. “If it happens again, I’m packing.”

They cheered. Sam went as far as to go around the table and give me a hug.

“Thanks, step-daddy!”

I tried not to smile and failed miserably.

“Shut up. Annoying step-kid.”

Well, we didn’t pack our things and leave. Lost Tourists came and went, with their eerie sounds and endless eyes. Maybe every couple of months or less, one would grow tired of waiting for the Great Beyond and throw a tantrum, throwing items and racks about and making a mess, but their anger often subsided. And when it didn’t, we all had our ways of pushing them out. Mitch and Sam used gentle words. Tom told them firmly to get out and that they didn’t belong there. I chose to walk away and let someone else deal with it.

The Mary Janes came flying towards my head. I ducked. Mitch did, too. The shoes collided with a mirror on the opposite wall and shattered it with a deafening crash.

“Ma’am, that is unacceptable!” Tom said, firm but falling short of authoritative. Despite his height and uniform, he was easily ignored by the people around him (most often by Sam). “If you continue with this behavior, I’m gonna have to-”

The Bride shrieked at him like a banshee, her pale face suddenly becoming stretched and horrifying. That mouth looked like it could swallow the three of us in a single gulp. There were no more traces of a pretty young lady on her plump cheeks and whatever sadness she was feeling vanished in the blink of an eye.

I jumped over the counter and ducked, my shoes making the tiny shards of glass crack, but I wasn’t about to calculate just how much bad luck that would get me.

Mitch peeked over the counter, mouth agape. “Fascinating!”

I pulled him by the collar. Let the dead people get their shit together.

In a glance, I saw the Bride’s left hand pass through several objects until they managed to close around an ugly vase I’d been trying to get rid of for months. That one went through Tomás’ chest and hit the wall. And it didn’t break. Great.

“Oh, you did not just do that!” Tom shouted back at her. “If you don’t behave yourself, I’m- I’m gonna have to ask you to leave!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tom!” I cried out, eyes peeking over the counter just so I could glare at him. “You’re dead too! Go grab her by the hair or something!”

That seemed to offend him even more than the vase throwing.

“A Mountie never touches a lady! What do you take me for?”

“You’re not a Mountie! YOU’RE THE FUCKING MANAGER!”

“Andy?”

Oh shit.

She was looking at me again.

I ducked.

But she was still looking. I could feel it. I could feel her angry eyes on me through the solid counter.

“Why did you do it, Andy?”

“Oh no,” Mitch said, curled up next to me. “No, no, no… we got ourselves-”

“A Karen,” I said. “Yeah. I got that.”

My least favorite type of apparition was the Ghost of Karens Past. Sam named that one after being yelled at by a gray-looking lady who demanded they return her stolen pearls. By the time they managed to slip away from the shop, Mitch and I were heading downstairs from the apartment to see what the ruckus was all about. Sam was wide-eyed and frantic.

“Don’t come downstairs. Call the Ghostbusters or something.”

I paused on the stairs and grabbed Mitch’s shoulder before he could dart into the shop just to take a look.

“What happened, Sam?”

Something crashed.

“I think she wants to speak to the manager,” they said, hands clutching the handrail.

I frowned.

“She what?”

“She keeps asking me to return her pearls!”

A woman’s voice wailed angrily on the other side of the wall.

“Get back here!”

“Yeah,” Sam said, looking increasingly scared for the first time. “It- she already has them, I don’t know what she wants.”

“Get back here, you little bitch!”

“Oh no, sir!” Mitch said, slipping out of my grasp and storming past Sam and across the little atrium that connected the shop to the upstairs apartment. I never saw him look as angry as when he burst into the shop. “You do not call my kid a bitch! They use they-them pronouns and you will refer to them as 'asshole' or, better yet! Shut your mouth altogether!”

“Aw!” Sam said. “Thanks, daddy! That means a lot.”

“Misgendering my kid. The audacity. Not in my shop, no ma’am!”

I rubbed my eyes. Once this was done, we would have a long talk about priorities. The shop looked like it’d been stormed by a maniac. Only, the maniac was a 5’2’’ old lady with sunken cheeks and white hair that was standing effortlessly on top of the t-shirt display, a sea of t-shirts littering the floor.

“Maxandrio!” Mitch snapped at me. “Get me those scissors!”

I think it was the power of my full name that got me into motion. I didn’t even question it. I just reached over the register and did as I was told.

Mitch took a step forward and, without much effort, he reached for the pearl necklace around the old lady’s neck. She screamed. I think I screamed, too. Something about not touching it or not making things worse. I don’t know.

Surprisingly, the necklace came loose like it was only being held by a curtain of smoke. A very angry curtain of smoke, of course, but one that couldn’t do much about it except glare.

With a quick nip, the tacky pearls came loose and peppered on the floor.

Karen stared at them as they rolled under counters and racks.

“There!” Mitch declared. “Pearls gone! Now leave!”

And, much to our surprise, Karen shut up.

For a full five seconds.

Then the lightbulbs started flickering.

In no time, the three of us found ourselves sitting on the atrium floor and pressing our backs to the door to keep it from rattling too much while Karen raged on and screamed about her pearls.

“In the movies, that works,” Mitch said. He sounded disillusioned.

“I’ll be writing Hollywood a strongly-worded letter,” I said.

Karen didn’t leave and breaking her precious necklace did us no good. If anything, it made everything more difficult because we had to put the whole thing back together before taking it to her grave in Alberta.

Thirty-three fake pearls that hid into every nook and cranny of our shop. One into the vent. Took a month to find all of them.

I hate the Ghosts of Karens Past. They come with the creepy feeling, the endless eyes, the property damage, and the risk of personal damage due to misplaced anger. Sometimes, they made the walls bleed - which was an improvement over the ghastly magenta wallpaper the last owners had left us with. They were vicious. They were angry. And they had a very clear target but a terrible aim. Therefore, while they’d love to go get vengeance on the bastard who’d refused to bury them with their beloved pearls, they’d often look at an innocent bystander such as - oh, I don’t know, me and swear to haunt me until my dying day if I didn’t return their necklace.

There was only one way to get rid of the Ghost of Karens Past, and that was by doing what they wanted. The longer a Karen lingered, the harder it was to get rid of them, and I feared that, if they got attached to their place of haunting, they might become a permanent fixture of the building.

I didn’t dare to look. I couldn’t. I covered my head with my hands and hoped for the best.

“Andy!” she said, making that last syllable rasp through the air and linger just above my head.

“Madam, we can return your dress!” Tom promised. “It’s fine! We can contact your-”

“ANDY!”

Something heavy fell on the counter and I whimpered. It wasn’t very dignified, but I was past caring.

“ANDY! GET! BACK! HERE!”

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

She was going to bring the entire shop down.

And that was when Mitch jumped to his feet and shouted, “That’s not Andy!”

I peeked through my fingers. He was on his knees and staring at the Bride over the counter. I reached over and pulled at his sweater.

“Mitch, get back here!” I hissed.

He ignored me.

“That’s not Andy. That’s Max. That’s my husband.”

“Andy!” the Bride said. She was hovering just above me and I hated that there was only a slab of plywood between the two of us - I hated even more that there was nothing between her and Mitch.

“Did… did Andy have glasses?” Mitch tried.

He pulled at my shirt. I tried to fight it, but he got me up and pointed at the skewed glasses on my face.

The Bride almost frowned.

I waited.

Then, she said, “Glasses.” Like she was considering a foreign word, trying to decipher its meaning.

“And was Andy 50 years old?” Tom chipped in, floating beside the Bride, becoming even taller.

She eyed me with suspicion. Her endless eyes narrowed and I wanted to look at the counter, but I didn’t want to make things worse by looking away.

“Yeah, look. Glasses. Wrinkles. Gray beard. Hairy ears-”

“She got the point, Tom,” I told him.

“Point is, not Andy. See?”

She stared. Her mouth opened wide and - oh god - it was even more endless than her eyes. But all she did was scream louder, then float the other way, disappearing behind a rack.

I felt my body unclench. If Mitch hadn’t been holding on to my shoulders, I’d have slipped to the floor.

“Is she gone?” I asked.

Tom peered around the rack.

“She’s staring at another pair of shoes- no, wait, she’s gone.”

“Has she passed?”

“I don’t think so,” Tom said, looking at Mitch. “Her dress is gone, too.”

“I think that one will take some time.”

“Great,” I breathed. “Just great. Just… do me a favor and don’t hire her or anything.”

We called those who lingered the Staff. Well, I say “those”. Tom was the first and only, and he was unusual in every way. He didn’t run into us by accident on his way out. Instead, he’d come to Mitch in his red uniform with much more focus and politeness than any of the ghosts we’d met in the almost two years of running the shop.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, his voice very formal and well enunciated. “I seem to find myself dead.”

“Oh… so you have,” Mitch told him, surprised to find him so eloquent. “Do you need any assistance?”

“Yes, indeed I do.” He’d pointed to a tear in his otherwise impeccable red coat. “As you can see, this is unacceptable. If I am to haunt your shop, do take better care of my belongings. I worked very hard to earn this uniform and do not wish to see it desecrated.”

Mitch had been so fascinated that he’d put the uniform away in the office. While I wanted to set the thing on fire and be done with Cadet Tomás Valdez before he too cost us three plain tickets to Alberta, Mitch made some very good points. Having a ghost we could talk to and ask questions would make dealing with hauntings on a regular basis easier.

Besides, and this is something I will never admit to out loud, I am quite helpless when he pleads with those happy blue eyes. But don’t you tell him that, or he’ll abuse the privilege.

Tomás hanged around the shop after hours. He had worked eight years in retail before applying to the RCMP. Getting that red uniform was the greatest achievement of his life, but he didn’t remember much about wearing it. He didn’t think his death had been particularly traumatic or violent since he couldn’t remember it, and he didn’t know of any unfinished businesses that required his immediate attention.

“Perhaps I was sent here to teach you how to run a proper business,” he said to me one day. He had a lot of opinions on how to run my shop, which grew annoying pretty quickly. His one saving grace was that he was quite fussy about cleanliness and while holding material things was difficult, he had such an emotional attachment to cleaning supplies that he liked to spend the night dusting trinkets and cleaning the floors, saving us the time.

And he was a good boy, in his own prissy way. Mitch liked him and Sam only wanted to exorcise him from the shop once or twice a week, which was progress.

Mitch erected the racks from the floor and hung the clothes carelessly onto it. Tomás remarked that he was doing it wrong and that we might as well go to bed if we were going to get in his way. We both agreed that the ghostly manager could handle the cleaning. In fact, he’d love to.

We didn’t go upstairs yet, though. Mitch signaled to the drawer under the register and I nodded. He took the bottle of whiskey from it and poured us a shot. After I swallowed, he said, “What a day, huh?” and went on to pour himself a shot from the same glass. He’d come into the habit of saying that whenever I looked startled or tired. After he drank, he continued, “I’ll set the dress on fire once she drops it.”

“Don’t. I don’t want a repeat of the pearls.”

“No, I figured it out. It’s fire. We have to set it on fire-”

“Mitch, just get the dress if she drops it and sell it cheap.”

“Bury it in holy ground? That could work.”

“Mitch-”

“I’ll come up with something. You’ll see.”

I sighed. “Whatever. Just don’t hire that one too. I’ve already got all the ghostly staff I need.”

“Technically, Tom is a ghostly volunteer. We don’t exactly pay him.”

“Well, he can take that up with the ghostly union.”

I waited for Mitch to chuckle. He didn’t.

“What?”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

He stared at me.

When I didn’t fill in the silence with what he was expecting to hear, he said, “Say that we should sell the shop.”

I blinked at him.

That hadn’t even crossed my mind yet.

“Ah. That.”

“Yes.”

I shrugged.

He quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting used it?”

“I will never get used to it. But I’m too tired to have this conversation.”

He had a little smile in the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“You like it here.”

I didn’t look at him.

“It’s a financial decision. We did put all of our savings into this.”

“No, I think you like it here. Ghosts and all.”

I didn’t agree.

I didn’t correct him either.

Most importantly, I didn’t look into his pretty eyes lest they get me in trouble again.

“I’m going to ask Sam to find out more about the dress,” Mitch said, finally dropping the subject. “Learning about that Andy person might make it easier for her to move on.”

I nodded and drank another dose of whiskey. He did the same.

“Funny how we can become so attached to certain things, huh?” Mitch asked. He was fidgeting with his wedding ring, but I don’t think he noticed.

“You and I have a different definition of what is funny, Mitch.” But I still asked, “Think we’re gonna- how did you put it? Move on? Think we’ll go into the light someday? Or do you think we’re just gonna roam this shop indefinitely?”

He looked at me with some pity and said, “Max, you know that-”

“Oh no, don’t say it. I know what you’re gonna say. Don’t. Please-”

“…you are my light.”

I winced.

“What? I’m being cute.”

“That’s gonna be my haunting, I just know it: to be followed for the rest of my days by your cheesy declarations of love.”

“You’re quite welcomed.”

“Couldn’t just drag chains across the floor or pull my legs at night.”

“Keep your kinks out of my haunting.”

I threw him a look. But I laughed.

Idiot charming husband.

I loved him.

I put the bottle of whiskey away and gave him a tired smile. “Let’s get some sleep.”

“I think I should stick around and help Tom clean-”

From the other room, Tom yelled, “Stay away from my cleaning supplies, Mitchell!”

Mitch sighed. “Fine. We should pay him in Swiffer refills.”

I smiled at him and took his hand.

“Don’t worry, love. You can open tomorrow at eight. Like we always do.”