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Before any of them can stop me, I pull Mason’s lighter and touch it to the corpse. It goes up like a torch in a Frankenstein movie.
“According to you assholes, this is my resting place too. If it is, I’m going to redecorate it any way I like.”
“Stop. You can go.”
I drop the burning body.
“What was that?”
“Please put out my corpse and we’ll let you go.”
I get one of the beanbag chairs and drop it on the body, smothering the flames.
“Okay. I put it out. How do I get out of here?”
“There’s one more thing you must do. Take our bodies with you so they can be buried in the earth.”
“Are you crazy? What are there, twenty or thirty of you? I can’t carry that many bodies.”
A poltergeist swoops down from the wall and flicks a knucklebone from one of the unearthed corpses at me.
“A single bone will do. One from each of us. Bury them in the ground somewhere. If you promise to do that, you can go.”
“I’m going to have to mess up your little garden even more to do it, you know.”
“Do what you have to, but please don’t be cruel when digging us up.”
“How am I supposed to carry all these bones with me?”
The poltergeist tosses something in my direction.
“Look down. There are shopping bags everywhere.”
It’s a thick plastic bag advertising a 50 percent opening weekend sale at Victoria’s Secret. Pictures of attractive women in panties and bras. I fill the bag with bones, the smallest ones I can find from each body. Yes. This is exactly how I wanted to spend tonight.
“So, what were you? Workers getting shops ready for the mall?”
“And some construction workers.”
“I was an OSHA inspector.”
The others laugh.
“That’s not funny,” says the inspector.
I shake the bag a few times to settle the bones.
“I think that’s it. Did I miss anyone?”
“No one who wants to go.”
“Good. Now point me to an exit.”
“No.” It’s a new voice. “He doesn’t go.”
“He’s alive. He’s an invader.”
“He has to die.”
