Welcome to Scary Story Time. In this episode, we take you to the dark place in the mind of a traveling Halloween store owner. His costumes are pretty normal–and very scary! You’ll find vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, and even fae in his large assortment of wonderful Halloween costumes. You’ll also find see the dark side of his business.

Be sure to check out my website at www.scarystorytime.com to find out more about the little mystical town of Sandcastle and its inhabitants.

But first, I’d like to invite you to watch Creature Features with my friends and I on Saturday nights at 10:00 PM, Pacific time. You can watch it on KOFY TV20 and other tv channels, but we have a little chat group where we chat about the movie and guests every Saturday night on YouTube. Get the web link at www.creaturefeatures.tv.

Now let’s begin.

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The Halloween Costume Tailor

A Horror Story by Spooky Boo Rhodes

~~~ 1 ~~~

It was your typical October morning in Sandcastle. The fog and clouds were still blanketing most of the bay area and probably wouldn’t roll back to the ocean until around noon, if at all. Cyrus Vanslow traveled to Sandcastle from New York state every year two weeks before Halloween. Each day he stopped in a large city with his little traveling caravan of gypsies until the two weeks before Halloween where he and his crew of carnies set up camp on the hillside above the beach before the big Halloween ball at the Miller house every year.

He hadn’t planned on arriving so late this year, but his latest costume was a bit of a problem getting all of the pieces collected. He had to stop in Siesta, a small town just at the foothills of the Sierras to make sure the parts in his new collection were still intact. He told the caravan to go on without him and when he stopped to get a bite to eat before heading west to the California coastline, he knew right away what the problem was. The temperature on one of the freezers in the back of his cargo truck wasn’t freezing anymore.

He immediately smelled the sweetness of hot rotting meat when he opened the side door to the back of his rig. He grimaced as the stench wafted up to his nostrils. Such a waste of human life disturbed him. He didn’t do what he did to mercilessly kill people, that would be wrong. He did it for the cause. Each victim was preselected from a survey taken off the internet. His selection had to be perfect from size to looks. Now he’ll have to improvise and either find another person from the candidates in the area or create a whole new persona.

Cyrus shut the door to the truck and went into the little cafe with his laptop in hand. He scoped out the dining room, happy that he didn’t see very many people even at noon. He looked at the counter and noticed the handwritten sign pointing to the rows of empty tables. SEAT YOURSELF it read in all caps. He shrugged and found a table near the window where he could keep an eye on his truck. The smell was surely contained within and the human nose might not be able to smell it from the outside, but a K9 could and around here police dogs were pretty popular.

“Do you happen to have wifi, ma’am?” he asked the waitress as she arrived holding a pad of paper and a pen. He thought how she might look really nice as that huge sea witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid with her rather large body frame and tussles of long gray hair. She even had perfect overly painted lavender lips with dark lip liner. Even the mole placement was superb.

“Oh yes, honey. Just look up Katerina diner in your wifi list. It’s free for customers especially you, sugar,” she winked at him. “What will it be? We’re still serving breakfast or we have the regular grill that you’ll find anywhere else right there on the menu.”

“Steak, eggs over easy, and a pot of your best coffee. Thank you, Julia” Cyrus smiled as he looked at her nametag. Her name even sounded like Ursula.

“You got it, sugar!” she smiled and waddled away.

Looking up all of the clothing stores and freezer repair centers in the area from his laptop, he picked out two and called to make sure they had time to look at his equipment. As expected, the repair center had more time on its hand than any other place, probably due to the lack of people in town. Another crumbling small town in America. “What a waste,” Cyrus mumbled.

Julia placed two plates in front of Cyrus along with the pot of coffee and a cup. Then she grabbed the steak sauce and catsup from another empty table and placed it in front of him. “I get out of here in an hour, sugar. Want a tour of the town?”

Cyrus thought for a moment thinking about his plans for the day and then smiled. “How about in two hours? I need to drop my truck off to get something repaired and you can pick me up from the repair spot. I’ll treat you to whatever you like.”

She smiled, and when she did he marveled at her beauty. Although very large, she was gorgeous and perfect for his needs.

2

The old gypsy drove his truck out to the dump and paid the dump fees. A mere $25 would do the trick to get rid of this hunk of meat in his freezer. In his truck, he carried 4 freezers, each containing the props he needed. This was the only one with one body, which was a good thing because with all 4 freezers dying it would have been a disaster for the party in Sandcastle. All of his props needed to be completely frozen when he arrived and stored for a week while he prepared the other details. One simple problem could ruin everything and his reputation.

Before opening the meat locker, he placed an old emergency tarp he carried in the back of his truck just for this purpose. With large yellow rubber gloves, he opened the freezer and hoisted the body on to the tarp. It wasn’t easy dealing with such large prey, but he prided himself on being a very strong man. After rolling up the trash and securing the ends of the tarp, he looked from left to right. When he was sure no one else was around, the bundle was tossed out of the back of the truck.

He watched silently as it tumbled then rolled down the side of the hill. The smell of the dump was even worse than the rotting meat in the back of his truck, but he would soon be rid of that issue as he called the closet hotel he could find where he could rest and take care of the next issue after he hosed out his truck at the local car wash.

Without hesitation, Cyrus jumped back into his vehicle and drove off toward the front gate. He gave the attendant a $100 bill for turning the cameras off and also left a little insurance policy of an extra glove in the guy’s car down at the bottom of the hill, just in case anyone asked questions.

Rolling down the hillside that protected the surrounding cities from the smell of the garbage, he turned on a song by KISS and began humming the tune. He was going to get lucky, very lucky, and then have the perfect specimen for the Halloween party in Sandcastle, California. He heard there was a new resident in town who was very important and he wanted to make sure this resident was pleased with the costumes.

3

In exactly two hours and not a minute later, the gypsy arrived at the appliance store. He took a glance at the shabby man at the counter and realized he could have the perfect costume for Al Franken’s baggage handler in the movie Trading Places. Why the shop forced their employees to wear such drab clothing was beyond his comprehension. Life was supposed to be full of beauty and wearing such gear would put him down in the dumps. Fortunately for Cyrus, he chose to wear his own colorful blend of yellow, black, and purple shades. His mother always told him that people won’t take him seriously if he simply dressed up like a salesman in blue all of the time. Of course, his mother wore her own gypsy flare that could be seen from any space station far above the Earth.

“I just need this freezer fixed to carry the meat to a carnival in the next day or two,” he stated while patting the top of the freezer. The other 3 freezers were locked shut and running fine. Cyrus looked around the back of his truck, amazed at the cleanup job he had done. The smell and mess were gone without a trace of blood or rotting flesh. It took a lot of bleach and elbow grease to clean it up in such a short time, but that is what overly eager teens were good for. They wanted money for the weekend and he gave them a job to do. They’d do just about anything for a Jackson these days, including clean up what he told them was putrid, rotting beef stench.

There were four of the boys scrubbing the freezer and the floor of the truck. it took 6 cases of bleach and a couple of mops to finish the job. Cyrus would have to spend extra time making new costumes for the Halloween party that was only two weeks away, but people were always willing to pay a handsome price at the Miller Mansion for the costumes, and this new costume he was preparing would be no exception! It even fit his oceanside theme this year.

“Just don’t open the other freezers and make sure they are not turned off at any time,” Cyrus commanded as he tossed the keys to the serviceman. “I can’t have any of the meat spoiled and it would ruin me, understand? There will be another tip for you when the job is finished.” he gave a $100 bill to the man, who took it gleefully.

Cyrus dialed the number handed to him by the waitress. “Yeah baby, I’m ready. Come and get me at Joe’s Appliance. Of course, I’d love to see your house,” he smiled.

4

Upon arriving at the home of home Miss Julia Smith, Cyrus reached over and grabbed her pudgy hand that was resting on the gearshift. She smiled at him and winked with those large fake eyelashes and overbearing blue eyeshadow. It had been quite a while since he allowed himself such pleasure, but it wasn’t often that he found a voluptuous woman willing to take a traveler in for an afternoon.

“Tell me this isn’t love,” she said and then laughed. “I’m just kidding, you’re cute and all but I’m not into the relationship thing, you know what I mean?”

“Oh yes, perfect because I can’t stick around. I have a show to do,” he smiled knowing that her decision fell right into his plans. “Is anyone else here?”

“Nope, I live alone. It’s hard to find a good man around here, know what I mean?” she squeezed his hand and leaned over to kiss him.

Cyrus pressed a finger up to her lips and grinned. “All in due time, my dear.”

They both exited the car and scrambled to the door. She fumbled with the keys and when she finally found the right one, she opened the door to the biggest mess he had ever seen. Even his grandmother’s house wasn’t so filthy while she kept her chickens and pet rats running free in the house.

“Sorry about the mess,” she confessed while tossing the dirty clothes out of the walkway and pushing her rather large ass in his face. There was no way in hell he was going to attempt to pleasure himself with this slob. He thought about it for a moment and realized this really was the perfect scenario for his plans. They would be searching for her for weeks as they cleaned the house!

As she led him to the bedroom, he followed pretending to be interested. At first, he was a tiny bit excited, but seeing the box of old pizza on her bed didn’t help the matter. She ignored the old food as she took off her clothes. “Hey, eyes over here,” she pulled his face toward her by his chin. “Don’t worry about that mess over there. Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?”

“I simply want to admire that gorgeous body of yours,” he smiled, carefully grasping the syringe in his pocket. “Turn around, I want to see that beautiful backside.”

She did as he said and then screamed as he plunged the need into her jugular. He clamped his other hand over her mouth until she fell on her bed with a loud thud while breaking the legs on the bed and forcing the pizza box to open, sending old pizza all over her hair and face. He frowned when he realized he would have to clean what looked to be day-old pizza sauce out of her hair.

While cleaning her up with a warm rag, he thought about driving her car over to the shop to get his truck. With the stolen plates, it would be weeks before they tracked down his truck and by then he would be long gone, in a new truck and across the country. It would take them days to gut out her house trying to find her body. He thought hard about this as he hoisted her large body into the bathtub and cut her neck from ear to ear allowing the blood to drain into the sewer as much as possible. Since it was so close to the party, there was no way he had time to properly prepare her as he normally did, but he knew he couldn’t avoid it.

Instead of taking her car, he parked it in the garage and locked both doors. Within moments and a phone call, a cab picked him up down the street where he explained he was trying to find a friend’s house without luck. Cyrus was good at bullshitting, it’s what his family taught him to do.

~~~ 5 ~~~

Upon picking up the truck with the freezer now in perfect condition, Cyrus gave the attendant the extra tip and another to the mechanic. He pulled out and traveled down the road and into a grocery store where he changed his license plates with another car and put some rather large business magnets on the sides of his vehicle that he kept rolled up in the back of his truck in case of this type of emergency. He put on a jacket that covered his obnoxiously yellow and purple shirt and topped his head with a matching baseball hat. After getting back on the road, he smiled at himself. He looked just like the very boring appliance repairman.

Backing the truck into the driveway of Julia’s house he parked as close as he could get to the garage. Cyrus rolled up the back door of his truck and the garage then opened the freezer. He parked so close to the garage that the neighbors wouldn’t see what he unloaded (or loaded) into the house. As far as they were concerned, he was delivering a washing machine.

Removing her from the tub wasn’t as easy as he thought. He hoisted her 400-pound body on to the plastic tarp he brought and had to stop every few minutes to adust her rolls to fit into the corners of the hallway and doors. When he finally reached the garage, he laughed as he pulled her down the stairs. Her fat made this horrible slapping noise with each downward step taken into the garage. He pulled her up the ramp and into the truck where he hoisted her body into the freezer.

“Oh Julia, you beauty. People will talk about you for years! Your life is not wasted, my love.” he said as he shut the freezer door and began to clean up the mess left behind.

~~~ 6 ~~~

About five hours later, Cyrus pulled his large truck and trailer into the driveway of the Miller Mansion looking over the Pacific. People were gathering around and following him as he made his way through town and stopped at the gates to the property. Every year the gypsies brought the best carnival to Sandcastle and there were no known better costumes. It was a century-old tradition and got better every year.

The gypsies, knowing that he was having truck issues, were already set up in the field around the house. The lights from the carnival rides and games littered the green grass on the hilltop surrounding the mansion. He continued driving until he parked in the spot he secured every year. During the next week his assistant Maise, who was already setting up the costume tent, would help him with sales as he put together his most prized possession: Ursula the Sea Witch!

Stay tuned for the continuation of this three-part series of The Halloween Costume Tailor. Next week we’ll find out what exactly Cyrus Vanslow does with his meat freezers and how terrifying the gypsy really is!

Be sure to check out my website where you can listen to other terrifying horror stories about the town of Sandcastle and its strange inhabitants. You’ll learn more about the Lady of the Lake and of the mysterious awakening of the town in this age of sin and evil. Head on over to my website at www.scarystorytime.com and let me know what you think of the series, or leave a comment on Apple Podcasts. You can also leave a message for the show by calling 707-SPOOKYBOO-22 (that is 707-776-6592) or by sending an email to scarystoriesonvideo@gmail.com. You can also send a letter to:

BOO RHODES
39 CALIFORNIA ST. #251
Valley Springs, California 95252

Be sure to check out the band Stay Out on Spotify and Apple Music or at www.officialstayout.com.

That’s all for tonight. I’ll see you in your nightmares.