Young Writers Society

Bo nodded and looked around at the surrounding shops. One of them just to the left looked sort of like a Macys or something - a big store with a lot of options, that's really all he was looking for - and he ran over to it.

The following minutes were filled with hurried and panicked searching around the store. He found a pair of leather gloves and snatched them up, slipping them on. Then he found a bomber jacket that kind of reminded him of what his dad would wear, and he threw that on over his bare plastic arms. That left him with his feet, which he quickly covered with a random pair of white socks and the first pair of tennis shoes he could find. They were really colorful compared to everything else he was wearing, but it didn't really matter.

Amazingly, guessing his mannequin's shoe size had been a lot easier than guessing his pant size. He put the shoe box neatly back where he found it on the shelves (as a courtesy to the people who worked there, in case this was an actual store he was robbing), but as he slid it back into place, he caught sight of movement in the corner of his eye.

Not that he had eyes. He was wearing a horse mask, too. He could not explain to anyone, for the life of him, how this was working.

He whirled around to see who was behind him.

Bobby didn't take the time to pay attention to anything anyone was saying. In a brief moment when no one was looking, he ducked away and went further into the Halloween store. He had to hide. There were people here, now, and he couldn't be spotted. He couldn't.

Bo was taking awhile.

Télos frowned - or would have, if he had the face to. He knew it hadn't been that long in actuality, but Télos was terrible at waiting. He desperately wanted to find out more about that person he had seen.

...And it was a little creepy waiting alone in the mall's hallway.

With almost all of the store windows dark, the only light came from the faint, dim lights up above. There were windows at some points in the ceiling, too, but it was just pitch black darkness outside. He knew it was probably just a cloudy night on the new moon, but still. It seemed like something out of a ghost story Lex and Liz would tell.

He gulped.

(Or made the sound of it, at least.)

"B-Bo?" he asked, peeking into the store that Bo had gone into. "Are you almost done?"

He didn't get an answer.

Miming a deep breath - since he couldn't actually breath - he took a hesitant step into the store. The store was eerily silent. If he hadn't been standing outside of it the entire time, he would have guessed that Bo left for another store.

"B-Bo?" he repeated. "Where are you-"

He gave a startled yelp as he tripped over something in the middle of one of the aisles. He tried to catch his balance, but failed miserably - he went crashing to the ground with a loud thud.

"Ow," he said, out of habit. He sat up. Somewhat disorientated, he looked through the aisle to see what he had tripped on.

And found himself looking at Bo.

The clothes were slightly different than what he had been wearing earlier, but it was undeniably Bo. Télos didn't even bother to get back up on his feet. He just scooted over to where Bo was and tried shaking him. He was laying face first - or would have been, if he really had a head right now - and wasn't moving at all. He already knew he wasn't going to get a response.

Feeling numb, Télos sat back.

There was no way to check for a pulse. No way of knowing if Bo had just fallen asleep standing up, or if he was gone. His limbs looked sudden and stiff, just like a regular old mannequin's would. It was as if he had never been a person to begin with.

There was a crash from the end of the aisle.

A shoe box had fallen, its contents sprawling out across the floor.

Télos stared at it.

He was alone in the shop, right? So why had that suddenly fallen-

The shoes suddenly went in the shoe box.

And the shoe box was suddenly put back up on the shelf.

Télos froze.

The store was haunted.

And if the ghost had done something to Bo, he knew exactly who would be next. He scrambled to his feet, nonexistent adrenaline kicking in and overriding his limbs not wanting to move. He rushed towards the door - maybe to get away from the ghost, or maybe to warn Aquarius and Bobby.

But he never got a chance to.


Bobby was gone.

Aquarius had been sure Bobby had been right behind him. Télos and Bo hadn't said anything about him disappearing before he left. But when Aquarius looked back to talk to him, Bobby was gone. It was like he had vanished into thin air.

If Aquarius had lips, he would have been biting them as he nervously scanned the store for where Bobby could be hiding.

"Bobby?" Aquarius quietly said, peeking around one of the aisles. "Please...Please come out. I'm not going to hurt you. And if you want to hide, I can hide with you-"

There were noises coming from the store next door.

Aquarius gave a hopeless glance in the direction he thought Bobby might have been before looking towards the exit to the store. He didn't want to leave Bobby. If he left, Bobby might hide in another store - and Aquarius wouldn't be able to find him after that.

But his brother could be in trouble.

"I'll be right back," he promised. "I have to make sure Télos and Bo are okay."

He left the store.

He clung to the storefronts as he walked, his eyes more focused on the entirety of the hallway than on what was in front of him. Aquarius hadn't grabbed anything that could hide he was a mannequin. Maybe he should have, before he left. But he had to find out what had happened-

His foot bumped up against something.

He looked down.

Télos was sprawled in the doorway.

He got a sinking feeling in his gut.

"Télos?" he asked, kneeling down beside his brother and giving him a hesitant poke. "Are you okay?"

Télos didn't reply.

Télos, who didn't like pranks. Who would have gotten up the moment he realized his brother was there, even if all he wanted to do was lay on the ground. Télos, who Aquarius could normally read with ease but couldn't understand his body cues at all right now because he was made of plastic.

"Please," Aquarius begged, his voice a desperate whisper. "Get up. You might be tired, but..."

He gently shook his brother.

Télos still didn't get up.

Aquarius sat back and held his face in his hands.

His brother wasn't really gone, right? He couldn't be. He had to be okay. Télos was one of the oldest gods right now. He had been around for a long time. No one and nothing could...could...

He shook the thought away and peeked through his fingers.

With the way he was sitting, he could finally see inside the shop. Bo was inside it, but there was something wrong with him, too - he was laying on the ground. It was the same way Télos was. He had fallen face-first, and his limbs looked stiff like a mannequin's were supposed to.

Whatever had done this to Télos must have done it to Bo, too.

Aquarius rushed to his feet.

He had to let Bobby know. Even if Bobby was hiding right now, he still had to know-

Aquarius made it to the doorway of the Halloween store.

Bobby dashed into the Halloween store and took shelter behind a display of cheap Dracula capes. There was a hollow thud behind him and he jumped, stumbling a step away from the noise, into the rack of capes.

CRASH!

He yelped in surprise and glance wildly around for...something. Someone. Anyone who saw him.

And he saw no one. The store was empty. But he still had to get out of here.

He turned on his heel and dashed deeper into the store, or, he tried to. He barely made it two steps before he tripped on something hollow and plastic. He hit the ground hard and groaned, kicking the thing away.

Looking back, he saw that it was just a mannequin. It wasn't wearing a costume, though. The clothes it was wearing were just normal clothes. Very familiar normal clothes.

Bobby looked down at himself, and screeched.

Robin's day hadn't gone exactly as she had planned.

Well, the day had. It was the night that hadn't gone as planned. It had looked like it would, when she first got to the mall. It was late at night. The mall was practically a ghost town; no one had been in there for a long time.

Which was a total jackpot.

She hit up some of the bigger, name brand stores that could afford to lose some clothes and other items here and there, then decided - just for kicks - to take advantage of how empty the mall was. She was in the middle of checking out one of the other stores and kind of goofing around in it when she heard someone come in.

All it took was slipping into her more ghostly self - still looking human, on the off chance they somehow could see ghosts - and peeked around the corner at the other nightly intruder.

...Who was a mannequin.

Weird.

It took Robin all of a second to realize that 1) a ghost was probably possessing the mannequin and 2) that it was kind of her job to take care of things like that. So she made her reaping weapon appear, took aimed, and fired a little shot right at the mannequin's soul.

A second later, a guy far taller than the mannequin popped out.

All she managed to get in was a quick hi before someone else popped into the store. Seeing that the other person was a mannequin, too, she took aim and repeated. Her reaction was a little slow, and she did technically knock over a box of shoes by accident, but she could fix that with the others.

Because when there were two ghosts possessing things, there were probably more.

This second ghost - who had an impressive black braid and bright golden eyes - barely had a chance to move out of the way before she slid out into the hallway.

When a third ghost came out possessing a mannequin and she snagged him, Robin couldn't help but give a triumphant cry. She didn't really register how he was wearing a mask in his ghostly form, or how shocked he seemed when he saw the ghost with the golden eyes.

Following a hunch, she slipped into the ironically Halloween-themed store and sought out any other ghosts that were lurking around. She felt a little guilty when the final ghost tripped over the mannequin he had been possessing, but she had no way of knowing he was going to run after she broke the connection.

...Or that he was going to scream.

Something told her he was screaming at the mannequin and his ghostly body, not at her. Which was good. She wasn't sure how she'd handle that.

"Hey," she tried to reassure him. Should she hold her hands up? Yeah, she should. She raised them up, hoping that it would come across as a peaceful surrender. "It's okay. That's just the mannequin you were possessing - you're yourself now-"

She faltered.

"...Wait," she said. "Did...Did you not know that you were possessing it? Because if you didn't, this is really awkward and not what I signed up for at all."

Bobby whimpered and backed away. This girl looked like trouble. Lots of trouble.

"Don't hurt me," he said weakly. He had to get away. His gaze darted around the store as his breathing became unsteady. He could climb up into the ceiling. It was a false ceiling, and there were plenty of ways up. He was always safer the higher up he was. Always.

He was having a panic attack.

Why wasn't this something that had ever been covered? She felt like it should have been. Having a panic attack in a situation like this just made sense, so why wasn't there any kind of preparation for how to handle it?

"I'm not going to hurt you," she reassured him. "I promise. I'm just here to help you."

She thought for a moment, then slowly lowered her hand towards her pocket.

"I have my app on my phone," she said. "It's supposed to help with breathing. I don't usually get panic attacks, but it's helped me with the one or two of them that I've had since I got it. I'm reaching for it now. If you let me get it out, you can use it. It should hopefully help?"

Bobby slowly shook his head, then in an instant, he was gone.

He had to get out of this store. She was too close now, she could get to him before he could climb anything, and even if she was offering help now, that didn't mean anything. It was the people who offered help who were always the scariest, and Bobby didn't know what was going on. He couldn't trust anyone until he did.

He slipped and lost his balance as he tried to turn in the hallway, almost falling over, but he recovered and took off down the hall, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.

Bo didn't really have time to react to anything that was going on.

One moment, he was looking at shoes, the next, he was looking at shoes, but also his former mannequin body lying on the floor, and also a ghostly looking woman in a hoodie.

The only thing he could guess about her was that she was friendly, maybe, and then he watched as Telos came up and went down, only for his ghostly form to emerge from his former mannequin body.

He didn't really resemble his mannequin, apart from maybe the wig he'd acquired in the Halloween store.

It was only then, looking at Telos, that he realized he now looked like himself, and that he too, along with Telos and the woman, were all ghosts. Floating, transparent, doing some astral-projecting, or potentially dead. As the woman left, Aquarius rushed in, unaware of the ghostly figures around him as he worried over Telos's plastic corpse.

As Aquarius left, Bo followed after to look for the mystery woman with the slingshot and the undercut, not sure how he was running without a physical body, but he pursued nonetheless. He had only just caught up when he saw poor Bobby get ripped out of his mannequin from afar, scream, and then run away.

Bo argued in his mind for a split second on who to pursue. It was very likely Bobby would be intimidated by him if he were to pursue, but he didn't want Bobby to get lost in the mall alone. That would be the worst thing... to be a ghost, alone in a strange mall in a strange world with a strange ghost of a woman running around, ripping people out of their mannequin hosts.

"Bobby!" Bo shouted as he started down the hall.

Bobby heard one of the people calling his name, but instead of answering, he ducked into a vacant store. The windows were covered up by sheets of plastic, and the inside was clearly under construction. Probably a new shop moving in. He' always heard that those were a good way to get in if you wanted to rob the place. At least, in his city they were.

He looked frantically around for a new hiding place. The dressing rooms were a dead end, they'd find him right away behind the unfinished checkout desk...

Bo skidded to a stop and spun to turn for the shop-in-progress.

"Bobby, it's me! Bo! Please, I just want to make sure you're okay!"

Bobby whirled to face him and stumbled back a step.

"I-I'm fine," he said, avoiding his eyes. Bo was so big, and Bobby trembled slightly.

Bo realized how severely he towered over the poor kid, so he knelt down. "I'm sorry for scaring you. I'm back in my normal body, and I know I can look pretty scary."

He covered half of his face - the side with the scar and the missing eye.

"Hm... what do you think. Better? Worse? Or do I just look like a pirate?"

Bobby shuddered, "What do you want?" he squeaked.

Bo lowered his hand a little. Ah. Bobby was still scared.

"Ah. Sorry. Just trying for a little humor. I just didn't want you to get separated. Things are already scary and confusing. I just want to make sure you don't get hurt. We don't know what else or who else is in the mall, and if we all find a way out of this I don't want you being left out of that either."