Mr. Mulligan needed a new pair of shoes. He had a shirt, tie, blazer, and trousers better than any he’d worn in life, but his family forgot the shoes. They probably figured cold feet didn’t matter where he was going, but Muggsy doubted Mr. Mulligan saw it that way. Why live your short life shoed just to spend eternity barefoot?

 

Luckily for Mr. Mulligan, forgotten shoes were a common oversight, and one Muggsy prepared for. He couldn’t have people meeting their Unmaker in bare feet, even if their families tolerated it.

 

Muggsy daubed Mr. Mulligan’s cheek with a last touch of rouge and returned the brush to its stainless tray, nudging it into line with the rest of his instruments. To an untrained eye, the gleaming tool set would look gruesome, but necessary. Make-up brushes and syringes. Blades and pumps. All the expected and unexpected items needed to make a body decent for public viewing.

 

Most people look away from such things, but if a mortuary supplier ever saw Muggsy’s tools, a number of anomalies would stand out. The double-thick walls of the gum tubing. The enlarged applicator on the cavity injector. The twisted grips on each cosmetic brush. Senseless ergonomics—unless one considers the spindle-talon grasp of a Cemetery shade.

 

Muggsy drifted across the embalming room, sweeping past the refrigeration units. Grave Vapor seeped through the cracks of the sealed chamber, courtesy of the pair brought in from St. Agnes’s Elderly Home that morning. Muggsy had worked on Mr. Mulligan all night, absorbing the last of this stale Vapor. By comparison, these fresh cadavers were like a shot of Italian espresso.

 

But indulging in their Vapor would have to wait. Muggsy could sense Kate preparing for Mr. Mulligan's service above with her typical jumpiness. Somehow, she expended double the energy on tasks her mother would’ve accomplished in half the time.

 

Muggsy missed the silence from when it was just him and Kate’s parents. Barb had been gone three months, even though Pat should’ve died long before her. The crimson runes appeared over his heart years ago, while Barb showed no signs of them.

 

Could the runes be faulty? If not to the grave, where could Barb have gone? 

 

Muggsy cracked the door and peeked into the hall before fading to translucency. No one but Kate or Pat would be here this early, but he hadn’t survived three generations of Larosh Morticians by being careless. Noticing him in this form would require keen eyes and fortuitous lighting, and even then, someone would see a vague, smokey shape. Better they see that than the slope-backed and crooked-limbed specter he was.

 

 Muggsy darted down the hall and opened his shoe cabinet at the bottom of the stairs. The main entrance to Larosh Funeral Home was up half a flight, around a corner, and up another half flight.

 

The orange rays of morning light spilled onto the landing above Muggsy. They made him feel as naked as the corpses in refrigeration.

 

Muggsy didn’t have an aversion to sunlight. Its glare masked his form quite well, but knowing the entrance was a turn away, with no doors to block the sound of him rummaging, unsettled him. If someone saw him in the wrong circumstances, they were liable to die from a fear induced heart attack.

 

Muggsy had known a few shades who relied on that sort of thing for fresh Vapor. He used it himself, a time or two. Desperate times. When his old Cemetery grew unsustainably crowded with shades. He had that overcrowding to thank for his current cushy gig. Without it, he’d still be out there sucking weeks old Vapor with the rest of his kind.

 

Starvation was a powerful motivator.

 

As Muggsy dug through the pile of used tennis shoes and loafers, he wondered—as he often did—if any other shades shared the ambition that got him this position. He’d heard of the occasional shade befriending a Grave Tender or a child with the touch, but never of a shade with a day job.

 

Something thudded into a wall above. Muggsy rammed himself into the corner next to the wardrobe. When he heard Kate’s cursing, he flowed out of the crevice. She must’ve hit the casket on a wall trying to roll it somewhere, no doubt denting the fine white oak the Mulligan family had picked out.

 

Muggsy made a garbled hissing sound as he returned to his search. His selection of men’s shoes was dwindling. The one pair he found with a whisper’s hope of fitting were some grass-stained, size 15 New Balances.

 

Muggsy lifted the sneakers on two hooked fingers and stalked back to the embalming room. He eased Mr. Mulligan’s feet into the shoes, but soon met resistance. Muggsy growled. He’d have to crunch the man’s toes to fit. That wouldn’t do. These feet were a testament to Mr. Mulligan’s kind.

 

Muggsy considered the doorbell hanging on the wall across the room. It was wired up to the office for him to call for help, but the only help up there was Kate. Would this be too much for her? Barb always kept his wardrobe stocked, but Kate didn’t have her mother’s inevitable force of will. Few other than Death herself did.

 

Muggsy stared at Mr. Mulligan’s feet—blood-drained and bare beneath his suit pants.

It just wouldn’t do. Muggsy tapped the button with a blunt knuckle and waited.

 

~ * ~

 

When Kate left for Milwaukee, she swore she’d never be back. But here she was, blotting orange juice out of the foyer’s chevron patterned carpet. That morning’s casket lay on its crooked wheeled cart beside her, ready to accept whatever poor soul the demon in the basement was working on.

 

A cheerful jingle sounded from the office. Kate froze, mid-ringing out her sponge.

 

She rose as if in a dream. Flashes of trips to the basement as a kid assailed her. The dark landing. Scraping sounds from the embalming room. A shadow, somehow taller than the ceiling, hunched over dead and blueing bodies. Kate remembered all the afternoons spent hidden in closets or under sheet covered tables in the casket display room, preferring the dark to the cold lit hell of the family home’s basement.

 

Kate shook herself, finished mopping up the stain, and dropped her sponge in the bucket. A slight orange hue remained, but it blended well enough with the patterned carpet. Kate mentally thanked her Dad for his awful taste.

 

Kate steeled herself and descended the stairs. She found Muggsy hunched over his latest victim, holding a massive pair of sneakers. Kate averted her gaze from the pale corpse on the table and put on her best big-girl voice. “What do you need?”

 

Muggsy lifted the shoes. His faceless face betrayed no intention.

 

“You need me to clean them?”

 

Muggsy made a radio static growl and mimed something with his hooked hands.

 

“Too big?”

 

Muggsy stabbed a claw toward the corpse’s feet. Kate’s wonder at their freakish size momentarily overpowered her queasiness. “So not too big.” She folded her arms to stop her hands from trembling. “What do you want me to do about it?”

 

Muggsy’s talons flashed a series of gestures that gave Kate the impression of him disemboweling a cat.

 

“I don’t know, I don’t…”

 

Muggsy growled in the back of what counted for his throat. Kate stepped back. She fumbled for the steel door-pull behind her. “I’ll call Dad.”

 

The shade gave a thumbs up. The absurdly human gesture shocked Kate out of her terror. She yanked the door open and shut it behind her, steadying herself with a breath before punching her Dad’s number into her cellphone.

 

He picked up halfway through the outgoing message. It sounded like he was rummaging on the bedside table for his glasses. “Kate? What’s going—” he gasped. “The Mulligan service! Am I late? Are they—”

 

“No Dad, you’re alright.” All the frustration Kate had with him that morning fell away.  “I just need some help with something.”

 

“Ok. Um, I’ll be there right away.”

 

“No, I got it. It’s just a—” Kate glanced through the window into the embalming room. Muggsy stood in the corner by the freezers, facing the wall. She shivered at the bony lumps jutting from his back. A twisted mockery of human shoulder blades. “It’s an embalming thing.”

 

“Oh.” Pat’s voice crackled, courtesy of the handset he refused to part with despite Kate’s brother getting him a cellphone years ago. “Well your Mother handles most of that.”

 

“I doubt she’ll answer,” Kate said. “It’s like five a.m. in California.”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

Kate shivered, uncertain if the slurping noises behind her were real or a fabrication of her fear. She tucked herself further against the door jamb, fighting the urge to look back into the embalming room.

 

Pat asked, “What does he need?”

 

“He seems mad about the shoes being too small, but if that’s the shoes the family brought, shouldn’t they work?”

 

Pat sighed. “He’s got a thing about shoes.” The other end of the line rustled as Pat rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Your Mom keeps a wardrobe of them for him at the bottom of the stairs. Check there.”

 

A negating snarl sounded behind Kate. One she knew she didn’t imagine. She shrunk further against the wall. “I think he’s tried that already,” she whispered, for all the good it would do. If Muggsy could hear Dad on the phone through a solid pine door, what else couldn’t he hear?

 

“You’ll have to get some more then. He won’t let us get him into the casket until you do. Your Mom goes to the thrift store down on fifth every few months and clears out their shoe section. You could try there.”

 

Kate grimaced at the thought of going out in public. It was bad enough her Honda had to be in the Home’s parking lot, broadcasting her presence to the town like a busted-down, puke-green billboard. So far, she’d avoided running into anyone from high school since dropping out of college, but it was only a matter of time before someone’s Grandma or Grandpa dropped dead.

 

“Should I pick some up on my way in?” Pat asked. “I was going to do laundry, but no one will care if my pants are wrinkly, right?”

 

“That’s alright,” Kate said, doubting his intention to do laundry. She pictured the pile of unwashed clothes on what used to be her Mom’s side of the bed. It would take her Dad awhile to sort through that pale imitation of his wife sleeping beside him. “You have to figure out how to use the iron some time, might as well be today.”

 

Pat laughed. Kate couldn’t tell if it was genuine or for her benefit. The ambiguity was an improvement.

 

As they hung up, Kate considered just leaving. Muggsy had overheard the call, so he knew the plan, but her Mom’s early lessons in manners wouldn’t allow it. Not even for an inhuman specter lacking in the social graces.

 

Kate cracked the door and glanced into the room. Muggsy was packing up his grisly implements. She cleared her throat, but Muggsy paid her no mind, continuing to clean his make-up brushes on a silicone mat.

 

“I’m going to go get your shoes.” Kate said. “Did you get a measure on his size?”

 

Muggsy held up a jagged finger for her to wait. Kate wasn’t about to rush him. The shade packed his kit in its zippered bag and stowed it under the table. Then he slunk across the room and loomed over her.

 

Kate shrunk into the doorway, fighting with every inch to maintain her personal space, but Muggsy kept coming.

 

“I just need the shoe size.”

 

Muggsy shook his head and pointed to his sunken chest, then to the hall beyond Kate.

 

“No,” she said, “you can’t come. I know they’re accepting at Goodwill, but they’d draw the line at you.”

 

Muggsy grumbled and then—as if pulling a mask on—raked his claws down the inky pool that counted for his face. He shimmered in the fluorescent lighting and then faded to a shadow, like a visual smudge from staring at the sun.

 

Kate’s stomach squirmed at the implication. How often had Muggsy been lurking near her when she thought she was alone?

 

Muggsy reappeared a moment later, still looming over her in the doorway.

 

“Hard to argue with that.”

 

Muggsy followed her down the hall, again using his vanishing act at the foot of the stairs. Kate left him in the lobby—at least she thought she did—and retrieved money from the locked drawer in her Dad’s office. When she returned, she was surprised to find Muggsy standing in his corporeal form, filling the lobby floor to ceiling. His head hung down, staring at the faint orange juice stain.

 

Kate gulped and continued to the door. Muggsy followed, vanishing before they hit the sunlight beyond.

 

~ * ~

 

Kate drove with one hand on the wheel, cramming herself as far against the driver side window as she could manage. She wasn’t certain how Muggsy packed his hulking frame into her two door Honda Civic, nor did she want to consider it. Somehow, he must have, because there he was in the Goodwill parking lot. Kate’s eyes felt bruised as they lingered on the darkened spot he occupied.

 

Kate entered the store with her shadow close behind. The smell of a thousand people’s homes crashed over her. Flowery spritzes from dispensers high on the walls fought to mask the scent, but it was a losing battle.

 

A few early risers wandered the shelves, mostly blue-hairs getting some exercise with a little retail therapy. Kate suspected most of the stuff here originated from them. Her eyes passed over piles of tatted lace and knick knacks. A stooped woman ambled past, using her loaded shopping cart as a make-shift walker. Bone-pale china dolls gazed at Kate from behind the cart’s blue plastic mesh, begging her for freedom.

 

Kate pulled a cart from the rack and rolled toward the shoe section. They passed a shelf overflowing with snow globes, upholstered Santa Clauses, and other Christmas trinkets. Lovely displays, if it wasn’t mid-April.

 

As Kate rolled away from these, the chill at her back fell away, and the tension in her shoulders released. She glanced back and found Muggsy’s blurred form lingering near the snow globes. A man with a face like leather shuffled toward him, clutching a basket of VHS tapes with cowboys on their covers.

 

Kate panicked as one of the snow globes tipped on the shelf toward Muggsy. The old man kept coming, too enamored with his haul to notice he was walking toward a dim specter of death. Kate wheeled the cart around and raced toward the man, but she was going too slow. Even with the man’s shuffling pace, he’d reach Muggsy long before Kate would.

 

Her breath caught as the man stopped inches from Muggsy’s shadow. He shivered, glancing up for the air vent responsible for the sudden chill. Finding nothing, he turned away from Muggsy, muttering something about a faulty HVAC system.

 

Kate let out a long sigh and wheeled her cart toward Muggsy. His shadow loomed over one of the smallest snow globes. He rocked it back and forth with a talon. It was a tacky thing of glass, paint, and plastic. A family of anthropomorphic mice sang carols around a bonfire in its center, bundled against the cold.

 

Kate sidled next to Muggsy and pretended to occupy herself looking at the costs of some homemade ornaments. The prices people put on children’s works of love. “Shoes,” she muttered, glancing over her shoulder, relieved to find the old man checking out. “Remember?”

 

Muggsy grumbled, but he tipped the snow globe back on its base and followed Kate to the shoe racks.

 

The men’s section left something to be desired, but that was always the case at these places. Kate wasn’t sure if men and women fit the stereotype of how many shoes they owned that closely, or if men were more likely to throw them away than to donate.

 

Kate started shoveling shoes from the rack, letting them tumble into her cart. A firm pressure on her wrist stopped her. She jerked in Muggsy’s grasp like a snared animal, imagining claws sink into her arm, peeling her flesh from bone.

 

Muggsy released her at the first sign of struggle, shrinking down to her height. Kate staggered into the row of stilettos and Ugg boots behind her. She clutched her wrist, relieved to find it unmarred by the shade’s claws.

 

Kate’s eyes darted around the store. In the next row, a woman with baggy eyes perused the kid’s section. The young Mom was too busy scouring the racks of miniature t-shirts and polos to notice the crazy woman in the shoe section.

 

Kate glared at Muggsy’s shadow, cowering in the corner like a scolded child. “You pick them out then.”

 

The shadow nodded sheepishly and set to work. He indicated which shoes he wanted by tugging on their tongues or laces. Kate was grateful Muggsy had the sense not to throw them into the cart himself. She followed Muggsy’s lead, plucking the shoes he selected and placing them in the cart.

 

After a dozen pairs, Kate started to understand the shade’s preferences. He left behind the cheap and worn-out options—their soles scraped thin and scuffed beyond repair—opting for loafers and tennis that offered ample arch support, if not the style to match. The tennis shoes and hikers he selected clashed with the classic styles people buried their relatives in, but no one saw feet in caskets, so what did style matter?

 

Kate smiled, picturing the crowds of people her family had sent to the afterlife sporting Muggsy’s shoes. Spirits comparing kicks at the pearly gates, thanking a monster they’d never met for choosing comfort over style.

 

When they arrived at the largest shoes, Muggsy took special care to pick out a pair that would fit Mr. Mulligan—a pair of boat-sized converse in a black and white checker pattern. Kate chuckled as she placed them in the cart. Muggsy rumbled inquisitively.

 

“They’re perfect,” Kate said, glancing to the side to avoid the headache of staring at his shadow. “Do you need anything else?”

 

Muggsy clacked his claws together. His void face seemed to glance toward the Christmas section for an instant, but it spun back just as fast. He shook his head.

 

“You sure?”

 

Muggsy nodded.

 

“Alright,” Kate said with a knowing lilt. She wheeled their cart toward the register, feeling surprisingly calm about the prospect of checking out four dozen pairs of shoes.

 

~ * ~

 

Muggsy savored the Vapor pouring off Mrs. Fuller as he drained her fluids. Above, the Mulligan service sounded like it was wrapping up, though Muggsy suspected he’d be hearing their revelry and grief long after the home closed. Whispers of stopping by Foghley’s, the tavern across the street, had drifted down to the embalming room before the reception line had even formed. After years of processing this town’s dead, Muggsy had concluded the desire to poison oneself must be hereditary. Based on the state of Mr. Mulligan’s liver, the family would be at the bar long into the night.

 

Footsteps sounded on the landing. Muggsy didn’t have time to dump the bucket down the drain, so he tucked it under the table. Even the most seasoned funeral home directors would prefer not to see its contents.

 

Kate opened the door. A plastic bag dangled from her hand. “May I come in?”

 

It was a silly question, considering this was her home, but Muggsy nodded. Kate averted her gaze from Mrs. Fuller’s pale and wrinkled body. Muggsy had been right to hide the bucket.

The young woman and the ancient shade observed each other over the table. Kate fidgeted with her bag. “Thank you for coming with me today.”

 

Muggsy cocked his head.

 

“It was nice to get out.”

 

Muggsy grumbled, remembering the way she’d recoiled at his touch. At the bite in her voice when he saved her from buying those broken-down oxfords.

 

“I thought you might want this.” Kate pulled a lump of tissue paper from her bag and started unraveling it. Muggsy’s heart skipped—or it would have if he had one—as the paper fell away, revealing one of the orbs from the shoe shop.

 

Kate started to put the orb on a counter near the door, but Muggsy rushed to her side. She didn’t shy away from his quick movement.

 

Kate set the treasure in his palm, and Muggsy cradled it in his claws, careful not to chip the paint. It was the one he’d toyed with on the shelf. The one with the fuzzy creatures that used to scurry through his graveyard. But these creatures weren’t ragged and feral like the ones he’d known. They didn’t look like they had to scrounge for crumbs and fallen flower petals amongst the headstones. No. These were chubby and bright, nestled together by the warmth of their fire. Kate held out a hand. “Let me show you how it works.”

 

Muggsy shied away, but Kate kept her hand outstretched, as steady as Muggsy with a scalpel. Maybe there was more of Barb in her daughter than Muggsy thought?

 

He handed her the orb. Kate gripped it in both hands and shook. Muggsy lunged to reclaim it, but Kate dodged away, holding it to her chest. Muggsy retreated, rubbing his claws together.

 

Kate returned the orb to him, and he wondered at its transformation. Glittering flakes of powdered white swirled within, buffeting the creatures around their bonfire and piling in drifts around their feet. Muggsy shook it again, and a fresh blizzard kicked up.

 

“If you like that one,” Kate said, “There’s a tote full of them in Dad’s basement. Something tells me Mom won’t be coming back for them.”

 

Muggsy nodded, but he didn’t look up from his treasure. Kate smiled and left him to it, heading upstairs to clean up after the Mulligan family.

 

Long after she left, and silence fell on the home once more, Muggsy took a break from shaking the orb. He placed it on the embalming table. His gaze followed its flakes as they spun to rest at the creatures’ feet. They wore bulbous boots painted a shiny black. Muggsy thought of a pair of red Asics they found today that would be perfect on Mrs. Fuller. 

 

No. Not red. A proper crimson. It matched the runes over Pat’s heart.

 

Muggsy caressed the orb’s glass with a claw. Kate did well today, but there was more to running this place than cleaning up stains and buying shoes. If the runes held true—and Muggsy suspected they did, as they’d never lied before—Pat had less than two years left. Less than two years until he joined the masses of dead who’d passed through this house. Muggsy hoped it would be long enough for Kate to learn it all.

​