Comic strip number five brings us face-to-face with the ultimate party nightmare. Gathering her courage at the counter, the blonde tries to break the social ice by asking Charmy if he and Dee are planning to attend next week’s big Halloween Ball. Charmy enthusiastically confirms, only for Dee to let out a ferocious, saliva-spraying “GRRRRRRR…” that clears the air. Charmy casually translates: Dee wasn’t growling in anger; she just wanted to ensure the catering staff would be serving finger foods. The mere thought of literal fingers on a banquet platter sends our ponytail protagonist over the edge: “I am SO not going.”

The diner was significantly quieter by the time Charmy and Dee circled back inside to pick up an insulated cooler bag Charmy had accidentally left beside the counter. The afternoon crowd had thinned, leaving only a solitary line cook scraping the grill in the back and the two girls standing by the vintage jukebox near the entryway. Seeing Charmy return without his jacket seemed like an invitation—or perhaps a curse. The blonde, unable to control her curiosity, stepped out from behind the booth and cleared her throat.

“Hello, Charmy!” she called out, plastering on the most aggressively cheerful, neighborly smile she could muster under the circumstances. “Quick question for you! Are you and Dee going to the Halloween Ball next week?”

Charmy beamed. His face lit up with the unbridled joy of a man whose weekend plans were locked in and guaranteed to be a hit. “Yep! Absolutely! We wouldn’t miss it for the world! Dee’s been working double shifts in the meat locker all week just to bank some extra hours so she could have Saturday evening off.”

Right on cue, Dee snapped her head around. Her jaw unhinged with a wet, sickening click, dropping several inches lower than standard human anatomy normally allowed. A deep, primal rumble began in the cavern of her chest, building in intensity until it burst forth as a loud, guttural roar: “GRRRRRRRRRRR…”

A fine mist of discolored saliva sprayed across the counter, coating the sugar shakers, the laminated breakfast menus, and a small metal rack of grape jelly packets. A single fly caught in the crossfire was knocked clean out of the air, tumbling onto a napkin.

The ponytail girl physically recoiled, flattening her back against the glass display case behind her with a strangled yelp. The blonde flinched violently, wiping a microscopic droplet from her cheek with the back of her sleeve, her cheerful smile twitching uncontrollably as she tried to maintain social composure.

“Yes, Dee,” Charmy answered calmly, turning toward his undead companion and giving her a gentle, reassuring pat on the shoulder. “I am sure there will be plenty. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

The blonde swallowed hard. Her voice came out two octaves higher than normal, thin and reedy. “What… what did she ask, Charmy?”

Charmy adjusted his shirt collar with a modest grin, looking for all the world like a proud husband translating his foreign spouse’s charming cultural inquiries. “Oh, nothing major. She just wanted to know if they would be serving finger foods.”

A suffocating, dead silence dropped over the diner. The hum of the refrigeration unit suddenly sounded like an industrial turbine. In the back, the line cook stopped scraping the grill, his spatula frozen in mid-air.

The ponytail girl stared at Charmy with eyes that threatened to pop clean out of her skull. The double meaning hung in the air as a butcher’s cleaver suspended by a thread. Finger foods. Cocktail sausages wrapped in puff pastry? Miniature egg rolls? Swedish meatballs on wooden toothpicks? Or did an integrated zombie take the phrase with chilling, literal precision?

“Finger foods…” the ponytail girl whispered, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the straps of her purse. Her imagination immediately conjured a vivid, horrifying mental image of a silver banquet chafing dish filled with ice, upon which rested a dozen manicured human appendages neatly arranged around a bowl of cocktail sauce.

“Dee has a wonderful sense of humor,” Charmy added, though his tone was so thoroughly deadpan that neither girl could discern whether it was a joke, a misunderstanding, or a genuine logistical warning. “She loves appetizers. She says traditional plated entrees require too much fine motor control with the silverware, and her wrist tendons tend to slip whenever she tries to cut through anything tougher than Salisbury steak. A buffet-style finger-food layout is just much more accessible for the physically challenged.”

“I am SO not going,” the ponytail girl stated, her voice trembling with absolute, unwavering resolve. She turned on her heel toward the door, her decision finalized. “I am deleting the event from my calendar. I am taking my costume back to the store. I am locking my front door, boarding up the living room windows, and spending Halloween night under my bed with a flashlight and a heavy iron skillet.”

“Oh, come on!” Charmy protested, chuckling warmly. “Don’t be like that! The community committee spent months putting this together! There’s going to be a costume contest, a three-piece polka band, and a punch bowl shaped like a giant plastic skull! It’s a family-friendly affair!”

“Charmy,” the blonde said slowly, stepping between him and her retreating friend, “if your girlfriend looks at a platter of pigs-in-a-blanket and sees a decorative appetizer, that’s fine. But if she looks at the hors d’oeuvres table and decides that the caterer’s left pinky looks like an hors d’oeuvre, this town is going to experience a secondary quarantine event before the DJ can even finish playing ‘Monster Mash.’”

“You worry too much,” Charmy said, picking up his cooler bag and slipping the strap over his shoulder. “Dee knows the rules. She had to pass the county safety evaluation before they even issued her employee name tag. Besides, our costumes are going to steal the show. We’ve been planning this thematic couple’s outfit for three whole months.”

The blonde squinted at him, a terrible sense of foreboding washing over her. “What costumes, Charmy? What could you possibly be dressing up as that won’t cause a riot?”

TO BE CONTINUED…