eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Loss Prevention (Reply)

Written for Day 3 of the

31daysoffandom October challenge. The prompt I used for this one was "haunted"

"I've investigated the matter thoroughly and my conclusion is that the dressing rooms in the menswear department at the Eerie Mall are definitely haunted," Marshall declared, tossing his notebook down on the ring-stained dining table with an authoritative slap.

Dash glared at him as best he could, given that he was holding a three-pound bag of frozen peas against his left eye.

"Thank you," he said bitterly. "Because without your expertise on the matter, the bleeding walls, voices that come out of nowhere and sound like the buzzing of a thousand flies, and the fact that an unseen force hit me in the face with a changing room door could just have been coincidence."

"Mall security could have been using poltergeists as a deterrent against shoplifters," said Simon. "We've seen that before, though not on this scale."

"Overreacting," Dash muttered.

"You stole sixteen pallets of tinned yams!" said Marshall. "The World o' Stuff can't take those sorts of losses. Plus you pretty much ruined every Thanksgiving dinner in Eerie."

"No," said Dash, in the slow, patient terms of someone who'd refuted this particular argument before. "One, because nobody 'ruins' a ridiculously huge turkey dinner by not including one of about thirty side dishes. And two, you could have had yams if you had been willing to pay for them, but you threw a giant temper tantrum about artificially-created yam shortages and I put a yam-embargo on you."

"Yambargo," said Simon, and giggled. Dash laughed. Marshall scowled.

"Anyway," he said, giving Simon a disapproving look. "It wasn't a poltergeist; I checked with the head of security and they prefer to use traditional methods of loss prevention. So you might end up processing customer returns in Mall Jail but they wouldn't throw you face-first into an interior wall over a pair of stolen boots."

"Joke's on them," said Dash. "Last time they put me on the customer service desk, I made a killing. Plus they got a ton of bad press about how rude the staff were. Whiners."

"Can I finish?" said Marshall. "Do you want to hear about the human remains in the food court soda fountain or not?"

"Aww, no," said Simon. "You get refills on that thing!"

"Yes," said Marshall, adopting his spookiest tone. "Free refills... on DEATH!"

"That makes literally no sense," said Dash.

Microwave-verse

Bonfire by