Diondra loves Good American jeans, filling out their seats with all the juicy contours of Georgia fruit. She can often be found admiring herself in the corner fitting room. The one with three mirrors.

My customers, of course, can’t see Diondra’s crazed smile: sharp corners under eyes that shine with ill intent. But I know her malevolent features and foul deeds by heart. That’s why I had to strangle her and top her off with two feet of concrete down in the stock room. Mannequins had nodded solemnly at the rightness of it all: me freeing the world of Diondra’s cruel proclivities.

“Miss? Did you hear me? I asked if you have this in a large,” a customer says, holding up a black bustier.

Halloween is a week away, and I’ve been turning a huge profit selling bustiers, corsets, miniskirts, over-the-knee boots, and headbands festooned with cat ears or devil’s horns.

Speaking of devils, Diondra is now gyrating inside the bustier, her presence evidenced by the awkward shuddering of black fabric.

The customer blinks at it. Puts it back on the rack and gapes at me.

“I—uh—sorry, yes,” I say. “I’ll get one from the stock room. Be right back.”

On my way to the basement door, I brush against a console table atop which there’s a bowl of random things: my measuring tape, fitting room keys, and the serrated pumpkin carver I used to make jack-o-lanterns for the window display.

I peek back out at the sales floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of Diondra. The shifting of a silk dress in the window reveals she’s got her legs wrapped around the mannequin, grinding. Thank god the candles in the jack-o-lanterns are LED. With all the fabric Diondra’s got flapping around the store, regular candles would’ve been dangerous. I roll my eyes at her juvenile hijinks, but I’m glad she’s occupied.

I take my shoes off, ease the door closed behind me, and descend into the storage room. Its concrete floor is absolutely frigid. I rifle through the bustier rack.

XS.

XS.

XS.

S.

M.

Come on, gimme a large….

XL.

Fuck.

M.

Oh, come on!

L.

A large. Yes!

I grab it. Turn around. And slam into a hovering Burberry trench.

I raise my eyes to find a pair of sunglasses suspended three inches above the trench’s popped collar. The shock on my face reflected in those lenses sets off a painful quaking in my chest: a strange feedback loop of my fear escalating my own fear. 

“I was just…g-getting something for a customer.”

The sunglasses slowly tilt. Diondra’s cocking her head, amused.

I take a step back and hit a clothing rack. In an eerily smooth movement, the trench and sunglasses close the gap between us. I feel a tug on my blouse, then hear the screaming of fabric and the raining of buttons on concrete. Suddenly my body is shoved into a 180-degree spin. Now I’m facing a full-length mirror. A strip of my torso is visible where my shirt’s been torn open. Icy fingers slide beneath my underwire. They cup my breasts. Barely any movement registers in the mirror. Goosebumps spread down my flanks.

Something cuts into my throat. I gasp and bring my hands to my neck. It’s the measuring tape. Diondra’s got it pulled so tight I can’t get my fingernails under it. I claw and I claw but I can’t get it off. My lungs burn. My head pounds with every beat of my heart. Oh, the pounding. Desperate for oxygen, I buck and thrash, but the measuring tape only slices deeper into my flesh. I hate that I can see myself like this—eyes bulging, lips pulled into a teeth-baring grimace, face purple and hideous. I hate that Diondra gets to watch me struggle. I scrape at my throat so hard there’s blood smeared on the measuring tape…all over my bruised, gouged flesh. My neck. My poor fucking neck. It always was Diondra’s favorite part of me—warm and smooth and too beautiful not to destroy.

The mannequins turn their heads away.

I wheeze. I’m so hot I’m cold, icy panic spreading over every inch. But soon my suffering leaves me, and there is only blackness.

When I return to consciousness, I’m slumped in the corner fitting room watching Diondra try on a pair of Good Americans.

“What do you think, babe? Does my ass look good in these?”

“Enough to eat,” I rasp, then, startled, look into a mirror.

I can’t find myself. There’s only a Burberry trench, belted shut over a 26-inch waist I recognize as my own. Tears roll down my face and splat on the beige fabric.

“I put that on you. Your shirt was ripped. You’re welcome.”

Your shirt was ripped. Like she has no idea how it got that way. God, I fucking hate her. Tears of odium glitter in my eyes.

“Don’t you fucking cry,” Diondra snaps. “My delectable bod is encased in concrete because of you. Remember that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.” She turns toward me.

Now I can see her face. I…I can see her face. Her cruel smile. Shaken, I say nothing. She turns back around.

Faceless again, she says, “Ah, but it’s all good. You got what you deserved in the end. You’re stuck here now. It’s just you and me and all these clothes. Forever.”

The idea of eternity stretching before me in a Diondra-laden hellscape sends a painful rumble of acid up my throat.

I think of the pumpkin carver. Would I be able to pick it up—wield it against Diondra the way she wielded the measuring tape against me? Can you kill a ghost? I wonder. And there’s no time like the present to find out.