The Harvest Reaper

Places, Everyone

The brain walls came off the truck first.

Then Spencer and the crew would grab the zombie tank and the Death Space Lab.

All the wall pieces, even the corridors between scenes, had alphanumeric codes in the top corner to make the haunted house easier to reassemble every year.

Writzfeld watched Spencer run the crew of twelve, saw Blood Mansion begin to come together before his coffee had cooled enough to sip.

The billboard at the edge of the freeway onramp on top of the ink warehouse touted their 25th year.

Spencer had been with Ritzy twenty-four of ‘em.

He was starting to stoop a bit, his arms seemingly getting longer, dangling beneath his worn leather belt.

Ritzy took a tiny slurp of his coffee, stung the roof of his mouth with heat, walked over as Spencer leaned against the truck calling “Four A through F next, then Aux Five and Six to link ‘em.

Ritzy smiled like he always smiled when he had an idea he was proud of. 

“Spence, you think Bergie can handle site maintenance this year?”

Spencer turned to his boss and cracked his knuckles through ratty leather work gloves. Most of the younger crew had hi-viz synthetics.

“Kind of a fucked up time to fire me, Ritzy.”