Fear the ghost of Zorro (or something)

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Here it is October 22, and you’re not ready for Halloween.
You know where the best parties are, with the cats and the bats and the costume contests: at Limelight on Friday the 29th, and at Spy Club on Saturday the 30th.
Then again, it might not matter, since you’re so frightfully costumeless.
On the other, um, claw, a couple of the bartenders at Spy Club, Bomi and Kyung-hee, have already scared up some interesting costume ideas: They’re going as the ghost and the darkness, respectively.
Kyung-hee, who stirs up the potions at Spy’s Blue Club, plans to go as a Korean ghost. Now, for the uninformed, the traditional Korean ghosts are not bedsheets with eyeholes, or wisps projected on walls. They’re beautiful yet creepy women with long black hair, deathly white skin and a white traditional dress.
“And their eyes are bright red, and piercing,” Kyung-hee said. “Their lips are also bright red, and sometimes they drip with a little blood.”
Scary enough. But what do these ghosts actually do to you?
“They never really attack you physically,” Kyung-hee explained. “But they can hurt you with their mind power.”
And that’s different from mortal women, how?
“The Korean ghost is always possessed by some sort of madness, because she died before she was able to marry,” Kyung-hee said. “So when she appears she just watches people, sometimes because she’s envious, sometimes because she needs to take revenge on somebody before she can rest.”
Poor Korean women. Whether or not they’re damned if they do, they’re certainly damned if they don’t.
Bomi, the manager at Spy, will be dressed up as “the night sky.” She got the idea a few years back, when she was teaching English at a local institute and had to throw together a Halloween getup quick.
“I just wear all black, and paint my face black, then draw things like silver moons all over my clothes, and add sparkles,” she said. “Last time I spiked up my hair, but now it’s longer, so I’m not sure that will work.”
Let’s hope Bomi doesn’t drink too much at the party ― sure, night will have already fallen, but we wouldn’t want the sky to do likewise.
Kyung-hee is a little worried, as it happens, that she won’t be able to wear the ghost costume. She fears the dress will be too unwieldy for her to properly serve drinks, especially on a night that promises to be especially lively. Or deadly.
“If I do change my mind, then I’ll just go as Zorro, and I’ll encourage Ms. Cho to be the ghost,” she said. Ms. Cho, a co-worker, is taller and has longer hair, so she looks the part more than Kyung-hee does anyway.
So it’s back to you, fearful reader. Time to Frankenstein together a last-minute costume. And don’t try to show up at Spy Club without one, or people will just assume you’ve come as a troll.

by Mike Ferrin