Page 24 of Someone Save My Midlife Tonight

“Suit yourself,” Candy said. “But I’m just sayin’, I tell one heck of a bedtime story.”

“I can attest to that,” Tim said with a smile. “Very graphic, but quite amusing.”

“I can definitely live without that,” Heather replied dryly.

“Gram, Mr. Jackson and Jimmy George Carrots can bunk with me so I ain’t alone,” Candy said, giving Gram a hopeful look.

“That sounds right nice, girlie,” Gram announced as Mr. Jackson and Jimmy George Carrots turned flips of agreement in the air. “We don’t sleep cause we’re dead and all, so the snorin’ won’t bother us a bit!”

Candy grinned and Gram and gave her a thumbs up. “Daisy, Gideon and Alana Catherine get the house. Capiche?”

Shitty Ritchie let loose with a piercing crythen dropped to the ground and began to wail—tears, snot and ground kicking included. “What about Shitty Ritchie?” he screamed. “Doesn’t Shitty Ritchie get a luxury home? A McMansion?”

Again, I wondered where the guy had been living if he thought a double-wide was a luxury home.

“Itty Ritty!” Alana Catherine called out with tears running down her cheeks. “Ohhhhhhhh, Itty Ritty.”

“Crap,” I muttered. “First, she wanted the skunks for pets… now Itty Ritty. We’re doomed.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Gideon questioned warily.

“Umm…” I began with a wince as Itty Ritty continued to sob in the background. I decided to just rip the bandaid off. There was no sugarcoating it. It was going to be bad no matter how gently I revealed the story. “There’s one minor detail I forgot to tell you about from our trip to the Higher Power’s plane… Our daughter is housing forty dead, machine-wielding skunks inside of her. She wants to keep them as pets.”

Gideon looked back and forth between Alana Catherine and me. The expression on his handsome face was one of utter disbelief. “That’s a joke. Right?”

“Heck to the no!” Gram said as she swooped down into the conversation with a cackle. “Them little stinkers love our gal and she loves them. And I know, I really do, that forty pole cats might seem like a lot, but they’re dead. Therefore, they ain’t gonna eat nothin’ and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that their anal rumpus blasters don’t work no more.”

Gideon was at a total loss for words. I didn’t blame him. It was a lot. Alana Catherine giggled, grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled. Our little gal then proceeded to cover his face in wet baby kisses.

The Grim Reaper was instantly charmed. His daughter hadhim wrapped around her little finger. I was pretty sure she could ask for an entire zoo and Gideon would get it for her.

“Dadadadadada!” she squealed. “Skoonks!”

Before anyone could comment on the fact that she’d just said the word skunk… well, kind of, she pumped her free arm in the air and began to glow in every color of the rainbow. One by one, the army of black and white ghostly stinkers floated out of her small frame and gathered at Gideon’s feet. They stared up at Alana Catherine with reverence and unconditional love in their beady little eyes.

“Holy heck on a bosom stick,” Candy Vargo cried out. “In all my gadzillions of years, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that!”

“Fascinating,” Tim said, waving at the gathering. “Welcome, friends!”

“This is real?” Gideon whispered, still in a semi-state of shock.

I blew out a raspberry and laughed. “One hundred percent.”

“Welp,” Candy said, getting back to business as the skunks wandered around the area. My dog Karen couldn’t see the dead, but Donna could and seemed delighted that we were expanding the furry part of our family. “We can put the dead stinkies in McMansion number six.”

At the news, Shitty Ritchie lost his tiny and debatably sane mind. He beat the ground with his itty-bitty fists and stubbed every single one of his bare toes on the hard ground. “WHAT ABOUT ME? Where does Shitty Ritchie sleep?”

“Seven. McMansion number seven,” I said in my outdoor voice so I could be heard over his sobs. I wasn’t sure if his tantrum was about to devolve into something worse. We’d already seen worse. Having a repeat would piss me off.

“Really?” he asked, peeking up at me. The crying ended as abruptly as it had started. The tiny freak smiled.It was slightly horrifying with the sharp fangs, but it pulled hard at my heart for some reason. My compassion was probably going to get me killed one of these days. “Seven? For me?”

“Umm… yes, seven,” I repeated. “Will that work?”

Shitty Ritchie got to his feet and did a few jazz squares as he shrieked in excitement. His happy screams were as ear-piercing as his desolate ones. Most of our group had slapped their hands over their ears. The dead skunks sprinted away and hid. It was wonderful that the tantrum had ended, but I still didn’t trust him. I was ready to step on Shitty Ritchie if the jazz squares led to a natural disaster like the tornado earlier. Thankfully, it looked like jazz squares only meant the strange little man was in a good mood.

The learning curve with Shitty Ritchie was steep.

“Yes! So fine,” he said. “The number seven is very important in many cultures! It represents completion, perfection, rest and spiritual wholeness. Very much like Shitty Ritchie.”

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