October 31 - The Haunted Strip Mall

Every year around Halloween we would always hear all about people putting on a Haunted House, or a Haunted Barn, or The Haunted Woods, or a Haunted School or Haunted What Have You, and we were always thinking, why not us? We oughtta get off our asses, put some scary ass shit together, and grab our piece of the Haunted Pie. Know what I'm saying?
Well it took several years of thinking that but doing jack shit before we finally stopped fucking around and actually did something.
And by the way, no, Lee: Your Haunted Garage does not count. Not one person set foot in that stupid thing, Lee. Not one--unless you count your parents and their friends, which, I'm sorry, but I don't. I still remember Mark being all, "It's just a marketing problem." And I'm like, yeah, Mark. You think? A cardboard box propped up against your mailbox with "Haunted Garage" written on it with an arrow pointing at your house? That shit ain't marketing. And neither is pulling the parents of trick or treaters aside and offering them two for the price of one entry for the Haunted Garage. Besides, there's a difference between scary and creepy. And a dude in his mid-30s trying to rope kiddies into a dark garage is the latter. Not one taker, man. Not a one.
And yet, I let him rope me in for our next venture, the Haunted Strip Mall. Seriously, that's what it was called. The Haunted Cocksucking Strip Mall. I guess all the good ideas had been taken already, Lee. But it's all good. After all, who would want to go to a Haunted Mental Asylum when you could go to a Haunted Strip Mall instead?
Who? Pretty much everybody, that's who.
Beyond the ridiculousness of the name, part of why it flopped was it didn't look any different from any of the other empty strip malls out there. Lee was like, it'll be so much scarier if we leave the lights off, and then people will pull in and start poking around inside and them BAM!, we'll scare the fuck out of them.
Really, Lee? That's your plan? Hey, ass-face, when it's just some dark strip mall in the middle of 82nd Avenue, with a dive hotel on one side and a boarded up thrift store on the other, who the hell's gonna say, "Hey, see that? I know it looks like every other piece of shit failed business around here, but it might be a Haunted Strip Mall. I believe I'll check it out, just in case."
Lee didn't want to have ANY sort of sign or anything out there. He figured enough people would have seen the website (more on that later) that they would know the place on sight and we wouldn't need to have any sort of sign. Fucking moron.
Anyway, the compromise we came up with was a sign propped up against the old bail bonds place. What'd it say? "Who dares to disturb the spirits of the Haunted Strip Mall?"
And that was it. No other signs. No lights. Lee even made us park around back to save the parking lot up front for the nonexistent customers, so it 100% looked like nothing was going on.
But Lee kept on insisting that the website would have taken care of building buzz and getting people to show up. Oh yeah, the website: hauntedstripmall@blogspot.com, which was "launched" back in August with the message, "Check back soon for updates on the Haunted Strip Mall." It was just that and some shitty Halloween clip art photoshopped over a picture of the strip mall and our address. That was it. And there were never any "updates." There was no explanation of what it was, when it was, or anything. Lee was like, "Less is more." Whatever, dick face.
In fairness, it might have been cool if we'd had more time to work on it. I'm talking about the Haunted Strip Mall, by the way. Not the website. But yeah, we had a bunch of mannequin parts strewn all around the old pawn shop with fake blood on them, a bunch of candles and satanic shit in the Radio Shack, and Mark dressed up like Leatherface and hiding in kitchen of the pizza place. I mean, it wasn't a ton of shit, but if people'd come it might have worked.
But nobody came. And when I say nobody, that includes the cops, too, so maybe the no lights, no signs, no cars out front wasn't such a bad idea after all, because as it turns out, Lee didn't have any sort of permit to do anything there. Surprise, surprise.
Anyway, when I was telling people at work about it, a bunch of them misheard me and thought I said Haunted Strip Club. And I'm like, a Haunted Strip Club might actually work. Titties and ghosts? Fuck and Yes, mi compadre. Fuck and yes.
I wonder if I should tell Lee.