The sign out front said “GRANDMA’S THRIFT & BONE – UNDEAD GOODS, AMAZING PRICES!” in flaking paint and what might have been coagulated blood. Beneath it, a handwritten chalkboard cheerfully advertised:

TODAY’S SPECIAL: BUY ONE SKULL, GET A FREE TIBIA!

Marcus needed a lamp. Maybe a chair. Something tasteful. He had just moved into his apartment above the all-night funeral home and wanted to “warm up the place,” as his mother suggested, though her ghost had been dead for at least six months and, frankly, needed to mind her own business.

He stepped inside. A silver bell rang overhead with a sound like a tooth cracking under pressure.

The store smelled like dust and embalming fluid. Racks of moldering ribs creaked ominously as he passed. A display mannequin made entirely of jawbones flashed him a flirtatious grin. The “CLEARANCE” bin was just a wicker basket of finger bones labeled “lightly used.”

“Can I help you find anything, sugarpea?” croaked a voice behind the counter. The clerk looked precisely how you’d imagine someone named Grandma would—if Grandma were a taxidermied corpse in a crochet shawl, animated by spiderwebs.

“I, uh… just looking for a lamp?”

She reached beneath the counter and plopped down something vaguely electrical with a femur for a base and what looked like a shrunken head for a shade. “Mood lighting,” she said with a wink.

“I’ll… keep browsing.”

Aisle 3 was labeled “Home Decor & Partial Torsos.” Marcus admired a decorative centerpiece of pelvises arranged in a circle like a haunted charcuterie platter. He turned a corner and bumped into a pile of robed skeletons slumped around a Ouija board. One of them turned its skull toward him slowly and rasped, “Still waiting for a price check on eternal damnation.”

Back by the fitting rooms, a zombie in a sunhat tried on a ribcage that didn’t quite fit. “Do you have this in medium-murder?” it asked a disinterested employee named Kevin, who was just a floating spinal cord wearing a name tag.

Marcus found a mirror. It was framed in shinbones and shrieked every time someone looked into it.

It screamed now.

He saw his reflection—and behind him, Grandma. Smiling. Holding a receipt that read: 1 Soul – FINAL SALE. NO RETURNS.

“Well, shoot,” Marcus said. “Guess I’ll take the lamp.”

The End