"Spooky Ookie" by Richard F. Yates

[Sharpie and silver paint pen on reclaimed cardboard with digital embellishments and color. 2019.]

Spooky knows that it's technically still summer, but the Halloween decorations are already filling stores, so he figured it was safe to start coming down from the attic and do a bit of moaning in the dead of night.

What Mr. Ookie didn't realize was that the new residents in his century old home are...I guess..."IMMUNE" to the supernatural. The parents go to bed so exhausted that they fall dead asleep (basically in chemically enhanced comas, thanks to their twin prescriptions) and can't be roused by any amount of haunting.

The younger child, 14 year old, Kimmy, pretends to go to bed when she's supposed to, but as soon as she hears her father snoring, she puts on a headset and starts blasting away at her friends online...(then struggles to get up on time for school every morning.) Mr. Ookie just can't compete for the girl's attention against the rocket launchers and vicious combat...

The older boy, 17 year old, Charlie, sleeps with earbuds in playing his favorite hip-hop cuts. Plus, Chaz has been secretly smuggling "special" edibles into his diet since his older "friends" started working at the local pot shop---so Charlie sleeps well now, and isn't full of anxiety over finishing high school and heading off to college, like he was about a year ago.

Spooky Ookie really only has the two cats to haunt, now... And frankly, they ain't that interested. The two old, neutered Toms (both close to ten years old), unless you wiggle a laser pointer around for them, barely even look up when Ookie floats into the room. In fact, about all Mr. Ookie does when he floats downstairs in the wee hours of the night, now, is turn on Netflix (Kimmy forgot to turn the t.v. off one night before bed, and Mr. Ookie fiddled around with the remote until he found that some of his favorite shows from when he was still human were available), and he watches old Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes... And pets the cats...

It was frustrating, at first, not being able to scare anyone, but he's settled in, now, and just goes with it... Plus, he found where Charlie stashes his cookies, and he'll occasionally sneak one or two before watching Shatner overact, and he and the cats will laugh and enjoy the shows until just before dawn when he'll float back up to the attic and sleep until sundown...

Way to roll with it, Spooky. Way to roll...

---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

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