My delivery company occasionally picks up packages from this dusty old costume shop, and delivers them to various residences. Now, I'm normally not one to poke and pry, but while I was running one of these packages one Saturday afternoon I got to wondering.

Who orders costumes so far from Halloween?

I mean, come on. I go into the costume shop every time I pick up a package to deliver, and although the costumes look fairly realistic, I don't see what's so special about these costumes, or why I have to deliver one of them every week or so.

On this afternoon I had two such packages to deliver, both going to an apartment building a little ways from the city core. Another thing irks me. If you're going to order a costume, why don't you pick the damn thing up yourself? I enjoy the business, it pays fairly well, but it bugs me that people are too lazy to go and get the package themselves. Better yet, why not pick it up when you're in the store paying for it?!

But I digress. This Saturday was a fairly nice one weather-wise. It was far from being sunny and warm and pleasant, but at least it broke the spell of rain we'd been having for the past week.

There was a pretty usual routine to collecting the packages from the costume shop. I'd go into the shop and that old bat would come out from the back room almost immediately and give me the brown paper-wrapped package. The old man was quite strange, and seemed to me as if he was off his rocker. He'd hand me the package and shoo me out of the store, before disappearing into the back room again.

The packages that he gave me were never extremely heavy. In fact, they seemed a bit light, considering that they supposedly had full costumes in them.

My truck pulled up to the stop, a five-or-so storey apartment building. Its red brick walls looked like they'd seen better days but, hell, most of this neighbourhood looked like that. It was mostly those "gangsta" morons that hung around here, smoking and throwing rocks at the windows of old ladies.

I got out of my truck and picked up the two boxes from the seat beside me. The top box was addressed to Jake something-or-other, and the other was for some guy named Chris.

The inside of the apartment building was even more derelict as the outside. The tiles on the stairs were cracked and chipped, and someone had spraypainted some profanities on the ugly flowered wallpaper. A month-old newspaper was scattered around the entrance, several sheets of it blew outside when I opened the door.

I looked on the address of the box. It read that the packages were to go up to the fourth floor. I pushed the button on the elevator but, as I had assumed, it was broken. I sighed, and resigned myself to trudging up the battered staircase.

When I finally reached the fourth floor I was a bit out of breath, and it felt like the boxes were a bit heavier than before. But, of course, that would be attributed to me having just carried them up four freaking flights of stairs.

As luck would have it, go figure, the apartment I was delivering the boxes to was all the way at the other end of the hall. I finally reached the end of the hall and knocked on the wooden door with the faded-out brass letters that read "Apt. 208", but there was no answer.

"I've got two packages here!" I said loudly, in case the inhabitants of the apartment didn't hear me. Still nothing. Slightly irritated, I banged loudly on the door, but to no avail.

Exasperated and starting to wonder why I made this stupid long trip for nothing, I set the boxes down on the dirty hall floor for a minute. I couldn't just leave the packages here because the recipients had to sign for it first, and I didn't want to wait around for them to return, I had other packages to deliver.

But hey, a small voice in my head said, why not see what it is that you've gone to all the trouble of delivering for? I smiled. They weren't here anyways, and I could just retape it - they wouldn't know I was looking.

I reached down and slowly slipped a switchblade knife from my pocket. Flipping it open, I cast a look down the hallway to make sure the packages' owners weren't coming. The blade of the knife slowly slit open the tape holding one of the boxes closed. I set the knife down when the job was done, and peeled back the cardboard flaps.

What looked like a mass of white and black fur was in the box. I grabbed it and held the thing up. It looked like someone had skinned a tiger and put the fur in a box. The thing actually looked pretty real. Minus the fact that it was about human sized. I let the costume drop roughly back into the box. One of its arms drooped over the side of the box and onto the floor, but I didn't notice.

Picking up the knife again, I cut the other box open and looked inside it. This time I wasn't met with a tiger costume - I wasn't even met with fur. Instead there was a glimmering pile of red scales. Lifting the costume, I saw this time that it was a dragon. A particularly menacing one, at that.

Who orders costumes like these at this time of the year? I wondered. Then I realized that I should probably put the costumes back and reseal the boxes. I had wasted about ten minutes, and was going to be late for my next delivery. Just as I was shoving the dragon costume back into the box, something touched my arm and I jumped.

"What the hell?!" I asked, scrambling to my feet and looking around in alarm. There was no one in the hallway but me. You're imagining things, calm down. I thought, rubbing the spot on my arm where I had been touched. Then I saw it, just out of the corner of my eye. The arm of the tiger costume moved. I blinked and shook my head. Costumes don't move, don't be an idiot. Still, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I had just seen a perfectly inanimate object move.

Pretending that I hadn't just seen or felt that, I got back down on my knees and bent over to tape up the dragon costume box. And then it happened again. This time, though, I was quicker to see it. The large paw of the tiger costume reached over and grabbed my left hand!

In spite of myself, I yelled and grabbed at the paw. The thing seemed to be latched on to my hand and, no matter how hard I tugged, it wouldn't come off. I grabbed the switchblade off the floor and tried to slash the costume off, but its long tail swished and sent the knife scattering across the floor. The tiger raised its head, and seemed to look right at me with its hollow eyes.

Just then, another hand touched me. I started, and turned to see who it was this time. Instead of a furry paw, the clawed, scaly hand of the dragon cosume was grabbing at me!

"What the hell is going on?!" I exclaimed, trying in vain to swat the hand off of me. What kind of costumes are these?! Costumes don't attack!!! While I was wrestling with the dragon hand, a peculiar sensation washed over my left arm. I looked over and almost passed out. The arm of the tiger costume had somehow managed to wriggle onto my arm. I tried to move my hand and get it out of the costume, but I didn't seem to have any control over it.

I almost lost my balance and fell over as the dragon costume dived out of its box and tackled me. Soon after, as I tried to recover my center of gravity, the tiger costume did the same. This time I fell over, and found myself amid a jumble of scales and fur. Both costumes seemed to be like a liquid, defying all laws of physics and ... for lack of a better description, melting, on me.

I winced as the tiger costume tried to swipe at the dragon costume, and instead tore at my chest. The dragon roared back in return, and tried to smash the tiger with its spiky tail. The odd fight on my body between the dragon and the tiger did more damage to me than it did to the opposing costumes, and I quickly found my clothes in shredded tatters on the floor. My dignity was saved, luckily, by the scaly belly of the dragon taking over my extremities.

Both sides were attempting to destroy the other, both vying for control of my body. I, of course, was't going to take this. Using as much strength as I could muster, I tried to use the now-tiger enveloped's clawed hand to tear at the dragon suit.

This isn't real, this isn't happening. My mind thought desperately, as both the dragon's mind and the tiger's mind began to infiltrate. Costumes are just costumes!! They don't c-RRRAAAWWWRRR-ome to life and a-GRRRROOOOOOWWWRR!-ttack!

The dragon seemed to be holding my right side, while the tiger was effectively keeping the left side. Behind me, a fierce battle ensued. The tiger was using one of its arms to scratch and tear at the dragon, and the dragon was doing the same.

I had no time to explore the strange sensation of having my body turned half-into a dragon and half-into a tiger, as the minds of both animals tried to gain access to mine. My head was soon filled with the piercing roars of the angry reptile and the animal growls of the cat.

One side of my body was much heavier than the other, as the dragon had heavy leather wings. In anger, the dragon beat these wings and sent me - and the crazy zoo attacking me - sprawling. I landed near the knife, but it was just out of arms reach. I didn't have much control over my arm anyways, since the dragon was attempting to use it as a club to knock the tiger's head off.

In desparation, I made a diving lunge for the knife, and my half-hand, half-paw barely managed to grab it. I had quite a time trying to hold the knife, as my hand no longer had a thumb, but I somehow picked it up and aimed it at the dragon's face.

As soon as the knife struck I yelled out in pain, along with both the dragon and the tiger. Angry thoughts came from the dragon, and it focused its attention on attacking me instead.

For another several minutes this fight ensued, the dragon, the tiger, and I all fighting for control. Suddenly, it all stopped. I lay panting, facedown on the dirty linoleum floor, buried under immobile masses of scale and fur. I looked up weakly, tears mingled with blood streaming down my face.

Standing over me, casting a dark shadow, was the owner of the shop. He shook his head slowly, looking at the sorry state I was in.

"These were not meant for you." he said quietly. His voice was not one of anger, it was one of pity. "Now you know not to meddle in the affairs, and packages, of others." He turned on his heel before I could say a word, and he strode away.

Immediately the costumes sprang back to life, and resumed their ferocious attack. The old man ignored my screams of pain, and beggings of help.




Drethan left the derelict old apartment building. He resented the loss of two of his better creations, but knew that the carrier should have known better than to look inside. The spells he had cast upon those costumes were a bit more potent than other costumes previous, and that was why they were meant for Chris and Jake. But no matter, he would be able to make more.

He just hoped that the two wouldn't mind waiting a bit longer for him to create new costumes for them. If they managed to come across that mail carrier before he either killed himself or found his way out of the building, they'd understand. Drethan smiled. Magic was a funny thing.