Based on a drawing by Skekpen.
Thomas sighed and stretched as he arrived home from his shift at the gas station. True, these evening shifts paid better than the day shifts, but the number of crazies he had to deal with was also a lot higher. And today was Halloween, which hardly made things better. The 25-year-old wished he could have traded shifts with someone, so he could have gone to a Halloween party with his girlfriend instead, but none of his coworkers had been willing. Which was fair enough – if he'd been in their shoes, he wouldn't have traded either.
"Oh, hey, honey," Zoe said, smiling at him from the other end of the living room. She was sitting at the dining table going through a pile of sweets.
He could feel the stress of the workday draining as he watched her happy little face. Zoe was a petite, red-haired woman with a perky disposition, a trusting nature, and an almost terminal lack of common sense. "Hello, darling. Where did you get the sweets?"
"I went trick-or-treating," she said cheerily, grabbing another caramel from the pile.
He raised an eyebrow. "You're twenty-two. Aren't you a little old for that?"
"No one arrested me for it," she said with a shrug. "Want to see my costume?" When he nodded, she retrieved a hairband from the other side of the table. Two black cardboard pieces had been taped to the top, resembling rabbit ears. She placed it on her head, stood up, and looked eagerly at him. "What do you think?" she asked, twirling to give him a proper look.
Thomas stared. After a few seconds, he finally regained the ability to speak. "And where," he said in the calmest voice he could muster, "is the rest of it?"
Zoe was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, long black socks, black shoes, and the black headband. The problem was that between the bottom of the shirt and the top of her socks, the only thing protecting her modesty was a small pair of black panties with a large, white cotton wad sewed onto the seat.
"What do you mean?" she said, furrowing her brow as she looked down at her attire. "This is it." She noticed the expression on his face. "What's wrong with it? Don't you like it?"
"For wearing at home? Wonderful! At a party? Maybe, if it's the right sort of party, and I'm there with you," he said, still trying to remain calm. "Out on the streets? Not a chance."
She glared at him. "People were happy to see me! I got a ton of sweets, you know," she said, nodding to the pile on the table.
"And these people who gave you sweets," he said, "were they mostly middle-aged men?"
She huffed, folding her arms as she tried to pout him into submission. "Yes," she admitted.
Sighing, he picked up one of the dining chairs and placed in the middle of the floor. As he sat down, he patted his lap. "Come here, Zoe."