For Scott and Vahid, Part 3

Part 2
Part 1

At that Elise's blood ran cold and each of the hairs on her arms stood on end. "G-g-g-ghost vampires?" she whispered in disbelief, and before she or Marvin (for that was the register dude's name) could turn and run the suddenly grotesquely costumed party swarmed upon the pair.

Marvin screamed in terror. "Please don't eat me," he whimpered while trying desperately to push Elise in front of him like a human shield. The ghost vampires stopped in their tracks.

"Eat you?" the astronaut repeated incredulously. "We don't want to eat you! We just want our smoothies!"

The ninja broke in haughtily. "We are ghost vampires, the undead dead again. Once we were human. Then with a fateful bite we became vampires. Unfortunately we discovered that we weren't quite cut out for the whole vampire lifestyle."

Ben Franklin continued, "Yeah, it turns out none of us are much fans of the taste of blood. That's why we started drinking smoothies, to cleanse our palate of that deplorable taste." The other ghost vampires nodded emphatically in agreement.

"My face is on the hundred dollar bill," Ben sadly proclaimed, "but the little known fact it that there's not much money in the vampire game. It started getting pretty pricey, what with needing a smoothie every time we fed. And with inflation being the way it has been over the last few centuries, well, we didn't think there was a point in going on. We thought a stake through the heart would fix that right up, but, well, you see what happened."

Elise looked from one to another of the sad, rag-tag bunch. "You mean you tried to commit suicide?" she asked.

"Tried and failed, my dear." And each ghost vampire hung his or her head in shame