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[Transcript]

        “Ew, ew, EW!” hissed Penny. “What was THAT?!” 

        Penny hated bugs and creepy-crawly, many-legged things (a phobia she’d never tried to tackle, since she thought that, as fears went, it was a little bit endearing). Unfortunately, the world of ghosts and spirits was chock-full of nasty critters. All too often, she would be in class, or out with friends, or up on stage, and some weird stinkbug with a human face—or a centipede whose body was a string of bloodshot eyes, or a spider that was dead and thus could fly—would scuttle out of hiding and just devastate the vibe.

        “Where the HECK is my ZWEIHANDER?!” Penny whimpered in frustration (at least according to this semi-censored transcript of her lines).

        “There’s no need to be afraid, darling,” hummed Phantomime. “Given your location, Penny, this would count as stage fright: an obstacle you conquered long ago.” The harlequin spirit’s tone shifted, as though hesitant to share her next suggestion. “Besides... not all who skitter are gross, as they say. Why not keep an open mind? Today’s awful beastie might be tomorrow’s awesome bestie, and you can’t—oh dear god what is THAT? Ew, ew, EW!”

        Penny had courageously drawn back a curtain instead of a blade, revealing, in her flashlight’s glow, a severed human hand. It was green, but stitched with other sickly shades, criss-crossed by spooky sutures, far too large, with screws for knucklebones (someone must have really messed up the assembly instructions). Its stump had been cleanly severed by the hook of Davy Jones, and the meat within was dripping gloopy ectoplasmic goo. As the light of Penny’s phone stretched out its shadow, the hand of Doctor Bruce Burger twitched eerily, scuttled its fingers to face her, reared back, and leapt at the young actress like a predatory alien. A startled Penny screamed.

        Truly ridiculous combat ensued, a clash of titans in the backstage sky of Davy’s model Bayview. Curtains closed and sets collapsed. Dramatic lighting lit dramatic fighting, at least until a stray strike struck and shattered Penny’s smartphone. The younger Spender turned the tide from there: she had found her motivation. It was the zombified appendage that stumbled upon Penny’s missing zweihander first, but, unable to zwield it with two hands, the attacker was swiftly disarmed (a complete loss for a creature who had naught but arm to start). Penny pinned the writhing beast flat with her prop sword’s blunted point.

        “UGH, my PHONE! How am I supposed to afford—HEY! QUIT IT! I said tap out, you little freak!” a disheveled Penny wheezed. “Or the ten count’s getting tallied on your fingers!” She raised a hand to her ear. “What’s that? You’ve only got five? Well here’s ONE MORE!” Penny gave the hand the finger (though I dare not say which one).

        “As I live and breathe...” marveled Phantomime, forgetting that she kind of only half-did half those things.

        “All right, so, like, what’s this creepy spirit’s deal??” Penny asked her partner. A perk of Phantomime’s ability was her sense for other spectral life forms and their powers.

        “This is, er, not a spirit, darling...”

        “HUH? Did somebody, like, die in full Frankenstein makeup??” Penny asked in disbelief.

        “I, um, don’t believe that it’s a ghost, either, my love...”

        Penny blinked. 

        “Then what’s—”

        “Yo, Penny!” called a new voice. “You good?”

        “Oh, my sweet Panini!” warbled a second, a willowy treble that was far more nose than throat. “We heard such frightsome sounds of struggle, oh, and such a stirring scream! We feared our dearest damsel in distress!”

        The Theater Club crew that Penny had left to guard the backstage door, her classmates Snail and Harper, had come stumbling through the curtains to make sure that she was safe.

        “Waaaaiiit, you found your sword,” said Snail. “Hardcore.”

        “And goodness me, but what is that? Some manner of Halloween animatronic?”

        Penny looked down from her perfectly mundane friends to the writhing undead hand that she had vanquished. If they could see it, and—oh god, it really did look quite a lot like earthly flesh and bone—then it was just somebody’s actual, reanimated—

        Penny screamed again, scrambling back from the corpse she’d had pinned.

        Bruce Burger’s hand did not use the opportunity to flee, however. The flash of Penny’s bright white spectral energy, startled free from her for the second time this week, had given the appendage awestruck pause.