by Tobias Carroll
We were listening to this Icelandic postpunk band when we pulled up at the haunted donut shop just off Route 35. It was Christmas Day at around 10:30 in the pm, and we were en route to Atlantic City because we had nowhere better to be. The rumor about this donut shop was that it was haunted some of the time, that the ghosts of former employees could be summoned back to work a shift or two if you made the right sacrifice. It was the sort of thing that a friend’s brother had heard about for years and years, and it eventually made its way to us. Like I said, we were on our way to Atlantic City but we got off the Parkway because the donuts there were good and we didn’t really care if the people who served them were alive or dead. So we pulled into the parking lot and we silenced the Icelandic postpunk and we walked inside. The place was deserted except for us and the woman working behind the counter; it was 10:30 at night on Christmas Day, so we figured the best odds were on ghost. We placed our orders: three cups of coffee, six donuts, one cruller. She said she’d throw in some day-old croissants and we said that would be fine. All the while we were looking at her, trying to see if she was slightly translucent, wondering if some night-shift worker had pricked his finger and marked runes down in the break room and summoned this woman up to do his bidding. We weren’t…
