Rise of the zombies
Can you imagine the look on my wife's face as I pulled into our driveway with a van full of beat up mannequins? I had just returned from a shady craigslist deal when my wife met me in the front yard. She stared at me with the stink eye as I busily started dragging assorted arms and legs from my van into our garage. I'm not sure if it was the mid-June sun or the heat from her fixed glare that was making me sweat. I began to plead my case, "But honey, I got a super good deal, when I'm done we will be able to double our money" I continued while flashing my best sad puppy eyes "It will be a fun project for us" Even after the sunset that night it was still pretty hot at my house.
I have always loved Halloween. I'm sure my kids will have fond memories of the kick-ass parties we had when they were growing up. I try to keep the tradition alive and decorate the house but it seems every year we get less trick or treaters. I quickly found that making my own props and decorations was the way to go. They turned out better and were also easier on my wallet. My plan was to change these roughed up mannequins into a horde of brain-eating zombies. Then I would sell them before the Halloween season. (This was still four months away)
The following weekend, I gathered all the arms, legs and torsos in our backyard. This is where I ran into my first problem. I had to match the miscellaneous body parts to the specific mannequins, each one was different and it ended up talking the better part of the day. I cracked a beer and looked at the chaos of 27 naked mannequins scattered around my property. I started thinking, "what would my neighbor say if he popped his head over the fence to borrow a cup of sugar?" I laughed it off, cracked another beer and decided that I was done for the day. My silent shapes would stay outside overnight to bask in the moonlight.
The next day was going to be a good way to get my wife on board with the zombie project. We had to go to the thrift store and find some fashionable attire for our horde of the undead. We searched the racks for the perfect outfits and spent around forty dollars, which seemed like a bargain for the four bags of clothes that we walked out with. The next stop was Walmart for craft paint and spray foam to add a little gross and gore to my mannequins perfect grey skin.
When we got home we feverishly started ripping, tearing and staining our thrift store haul. This took way longer than expected to distress 27 outfits. It may have been the Florida heat or the lack of motivation after drinking a few cocktails but we called it quits around 4 pm with a little over half of the clothes done. I didn't want to drag all the mannequins back into my garage, so I piled them up under our back porch so they would be out of the weather until the following weekend.
Ah, the smell of fresh spray foam in the morning
I woke up early the following Saturday and was eager to begin the process of bringing my army of darkness to life. We finished distressing the cloths and started working with the spray foam. Everything was moving like clockwork. The foam, with a little red and green paint, turned out looking great! We started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe we can pull this off and get them done in plenty of time to sell before Halloween. We decided to wait for the foam and paint to dry overnight so once again my yard looked pretty wicked with the shadowy figures scattered around under the moonlight.
Sunday funday!
We woke up very motivated, we were finally going to get to see how these naked freaks looked wearing their tattered duds. It should be easy enough to put the clothes on, right? WRONG! Here comes my second problem. Hardly any of the clothes that we already distressed fit the oddly shaped figures. I guess these mannequins were built to showcase garments that real people would never be able to fit in. Next stop… the thrift store. We got a better gauge of what sizes we needed to buy and came back with three more bags of clothes. We worked on distressing the new batch of zombieware, I then gathered up the horde and stuck them back in the garage.
Life happens and weeks flew by before the bare-skinned ghouls would get to see the light of day again. By now it was the end of August and the sweltering Florida summer was in full effect. Under the hot sun, we tugged and stretched the newly defaced clothing, until they formed to the mannequins. With the help of some eBay wigs and a few accessories, my dream of a zombie horde became a reality. My wife and I sat on the back porch sipping on summer cocktails admiring our work. It was truly a site to see! Each zombie had its own personality and we even named some of them. All we had to do now was to take a couple pictures and slap them up on craigslist. We will surely make a few hundred dollars off of each one of these awesome zombie props. Maybe someone will want to buy them all and hand me a big stack of cash. I needed to get compensated for the months that these things haven't been paying rent and taking up most of the space in my garage.
A wave of emotion suddenly came over me. I can't sell these, they are super rad! I didn't even get to show them off to any of the little candy beggars that will be scared shitless when they come to my house this Halloween. Time for some sweet talking, "You know what would be cool, honey?" I asked after she had her third rum and coke. I proceeded to pitch the idea of us keeping the zombies through the holiday and having the best yard display in our neighborhood. Then we will sell them in the beginning of November for a big profit. I'm still not sure if it was the rum and coke or if she was also attached to them, but she agreed to let me keep them for Halloween.
October finally arrived and I couldn't wait to blow my neighbor's minds with my yard full of The Walking Dead. We let the grass grow, adding to the creep factor and broke out our family of flesh-eaters for the world to see. They got a lot of attention; people would be driving by and stop to take pictures with them. The kids walking home from school would either run by my house or look at my yard with spooktacular awe. We put together a small Halloween party and everyone had a blast, we felt vindicated for the blood, sweat, and tears that we poured into the horde. The trick or treaters were shaking in their shoes which gave me a twisted kind of Halloween joy. The holiday was over but my undead army was still here. Time to get these things sold!
Zombies make terrible roommates
I listed them promptly on craigslist and started calling the local haunted houses. I knew I wouldn't be making as much money as if I would have sold them before Halloween, but I had plenty of profit margin to play with. My phone will probably be ringing off the hook when people see these fearsome props. No such luck, what I failed to realize is that nobody wants Halloween props once they get into Christmas mode. I hardly got any calls and the ones that I did receive wanted me to give them away cheap. The zombie horde was destined to take up space and haunt my garage until the next fall.
September slowly rolled around and I knew I had another chance to make some money off of my morbid minions. I listed them online again and this time my phone actually rang. I was selling them for around $150 each and I sold about 14 of them before the middle of October. I started sweating it and thought I may end up with another zombie fest for my Samhain display. (Also an angry wife) A week before Halloween I received a call from an older sounding gentleman from a beach town about three hours away. He wanted me to deliver them to his haunted house and offered me a nice sum of money for the remaining 13 zombies. The thing is, he wanted me to trust him and deliver the goods before he made payment. My wife and I have always enjoyed a good road trip so we took a chance and headed to south Florida. This guy was cool as a cucumber; he had been putting on local charity haunted houses for years. He gave us a tour of his set up then we headed to my van to bring out the dead. My wife and I have never been able to refuse a fun night in a beach town. We rented a hotel room and basked in the glory of the gory. We had a great time and I was finally free from my zombie family.