Generic or not, "Hatchet Wound Zombie Clown" sounds pretty scary.

Every October, malls and shopping centers across the country are treated with the seasonal Halloween store. You may not know exactly where it is in your shopping complex since the Halloween store’s location varies from year to year. The easiest way to find the Halloween store it is to look at the mall directory for any holistic medicine, southwestern crafts, or educational toy store in the shopping center. Odds are good that one of these stores have gone out of business recently and left a vacant storefront for the Halloween shop to occupy.

Malls add these seasonal Halloween stores since the only other store that carries costumes is Spencer’s, and that store is just slightly larger than a UPS delivery truck. The influx of costume seekers overwhelms the smallish shop making it much too difficult for the junior high boys to sneak into the store's tantalizing 18 and up kiosk. This sends the hormonally charged teens into the mall bookstores to the art and photography section to ogle nude photography books, but once they get there they run into their fathers who have camped out in that section to wait for their wives who by the way are spending too damn much time looking at purses, and the whole situation is just really awkward. So the addition of the Halloween store is not only good for business, it's also good for families.

If you've been in one of these stores, you've been in all of them as they're all laid out the same way: the front of the store is decorated with fake cobwebs and those irritating animatronic bats. The entrance is usually guarded by one if not two freakishly realistic creepy old guy statues with moving eyes. Once you're inside you'll notice the muzak of choice over the store's PA system will either be the scary sounds mix tape or The Monster Mash on a continuous loop. It's not uncommon for former employees of the Halloween store to develop repetitive stress injuries in their ears after an entire month of listening to nothing but The Monster Mash or Ghoulish Sounds Vol 3. It's gotten so bad that a class action lawsuit has been filed on their behalf requesting $4.7 million dollars in compensation and adding a requirement that stores also play Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London at least twice a shift.

Besides the costumes and the shockingly realistic (and even more shockingly expensive) gory decorations, somewhere in the store you will find a wall of just masks. In amongst the sea of latex reproductions of copyrighted cartoon characters, horror film bad guys, and political caricatures, each store carries a large selection of free agent horror masks not affiliated with any movie, comic, or television franchise. These I enjoy these the most, not because they are particularly well done, but because I can't help but think about the creative thought processes that went into the development of a horror mask from scratch:

"So Jenkins what are your mask ideas for '07?"
"I was thinking maybe another creepy old guy mask."
"Creepy old guy mask eh? Don't we have like twenty of those already?"
"Yeah, you're right. (pause) What about a scary clown mask?"
"Yup, got that too."
"Zombie?"
"Check."
"How about a zombie clown, or perhaps a creepy old guy zombie?"
"Jenkins, you may be onto something there."

The names of these masks are just as generic as their origins, and often contain qualifiers like 'spooky', 'eerie' or 'scary', as if someone might mistake a zombie clown mask with the hatchet wound in its forehead as something suitable to wear to a children's costume party. I think "Hatchet Wound Zombie Clown" is descriptive enough as it is, don't you? 

Of course if the "Hatchet Wound Zombie Clown" isn't what you have in mind for your costume this season, just keep looking; there's bound to be something in there to meet your Halloween needs. Take your time. I'll be in the bookstore if you need me.