#dont talk to me about “that wouldn't have gotten soap kicked out” I KNOW

[ceilidho]

prompt: horror au where soap is dishonourably discharged/falls on hard times and he's forced to move into this really creepy apartment building because it's the only thing he can afford. and ghost is his weird neighbour and soap's not completely convinced that he's not a serial killer. (ghostsoap)

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Misery takes him to a place covered in litter and dust, and old dirt. 

Maybe he thought it couldn’t happen to him. Famous last words. Anything can happen to anyone; lightning has to strike somewhere. Johnny makes the mistake of driving once under the influence and they throw the book at him when he’s caught—bad conduct discharge stamped on his record for the rest of his life. Through the investigation and trial and the subsequent stamp on his record, Johnny goes through the motions numb, head buzzing like there’s a fog that he just can’t get out. 

It takes a while for Johnny to admit that he might not have wanted this outcome in the slightest, but actions have consequences. In the first few weeks, the shame warps him into something unrecognisable. He sleeps on his sister’s couch until she all but begs him to get his own place. The month passes like he’s in a fugue, the bags under his eyes dark and his hair matted down, unwashed. 

The apartment building in North Barlanark is the best he can afford on his meagre savings—not much squirrelled away over the years, always the thought that the well would never dry up. Now it’s dry; now it’s standing on the embankment staring down into nothing. The bad conduct discharge stamped on his record also means that he isn’t entitled to VA benefits and it’ll show up on every background check going forward when he finally finds the energy to get off his ass and apply for jobs.

From the outside of the building, there are cracks in the stone walls, window panes red with rust. Black scorch marks climb up the walls like someone tried and failed to burn this place down. Stone chipping away in other places; there are air conditioners hanging from several windows that look dangerous close to falling out.

When he moves in, there’s no one to help carry his bags up the long flight of stairs up to the seventh floor. Johnny hadn’t bothered to ask either of his sisters, not too keen on being in this neighbourhood himself, never mind inviting them over. 

The elevator’s broken, of course. Each step creaks under his weight as he lugs the garbage bags filled to the brim with his only earthly belongings up the stairs. An uneven, loosened tile nearly makes him brain himself on the stairs. It would be a depressing, but fitting end. 

The corridors are lit by an ambient yellow light, the walls at the far ends a dusky blue when they ebb into darkness. Johnny’s stared down gun barrels raised to his face plenty of times before and still he stands at the other end of the hall vaguely unsettled. Gut clenching over nothing. 

This whole endeavour feels inauspicious. Living, that is. He toys with the thought like a delicate glass bauble, staring at it indifferently as it rests in the palm of his hand. He might still break it. 

Some nights his heart feels so heavy that he thinks it’ll sink right out of his chest, through the mattress and onto the floor below. Melt through the floorboards until it trickles down into the bowels of the building, down into the entrails where the furnace roars and there’s a damp cold that pervades everything it touches. He hasn’t cried since he was a boy, but his eyes hurt when he blinks. 

Johnny doesn’t see a single other person in the building the day he moves in, nor any of the following days during his first week in the building. He doesn’t have it in him to grieve the loss of his former life anymore—he did that over the month that he lived on his sister’s couch and barely showered or shaved. There’s a factory within biking distance where he gets a job as a die cast operator and spends his days making carburetors and engine blocks. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s better than what he expected. 

There are signs of life in the building though. The sound of a door creaking open when he’s sitting on the couch in his flat, only to peek out through the peephole to an empty hallway. Passing a door on his way home from work and pausing at the sound of someone groaning from within. Trash bags out in the hall when there weren’t any earlier. 

It makes his skin crawl. The suggestion of occupancy that never materialises. People that live like rats in the walls. 

He hurries home with his head down in the evenings, walking straight past the other flats. No one needs to know his business just like he doesn’t need to know anyone else’s business. If he hears the rattling of dishes or feet shuffling along the floorboards, what’s it to him?

There’s only so many times he can tell himself that though. 

The coming of winter deepens the night, dragging it further into the day. The sky has long gone black by the time he leaves the factory after his shift, pulling his hood up to seem marginally less appealing to anyone wandering around at night. Hardly anyone wanders with good intentions. At least, that’s what Johnny’s taught himself. He’s still got all of the muscle mass from his years of service, but he’s not interested in fucking around and finding out, so he speedwalks to his bike and pedals home as fast as possible.

There’s something in the air. He sees only a single light on from outside when he reaches the front doors and it quickly shuts off when he dismounts the bike. A curtain rustles like someone was just there. It turns his blood to absolute ice; something in him is hissing at him to stay out, but there’s little else he can do. He rolls his bike in and up the seven flights of stairs. 

He rolls the bike down the hall as always, only the squeaky sounds of the wheels echoing down the length of the corridor. The exhaustion eats away at his bones; he’s so tired that it’ll be a dream even to collapse on the bed with the weird stain on it that he inherited from the previous tenant. 

Something makes him pause in the hall. 

There’s a scratching sound coming from the door to his left. The faintest rasp of a fingernail against steel. Johnny goes so quiet that even the sound of his blood disappears. Just staring at the door. 

It comes again like someone’s standing there on the other side of the door. Scratching softly with a single fingernail. When he glances down, there’s a slight shadow just under the doorframe, no wider than a person. 

His vision tunnels in on the shadow beneath the floor. 

“What are you doing crouched there?” a deep voice growls from behind him. 

“Steamin’ Jesus!”

When he whips around, his heart about jumps into his throat. A man in a skull balaclava stands not two feet from him, a wall of muscle and bone. The eyes that stare down at Johnny seem almost hostile in their hollowness at first, the darkest blue he’s ever seen. 

Johnny freezes for a second, old instincts taking over. Something feels deeply wrong. He’s never seen the man before and he takes up space like no one he’s ever met. Even in a black hoodie and jeans, Johnny can see the muscle definition just barely visible underneath. The mask makes it worse somehow, obscuring the only part of him that might’ve been comforting. 

“Sorry, mate,” he says with a grin, sheepish. Wary. “Lost my train of thought.”

The man stares at him. “Go back to your place.”

Johnny furrows his brows. “Excuse me?”

“Back home, puppy.”

There’s a second where Johnny thinks he might do something rash. The anger that rises up from his core is swift and sudden, furious at being ordered around like a dog. He pauses though. There’s something wrong here. The man angles himself towards Johnny like he expects a fight, and it’s there in his eyes for a split second, so fast that Johnny almost misses it. Anticipation.

He’s lived long enough to know his limits. He gives a brittle smile instead and nods, backing up a few paces before turning around, wheeling his bike home. He doesn’t hear anything from behind him, but the next time he looks around before stepping into his flat, the man is gone.