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simp4konig · 11 months

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Halloweens with König headcannons 🎃🍂

Gender-neutral Reader

*Slow burn

Word Count: ~3246

*FLUFFFFFFF😿😿💖✨🩷🩷💘

*Soft König☺️ (but also König is a smug bastard + asshole 🙄), Established relationship, Single mention of (ambiguous) age gap 😮‍💨

🧡Happy Halloween guys!!🧡 I don't celebrate Halloween myself , but im feeling 😈in the mood😈 so i hopw this can suffice for this ooky kooky spooky season 😰😰

Gos i wanna kms ive veen so uninspirws AAAHAHAHAHDHDHDDH this is literslly. Me rn--->💥💥💥💥💥🙂🔫 fuckijg FINALLT GOT sometjing OUT 🥳🥳 rest asusred iwont kms i need to finish my rqs first ☺️💖💖✨ i will feel SO euphoric when all the WIPS will become Completed Works !! 😍😍Im just gonna not post until i gdt smth donw bci hate giving false promises its the same as lyijg,🗿🗿

Tag List ♡ @simpforkonig ♡ @abysslovesyou ♡ @puff0o0 ☆ @rustic-guitar-notes ☆ @happy-mushrooms ♡ @reyner-lee ☆ @lotionlamp ♡ @trepaika ☆ @luci4theminorannoyance

...

König wasn't really one for Halloween.

Hadn't ever been, really, as he hadn't been raised to celebrate it.

In his household, he hadn't had much exposure to the Western "Hallow's Eve".

Besides, even if he was familiar with the tradition, his parents didn't bother celebrating those kinds of trivialities; after all, they certainly weren't going to bother wasting hard-earned money on trifles like pumpkins, just so they'd rot on the front porch, or candy that would rot your teeth, or on vulgar masks that depicted serial killers and monsters, too blasphemous to bear.

Plus, his neighbourhood didn't partake in "Trick-or-treat'ing" at all, and wouldn't leave any candy for any children — wouldn't do anything, really.

Nobody decorated their house with ghouls and ghosts, nobody dressed up as vampires or murderers, nobody jumped from behind corners to shout "Boo!".

None of that, as these ideas were childish. Infantile. Juvenile, even.

Thus, October 31st, König's Austrian villiage was quiet. So eerily quiet you'd had thought it was a ghost town had it not been for hundreds of cloaked figures in the cemetary — as, for König, "Halloween" tended to be a more sombre occasion in comparison to the American/English versions.

Instead of running around and knocking on people's doors with a broad, lopsided smile like other children ought, he was brought along to visit the graves of his family members: graves of his ancestors, which he'd be told about in detail, details of the person buried six feet under the stone slab; information and stories passed down from generations.

He would be taught to honour those deceased in his family and respect their memory, to remember those in the afterlife and what they sacrificed to get there.

Carrying a lamp, he'd light candles on those decrepit gravestones, text faded and illegible, while his parents left boquets of flowers, and pulled up their long black cloaks. Silently paying their respects.

While it wasn't necessarily a day of mourning — König never needed tissues to wipe any tears or blow his nose, and neither did anyone else in the family — it was far graver when compared to the Halloween holidays elsewhere.

However, König's memories of Halloween were few, far, and in-between.

Whenever he'd hear of other people's experiences, he was never nostalgic, as, the times that he did attend those familial ceremonies he was either too young to understand what was happening, or knew too little of the deceased[s] in question to be moved by the heavy atmosphere.

Not only that, but the time period was overwhelmingly solemn, with people flooding the burial grounds, some murmuring prayers, others with tears in their eyes.

There was no laughter, no treats, no fun costumes. Not even tricks. Just suffocating depression all around.

So, he didn't really associate the celebration with something to celebrate: what, celebrating the deaths of your family? That was quite morbid, when he thought about it, and he wasn't going to dedicate an entire month every year to remind himself of death with so many other operators around him falling on the battlefield, and having had faced the grim reaper himself several times already.

Hence, every 31st of October, he did nothing. Didn't acknowledge it at all.

But all that changed one fateful day in September. When he finally acknowledged it, all right (with a little of your help of course)!

You had asked König in passing if he had considered dressing up as something for Halloween. Maybe what he had considered doing on the evening. Or if he had plans to attend the autumn fair sometime soon.

His response? A blank look. Distant recognition.

For a quiet moment, you thought he was scowling at you, silently ridiculing your childish suggestion.

Then: "Halloween? Ah!" An amused chuckle, endeared by the child-like curiosity in your eyes, and a silent sigh of relief from you.

"I don't celebrate it, myself, meine liebe. But you're welcome to tell me what your costume is. I'd love to hear all about it, maus."

Mortified by this revelation, you couldn't let this go.

"What do you mean you "don't celebrate it"? You have got to be joking!"

Wide eyes, and jaw agape, you were in disbelief.

He simply shook his head with a strained smile. "I've just never seen it as something to celebrate, you know? No reason to."

Taking it upon yourself to prove him wrong, you wasted no time converting this skeptic into a believer. "Oh no, there is. I mean, it's Halloween! Everyone is crazy for it!"

Suddenly, your eyes lit up. A wave of adrenaline crashing into you, you tugged König's arm in direction of the couch.

"That's where we'll start! We're gonna watch Halloween! That'll surely get you in the spirit."

You winked at him, satisfied. Then, a sudden snort and a suppressed chortle, hand cupped over your mouth as you laughed at your pathetic attempt at a joke.

König cocked his head to the side in confusion, but let you hastily scramble for blankets, pillows, and to microwave bowls of popcorn, as he made himself comfortable on the couch cushions that sank in protest under his weight.

Initially, he was reluctant. Not necessarily looking forward to being forced to watch movies from the 80s–00s, over-the-top movies with subpar acting, to say that he was looking forward to it would have been a stretch.

However, seeing how passionate you were about the holiday, your interests, König didn't want your sweetness sour.

Yes, he was a little older than you, and perhaps didn't grasp what there was to fuss over, but he wasn't about to spoil your good mood, or dampen that excitement just because he didn't personally understand or was interested personally. He wanted to make an effort, for you.

Vowing to take part in your silly shenanigans, he swore to become involved in the festivities in order to see you smile. To keep seeing you smiling.

After that, every October evening you'd watch a movie — a (usually) corny horror classic, though spending most nights binging all the Screams, Halloweens, Chuckys, The Shinings, Saws, and Evil Deads, — huddled under moutains of blankets and stuffing your faces with toffee-flavoured popcorn.

Watching horror films with him was like being lectured on common-sense and taught self-defence lessons in real time, though. Not like you minded, but it really got rid of the edge and the tension in its entirety.

Instead of paying attention to the storyline, it's more likely König would catch on to the stupid decisions the characters and the shitty attempts to fight back, and he wouldn't be able to help commenting:

"Why did she leave the knife in him? In his abdomen, of all places? Now the murderer has a weapon! Should have taken it out and left him to bleed out. But noooo, nein, leave the knife there."

"Going into the forest on his own? In the night? With a killer on the loose? Mein Gott, he is such a dummkopf! Bring a friend, why don't you?"

"Liebling, why is there so much gore? Isn't this rated "15"? Wait, and why is there a lady with no shirt? This is supposed to be scary, ja? I'm very scared. Scared you'll slap me, actually, if I don't keep looking at my lap."

Angrily ranting at the television, you'd gently reassure him, that, "Sweetie, this is fiction. Sometimes, the scenes are unrealistic." "But it said "based on real events"! I swear, liebling, if I watch another ten minutes of this I'll have a headache. I can't comprehend the stupidness."

Tough crowd, that couldn't really immerse himself in the plot, but you took a note or two for the sorts of horror movies König wouldn't dislike.

Although he insulted all the characters for being stupid and ridiculed all the characters for being so brainless, he would begrudgingly admit that he enjoyed the movie, pointing out some of his favourite scenes.

Self-aware comedic slashers meant he could suspend disbelief and laugh out loud a little, while, movies with an omnipotent monster meant he couldn't criticise any inaccuracies. He didn't winge at those as much in comparison to major blockbuster films. In fact, he even preferred low budget movies, ones that were pure comedic relief and so self-aware that he wouldn't be able to help but laugh along, unable to hide his amusement.

Afterwards, at exactly midnight, you'd be huddled together in the dark under a thick blanket, gorging your mouth with sugary sweets and bite-size chocolates (also indulging in chocolates that were far from bite-size), giggling like lunatics (well, that was mostly you, but König joined in to keep you company).

Later, face serious, with a torch under your chin, you'd be whispering hushedly with a tone of foreboding, voice low, and words ominous:

"Drip. Drip. Dripping water. She had checked the bathroom taps, the kitchen taps, and they were twisted tightly closed. A leakage, perhaps? Or, perhaps, something else. As she roamed the corridor, the drip-drip-drip of liquid grew louder. And louder—"

"Ah, she should call her plumber, then, shouldn't she?" A sure shit-eating smirk that was obscured by his mask, but the way his eyes were squinting you knew he was taking the piss.

Of course, storytelling was not as haunting as you would have had liked it to be: König would interject, interrupting the aura of mystery and the medatitive atmosphere, with sarcastic remarks. It made the narrations really melodramatic in the end, and frustrated you to no end.

Still, you would groan, and, undaunted by his immature antics — as, mind you, this was a grown-ass man, a 6'10 wall of muscle messing around like this, teasing you not like the cocky Colonel he was but a snarky teenage boy — continue:

"—she walked on — despite having been rudely interrupted moments prior — and her heart sank. Blood. A puddle of it, on the floor, looking like gallons upon gallons of it had—"

"Maybe she was — ah, what's the word?" A thoughtful pause, hand where his chin was under the fabric "— menustrating? Was she wearing white pants, maybe?"

"—Menstruating, König — and stop ruining my horror narration! Now I've lost the plot! Okay — against her will, her eyes moved up the wall, following the dripping blood. To her horror, it was coming from the attic. Swallowing the heavy lump in her throat, she pulled open the hatch with jittering fingers, grip slackened by the warm sweat on her palms, knees threatening to buckle. And, when the trap door released, she gasped. Blood draining her face, she saw��"

An exaggerated gasp from König, as he clasped his hands over his mouth in mock shock. "She— she saw— your mother! Mein Gott, the horror!"

"Shut up, König!" An annoyed huff, and shuffling away. "Honestly, you're such a killjoy..."

König, scooping you into his arms when you turned around with crossed arms, pouting lips, and furrowed brows, nuzzed his masked face into your neck, chuckling heartily. You squirmed under his hold, fabric tickling your sensitive neck, and you'd desperately hold back your giggles, trying hard to keep a straight face.

"Ja, ja, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Es tut mir leid, meine Liebe. Please keep going. What did she find in the attic?"

"No! You made me forget the grand reveal, now! I forgot what was up there, anyways..."

Walking around the house, you'd have the fright of your life when a huge shadow would jump in front of you at odd hours of the day.

"Boo!" König's voice resounded, loud and reverberating.

And you screamed, damn near verging on a heart attack.

"Shoving" him in frustration — you became actually even more frustrated when the man was like a solid wall and did not even budge a millimetre — König was quick to console you.

Doting over you, a wide smile on his face that the mask couldn't hide, he would be so overly lovey-dovey with you in an attempt to win back your affection that you'd roll yours eyes so far they'd end up in the back of your head.

"Meine liebe, I'm sorry for scaring you. I couldn't resist. You'll forgive me, won't you? You will, right? Please say yes."

You insisted you would, seemingly unassuming, then schemed to startle him at odd hours of the night as payback for losing your dignity in that moment.

At one point, you had even waited half an hour in the wardrobe while he was showering, only to jump out and see König in only a towel.

Yeah, you were the one that got jumpscared instead, face erupting in red despite you two being together for months at that point. You gave up trying to spook him then, bitterly accepting defeat.

Though, going along with your silly little activities, like going shopping for Halloween decorations, made König's heart swell seeing you bounce around excitedly and point out all the ornaments.

He didn't quite consent to you buying a life-size skeleton to call him Greg and place him in your shared bedroom. That was one step too far.

Still, seeing the wonder on your face, in awe of all the masks, costumes, decorations, and animated mannequins that'd cackle after triggering their mechanisms made his steel-blue eyes soften, melting into pure love and devotion for you.

So, to humour you one day, and to lift your mood after scaring you that one morning, König made two eye-holes in a white blanket, running after you around the house, almost tripping over it in his haste.

"Ooooo-ooo!" he moaned in over-dramatised agony, voice low yet playful. "This is not König, but his ghooost! Run, liebling, or you'll be neeext!"

Hearing him say that in his Austrian accent was so hilarious that were tears running down your cheeks from how hard you'd be laughing, and your sides splitting with the laughter, struggling scramble away, giggling.

Those moans of agony would become genuine cries in pain when he'd accidently hit his head on the doorframe when he forgot to duck in his excitement. The one time that bulky helmet of his could have come to use.

Despite all that, you'd be cornered against the wall, with nowhere to run, and König would pounce, tickling your sides viciously.

That broad smile on your face and the expression was worth fooling around and making a fool of himself.

He even didn't mind having you coo over his "injury" just like how he had when he was doting over you, because he loved you so much.

And, he loved you so much, that he even allowed you to "decorate" his gear. "To make it appropriate for the spooky season!" you had insisted, and he'd comply, not wanting to dull that sparkle in your eyes.

So contented with painting an intricate monster on his mask with fluorescent orange paint, you didn't notice König watching you hunched over the desk from behind, leaning against the doorframe with a loving smile on his face.

You hadn't expected that he'd wear that gear on base — veil, knee pads, helmet, and all — strutting his stuff. Just to remind everyone that their Colonel had a lovely spouse back home.

What you hadn't anticipated was how quickly König would start enjoying the season. Unexpectedly, he became obsessed with Halloween — his favourite tradition, second only to Christmas.

Carveling hollowed-out pumpkins of all shapes and sizes was one of his favourite past-times.

You'd think that with his size he'd struggle to cut through the orange crust without crushing it into pumpkin-coloured mush in his fists, but you'd be forgetting that he was skilled with a knife.

That said, König wasn't artistic. At all. The best he could produce would be a lopsided smiling caricature of... something. A nondescript creature, which you had complimented him on being so cute, only for him to angrily insist that it was an evil monster, and not cute at all.

Still, you would snap a picture before he could object, and give this pumpkin the spotlight on your front porch, soon many more following suit. Jack'o'lanterns illuminating your front step, glowing gold.

The sweet scent of cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla extract filled your house, new freshly-baked treats from the oven laid out on the kitchen island daily.

Delicious aroma of sugary pastry, homemade banana bread with small hints of vanilla and sprinkled with icing sugar, candied oranges and sour, sherbet lemon cakes, crunchy cinnamon sugar pumpkin seeds ("Made from the pumpkin guts!" you exclaimed with a smile of pride, König's eyes smiling in delight of your enthusiasm).

Crumbly shortbread in the shape skulls and bats, round cookies with orange and black icing resembling pumpkins, sponge cakes that oozed thick raspberry and strawberry jam when you bit into them ("Because they were bleeding blood," you proclaimed, a devilish smirk on your face — or, something like it, as to König you were the cutest angel he'd had ever been blessed to be around), and so, so, so much more.

So much that your weekly trips to the supermarket became biweekly, until you two found yourselves stocking up on sugar, flour, eggs, and butter far too often to keep track of.

The house was so inviting, especially to little ones from the neighbourd, that their mouths were agape and their eyes sparkled as they passed your "haunted house", holding the hands of their parent(s).

Mentioned in an earlier post that König has a soft spot for children, he'd stock up on Halloween candy and treats, and lug bucketfuls of sweets on the doorstep for any little ones that'd knock on your door to cheerfully cry out in unison, full of glee: "Trick or treat!"

He'd welcome them with open arms, but, with most of them being so little, they'd point with bulging eyes the giant on the doorstep, to be harshly reprimanded by their mothers and fathers for their ignorance and rudeness.

Few would say much after seeing König the giant, and after daring to scoop a handful of confectionary, bowing their heads and avoiding his eyes would mumble a shaky "...Th-thank you, s-sir—!"

One of them, however — a little girl with rosy cheeks donning white stockings and a gold tinsel halo — beamed brightly, albeit shyly, at König, thanking him for the treat and his generosity. An innocent, toothy smile that made her squint from how high it reached her eyes, her front baby teeth missing.

When she had her back turned to you two, she ran as fast as her chubby little legs could take her, and exclaimed, "Mommy! Mommy! That giant is a big and friendly one! A big, friendly giant. Can we go again, please? Please?"

It was only when you nudged König with your elbow, grinning, when she had skipped happily away, that he had realised he had tears in his eyes.

Moreover, maybe the memories König had of Halloween weren't so cheerful, or ones even worth remembering in the first place; after all, his childhood wasn't so cheerful. Joyless, and with little life.

But, with the way that Halloween was shaping up to be, he was already looking forward to the special celebration.

So full of life the you two were, you would laugh at the irony — animated and living the dream, while celebrating the day of the day. It brought you two to more laughter.

And, with you, König could make new ones, ones that you'd look back on fondly years from now, and those grueling months on deployment.

...

Note: Went off experience here for the beginning, guys🫡🫡 for the mowt part i have never celebrated Halloween😰 only a couple times in Poland, and once in England when i drank tomato juice and prwtended it was blood and i was a vampire🤪,

, but I Googled "Halloween in Austria" /Germany" to clarify whether I wasn't just speaking outta my ass and König here would have celebrated it differently to how I had in Poland 💀cuz, yknow, im not egocentric ajd the world doesnt celebrate things the same way Poles do 😘...

...And, no, I wasn't !☺️✨✨(... sort of😅... As far as I know, Germany has adopted the West's Halloween, ans theres pumpkin carving competitiomsn stuff, while Austria does indeed celebrate it slightly differently) .

Because I have no fuckijg idea of König's nationaloty anymore as it KEEOS CHANGING, I got the vest of both worlds 🥲🥲

Also been really busy guys😰😰😰by busy i mean stressing out ovee not writing then proceeding to NOT write bc im stressed❤️❤️🥰 you know jow it is!! 🤗(🔫) its ok tjo❤️(no it isnt) ill work tjis oit somejow🥹(no i wont im gonna kms) 🥰🥰

Have a very spooky halloween guys<3Feel bad foe those that are buying candy bc not onky is it smallwe than last uear but its more expensive 💔😟

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torialefay · 4 months

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maybe this is too niche but the most random thoughts keep popping into my head?? idk but i must share them.

these are the types of doctors i think stray kids would be, based on different doctors' stereotypes (from the pov of a medical student):

chan: sports medicine 🏀⚽️

• description: physicians with training in areas related to treating and preventing injuries and health issues associated with sports, exercise, or strenuous physical activity

• stereotype: athlete-turned-doctor. the less extreme brother of the orthopedic specialists. get to meet a wide range of people and are well-liked. very passionate about sports and physical health. dress really nice and know their ass looks great in their tight pants. probably has memorized all the stats of their favorite teams. ACTUALLY very intelligent and not just a meat head.

minho: forensic pathologist 🩸

• description: subspecialist in pathology whose area of special competence is the examination of persons who die suddenly, unexpectedly or violently. The forensic pathologist is an expert in determining cause and manner of death.

• stereotype: honestly just leave them tf alone. they just wanna do their thing... without you there, just come find them when they've figured it out. nice but also scarred forever. a little fucked up in the head but much needed. no one understands how they're able to do their job tbh. able to conjure up the most morbid situations. kinda freaky but in a respected way. you should be concerned if they stare at you for too long.

changbin: orthopedist (aka orthopedic surgeon aka "ortho bro") 🦴

• description: medical specialist who focuses on injuries and diseases affecting your musculoskeletal system (bones, muscles, joints and soft tissues). although this type of doctor is a surgeon, they often help people get relief with nonsurgical therapies.

• stereotype: the "bro"est of the bros. always talking about their new workout routine or equipment with the other ortho bros. will out-eat you any day of the week. probably has a hot spouse. will be blasting their workout playlist for hours on end in the operating room. honestly just want to do surgeries so they can play with the tools. could fight off an entire army with the amount of protein powder they consume on the daily.

hyunjin: dermatologist 💉

• description: medical doctor who specializes in conditions that affect the skin, hair, and nails.

• stereotype: distinguished and better than you. better than everyone else. can be nice, but can also be cold depending in the person. only uses the best hair products. the specialty is very competitive, but you're 99% sure they got in with pretty privilege. owns 7 cars, but their sunday car is their favorite. sells $90 moisturizer at the check-in counter. most definitely is also certified in botox and filler and will give you a discount on your injections if you compliment them enough.

han: psychiatrist 💆🏻

• description: medical doctor who can prescribe, direct, or administer psychotherapeutic treatments or medications to treat mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders.

• stereotype: actually does give a fuck about you. you can tell them the most fucked up shit and they honestly will not be surprised in the slightest. quirky to a fault. knows how to make you feel special. very #relatable. sacrifices their own mental health for the sake of yours. cannot do math. just wants world peace. mentally diagnoses everyone they meet with a personality disorder.

felix: gynecologist 👛

• description: physician who specializes in diagnosing and treating diseases of the female reproductive system.

• stereotype: will be kind to you and work for the promotion of women's health. never makes you feel uncomfortable and tries to make you feel more secure in an environment that can seem scary. has very expensive bags. their children are very successful, but in a humble way. emotionally intelligent. wishes they had more time to bake. an advocate. seem sweet, but if you cross them, they can drag you through the absolute mud. may or may not have a rhinestone cup collection.

seungmin: general surgeon 🔪

• description: doctor and surgeon who’s trained to diagnose and manage a broad array of medical conditions before, during, and after surgery (preoperative, operative and postoperative care), often as leaders of a team.

• stereotype: literally just trying to get you cut open, close you up, and leave. has 27 different playlists to listen to in the operating room. may or may not flirt with the other staff. got this job bc they cannot handle people telling them what to do. will humble you so quickly. other besties are also surgeons. has very niche interests. weird sense of humor that not everyone gets but they still have to laugh because they are scared of him.

innie: neurologist 🧠

• description: medical doctor who diagnoses, treats and manages disorders of the brain and nervous system.

• stereotype: a little peculiar, but very smart. takes a long time to get an appointment with them. probably thinks you are a little dumb, but tries to be nice anyways. hard to make friends. has an amplitude of medications that they are legally not supposed to have. their children are most definitely overachievers. would not trust you to bring an important dish to the potluck. has the cutest shoes. dabbles in unexpected kinks.

(descriptions gotten from various websites hehe)

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dovithedarklord · 4 months

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Stucked - Part 7

You're trapped in a game and a new threat is lurking.

..............................................

Pairing: John "Soap" MacTavish x reader, Simon "Ghost" Riley x reader, König x reader

Tags: Mentions of death, Mentions of blood and gore, Blood and Violence, Sexual Scenes, Alternate Universe, No use of Y/N, Not Beta Read, AFAB Reader

Trigger Warning: Contains blood and gore, violence, injury, some body horror, and drugging. Please, keep that in mind!

⚠️MDNI⚠️

......................................................

Author's Note

The climax of the story is getting closer and closer, and now you meet someone who knows what kind of place you're stuck in.

Hello!

Sorry for the long delay, but I was finally able to get back to writing! The story is slowly coming to an end and the last important character enters.

Have fun! :D

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

.................................

The eerie silence of the forest penetrates every unprotected pore of your cold body like a latent sickness, as if the ominous uneventfulness would be a precursor to a deadly disease that can push you into a sick bed festering with ulcers at any moment. And you know that this calmness is only a fleeting mirage, because in every dark corner, in every hidden hole, something terrible can be lurking, which can ruin the unsettling ease with which you fled from your pursuers. Even though you're surrounded by the soft breeze of the night, the sighs of the branches dancing in the wind passing through the trees, the frightened shuffling noises of the feet of animals coming to life under the dead leaves, and even though the owls try to lull your suspicions with their melancholic songs, you already know this horrible prison all too well. And thanks to the last few hours, you won't make the mistake of trusting in its mercy again. Because in this fever dream, there is no benevolence, no compassion, only survival. And you do everything to win, because there is no other way out.

The time you spent wandering in the woods in the pitch-black night seems endless, and even though you know you're far away from the lake and the deformed creatures that turned the water into a putrid graveyard, the dull stabbing pain in your lungs reminds you of with what hurry you managed to disappear from the watchful eyes. You were just a hair's breadth away from being caught in the violent embrace of a beast, and if you hadn't found the pearls, you wouldn't have had a chance to make that daring escape with which you threw yourself into the thick of the forest before.

If you had any hopeful foolishness left in you, you'd think the game had given up on its cruel pursuit of fun and finally presented you with a generous gift. But you know that this goddamn purgatory feeds on the sweet nectar of suffering and will do everything to squeeze every last drop of luscious misery out of your flesh and bones. And as it flashes before your mind's eye, how the red and purple stains of the damaged blood vessels drawn into the tissues disappeared from your leg following the cool caress of the beads, you become more and more certain that it was all just a morbid coincidence. Maybe even this nightmare-like torture chamber can make a mistake, because you doubt that it offered you this miracle voluntarily. Like when a bug appears in a video game, causing the world embedded in pixels to slip for a moment, and through the distorted chaos, the system reveals secrets that you should have never seen. And maybe it did. Maybe this diabolical place is finally starting to crumble under the weight of its own evil.

But you know that now is not the time to ponder how the well-known hell will turn into a completely new kind of horror, because you only need to take a look at the map resting in your hand to know what your task is. On the yellowed page, the unknown gray building stands out with such definite outlines, as if someone had painted it there with liquid metal, and for a minute the sharp lines of the rough sketch seem to dance in front of your tired eyes. While trekking through the wild vegetation, you had time to decide where your path should lead you next, and although the knife-like anxiety in the depths of your stomach relentlessly pumps the warning acid of uneasiness into your limbs, you're aware that this new location didn’t appear without purpose. There's something there that makes this place important enough to have a prominent spot on the map, and that's enough reason for you to risk another disastrous adventure. After all, you have nothing to lose, right? A new killer, a new death, another damn mark on your skin, but a chance to find an exit. And at this point, you're ready to seize anything to get out of here.

It's almost cartoonishly comical, the way a small blood-red line on the stained page traces your journey so far, like a path sketched up with a crayon in the middle of the splotch-like woods, and this small detail only makes you even more certain that you're stuck in a grotesque game. The system keeps track of your progress, and although the knowledge that you cannot hide from the invisible gaze only increases the uncomfortable tightness in your chest, for once this atrocity has at least some benefits. For the dull edge of the gray building emerges with an uncanny glow from behind the dense curtain of foliage and branches, like a glimmering fragment of the imagination that may fade away at any moment. Even though the game follows your every move, it helped you to reach this point, and you're terribly grateful for it.

You keep your eyes fixed on the slowly approaching house with an unbroken focus as you carefully thread through the thicket of dry bushes, and it’s only due to random luck that you catch on your periphery those tiny, uncertain little blobs that rest serenely on one of the nearby trees. And when your brain finally registers the stimuli, you suddenly halt in your march, as if an unknown force had severed the nerve fibers wiring your muscles. There is something sickeningly familiar in the way the small human-like figures sway between the withered branchlets, and it dawns on you a few seconds later why your mind thought it was important to stop here. Because you saw the same dolls made of sticks at the shrine, where the map was waiting for you, and no matter how much this is a sure sign that you're moving in the right direction, you're unable to banish the instinctive sinister feeling stirring in your brain cells. At first, you thought that maybe they had erected that hideous monument in honor of the tentacled creature that lived in the lake, but now you know that they wanted to pay homage to something completely different. And whatever that unknown entity is, it doesn't bode well for you if teeth pulled from jaws, brown with blood, and clumps of hair lead to its grace.

But a completely new kind of confusion comes over you when you shift your attention from the sprawling tangle of dead twigs and finally spot the boot lying on the ground, almost hidden under the dry crown of curled leaves surrounding it. Perhaps you could chalk it up to a morbid coincidence, a background element without meaning, which fades into oblivion eventually, but the game has engraved in your mind with blood and pain that nothing here is just an insignificant detail. And as you step closer and examine the forgotten footwear, you discover those tiny, white shards on the faded leather covered in muddy dirt, which shine under the filtering moonlight like glitter. However, there is something quite unsettlingly velvety in the way the crushed pieces stand out from the grimy material, and as your vision finally sharpens enough to recognize the tiny red specks between the zig-zagged edges, you know what sits so innocently on the surface of the boot. Small pieces of grounded bones, which cover the abandoned object as if someone sprinkled it with granulated sugar. And this makes your stomach turn with such an elemental force that you stagger back from the horrible surprise, as if the very sight of it could breathe death into your cells. Because however that bone dust ended up on that unfortunate shoe, you don't want to suffer the same fate as its owner.

However, you’re jolted out of your stupor by an unexpected crack, which deafeningly pierces into the motionless quite between the tree trunks, and you crumple the map deep into your pocket with reflexive panic and turn in the direction of the noise, as if someone was pulling you on a string. And a completely impossible relief ripples through you, loosening the tennis ball size knot your stomach has shrunk into, as you find yourself face to face with an old woman, who freezes with her wicker basket full of chopped-up wood clutched to her chest, her face pale with a look of horrified shock like yours. You see the fright reflected in her eyes, as she looks you over slowly, and the thought arises in you that maybe you yourself might not present a more inviting sight than the boots. Because although the mementos of your wounds, colored with bruises, have disappeared, your dirty, wet clothes clung to your battered, paralyzed body, and at this moment you're quite sure that with your eyes widened with fear, you must remind her of a trapped wild animal.

A torturous, tense moment of stillness passes, and when you see the frail, worn-out old figure relax, anxiety releases its grip on your insides as well, and you let out the breath that has been trapped in the supple prison of your lungs with painful tension until now.

"Oh my… are you all right, sweetheart?" Comes the sincere question in a strangely accented voice, and the tenderness in her words hits you completely unprepared. And although an intimate, motherly concern moves between her features, as her thinning eyebrows meet under her gray hair with worry, you still can't suppress the flicker of doubt that whispers from the back of your skull to be careful. You don't dare to trust anything anymore, and a stranger rarely means good in this damn world. Yet, your tortured soul yearns for the tiniest spark of humanity with such pitiful force, that you involuntary let your spine loosen the painful stiffness that resides in it.

"I'm lost." You answer, carefully rolling the syllables on your tongue, savoring the caution that instinctively settles in your mouth and restrains your sociability. Although the woman seems defenseless, you already know how unnoticed a beast can hide behind the mask of sweet kindness. At best, she’s an insignificant NPC, an additional character who merely fills the void, who, like Pam and Rebecca, is condemned to eternal death, and waits unsuspectingly for the killer to appear to strip her of her aged flesh. And you want to hope that she's just a helpless puppet of the storyline and not another threat, because you want more than anything to have someone else suffer instead of you finally. Because you lost the compassion that would be appalled at this thought long ago.

"How about you come to my house?" She makes the timid offer, and as her gaze catches the thick layer of mud embedded in your T-shirt, you can see how her mouth curls into a line full of doubts. As if she would understand without asking any questions, that you've been through an endless hell that has soaked itself into your pores through the soft cotton, and can't be expressed with words. "I'll find you something warm to put on." She adds, and you feel the awareness with which she tries to dispel the restless rigidity radiating from her to not frighten you. As if she were talking to a trapped fawn, which would be able to take flight at the slightest thoughtless move, even if its shackles would flay its legs, trapped between the razor-sharp metal, alive in the process. And it makes you realize how pitiful it is, that the events of the never-ending night transformed you into a raw, pulsating nerve so easily. But you suspect that this is what has kept you alive until now.

Although the suspicion of the stranger has already settled into the depths of your consciousness, you still make yourself nod, because even if you don't know the woman and have no idea what might be hiding behind the defenseless exterior, you're aware that you're serving yourself as easy prey for the monsters in the forest. And you know it's only a matter of time before they catch a scent and appear breathing down on your neck.

"Alright... Come on, I don't live far from here!" She motions towards the building resting in the distance with her head, and you immediately know where her home could be. And if you had doubts, now you're quite sure, you've become involved in a new storyline, no matter how accidental this unexpected meeting seems. The game can always surprise you with new horrors, but as merciless as this world is, it's also as predictable. Because it's addicted to its habits, and you have learned to interpret its hidden signs. There are no coincidences, only tools that lead to your doom. And if you were already on your way to another trouble, then you let yourself be lead into its open mouth.

She hesitates for a few seconds, waiting to see if you change your mind and retreat into the desolate depths of the forest, but when you continue to stare at her like statue frozen in place, she turns around with the ghost of a small smile on her face, and beckoning you with her knobby fingers, she aks you to follow her. And you join her a moment later, keeping that respectful distance that speaks more to the mistrust swirling in your belly than to the thoughtfulness you feel for her. Perhaps an onlooker would think that you're just a scared little girl tagging along with her in the maze of tree trunks, but you feel the energy slithering through your legs, ready to run off at the very first odd move. You may be a slow learner, but you could repeat this lesson even after waking up from a dream. Don't let yourself be fooled. Because you've outlined the ideal possibility, but even the whirlwind of your imagination cannot authentically paint the worst-case scenario for you.

After a few meters spent in wordless peace, as the last remnants of the wild vegetation, frozen from the autumn cold, disappears, the concrete building, for which you decided to drag yourself through the goddamn forest, emerges almost abnormally in the small clearing. It stands out from the dark foliage as strikingly as an old silver ring forgotten in a black velvet box, and there is something quite unsettling about the way the tiny windows stare down at you from the monotonous walls. Like hungry mouths, waiting for a victim that they can grind up with their glimmering glass teeth. And you notice, what grotesque similes your brain is making, but you're unable to suppress the voice in your head that tells you, that there is no one in this artificial world who would call this their home with peace of mind. Because the structure looks more like a slaughterhouse with its inhospitable, barren frame, on which the holes from the crumbling plaster and the dry carpet of faded lichens bordering them gape like scars left behind by smallpox. The building may have been standing here since the game's universe was created, and in light of this, it’s even more baffling to you why it appeared only now.

But you can't ponder on that now, because you reach the house, and the old woman hurries to the shabby entrance with an agility that belies her age, pushing in the thick wooden panel covered with flaking red paint with a light movement, and opens the door of her home to you with the same helpfulness with which she led you here until now. Even though she doesn't say a word, you still understand the gentle plea with which she invites you in, because you see the worried light dancing in her eyes, with which she examines the uncertainty glued onto your features. And you want to believe in this softness more than anything, but what helps your leaden legs move the most is the knowledge that you know you can't turn back. Because Johnny and Simon are out there looking for you, and even if you were to avoid them, you'd already delved into a new thread of events. And you fear how the game would punish you if you were to deny its generous gift. Therefore, gathering all your remaining composure, you force the faint curve of a weak smile into the corner of your mouth and head towards the interior of the house, fighting the instinctive feeling that makes it seem like you're walking straight through the entrance to the scene of your execution.

As you cross the threshold made of rickety boards, the characteristic smell of old houses snakes into your nose, the fusty stench of moisture that has soaked into the walls over the decades and the stale essence of powdery, old perfumes, which awakens nostalgia in you with an almost visceral force. And there is something extremely homely about the old chest of drawers, forgotten in the small hall, and about the lace tablecloth spread on the top of it, chewed by time, on which a bouquet of worn plastic flowers sits in a glass vase, like the last witnesses of a couple of long gone, sentimental memories. The old nick-nacks accumulated over the years rests in neat order, and even on the walls, the frames, covered with pale gold, hang with measured precision, with black and white photos of unknown people in them, testifying that perhaps, according to the story, the woman might not have lived here alone once. They looking into the camera with blank expressions on their grim faces, and you swear that they're staring into your soul with their dull, dot-like eyes.

And when the woman rushes past you towards the inside of the house, disrupts the thin layer of dust that settles on the worn surface of the furniture, and as the musty smell traveling with the tiny particles settles into your nose, it occurs to you that, despite the homely atmosphere, it's as if no more than a few stray ghosts would actually live here. And your subconscious warns you about this small intuition, which makes you sneak after your host with careful cat-like steps, like a curious child who knows she's straying into an area that adults have told her a thousand times not to venture near to.

The lamp hanging from the ceiling is the only source of light as you enter the kitchen after the the old woman, and the light bulb casts filmy, yellow rays from under the milk-like porcelain onto the battered furnishings of the little room. She’s already busying herself, and shoves chopped pieces of wood into the dilapidated stove, scaly with peeling white paint, glancing over her shoulder as she hears the shuffling of your shoes on the worn linoleum.

"Sit down, I'll make you some tea to warm you up!" She speaks up, and by now all uncertainty has disappeared from her voice, giving the impression that it was not a torn stranger, but an old friend who appeared in front of her humble abode in the middle of the night. And, as she digs out an ancient teapot from one of the cupboards, and the faucet turns on with a loud creak, as she steps to the sink and fills it with water, you wonder what will come next. Now you can't rely on your routine, with which you were able to tell exactly which breath followed the other in the cabin, and this creates an uncomfortable, gaping hole in your insides. And that sends a robotic rigidity into your limbs as you walk over to the table in the middle of the kitchen and settle down in one of the thick oak armchairs, because fear begins to twist in the bottomless pit that anxiety has opened in you, as your eyes scan the room for danger. You should feel bad that you're so persistently looking for a trap in the woman's hospitality, but you have experienced firsthand how big a mistake it is when you let yourself to be overconfident.

"A few minutes and it's done." She comments on her haste, and turning towards you, she leans against the shabby kitchen counter, finding you with her searching gaze again. Now that you have entered the scene of another dangerous mission, your consciousness automatically accepts the stimuli that your brain may have tried to push away until now. And you see the sparks of interest swimming through the pools of her eyes, but despite the soft expression still sitting on the worn face, the stress is too strong for you to let your guard down. You'd like to think that only your paranoia brings out this visceral suspicion, but you're smarter than that. "How did you get lost?" She formulates the completely legitimate question, and your ear once again discovers the accent that, despite the light tone, gives her words harshness. As if tiny little pebbles would be gurgling in her mouth, making every consonant flow out a little harder from her paper-thin lips. Maybe Russian?

"We just went for a walk with my friends. I lost them." You finally break your silence with a half-truth, which is just honest enough so that your tone is not colored by the sound of lies. You have no reason to tell her what happened during the endless torture of the past hours, and you have a gut feeling that it wouldn't help you if you mentioned to her what kind of monsters this demonic place has entwined your fate with.

And when the telltale shadows of doubt creep across the old face, you become quite sure that you have made the right decision. You can tell from the little quiver that makes the corner of her mouth twitch that she doesn't believe you, but there's just enough goodwill in her not to try to inquire further. You see how suddenly her throat jumps as she swallows the demanding questions, and you're quite sure that she knows exactly what happened to you. She must have resided in the middle of the forest long enough to know its every evil nook and cranny, and you doubt that her innocent facade is what has kept her alive. Whatever the purpose of this storyline, it is not a coincidence that she lives here in the middle of nowhere, and there is even less chance that it was thanks to some harmless tricks that helped her home to stay so undisturbed. This also raises a series of dangerous assumptions in you, and you can almost feel how the buzzing of suspicion in your head sharpens as a result.

A sudden whistle interrupts the thread of your thoughts sinking into ever darker pits, and the woman, breaking your silent examination, settles back into her caring role, turning to the teapot angrily steaming on the stove amid soft curses. And you take advantage of this to explore the hidden corners of the room, searching for small signs that can reveal what you're dealing with. It’s quite obvious that another important clue will be hidden here, and you have to do everything you can to find it, because you don't know how much time you have until the two men or another killer find you, one who has been lying dormant waiting for the opportunity to play with you until now.

And now that you take a closer look at the room, you discover more and more little details you missed when you wandered in here. You can see the touch of old hands in the order that resides in the small hole of the kitchen, but you can spot the silky blanket of spider webs that weave the plates decorated with flowers on the shelves, as if no one has used them for decades. There are rich bouquets of dried plants hung on nails on the wall, but below them, you can clearly make out the yellowed newspaper articles written in a language unknown to you, on which the same black and white people you saw in the hall look back at you. And when you squint and try to observe the figure emerging from under the withered flowers of one of the herbs, you see how a little boy, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, is cut through by the unknown mark, which almost decapitates him with the edges engraved with graphite. At first, the drawing may seem like a simple scribble, but you recognize the needle-sharp points of a star in it, as if someone had carved a grotesque crosshair there…

The knocking of the mug's porcelain jolts you out of your investigation, and you wince with the surprise of a small child caught in mischief, turning your gaze back to the woman, who takes her seat across from you with a much tighter smile than before. And the tenderness on her face turns into something completely cold, as if only habit would keep the friendly curl in the corners of her mouth in place, and the softness that used to be able to inspire sympathy in your soul has disappeared from them. Now her expression transforms into sharp lines, which are deepened into gloomy furrows by the yellow light filtering down from the lamp, as if would the woman transform into someone completely different in an instant. Someone you shouldn't be around.

"Drink up. It will help." She pushes the cup towards you, and you know it's not just your ears when you feel the impatient tone in her voice, from which the offer sounds more like an instruction than a well-meaning nagging. And you don't react for a tense moment, and despite the anxiety churning in your stomach, you try to keep your cool, because now you recognize the fleeting shadow that hides under the gentle warmth. Like a hawk waiting to strike, she follows your movements as you wrap your fingers around the handle of the mug, but she can no longer deceive you, because you've seen the same expression before. Although it's not Johnny's handsome face and the sparks of his sky-blue eyes that want to divert the suspicion that is scratching your insides, the disguise of an old woman feigning cordial concern would just as effectively put anyone's doubts to sleep. But she can put on any mask, you're already able to distinguish the vileness under the sickly sweet surface. And this woman wants to hurt you, you're sure of that.

Still, you pull the steaming beverage in front of you with almost automatic movements, trying with every cell not to let her figure out that you suspect something. You need her to reveal herself, because that's how you can get her to lead you to the clues that can get you out of here. There is something hidden in this damned house, and you feel it in your bones that it’s important to find out what it is. All your fake innocence seeps into the way you touch your mouth to the porcelain, and the luscious scent of herbs and fruits snakes into your nose. And although you don't feel the sting of poison in the steamy clouds rising from the tea, it fills you with a bad foreboding when the woman leans forward with artificial benevolence frozen on her face, watching with almost intrusive interest how you start sipping the hot liquid. And you feel more and more tense with each passing second, like an ant stuck under a magnifying glass, which has just begun to feel how the rays of the sun breaking through the lens burn its legs into charcoal stubs. And you see the dissatisfaction when you hesitantly lower the cup.

"Drink it all. You need it." She encourages you, almost cooing, and her accent is more reminiscent of an impatient mother who tries to dictate medicine to her protesting child with a barely controlled temper. Gentle, but just as much as boiling water forgotten under the lid. And you feel how the little hairs rise on the nape of your neck, as her glassy eyes fixate on you with unblinking persistence.

Uncertain silence settles in the tiny kitchen, which makes the saliva in your mouth thicken into molasses as you return the woman's stare. Under the flickering light of the old bulb, everything seems to change, and out of the corner of your eye, it looks as if the flowers painted on the wall would turn into wax, dripping off the plaster dirty from grease. But you’re unable to turn your gaze away from her, as she studies you with the immobility of a predator, and you have to forcefully suppress the trembling that awakes in your hands as you raise the mug to your lips and take another small sip. And the excited light that passes over her features does’t escape your attention for a minute, as she follows the almost painfully sweet liquid traveling down your throat. And now you're sure that no matter how harmless this elderly woman seems, evil is hidden under her frail frame. Because the pearls hidden in your pockets come to life with an almost warning glow, as the strange, bitter aftertaste sits on your taste buds, which the sugar has been able to suppress until now.

Under the pulsation of the little red spheres, the light buzz, that the brew wants to envelop your brain in, has no chance of spreading, but you know you have to pretend that she was successful, whatever she smuggled into your drink. Because there's a reason why she's trying to knock you out, and maybe if you make her believe that you let her trick you like an unsuspecting fool, then she'll reveal what she's up to. That's why you let the fatigue throbbing in your limbs creep onto the fibers of your muscles, numb with lactic acid, and you let the exhausted yawn loose that, now that you're finally resting, falls through your mouth sincerely. And you hear that satisfied little hum with which the woman finally leans back, when she assesses the unexpected force of the sleepiness washing over you.

"Perhaps it would be best if you stayed here for the night." She offers, and there is nothing to unsure about the way she presents her proposal to you. A selflessly offered opportunity, behind which lies a statement to which no opposition is expected. And it’s exactly this determination that dispels the previous softness, and fills her old joints with an almost youthful energy, when she springs up and starts towards the kitchen door, giving you one last, almost painfully fond look. "You just stay here and rest." She adds, and you feel nauseous from the kindness under which the poison of cruelty ripples, and which creeps into your ear canals with snide unsolicitedness.

When, after an uncertain nod, you lay your head down on the table with languid weakness, she hurries away towards the maze of the corridor giggling, with such immense glee, as if an unexpected present had fallen into her lap. And you, closing your eyes, order every part of your body to remain motionless in anticipation, slowing your breathing to a trembling evenness, listening through your own shivering for the woman's footsteps. You have to remain unnoticed because you're sure that if she realizes that her tea has failed to relax you enough, she'll come up with something much more painful to get the desired effect. You're not sure what her goal is, but you don't have time to create unnecessary excitement for yourself.

For minutes, only the soft puffs of the air flowing through your nose fill the room shrouded in an almost disturbing quietness, but despite your pulse pounding in your ears with an almost deafening noise, you wait until all the sounds die down between the old walls. And when you decide that you have wasted enough time, you carefully push yourself away from the worn furniture and stand up with your eyes fixed on the shadows beyond the door, watching for an unexpected visitor with every move you make. But, when nothing happens, and only the low buzzing of the light bulb and the hooting of the owls filtering in from outside travel through the empty house, then you sneak towards the hallway.

As you step out onto the corridor, it takes a few uncertain seconds for your eyes to get used to the dense darkness, and when you're finally able to make out the pitch-black outlines of the furniture, you set off into the unknown. The age-old parquet floor creaks under your shoes, reminiscent of the soft squealing of a mouse, and with each step you take, the presentiment tightens its grip on your insides. Because you have no idea where the old woman could have gone, and the fact that she can appear from behind any of the doors lined up next to each other is just enough to awaken the needle-like prickling of stress in your muscles. As if a thousand tiny ants would be crawling under your skin, and clenching your teeth, you fight the tempting compulsion to escape. You know you're wading into the swampy abyss of certain danger, but you also know you have no other choice. And not finding a clue is not an option. You have to move on or you'll be stuck here forever.

You wouldn't be able to tell how deep you ventured into the uninhabited house, but everything turns into an unsettling uniformity as a dull entrance follows another insignificant door, and the pictures hanging on the walls serve as your only companions in your wanderings.The lifeless eyes following you send shivers down your spine involuntarily, because although they're nothing more than the imprints of strangers lingering in the past, yet there is something bleak in the faces of the people on them. But when you discover something familiar, you stop dead in your tracks to take a closer look at the many of photos hidden in the frames, and you don't have to think long to recognize the boy from the kitchen. Although he may be much older here, and the childish roundness of his face has already been banished by the hormones of adolescence, but the light eyes stare at you with the same stern expressionlessness as they did from the shadows of the herbs. There is something hard in them, something angry, lurking beneath the frozen stillness, waiting to strike. And the longer you stare, the more the unpleasant feeling intensifies in you, which plants the impossible idea in your mind that the next moment he will come to life and, reaching through the scratched glass, wraps his pale, thin fingers around your neck.

A thunder-like bang tears into the empty quiet of the building, and you, shaking in terror, break out of your paranoia-woven imagination to spin around and start searching for the noise with the alarm of a frightened animal. And when the sounds don't die down, but are enriched by the clanking of a chain and the murmur of a muffled conversation, then you come upon the worn door, ajar, on the tattered surface of which a star-like scribble greets you, roughly sketched up with blood-red paint, the same that someone drew on the boy in the newspaper article. And you become aware with an uncomfortable certainty that the game has finally revealed your next destination to you, no matter how much every cell of yours protests against venturing towards the source of the increasingly loud clamor.

Every single nerve of yours tenses as one, as you move closer, keeping your eyes fixed on the cracked varnish clinging to the wooden surface, considering each step before the next, and the closer you stray, the sharper the violently snapping words become, and even though you don't understand them, you can feel the simmering ire in them. You open the door with your trembling fingers wrapped around the doorknob, and the saliva crawls down your dry throat almost like shards of glass, when you try to dispel the lump that has grown there. But nothing welcomes you, only a set of stairs covered in faint light, which leads you down into the uncertain darkness, and you feel the force of fear twisting your guts, as you muster up your courage and set off to the rickety steps.

The lower you go, the wider the hidden world of the basement opens up in front of you, and the more painful the horrible smell, mixture of the sweet stench of rot and the sting of sweat, pierces your nose. With each breath, the stagnant, moldy air penetrates deeper into your lungs, and if your brain weren't occupied by terror, you would wonder what kind of disease you're filling your chest with so voluntarily. Although to your own ears, every noise your shoes mak on the old stairs is ear-splitting, you know, even through the uncontrollably roaring fear inside you, that the sounds of your arrival will be drowned out by the wild discussion unfolding on the other side of the wall bordering the stairs. You recognize the woman's voice in the furious foreign expressions, but that's not what makes you halt hesitantly on the last step. It's that unexpected, raspy male baritone that stops the momentum of your curiosity from taking you any further, because even though you can't see the face associated with it, you feel the deadly threat traveling in the growl-like rumble.

"ублюдок!" The woman erupts, and even you cringe instinctively from the caustic rage that sits in her tone. "You ungrateful wretch!" She spits in a way that you finally can understand, and you hear the crunch of the dirt and dust sliding under her shoes as she take a step forward, as if she were moving closer to someone, but further away from your impromptu hiding place. "I should have let them take you!" The end of the heated cursing snaps, and with this the stormy exchange of words turns into painful silence, as if the shadows hiding on the dirty floor had absorbed not only the rays of the faintly flickering light, but also the sounds. And from this, even you know that something came out of the woman's mouth that shouldn't have.

The basement falls into an icy stillness, and the tiny hairs on your skin rise as you lean against the wall and listen, wondering if you made a mistake by coming down here. However, as your frightened eyes wander around the dimly lit room, you discover something in one corner that catches your eye with its golden glow. And you lean forward like someone who has been mesmerized, trying to decipher through the dying light of the old bulb hanging on the ceiling, what might be hiding in one of the shelves under the piled-up, dusty mountain of junk. And the relieved joy that washes over you when you notice the lost key that leads to Johnny's attic, is almost ridiculous, and for a fleeting moment, you're sure that it's just your eyes playing games with you. But the tiny little object winks back at you with an unmoving serenity a few long seconds later, and you already know what your task is.

"Oh, my little boy... don't be angry! Mommy loves you, you know that, right?" You hear the apologetic shush, and you're filled with an ominous feeling as you lean forward from behind the wall, clinging to the crumbling bricks, to see how safe it is to get the key. And your eyebrows knot together in confusion when you're greeted by nothing more than the old woman, who, stepping towards one of the dark corners, spreads her arms as if waiting for someone to fall into her arms. Although at first, you're sure that age and loneliness have warped her mind so much that she imagines one of her loved ones in the shadows, but as your gaze falls on the mattress, brown with dirt, lying by the wall, and the plates soiled from the rotting leftover food, you dismiss your naive assumption. Someone is here, and based on the dried, yellowish stains on the torn bedsheet, they weren't forced to retreat here now. But you don't care about that. Whoever is imprisoned here, you're not here to help them.

"I found a new friend for you... She is much prettier than the previous ones! You want to see her, don't you? If you're a good boy, I'll bring her down for you... You do as mommy says, yes?" The woman continues, mumbling the kind words with an almost atoning tenderness, and it becomes painfully clear that whatever lives down here, this old bitch tried to drug you because of it. And when you remember the boot sprinkled with bone dust found in the forest, you banish the idea of thinking about what could have happened to those who were dragged down here before you. You have more important things to do than brood over the deaths of imaginary strangers… as cruel as that may sound.

But just as you finally take the first brave step and leave your hideout with careful stealth, the chain rattle comes to life again, and you freeze, forgetting about the key, when a dull crack silences the old hag. Like when a ripe, juicy melon cracks and splits into two when a knife sinks into it, but deep down you know that it's not fruit juice you hear splashing on the floor in fat drops. And you're unable to resist the pull of fear, which draws you in the direction of the noise against your will, but as soon as you see the woman slowly staggering back from the dark corner, you immediately regret giving in to the impulse. Because when your eyes find the handle of the large knife protruding from her head, you clamp your hands to your mouth, trying to force back the horrified scream that rises in your throat.

The woman clumsily stumbles backward, and you see the uncertain surprise in the trembling hands with which she reaches for her hair, slowly covered into a crimson veil from the blood, touching the wooden handle almost in disbelief. And there is something quite pitiful in the way she turns around in confusion, amidst frightened whimpers, brushing away the strands stuck to her eyes by the red streams running down her forehead. And you, swallowing the bitter taste on your tongue, take a terrified step back, as you suddenly see how impossibly tight the skin clings to the edges of the bones emerging from the sunken face, as if a parasite were about to break through a thin membrane. The pale tissues look unsettlingly papery, and you have a lingering fear that the dull, matte white of her jaw might penetrate them at any moment, as the woman's mouth opens in a silent scream. Unfocused eyes find you, and you're horrified to realize that maybe she wants to ask for help when she wobbles towards you with shaky legs, but you're frozen in terror, as you stare at her motionless, like a deer stuck in the headlights of a car. And you watch in shock, when after what seems like eternity, she, with a gurgling rattle, finally sprawls out on the dusty ground, like a sack full of rotten potatoes.

"You're finally here." You hear the hoarse voice from before, and as you look for its owner in terror, you see how a strong figure emerges from the darkness of the shadows, dragging the heavy shackle of the chain hanging from his thick neck behind him with a metallic clang. But what worries you even more than the muscles hidden under the torn clothes, is the pair of impossibly blue eyes that emerge from under the mask covering the unknown man's face, which look at you with cheerful interest, as if he had found a small bird with a broken wing. And from the cruelty glimmering in them, it immediately becomes painfully clear that he is the kind of person who would rip your wings out by the stem to free you from suffering. "I was waiting for you, Bunny."

(ублюдок (ublyudok) - bastard).

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no-side-us · 6 months

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My first reaction to learning Watson has an older brother is the fact that both him and Holmes are the younger siblings in their families, which would make their tendency for misadventures and to getting involved in other people's businesses a life-long trait.

On a more morbid note however, the fact that Watson has an older brother, one with whom he seemingly had a not-so-good relationship with before his death, also paints his reaction to learning about Mycroft in a whole new light. Instead of the general happiness of finally learning about Holmes' history and family, there's an added layer of Watson getting to see a working, happy, brotherly relationship, one he presumably didn't have and now could never have.

And depending on whether or not you think Watson meeting Mycroft happened before or after this story leads to different interpretations. The Baring-Gould chronology puts The Greek Interpreter before The Sign of the Four, meaning Watson accusing Holmes of digging into his family history perhaps has a sting of envy for not having as good a relationship with an older brother as he knows Holmes does.

However, if The Greek Interpreter happened after this story, then Watson accusing Holmes could be what led to Holmes being so unyielding of his own family history, presumably so as to not upset Watson. Though Holmes is generally closed off about himself regarding those sorts of things.

In addition, the detail that Watson's brother drank himself to death makes Watson's view of Holmes' drug use in a new light as well. Looking at this paragraph specifically:

“But consider!” I said, earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.”

Without the context that Watson is speaking about Holmes doing cocaine, I can easily imagine Watson talking to his brother about drinking too much. Obviously cocaine and alcohol abuse are different things, but the list of negative effects, not to mention the fact that Watson feels answerable to their condition could apply equally from a partner in crime as to a younger sibling to an older one.

The opening of the story reveals that Watson has wanted to, but not yet been able to confront Holmes about his drug use. I imagine Watson was the same way with his brother. And we know the watch he tests Holmes with came into his possession recently. Ergo, I'd say that his brother's death is probably the impetus for Watson to finally say something, so as to not repeat what happened with his brother.

#letters from watson #mary morstan next time yay #the sign of four #the sign of the four #arthur conan doyle #sherlock holmes #john h watson #mycroft holmes

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eatmangoesnekkid · 5 months

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I accidentally deleted your question—but my best feature, if I read your question properly, is that I don’t take too many things too seriously. I try not to live so much in my head and fully live and play more in my body no matter what may be going on and know that I am safe and held in my experience. Constantly living in the exhaustive tasks of thinking, analyzing, and processing create a level of 'noise' within the female body that inhibits it from achieving deep regenerative rest, the quality of rest that I center in my everyday life. We craft high-quality rest in our lives, when and when the clouds of grief or loss sneak in out of nowhere, our bodies instinctively know that they are capable of restoring, rejuvenating, and regenerating. Everything I do in life, I do it for our foremothers who did not have the time, rest, peace, or space to receive these higher teachings of how to thrive in a female body because they were too busy trying to survive.

My heart tends to stay lighter than most. I am always jumping, twirling, and sassy-ing, and finding new openings and depth in my body instead of deferring to my head for solutions. Having that feature is an ongoing love story, I find! I see life as transient and fleeting so I am often aware of my own impending death (that sounds so morbid and terrible to read in words, but it's true).

Five percent of our conscious mind influences and directs our daily life, but 95 percent of our unconscious influences and directs our day-to-day actions and creates our reality. In other words, we must begin to believe at the unconscious level that we deserve the very best in this lifetime--a beautiful healthy body or a great love affair-and naturally and instinctively begin to birth it. If we have a womb (or energetically womb if surgically removed), we have even greater birthing power.

...a positive perception about whatever you are going through life is incredibly regenerative and impactful...rebuilding your subconscious mind is key.

I unconsciously tend to ground myself in the truth that one day I'm going to die, which allows things roll off my shoulders easier and gifts my body with more LIFE. I am sincere in my desire to enjoy my time while I’m on this earth plane in this physical vessel no matter what.

I am a lila woman therefore I tend to fuck a lot…."make love with life," is what I'm talking about...giggles! :)

We have to wake up from the amnesia we have fallen into and remember what it means to be female upon the earth and what our purpose is: to make love with life. I am always "making love," doing what makes me feel fully alive in my tissues. And when you live a life of "lovemaking" --bringing the energy of love into nearly everything you do, then everyone and everything benefit.

We have to be deliberate in divinely planting seeds of joy into our everyday lives because a life that's growing and elevating will also have challenges and tons of things to check off the to-do list. Therefore, if I’m cooking, I’m usually having a good time and finding something to laugh about while doing so. If I am making love in a bed, I’m in it with all my vulnerable heart and soul for the life and breath of me. If I'm about to jump into a cold pool --which helps to relieve any inflammation in the body and stimulate the vagus nerve, I do so while leading with love and deep breathing way into gratitude for the regenerative moment and I dare not complain. If I'm biking in the cold rain to dance class, I start singing my favorite song at the moment out loud. If I’m pole dancing—the same mathematics apply. I’m the one moaning on the pole to usurp greater strength in a difficult moment. I perceive myself in all my experiences, in love, as love, transmutation as a lived experience. Because we are here to do amazing things and have aims and objectives in life, but we are also here to feel really delicious in our bodies and lives while reaching them in real time and get our bodies luscious and well

....God is in the present moment.

Not taking the present moment in front of us for granted gives birth to a fluid matrix of limitless possibilities. Some people feel very comfortable and safe listing all the ways and reasons they are limited. But you can create a warm beautiful container that allows you to regenerate and create new narratives which by definitation makes you limitless. All that childlike excitement that awakens and creates more tingles and internal space and lubrication as a result of you feeling like more is possible beyond your current experience will help you to break through the brittle and cold, the mental fog and body fatigue, and the frustrations and lack.

the more you hate your body, the more your body becomes a thing to hate...in order words, energy impacts matter, how you think matters and become matter.

I have not always been the way I am. I grew up pretty left-brain and always in my head calculating and have degrees in accounting and science. Something major shifted in my tissues when I had my kundalini awakening in a forest almost 17 years ago while alone. I l do believe it was a kind of mother wit or deeply cervical mother's love...I'm still trying to find the proper descriptive words. After that moment, I became more lighthearted, an old soul and youthful spirit emerged greater than I had ever known myself to be. After that surreal experience in the forest, even though I was still climbing my way out of struggle and lack frequencies, I would play and twirl and get back into my body and experience sweetness and bliss no matter what foolishness I was going through--the heart of a child/lighthearted energy. An orgasmic frequency. A great death a great love story. Sincerely living with a higher frequency beyond what my life was actually reflected in my life instigated my quantum leap. I saw the scarcity around me an initiations and not permanent fixed states. I always knew one day I would transcend. It's like Donna Summer said something to the effect of "when you have something great, it's only a matter of time." I would going through the craziest times but had an attitude where I refused to wait to enjoy my life--what was in front of me, and would be hula hooping and giggling to release any stuck energy from my heart and belly. That's the spirit I felt in me while working 55 hours per week at a job I hated most days and in a relationship that was imploding. There are sacred times in life where life is just hard and you have to do what needs to be done while still discovering pleasurable ways to adore life as it is and where it is going.

More than "woman" I sense myself as a fairy woman—Priestess, Temple and Wisdom Keeper, Seer, and Medicine woman from the Lover-Warrior template and Mother lineage I channel and translate from. I'm deeply rootsy with dirt on the bottoms of my feet which builds immunity and a self-cultivated larger capacity, as devotee to Kundalini, the Shakti fire, that deep cervical love. I participate in life through my own body and I am not hijacked by the limitations of my mind or this world. I certainly have proud unifying moments where I weep and howl alongside the rest of the world in kinship and what’s also true is that I’m not of this world like one of my divine mentors "Sun Ra" spoke and am unwilling to miss out on the here and now most days.

...your warmth of love is essential...warmth = love....and heat is always essential for repair and regeneration. and there is no time and space...everything is possible.

I let the world’s wickedness ignite my fire and heart and discover the wickedness living in me lurking in the shadows that needs to be integrated. I drop timelines and tend to the ancient-future projections. These are some my best features. Life is my mirror. I hope I answered your question right —your words were beautiful! Poetic! Great writer....I was so stunned by your language that I hit the wrong button. Thank you Anonymous! 💜 —India

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melit0n · 4 months

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Delicate is the Flesh - Chapter 1

- Synopsis: On the brink of the bustling new city of Rosholt lies a forgotten palisade of abandoned homes, shops and streets that sit mummified after a chemical outbreak in the 70s, leaving the city uninhabitable.

Over the years however, the place has become a hotspot for urban explorers and crime junkies alike.

Whispers of reanimated bodies stalking the dead streets and brutal murders worm their way into your friend's ears and, having nothing to do on your Winter break, you reluctantly agree to go exploring the abandoned city with them.

What could go wrong, right?

- Chapters ->

Prologue

Chapter 1: For whom the Bell tolls (you're already here!)

Chapter 2: Corvus and Krater

Chapter 3: Belly of the Beast

Chapter 4: Something Forgotten

Chapter 5: Citrus and Cinnamon

Chapter 6: Mumbling Conscious

- Obsessive! Demon OC/Reader

- Word Count (for chp): 11.7k

- Warnings (for chp): Nightmares, description of past truama.

- Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55444003/chapters/143071153#workskin

Glass crunches quietly underneath twisted and trembling hands. Digits that looked more like misshapen claws than human fingers. Fingers that shouldn’t be bent at that angle. Fingers that quiver with every hoarse breath you take. Fingers that you’ve been able to move your whole life, yet now they sit as still as the grave. No urge from your muscles brings any applicable movement. Just trembling. Trembling and shaking. A morbid thought crosses your bleary mind; what if they’re not even attached? Jolts of pain running up your bruised arm answers your mental question; the only thing telling you you’re not numb with death yet.

Everything hurts.

Every breath feels more like a death rattle. Every twitch of every muscle pulled as taught as a halyard sends a shudder crawling up your bruised spine. Your entire being– every cell and every tissue and every twitching muscle– buzzes with anguish.

You feel nothing and everything, and you wonder, with gore-soaked skin, if this is what touching divinity is like. Maybe this is what Icarus felt as he warmed his back with the sun while his father screamed his throat raw underneath the silver clouds.

Deafening silence rings its death toll. A distant bell grows ever closer each time your struggling heart fails to keep its steady rhythm. Each ba-dum sends less and less crimson life to your brain, and you think, no, you know, that you are dying.

You’ve always liked the silence, but now? Now it unnerves you. Life itself rushes around you in a multicolour blur, yet there is nothing but a loud ringing. Nothing and everything.

Your warm back hits the ocean waters. You make no sound; no splash. The waters do not even ripple.

Your buzzing synapses drive a pained whimper from your mouth. No sound arrives, just a hollow feeling of emptiness and the overwhelming twitch of pain in every cell in your body.

You have spent your whole life tired, and, through the feeling of nothing and everything, the idea weighs heavy on your eyelids, heavy as lead. It’s been a long night anyways. Who was going to blame you?

With as little movement as possible, you rest your head, heavy with the ache of your neck and jaw, and look into the wide eyes of your friend. The beautiful, dark blue eyes of your friend who had drunk too much tonight. It surprised you that he hadn't fallen dead asleep on the drive home, but, now, he lies hunched. Quiet.

Ever so quiet.

You don’t think necks should be at that angle- you don’t think his neck should look like your fingers- you don’t think a jaw should be that wide open; unhinged in a scream that was never let out.

He’ll moan about how much his back hurts in the morning, you’re sure of it; rubbing his neck with his spindly fingers and smiling sympathetically at you. He’ll spend the whole day obnoxiously cracking all of his joints and complaining about how old he’s getting, saying that maybe he should stop drinking. And you’ll tell him you hope he does.

But he never will.

And the world continues to turn. Except…except now there is blue. Bright blue flashes, and a large splodge of neon yellow. The neon ink bleeds into the rest of the messy watercolour.

You want to turn to him, turn to him and hit his arm before he hits yours. Get another point in on the game you were playing.

You feel the salt water anchor itself in the bottom of your lungs. Feel the burn of it in your throat. Everything burns.

Get him to change the damn expression on his face. Make his glossy, unblinking eyes close with laughter. Anything to stop him from staring at you.

But you can’t. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. You-

You are pathetic.

“...they’re still…have to move…get them up and…” Muffled words you can’t make out break the unnerving silence, but not the eye contact you hold with your friend; it’s the only thing keeping you awake. Keeping you from the warm arms of sleep. Keeping you from your drowsy lover’s arms- you can’t help but feel spiteful.

Someone says something about getting up, and your mind– every cell and tissue and every twitching muscle– screams at the thought.

Get up.

GET UP-

“-and out of my fucking apartment, asshole! You’re such a fucking-”

-Jolting awake at the sudden noise, you smash your head into the wood of your headboard.

“Ow…” You cradle your head, brain throbbing with the impact. Eyes wide, pupils dilated like a scared piece of prey, you turn shakily to your cracked and peeling ceiling. Dust and plaster flitter down, almost elegantly, like spring dandelion seeds. It's a pretty image, one your body, already tired of the dreary weather, takes a liking to.

The thick dust that swarms your lungs the moment you inhale, however, ruins the idea. A series of throaty coughs escape your chapped lips, lungs attempting to exhume the ancient grime.

While coughing up a lung, you place a hand to your heart, trying to calm the pumping muscle, forcing in air with heavy inhales and shaky exhales. Eventually, you manage to get the dust out of your already dry throat, and turn to lie on your back. Unblinkingly, you glare at the ceiling and listen to the ever-present shouting of the two people who most definitely shouldn’t live together.

The couple in the apartment above you, if you could even call them that, seemed to love shouting matches more than they loved each other. Most of them ended within fifteen minutes or so, followed by a loud slam of a door and annoyed grumbles that, through the thinning walls, you were ninety percent sure was just a stream of slurs and derogatory terms. Each time their shouts and screams dragged you out of slumber, you prayed that the inevitable door slam would be the last one, but it never was. They always kept coming back for each other, no matter how many times they screamed their throat raw for the sake of it. You had never even seen either of them; they were the noisiest ghosts ever to haunt you.

Slowly, you bring your arm out from underneath the blisteringly warm covers and find your face. Damp hands are met with tears slowly dripping down your flushed cheeks. Warm air swirls around in your lungs, mixed with grime and plaster.

You exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

In…

…out.

Carefully, you eye your fingers: normal. Clenching and unclenching them, you feel the damaged muscles strain under the skin as a few of the bones click into place.

In…

…out.

They’re human hands, not misshapen claws, you reassure yourself. A hand gently rises to tap the sticky skin on your forehead, bringing you back into reality.

In…

…and out.

You’re all here. Good.

As you do so, you listen for the war's end upstairs. Listen for Odysseus to finish his verbal match with war-hungering Athena. And, just like clockwork, someone screams a foul-tasting name– screamed with vile hate and smouldering ash– and slams the front door shut above you.

Silence. Comforting, calm, silence.

…

Your ears are still ringing.

With a small grimace, you settle into bed after the rude awakening and attempt to relax again.

Keyword: Attempt. You had gotten somewhat used to the second part of Troy playing out in the apartment above you, but it still woke you nonetheless. However, you considered the few hours of sleep you managed to get each night precious, and you preferred not to be interrupted by petty feuds.

Sleep was a nymph you chased after each night, hoping she’d be willing to open her arms to you. You typically had two choices - either be permitted to lay in her embrace, sleeping like a corpse but then unable to rest properly for days, or to be cast away from her and made to lay in a too-warm bed until the sun rose. It’d been that way since you were young, and, despite your best efforts, it seemingly wasn’t something you were able to change.

Eyes closing, you attempt to gain some semblance of peace again.

Bzz bzz.

…Nevermind.

One dazed, E/C eye cracks open, fuzzy pupils darting over to your phone. The bright light of your home screen, illuminated by some sort of notification, begs you to get out of bed. Get up and out and glimpse at what was happening, or what your friends were talking about.

Sighing dramatically, you begin to move your cramped muscles in an attempt to get up. You didn’t particularly want to move from your warm bed, mattress moulded to your body, but a nagging, annoying voice in the back of your head insisted on it. One that sounded eerily like your old maths teacher. You never really liked her; she felt more like a whiny drill instructor rather than a secondary-school teacher.

While rolling around in your tangled sheets, managing to free one arm now groggily grabbing at air, you miserably realise that your half-assed attempts to escape the warm covers were failing. And you looked horrendously pathetic while doing so. Huffing loudly, sounding more like an exhausted labourer rather than a drowsy student, you let your head fall back onto the pillow. Can’t be too important anyways. Who’d even be up telling you something major this early in the morning? Your mind sparks tiredly with an odd feeling of déjà vu, but you ignore it in favour of closing your eyes again. However, something in the corner of your vision catches your eye.

Light. Bright, warm light seeping in from the gap of your blinds.

This early in the morning? In Winter?

You squint and frown.

The yellow beams spread patterns across the thin blinds you’ve had ever since you can remember. Suddenly, the light grows brighter, a cloud most likely shifting away from the sun; aureate rays shine into your room, just above your head. The light chases away the few shadows in your room, sending them skulking under the gap of your door. Even so, they paw, like needy children, at the beams of light. They play across your scuffed floor, casting intricate patterns that seem to shift and change with each small movement you make in your bed.

You wish you could be that excitable this early in the morning.

Blearily, you turn your mummified body over to your trusty alarm, not bothering with your phone since you can’t will yourself out of bed and get it.

1:23 pm. Yeah, checks out, you nod to yourself, letting your head fall back onto the pillow.

1:23 pm.

1:23 pm- hold on a damn minute.

Darting around in your bed again, you squint at the time. Still 1:23 pm. If your memory serves you correct, then that meant you had slept a little over ten hours. Quickly, you rub your eyes and blink once or twice, grimacing at the weird splotches of greens and reds that appear in your vision, before glaring into the bright white numbers of the alarm clock; 1:24 pm.

“Huh…” you huff out, a small grin on your face. Seems you were permitted to enjoy the arms of your elusive lover. Even though she’d been more scarce as of recent, she seemed to find enjoyment in plaguing you with nightmares; lulling you into a false sense of security with the hum of distant conversations and the creaking of floorboards. Even so, you always kept coming back for her. Who wouldn’t?

Something crashes loudly upstairs, followed by a mumbled ‘fuck’.

Despite it all, you smile to yourself widely: it’d been a while since you’d slept that well. That has to mean something- that has to mean something good. You giggle to yourself, lying back down in bed with your eyes crinkling at the sides.

Before you can get too comfortable, however, a phrase trudges through the trenches of your sleepy mind: ‘tomorrow as in today’.

Huh.

Wonder what that could mean- shit.

You jolt upright in your cocoon; tomorrow as in today.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

With much more vigour and energy, you battle with your covers before you finally free yourself and grab your phone, speedily reading through any messages you’ve been sent, your mind reeling with half-formed memories of agreeing to something you’re now beginning to regret.

The ones from the group chat mainly consisted of Jeanne and Noah going over the logistics of the exploration; times the police– fucking Hell that place is patrolled by the government– would be there, spots to go, easy ways in and out, things to bring, etc. However, all of them were from last night and stopped at around 4 am-ish. You groan loudly: with all that hyper-specific planning, not a single fucking time for anything had been mentioned.

Scanning the messages again, you search for any sort of notion of a time to be there.

Even with the glee of knowing you had managed to get your well-deserved ten hours, you hadn’t expected to be awake this late. Even if ‘late’ was only half-past one, you couldn’t even remember if the place was an hour’s drive away, or five. Plus, considering your friends and especially Jeanne, you wouldn't be surprised if they were determined to arrive early. Bloody morning people and their bloody times- what if they were already halfway there and were expecting you? What if they decide to pick you up and are already waiting for you in the parking lot??

You almost always wake in the early hours of the morning, body’s natural clock tuned for the second the sun begins to rise. You can’t even remember a day from your childhood when you woke up later than seven, even on weekends.

Unfortunately, however, this was most definitely the wrong time for your body to afford those extra hours.

After a stressful five minutes of scrolling, scanning, reading and then re-reading messages, you finally find something.

Jeanne: Yh, I think 4:30pm-ish will be good. Even if Len has day classes theyll finish before that and Y/N is always awake: @/Helen @/Y/N tagging u two so you don’t have to search in the morning (lmk if we should do later!!£

Tagging didn’t do jackshit, quite apparently. Even with your eyebrows twitching downwards with annoyance, your whole body relaxes as you let out a sigh of relief; you weren’t going to be late. Far from it.

Now…you just had to figure out if any trains would be running to the city, or at least the non-abandoned one near it– Rosehalt or something– and how long that would take. Did the place even have a train stati- you pause your thought process. Why on Earth would trains still be running through a fully abandoned city?

“Jeeze, I’m slow today.” You mumble to yourself.

Either way, train strikes were still unexpected and constant. Plus, you didn’t know how many stops it’d take before you’d actually get to the city.

You’re about to check the train times and routes– or maybe you could take the bus?– when you notice a new-ish message from Helen.

Helen: I know you are going to get lost when reading through almost 100 plus messages from the group chat like I did, so I will summarise for you.

You let out a sigh of relief; thank God for that.

Helen: We decided to try to aim to get there for around 4:30pm, since that is when it starts getting dark, if not 5pm.

She reaffirmed what you already got from Jeanne…now you just have to pray that the train ride wouldn’t be too expensive.

Helen: We also plan to all go in the same car; it’ll be easier since we can cut down on gas (do not worry about paying, I have got it) and we won’t have issues with anybody being late. We are going in mine since Noah still doesn’t have his licence and I don’t trust Jeanne’s. Plus, I know you are still not well with driving, especially long distances, so I don’t want to put you through any extra stress.

‘I know you are still not well with driving…so I don’t want to put you through any extra stress.’

You frown.

‘I know you are still not well with driving.’

‘I know you are still not well.’

‘Not well.’

…

Not well.

A pang of…something, something like annoyance and scorn, thumps in your chest. However, you keep reading.

Helen: Further, do not worry about bringing anything; Jeanne and Noah have everything sorted.

With a small sneer on your face, you begin to type out a reply before spotting the final message sent.

Helen: I will pick you up at 3pm-ish? Reply when you can.

Yet again, you make a quick turn to your alarm; 1:37 pm. One hour and twenty-three minutes.

You: Are you sure? I can drive just fine on my |

You pause, back tracking on your message.

You: Are you sure? I can drive, or take the train/bus, It’s no stress

Almost immediately, Helen pops online. You watch with subtle amusement as she types out her answer speedily.

Helen: As I said, it has already been decided. I am picking up Noah in fifteen or so because he lives further out, then Jeanne, then you. Do not worry about it Y/N !

You begin to type out a rebuke, but, unknowingly; she interrupts your response.

Helen: I have full belief that you would be able to drive yourself, it is just a long way. Plus, it will be nice to have a road trip, no :)?

Your head turns to glance out your window. Well, the blind covering your window. Through the thin window panes, you can hear the subtle buzz of traffic from the road below.

Eventually, you nod to yourself and look upwards at your cracked ceiling. As you squint at what you believe to be a new fracture, a spindly one that almost looks like boney fingers, you yet again nod to yourself, and finally type out your reply.

Your car probably didn’t have gas anyways.

After hitting send, with much effort, you bring yourself up from your bed. You crack your back loudly and loosen your joints with a pleased sigh. It was something Noah always complained about you doing, constantly twisting over the back of chairs and cracking your knuckles when there was no fight to be had. Like a helicopter parent, he nagged you, saying how one day you’d end up going too far, and piercing a lung or something. You just laughed it off, but sometimes the thought lingered in the back of your mind, leaving you wondering. Wondering what it would feel like; a lung cracked like an egg or a heart bleeding out inside its ivory cage.

You wondered if…no. Shaking off the thought, flapping your arms around your head as if a swarm of buzzing flies surrounded you, you meander through your dark halls– still cool with the Winter wind– blinds not yet lifted, and make your way to your bathroom. After living here for over four years, you know every hall like the back of your hand. You could walk down each hall in absolute darkness, blind as a bat, and still be able to find each room.

The sink turns on with a squeak, cold water flooding out. Gently, you take some in cupped hands and splash it onto your face, washing away the sweat and grime of the night. Feeling the itch of your dry throat, you decide to take a sip of some as well. While drying the water off, you contemplate the day, or, rather, evening, that awaits you; an entire abandoned city, albeit a small one likely shrunk by the hands of time. Shells of tens, if not hundreds, of abandoned shops, offices and homes to explore. Despite the regret that had begun to creep in this morning, excitement and anticipation was beginning to flood back into you; your whole body filled with an almost drunken buzz.

Glancing at the shower, you shrug and turn on the hot-water, old pipes again creaking loudly as water gushes through them. You pull off your warm sleep clothes and step in, happy to get the sticky sheen of sweat off your body. You scrub soap suds off from your body, relishing in the feeling of being clean once again, and reach for the shampoo.

From the back of your sleep-deprived memory, you half remember a section from the article. Something about ghosts…quite admittedly, you’ve always had an interest in ghosts and such, even if some stories you heard sounded so stupidly unbelievable that they put you off the idea for months. With believing in ghosts, demons etc., you were always fifty-fifty on the topic. There were occasions where the idea seemed very real and convincing. Both the subtle things that made your heart thump with something primal in the back of your head telling you something is there- and the more scientific reasoning on EMF waves, memory loops and attachments.

Other times, mainly when you watched clickbait content on Youtube or when Jeanne and you sat down for a shitty horror movie for some entertainment, you found yourself bored and unenthusiastic. Although, you always got a good laugh at the…theatrical expressions of the content creators.

Having finally washed out all the shampoo, you reach for the conditioner. As you squeeze the thick liquid into your palm, the bottle makes a pathetic wheezing sound; empty. You’ll have to buy some more soon.

However, when it came to the supernatural, specifically ghosts, you’d have to also ask the question of where does someone go when they die? Is it being judged by an omnipotent being and sent to an eternal paradise in the clouds, or down to suffering and damnation in fiery pits? Is it a soul, sparkling with old stardust, passing through thousands of different bodies over millions of lifetimes, or is every human to ever exist a reincarnation of one person? Is there some sort of in-between that souls rest in if they choose to?

It was a question you could never decide an answer to, so, you never really gave one when asked.

Turning off the water, you step into the now steamy bathroom and reach for your towel; drying yourself off thoroughly. You breeze through your morning routine, cleaning your face off again and drying your hair. Time tended to blur like an unfinished watercolour whenever you were in the shower, especially since you had decided to have a contemplation session, so you were wary of how much time you had left.

You glance downwards at the damp tiles of the floor and frown to yourself; you’d forgotten to bring clothes in. Grumbling, you make your way back to the bedroom, unconsciously avoiding the windows despite the blinds still being drawn, and shrug on an outfit.

It was an unspoken rule that, when going exploring, the lot of you were to wear baggy black clothes. Or dark-coloured clothes in the least. It wouldn’t show off whatever figure you had, so, on the high chance you’d be running like a bat out of Hell away from the police, they hopefully wouldn’t be able to tell your gender.

In the end, after struggling significantly with your pants leg, you ended up in dark cargos, a worn but trusty t-shirt and a plain zip-up hoodie over it, along with a pair of odd socks that you couldn’t care to find the pair for. Like usual, you planned on using a pair of aged hiking boots that always seemed to have a small rock in the insole. You’re pretty sure you’d snagged them off of Jeanne a year or two ago, the outsole on your old boots came off midway through climbing up a steep hill– littered with brambles which you still have the odd scar from– and Jeanne had simply given you her spares…of which you never gave back.

It was one of her tendencies to give items of clothing, and occasionally jewellery, to her friends and just never ask for it back. She always seemed so happy to see you, Noah or even Helen– on the odd chance she accepted them– in them and you never truly understood why. None of your friends could count on two hands the amount of jumpers, hoodies and oddly high number of socks you all had from her.

Noah, ever the analysis of the human mind, always said it was linked to some sort of attachment issue. She gave up parts of herself to see them on you and, if you two were ever to part ways, she’d still be there, in a sense. You’d end up looking at what has become your favourite shirt and realise it was hers. Is hers. Even if she were gone, you would still think of her. Fondly, hopefully.

She always did seem to have an obsession with being remembered. In all the years you’ve known her, right from childhood when you could barely understand her accent, you could never figure out why. Even in the years where she’d changed, becoming the excited extravert she is now, you still couldn’t fully understand her. You were best friends, through and through, but sometimes you felt as if you conversed with an elaborate mask rather than a person. It was almost like she was pretending to be a step behind while being two steps ahead, always having some unseen motive that would get her where, who, and what she wanted.

She was smart, she just pretended not to be; putting on a facade of dumb childishness. Smart about what, exactly, you didn’t know, and didn’t think you’d ever know.

In the end, however, no matter how many times you try to give her stuff back, she would make some excuse for you to keep it. A thunderstorm that never came around, a hiking trip that never came to fruition always stopped you from giving what was not yours back. It was like some unapparent friendship bracelet that always had some abstruse stain or the symbol of some obscure band she was determined to make you like on it.

Speaking of, despite her usual music taste, she was currently determined to get you all to like ‘mid-western emo’ music. It’s all you’ve been hearing in her car for the past two months and you couldn’t decide whether the line ‘She hopes I'm cursed forever to sleep on a twin-sized mattress’ made you want to burst a blood vessel or scream it along with her.

After struggling pitiably with your aforementioned pair of odd socks, one of them fitting uncomfortably on that stupid seam that made you want to claw your eyes out, you got up off your squeaky floor and checked the time; 2:26pm. Long ass shower, apparently.

Peering at your phone, you spot that Helen had replied with a simple thumbs-up emoji in true dad fashion. Smiling to yourself, you yet again crack your back and sigh satisfactorily at the loud creaks of your bones, sounding more like willow branches clacking in the wind rather than bubbles of air in your joints.

Blind by blind, you open the thin curtains and let the odd amount of afternoon winter sunlight glimmer through the windows and grace your apartment. It had been frosting over the past couple of weeks, everyone hoping for snow that never seemed to come, so you were surprised to feel the warm light on your cheeks after spending so long bundled up and shivering at every gust of wind.

It was nice, to say the least. A break from dreary, cold, mostly wet Winter.

As you reach your small kitchen, the one thing Helen, ever her mother’s daughter, seemed to despise about your apartment, you open the shutters and briefly glimpse out of the window to the bustling city below. Your apartment wasn’t the highest, 16th out of 40 odd floors, but you still got a damn good view. Cars raced back and forth on the roads next to your apartment block. Far below, a family gets out of their mud splattered car and makes their way to the front entrance of your building. The sun was high in the sky and seemed more golden than usual; framed with gilded clouds reaching for the bright blue above.

Your stomach growling loudly interrupts your people-watching. Giving in easily, you pop a slice of bread into the toaster and reach over to one of your cupboards, finding your favourite cereal. As you wait for bread to become toast, you grab a small bowl– a ceramic, Bathypelagic one from your mother– and fill it. Turning over to the fridge, you take another quick glance out of the window.

Your friends had picked a damn good day for this little expedition.

Blindly, you paw for the milk while squinting out the window– which definitely needs to be cleaned at some point– and watch for any rain clouds. You find none.

As you pour milk into your bowl, your toast pops up with a ding that makes you jump slightly. Your toaster was old as Jericho, stained and chipped in places that made it look like it’d been through a war, so it never really toasted to the extent you wanted it to. You could leave it for ten minutes and you’d still end up with it being too soft to even be considered toast. Other days you’d leave it in for five minutes and find yourself with ash to eat. Frowning to yourself, you put your almost-toast on for another round, grab an odd-looking spoon out from your cutlery drawer, and begin to eat.

With the golden sun against your face, slowly beginning its early Winter descent, you only hope that the weather stays clear, and doesn’t leave you wandering the city absolutely drenched. Speaking of, you’re surprised you’d never heard of the city, both the abandoned and occupied one, especially since Jeanne– or was it Noah?– claimed it was only an hour and a half’s drive away.

Your own city was no landmark, but it wasn’t small either. Surely you would’ve heard something from someone about an entire abandoned city, albeit a small one. It sounded like a set for a cult classic 90s horror film about Demons or some shit.

Your bread, hopefully now toast, pings up again; finally done. Though, having been a bit too zealous, it was slightly overcooked. Seems today was one of the days it wanted to play two up with you.

Shrugging and placing down your now empty bowl of cereal, you grab your cutting board, littered with gashes in the wood, and a plate before picking up the toast. At least, attempting to. The moment your fingers touch it you flinch away with a deplorable whine as the burn from the stupidly hot toast hisses on your skin like an angry snake. You move your hand back and forth, contemplating how to approach it without scalding your fingers on the toast or the metal of the toaster. Eventually, you stop acting like a wimp and make a quick grab for it, tossing it haphazardly onto the cutting board and waving your hand around in the air as if it was set ablaze.

“Fucking Hell…” Grumbling with annoyance, half at your toast and half at the sensitivity of your skin, you put on your desired spread, scraping the bottom of the jar. Another thing that had almost run out; another thing you’ll have to buy more of. Your tendency to only go shopping after almost everything in your house was depleted was beginning to become a bit of an issue.

Sighing, you grab a cup of cold water and, quickly, head over to your living room. Before you do, however, you make a quick turn around the corner and squint at the time on your small oven; 2:37pm. Plenty of time.

Smiling to yourself, you sit down on your couch, carefully placing your glass of water on the table in front of you and your plate in your lap– you knew you would never get all the crumbs out of the cracks but it was so much more comfortable– and turn on your TV. It buzzes to life with a bit of static. It was an older thing, and worked half off of you pretending not to care when it was taking forever to work and half off of your neighbour’s…cable job. If you could even call it that. It wasn’t horrendous by any means, still kept the thing running after all. You’re just half sure by the jungle of cables back there that he managed to hook you up to the city’s main grid or something. Either way, it worked. That was all that mattered.

As you begin one of your current shows, a video game made series Noah had recommended to you about zombies, an abrasive fourteen-year-old and a very done-with-it-all middle aged guy, you begin to feel the familiar buzz of adrenaline pump into your bloodstream yet again.

You feel every second. Count every minute in your head. Thirty minutes had never gone slower in your life, and that was saying something. Every five minutes, you checked your phone for any new messages from, well, anyone. However, for once in their life, Noah and Jeanne had decided to be silent; no raving excitement about what was to come, no spam tagging you in messages, no nothing.

After all the time you’d spent with the three of them, it was almost odd to have a silent apartment not filled with the constant ding of notifications.

But, eventually, your phone lit up with the message of ‘Here.’ at four past three, unusually late for Helen. Paired with the message comes three soft knocks at your door.

“Coming!” You call out, as you rush to grab your phone off the table, skidding back and forth between your hallways and your bedroom wondering if you needed anything. A rain coat maybe?

Three more knocks, louder this time, echo throughout the thin walls and you repeat your previous statement with a little more irritability. Feeling slightly pressured, you shake your head and jog over to your door, twisting around corners as fast as you could.

Swiftly, you tie on your scuffed shoes, fiddling around with the worm-like laces in an attempt to tie a tight knot, before sighing loudly.

I’ll just tie them properly in the car.

You make a quick nab for your apartment keys, haphazardly hung up on a nail hammered into your wall– which may or may not have been an elongated bolt– and slip them off the hook. Fiddling with the doorknob, cold and slippery from too much use, you finally manage to open it, letting the bright hallway’s light filter in.

You begin an apology “I’m so-”, only to be met with…air. Confused, you look up and down the well-lit hallway, old carpet stained from the thousands of shoes that have trekked on it, only to find no one. No one but you, standing awkwardly in your door with half tied shoelaces.

You’re about to call out again when you hear the comically eerie giggle of kids, paired with the soft pitter patter of feet that have not yet learned how to be quiet. You huff, a tired frown taking over your face that makes you feel and probably look like a tired parent, and kick the door closed behind you. The half-broken locking mechanism clicks, before another, quieter click– one that reminds you to triple check your door– sounds out. You’d asked for the thing to be fixed about a month ago, but nothing had been done; you’d just gotten into the habit of double checking the lock.

“Very funny, lads.” In response, another spurt of barely contained laughter echoes up from down the staircase at the right end of the hall. One of your neighbours, a woman not much older than you who lived further down the hall, had two kids who had recently discovered the art of ding, dong, ditch-ing someone. They were little copper-haired menaces who managed to get away with everything.

After properly locking your door behind you, double-checking by pulling on the handle a couple of times, you make your way down the hall to the stairs still echoing with innocent laughter. Their mum was a good woman despite not being someone you knew personally, only in somewhat aimless chatter in the halls; she tended to over-share with you in what you guessed was hopes of gaining more conversation with you. In a way, you could understand her. The apartment block was mainly filled with older people and the odd nuclear family who kept to themselves, minus the few students like you, so, there wasn’t much community support to be had. You had had a small dinner with her recently though; she made a brilliant stir fry that you had attempted to meet with some Carbonara.

Either way, aside from Helen, she had the largest heart one could hold. Quite simply, she was a good person and deserved good things. You were still fifty-fifty on whether those two kids counted as one of those ‘good things’.

Passing down all the floors of your apartment, already dreading the walk back up, you yet again hear the giggles of the two children and look up just in time to spot their curly ginger hair disappear behind the railing.

Lightly, you shake your head and smile to yourself. As annoying as those two were, of which was most likely to worsen as they got older, they kept your mood up. At least when you weren’t in a hurry. Skipping down the last few steps, you nod to the secretary, too busy with his phone to notice you and walk out the front doors, making sure they lock shut behind you.

As you turn around, you’re immediately met with the distant sight of your friends, the three, of which, who seemed to have been guiding your fate for the past nine years.

The moment Jeanne spots you, she shouts and waves you over, a faraway “there you are!” floating towards you on the wind. Despite the sun, it was still cold out, especially with the harsh breezes that hit your face and body like a freight train. Even with your thick hoodie, now zipped up, the icy Northern winds still bite and claw at your skin through the fabric, a cold that chills you to the core.

You definitely should have checked the temperature before you went outside…and maybe picked up that raincoat.

The moment you’re within range, Jeanne hug-tackles you and somehow doesn’t make you eat concrete while doing so. She stuffs her head in between the crook of your neck, smiling against your goose-bump-ridden skin. Hugging her back, you smile with her as she grips onto your sides, almost like she’s afraid you’ll disappear the moment she lets go.

The weak but musky scent of weed greets your nose, a smell you’ll never miss from her, along with something akin to sandalwood and cigarette smoke. A smell you frown at.

“What took you so fuckin’ long?” Moving back from you, she holds you by the shoulders and gives you a large grin with teeth a little bit too yellow for her age. Deep blue eyes partially obscured by her shabby haircut stare joyfully into your own with a spark you hadn’t seen in them for a while.

“Nice to see you too Jeanne.” Even though you had only seen the blonde– hair recently cut into what you could only describe as a wolfcut– a day or two ago, she acted like it had been a century since she had last glanced at your form.

She snickers, slinging a well-built arm around your shoulder as you spy on your two other friends.

Helen gives you a pearly grin as she leans on her car, a surprisingly clean, black Ford Fiesta. Her olive skin and wavy chestnut hair manages to glint in the morning sun, deprived of her usual rays of sunlight yet still managing to look as if she danced with the early morning star Himself only an hour or so ago. You nod back at her with a smile before Noah comes up for your usual handshake– pale skin, almost on the verge of sickly, lands in contrast to your own S/C.

You begin to make a series of intricate gestures and fists, ones Jeanne laughs to herself at, taking her arm off you and moving to the car. A loud cheer escapes both you and Noah as, somewhat seamlessly, you complete it. It was a mess of weird hand manoeuvres that had been removed, replaced and changed for the past nine years, but it was yours. Afterall, Theseus’ ship was still Theseus’ ship.

“Still got it.” Noah smirks, juniper eyes with a thousand thoughts behind them crinkling in the process.

“Acting as if we haven’t done it in twenty years.” You reply with a laugh.

He smiles again at you, a little too wide with a little too many teeth, a habit he’s always had. A muffled thump reaches your ears and, looking over your shoulder, you see Jeanne lightly punching the car's roof, not so subtly trying to bring attention to herself.

“Alright raccoon eyes, ya’ ready?” Frowning at the childish poke at your eyebags, you bring a hand, digits shaking a bit with the movement, to the almost permanent bags under your eyes.

“Would’ve slept better if you weren’t texting me in the middle of the night-”

“-says the person who almost never sleeps-” A usual quick-fire, defensive reply.

“-But yes. I’m good to go.” Jeanne never really grew out of being a teenager when it came to her insults and responses. Nor did she ever lose that mischievous glint in her eyes that you saw in the two copper-haired kids. So, you mock her with a condescending tone; slowing your words and looking ready to repeat the sentence as if she wouldn’t get it the first time. It was something you’d both grown into over the years, arguing and insulting each other like an old married couple.

Jeanne smiles deviously, fluttering her lashes like ashes and embers, and you prepare yourself for an oddly creative insult, before Helen cuts in; “Okay you two. Jeanne, you were the one who wanted to get there early. As much as I would like to listen to you two insult each other, we have somewhere to be, no?” Raising a well shaped, expectant eyebrow, she shifts her gaze, questioningly, between the two of you like a mildly tired mother. “Good.” She smiles and Jeanne, shaking her head, gets in the car without too much resistance. Noah gets into the front seat, an unspoken rule of him having shotgun, and straps himself in.

Before you get in the back, Helen gives you a knowing glance. She raises her eyebrows in a concerned gesture, opens her perfectly pink lips to let her honeyed voice flow out in worry, but before she can you shake your head and send her a somewhat tight smile, a light tinge of annoyance lifting your lip up slightly.

Letting out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding, you open the car door, and close it gently, Helen following behind.

The engine starts with a low rumble, and the jingle of Helen’s many keychains rattle around in your brain. You spot her looking up at you through the rearview mirror, but you focus more on the car's low vibrations. Shifting your feet in your shoes, your brows furrow at the loose feeling of them, before you remember they’re untied. As you begin to tie the roughed-up laces, Helen begins to speak; “So, Jeanne, want to tell everybody why we are not using your car?” Helen questions, tugging the gearstick.

Noah lets out a knowing snort, trying to cover it with his hand. Jeanne sinks into the seat besides you, mumbling something with a red, embarrassed glow on her face.

“I don’t think we heard you.” Helen extends the u mockingly, smiling to herself.

“Fuckin’ totalled it while I was driving away from some pigs.” she mutters, staring out the window and trying to cover her reddened face with her hand. Something sharp, sharp like a shard of glass, pierces your heart at the word ‘totalled’, and an old fear creeps up to the front of your brain. Even so, you can’t help the guffaw that makes its way out of your throat, a stupid and pig-like thing that sends Noah into a snorting fit. And, within all her embarrassment, you notice Jeanne smiles as you do.

“When- when the Hell did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me? Are you good?” You try and speak through your unexpected laughing fit, further spurred by Noah’s snorts and Helen’s charming giggles as she pulls out of the parking lot.

Before Jeanne can reply, Noah cuts in and saves her from the supposed embarrassment, but, by the frown that suddenly appears on her face, you can tell it's a story she'd rather have the glory of telling; “Went out exploring without us, again,” He eyes her with faux annoyance, “and went into a building she didn’t realise was supervised. Got-”

“-Got chased through half place before jumping outta the window and getting in my car,” Jeanne cuts in, sitting up in her seat and moving her hands around to tell her story, sending a snide smile to Noah. Helen watches through the rear-view mirror, finally on the main road, and both Noah and you lean in as if you were kids around a campfire listening to a horror story. “Had a high-speed chase and everything! Blue and red all around me-” Her hands move left and right, “-sirens blasting in my ear as Metallica plays on the radio, before bam!” She slams her hands together, an unexpected noise that causes you to flinch. “The engine fuckin’ explodes-”

Noah turns to you with a worried but factual look on his face, “-It stalled-”

“-And I slammed right into a wall!”

“-she bumped into a wall and it got towed by the cops-” Noah whispers not so discreetly to you.

“-would you let me have one fuckin’ minute of glory you-”

“-Why didn’t you tell me? That sounds horrific.” You look at her with what you can only guess is somewhere between worry and entertainment due to her reaction; something mixed with excitement and a realisation. Of what, you’re not entirely sure. Two steps ahead, as per usual.

She takes a moment to speak, cogs turning and deliberating on the best response. However, when she does begin, her voice suddenly turns comically posh; “Oh, because I knew you’d worry darling, it’s all you ever do.” She sighs theatrically, placing a hand on her forehead as if a damsel in distress.

Both Noah and Helen eye you this time, and you just smile and shake your head, easily matching her energy. “Oh do forgive me, my love. You know what your excursions do to my nerves-” You mock, and go to cradle her face, but both of you burst out laughing, unable to take yourselves seriously. The car descends easily into laughter, Helen trying to hide her louder giggles. By the end of it, you look out the window to find that you’re already on the highway.

There was a certain excitement, a certain electric buzz, that permeated the car as it quietened into comfortable silence. Your group had done trips like these a multitude of times, both for day-outs to other towns and cities, and for sometimes-illegal-sometimes-not urban exploration. If you got lucky, you could get permission from the land’s owner to explore; it was something you always aimed to do, mostly to avoid being chased out by said owner or worse, police threatening lead in your head if you didn’t comply.

Asbestos, rotting wood, seemingly sentient shadows and rats were something you were all very used to. Although Helen never got used to the vermin, neither have you, especially when the little buggers run between your legs out of the darkness.

Eventually, Noah grows tired of the silence that fills in the gaps of each short conversation, and asks, “Can I?” while gesturing to the radio. Helen nods. Almost immediately, the radio blasts the chorus of AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ on full volume, filling the car.

It’s another unexpected thing that causes you all to burst into laughter as Noah turns it down, Helen shaking her head and Jeanne already screaming the lyrics, you eventually joining her and sharing an imaginary microphone.

Smiling to yourself, you glance behind you and spot your city slowly disappearing; a waypoint filled with memories now a small dot on the horizon. Other cars pass by Helen’s in dull blurs of blacks, white and greys with the occasional dark blue or silver. The dreary plant life besides the highway isn’t much better. In the Summer, you might’ve found more life in the trees that line the roads and the hardy bushes growing in the median strip, but in Winter they’re simply dry claws reaching out for the moving bodies of cars, hoping to snatch some unknowing soul up from the pot-hole ridden concrete. Occasionally, a dark evergreen breaks the pattern of sleeping trees and bushes, but the rest of the road spans out in wintery death.

Nothing happens, and nothing changes, until Jeanne’s voice, surprisingly close to your ear, startles you out of your stupor. “How are you?”

“Tired.” You give your usual response. Nothing much to report in the oh so lengthy two days you hadn’t seen each other anyways.

“You’re always tired.” You eye her with a look of ‘no shit, Sherlock.’ “I’m like, 90% sure you’re a clinical example of a chronic insomniac. Are you on meds for that shit yet?”

“I’ve gone to see someone a couple of times, but there’s nothing to verify me for anything proper,” You send her a sad smile, “They just suggest a better sleeping schedule, to limit stress, noise cancelling earbuds and store-bought melatonin gummies if it gets too bad.” Just makes the nightmares worse, though, goes unsaid.

“Man, that’s shit.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I swear you come into college every morning looking like you got drunk, ran a marathon and went to a metal concert the last night.”

“Geez, do I really look that bad?” You frown comically, whipping your head around to the window and squinting at yourself. It gets a laugh out of Jeanne, and a small chuckle from your own still dry throat. You should’ve bought a water bottle along with you.

“No, but honestly,” she leans into you, beginning to whisper, “You ever need a proper prescription, some really powerful shit like Zalepon, just say and I’ll have a chat with my dad, yeah? He’s always liked you. I’m sure I can convince him to get you some-”

“-How about let’s not get your dad to abuse his power and illegally obtain prescription drugs?” Noah cuts in, turning from his small talk with Helen, clear he only tuned into the conversation then.

“Oh, don’t you start talking ‘bout illegal shit!” Jeanne fires back, a wide grin on her face, “We’re literally about to break into an abandoned city patrolled by the state which you agreed to.”

“She has got you there,” Helen adds, taking a left turn, still watching you and Jeanne through the rearview.

Noah huffs sardonically, turning back to face the road, “Yeah, well, you’re the one-” his scream of “-deer!” cuts off the end of his sentence.

Helen swerves quickly, almost crashing into a car going past, earning a loud honk from the cars surrounding her. The swift manoeuvre sends you and Jeanne crashing to the right, an audible thump coming from Jeanne’s head hitting the window.

A jolt of utter panic runs through you like electricity. Starts at the base of your feet and ends at your twisted and trembling fingers. Your muscles twitch with an old memory you wish to forget. Your whole body buzzes with phantom pain like an angry beehive.

A war drum beats in your chest. Telling you that you’re okay. Telling you that you live still. Telling you it has been years, and you’re not on that dingy corner road anymore.

Shocked breathing fills the car, along with some foreign blues tune that sounds too familiar for your liking.

Helen drives on, chest heaving, down the pin-straight road. Jeanne clings onto you and wraps herself the best she can around you, digging her bitten-down nails into your hoodie. Noah braces himself on the left side of the car and the dashboard, sandy blonde hair in disarray.

Warm breaths tickle your ear.

Loud.

So very loud.

Helen gulps. “Is everyone okay?” She turns to Noah, then Jeanne, then to you; staring wide-eyed into nothing and everything.

You thought.

…

What had you thought?

That you were getting better? Because, what? You could drive a car to the supermarket and back now? What a pathetic, miserable wretch you are. On the verge of a panic attack because of a deer. On the verge of crying again because of the sound of those damn tires screeching.

Come on, be strong; you’re better than this. You know you’re better than this. You don’t need to be babied; you don’t need to be pitied.

Get up.

Get up-

“-Close call,” Noah mumbles, still in shock.

Shimmying your way out of Jeanne’s iron grip, you sit upright.

Noah watches you carefully like you’re fine China, ready to hold together your broken pieces, analyse each fracture, and put you back together again.

“Yeah.” Jeanne mumbles.

Unnerved by the tension permeating the small space, all eyes seeming to watch you for some sort of crack, some sort of fracture that will have them turning on the next roundabout and taking you back home, you decide to ease it yourself. “Too bad. Would’ve made a great addition to your collection, Noah.”

Sensing the tactic, and your own unease with his not-so-subtle pity, he decides to play along. “Did you see the antlers on that thing? Would’ve been perfect to mount.” He crosses his arms and acts annoyed. Maybe he really is.

Jeanne, wanting to move away from the occurrence, jokes back with “Y’know, sometimes I’m sure you were some rich Southern Uncle who went out hunting on Sundays with his buddies in another life.” Noah whips his head around at the statement, so fast he looks like a pale blur of alabaster and blonde, and gives Jeanne an incredulous look, firing back with how she looks like she could be drawn with his broken left hand, among other things.

Their verbal fight immediately takes your mind off things, focusing more on laughing rather than the ache of your fingers.

Then the ringing in your ears.

Conversation fades easily into the background, and you watch as the wintery landscape passes by you in an icy blur.

Maybe you’ll get the train home.

---------------

The sun had set a long time ago, bringing the chilly night out with His inky fingers and soft, whistling winds. Traffic had kept you up longer than you all thought it would, so the plans of hoping to have at least a little daylight went out the window the moment that massive long-haul truck decided to blow a tire way ahead of you.

You had passed by Rosholt about half an hour ago, now travelling down overgrown, dirt back roads with Noah and Jeanne both trying to give directions. You had seen the same tree stump four times and passed by the same sign, grown over with thick moss and lichen, at least two. From the little you could see outside, Helen keeping her headlights low, thick forest and dense shrubbery surrounded you, looming over the car and laughing in the wind at your expense.

Eventually, however, their directing came to fruition, and Jeanne points to where to park. Looking out, you find yourself in the middle of a darkened forest, obelisks of dark wood towering menacingly over Helen’s car.

Helen berates the two of them for backseat driving, then parks the car between a tall pine and a group of ragged bushes, frosted over from the encroaching, cold night. You’re confused for a moment. Only half an hour away was the glowing city of Rosholt, and you’ve somehow ended up in a forest that looks straight out of The Blair Witch Project.

As the clicking of seatbelts fills the air, you mumble, mostly to yourself, “Where the Hell even are we?”

Your question garners a response from Noah. “Not too far away from Neuhaven, surprisingly. It’s practically surrounded by a massive forest now; we’re just parking here so we have a lesser chance of being caught.” He smiles at you before opening the door.

“Come on.” Jeanne nudges you slightly in the side, before stepping out of the car herself. Despite all the previous excitement you held for the place not only this morning, you felt…off put, all of a sudden.

Maybe it was the towering trees, maybe it was that stupid deer from before that put you on edge, or maybe it was the scratching, the clawing, at the back of your mind telling you to turn tail and run.

Something childish but old past its years mumbles in the back of your head.

Wearily, you stepped out of the car, dried pine needles crunching loudly underfoot. Noah and Jeanne laugh to themselves in the background as you stare up at the starless sky. A crescent moon illuminates your tired face and chases away any eerie shadows of the night. Oddly vibrant for a new moon.

The trees tower above like colossal waves, creaking in the night wind. Too large, too sturdy, and too dark for their age. Too large, too sturdy and too sentient feeling for your liking.

“Hey, Noah-”

“-Y/N! Get over here.” Jeanne calls out, unknowingly cutting you off, waving you over to the trunk. You glance upwards at the trees again, and make your way to the back of the car. Looking into it, you see it absolutely stuffed to the brim with items, illuminated by the soft yellow of the car’s inner lights.

“Looks like we’re preparing for nuclear fallout or something.” You joke, earning a proud chuckle from Jeanne as she explains and distributes all the items. You’re handed a torch– with new batteries on hand– a walkie talkie, one you’ve used many times before, a particle mask and a Geiger counter. As you flip the little thing around in your hand, you catch Helen frowning in the corner of your eye.

“You said this place wasn't irradiated, didn't you?” She raises an annoyed eyebrow, taking on a condescending tone while softly glaring at Noah and Jeanne. Noah looks away abashedly, pale ears going red.

“We’re just being careful, Len.” Jeanne smiles, not mischievous like her usual grins are, but instead empathetic. Helen’s brow falls, and she simply nods in response.

“Oh! Before I forget…” Jeanne reaches into the trunk, opening up a small black case that shines sinisterly in the moonlight. Four battered-looking pocket knives greet your eye, one handed to each of you. You shimmy the notch on the side, and release the surprisingly long blade carefully, winking at you in the darkness. The handles were roughed up, sure, but the blade looked brand new.

You all eye her questioningly; walkie talkies and particle masks were usual precautions, but a pocket knife was new. It didn’t help the pit in your gut, either. “Just in case we have to…cut through anything, yeah?” Jeanne looks between the three of you. Specification on what was to be cut was left unsaid, but the threat of over protective explorers and police hung over your heads still.

You look between all your items, doing a routine check on your torch and walkie talkies and all setting them to the same radio channel. Easily, you sling your particle mask around your neck before letting the pocket knife snap shut, and stuff it into your cargo pocket.

Jeanne closes the trunk with a slam, loud as a Church Bell calling its followers to fill the empty pews. It bounces off of the old trees, boughs bent in eternal supplication to the darkness above. You can’t help but feel you’ve disrupted them in their quiet worship to that of which you cannot see. In the dead silence of the forest, a place all too quiet for the life it should house, you all flinch at the sudden noise and eye her with annoyance.

Well, there goes any stealth you would’ve had.

She whispers out a quiet sorry, an empathetic smile on her face, as she begins to lead the way through the maze of pines. It was almost as if there was an unseen barrier between here and the city. You could hear– feel– the ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum of Rosholt’s heart from the car, yet here?

Silence.

No soft beating of a hunting owl’s wings, no scurrying of midnight critters, not even wind carrying messages to the trees.

Even though you’re sure it’s only you and your friends in these woods, you can’t help but hunch in on yourself, make your body as small as possible, and watch carefully as to where you step. You keep your head bowed, focused on the beam of light you make sure to keep low in front of you. You are riddled with the sense that your group is interrupting something. Something much bigger than you. If you said that out loud, you’re sure you’d be teased, Jeanne would probably call you a pussy again and Noah would still manage to look at you with pity.

Speaking of the Devil, his voice, so, so loud in the silence of the woods, meets your ears.

“Are you okay, Y/N?”

You take a second, a second too long, to reply “Do you hear that?” Your mind goes to speak normally, but your mouth instead whispers. It still echoes. It still bounces. And you still feel like an intruder.

Noah listens for a moment, both of you pausing in your walking. “...No?”

“Exactly.” You turn to face him, and begin walking again. “Why is it so fucking quiet?”

“Didn’t you read the article?”

“Yeah, at like, 3 in the morning.”

He stares at you with exasperation, something like the look of a disappointed science teacher, looking like he’s waiting for something, anything, to click in your brain.

Almost as if in response, a cold wind gently whistles between the trees, a susurrus echoing from the ancient pines. The noise slithers up your spine and stays curled in the crook of your neck.

A lightbulb suddenly goes off in your head, and you feel like a bit of an idiot for forgetting such an important piece of information.

“The chemicals…” You bring a hand up to wipe your tired face, groaning at your forgetfulness.

“Mhm,” Noah takes a subtle inhale, “As the article said-” he sends a joking glare to you, “-the chemicals released caused the place to become uninhabitable for most life. People went mad, coughing up their own lungs, and swore Demons had come for their hearts-”

A thought crosses your mind,“-Do you believe in that?” You interrupt him.

“Pardon?”

“Demons- do you believe in that sort of thing?”

He gives you an incredulous look, “You know I’m not religious, nor am I like you or Jeanne; believing in Ghosts and such.” He scoffs. “Sudden paranoia, hallucinations, things moving- it’s all either an unknown mental condition or Carbon Monoxide poisoning or something of the like.”

“I’ll take that as a definite no then…” You mumble, almost bumping into a tree.

You both walk in silence for a moment, thinking over his words. He was always the logical one; he would be the first to admit he was all left brain and had little to no space for creativity. Jeanne always made the joke that his mother had dropped him on his right side when he was younger, and you can see by the side-long glance he’s giving you that he expects it to stumble out of your own mouth, but you decide against it.

Your ears are still ringing.

He coughs, clearing his throat, “As I was saying…People went mad, their bodies mentally and physically failing, and animals seemed to bleed from the inside out. Everything, and everybody, left and vowed not to come back.”

“Hold on, you- you said, the article said, the chemicals were airborne, right? Gaseous?”

“Yeah?”

An odd chill passes over you.

“Then how come they’re still around?” You both look up at the watchful trees above you, leaves now chattering in the North wind. Noah was a biology fanatic, eager to know how every cell and tissue worked together, so surely he would know, right?

However, as he frowns at the pines, melting skyward, you notice a twitch of his brows. It dawns on you that you have discovered something that Noah-the-know-it-all cannot provide a definite explanation for. You want to make a jab at him for it, finally something he can’t lecture you about, but you can’t find it in you.

Instead, you just end up feeling very, very small. Very small and very insignificant.

Yet, to your surprise, he begins talking, albeit slowly, again, “...Radiation can cause plant growth to either rapidly increase, decrease, or freeze in time. It happened quite commonly in Pripyat after Chernobyl exploded; decorative trees stuck where they were in the 80s, but others the size of redwoods. Whatever the chemical was, it’s possible it- it could’ve, that-” He stumbles over his words for a moment, an odd look of fear in his eyes, “That it could’ve been mixed with Radon or some other radioactive material, combining to create an isotope that didn’t negatively affect their rate of photosynthesis.”

Jeanne barks out a laugh ahead of you.

“But what if it wasn’t?”

Helen’s words from before ring out inside your head; ‘You said this place wasn't radiated, didn't you?’

Noah frowns again, not knowing an answer for something for once in his life, and stays silent, simply keeping an eye on Helen and Jeanne now far ahead of the both of you, torch light moving up and down with their steps.

The unspoken I don’t know manages to make the trees much more terrifying.

“Hey! Slow pokes-!” Jeanne calls out loudly.

"-Quiet down-" Helen's voice interjects with a whispered shout.

“-Come on!” She waves the two of you over.

The both of you speed up your walk, each footstep sending loud crunches– loud as the snapping of bread in quiet Church halls– echoing, bouncing, against the pines. They creak in discontent, and you bring yourself to walk faster, Noah treating it as some sort of game as he strides faster than you, sending a snide smirk over his shoulder as the pines thin out around you.

Eventually, you reach Helen and Jeanne, and find yourself on the brink of the forest, sat tall upon what you now know to be a hill. Not so far in the distance, the heart of Rosholt shines brighter than the sun, and clears the sky of stars, leaving only a new moon, floating white as a rib, above. From what you saw of it as you passed by, and the small spec that you can see now, it was a city alive in the truest sense; pulsing in artificial blue and yellow. It was such a harsh contrast to the barren ghost town that now stood below you.

The city lies in ruins, a skeletal remnant of its former self. Its streets, once alive with the hum of daily life, are now silent; the echoes of the past, of so many people’s past, haunting every corner. Buildings, once towering symbols of progress, stand in varying states of decay, their windows shattered, and walls cracked and weathered. Senescent buildings crowded the wide space before you; it almost felt as if that walk through the woods was a walk through time, allowing you to step into an abandoned version of a decade you never existed in. A life you never lived.

Old concrete buildings tower into the sky, smaller than the trees, but somehow just as ominous in the darkness. The new moon barely illuminates the roads, and you swear the shadows of the vessels of buildings dance in a silent waltz. Eternally left without a partner to brighten their despondent dance. Even from here, you can see the ladders of ivy that ascend each wall; seeping into the weak spots, the spindly, crumbling cracks, and latching on to what does not need them. What cannot house them without falling apart into dust.

The yellow police tape glints in the moonlight, yet, you see no-one around. For a place ‘patrolled by the state’, the area was pretty damn empty. Even so, you keep to the shadows, even if you feel smokey hands with boney fingers pushing you forward.

Ba-dump…Ba-dump…Ba-dump.

Through the soles of your worn shoes, you feel the persistent throb, almost like the beat of a distant drum. The sound seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once, a haunting reminder of what was and a curious hint of what might still be.

Someone lets out a low whistle, probably either Jeanne or Noah, and you feel someone nudge you in your side.

“Worth it, am I right?” Jeanne smirks at you, eyes glinting in the low-light of her torch.

Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.

“Definitely.” You breathe out, an odd sense of wonder filling you at the inky sight of the small derelict city. Yet, as you stand amidst the ruins, you can't help but wonder: is what you feel the ghostly heartbeat of a city refusing to die, or the vibrant life of the city that thrives beyond the horizon?

---------------------

And so it begins. I wanted to say sorry for this taking nearly an entire month; I hit a bit of writer’s block near the end of writing this lol. Hope you guys like long chapters. Fun fact! I planned this to originally be double the length it is now, but cut it down.

Anyways, what’s you guys’ opinions on ghosts and demons? You believe in them, or no?

As per usual, thank you for reading <33

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