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galahadwilder · 5 years

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It was like she was losing all control. But then again, when was the last time she had control of anything?

Broken Masks

Chapter 1: The Mortifying Ordeal

(For anyone who’s confused: I asked for two-sentence prompts back in either August or September. I’ve still got a few on reserve.)

“If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” --Tim Kreider

Marinette looked out her window to the crowd of reporters gathered below and couldn’t hold back a whimper. So many people, all looking for her, to worship her or berate her or—it didn’t matter. They were all here for her. And she couldn’t escape them. Not anymore.

She felt gentle fingers wrap around her limp wrist. “Shhh, shh, shh,” her mother said, pulling her limp daughter into her lap on the chaise. Maman held her tightly, stroking her hair, tugging Marinette’s gravity blanket around their shoulders. “Don’t look, pumpkin,” she said as the old chaise squeaked under their combined weight. “Nobody here but us.”

“You’re going to be okay, Marinette,” Tikki said, nestled in her hair, earning another sidelong look from Maman, but the Kwami’s words were lost as Marinette’s breathing began to come in gasps.

Marinette felt like a baby, desperate for her mother’s arms, as the whole world tried to break down her front door. She wasn’t ready for this—it was like she was losing all control. But then again, when was the last time she had control of anything?

Normal girl with a normal life? She couldn’t believe she’d ever bought that lie.

Taking off the mask had always been easy. Two words and Ladybug would vanish, she’d drop off the face of the Earth and be replaced by average unremarkable Marinette, able to slip beneath notice, to take a break from all the overwhelming attention and the adoration. But that had just been the illusion of control—even with the mask off, she’d always been Ladybug, and all it would take was one slip-up and she’d never be able to take it off again.

With the mask separating her from the rest of the world, keeping her privacy, she hadn’t noticed when she’d become famous enough as Marinette that people had begun to watch her. Everyone looked at Ladybug. Being able to take off that face and become Marinette—she’d taken that for granted. She’d settled into her illusion of safety, and now it was gone. She’d never be “just Marinette” again.

But in the absence of her normal barrier, there were other ones—ones she could never have erected by herself. Her father’s whole family had come together for the first time since before the wedding, just to protect her: Mama Gina and Papa Roland had even managed to ignore their usual hatred of each other to agree that they could work together to make sure that nobody made it up the stairs. Her classmates had gathered into a makeshift wall between the reporters and the bakery doors; even if anyone did get into the shop, there was no way they could make it into her apartment with both Ivan and her father were sitting on the trapdoor, holding it down with their combined weight. (Ivan had insisted on protecting her personally. “I owe you for Stoneheart,” he’d told her.)

“We’re so proud of you, Pumpkin,” her father said with a sad smile, straining to reach out to her while trying to keep his full weight on the trapdoor in case someone had slipped past his parents downstairs. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Her nerves began to squeeze in her wrists, shooting fire down to her fingers and up through her chest as she began to shake. Easy for him to say that everything was going to be all right; he wasn’t responsible for the safety of an entire city, he hadn’t just lost the only protection he’d had against a magical terrorist, he wasn’t… but she could see in his face, in the tightness hiding behind his mustache, how terrified he was, how he was trying to keep it together for her.

The babble of the crowd downstairs began to rise, pressing down onto her brain, and she curled closer to her mother with a whimper. Tikki cooed, scratching Marinette’s scalp with her paws.

Suddenly there was a shout, and all the sound outside stopped.

Marinette jerked upward, her eyes locked on the window. She couldn’t get an angle, couldn’t see the street—

Her mother swallowed. “Sweetie,” she said, “don’t look.”

Marinette didn’t listen.

She yanked herself out of her mother’s arms and shot up from the chaise, peering through her window to see the crowd parted around the familiar bald head of Alec Cataldi. His face was turned, a palm pressed to his cheek, and his expression—from what Marinette could see—was one of shock and pain.

It was easy to see why. Alya stood before him, towering over him despite their relative heights, her fist hooked just past Cataldi’s face, right where his cheek would have been. Marinette couldn’t see her best friend’s face but she knew that stance. If you touch my friend I will annihilate you.

Alec’s glare snapped toward Alya, the smile leaving his smug face for the first time in Marinette’s memory. He pointed at Alya, spat something angry and stupid. Looked around at the other reporters for… solidarity maybe?

Instead, Chloé stepped forward, right next to Alya, phone in hand, planting herself next to the other girl. The crowd parted before her—they all backed away, eyes down in shame, steadfastly avoiding looking at Alya.

Marinette’s gaze shot upward, peering into the blue sky, searching for violet specks across the azure. “Ivan,” she whispered, hugging her shoulders. “Can you… send Alya a thank-you text?”

Ivan perked up. “Why?” he said. “What’d she do?”

Marinette bit her lip as she turned back to the chaise. “She just punched Alec Cataldi.” She shouldn’t be laughing, she thought, climbing back into her mother’s lap. She was a superhero… but Cataldi’s particular lack of ethics and tact had put her through hell since the day he rigged the weathergirl contest. She couldn’t help feeling some satisfaction at knowing someone had finally made him feel consequences.

“Cataldi,” Papa snarled, pressing his palms to the trapdoor until his fingers went white. “I swear, that man has no sense of appropriateness. He’s caused more Akuma than—”

Ivan placed a hand on Papa’s forearm with a raised eyebrow, and Papa froze.

“We need to stay calm,” Ivan said, softly. “She’s in no condition to be fighting family right now.”

Papa swallowed. “Yes… right,” he said. “I… thank you.” He seemed to visibly deflate at the thought of not berserking on the abusive game show host.

“You know,” Mama cooed, “I bet if Ladybug complained you could get that man fired.”

Tikki hissed. “Marinette, no!”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t gonna,” she said.

She was tempted, though. The man should’ve known to stop humiliating people on air after the first time one of them got Akumatized, but he never really learned, did he?

“Stray cat strut, I’m a ladies cat,” her phone suddenly shouted from her desk.

Marinette’s stomach clenched, and she dove for it, her fingers scrabbling for her pink case as it continued: “I’m a feline Casanova, hey man that’s that.”

“It’s him.”

Papa’s head immediately swiveled. “Is he okay? Is he safe?”

“Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man, Get my dinner from a garbage can!”

Marinette stared at her phone, at the obnoxious face of Nyan Cat she’d put into “Chris Nicolas’s” phone contact to hide his identity, back when that still mattered. She hadn’t thought to change his contact picture yet. Should she—no, not the time. “He’s calling from the baton,” she muttered. That wasn’t a good sign. He was supposed to be talking to his father right now.

She should change his ringtone, too. “Shoe thrown at me by a mean old man”—couldn’t be more foreboding for this particular call if she’d tried. She shivered.

She answered the call. “Kitty?” she breathed. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

He laughed, but not Chat’s prankster laugh, or Adrien’s genuine sunshine one—this one was rueful, sad, broken. “Hiding on the Trocadero,” he said, his voice strangely muffled, like he’d stuffed cotton into his cheeks. “I—My Lady, I don’t think I can go back.”

Marinette swallowed as a shiver passed up her upper arms. She tried to force down tears—he didn’t need her to break down right now, he needed solutions.

“What happened?” she choked out.

“He tried to—” Chat’s voice broke. “To… take the ring. When I wouldn’t give it to him…” He sobbed. “He... he was so angry...”

Her heart rocketed into her throat, and the chaise squeaked under her legs as she shifted. No. “Chaton,” she said, “what did he do?”

“He threatened me. Said he’d throw me out.”

“You—” It couldn’t be. Even Gabriel wouldn’t—wouldn’t be so cruel. Could it? “Throw you out?”

Her father read the expression on her face and nodded. “We protect him,” he said to his wife with a determined set to his jaw. “With the number of times he’s saved her—”

“He stays here,” Maman agreed, softly but firmly.

Marinette squeezed her eyes and shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “This is the first place his father… or, or Hawkmoth, will look.”

“My Lady,” Chat said. “He—he hit me.”

“No.” Marinette’s fingers were shaking—only holding her phone to her face kept them from outright quaking. His voice—no wonder it sounded so strange... “Adri—Kitty, Chaton, Mon Minou, I’m so sorry, I’m—I’m—”

He gasped. “Butterfly,” he said.

The phone dropped from slack fingers. “Tikki!” she screamed. “Spots on!”

She didn’t have time to see her parents’ reactions before she’d launched herself from the chaise and out the skylight. She couldn’t even imagine what they must be feeling, must be thinking; seeing it on the news was one thing, but watching your daughter transform in the middle of her room from clumsy, anxious Marinette to the unstoppable Hero of Paris?

She heard screaming from the crowd down below as cameras caught her vaulting across the street. She was sure every newspaper and tabloid in Paris—except the Ladyblog—was going to have an original image from this moment by the end of the day, but she didn’t have time to care about that. Didn’t have time to think about anything else, just her partner, somewhere she couldn’t see, desperately scrabbling backwards away from the oncoming butterfly. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she raced toward him—

She found him on a roof, staring blankly at his clenched fist.

“I killed it,” he said, his voice cracking. One green pad was missing from his ring.

Her heart leaped at the sight, and she barely touched down on the roof before she collapsed into his arms, shivering.

After a moment of surprise, he pulled her in close. “I’m okay,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “I’m okay.”

Ladybug whimpered, shook her head. “Both our identities got blown to the entirety of Paris,” she said. “You—your father hurt you.”

“My Lady, I’m fine—”

“Adrien,” she interrupted, “you are allowed to not be okay.”

He stared for a moment, eyes wide and watering, before he collapsed into her, sobbing into her hair.

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theparanormalperiodical · 4 years

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31 Celebrity Ghost Stories You NEED To Read On Halloween Night (Or Any Time Of The Year, Screw The System)

*Puts on old professor glasses*

For generations we have been in awe of the celebrity.

*strokes beard*

For generations we have trodden their paths, followed their scents, and watched with wandering eyes exactly what they do - and all in the name of escapism.

Since the conception of humankind we have sought to understand what makes the rich and famous both rich and famous. Our philosophers decode mannerisms, our magazine editors calculate their every mistake, and the rest of us simply gaze up at the stars wondering how, why, and what we share in common with the glorified among us.

But you see-

*walks across the Ted Talk stage*

-they are just like us.

They make mistakes, they compare themselves to others, and yes, they even suck in their stomachs when trying on their new TopShop crop top and then shove it in the back of their sock drawer convinced their lower belly will always have too fat.

But even more than that, they have experiences with the paranormal.

*pulls up a chair and sits on it backwards cause for some reason people think it looks actually idk how people think it looks but whatever back to the imagery*

And so, on this Halloween night, we celebrate what brings us all together - no matter how much cash nor clout one has.

Shall we?

Miley Cyrus

During her 2009 Europe tour, Cyrus stayed in a flat in London - a flat that she claims was haunted.

"It was seriously so terrifying. It used to be an old bakery and they turned it into an apartment building, and I was having really crazy dreams and really scary things, and one night my little sister–it sounds crazy to tell you–but she was standing in the shower and all of a sudden I hear her scream.

I run in there and the water had somehow flipped to hot but it was still...It wasn’t like the water had just changed, the knob had turned but she hadn’t turned it and it was burning her.”

In the same bathroom Cyrus was convinced she saw a little boy sitting on the sink whilst she was showering. A series of other unexplained events took place until they delved into the family history of the bakery: it was passed down for generations from father to son. Cyrus believed she saw the last son to be left the bakery.

Cher

Turns out Cher doesn’t just believe in life after love but life after death, too.

The music legend herself is convinced that her late husband, Sonny, who died in 1998 is still making his presence known to her.

She claims his spirit has a habit of turning lights on to remind her he is there and often does this to her chandelier - even when there is no power.

“I love ghosts, I prefer ghosts to some people.”

Anna Nicole Smith

This late Playboy bunny was known for her bombshell sex appeal and scandalous career - but what about her forays into the supernatural?

"A ghost would crawl up my leg and have sex with me at an apartment a long time ago in Texas. I used to think it was my boyfriend, and one day I woke up and it wasn’t. It was, like, a spirit and it—woo! [miming a ghost flying from her bedsheets]—went up!

I was freaked out about it, but then I was, like, 'Well, you know what? He’s never hurt me and he just gave me some amazing sex so I have no problem.'"

When the interviewer asked her whether it was merely a dream Smith replied that it was happening every single night.

Kesha

Just like Smith, Kesha’s own experience with the paranormal is rather more sexual.

In her own words she went to the “bone zone” with a ghost.

"I don't know his name. He just started caressing me. It was a sexy time, it wasn't, like, sex."

Emma Stone

Back in 2014 Stone revealed on a late night talk show that the spirit of her grandfather often leaves quarters for her to find.

In fact, she claimed her family has a history of the small change - and its legacy clearly goes beyond the grave.

La Toya Jackson

Michael Jackson’s death is one of the most striking moments in modern history - but it turns out the King of Pop might also be the King of the Paranormal.

La Toya often claims she feels strong presences in the Jacksons’ childhood home and frequently shares about the supernatural activity coming from MJ’s old room. Many visitors, staff members, and family members have heard tap dancing coming from the room, even when they didn’t know who it used to belong to.

It was in this room that Michael would tap dance for two hours every sunday.

Susan Boyle

Boyle often recounts that she lost several members of her closest family within the span of a few short years and felt abandoned by her family. But in a 2011 interview she claimed she sees her mother’s spirit around her house, believing it to be a reminder from beyond the grave that she is not alone.

Megan Fox

"I was just in Mexico at my hotel and it was a bedroom, living room, bedroom...I had pre-ordered breakfast for 7:30, and at 7 a.m. I hear them come in with the table, I hear them pouring the coffee…

30 minutes later, at 7:30 I went in there, no table, no coffee, no food, no nothing, no one there. Door bell rings, I open the door, it's room service with my food...Brandy the nanny comes out later and says, 'Why did room service come at 7 when we told them to come at 7:30?' So you can't tell me I'm crazy, because two people heard it."

Ariana Grande

This paranormal enthusiast was visiting one of the gates of hell - Stull Cemetery - when she felt a sudden surge of negative energy around her. Flies suddenly appeared in the car and she smelt a strong odour of sulphur.

Both are symptoms of dark, demonic energy.

As they drove off she ‘apologised’ to the spirits for disturbing the peace and took a couple of pictures of the area before they left. She saw clear demonic faces in the image. When she tried to send it to her manager as proof of the strange goings on, the picture couldn’t be sent.

Why?

Because it was 666 megabytes.

Joan Rivers

This comedian’s old Manhattan apartment might be worth $28 million but it's far more famous for the supernatural entities within its walls than its price tag.

In one iconic episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories Rivers claims she even brought in a voodoo priestess to help a former resident, ‘Mr Spencer’, pass on.

Marilyn Manson

Just like Rivers, Marilyn Manson told his own paranormal experience on CGS. But his story had less spirits and more, you know, Satan.

Pressured by his peers into reading demonic incantations in a supposedly haunted basement, Manson claims he then heard demonic whispers around him asking if he believed in Satan.

Alyson Hannigan

Hannigan might be known for her Wiccan ways on the TV screen in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but her encounters with the paranormal aren’t just captured by our favourite streaming services.

Back in 2003 Hannigan claimed she lived in a haunted house - but she believes the spirit is friendly.

“My friend saw him first one night. She said, 'I don't mean to alarm you, but I just saw a man follow us out of the house.' “

"Later that night I saw this silhouette of a man standing in the bathroom doorway. I was like, 'Sweetie, what are you doing?' I thought it was [fiance] Alexis [Denisof]. But then I looked and Alexis was asleep next to me.”

Nicolas Cage

Yes, the most memed actor in Hollywood has faced a series of paranormal experiences, too. In 2007 Cage purchased one of the most haunted houses in America in a bid to get inspired to write the latest horror novel.

He bought the LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans, a house belonging to one of the 19th century’s most infamous serial killers.

Many believe the slaves tortured by Delphine LaLaurie still haunt the mansion. Perhaps Cage heard the wails and moans of her victims, or maybe he felt the demonic presence rumoured to have taken part in a murder of a tenant in 1894?

Demi Lovato

Lovato often makes mention of her beliefs in the paranormal - especially when it comes to her haunted house in Texas. She claims a young girl named Emily haunts her home in the South, and has even mentioned that she was a childhood ‘friend’ when she was growing up.

But this tale has to be the most terrifying:

"One of my friends, Tucker, came over one time and he asked, 'So your house is haunted?' I said, 'Yeah, just watch. Something will happen. Something always happens.' We started to watch a movie when all of a sudden a laptop in my kitchen started to play a movie also. It was a black screen before, so it was a question of who turned it on and hit play.

And after that Tucker texted a friend saying, 'I think this house is haunted, a movie just turned on by itself,' and there was a 'glitch' in his phone that kept texting him back the word 'definitely' over and over again. That happened about 30 times."

Peter Jackson

Jackson might be known for putting mystical and magical creatures on the big screen, but he’s seen similar things in real life, too.

"One night I woke up and there was a figure in the room. She was really scary—her face was like a silent scream. She glided across the room and disappeared into the wall." He told Fran in the morning and she said, "'Was it the woman with a screaming face?’ We had never spoken about it.

She had seen the same ghost two years earlier. So I do believe in some energy, a spirit or a soul..."

Kendrick Lamar

From one famous rapper to another:

Lamar told Home Grown Radio that he had a dream about Tupac Shakur - a dream he believed conveyed a message from beyond. In the dream Tupac told him “Keep doing what you doing, don’t let my music die.”

Keanu Reeves

He’s one of the internet’s favourite celebrities - but what isn’t so famous about this Matrix star is his paranormal experience from when he was living in NYC.

"I'm probably like six, seven years old, we'd come from Australia. Renata, [our] nanny, in the bedroom, my sister is asleep, she's sitting over there, I'm hanging out. There was a doorway and all of a sudden this jacket comes waving through the doorway, this empty jacket — there's no body, there's no legs, it's just there. And then it disappears..."

The nanny saw the exact same thing.

Adele

Ghost nuns are not only on-trend but also terrify-ing. Adele can testify to that. In 2012 the singer moved into a plush Sussex mansion which used to be a convent.

A couple creepy noises later and she hired around-the-clock security to protect her against the paranormal activity. Who knows what she might’ve seen in her new $6 million home?

Matthew McConaughey

McConaughey claims his Hollywood mansion was haunted by an unhappy female spirit by the name of Madame Blu.

"I was not even under the influence and she was there. She wasn't that happy, it didn't seem like she was going to be much fun to hang around or have in my house, so I went ahead and stood my ground. I opened the door and said 'You can move around all you want but I'm not going anywhere.'"

"For weeks everyone that came to the house said the same thing: 'There's someone down in that hall, there's somebody down in that hall.'"

Ryan Gosling

Most of the celebs that made this list whip out their charming ‘lil spooky story to pique interest in their latest career venture. Gosling’s story, however, is actually pretty f*cking scary.

One day, in his childhood home, he saw a ghost of a young boy.

"He just sat. And I knew from a very young age that he was a ghost, too. He scared me. I told my mother, but she couldn't see him. Nobody could. And I learned to live with that. I had to…

Then, a few years later, [my mother] thought she saw him, then almost right away my cousin saw him, and then my uncle. And we were outta there in fairly short order."

Laura Linney

Linney is one of Hollywood’s most cherished actresses - and even on the stage she has witnessed something from the other side.

She became a believer in the paranormal after working in the Belasco Theater on Broadway.

"I had forgotten this, and I was doing a play with Jane Alexander, and I turned to Jane Alexander, and I looked up to the upper balcony—there are two balconies there—and the upper balcony you can only get in from the outside, and those doors were locked; and I looked up, and there was a woman standing in the front row looking over with a blue dress and blonde hair.

I just thought, 'Well, hello!' I looked back at Jane, and I looked back up, and she was gone. I went to the house manager and I said, 'Joe, I think I saw a ghost.' And he went, 'male or female?' I said, 'female.' And he went, 'blue dress, blonde hair?'"

Megan Mullally

Another famous ghost that haunts a famous face features on this list. But this time the paranormal activity described by Mullally is certainly the most tragic.

She claims she lived in a house haunted by the spirit of Nicole Brown Simpson who was murdered in 1994. She believes that only when her husband watched the American Crime Story series about her death did the strange occurrences (most of which were odd and unexplained sounds) settle.

Kristen Stewart

Only last year our very own Bella Swan opened up not just about her own experiences with ghosts, but her own spiritual connection with other people.

“If I’m in a weird, small town, making a movie, and I’m in a strange apartment, I will literally be like, ‘No, please, I cannot deal. Anyone else, but it cannot be me.’ Who knows what ghosts are, but there is an energy that I’m really sensitive to. Not just with ghosts, but with people. People stain rooms all the time.”

Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher lived an extraordinary life. She was one of the few a-listers to openly discuss her struggles with mental health and drug use before it became so accepted in mainstream society. Unfortunately, these topics would haunt her in a rather more supernatural manner, too.

Following the overdose of a friend sleeping next to her in her mansion, Fisher claimed she would often feel their presence around her.

"Lights would go on and off, and I had this toy machine, that when you touched it would say, 'F*ck you! Eat sh*t! You’re an asshole!' And it would go off in the night, by itself, in my closet.”

She later hired an exorcist to cleanse the house of the spirit.

Halle Berry

Whilst filming Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Berry would experience intense paranormal activity she believed was down to her dress.

A dress formerly owned by the woman titling the film.

"I'd come home and the housekeeper would say she'd heard my vanity chair moving upstairs in the bathroom. When the film was over, I desperately wanted to keep her dress, but it had to go. And then everything was fine."

Lady Gaga

Just like Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga has had her own dealings with the spirit of an icon. But instead of rap legend Tupac, she got the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

"Right after he died, I wrote 'Born This Way.' I think he's up in heaven with fashion strings in his hands, marionetting away, planning this whole thing…

I didn't even write the f*king song. He did!"

Melissa McCarthy

Comedian Melissa McCarthy revealed in 2016 that she believed in ghosts - and gave insight into where her beliefs came from.

"I grew up on a farm and I didn't have any real friends,

I have a very strong belief that people are out there, because I was certainly talking to someone in those barns. Otherwise I'm just crazy. I really strongly believe in ghosts."

Jessica Alba

In 2008, Alba told US Weekly about her own encounter with the paranormal when she was a child.

“I felt this pressure and I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything

Something definitely took the covers off me and I definitely couldn’t get off the bed, and then, once I did, I screamed, ran to my parents’ room and I don’t think I spent many nights in that house ever again.”

Jenna Bush Hager

The White House already has a reputation for its paranormal activity (Abe Lincoln often makes a reappearance during times of crisis) and this former first daughter has evidence to support such a claim.

"I was asleep, there was a fireplace in my room and all of a sudden I heard 1920's music coming out. I could feel it. I freaked out and ran into my sister's room. She was like, 'Please go back to sleep, this is ridiculous.'"

Lucy Liu

This Charlie’s Angel - like so many of the people included in this article - claims she had sexual relations with something supernatural.

“I felt everything. I climaxed. And then he floated away.”

Bella Thorne

"I was lying in bed when I saw a shadowy, silvery figure of an old woman creeping across my room, then it slipped into my closet…

I panicked and ran out of bed and swung open my closet door only to see she was in there. But she was gone. I was sure I had seen her ghost! It was really freaky."

Do you believe ‘em?

If you liked this post be sure to like, reblog, and hit the follow button!

Got your own paranormal experience to share? Head on over to the peoplesparanormal.com to read real ghost stories and submit your own!

Happy Halloween, lads.

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