#*spooky twilight zone noises*

[omegasmileyface]

im so fucked up. theres a scene in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (the sequel to hitchhikers guide) where zaphod is rummaging through the ruins of a long-destroyed city on a lifeless, abandoned planet, looking for a way off, and he stumbles upon the crumbling remains of a spaceport, and miraculously one of the crafts is still intact, and there's still a quiet hum of power going into it from a connected cable, and it's making a quiet noise. so he rigs up a makeshift stethoscope and listens, and there's a PA system saying something like "we are very sorry for the delay. we are currently waiting for a restocking on lemon-soaked towlettes, for your hygienic and culinary pleasure. in the meantime, we will be serving coffee and biscuits on the deck." and he finds the remains of the arrivals/deparetures board, translates the dates and does a little math, and discovers the delay has been 900 years. spooky, yeah? but he goes on the ship, hoping he can get it flying, and it's perfectly well-functioning and an android flight attendant comes out and tries to force him to sit in the seating area, continuing to apologize for the delay. and when he gets to the seating area, every seat has a person in it. long-haired, long-nailed, and completely silent, but very much alive. and another android comes out with a tray of coffee and cookies, and all of the people wake up and start screaming in agony as she gives them their snacks. zaphod is terrified, so he runs to the control deck and locks the door behind him, and he finds the autopilot computer, which repeatedly tells him to return to the seating area, and he eventually convinces it to talk to him. "have you seen the planet?" he says, or something to that general effect. "there's no civilization! you're not GETTING a lemon-soaked napkin shipment!" and the autopilot says "the most likely path to us receiving our shipment is to wait until another civilization develops on the planet and they can deliver it. so we have put the passengers in suspended animation, and we wake them up once a year for coffee." and then? and then zaphod's friend who he was looking for shows up and the plot carries on and they don't say another word about the ship (at least, as far as i know from my place a couple chapters later). thats it. some classic Space Horror Of Grand Proportions, a doctor who plot, a twilight zone plot, an scp article, an asimov short story— that, when a ship ran out of a luxury amenity and didn't get it fulfilled quickly, the autopilot ai decided that, regardless of plentiful fuel and safety, the ideal way to deal with the situation is to suspend the lives of all of the passengers, waking them up once a year, until a new civilization could evolve around them to produce napkins— and it takes up about two pages total before being put aside completely!

[togglesbloggle]

The Island Where Dreams Come True

"Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore."

"Compose yourself," said Reepicheep, "and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying."

The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before.

"Nevertheless you will fly from here," he gasped. "This is the Island where Dreams come true."

"That's the island I've been looking for this long time," said one of the sailors. "I reckoned I'd find I was married to Nancy if we landed Here."

"And I'd find Tom alive again," said another.

"Fools!" said the man, stamping his foot with rage. "That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I'd better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams — dreams, do you understand — come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams."

There was about half a minute's silence and then, with a great clatter of armour, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before…

---- C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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

I’ve been thinking about this text a lot lately, partly with the help of that nasty fever I got a few weeks ago.  If I had to pick one chunk of prose to summarize my 2020 mood, this would be it.  Stumbling through a landscape that feels like one of those Deep Dream images, too unreal to have consequences in itself but real enough to count as a kind of darkness, real enough to obscure whatever reality it is that’s two feet off the prow.

At least some of this feeling comes down to the phenomenon I talked about here (and I’m rather pleased with how well that post aged), and at least some of it comes down to the fragmentation of media that Kojima saw coming some two decades ago.  But it was accelerated by the lockdown, probably a lot.  Our sense of truth is just so powerfully mediated by society, and that fabric has been disrupted more by the plague than by anything else I’ve ever lived through.  And what’s exposed behind that tear in the world is… stories, uncontrolled and associative.  Dreams.

We’re drifting apart, not just physically, but into our own dreamworlds.

There’s a question I sometimes ask when I’m in a conversation with folks in my native blue tribe.  It’s this: what evidence is there that there are more Nazis now than there were ten years ago?  And I’m not sure that I’ve ever gotten an actual answer to this question.  One guy got super mad, but that’s unusual.  Mostly they’re just confused by the question mark at the end, as if it was something that you didn’t need to ask.  Of course there are Nazis now, right?

Because-

I don’t mean the question as a ‘gotcha’, I’m not trying to trip people up with it so much as figure out where people are coming from epistemologically.  There are individual media stories, of course.  Charlottesville still looms large, as does the current president in his way.  And I suspect most of us have direct experiences with somebody espousing such views, if only in passing as through a comments section or twitter.  But actually counting them, comparing that number to estimates throughout recent history, gathering enough anecdotes that in their multiplicity they become data- it’s not being actively resisted as a process, but nor is it something that occurs to people.  It’s just not in scope, not part of the modern (and especially the 2020) experience. 

There are, of course, easy examples on the other side of the aisle.  I’ll never forget the weird lurch that happened when I realized my parents were sincerely worried about the imposition of sharia law in the United States.  But I’m trying to keep it close to home because I don’t see the blue/red fracture line as particularly important in the root causes of the phenomenon.  That was just the particular weakness in our civic order that happened to give way first, like a bum knee in the body politic.

Of course one must be concerned that the trends pushing us in this direction are ratchets, not cycles.  Ordinary politics tends to come and go, just waves in a very large bathtub.  But forces like science and technology give real history to the world, making ‘then’ different from ‘now’ in a way that isn’t mere happenstance.  And there are some worrying reasons to think that our slow fall into dreamland may be a consequence of those technologies and learned skills, not just the weird result of reality-show-presidents and news media balkanization.

And when I think hard enough about this stuff I’m pretty worried about my own dreams too- no way I’m immune to this process.  But how would I know?  I’m certainly a very odd man in my way, and what social anchors I have are as idiosyncratic as I am.  Is this feeling itself just a dream, something that surrounded me bit by bit as I and my helper algorithms gradually wrapped me up in a solipsistic media cocoon, while the rest of the world goes along as it always has?  Surely not, surely it’s the world that’s going crazy, right?  Not me?

[poorlytunedukulele]

Day 1 - Ghost Stories

October 28, 2877; The Last City, Earth

It was a night of relaxed revelry.  There was no special occasion- no big wins to celebrate, but no losses to mourn, either.  The bar was full of people just looking to enjoy themselves in the early autumn twilight.  There was a live band in the corner winding out heartfelt tunes.  People lounged, drinks in hand, chatting and laughing.  Above them, near the ceiling, Ghosts gathered in clusters, participating in the ever-important Ghost pastime of storytelling.

“Whose turn is it?” Pace asked.  His orange shell ticked like the hands of a clock, ever impatient.

“Spark’s,” Thetis replied quietly.

Sundance whirred her shell and let out a small, “Booooo.”  She'd wanted to be next.

Spark made a noise of indignation, so she sighed and tried to explain herself.  “You are not the best storyteller, dude.  Listen,” she said, perking up before Spark could interrupt.  “You take delightful footage.  That series of Eliksni pratfalls was inspired.  And it’s not like you and your Guardian don’t go interesting places, but you always somehow manage to make the telling… flat.”

“I’ve got a good one, this time.  I promise,” Spark said.  “And it’s spooky, so listen up.”

The Ghosts all huddled a bit closer in their corner of the bar airspace.

“This happened a couple of years ago, and everything is true,” Spark began, eye wide and genuine.  “I have the reports to back it up.  It all started when one day I got a request from a Hunter Den just west of the Appalachian Dead Zone.  They’d noticed some Hive activity and thought there might be a seeder nest in a cave nearby.  They wanted a professional scout to check it out.

“So we go, right?  Careful-like.  We poke around the cave- and a few other ones close by just to be sure, but we don’t have to go deep to tell that nothing’s been through there in weeks.  So we send back a report to them- no signs of recent activity.  The Hive must have just been moving through.

“But then three days later, we get a message back saying one of them swore they saw Hive entering that same cave the day previous.  So we kit ourselves out for deep exploration and go at it.”

“Did you find any Hive?” Sundance asked.

“Not… exactly,” Spark said.  “What we did find was…”

-

The crystal sprouted unnaturally from a fissure in the floor.  It was entirely different from the geology of the cave- not gypsum or limestone or chert.  Spark had no idea what it was, and he wasn’t about to get close enough to give it a scan.  It flickered with a strange yellow luminescence, casting barely enough light to see.  Azra Jax leaned almost hesitantly against the cave wall, but she was caught firmly in its glow.

Spark clicked, worried.  “Azra.”

The Hunter only grunted in reply.  She slouched and continued to shuffle her way forward.  She’d slipped her sidearm into its holster several minutes ago and hadn’t moved to take it out.  She should be worried about the obvious Hive presence here.  She wasn’t, somehow.  She hadn't looked away from the crystal since it had come into view.

Spark spoke a bit louder.  “We have to leave.”

She hummed at that one, and there was a faint tone of disapproval in her head- a half-formed No.

There was a dry, raspy chittering just at the edge of hearing.  It was oppressive, like the sound of summer bugs at night.  It drowned out the thoughts in Azra’s head.  The Hunter walked forward, feet dragging, eyes glassy.

“Azra!”  Spark exclaimed.

That got no response at all.

This was bad.  This was really, really bad.  Clearly, there was some Hive magic present here- but Spark had never seen anything like this.  And he could feel his Guardian’s mind slipping further and further away, buried under the droning and the captivating Light of the crystal.  The closer she got, the further under its thrall she fell.

Spark couldn’t just leave to get help.  Azra would be alone, at the mercy of whatever being ran this place.  But every second made her death more and more certain.  He couldn’t leave, but they could not stay.

He was desperate.  He did the only thing he could think of- if shouting didn’t work, then maybe pain would.  He wound himself back and, with a quick mental apology, threw himself at Azra’s face.  There was a visceral crunch as her nose broke.

The pain and surprise ignited her mind back into consciousness.  Her hands came up automatically to cover the offended area and she glared accusingly at her Ghost.  “Ow!  Spark, what the hell?”

“We have to leave, now,” he said urgently.

Azra took quick stock of the situation and her memories.  She looked down at her feet, seeming to realize for the first time that they had been going forward without her permission.  Fear cut into her, sharp as a knife.  She turned and all but sprinted from the room.

The chittering was still there, though.  The Hunter’s footsteps faltered, slowed.  Spark felt her mind begin to slip away again.  “Don’t listen!” he demanded.  “Keep moving!”

Azra clamped her hands to the sides of her head in an attempt to block out the noise, but it itched its way up into her bones.  “Don’t listen don’t listen don’t-“ she chanted to herself, taking a few more steps.  The yellowish light from the crystal pulsed softly.

Her feet stilled.

“Don’t… listen,” she murmured.  But she turned back towards the crystal anyway.  It grew in brilliance, almost tauntingly.  Spark noted with horror that the brighter light illuminated odd shapes scattered around the base of the crystal, bleached white with age.

Bones.  And, if he was being honest with himself, probably not from a deer.

“No, no no no,” Spark said.  He could fix this.  If he could just get a signal for transmat… but hey were too far under the surface.

“Don’t…” the Hunter whispered again, eyes glazing over.  Blood still dripped from her broken nose, down her chin and onto the floor.  She didn't seem to notice.

Then, the Light shifted.  Azra’s voice dropped in pitch.  “Don’t,” she said, in a growl this time.  The shadows hissed and flickered.  Relief washed through Spark.  She was still in control.

Dreamlike, almost, the Hunter summoned her Bow.  Usually it was a quick affair, drawing and shooting in the space of a second, but Azra held it languidly, letting pins and needles brush against her skin and silence whisper in her mind.  Void-purple light competed against the yellow Hive glow.

She drew finally, sighting and loosing in one smooth movement.  The Tether whistled through the air, piercing the Hive-chatter, and struck the crystal dead center.

The yellow light died and the chittering stopped.  Azra blinked, stunned a bit at the sudden normalcy of the cave she found herself in.

“Let’s go,” Spark said, immensely relieved but not willing to take any chance by delay.

“Let’s,” Azra said in sharp agreement.  She tripped her way out of the room and wound through the tunnels with fevered haste.  There was a moment, just before she turned the last corner where sunlight would be visible, when Spark thought he could hear the chittering start back up.

But then she ducked into the last chamber and saw the day streaming in through the opening of the cave.  Both Guardian and Ghost sighed in relief.

-

“We caved in the entrance and sent a report off to the Praxics,” Spark said.  “But we never got any follow-up about it.”

“And the Hunter Den?  The one that called you in for help?”  Sundance was thoroughly engrossed in the story now.

“Well,” Spark said, “we went back to give a report in person, but there was nobody home.”

“You didn’t leave it at that,” Charin said, aghast.

“Of course not,” Spark responded.  “We beat the door down.  But something wasn’t right.”  He paused for a second, reveling in the undivided attention.  “The place looked like it hadn’t been used for months.  Dust everywhere, no footprints, food gone stale in the pantry.”

“They must have fallen prey to the same Hive trick,” Pace suggested.

Spark twirled his shell.  “But if they did, who… or what, sent us to check out the cave in the first place?”

There was a moment of silence as the Ghosts wondered at the implications.

“…I like that story,” Thetis said.

“Of course you like it,” Sundance grouched.  “Spooky Hive shit, Nightstalker nonsense, and zero payoff.”

“You liked it too,” the other Ghost teased.

-

AO3 Linky

[fandom-sheep]

Fundy 10 MAY 21

Chille Peppers Part 1/1

Our streamer is suffering.

I got here like 45 minutes late, and he’s already had 4 and is on his 5th.

Oh this poor fox man. He sounds like he’s in so much pain.

Man’s smiling through the pain.

Build those legos you funky man.

Piano smack.

Oh bless his heart.

Oh yeah that’s right. Chat was trying to bully him into playing subnautica weren’t they.

Imagine if someone redeemed a hydro check right after a pepper. Water just makes it burn worse.

...I have points that I’ve saved for a hydrocheck... I could be that jerk.

But I don’t think I will.

I have almost enough points for TWO hydrochecks.

Oh your eyes do itch with stuff like that. I remember how bad my friend’s burned when they were doing Carolina reapers.

Phil isn’t there. He’s doing hardcore.

Oh Lovejoy gave us a new video. I’ll have to watch that after.

The glasses are going on things are getting serious.

Fire... awooga. Yeah he can read chat. That sounds like us.

All the fire emotes.

Oh no. The instructions have failed him.

This is why I don’t follow the steps with legos. I just build from my heart.

Man. People finding love through chat. Look at em go.

“I don’t give a give” -Fundy

Oh he started it every 50. Oh honey how many peppers has this poor mans eaten?

Wow. Chat is so mean.

Ah we hit 600. This poor man. He sounds so defeated.

Oh look a hype train.

All Fundy’s chat does is cry and bully streamer.

Oh he’s in so much pain.

Speed run building that little car honey.

Imagine if Boots got onto the table. Lego pieces everywhere.

Yeah your stomach will make funky noises after spice like that when you aren’t used to it.

This man doesn’t eat normal food and we’re giving him chili peppers.

Poor Dutch White Boy.

Asian peppers? They are just straight up sketchy peppers.

Meow? Why are we bullying him into meow?

That vacuum was spooky. Maybe that explains why I hate vacuums now.

He’s almost made it. He’s almost survived.

But chat still has time. If Wolf shows up they can change all of this.

I’m reblogging things on my iPad while typing this on my phone. What a time to be alive.

Someone needs to bully this boy into eating real food. And not you know chili peppers.

You go IKEA. Two cardboard boxes instead of a table. Yeah it happens.

E

Fundy’s chat spamming E feels like falling into the twilight zone where every chat is Technos.

We are bullying this man over his box table.

Wait? We’re done? What’s are the other pieces for?

Oh right it’s lego. They throw in a few extras. Or it at least feels like it.

Chat and Fundy so confused over the extra pieces.

Why do the donos sound kinda wholesome for a moment? Stop it.

Car go vroom.

He’s so proud of his car. And he deserves to be.

Now chat go ham and get those last few subs in.

A fox has fallen in the river in Lego city. I love that donation so much.

Second Lego?

Oh good. Glad you are done. No unaliving from chili peppers.

Showing us the work table/box

Stickers on PC? What?

Ooo sticker car. Noice.

Oh I don’t think that how it’s done. But that works.

It really is a box with like a piece of wood on it or something.

The car attacked.

Did it break?

Nope doesn’t look like it.

Our poor streamer. He seems so done.

Chat just clapping when he asks why we are here.

Our streamer at chili peppers and had a Lego car fall on his foot. What a day.

Oh off to Phil. Time to annoy the crows.

Well that was fun. Glad the streamer survived.

[not-from-the-absence-of-violence]

On assumptions, understanding, belonging and love.

Moments in Martin's journey understanding other people and finally himself.

or

Martin's journey in understanding, accepting and loving his asexuality.

a/n: some quick notes: Jon is sex repulsed, Martin is somewhere between neutral and favorable. While Tim and Sasha dont exactlty say they are aro they are! Jon is non-binary and uses he/they pronouns and i desperatly wanted to explore that but this is already twice as long than intended-

also while I am (half) Bolivian and speak spanish I am not at all fluent in Tamil so if there is any mistakes lmk! hope you all enjoy!

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

Sasha had convinced them to go get drinks together, as it had been a rather stressful couple of weeks since Martin came back from the siege of his apartment by Jane Prentiss.

Sleeping in the archives was not exactly helping the situation for Martin, or Jon for that matter.

So they decided to go to a pub and try to force a sense of normality everyone really needed.

Martin was having a great time, with the relative calm and safety he hadn’t had in a while, even Jon had something like a smile playing on his lips as Tim told a story from one of his university mates that had accidentally thrown his roommate's engagement ring down a drain. 

Martin zoned out for a bit, enjoying the pleasant buzz of the alcohol and his friends laughter and Jon’s animated movements that indicated that he was talking about something he actually found interesting.

 Jon was apparently telling his own story with some relation to engagement, something about a girl at a wedding that had acted strangely, Martin caught something about “purposely spilling wine on her dress”, which Martin agreed was quite wierd. 

“She was totally trying to woo you, Jon.” Sasha said as Jon got to the bit where they had to help her find some clean towels in a storage closet. 

 “I assumed she was just having a rather hard time,” Jon said, seemingly only now thinking of the implications of spilling wine on your dress and then faking needing help, to be fair to Jon that was a very weird tactic to pull and Martin would not have put two and two together either.

“Well what did you do in that closet then?” Tim asked with an incredibly over the top suggestive look. 

Jon pulled a face then, Martin thought it looked rather endearing really with his nose all scrunched up and his eyes narrowed, but he was clearly uneasy. 

“I don’t- I don’t really do… that sort of thing.”

Martin snapped back in the moment, feeling a weird but familiar anxiety in his stomach as the conversation lulled. He felt rather protective for a moment, instinctively knowing this seemed important. This turned out to be rather unnecessary, as Tim spoke up again quickly.

“Oh,” He and then, earnestly, ”I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Jon.” 

And then Jon smiled, properly, like he didn’t often and waved his hand dismissively but pleased.

“Thank you, well it's not like you could have known that, but anyway as I was saying-” 

 It was but a moment, but it stuck with Martin for a bit, mulling it over and not really understanding his own reaction.

 Eventually Martin settled back into the pleasant buzz, enjoying his friends chatter and Jon’s over exaggerated hand gestures.

-

It was an uncharacteristically slow day in the archives, not a worm in sight and Martin had only a bit of boring research to do for a very clearly fake statement.

Martin usually tried to be nice about it but this one featured a guy named “Richard Dickson” and was entirely about a fever dream someone had about a haunted accordion, he had listened to the recording that Jon had emailed him and it sounded like even he was having a very hard time trying not to laugh at it.

“Who comes up with this stuff?” Sasha said as she handed him back the statement. “Sure, I know we are being attacked by a worm woman but I really hope we can draw the line at haunted accordions that play spooky renditions of High School Musical and a prophetic dream guy called Dick Dickson.”

She was laughing too and Martin thought that she looked better than she had in awhile, it was nice, seeing her like this. 

“Well at least I won’t have to stay extra time for the research of this one, I would go home early but.” he shrugged and gestured in a you know the whole staying here cause of a worm woman situation, she gave him a sympathetic look.

“Well I am leaving early, got a very fun evening planned.” she said with a wink.

She had looked really rather excited and somewhat giddy all day, Martin realized. 

“Oh,” Martin said, “Who is the lucky person then?”

Sasha looked at him puzzled for a few seconds, slowly blinking at him, then the penny dropped.

“What? Oh no, I mean- Tim I guess, we usually have a sort of movie night every once in a while, this one is extra special though, because I found this book about the categorisation of demons, it’s partially in latin? Tim said he would help me look into it. ”

Martin felt his face heat up, feeling the urge to profusely apologize, Sasha continued however:

“It’s not like that though,” she said with a rather annoyed look, and then somewhat softer, “I am not really a dating kind of person, you know?”

Martin wasn’t sure he fully understood what she meant, but that was fine and she was clearly still very excited, so he relaxed.

“Sorry, shouldn’t have assumed, I do hope it’s not one of those books Jon goes on about, they aren't exactly...friendly.”

Her eyes lit up once again.

“Oh it's definitely not a Leitner! I do look out for that sort of thing, the interesting thing about the book is though-”

And she went on for a bit, the moment somewhat unimportant in a way but it still churned in Martin’s mind. 

-

Things with Sasha...shifted after the Jane Prentiss attack, everyone had different ways to cope with trauma of course, Martin knew that.

Maybe that was the thing really, while Tim, Jon and Martin himself were having a hard time processing (even if Tim and Jon refused to properly acknowledge it) Sasha seemed fine, a few weeks of being shaken maybe and she was now back to her regular old self. 

She even had a new boyfriend, Martin had no idea why that irked him so much.

He’d said as much to Tim, who was sitting next to him while both slacked off from their jobs on the stairs to the back courtyard of the institute (why there even was a courtyard was one of the great mysteries of this place).

Tim looked uncharacteristically solemn, seldom did he let his walls down like this. 

“I thought I was in love with her you know,” he said rather suddenly, “I mean we’ve been friends for years now and there was- is no one I would rather spend time with, so I mean if not her then- then who?”

He sighed and Martin made comforting noise, trying not to break whatever spell had made Tim genuinely speak about his feelings. 

“I mean I figured out I wasn’t in love with her before this whole...thing, we talked about it, I think? Some stuff is hazy. Just- I shouldn’t be jealous you know? She is allowed to have a boyfriend.”

“Your feelings are valid no matter what they are.” Martin said seriously.

Tim sighed and leaned into Martin, who enveloped him in his arms.

“Sure, doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck though.” 

And well there wasn’t much Martin could say about that.

After a bit of comfortable hugging silence Tim spoke up.

“Maybe her boyfriend is a vampire though, I totally get to be jealous about a vampire.”

“Tim don’t say that.” he said, trying to hide a smile. 

“What?” Tim said, pretending to be serious, “Everything is possible Martin, worm women and all that, I could obviously not compete with a vampire and their sexy glittering skin.”

Martin shook his head, not able to contain his laughter anymore.

“Can’t believe you are exposing yourself as someone who watched Twilight.” he said.

Tim smiled wickedly up at him from where he was still half cuddled into him.

“The fact that you got that reference exposes you in turn,” he said, sticking his tongue out, “Check mate.”

“Touché.” 

Then Tim stood up and said: 

“Well, Time to go back to our trans containment zone.”

“The fact that we just happen to be trans and were transferred to the archives is a coincidence.”

To that Tim only answered: “Trans-ferred Martin, can’t you see? You cannot call that a coincidence.” winked and back in through the door he went. 

Martin let out an exaggerated long suffering sigh.

Back inside they walked to their respective desks.

“Well lets hope work gets lets shit.” Tim said. “That’s such a low bar, and yet.”

“Paciencia y fé.” Martin said, which was in his repertoire of spanish phrases that just didn’t pack the same punch in english along with “ya pasara” and “digamos que si”.

Tim shrugged.

“Don’t think whatever grandmother made up that phrase could have imagined it being applied to our situation.”

“And yet we still have to hope for it to get better don’t we, see it works.”

Tim flashed him one last smile as he sat at his desk and Martin went to put on the kettle.

-

Martin had assumed Jon’s I-don’t-do-that-sort-of-thing included dating as well and it hadn’t bothered him really, he enjoyed clinging to his crush to Jon like a small steady comfort, even if he knew it wasn’t actually going to amount to anything, there was no harm in day dreaming after all and Martin was perfectly capable of caring about him as a friend too, it was harmless.

Of course the fact that he now knew Jon had been staying at his ex-girlfriends place and the fact that Jon might actually date people didn’t really change anything.

At least that is what Martin tried to tell himself as he shakily poured two cups of tea and mustered the courage to walk to Jon’s office. 

And he was at least a little right, even if Jon dated people, even if Jon would return his feelings (which Martin really did not let himself dwell on), these were particularly unfavourable circumstances to start a relationship, there was the matter that neither of them was able to string together a conversation, because the mundane ones sounded so inane and hollow and the important ones required being genuine and vulnerable and they might just be somewhat allergic to that. 

And there was the matter of the impending apocalypse they had to stop.

Martin knocked on the door and he heard a soft: “Come in, Martin.” from the other side of the door. 

The office was a mess as always and Jon looked like he hadn’t slept in a week and had aged about ten years in the last few months. 

But Martin’s breath caught in his throat anyway because, as was usual for Jon now, he also looked just a little more...comfortable, as you could anyway. They were wearing a hoodie with cats on it that was just slightly too big and a long flowy patterned skirt. 

Jon clearly caught martin staring because he ran his hand through his hair a bit self-consciously and said: “I know it goes against dress code, but I think you get a pass after you get kidnapped by an evil circus.” 

“Oh I mean, you look nice, I mean it looks nice on you. I didn’t mean to uhm, stare?”

“It was- I was just joking.”

“Oh.” 

They just stared at each other, painful silence falling over them. 

Jon broke the silence clearing their throat.

“So... you brought tea?” They said.

“Yeah, it's for you.” Martin said and immediately cringed because who else would he have brought Jon’s favorite chai exactly the way he always takes it.

Jon smiled though, reaching out to take the cup from him. Their hands brushed just a little and Martin's brain briefly shut down and he realised that maybe he should admit to himself he was really hopeless and too far gone.

That is though, how he ended up stupidly staring at Jon’s hands and how he spotted the shiny black ring on the middle finger of his right hand. 

“Thats a nice ring, don’t think I have ever seen you wear jewelry before.” 

That seemed to snap the tension out of the moment a little, Jon looked down at the ring and smiled a little.

“It's an ace ring,” they said, “I used to wear it a lot a while back, not sure why I fell out of the habit, but now I guess I think I am allowed whatever small comfort I can get.”

They were looking at the ring and then at Martin. 

Martin wanted to freeze the image right there, at the small not quite guilty smile Jon had as he looked up at him, at the feeling that things were OK, good even just for a bit.

Then something fell off Jon's desk and they both startled, flinching at the sudden loud noise. 

All the worry and tension flooded back into the room immediately.

“Right.” Jon said. “Did you need anything else?” 

Martin wasn’t sure how to even answer that.

So he just shook his head and started to leave.

Just before he was about to turn around Jon called his name, Martin turned around to face Jon that seemed to be fighting for the words he wanted to say.

“Yes, Jon?”

“Thank you.”

Martin smiled a sad smile.

“Anytime.”

-

It’t not that Martin had never heard the word asexual before, or that he didn’t know Jon was ace, he’d just never dwelled much on the actual meaning of it.

He had however never heard of ace rings before and he gave it a google for curiosity's sake. 

A black ring usually wore on the right middle finger to indicate the wearer is asexual (“ace”). 

It seemed nice to Martin, small token of your connection to a community, of course his curiosity did not end there, he had assumed previously Jon didn’t do relationships at all, and if he did, what did asexual mean then?

He found out rather quickly that asexuality was about sexual attraction, and aromantic was another thing all together, he also found out that asexuality didn’t mean a person couldn't have a libido, or like sex.

And maybe he just stood there staring at his laptop screen for a while knowing that sexual attraction had never really made sense to him, maybe it felt like something clicked.

And so knowing he definitely did not have the time or the emotional energy to deal with it he quickly closed his laptop, he had an apocalypse to stop and a boss to dispose of after all.

-

Martin was trying very hard to read Hija de la fortuna by Isabel Allende, every other sentence he sighed and grabbed his phone to look up a word the meaning of which he didn’t know.

It was frustrating, he once had been almost fluid in spanish as a child, but then his dad had left and his mother wasn’t able to and didn’t want to maintain his fluency. He hadn’t exactly had time or money for classes either and so now he attempted to regain some of it by watching movies and reading books.

It was not just the language of course that made it hard, Martin was so entirely full of worry. It was rare he got to spend a day in his flat these days, usually cooped up in the Institute hiding from something, or at the side of Jon's hospital bed talking to him, reading to him on occasion.

The anxiety, the fear, the pain, it had festered into Martin, the tiniest sounds made him jump and even when he got tiny little moments in which he wanted to, needed to, rest he still felt like a watched prey animal, or the full force of grief threatening to crush him.

Today he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, nothing remarkable had happened in a handful of days and it made him uneasy, he was waiting for Melanie to call him about a new attack, he was waiting for Peter to summon him with a weird cryptic request. 

And you would think that with all this other worry he wouldn’t be fretting about his sexuality.

But apparently there was plenty of anxiety to go around for all the areas in his life and he just couldn’t get that moment, months ago now, out of his head.

He sighed at set the book aside, grabbing his phone and opening google.

He felt like he was 14 again asking his mother what gay meant and getting only a nasty look in return, or 17 and anxiously looking for a book about being trans in the library. 

It was silly to look it up and read articles about how to know you were ace, because he already knew somewhere, but he desperately needed the confirmation.

The third or so blog post he opened was about a woman in her 50’s that had recently figured out she was ace.

Its freeing  the article read it’s freeing to be who you are and to understand yourself better, even if you aren’t sure, its OK, it will be OK.

Martin was only crying a little, he laid down his phone and stared at the wall.

He thought about how he had never quite fit, he wasn’t quite english, not with the people asking him where he had come from or asking his mother as a child where she had gotten him from. He wasn’t Bolivian either, he had never been there, his spanish was limited, he could only cook about three and a half recipes that the internet had taught him.

He had never been a woman and he would never fit what society thought of as a man. And what that exactly meant for his relationships.

He never understood other people, but he never thought he was bad enough to seek help for it.

Sexual attraction was vague and he didn’t get it, but in the few relationships he had had in the past he hadn’t minded sex, he enjoyed watching a nice movie together just as much but there was a nicety to it, especially taking care of someone else, having them unravel infront of you. And he had found it weird that he didn’t want anything back, that he felt uncomfortable sometimes.

He imagined he meant he was wrong, like with everything else Martin Blackwood also couldn’t do that right. 

But maybe there was something here, in Martins corner of human experience, in the small stack of books about Bolivia that he read, in the trans pin on his backpack and patches he sewed onto his clothes, in calling himself gay man even if that didn’t cover the nuances because it felt good, in the chew necklace that hung around his neck because it eased his anxiety.

Just like all of those things, Martin was ace, he wasn’t wrong or broken he was just different and there were all those other people who were different too and it was nice. 

And Martin was crying because of the overwhelming sense of belonging, and because he finally understood Tim when he had once asked “But what does romance even mean, Martin?” and he would never get to tell him, because this is yet another thing he and Jon could have talked about if the world had been kinder to them, this is something he could be talking about to Jon if he wasn’t in a coma.

But even in these miserable circumstances Martin made sense to himself a little more and no one could take that away from him.

-

The past week in the safehouse had been a whirlwind of emotions, but both Jon and Martin were trying, trying hard to heal, to learn how to feel safe again, to love each other.

For all that trying they hadn’t talked about it much, it was hard still, but Martin was quietly holding on to the hope that they would get there.

Today had been quiet, with the biggest setback being that Jon had found it hard to find all the ingredients for the sambar he wanted to make for dinner. 

“I know it won't be like my Pāṭṭi (பாட்டி) taught me, but you would think they would at least have coconut.”

Martin found their grumpiness adorable, reveled in the mundaneness of this worry. And he hadn’t been able to contain his laughter when they finally had found coconut and Jon had held it up triumphantly.

The food had been delicious and now they sat on the couch, it was hard Martin craved touch so dearly but it was like stepping into hot water after standing on ice for a while and Jon flinched so often, not used to not being hurt and sometimes Martin’s unnaturally cold skin brought up unpleasant memories. 

They could have wallowed in guit and yearning, but they were both stubborn, and so even if it took a while and millions of slow movements and asking if something was OK they managed. 

So it was that Jon had his legs draped over Martin's lap, enough to bring comfort, not too much as to be overwhelming, and their hands were lightly on top of eachother.

Jon seemed pensive, but not worried, Martin shot him a questioning glance.

“We went at this in such a sideward way,” Jon said, “I mean we live together now but we haven’t really...talked about it. We never- we never asked?”

There was a beat of silence where Martin just looked at Jon and then a smile spread over Martin's face.

“Jonathan Sims do you want to ask me out?”

Jon averted their gaze in a way that meant even though Martin couldn’t see it they were definitely blushing.

Martin just couldn’t contain his delighted laughter.

“Must you laugh at me,” Jon said, faking offence, he was also smiling now.

A bit of seriousness returned to his voice as he spoke up again.

“I don’t care that we have done it all backwards Martin,” they said, “But, I love you.”

And as he said that Martin stared at him, mouth agape and his heart thundering in his chest, he lost his ability in any language. Jon said it firmly and securely and Martin really didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all the feelings he had, Jon continued however. 

“And we don’t have to do anything but it just feels like we are dancing around several conver- Martin? Are you alright?”

It was only then Martin realised he was crying and he could only ask:

“You love me?” 

Not because he didn’t know, but because sometimes you just need the confirmation.

Jon squeezed his hand gently.

“Of course I do.”

Martin wanted so badly to answer him, to reproach but he couldn’t, not yet, instead he blurted.

“May I kiss you?”

Jon smiled, a tad nervously.

“That's sort of what I wanted to talk about,” they said, “boundaries?”

Martin understood the necessity of such conversations he really did, but it did not mean he was going to enjoy them.

It did come as a surprise however that Jon suddenly got very nervous and said.

“I mean- I just- I am ace, Martin.”

Martin cokced his head in confusion and said:

“Yeah, I know.”

Jon mirrored his confused look.

“You do?” and then more sour, “You listened to the tape?”

And fine Martin admitted to himself, maybe they should talk more.

“No? You told me, like ages ago.”

Jon laughed, relieved, happy.

“Sorry,” he said, “Ironically my memory is foggy. It has been a rough couple of...years.”

Martin hummed something of affirmation, because he also knew this seemed like a nice moment to come out, and he felt the very familiar anxiety in his belly. Idiotic anxiety because Jon was also ace and there were no stakes in this situation at all. 

Maybe it was just the fact that he had never said it aloud.

Martin heard himself speak:

“I think I am too,” and he could hear how stupidly nervous he sounded, “ace, I mean.”

There was a vague ringing in his ear and if he had been in the position to he might have just run out of the room, apparently facing down unknowable monsters didn’t make coming out easier.

His fear was cut down by the fact that Jon was absolutely beaming at him.

“That's great!” they said, “I mean not that I would have minded if- but it is nice to have someone understand, that's all.”

It was, it was amazing to have Jon here smiling up at him holding his hand and understanding him.

“It really is,” Martin said, then gently bringing the back of Jon’s hand to his cheek and leaning into it, “Doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk boundaries though.” 

Jon smiled at the small gesture and then said serious:

“I don’t want to have sex, ever.” 

Martin knew it sounded like people had tried to debate them on it before and it made his chest ache.

“I know,” he answered and then because honesty was key, “I am not adverse to it, but obviously if you don’t want to, we won’t, ever.”

Jon sat up a bit then, lifting his hand from Martins and gently cupping his cheek. Martin's pulse quickened, his hand moving almost automatically to Jon’s arm.

“How do you feel about kissing?” he asked.

“It's nice,” Jon said, smiling a bit cheekily leaning forward,  “So long as it isn’t tongue kissing that is.”

Martin leaned forward until their breaths mingled at their lips where all but touching.

“May I kiss you then?” He asked, breathless.

Jon could only nod and they both leaned forward the last inch.

Time must have stopped for a bit as they kissed, gentle and full of a thousand promises. 

They both moved away from the kiss gently, they were both tearing up a little, Martin felt so much so strongly and he pulled away from Jon completely.

“Just need a moment.” he said and smiled at Jon's reassuringly if a bit shaky. 

“Take all the time you need,” Jon said and then softer, “Anything you need.”

And Martin was sure he had never loved anyone more. 

-

On the fourth day of their third week in Scotland Jon had gone to run some errands in town and had come back with an incredibly nervous air about him they were sitting across from Martin at the table twirling their hair and checking his pocket every once in a while.

It was making Martin incredibly antsy and by the third time Jon had looked like he wanted to say something only to then go back to the crossword he was definitely making no progress on Martin had had enough.

“Sol mio,” Martin said, very much enjoying Jon’s wide eyed flustered he always got when Martin called him pet names. “Will you please tell me what is wrong.”

Jon looked at him sheepishly.

“There is not something wrong, per se.”

Martin gave him a look.

Jon sighed and stood up, grabbing a small box from his pocket. 

“Nothing is wrong I just… bought something for you beloved.”

Martin very nearly had a heart attack when Jon opened the box and there was a ring inside. Upon closer inspection it was a beautiful black ring and Martin understood. 

There was silence as Martin could do no more but stare at the ring and then at Jon.

“I see how a ring might come over as a gift now,” Jon rambled nervously, “it is not like that- I mean that is something we will have to talk about. I was afraid it would be too much? It is engraved too and I just hope I didn’t-”

Martin cut him off: “Jon let me see it properly.” 

Jon handed him the ring.

Martin lifted the ring out of the box and saw the engraving on it.

 நான் உன்னைக் காதலிக்கிறேன். I love you. Te amo.

Martin promptly sat down again, it was so sappy, just a tad ridiculous and stupidly cute. It hurt in his chest and tears stung in his eyes.

“How did you know I wanted one?” he asked, because he didn't know what else to say.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck self consciously and said:

“You were talking a few days ago, about how you would like something like a- like a token, to remind you and I thought an ace ring might be nice.” 

They lifted their right hand.

“We match now.” 

Martin silently moved to put the ring on, it fit perfectly. He ran his fingers over the tiny groves of the words on it. 

An anchor. 

A small reminder that he belonged, here in the world, here with Jon. 

Martin stood up and gently enveloped Jon in a hug.

“Thank you,” he murmured into Jons hair as he placed a small kiss on top of their crown. “It’s perfect.”

[imagekeepr]

Songs for Halloween Parties

Halloween parties offer the most wide open subject possibilities of any type of celebration. Halloween is the one day of the year that lets you be any living thing or dead thing, any occupation, any human or non-human and any personality type. You can be a cartoon character if you like. Since Halloween can go hundreds of different directions, the playlist will likely be a diverse list of novelty songs. The Monster Mash by Bobby Boris Pickett Rock Lobster by The B-52's Creep by Radiohead Everyday Is Halloween by Ministry Space Oddity by David Bowie Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo It's the End of the World As We Know it (and I Feel Fine) by R.E.M. Planet Claire by The B-52's Mad World - Tears For Fears Hell by Squirrel Nut Zippers Wicked Game by Chris Isaak Phantom of the Opera Soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd Weber Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon Black Celebration by Depeche Mode Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles Walking On The Moon by The Police The Fly by U2 Lola by The Kinks Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by The Hollies I Wanna Be a Cowboy by Boy Meets Girl 2000 Light Years From Home by The Rolling Stones The Munsters TV Theme Not Afraid by Eminem Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down Enter Sandman by Metallica Superstition by Stevie Wonder People Are Strange by The Doors Evil Ways by Santana 1999 by Prince Revolution 9 by The Beatles Twilight Zone TV Theme Hotel California by The Eagles Season of the Witch by Donovan Psycho Killer by Talking Heads The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band Highway to Hell by AC/DC Devil Inside by INXS Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran Thriller by Michael Jackson Super Freak by Rick James Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. Le Freak by Chic Rapper's Delight by Sugar Hill Gang Girlfriend in a Coma by The Smiths Dark Lady by Cher Scary Monsters by David Bowie Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival Devil Woman by Cliff Richard Riders On The Storm by The Doors Runnin' With the Devil by Van Halen Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones Crocodile Rock by Elton John Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People Frankenstein by Edgar Winter Group Nightmare on My Street by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Time Warp from Rocky Horror Soundtrack Rapture by Blondie She Said She Said by The Beatles Wanted Dead or Alive by Jon Bon Jovi Out of Limits by The Marketts Somebody’s Watching Me by Rockwell Bad Girls by Donna Summer Black Magic Woman by Santana Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N' Roses Welcome to My Nightmare by Alice Cooper Boris the Spider by The Who Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang Roxanne by The Police Back in Black by AC/DC Addams Family TV Theme The Blob by The Five Blobs Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson Take the Money and Run by Steve Miller Band Mama Told Me Not to Come by Three Dog Night Witchy Woman by The Eagles Speed Racer TV Theme Let's Go Crazy by Prince King Tut by Steve Martin Another One Bites the Dust by Queen Erotic City by Prince White Wedding by Billy Idol Hells Bells by AC/DC Fly Like an Eagle by Steve Miller Band Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult Tarzan Boy by Baltimore Rocket Man by Elton John Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney & Wings Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera Copacabana by Barry Manilow Black Cat by Janet Jackson You Dropped a Bomb on Me by Gap Band Zoo Station by U2 My City Was Gone by The Pretenders Eye of the Tiger by Survivor 99 Red Balloons by Nena Spirits in the Material World by The Police Monster by Fred Schneider Union of the Snake by Duran Duran They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha by Napoleon XIV Rebel Rebel by David Bowie State of Shock by The Jacksons Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles Freakazoid by Midnight Star Low Rider by War Church of the Poison Mind by Culture Club Rebel Yell by Billy Idol Valley Girl by Frank Zappa E.T. by Katy Perry and Kanye West We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions by Queen All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix Strange Magic by Electric Light Orchestra Burning Down the House by Talking Heads Der Komissar by After The Fire Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive by Men at Work Taxman by The Beatles Monsters and Angels by Voice of the Beehive Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz Spiders and Snakes by Jim Stafford Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers 2001: A Space Odyssey (Also Sprach Zarathustra) by Deodato Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band by Meco Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead by XTC You Are a Tourist by Death Cab for Cutie The Joker by Steve Miller Band Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails Jerry Was a Race Car Driver by Primus Clap For the Wolfman by The Guess Who Fear of the Unknown by Siouxsie & The Banshees I Ran by A Flock of Seagulls Centerfold by J. Geils Band Black Velvet by Alannah Myles Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, also The English Beat You Be Illin' by Run DMC Criminal by Fiona Apple Shout At The Devil by Motley Crue Weird Science by Oingo Boingo Swing The Mood by Jive Bunny and the Mix Masters Wild Thing by Tone Loc Whip It by Devo Planet Claire by The B-52's Legend of Wooley Swamp by Charlie Daniels Band Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley The Freaks Come Out at Night by Houdini The Road To Hell by Chris Rea Billionaire by Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars Devil With a Blue Dress by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels Rock Me Amadeus by Falco Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield Space Cowboy by Steve Miller Band Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash, also Social Distortion Walk the Dinosaur by Was (Not Was) Funky Cold Medina by Tone Loc The Night Chicago Died by Paper Lace N.W.O. by Ministry Paranomia by Art of Noise Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants If I Only Had a Brain by Lee Marvin from The Wizard of Oz Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini Orchestra Smuggler's Blues by Glenn Frey She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby Runnin' Down a Dream by Tom Petty Axel F by Crazy Frog (You've Got to) Fight For Your Right (To Party) by Beastie Boys In The Year 2525 by Zager and Evans Major Tom by Peter Schilling Man On The Moon by R.E.M. Happy Days Theme by Pratt & McClain Send Me an Angel by Real Life Convoy by C.W. McCall Particle Man by They Might Be Giants Pinball Wizard by The Who Fire by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown It's a Mistake by Men At Work Synchronicity II by The Police Mr. Roboto by Styx Wipeout by Surfaris Evil Woman by Electric Light Orchestra King of Pain by The Police Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody by David Lee Roth Twilight Zone by Golden Earring Rockin' Robin by Michael Jackson Spooky by Classics IV Jungle Love by The Time A View To a Kill by Duran Duran Rain on the Scarecrow by John Mellencamp Love Potion #9 by The Searchers Cult of Personality by Living Colour The Candy Man by Sammy Davis Jr. Authority Song by John Mellencamp Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog The Bird by The Time Lil' Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs Canary in a Coalmine by The Police Octopus's Garden by The Beatles Maxwell's Silver Hammer by The Beatles Puttin' On The Ritz by Taco Livin' La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin The Streak by Ray Stevens Bat Dance by Prince Theme from Greatest American Hero by Joey Scarbury Fame by David Bowie Eye In The Sky by Alan Parsons Project Devil in Disguise by Elvis Presley Mommy's Little Monster by Social Distortion Deadman's Curve by Jan & Dean Creature from the Black Lagoon by Dave Edmunds Zombie by The Cranberries The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen Haunted House by Jumpin’ Gene Simmons It's Halloween by The Shaggs Dragula by Rob Zombie Witch Queen of New Orleans by Redbone I Was A Teenage Werewolf by The Cramps Eye of the Zombie by John Fogerty Halloween by Misfits Pet Sematary by The Ramones Horror Movie by Skyhooks The Raven by Alan Parsons Project Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde Feed My Frankenstein by Alice Cooper Don't Be Afraid of the Dark by Robert Cray Hypnotized by Fleetwood Mac The Scientist by Coldplay Run For Your Life by The Beatles Dig My Grave by They Might Be Giants Waltz in Black by The Stranglers I Put a Spell on You by Screamin Jay Hawkins, Creedence Clearwater Revival Ghost Riders in the Sky by The Outlaws, Johnny Cash Ghost of Tom Joad by Rage Against the Machine, Bruce Springsteen Dead Souls by Joy Division, Nine Inch Nails Swamp Witch by Jim Stafford I'm a Goner by Matt and Kim w/ Soulja Boy & Andrew W.K. Mekong Delta - Night on a Bare Mountain Nightmare by Brainbug In the Hall of the Mountain King by Sounds Incorporated One Piece at a Time by Johnny Cash Tequila by The Champs I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night by The Electric Prunes Nasty by Janet Jackson No More Mr. Nice Guy by Alice Cooper Backstabbers by The O'Jays Pets by Porno For Pyros Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins Ghost of a Texas Ladies' Man by Concrete Blonde Dr. Tarr & Professor Feather by Alan Parsons Project To Live and Die in LA by Wang Chung Pictures of Matchstick Men by Status Quo, also Camper Van Beethoven Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves by Cher Land of Confusion by Genesis I Fought The Law by Bobby Fuller Four Naughty Girls by Samantha Fox Jimmy Olson's Blues by Spin Doctors Nightmares by Violent Femmes I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie 42 by Coldplay Haunted House of the Century by Tangent Sunset The Warrior by Scandal Pacman Fever by Buckner & Garcia Planet Earth by Duran Duran Skeleton River by Tangent Sunset Junk Food Junkie by Larry Groce Everything Is Broken by Bob Dylan The Gambler by Kenny Rogers Shark Attack by Wailing Souls Season of the Witch by Joan Jett Superman's Song by Crash Test Dummies Brain Damage by Pink Floyd Paranoid by Black Sabbath He's a Vampire by Archie King Mad Scientist by The Zanies

[storytimewithtibby]

*swings in on a vine like a monkey* fUkcnngg ugghh, can have a kids meal dad please mighty kids meal.

Warnings: None, but definitely kinda crackyRating: GWord count: 1071Pairing: TF2 Medic x ReaderSummary: Reader assisted Medic patching up the team and needs a break

     Every inch of you was sore, not from having gone out with the other mercs, but because you’d just spent the last twelve hours helping the Medic stitch up various limbs and torsos. There were still spots dancing in front of your eyes from the too-bright lighting and red. So much red….

“Why are we here?”

     His tone implied that you had dragged him to some back alley dive bar with syphilitic strippers languidly swinging from a pole. Not a McDonald’s that, to be fair, could have been featured in a Twilight Zone episode. The employee dully provided their name and waited for your order. 

“Because I’m hungry.” You finally replied, fidgeting slightly before meeting the person’s gaze. “I need a mighty kids meal, please.”

“Double cheeseburger or 6 piece nugget?” They droned automatically, and you felt a flicker of guilt showing up at four am. 

“6 piece please.” 

“Schatz… why are you-” Medic started to ask, with an expression somewhere between amused and irritated. 

“For a boy or girl?”

“Me!” 

     For the first time since you came in, the employee seemed to show flickers of life, a smile tugging at their lips. Tapping the order in, they handed you a cup, and for good measure also slid a milk across the counter with a wink. 

“Rough day?” They asked, for all the world suddenly giving the air of bartender ready to play confidant. 

“Very.” You agreed, eyeing the milk before handing it to Medic who had apparently been struck dumb. 

“That is a lot of blood, you okay?”

     Letting out an inquisitive noise, you looked down and saw the bloodstains that spattered you from neck to knees. Oh… Hazily you could recall finishing up the Soldier’s bandages, and half wanting to just collapse. But a small part of you wanted a reward, more than the baring of Medic’s teeth and his very loud praising. Something small, simple, cheap. 

“He’s a field medic and I helped today.” 

“Ah.” 

     There was a moment of shared exhausted silence before the sound of a hand slapping against the heating tray made you jump, but the employee simply turned around. Their hand slid into a bin in front of the tray and pulled out a few small plastic bagged toys and expertly flicked the tabs closed with one hand while trying to hide a yawn before facing you again. 

“To be honest I’ve seen a lot worse, and you don’t look hurt.” A final probe, their gaze flicking to the tall man standing at your side, then back to you with a raised eyebrow.

“Only my back.” You assured them, taking the box with a smile. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

     Carrying your treat to a booth, you slid in with a low grunt before realizing you hadn’t filled your cup. After a moment of glaring balefully at the empty container, you turned your attention instead to the box, struggling briefly before opening it and looking inside. Three toys, but you already knew that setting them aside, but underneath the rest of the box was a mix of fries and nuggets that was definitely not the standard amount. 

     Not bothering to count, you plucked a fry from the container as Medic slid into the booth across from you reaching out for a toy. 

“Could we not have stopped by a store to purchase a toy?” He inquired, wiping salt from the plastic with his finger. “There’s something… spooky about this place.”

“It’s four in the morning. Everywhere is spooky.” Plucking one of the other toys from the table, you opened the packaging and spilled the toy onto your palm letting the instructions flutter to the table. “But these are collectibles.”

“They are not.” Holding his free hand over the floor he rubbed his thumb against his fingers to rid them of salt before peering at the toy still encased. “I am not even sure they are real things.”

     Eyes rolling, you are another fry as you let the toy roll on your palm before opening the other one. It was hard to define a McDonald’s toy when it wasn’t a pop culture thing. But they were kind of cute, and sometimes dangerous. The edges may be dull but stepping on them in the middle of the night could still hurt almost as much as a lego. 

     Nothing on earth or under it hurt as much as stepping on a lego in the middle of the night. 

“That smells like something the Engineer might make.” He commented moments later as you mindlessly munched while playing with the toys you’d gotten. 

“That’s fair.” 

“I can see the sun is beginning to come up.” 

     He wasn’t wrong, you could see the world outside through the glass instead of just your own reflection. How long had you two been sitting there? When you looked towards the counter the employee was leaning on their elbows staring into space and you couldn’t blame them. 

     Out of the corner of your eye, you caught Medic reaching out for the little bird-like toy and tuck it into his jacket. Before you could tease him, however, he reached into the box and pulled out a nugget, squinting at it. 

“Excuse you?”

“I saw a documentary about the making of these nuggets, I do not think you should be eating them.”

“You say after I’ve eaten several already.” You grumble, scooting the box away from you clearly amusing him. 

“Can we go home now?”

     If it weren’t for the note of hope in his tone you might have taken offense, but any lingering adrenaline had faded from your system too. 

“I had hoped to take a long shower and go to bed, but this was also… interesting.”

“Uh-huh… Are you going to keep the little bird thing?” Sliding out of the booth, you tossed the box and all into the trash by the door. “I think Archimedes would like it.”

“That is exactly what I was thinking! And would he not look precious cuddling up to it in his nest with his other odds and ends?”

     He crooned about Archimedes the entire drive back to the compound, his tiredness waning in the face of his adoration of Archimedes and his many adorable habits. It wasn’t a terrible way to end the day, even if your stomach wasn’t as happy with the meal as you’d been planning on.  

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

The Bestiary Revamped: Vampire Squid (HALLOWEEN SPECIAL)

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(I intended to post this yesterday but stuff came up. Anyway.)

Ahem.

Cue the spooky music.

*threatening organ music plays at unbearable volumes*

That’s right, dear readers, the Spooky Gourd Day has finally, finally come, and with it the nigh-endless Halloween shitposting that permeates this website every October like the smell of pumpkin pie did my house just a few hours ago, immediately before I ate most of it. (I still have like half of it left, but it’s cold now so it doesn’t have that mouthwatering smell unless I reheat it. And I was too busy watching old Betty Boop Halloween cartoons to reheat it. Anyway, I’m getting off track.)

Frankly, the obsession of internet culture with this innocuous holiday has always fascinated me. What it is about a day when you get to dress up all funky-like, go from house to house acting like an idiot, horf down all the candy you can get away with and watch scary movies all night that is so attractive to them youngsters? I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

However, it is a day of great significance to this blog, since this is the day when we celebrate the utter freakiest of the freakiest that can be pulled up from the stygian waves of the planet’s oceans. This is the third Halloween of the Terrible Tentacle Theatre, and for this notable occasion, I have decided to give one of my earliest poster children a much-needed revisit.

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was still called Hectocotylus and my content mainly consisted of spicing up Wikipedia and Cracked articles with swearing for the sick enjoyment of some 30 followers, the article in question was my first big hit among the people of the Digital Blue Hills of Hell. In the days when most of my articles didn’t go above 20 notes, this beast gathered up 300 notes by using its nebulous tendrils to reach into the deepest corners of the ole ‘web. Not only was this creature my first big hit in my career as a marine biology blogger with tone moderation issues, it would also fit in great as the main monster in a theoretical Universal Horror/Syfy teamup, which would be the Halloweeniest shit ever.

Ladies, gentlemen and other fellows, the vampire squid.

Before you even see this thing in full detail you can already gather that I didn’t choose it for this year’s Halloween special for nothing. Everything from the ghoulish dark red color scheme to the bat-like webbing between eldritch tentacles screams “cheesy Hammer Horror movies written by good ol’ Howard Philips”. And it will become even more evident when you see it in its full, glowy, betentacled glory.

This is how it looks like when you stare down a squishy, floppy incarnation of doom. This thing looked so freaky that the dude who discovered it, a certain German biologist called Karl Chun, decided to name it Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s Latin for “vampire squid from Hell”. Yep, that’s right. Remember the part where science is hard fact unaffected by emotion? Well you can throw that right out the window, because this fucker freaked its discoverer out so hard that he named it the vampire squid from Hell.

“The shit I’ve seen, kiddo. You wouldn’t believe.”

Even descriptions of this guy sound like they escaped straight from a 19th century gothic horror novel. For example, in 1925 the Arcturus expedition caught one near the Galapagos Islands and described it as “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” Even in the years of the Roaring Twenties, merely seeing the vampire squid was enough to bring out anyone’s inner Poe or Bram Stoker, apparently, which isn’t very surprising considering that it looks like Béla Lugosi had an illicit affair with one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.

You’re welcome for that mental image.

While calling it a vampire is more than appropriate, the names “squid” or “octopus” are much less fitting. While intially appearing to be something of an octopus, it’s actually not one of them; and it isn’t a squid either, which left the confused scientists to place it within its own little private taxon, the order Vampyromorphida. If you know a little bit of Latin, that means “vampire-shaped”, which would imply that this is the general shape for vampires. So next time you read Twilight, imagine Edward as a vampire squid flopping around on the ground the entire time and I guarantee you’ll have a blast reading through several hundred pages of sweaty bloodsucker romance.

Unlike Edward however, the vampire squid doesn’t actually feed on blood. Dashing from shadow to shadow in the cover of a snappy opera cape and hunting for innocent young maidens in the night is the kind of energy expenditure that this malevolent mollusk cannot afford. Mainly because it lives (you guessed it) in the darkest, deepest excesses of the oceans, where the eternal darkness creates an all-year-round Halloween mood. In these waters, even beginners have a hard time finding the tiniest scraps of food, and have to resort to drastic measures to get by. But the vampire squid looks at those beginners and goes “yall are scrubs git gud lmao”. Compared to the vampire squid’s lifestyle, virtually any other denizen of the deep sea lives right in the middle of a goddamn cornucopia.

See, the vampire squid doesn’t just live in the deep ocean. It specifically prefers places called Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ), which sounds more like the hardest Sonic level ever than any serious place which can support life. OMZs are vast sheet-like expanses of water in the deep sea which barely contain any breathable oxygen. Some of these zones can contain as little as 5% of the oxygen that saturates air, and barely anything survives here.

And guess what? The vampire squid lives here. Not only lives, but thrives.

This is the game the vampire squid plays, every day of its life. On hard difficulty.

Obviously, living in a dead wasteland of suffocating water has required the squid to adopt some nifty tools of survival. Do not do so would be like entering the final dungeon of a video game with early game gear.

First off is a pair of sensory filaments, which the vampire squid extends through the water much like a spider does its web. They are super long and flexible, and probably the source of so many dick jokes that the squid will choke a bitch if anyone tells one more.

“No, I’ve never heard that one ever. Ha ha ha. Real fuckin’ original.”

Next up is a pair of membranous wings, used by the squid to travel through the aether of space to “fly” through the water, it’s cape-like arm web billowing behind it. The vampire parallels are getting more and more accurate.

Interestingly this wing isn’t the same in adults and juveniles. At one point in their devlopment they start growing a second pair of fins which eventually fully substitutes the first pair, which then atrophies back into the flesh. Thus if you’re lucky enough to catch a vampire squid, it’s not impossible that it will have four fins. The biologists who first found these four-finned squid nearly went insane trying to describe it (and several other developmental stages) as separate species. It was such a mess it took years to sort out, and nowadays the vampire squid is the sole surviving species of its order. He’s standing in the darkness. Alone.

WAKE ME UP INSIDE

The fins and the filaments aren’t just decorative elements the squid picked out at Hot Topic, either. Used in tandem, they’re a fearsomely effective netting tool and the way this crafty cephalopod earns its daily bread. You think spiders are cool with their webs? Nah, Spiders ain’t shit. They’re lazy idiots and their web does all the work for them. the vampire squid’s filaments is where it’s REALLY at.

See, the vampire squid’s main diet is thankfully not blood but something called “marine snow”. This is basically the shower of discarded tissue, shit and corpses that rains down upon the lower layers of the deep ocean from the upper layers all year round. Having this fall from the sky for “White Christmas” would probably be quite traumatizing.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BALLS OF FECES SHALALALALALALALALAAAAARGH

The vampire squid, however, has had its resolve steeled by years of isolation in the darkness of the deep ocean, and is willing to chug down anything to survive. Bear Grylls is a picky gourmet chef compared to this guy.

That said, it needs to eat something that’s actually of some nutritional worth. It could spend its life scarfing down every chunk of marine snow it comes across, but that would be a waste of muscle movements since most of it does exactly nil to fill up its stomach. That’s where the filaments/fins combo come in, turning the vampire squid into an angry little tripwire trap ready to snap at any moment.

Note the filament. That’s not a parasite, that’s legit a part of the animal. Nobody knows where it evolved from, it’s not a modified arm or tentacle and it’s a fucking enigma.

Mystery tentacles: the quintessential Terrible Tentacle Theatre experience.

Extending its filaments (one at a time) into the mucky waters around, it waits more still then I do when I go to the kitchen for a glass of water during the night and I hear a sudden noise. The filaments come with a plethora of sensitive nerve endings, ensuring that anything bigger than a flea’s asscheeks landing on them will elicit an immediate response from the squid. And if said asscheeks touch the filaments, responds the squid it does. Specifically, it exhibits a surprising burst of speed (considering it just drifts around all day and it is effectively the consistency of Jell-O), pulled entirely by its fins to perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle, whipping around in a loose loop and catching its own filament. Millions of dogs around the world enviously sigh in unison.

After this, the squid pulls off its prey from the filament using its arms, which generate a solid slime-like material. The collected chunks of edible whatnot are rolled into a ball of slime, and horfed down by the squid at once. You probably cannot tell but there’s a Michelin star underneath its mantle. “Slimeball à la Vampire Squid” is one gourmet-ass dish.

Molto bene!

Of course, all this fine dining makes the vampire squid itself tasty as all hell. You are what you eat, afterall. But in the deep sea, you do NOT want to be tasty, because everyone is hungry on top of being the most light-deficient gourmet motherfuckers on the planet. So naturally, our subject needs some sort of way to evade the raving food critics hunting him in the deep. And he has this way in the form of a very unlikely tool: bioluminescence.

“But Admin”, I hear you say, “didn’t you just get done telling us last week that glowing in the deep sea will attract everything around you?” That I did, young padawan, and it still stands. However, just like last week’s subject, the vampire squid uses its built-in glowsticks with a very express purpose and doesn’t just flash into the sunset willy-nilly. The glowy parts of this beast have very well-defined places and usages, exquisitely located and timed, just like a laugh track in a sitcom. Underneath its dark-red skin the vampire squid carries clusters of glowing photophores mainly on the tip of its arms as well as in two fake eye-spots on the top of its mantle, ready to flare up in a blue burst of light on demand. The fake eyes even come with their own built-in eyelids, opening and closing as Dracula Jr. sees fit.

Imagine you’re a predator and you see this glowing collection of random bullshit. Now figure out where to bite. Good fucking luck.

These lights are used with great care and consideration in order to troll the fuck out of anybody who is foolish enough to make an attempt on the vampire squid’s life. Upon attack, the squid whips its arms around with the lights on full luminosity, creating a confusing dance of light spots in the otherwise total darkness and messing up the predator’s perception. The false eyes only make things worse, finally creating the illusion that the vampire squid possesses unlimited godlike control over space and time, which may damn well be true.

Question: What way is this vampire squid going? Hint: It’s not facing toward you.

The appearance of the squid as a godlike psychic is surprisingly in line with the whole vampire angle, since Dracula has reknownedly had the ability to charm and hypnotize people. The effect is further accentuated by the squid’s eyes, proportionally the largest of any animal ever discovered. With a diameter a whopping one sixth of the animal’s whole body, this thing's oculars are like if you were walking around with eyes the size of your head. Each.

And for added effect, they glow and change color depending on which angle you’re looking at them from.

DISCO CTHULHU

And finally, if a spooky vampire-looking-ass dark red glowing octopus-squid-thing with hypnotic powers isn’t Halloweeny enough for you, the vampire squid has a final trick up its sleeve that catapults it right into the realm of body horror. This is suspected to be a defensive tactic but who the fuck knows, really. Deep sea creatures are enigmatic as shit, and they guard their secrets jealously.

Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and say it outright. Basically the final defensive measure of the vampire squid is turning itself inside out.

Yep.

Of all the stupid shit that Mother Nature could have come up with, she went and decided “alright, it just up and turns itself inside the fuck out. What are you gonna do about it?”

This behavior is known to science as “pineappling” or even more Halloweeny-ly “pumpkin posture” (no, seriously) and it involves the squid taking the webbing between its arms and turning it upside to shield its head and body from harm. Now folded comfortably into a spiky little footbal, the vampire squid knows itself free from harm. The webbings are thin enough for it to see through, but also don’t let its lights to shine around, so doing this effectively means the vampire squid switches into stealth mode. Plus it looks stylishly similar to Dracula popping the collar on his cape.

The vampire squid is every Monster Mash horror cliché come to life and smushed into a vaguely cephalopod shaped package for best user experience. When the stars are right and Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn emerge from the sunken city of R’lyeh to bring the world to ruin once more, these guys will be the first living things they encounter. And then they’ll fuck off back to their stupid city, mumbling things like “what the hell man, that’s plagiarism” and “that’s way too extra, even for us”. The apocalypse is postponed once again, thanks to the vampire squid’s vailant efforts of looking weird as fuck.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I was a day late due to the length of this article, but I hope you don’t mind. Until next Tuesday’s article, have a wonderful time with the aftermath of the day of cheesy horror and confectioneries.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life

Tree of Life Web Project

Animal Diversity Web

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

Ellis, Richard. “Introducing Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the vampire squid from Hell”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. 

Seibel, Brad. “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Deep-sea Vampire squid”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. Retrieved 3 July 2011. 

Hoving, H. J. T.; Robison, B. H. (2012). “Vampire squid: Detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 

[ventus-rogue]

So between classes I took a nap and dreamed that I was in class, but we were all talking about Halloween rather than lecture. Towards the end my professor started quoting the opening sequence of the Twilight Zone and I woke up the very second he was done. Then in actual class my professor kept making spooky noises. Am I living in the Twilight Zone?

[ao3feed-victuuri]

Kenopsia

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2waHSrY

by redtopaz

The eve of Skate America 2017, the world stops in an abrupt eruption of horrible noise. When pro figure skater Yuuri Katsuki wakes up, he's seemingly alone in a completely empty hotel with no way out.

---

Or, the story I wrote because I like Twilight Zone and Yuri!!! on Ice and thought that for some reason they'd be fun together.

Words: 1220, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime), Twilight Zone

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M, Other

Characters: Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov, Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin, Jean-Jacques Leroy, Phichit Chulanont, Christophe Giacometti, Leo de la Iglesia, Sara Crispino, Mila Babicheva, Isabella Yang

Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Jean-Jacques Leroy/Isabella Yang, Victor Nikiforov & Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri & Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin & Yuri Plisetsky

Additional Tags: Suspense, Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Season/Series 01, Post-Season/Series 01, Romance, Drama, 2017 Skate America, Science Fiction, Figure Skating Mystery Boys, Weirdness, Established Relationship, Canon Relationships, spookiness

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2waHSrY

[bigbenalpha]

The Haunting of Hilltop House*

This is a looooong post but totally worth your valuable time. So I got one of my besties a haunted doll for Xmas.  I got the idea from the Bizarre States podcast where one of the hosts gave a haunted doll to the other just as a random gift.  If you like paranormal stuff, true crime, cats, poop, strange history, sex, and general hilarity you should give them a listen.  The doll was purchased on eBay so yeah, who knows if theirs was really haunted. Ebay makes the sellers of such items put up disclaimers about haunted items since that isn’t exactly a tangible property that can be legally sold. I thought about just giving my friend a doll without any warning but then decided against that. It seemed a bit shitty to go “Here, it’s a cursed object! Merry Xmas, Kbye. Love you”  so I opted to ask her if she’d actually want such a thing. She was into it so I spent a couple days going over the available dolls and picked out one that seemed active but not malicious, and wasn’t too pricey. Most of the dolls in my price range were fairly normal looking. The creepy ones were either out of my price range or described as evil.  I settled on Owena. Here’s the description provided by the seller, first the headline then the body:

"haunted doll "Owena"  Alarming Porcelain Doll"

"I believe this is the spirit of Owena.  She is a girl from an Island somewhere by Wales.  She talks in a language that I don't understand.  The story I that has been told to me is she drowned in the sea by her house.  She will forever be looking for her family.  The doll was brought to the States by a person that was vacationing in Wales and found this doll in a store.  He felt so moved when he picked up the doll that he purchase it.  He says it was the worst decision he has ever made.  He was forever being woke up in the middle of the night by a horrifying noise that sounded almost animalistic.  When he was home working there was always a tapping noise on the outside door, every time he got up to check on it, nothing was there.  The last time this happened, his porch was covered in water.  He immediately put the doll in a box and took it our mutual friend.  She has asked me to sell it and be rid of it. 

The doll itself is 15" tall, wearing a beautiful plaid, what and lace dress, with matching hat, white bloomers, white socks and shoes.  Brown-reddish hair with brown eyes. The doll it a part of the Danea Collection Porcelain."

There were pictures as well but I took some of my own that’ll post a little ways down. I placed the order and waited impatiently. The doll arrived a bit sooner than the initial order tracking said it would. Maybe that was good sign it was really haunted and they popped for express shipping to get rid of it faster. It showed up on Nov. 29th as I was headed out the door to work so I was gonna have to wait until later to open the box. I sent my friend a pic of the box and her excitement was high, too.

As the evening went on at work I got a little apprehensive about opening the box. Not so much because I was afraid of a ghost but, if it was actually haunted I was worried that it might imprint on me like a baby raptor and then when i handed the doll over it wouldn’t do anything spooky for my friend.  When I got home I decided to open the box if only to make sure the doll wasn’t broken and was actually the one I ordered. I carefully sliced the tape and saw that the doll was wrapped in plain brown paper like an unnatural burrito Julie Andrews might sing about if she worshiped the devil.  I gently slid the doll out onto my arm like how you cradle a puppy and took off the paper.  She’s a very pretty doll.  As I handled her I never felt any weird energy from her like that guy did who originally bought her.

I made some small talk, asked how her trip was, that sort of thing. I told her that I was planning to give her to my friend as a gift for Xmas so she wouldn’t be staying with me for very long. I promised her that I wouldn’t put her back in the box.  I laid her on my bed and went about my usual routine of watching a few shows, net surfing and playing games until it was time for bed. Then things got interesting.

I sat her on my desk chair and got in bed. I ended up having a bit of insomnia, partly because I was on high alert for any spooky happenings but also just because it was one of those nights.  Every once in a while there would be a sound I didn’t recognize as one of the usual night noises in my house. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly they sounded like or where they were coming from but I didn’t get any chills or spooOOooky feeling from them. I eventually drifted of into a twilight sorta dozing. I was starting to dream but still aware of how i was laying, the temperature of the room and that my leg needed to stretch. So I stretched and gave my leg a shake for good measure. And kept shaking. And kept shaking. And wait that’s not me!  I was laying diagonally in the bed and the corner of the mattress where my feet were was shaking violently.  It was also the corner of the bed closest to Owena. I sat up and it stopped. It wasn’t like how you jolt yourself awake as you doze off. It was a definite physical feeling of the mattress being moved under me. I stayed awake for a little while longer until I finally fell all the way asleep.  When I woke up Owena was in the same spot where I left her. I said good morning (afternoon), made some more small talk and left for work.  

That night at bedtime I politely asked her not to do anything spooOOooky since I had a doc appointment early the next morning. She complied and I managed to get a good night’s rest. When I got home from the doc I was walking through the living room and I heard a weird little girl’s voice say “hello!” I was like FUCK! SHIT! She’s coming for me!!!  Then she asked if I could say red and started singing the ABCs. It was a motion activated toy in my baby great-niece’s playpen. Once my sphincter unclenched I had a pretty good laugh. I told Owena what happened but I’m thinking she already knew. I had a little nap before work but nothing odd happened. But every night after that for the next week was exactly like the first night- one or two odd noises then getting shaken as soon as I dozed off. Most of them were definitely Dream Ben getting shaken but once it was definitely my pillow being shaken for real. After the first week the shakings stopped but the noises shifted into recognizable sounds, specifically rustling fabric and sighs. And they happened while I was wide awake at my desk with the lights on. The final time the noises happened was fairly intense. My seven year old great-nephew likes to play sneaky ninja sometimes and crawl into my room while I’m at my desk. He’ll get behind my bed then get under the covers and try to get all the way behind me without me seeing him. He’s actually been getting better at it but still never manages to get the drop on me. That night it seemed like he succeeded. I heard all the usual noises he makes- his attempts to hold his breath, the sound of his knees on the carpet, the covers moving around as he tries to hide under them. I was like, damn, he’s getting pretty good. I turned around and the only thing on the bed was Owena. Right were I left her, fortunately. After that she got kind of dormant (not really, she was going in hard on my sister but more on that in a bit.). I thought maybe she was enjoying my company and the shows I was watching so she didn’t feel like getting up to spooOOooky shit. I was treating her to Critical Role, AcqInc C Team, Star Trek Discovery and hard-core binging Bizarre States to get caught up so that all seemed reasonable. I quit making small talk to see if that would get her going but still nothing. Finally it was getting close to the day for the gift exchange and I said to her “you need to be doing something to prove I didn’t wast my money on you. I love my friend and she’s very excited to be receiving you so you need to step up and make this an Xmas to remember.” For the rest of the week the dream shakes returned like clockwork every time I dozed off. 

Two days before the hand-off I asked my sister if anything weird had been happening in the house. She just looked at me for a minute then,  “Yes. What have you done?” I brought Owena to her and told her what the deal was. I deliberately didn’t say anything sooner to make sure my sister wasn’t actively looking for anything weird to happen. We’ve had a long history of paranormal things happen in our house so best to not put ideas in her head. This post is super long so I’ll just list some bullet points of shit she experienced.

She felt cold and creepy when she held the doll

There were random cold spots and zones of dread floating around her room.

Her mattress frequently felt like it was breathing but I never told her about my shaking experiences until after she said that.

She thought she heard my great-nephew (her grandson) come up behind her and whisper GRANDMA in her ear only to learn he was in the other end of the house.

Her handheld mirror flew off its hook and into the middle of her floor. The hook flew across the room.  The mirror didn’t fall straight down like if the hook was loose.  It went several feet out from the wall.

The day came for the exchange and I met my friend for breakfast. Two friends actually- Michelle, the recipient, and Renau (pronounced Renee), an adventure pal. I also gave Michelle a white sage smudge stick and a small bag of gemstones for in case things got crazy. In a cool coincidence Michelle also gave me a bunch of crystals and minerals.  We went by the store where I work and tried to make an EVP with Owena. I asked a few questions, then Michelle. Nothing turned up. Renau took a little movie of us while we talked. No odd images appeared. At one point the light seemed to flicker on camera but it definitely didn’t do it in the store. It might have just been an auto lighting thing with her phone but it happened at an odd time. I will try to include those in this post but Tumblr was acting weird when I tried to add pics so I might have to do it in stages.  Worst case scenario maybe I’ll put them on Dropbox and add links here. Also, once the doll was gone from my house all the weird stuff stopped happening to my sister... well, things just went back to the normal weirdness let’s say.

So I go to work and Michelle and Renau head back to their homes.  That evening Michelle and I both experienced a shake - her with a nap, me at bedtime.  I instantly knew it was because I forgot to say goodbye to Owena. Michelle has also heard a few random noises that aren’t typical for her house. She’s also been feeling slight breezes on her hair and face in places where there aren’t any, like in her car. It’s cold here now so no open windows. Her cats have acted slightly out of their normal routines but not full-on freaked out or anything.  Michelle has been doing a few experiments to see if she can get any more information from Owena but nothing concrete that matches the eBay description.  And if the eBay description is to be believed, and Owena is looking for her family then she might have been somewhat appeased by my and Michelle's houses. Mine is waaay too full of family and Michelle’s kids and in-laws are in and out frequently.  I hope she continues to be active but doesn’t do anything malicious. Of course I’ll post updates if anything truly outrageous occurs.

* The little rural suburb type area where I live is called Hilltop. Seemed like too good of a pun to pass up.

[theconservativebrief]

They all start the same way: a few minor chords from a pipe organ, maybe a quick plug for Bromo-Seltzer or some other apothecary’s helper no longer in circulation — and then the creak.

It is the creakiest creak to have ever creaked, so drawn-out and borderline polyphonic that it could be mapped on a musical staff. Doors, even those leading to dank candlelit basements in which creepy bards wait with tales of the macabre, do not make this much noise in real life. (And that’s true; the creaking sound effect was achieved with a rusty swiveling chair. Pity the poor self-starting staffer who once oiled the makeshift instrument under the impression that he was helping out.)

But that’s just the order of the day on The Inner Sanctum Mystery, where there’s always a chill in the air, black cats yowl at the full moon, and no hinge keeps quiet.

Spun out from Simon & Schuster’s series of cheap paperbacks and then spun out once more into a six-picture series of feature films in the ’40s, the title gained the most prominence as a radio serial running 526 episodes from 1941 to 1952. Creator Himan Brown struck the same chord with audiences that Rod Serling would continue to clang all throughout the 1960s on The Twilight Zone, attaining impressive longevity through an infinitely renewable formula and the public’s unslakable thirst for fear.

Brown cohesively bound the many installments of this radio anthology by sticking with a consistent structure and tone befitting the morbid subject matter. A vampy host brought over from the Broadway stage (Raymond Edward Johnson, at first, then Paul McGrath from 1945 onward following Johnson’s enlistment in the war effort) would ham it up as he introduced the night’s diversion with florid language that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud.

Then followed an account of danger and suspense, playing up atmosphere and tension over gutbucket descriptions of gore, erring on the side of “spooky” rather than “horrifying.” These punctuated by occasional appearances from the schoolmarmish Lipton Lady, come to shill for sponsored tea and tut-tut the twisted little deviants who tuned in.

The narrator’s raconteurish presence set the scene as an act of yarn-spinning, a framing device harkening back to the scary-story form’s beginnings in the oral tradition. By creating this familiar cast of characters and an accompanying sense of communal gather-round-children experience, the Sanctum established itself as a place anyone could go to get scared out of their wits in the comfort of their own home.

While some episodes dove into the supernatural (to wit: “The Horla,” in which Paul Lukas contends with an invisible demon borrowed from an old French novella), they more frequently landed in an earthbound, Hitchcockian register. With all the gravitas that the sonorous cast could muster, they emphasized a human element among the violence, illustrating the ease with which jealousy, arrogance, or anger can drive a person to homicidal extremes.

All that each half-hour segment needed was a sturdy hook on which it could hang puns, pulpy pleasures, and purple prose; hubristic would-be masterminds plotting their perfect crime, average Joes stalked by unseen predators, lovers losing their senses in fits of feverish passion.

The dark side of the FM dial provided a playground for some of the era’s most lauded talent to cut loose, and launched careers for a handful of future stars. Because the Sanctum’s signature fusion of lurid content and arch humor toeing the line of camp offered many thespians a reprieve from a diet of soft-focus melodramas and dignified theatre work — not to mention a quick check — it attracted the cream of the day’s crop.

Silver screen monster-men such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were regular fixtures on the airwaves, the invisible man Claude Rains showed up for “The Haunting Face” (an episode now preserved by the Library of Congress) and two years out from Citizen Kane, Orson Welles dropped in to provide vocals for “Death Strikes the Keys.” Helen Hayes and Mary Astor set a course for the scream queens of the ’70s with their earsplitting terror, and even Frank Sinatra lent his velvety baritone to “The Enchanted Ghost.” For audiences in the ’40s, listening felt like attending a swinging costume party with all their favorite celebrities.

For listeners in 2018, however, the Sanctum and its library of nightmares live on as a totem of nostalgia for a bygone era, both of horror and audio media.

The Inner Sanctum Mystery took me unawares on — when else? — a dark and chilly night. During the final hours of an October day’s road trip with a friend, we were scanning the FM dial when an eerie shriek burst onto the radio and caught our attention. After about 20 rapt minutes, we learned that a local affiliate liked to treat Long Islanders to some vintage frights when the according season rolls around.

Though many episodes have been lost to the sands of time, a healthy portion remain available to stream online, and revisiting this curious chapter of horror has become my favorite Halloween ritual. There’s a hokey appeal to the conspicuous old-fashioned-ness of the crackly broadcasts, all corn-syrup blood and rubber bats. Brown pushed the horror envelope by taking advantage of radio’s inability to graphically represent grisly material, allowing the suggestion of depravity and letting the listener’s mind fill in the rest.

Inner Sanctum Mystery host Raymond Edward Johnson poses with a presumably creaky door. CBS via Getty Images

Moreover, Sanctum hails from a time when consumers had a more formal relationship with what they listen to. In a pre-TV America, the radio was appointment entertainment, commanding rooms where sitting families would place the sum total of their attention on a narrative that leaves you behind if you zone out. There’s something meditative about doing nothing but sitting and focusing, eyes closed, imagination firing on all cylinders; it raises the zen state of lower wakefulness achieved by moviegoers to the Nth degree. While you listen, everything else stops.

As the popularity of long-form radio storytelling has declined, podcasts have moved in to fill the vacuum, but some of the jerry-rigged charm has been lost along the way. Freed from dependence on a gatekeeping broadcast station, independent outfits everywhere have flooded the internet with anthologies and long-form series updating Sanctum’s template. The White Vault is one such program, following a perilous expedition to a research facility tucked away in a frost-choked wasteland. Producer Travis Vengroff and creator/host Kaitlin Statz agree that the content and the platform housing it have both changed since Brown’s day.

“Older radio teleplays generally emphasized stage acting and live audio design,” they explained via email. “As many of the shows were performed live for radio, they created soundscapes on the fly using whatever objects or tools they could fit in a soundstage… From a production perspective, audiences now expect more.”

Attaining a standard of professionalism is more doable than ever, but that polish has widely supplanted techniques with their own time and place. As Vengroff and Statz put it, “Stories are now pre-recorded, edited, and mastered prior to being released. So instead of shaking heavy paper, actual sounds of thunder might be used, and the sounds of wind and rain might be used in place of a dramatic organ performance.”

That technological evolution is reflective of a wider shift away from the stylized pre-packaged irony embodied by Inner Sanctum Mystery and towards an approximation of real life. “Over-the-top acting was also desirable because shows during that era emphasized excitement,” the White Vault team said, “often taking listeners to distant locales to tell grandiose stories. While a podcasting sub-genre still exists to cater to the fans of the old radio plays, modern audio drama has since shifted its style.”

While the audio drama medium’s evolution clearly points forward, employing more sophisticated equipment and techniques, the limitations of Sanctum’s era forced personal touches that are now easily automated. Statz and Vengroff aren’t bothered by these sea changes, or by the notion that consumers might be taking in their handiwork while cooking, driving, cleaning, working out, or “powering through any mind-numbing tasks.” The listener has claimed dominion over the shape of their entertainment, pausing and playing as they please, streaming and downloading at their own pace.

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die, and accept that Inner Sanctum Mystery’s specific register of mannered, corn-adjacent horror lives on solely as a novelty in a modern radio landscape. But what is Halloween if not the season of novelty, an occasion for goofy artifice, for plastic and foam?

Inner Sanctum Mysteries host Raymond Edward Johnson and actress Virginia Owen demonstrate the old head-in-a-hatbox gag. CBS via Getty Images

Excluding only sci-fi, horror attracts more purists than any single genre, and that diehard fanbase can be a double-edged sword. Slasher flicks remain the one trend-impervious box-office bet, as recently proven by the umpteenth Halloween’s resounding success, yet this comes at the cost of some measure of homogenization.

Plenty of people equate horror with straight-faced scares, as if its inherent value can be measured in ounces of cold sweat. Those in search of something a bit kookier can perhaps have a detached chuckle at kiddie-demo Halloween specials, but otherwise, they’ve got to search a little harder.

The Inner Sanctum Mystery, then, serves as an alternative to all things sleek and serious, occupying a universe where the words “gritty reboot” have yet to be uttered. This facsimile of time travel transports listeners to a horror paradigm governed by the notion that being scared should be kind of fun and kind of silly.

Brown preferred to emulate the feel of a fairgrounds haunted house rather than a house actually haunted, with the added benefit that most of his tricks had yet to calcify into cliché. Conceived with a wink and performed with absolute conviction, his work aptly embodies the spirit of Halloween as a jovial celebration of all things frightful. Every day was October 31 in the Sanctum, all the nights stormy, all the screams shrill, all the doors creaky.

Episodes of The Inner Sanctum Mystery are available to stream via archive.org,

Original Source -> Why the vintage terrors of The Inner Sanctum Mystery make for great modern Halloween fare

via The Conservative Brief

[writer59january13]

A Nightmare In Collegeville,™ Pennsylvania circa mid 1980's

     While shuffling off to Buffalo (another name I use to call the bedroom here at 2 Highland Manor Drive), an impulsive whim found me rifling thru notebooks of very early writings from yours truly.

Back some decades (perhaps an amount of time approximately equal to the half life of element named Matthew Scott Harris), typed document unexpected spilled forth from a heavy duty three ring notebook binder.

    Upon rummaging among typed efforts of literary amateurism, these myopic eyes stopped short when espying a stapled composition about four pages long. The material in question refers to the title of this piece de la resistance.

    There appeared to be a beginning, middle and end, which degree of completion would absolve me to ponder a theme for self subscribed daily assignment, which discipline forced refinement of a verbose harried style, and not always swiftly tailored.

    Hence the brief preface now allows, enables and provides this wordsmith to segue-way into the core firmly identifying lodestone of material (making alterations to hone clarity, favorability, and integrity) before releasing completed fictional story into cyberspace.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

    A primal fear coursed through my body, and haunted every fiber of my slight (slip of a young man) corporeal essence every time I passed the burned out hulk of what used to be the discount lighting and fixture store located at 3714 Germantown Pike, Fairview Village, Pennsylvania.

    An emotion of fright gripped my psyche most prominently when I drove past the dilapidated, hollowed out scorched structure after the bewitching hour of duck. This palpable quotidian uneasiness best characterized as an eerily foreboding, ghostly sensation. Phantasmagoric phenomena purportedly populated these premises prior to the pyromaniacal torched act of a Mongolian Vandal.

    Twas at twilight nocturnal sweeps of the clock, that the heavily damaged wing of the building stirred like some dormant, huge monster.

    The charred ruins of unsold merchandise, collapsed rubble heap, crumpled corrugated roof material, and twisted (sister like) beams of steel appeared to lumber silently and stealthily along the ground analogous to sinister beast in search of prey.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

    Braggadocio got the better part of this ordinarily overly cautious young man (asper fools rush in where angels fear to tread apothegm).

    Abe Zion (my best friend since kindergarten) double dared ourselves to test our comfort zones, and apply exposure therapy under apropos weather conditions.

    Thus, when came a ferocious, dark and stormy night (nsync  with thee refrain "It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase written by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the opening sentence of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The phrase is considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose.

    Actually, we struck up this mutual pact on a recent pitch perfect, gloriously sunny spring day to prove paranormal phenomena a confabulation, where nature played trick or treat with vulnerably susceptible rudimentary precinct of individual human mind.

    We agreed on this deal (after watching an episode of Let's Make A Deal on television based on similar context). While brimming with testosterone roaring swagger, both of us sought to accomplish a twofold objective. We wanted to put to rest this unfounded rumor, that evil spirits inhabited the

abandoned , abysmal site, to test fledgling manhood by carrying out this adventure of daring-do.

    When the rush hour traffic diminished on this most tempestuous, torturous, tumultuous evening, and no on-coming vehicles could be seen approaching from within our severely restrained minimal visual range, and the last traces of fearful silhouettes from passing headlights dissolved, we parked the car (a 1970 Yolks Beetle) within a secluded area of brush.

    Each of us dressed appropriately in sturdy rainwear then walked the short distance to the forbidding, dismal, decrepit shell of a burnt offering with portable phones, and other paraphernalia in hand. Naturally, we conveniently ignored the NO TRESPASSING sign. Just a little bit of the heebie jeebies gave goosebumps as four light as a feather legs gingerly stepped over yellow plastic construction stripping cordoning and marking off perimeter of danger regard this condemned property.

    Upon approaching what used to be the doorway to the store, we found the entrance blocked. Long (and fostered) animal nests, cobwebs, and thick vegetation impeded further progress. This dense brush needed to be cleared. Both of us unclasped the scythes and created (NIKE) swishing motions in an effort to minimize upsetting the resident flora and fauna ecosystem, who rightfully owned provenance to this territory.

    Once a passage got cleared wide enough for slender framed teenage boys to slink through, the mission resumed. As told, donned cladding bolstered top of the line waterproof gear. Also lugged thru this morass comprised backpacks filled with ample food and drink. Entrance made into the inky black ominous void, whereby every sensory nerve cocked, primed in case an ill fate triggered necessity to escape.

    When suitably acclimated to the pitch black environment did attention turn toward the raging tempest (that would no way fit inside a teacup), and ferocious roar outside indicative of horrible creatures, (where the wild things lurked) evident via cacophony of sounds.

    Amidst this earsplitting maelstrom, a faint yet sharp noise (similar when people toast and clink wine glasses together) punctuated infinitesimal brief silences between the bagging and rattling din.

    Subsequently, a phantom (possibly of the Opera) flitted close to our non-visible presence like some ephemeral spirit aware of intruders.

    The hairs along my spine stood on end in tandem with chattering of my teeth, which found me to cling nervously (for dear life) the coat tails of Abe. He laughed softly, and said “come on scaredy cat”, concomitantly taunting me with mild unflattering names. Braveheart endearment tossed to him, whence the erratic waving flashlight, his signal for us to proceed.

    Abe and I walked slowly and carefully with beams of light (flickering with fluctuating diminution of battery life) pointed to the ground, whence one direction indicated the vanished specter.

    With each footstep closer to our objective (the bowel of what could easily be presumed bombed building), a hitherto undetectable source of phosphorescent shimmering now glowed dimly some length down the corridor.

    As we headed deeper into the hallway (in an attempt to lay eyes on that after glow luminous emanation) to discover visa vis the mystery of this nebulous halo, my head accidentally knocked against dangling overhead merchandise, and right foot unwittingly kicked broken cluttered electrical contrivances scattered across the floor. The reverberation of the moving objects got me spooked. As a result, I let out a shriek of surprise.

    When I next heard a maniacal cackle, I momentarily believed Abe to be playing a boyish cruel, practical joke sans emulating my voice in a sinister exaggerated tone. “Abe”, I said in a stern tenor. “Stop with that childish nonsense”!

    Before he could defend his innocence, a blood curdling squawk filled the dank air as a whole horde of hobgoblins maddeningly swooshed about our faces.

We quickly (albeit instinctively, since painful black bore down upon blinking eyelids) dove for cover in a narrow, yet long abysmal recess within the wall. The pinched width of this alcove forced us to negotiate a careful maneuver, especially as the obstacle course incorporated serpentine curves.

    Before planning a strategic approach, we each outfitted our baby soft hands with durable rubber gloves to protect the tender flesh against damp dark surfaces.

    Inch be ooze filled inch (unbeknownst why, but the refrain from inch winch spider...occurred) as we edged forward through the void of absolute zero visibility, whereby a natural poorly wrought tunnel bled caustic, drastic, elastic flux akin to a soldering iron fashioning precise jewelry. Par for the course, and typical of most generic spooky tales hid sundry vermin lodged in crevices.

    Said various and sundry critters scampered and slithered across thickly clothed arms and legs.

    Eventually, the closed area expanded into a wider corridor, and eased growing claustrophobic tendencies.

    Abe and I breathed a premature collective sigh of relief at this prospect, and exhibited less restraint by conversing in a more audible level of conversation versus a forced coda of whispering moments ago.

    This creeping complacence did not last but a couple minutes. Once again peculiar creaks captured our acute hearing. In addition noticeable vibrations shook below our feet.

    These tremor like movements (I associated, kindled, and linkedin, with earthquakes) increased in duration and intensity. Soon thereafter even more powerful shakes made standing and/or walking impossible. The entire (once complex) edifice shook violently, and forced us to take a knee way before Colin Kapernick.

    A seismic shock wracked the foundation to its mooring, and thru us violently to the ground.

    The timbers creaked and groaned as if under an unrelenting strain, and wrenched loose from their respective mortise and tenon joists.   Floor boards popped loose from heavy duty industrial nails below, while shingles flew (akin to carrion diving after fresh road kill) haphazardly overhead. A patchwork of moonlight filtered down from a clear sky, and revealed a anatomically distorted skeletal frame.   

    One need expend imagination to envision the demolished structure waving like some hideous beastial ghoul or buoy. An ethereal quality imbued the remnant relic with a haunting spectre, a person could expect to encounter at a Halloween party.

    The powerful force of each crumbling, grumbling, and lumbering surge (Knight clanging in rusty armor) from this pseudo living thing (satan incarnate) swept aside any immediate hope of escape.

    While thinking to myself about the foolishness of this decision (an exploit to boast) to test the verity of a super-natural situation, a covey of apparitions considered myself and Abe ground zero (in this macabre version of zero sum game), and immediately rendered each of us unable to utter a word.      

    Try as I did, nary a recognizable plea exited this mouth.

    Unlike anything I ever saw in this brief life of mine (suddenly cherished as more valuable than fine spun gold), these transparent, milky fiendish beings epitomized a demonic streak.

    No doubt our earlier uninvited subterfuge (interpreted by these horrible hosts as a most sinister transgression) riled the figurative (or...maybe real tail feathers) these phantasmagoric banshees sought revenge.

    Rather than meekly resign ourselves to whatever malevolent fate awaited us, we fought tooth and nail for our survival. This amounted to defensive access to an out of reach fenestration, when not parrying nor ducking from bodily harm.

    A mighty strength grew up inside us as if by magic. Despite the topsy turvy momentum of the structure, we managed to stand upright like the bipedal hominids we knew and loved. I suddenly reacquired my speech and yelled out “for Christ sake Abe run for your life”!

    I instantaneously followed suit.

    Neither of us succeed in outsmarting our nemesis. Every cubby hole and hatchway found us face to face with a leering malicious grin much more frightful than that of the Cheshire Cat.

[ao3feed-yurionice]

Kenopsia

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2waHSrY

by redtopaz

The eve of Skate America 2017, the world stops in an abrupt eruption of horrible noise. When pro figure skater Yuuri Katsuki wakes up, he's seemingly alone in a completely empty hotel with no way out.

---

Or, the story I wrote because I like Twilight Zone and Yuri!!! on Ice and thought that for some reason they'd be fun together.

Words: 1220, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime), Twilight Zone

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M, Other

Characters: Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov, Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin, Jean-Jacques Leroy, Phichit Chulanont, Christophe Giacometti, Leo de la Iglesia, Sara Crispino, Mila Babicheva, Isabella Yang

Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Jean-Jacques Leroy/Isabella Yang, Victor Nikiforov & Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri & Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin & Yuri Plisetsky

Additional Tags: Suspense, Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Season/Series 01, Post-Season/Series 01, Romance, Drama, 2017 Skate America, Science Fiction, Figure Skating Mystery Boys, Weirdness, Established Relationship, Canon Relationships, spookiness

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2waHSrY