#all the big furniture is gone. the ghosts of paintings dust the walls. the living room has an echo

[comradesnufkin]

.

[frankiekatt]

My Ghost (Part 1)

Characters: Denki Kaminari 

Notes: Ghost AUs fuel my soul so I had to write one myself. This will be a 3 part series!

Warnings: Mentions of death!

Words: 4K

Synopsis: Denki knew deep down any outcome would just lead to disaster and sorrow. After all, he was a dead man who never aged and who could never leave this house. And you - you were the complete opposite. You were a living, breathing girl with your whole life ahead of you.

Being alone in a brand new house with all its creaks and groans was definitely not your idea of a perfect summer. If you had gotten a choice in the matter, you would have gladly followed your two best friends to Costa Rica, or went vacationing with your father to Greece, or visited your grandmother in Hong Kong. Anything but being stuck home alone in a brand new house that didn’t even have all of your furniture in it yet. 

But sadly, your mother had finally decided to get married to her long-time boyfriend, and the two of them had made the exciting decision to honeymoon in America all summer. Which meant that you would be cat-sitting for your new step-father’s tabby, Charles, in the new family house. All summer. All by yourself. 

The house that your mother and new step-father had moved the three of you into was a two-story brick building with 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a small library on the second floor. The real estate agent that had sold your family the house had explained that no one had lived in this house for over 30 years, due to a death taking place in the upstairs attic, which creeped you out a bit, but your parents were quick to put down a down-payment on the house due to the unusually low price. 

Now, for the next three months, this house would be a constant for you. That, and the black and grey tabby you were now responsible for. 

Though, there was one more thing that would be in your presence for the remainder of the summer. You were not yet aware of the blonde boy’s presence in your house, but he was very aware of yours. 

The very first day you and your family had moved in, Denki was completely smitten with you. He hadn’t seen a girl in this house that wasn’t over the age of 45 and trying to sell this place in well over 30 years. And definitely not a girl this cute. 

He watched you explore the house, following behind you as you went from room to room, admiring the paintings his mother had hung on the walls years ago or inspecting the oak cabinets in the kitchen with a curious look in your pretty eyes. 

Denki adored you. He watched every night as you and your two parents unpacked boxes in every room. He watched every night as you decorated your room - which was once his - with posters and drawings and hung up your clothes in the small closet on the right side of your room. On the third day, while you were downstairs with your mother, Denki decided to look through all the clothes you had hung up the night before. Most of the articles of clothing were sweaters and hoodies with a couple dresses and skirts here and there. 

That’s how you dressed normally, Denki observed. Always in a hoodie or sweater with shorts or jeans. Denki thought it was odd at first, as it was the beginning of June and the sun was scorching. But the more Denki watched you, the more he found you absolutely adorable. 

Denki hadn’t felt the touch of another human being since the day he died in his attic, and seeing you walk around his house each day, bundled up in big hoodies and sweaters, made him want to touch you more than anything. You just looked so soft. On the fourth night, after you had already gone to bed, Denki decided he was going to touch you. Just a little, just on your cheek. Nothing too creepy or too serious to wake you up.

You looked so pretty when you were sleeping. Your eyes were closed, which meant they couldn’t hold that annoyed look you seemed to perpetually have whenever your parents would talk about leaving for the summer. Your brows were rested, no longer drawn together in irritation. You looked completely and utterly peaceful. 

Denki reached out towards your face, hand shaking like a leaf. He hadn’t touched another human in so long, and here you were, right in front of him, unconscious, vulnerable, smooth and soft. Denki had forgotten what human flesh felt like, so when he brushed the back of his fingers against your cold cheek, he almost jumped away. 

Almost.

You felt like spring to him; growth, new beginnings, blossoming, life. You felt like everything Denki had been longing for for over thirty years - hell, even before then. He had only touched you with two fingers, and he already felt like fate had pulled him into its eventful little game. It was frightening to him, how many emotions were drifting in and out of his chest all at once. 

He didn’t know you. The only thing he knew about you was your name and he only learned that four days ago. And yet, he here was, standing in his - your- bedroom, watching you sleep, falling in love with everything about you. 

You stirred slightly at his touch, which made Denki jerk away. He quickly made himself invisible to the human eye once more and stepped away from your bedside before your eyes opened slowly. 

Your room was unusually chilly. You got cold fairly easily, so you often kept the temperature of your room higher than normal, but now it felt like someone had left your window open during a frigid winter night. Sitting up, you pulled the large red hooding off the side of your headboard and slipped it over your t-shirt. Why is it so fucking cold?

Your bedside clock read 3:33am, which meant you only had a couple hours until your mother and step-father left for their 7am flight. Soon, you would be all alone in this house, in a new town, with no one to keep you company other than the fluffy grey cat that was currently sleeping at the foot of your bed. You were now wide awake and freezing cold, so you saw no point in trying to fall back asleep for a measly few hours, so you decided to explore the one room in this house you hadn’t quite gotten to see yet; the library.

The library was exactly as the real estate agent had said it was; completely untouched since the last family moved out. It was a small room, filled with one desk in the center, and two wide bookshelves attached to each wall. There were papers and notebooks littering the mahogany desk, as well as envelopes and wax stamps. The room smelt of dust and pine and was colder than your bedroom had been a couple minutes ago. Still, you ventured into the dark room, stopping by the large desk to turn on the small lamp that sat at its edge. 

Light filled the room, showing off the rows upon rows of books that decorated the large brown bookshelves. Some books were very old, such as ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, and some were not so old, such as a couple of Louis Duncan novels. Some of the books, as you saw, you had read, and most of them you had not. You spotted one of your favorite novels on the south wall bookshelf, and shuffled towards it to look over the dusty cover. Before you could grab the spine of the book, however, something caught your eye. 

Something very human-like, and it was definitely not one of your parents. 

He was only visible for half a second before he seemed to just cease to exist before your eyes. In that half a second though, you were apple to make out spiky blond hair, and piercing yellow eyes that were staring directly at you. 

A scream rose in your throat, but you were able to choke it down before it could escape and wake everyone up. There was no one else in the room but you. You whipped your head around, scanning every corner of the room for the blonde boy who had just been right by your side moments ago, gazing at you. But there was nothing. No mysterious boy in the library, or out in the hall. Maybe the lack of a full night’s rest had you seeing things. Yes, that had to be it. 

But Denki knew the truth. He had gotten distracted by you for not even a second, and had managed to make himself visible to you. He knew the second your eyes had widened in fear, that you had spotted him. Denki’s heart leaped out of his chest as he quickly made himself invisible and backed away from you. You were now looking around frantically, terror written all over your face. In the midst of back away from you quietly, Denki accidentally bumped into the large wooden desk, sending papers flying to the floor. 

The sound of a thud and the fact that papers were now drifting downwards as if someone had picked up a stack and threw them on the floor had you second guessing if you were just imagining things. 

No fucking way, you thought. You weren’t exactly a non-believer of the supernatural, but you had never in your life imagined that you would encounter anything non-human. The thought of it almost made you laugh as you stood frozen in fear. This was just ridiculous. Okay, so maybe you had thought you had seen a boy standing next to you and the next second he was gone, and maybe something made a loud noise and a stack of papers coincidentally fell to the floor. That did not mean that there was a ghost or a demon or some kind of invisible man in your house. Did it?

Denki decided to let you know it did, in fact, mean that. Making himself invisible to the human eye for four days straight had drained him of almost all of his energy, and you had already seen him and heard him twice. So, fuck it. 

The scream that you had been keeping bay for the last 60 seconds had finally decided to rip free. There was the blonde boy again - standing right in front of you. A minute ago, he had been more translucent and blurry, but now you could see him clearly. This thing you were seeing was a tall blonde boy with yellow eyes, wearing all black. He was cute. But he was also someone who could disappear and reappear in a matter of seconds, and that was not what normal cute boys do. 

You were screaming and backing yourself up against the wall, trying desperately to make yourself as small as possible so this magical invisible blonde boy would leave you alone.

“No! Shh! Stop, it’s okay, everything is okay! Please stop screaming!” 

The fact that the blonde boy was now speaking to you, made you even more afraid. You inhaled deeply, preparing to let out another scream, hoping one of your parents would wake up and come save you, but the blonde boy lurched forward and clamped a hand down on your mouth before you could make another sound. 

“Please,” he pleaded. “Please don’t scream. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”

His golden eyes were boring into yours, begging you to stay quiet. The urge to scream slowly dissipated as you realized this boy’s body was pressed against yours - this incredibly cute boy was pressing himself against you. 

“I’m gonna take my hand away, okay?” The boy whispered. His eyes were just as wide as yours. 

You nodded slowly at him, which prompted the blonde boy to let his hand slip away from your lips, inch by inch. Once your mouth was completely free, Denki took a step back to allow you to catch your breath. 

“Alright, so, you probably have some questions.” He chuckled nervously. 

Without meeting his gaze, you pushed yourself off the wall and nodded. Uh, yeah I have questions. Why are you in my house? How are you in my house? What exactly are you?

“Well,” he started slowly, “My name’s Denki. I, um, I used to live here.”

“Live here? So, what, you're mad I’m in your house or something and you’ve come to magically take it back or something?”

He shook his head and focused his gaze on his feet. “No, that’s not it. I kind of still live here, just not by my choice.”

What the blonde boy - Denki - said, seemed to ignite a memory in the back of your mind. The real estate agent had told you and your family that there had been a death in the house over 30 years ago - a boy who got electrocuted in the attic. The fact that Denki could make himself visible and invisible at will, clicked everything into place. 

“Oh my god,” you whispered. “Y-your d-dead.” Your hands were now trembling. 

Denki looked up at that moment. His eyes were sad and bleak, which almost made you feel bad for stating the obvious. 

“That’s right,” Denki lamented. “I’m dead.”

* * *

You spent the next three and a half hours cautiously speaking to Denki, processing the fact that you were conversing with a ghost in the creepy library of your new home. 

Denki explained to you that he had died on November 11th, 1989, in the attic of this house when he attempted to set up a couple extension cords for his tv he liked to play video games on during a storm, and ended up electrocuting himself. Denki didn’t seem too  upset describing the day he died to you, but he did start to shed tears when he choked out how he had to watch his parents fall apart in the halls of this house over his death. He cried as he remembered how they finalized the divorce a year after his death, and put the house up for sale. Denki weeped when he looked back on the day when his eternal loneliness began. When his parents left him in this big, cold house all alone. Dead and lonely. 

Once he was finished telling his story, he quickly wiped his tears away and smiled as brightly as he could at you, trying to hide his sorrow. “So,” he drawled. “What about you? What’s your story?”

You felt silly, sitting on the floor of the library, telling a dead boy the story of how your parents split when you were 12 due to an affair your mother was having with her now-husband, and how your dad decided to travel the world instead of wallowing in his heart break. You told Denki that living with your mother and her new boyfriend who had ruined your parents’ marriage was hard at first, but gradually became easier the more you realized what a nice guy your mother’s now-husband was. He was awkward around you, but always polite, and he seemed to be infatuated with your mother. Though you hated to admit it, you saw love between your mother and her boyfriend that you never saw between your mother and your father. 

Denki reached out to hold your hands in his when your voice began to waver when speaking of your mother and father. It was a hard topic to talk about for you, but Denki’s cool hands gave you comfort. 

You both shared stories of your childhoods, your favorite memories, what you both were like when you were younger. As 6 ‘o cock rolled around, you had forgotten that you were chatting and laughing with the ghost of an 18 year old boy. It was a strangely nice feeling. You had just discovered that ghosts were real, and now you were making friends with one. Denki was nice and funny and his infectious laugh had managed to pull a smile from you numerous times throughout the three hours you sat talking to him about anything and everything. 

While Denki was rattling on about his favorite foods and how much he missed eating them, a thought popped into your head. “Denki,” you started, “have you been watching us for the past four days?”

Denki blinked at you before grinning and nodding furiously. “Yep! The way you dance while folding laundry is super cute by the way!” His favorite thing to do at night was watching you blast music from your phone and dance around your room while folding fresh laundry. 

A slight blush coated your cheeks. “So, did you...see everything I did then?”

Oh. That.

Denki instantly knew what you were referring to. On the third night of staying in your new house, you had waited till both of your parents had gone to bed before locking your bedroom door and slipping into bed. Denki had been sitting in your computer chair at that time, leisurely watching you go about your room for the past half hour. The moment you had fallen into your bed though, made Denki shoot to his feet with a tomato red face. 

You had slipped your delicate hand into the waistband of your night shorts. It had been several weeks since you had had a chance to release any of your stress in any type of form, and tonight you were alone, horny, and frustrated. Your small fingers were now stuffed inside your cunt, moving in and out in an attempt to relieve yourself, and Denki was unable to look away. He knew he shouldn’t be watching this - watching you - but he couldn’t make himself leave, couldn’t make himself respect your privacy. 

You looked so helpless and so cute sprawled out on your bed, hand moving around in your shorts, your wet lips letting out soft little mewls. Denki felt utterly disgusting as he slipped his own hand into the waistband of his jeans to knead himself at the sight of you. He wanted more than anything to make himself known to you, to touch you, to tell you he had practically fallen in love with you the first time he saw you and you should let him pleasure you instead. 

Denki had to settle for fucking his fist to the sound of your moans, unfortunately. He could almost imagine how wet and tight and how good you would feel around him. He hoped someday soon, he would get to be the one forcing moans out of your mouth instead of your own fingers. He hoped soon, he would be able to kiss your neck as he fucked into you, reaching his high. He really, really hoped that he would be able to release inside you, stuffing you full of his cum, of his passion, of his love.

Denki’s face flushed at your revelation. He had just revealed himself to you, and had managed to get you to stay and talk to him for hours - he did not want to ruin it by admitting to violating your privacy in the worst way possible. 

“I know you watched me that night,” you said, barely above a whisper. “I-I think I heard you. H-heard you moaning.”

Denki didn’t think his face could reach a higher temperature. He wanted to say something - anything - but was completely stuck watching you stutter and blush, his own mouth glued shut. 

“I thought I was just imagining it, that I was fantasizing about something like that. But I wasn’t, was I? It was you in my room that night. Watching me.”

Your voice wasn’t the least bit defensive, nor was there any trace of accusation on your face. Shouldn’t you be angry at him? Shouldn’t you be yelling at him in embarrassment? Calling him a pervert?

But you weren’t. You looked flustered for sure, but not like you felt violated in any way. In fact, the thought of Denki watching you touching yourself - touching himself at the sight of you - made you feel good. Denki was extremely attractive to you, and it was thrilling to know that he thought the same of you.

“I-I’m sorry, Y/N.” This was humiliating. What if you never wanted to talk to him again because of this? What would he do then? “I never meant to do that sort of thing! I j-just, I don’t know, you looked so pretty and I had already come to like you so much that I just-”

Watching Denki fumble with his words in an effort to not upset you was almost laughable. You didn’t want nor need an apology from him. You liked that he had watched you. That he had touched himself to you.

That’s why you were now kissing him. He had begun to stutter and raise his voice so much that the only way you saw fit to quiet him was to press your lips against his. His lips were smooth and full and cold to the touch just like his hands were. Your sudden intrusion shocked Denki so much that he almost forgot to kiss you back. He hadn’t kissed anyone since he was 12 years old, and even then, the girl who kissed him was only acting on a dare and had laughed in his face before running away after taking his first kiss. Now, he had you pressed against him, your lips dancing upon his in the gentlest way possible. 

When he began to reciprocate the kiss, Denki could have sworn he saw ‘the light’ everyone talked about seeing when they died. It was beautiful and warm and exciting and it was all you. You slipped an arm around his neck to tug him closer and deepen the kiss, which incited a soft groan from Denki’s throat. Breathing had become a distant memory for the both of you; all that mattered in that moment was claiming each other’s lips. 

“Y/N,” your mother called from downstairs. You both jumped away from each other at your mother’s voice, panting heavily, lips swollen. 

“What, mom?” Why did she have to be awake now? 

“We’re leaving in a few minutes, sweetie! Please come down here!”

For fucks sake. You knew you should go down there and bid her farewell. She would be gone for three months, after all. But Denki’s presence made everything else in your life seem so small. You had only just met him, only kissed him once, and now it felt like he was invading your mind and making a permanent home in your brain.  “Alright! I’m coming!”

You turned back towards Denki who had a goofy grin on his face. “So you do like me back?”

You scoffed, letting your hair fall in front of your face to hide the redness that was blossoming across it. “Shut up. You’re just kind of cute. That’s all” A complete lie. 

Denki leaned forward and took your chin in his hand, forcing you to look him in the eye. “Well,” he said, “I like you. And I want to do that again, if that’s okay?”

A slight smile found its way on your lips. You were about to take him up on his offer before your mother shouted back up at you to hurry down. Denki smiled at you and said, “Go, before she comes up here and catches you making out with a ghost.”

Tearing yourself away from him was surprisingly hard. You felt compelled to stay with Denki like that, centimeters apart, lingering in your own little bubble. But he was right. Your mother was starting to sound agitated. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Denki nodded at you encouragingly, and watched as you rushed out of the room and down the stairs. His smile quickly fell from his lips once you were gone. 

You had kissed him. And he had kissed you back. Denki wasn’t sure what this meant, but he was secretly hoping it would continue. 

Though, even with that hope, Denki knew deep down any outcome would just lead to disaster and sorrow. After all, he was a dead man who never aged and who could never leave this house. And you - you were the complete opposite. You were a living, breathing girl with your whole life ahead of you.

[clockworkgraystairs]

There is no such thing as vampires #1 || Jurdan AU

Jurdan Smut Week 2020   •   DAY 2

The prompt was technically dagger play...it didn’t really worked that way but HEY more smut! (vampire smut cough)

@jurdannet​   @jurdannetrevels​

Rating: E (no I don’t mean ‘everyone’)

Warnings: Explicit content, mentions of blood, some biting (it’s a vampire au c’mon), swear words (just in case)

Summary: 

Behind me stands a tall, slender man dressed in black trousers and one of those puffy white shirts men always use in period TV dramas. Raven curls frame the sharp angles of his face and his pale skin resembles marble. I stare at him unsure if my eyes widen because of the scare or how good looking he is. Maybe both.

His lips curve as if he finds my reaction somehow satisfying.

Extra comments: Just because I’m extra af, I’ll leave you the ambience music videos I listened while writing this. In case you’d like to hear them while reading:

Rain in a forest at night - Haunted Mansion/rain/thunder/wind - Narnia Lullaby

Written for: @slightlyrebelliouswriter23​ MA’AM AS ALWAYS THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HELP AND SUPPORT, FOR BETAING THIS UNENDING PIECE AND FOR HELPING ME CRAFTING THE IDEA FOR IT! ❤️

Part 1 ||  Part 2

Masterlist   •   AO3

“Please tell me again why are we doing this?” I ask for the third time, leaning to rest my head on my sister’s shoulder. We bounce as the uncomfortable van we travel in turns to a cobbled path, leading us deeper into the woods. 

“Because,” Vivi hisses back. “Your little brother is currently in his Twilight-obsession phase, and he just broke up with his girlfriend so we’re trying to cheer him up!”

“He’s 9! And they lasted like, what? Four hours?”

In that moment, Oak turns violently from the front seat, scowling at me. “First of all Jude, we were together two full days ok? She was the love of my life and suddenly she’s not sure about us anymore? Now I shall never find love again! I might have to become a priest. I expect a little consideration.”

Vivi ruffles his hair affectionately. “We absolutely understand, your sister here doesn’t have an ounce of romance in her veins but of course she supports the cause.”

That said, he returns to his place. I bite my lip hard, trying not to laugh. Typical Oak. I love my brother I really do, even if half of the time I can’t understand his dramatic outbursts.

Sighing, I stare through the window, to the heavy clouds gathering on top of us. Great. We are probably far away from the highway by now, nothing more than trees, rocks and occasional wild animals around. For some reason, our father had thought that there was no better way of fixing a kid’s broken heart than going on a quest in search of legends and hidden castles. 

The thing is that apparently, it works. Instead of an incessant whining about love being doomed, my brother spends the days throwing the most random facts about werewolves, vampires, ghosts and any impossible creature. To be honest, I don’t think wikipedia and the Twilight books are a reliable source, but if it makes Oak happy I could live a couple of days with it. And most importantly if I have to choose between this or spending the week back at home with my mother and twin sister going to tea parties for old ladies, well, the answer is very clear.

I remember reading a few books about myths when I was younger. When I turned fifteen, I developed a hard crush on Brad Pitt after I saw Interview with the Vampire, filling half of the walls in my room with posters of him. Even now ten years later, I actually enjoy talking about old folklore and legends, urban myths and stuff like that. 

What bugs me, are the fraudulent morons who want to take advantage of Oak’s naive curiosity to engage us in the most ridiculous tours that were obviously a waste of money. So far, we’d entered three “museums” where most of the so-called relics were made of plastic, and a haunted house with special effects so poorly done, father had discreetly asked for his money back. Only another two of the places we visited were actually interesting, but since the guides spent most of the time flirting with Vivi or me, it had annoyed our father. 

Now though, we are driving behind the car of an old couple who swore their ancestors owned a castle where true vampires had lived once. The sole mention of the word “castle” was enough to make Oak hang from our father’s sleeve begging to go.

I’m not going to lie, it is an intriguing idea. But I remain a little worried about how much money Madoc is ready to pay before he hurries his little son back to his fantasy books and videogames.

“Dad, did you know that vampires like to live in the woods because it allows them to make racing competitions without being interrupted?” Oak asks with enthusiasm.

Madoc gasps. “Do they? Is it because they’re so fast?” 

Okay, he might be willing to pay more than I thought. Next to me, Vivi muffles a laugh and keeps taking pictures for her instagram, occasionally asking for my help.

Upon arriving at the castle I have to suppress a curse. This, now, is a real castle. Nothing like the pitiful buildings we’d visited before. It is huge, made of pure stone and a modest wooden bridge that connects the entrance with the spot where the cars park. A slight fog covers the sides of the castle giving it a creepier look. 

A shiver goes down my back. I turn to find my family who are all equally gaping at the place in front of them. Oak is visibly shaking with excitement. Vivi shoots me an astonished look before taking my brother’s hand and following the couple across the bridge.  

The first thought that pops into my mind is that this place must have been taken out from a movie. Or set up for one. Maybe this is one of those pranks for TV. There is no other explanation for the massive room we find behind the giant front gate. Every inch of the walls is covered by paintings, several images barely recognizable through the dust. Aged furniture rests under dust and spiderwebs, pointing out they haven’t been used in quite some time. The illumination doesn’t help either. Electric lights hang from a few spots on the walls, though not enough for the big space, which I suspect is the reason that long candles are lit up too. 

My next thought is that I should’ve brought my sweater. The damn place is freezing. 

“Phew, sorry about the dust!” The old man says, flashing an embarrassed smile to us. “We were not planning to have any visitors yet.”

“You said this is going to be a museum?” Madoc asks, carefully surveying the walls. Next to him, Vivi tightens her hold on my brother’s hand to prevent him from starting to run around. I swear his eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. 

“It will indeed! This place has been in our family for generations, but since it’s hard to adapt it to modern technology it was abandoned.” He turns to Oak and winks. “Not to mention the creepy things that happen here all the time.”

His gaze widens. “What kind of things?”

“Well, some distant relatives used to try spending their vacations here. But after a couple of days they left in a big rush, claiming some strange force had commanded them to go away.” With a lower voice, he adds. “They also mentioned noises coming out from empty rooms and dark hallways. Steps. Shadows that followed them along the place.” 

For a second everyone remains silent. The only noise I can hear is the wind outside and the start of a slight rain. Somehow my hands are even colder.

“The legend says,” The woman, whose name is Marrow if I remember it correctly, continues while taking one chandelier with her hand. “This was the hideout of ancient vampires, how many, we don’t know. But they didn’t appreciate people trying to live within their domains.”

“So why come here at all?” Vivi asks. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It might be.” She shrugs. “But that’s half of the fun, isn’t it?”

“We like to think we’ve found a safe way to open this castle to the public without taking any risks. We will use a part of it as a museum, to show some of the family relics. But be aware, no one is allowed to go further than the marked area.” He signals at the yellow tape stuck on the floor forming arrows.

“If you please...” Marrow says, motioning at the stairs where the markings start.

They get me for a moment, not gonna lie. The surroundings and the way they speak are creepy enough to make me doubt my beliefs for a second. I shake my head to clear those thoughts away and walk behind my family. There’s no such thing as vampires or haunted castles.

We go through passages. Madoc has to remind Oak to not touch anything, constantly. From what I see, he’s living his best day. Several counters line up side by side against the wall. Some of them contain jewelry, others weapons, old writing pens among other things. Most of them carry a family shield, although it’s too blurry to properly identify what it says.

The rain thickens outside and Marrow keeps talking. She tells the story of her so called ancestors, whose family were big enough to fill all the rooms in the castle. Elwen, Eldred… something like that, and his many wives had once lived here. Along with his abounding children. I see in Oak’s face the intention to ask about how that family arrangement worked but Vivi gives him a slight pull of his hair. 

I would have thought our guides would try to keep a proud name for their so-called ancestors. But they don’t. In fact, she seems particularly interested in explaining how Eldred’s cruel and terrible nature brought him nothing but disgrace. His once prosperous castle and assets were gone little by little. He claimed he was under the effects of a curse, but no one dared believing him. At least not until people started disappearing.

I stop listening at some point, focusing my attention on the relics in front of me. I’ve always felt a significant attraction to weapons, but not the ordinary ones like guns or rifles. These ones though, such beautiful daggers and swords. I’d give a kidney just to hold one of them. 

On the next shelf books pile one next to the other, the dust around them a clear sign of how long they’ve been unbothered. All except for one. The navy blue cover has almost no dust at all, yet it looks like it would fall apart with a gentle blow of wind. The title is partially gone, probably through time. 

I turn my head to my family but they’re gone, probably to another corridor since I can still hear the muffled voice of Marrow and my brother. Would she care at all if I check out that book?

I bite my lip. As long as it doesn’t break it’s probably alright. Standing on the tip of my toes I reach for it.

“That is an excellent book.” 

I shriek and whip around, my hand flies to my mouth trying to cover the embarrassing sound. The book falls open next to my feet.

Behind me stands a tall, slender man dressed in black trousers and one of those puffy white shirts men always use in period TV dramas. Raven curls frame the sharp angles of his face and his pale skin resembles marble. I stare at him unsure if my eyes widen because of the scare or how good looking he is. Maybe both. 

His lips curve as if he finds my reaction somehow satisfying. “My personal favorite. Too bad the author was a poisonous bunch-backed toad.”

My mouth opens to apologize, but I only manage to let out a strangled. “Shit”

The stranger lifts an eyebrow and chuckles. 

“Sorry, I- that wasn’t what I meant to say.” I stutter. I feel as if my heart has jumped to my throat. “I wasn’t trying to steal the book.”

“I did not say you were.” He answers, his voice is like velvet.

I nod and take a deep breath. “I came in with my family. Marrow is showing us the place.”

His dark eyes wander down my body, but not like one of those rude men on the streets. No. Something in his gaze feels feral, like an animal sizing up his prey. A strange urge to run pools in my stomach, yet at the same time my muscles seem to have forgotten how to do so. 

He looks me in the eyes again and it’s all gone. I let go of the tension in my back and a breath I didn’t know I was holding. When he smiles again, I feel as if I could trust him. Why shouldn’t I?

“And are you enjoying the tour?” He bends to pick up the book I’d dropped before and puts it back on the shelf. His movements are fluid and carefree. I doubt I’ve ever seen such elegance in a simple action. It is unsettling as much as it is attractive. Then I realize I’m supposed to answer.

“Yes, this is amazing actually.” I look around and take in the aged stone of the walls and ceiling. In that corridor there’s only one electric lamp, the rest is only lightened by candles. I can see our shadows dancing along to the flames. “All of this really helps getting in the ‘mood’.”

“The mood?” 

I look at him and notice his tilted head. “Yeah you know, the mood of enchanted castles and old legends. This is well put enough that a credulous person would believe any story. Marrow is pretty good at it too.” Motioning a hand to him I add. “They even have their own actor.”

A thunder roars outside. “I beg your pardon?”

I roll my eyes and flash him a smile. “You don’t really have to keep the charade with me. I’m not some schoolgirl.”

“Yet I managed to pull a scream out of you, didn’t I?” The way he says it feels as if he was talking about an entirely different subject. Heat creeps up my cheeks.

“That was… not the same.” I mumble. “I didn’t hear you approaching. That could scare the living hell out of anybody.”

“I have been told I am quite sneaky, I concede you that.” He nods. “Why don’t I give you the rest of the tour? As an apology, of course.”

He’s doing his job, I remind myself, he’s not flirting with you. 

“You haven’t even told me your name.” I say. “If we’re roaming around a castle together I should at least know who’s guiding me.”

That sounded an awful lot like flirting. Dammit. 

“Cardan, at your service madam.” The tone he uses feels like a caress, he bows his head in a way I’ve only seen in movies. He takes his role seriously. I almost chuckle, but the sound dies in my throat. 

“Cardan.” I repeat, just for the pleasure of doing it. “My name is Jude.”

He straightens. “Delighted to meet your acquaintance.” He answers and offers me his arm. “Shall we, Jude?”  

I can’t believe how far away my family has gone. Cardan and I walk through a couple of corridors and still there is no trace of them. Did we take that long talking?

He’s an excellent guide, I have to acknowledge that. 

While Marrow uses a tone of suspense and mystery, Cardan has this melancholy in his voice that sounds as if he’s talking about a memory. It’s bewitching. He also drops the most ridiculous “facts” about the people on the paintings. I refrain myself from asking if inventing things is allowed for employees, because saying that the girl with the pearl necklace enjoyed to play on the beach while saying she was the Princess of the Sea, certainly sounds like it. 

“If you bite your lip one more time, I am going to do it for you.” 

My heart skips a bit and I let go of my lower lip. I hadn’t realized I was tugging it. It’s an unconscious habit. I turn to him and I find his gaze different, hungry. It sends a shiver down to a place I know it shouldn’t. He arches an eyebrow as though he notices it.

“Is that a thing vampires like to do?” I say, trying to lighten the mood. The last thing I want him to know is that for the last twenty minutes I’ve been listening to him speak wishing he put a different use to that wicked mouth of his.

His gaze doesn’t change. “It is a thing I would like to do.” 

I am pretty sure my expression is giving me up by now. Knowing my traitorous body, I’m probably flushed, my mouth open in awe. Desire coils inside me.

At my lack of answer, he continues. “Why don’t I show you something vampires really like to do?” 

He walks back without letting go of my hand. I notice he steps out from the marked section and into a forbidden corridor. 

The sensation returns, the one that is telling me to run. The problem is that I don’t know whether to run away, or straight to it. My mind wants both and my body, only one.

“You’re going to the restricted area.” I’m partially surprised by how breathless my voice sounds. “You can’t go in there…”

Cardan pauses and a confused expression crosses his face. A second later, it returns to his charming and teasing smile. “Are you afraid?”

I am. 

Yet, I don’t care. I walk into the shadows with him.

As we cross the passage darkened by the lack of chandeliers I tell myself this is a terrible, terrible idea. The way he devours my mouth the moment a door slams shut behind us, convinces me it is the best.

Cardan pushes me against the wall, the cold temperature of the stone goes through my clothes making me gasp. He takes the opportunity and kisses me harder, his tongue explores my mouth with such deliciousness I have to bite back a moan. 

My fingers are tangled in his hair pulling him closer to me, if such a thing is even possible. His hands are everything but still. They roam intensely from my breasts, down my sides and finally to my rear, where he grabs me, pressing me against his pelvis. I hear him groan and the sound makes something clench inside me. 

Before I can double-think about it, one of my hands lowers to rub his hardness, still hidden behind his trousers. His breath hitches. He pulls back a bit and whispers to my ear. “Needy little human.”

I frown a moment, something about his words not clicking inside my brain but whatever it is I forget it the moment he slides his cold hands under my jersey. I yelp at the sensation, not sure if what flutters down my back is a result of the temperature or the eagerness which he’s holding me with. When he reaches my bra I hesitate for a moment. Cardan pauses too and leans back to stare into my eyes. 

“Do you want to stop?” His voice is throaty and charged with desire. Still, he doesn’t make a move, waiting for my answer.

An instinctive part of me knows this is something I shouldn’t be doing. But that’s definitely not any close to me wanting to stop. Without removing my eyes from his I take the hem of my jersey to pull it over my head. The piece of fabric hits the floor, but neither of us pays attention to it. Once again Cardan’s gaze roams me in that predatory way. 

I don’t stagger this time.

When my bra falls to the floor too, I take his hand and guide it to my jean’s button. “Do I look like I want to stop?”

Without hesitation he yanks the button open and slides his hand inside to cup the apex of my thighs. The contrast of my warm skin against his coldness makes my hips buck. Cardan buries his other hand in my hair and tilts my head back. I can feel his lips nipping down my jaw and my neck. A moan escapes my lips as he swipes a finger along my heat. He hums in response, the vibrations of it against my neck makes my eyes roll back.

He continues his ministrations until he feels me wet enough to slide a finger inside, he curls and pulls out. Then back inside. My breath comes out in elaborated pants as he quickens his pace. My hands almost finish unbuttoning his shirt when he slides another finger through my folds, his movements turn fast and punishing. Wet sounds taint the silence around us. As pleasure takes full control of my body I cling to him like a life saver, trying to muffle my moans.

“Let go Jude, let go for me.” He breathes next to my ear. My back arches and I sob a curse, writhing down on his hand. 

He slows down as I come back from my orgasm, but never stops. Despite the freezing surroundings a drop of sweat runs down my chest. My heart beats as if I just ran a marathon. Cardan’s lazy moves continue, frequently grazing that spot that makes me mewl.

I hear him sigh. “You smell so good.” He claims my mouth one more time and bites me hard enough to make me wince. His tongue caresses my lower lip and a warm throb expands through my veins. He freezes and pulls back, releasing me. I stare at him in confusion, or at least as much as I can manage giving my current state.

He pants a couple of times before looking up at me. There’s a fiercess in his eyes that would’ve been scary under normal situations, right now, it only makes me want him more. He swallows before finally speaking. “If we go further, I won’t be able to stop.” His voice is like sandpaper.

My body seems to work on its own account, as I move to cup his face between my hands. “I already told you.”

“Jude…” He warns me, but I interrupt him joining my lips to his.

“I want this.” I breathe into his mouth. Cardan lets out a defeated groan before pulling my body back against his. Either he’s been holding back or it is until that moment that I realize how strong he actually is. He kisses me like a starved man and I can feel my pulse rise once again.

Soon his shirt joins my other clothing. My fingers trace his chest and torso, marveled at the softness of his skin. I mimic him moments before and kiss his neck. A low sound that almost resembles a growl comes out from his throat. My hands travel lower.

Somehow I manage to free his raging erection from his trousers, closing my hand around him. He hisses and then tilts his hips up to my touch. I start pumping him with unsure movements before gaining confidence to do it harder, tighter. Now it’s his turn to curse. Even though it sounds like something taken out from a Shakespeare novel, it makes my core pulse. 

Cardan grips the hem of my jeans strong enough that for a moment I fear he’d rip them away. 

“Take these off.” He demands instead.

I’m not sure of how I manage to do it. My mind feels blurred with a mix of sensations. Disoriented, not sure about exactly how my body is doing all of that, and the bliss of knowing I’m enjoying every second of it.

Before the air hits my skin, Cardan lifts me from the ground. My legs circle his waist in a reflexive move. His lips quirk in approval. Then my back is once again pressed against the wall, making me arch in a failed attempt to avoid touching the cold stone. A sound leaves my mouth, though it is not clear if it’s a protest or a moan. I hear him chuckle in my ear and I turn my head, searching his lips.    

His kiss is slower but still deep. I feel as if small electric sparks are tickling every single one of my nerves. More, I need more. Cardan holds me in place with his hips, letting his hands wander up and down my legs.

The tip of his shaft is grazing my core over the thin fabric of my remaining piece of clothing, with an aching slowness that is not enough to ease my thirst. More.

I might have said that out loud because Cardan’s hips grind faster against me. It feels so good. And yet, it’s not enough.

I whine his name like a plea. 

He continues for a couple of torturing seconds before reaching between my thighs again. There’s no teasing now as he moves my panties aside and immediately sinks his fingers inside me, pumping in and out with a pace that has me gasping in no time. He murmurs something I can’t understand and lines himself up to my entrance.

With soft, deliberate movements he slides through my heat, letting me feel every inch of him until he’s completely filling me. Then he stills. My muscles twitch around him, trying to adjust to the invasion. The exquisiteness of it is making my head swoon. 

Cardan grabs my jaw and locks his gaze with mine. I can imagine what he’s looking at. Hooded eyes and flushed skin, though he doesn’t let me think a lot about it as he starts to move. Slow at first, with careful strokes that quickly evolve into long and deep. My mouth falls open at the sensation and my eyes shut.

“I warned you.” I hear him pant. “That there was no coming back.”

A whimper escapes my lips. I’m not even sure I’m actually trying to say something. He doesn’t seem to care either and leans to whisper to my ear. “You are mine now, Jude.”   

There is something in the way he says it, his words carrying some compelling implication I can’t fully catch. His lips trail down my neck and I want to answer. To tell him that I am, that after the way he’s taking me, how could it be otherwise? 

That’s when I feel a sharp stinging pain on the base of my throat. 

I cry out and try to shake it away but whatever it is won’t let me go. Cardan’s words echo at the back of my mind, Needy little human. 

As if sensing my thoughts he grabs my thighs and opens them wider, he thrusts into me harder and faster. Everything mixes in sensation. Pain leaves as fast as it came, leaving behind it that throb in my veins I can’t really explain. It is more intense now, what I felt as warm now is scorching. My entire body feels like it’s on fire, I’ve never felt so exhilarated before in my life. I don’t want it to stop. 

Cardan sucks on my neck again and I moan his name. Without realizing it, I’m on the brink of another orgasm. I only realize it because he groans when my legs start to shiver around him. I cling to his neck and his hair. If I’m pulling too hard I can’t really know. A familiar swirl comes up from my core to the rest of my body as I spasm around him. It takes me a moment to notice the broken moans and sobs I hear come from my own mouth. 

He keeps going a little longer until his fingers tighten over my skin, surely leaving bruises on both thighs. Muffled moans ring against my skin as he comes, thrusting in a couple of times more before stilling. A warm sensation covers the place where we join together.  His mouth lets go of my neck. I grunt and shiver. 

He puts me down carefully, still holding my waist, which is good considering I don’t know if I’m able to stand by myself. I feel dizzy. Cardan lowers his lips to mine one more time. He’s slow and gentle as though he’s worried. There is a slightly metallic taste in his tongue but I don’t pay attention to it. I trace the fine features of his face with trembling fingers. Little by little my senses start to take in the surroundings, the cold. 

The place rumbles with another crack of thunder.

“You have to go back.” Cardan says, barely pulling his lips apart. Go back. I frown, then images of my family crash in my mind. I look around searching for the door, there is something  on the floor. I realize soon those are my clothes. Shit. The tour, Oak. How much time have I been gone?

I dress in a hurry, not really caring if I put on my jersey correctly. He does the same but with the calm an elegance he has.

Panic must be written in my face because he grabs my chin and turns me to him. “Hey. Calm down.” He soothes me. Then his tone changes, turns commanding. His eyes are darker too. “Listen to me. You are going to do exactly as I say, do you understand Jude?”

I want to ask why, but for some reason I only nod. Cardan grabs my hand and pulls me out of whatever room we were in. “You must follow this passage until you find a way to turn left. Then continue until you see a painting of a black snake then turn right, you cannot miss it or you will get lost. Walk straight, and you will be back to a safe area.”

“But-” I start. I don’t want to go alone. And I don’t understand why but I don’t want to separate from him either. Which is nonsense, I barely know him and still...

He interrupts me. “I cannot go with you, I have lost so much control already and I don’t think…” 

“Cardan, I can’t-” 

A growl echoes in his chest and he pulls me closer to him. While his voice is still hypnotizing it sounds threatening now. “You will not tell anybody about what you saw here. Now go if you intend to leave this place alive.”

Then he's gone. I can’t recall if I blinked or turned, because a moment before I could still touch him and now he vanished.

I take a deep breath and start walking. Focus. Go straight, then turn right. Or was it left? 

All passages look the same, some spaces don’t even have a painting or anything at all to help me differentiate them. Sometimes I whip around, thinking I heard a familiar chuckle behind me. Distant rain is the only sound that is a constant companion, but even with it I’m able to hear an echo of every step I give. It unsettles me more with every minute that passes. Although I feel more in control of my body than before, my knees falter constantly and a sensation of tiredness slides over my mind. 

I find the snake painting just as I’d started to think I would be trapped here forever. 

It’s huge, and despite the years that have probably passed the scales still seem to shine. The head is painted in an angle that gives the illusion of the eyes following the person looking at it. It doesn’t help that the candle’s flames also make the snake look as if it’s moving. Stalking. Before noticing, I start hyperventilating. I shut my eyes close and turn away. Something is terribly wrong with me, I need to get out. 

Turning right, I start running. I cover my ears fearing that if I don’t, I’ll start hearing the snake’s hiss behind me.  

I cross an arch made with the same stone and stop right in my tracks upon realizing somehow I’m back at the room where we first arrived. I blink to adjust my eyes to the change of light, since here’s where all the electric lamps are. The room is empty though. 

I’m not sure of what I am supposed to do now. Sit and wait? Go out to the car?

While I’m weighing my options, trying to choose any that doesn’t imply dropping myself on the floor to have a panic attack, I hear murmurs and steps getting closer.

“Jude!” My little brother yells and runs to me. Behind him, Vivi scans me like she’s trying to find something wrong. I straighten my back and put on my best calmed face.

“Where were you?” She demands. “We lost you hours ago! Are you ok? You look pale.” 

Always such a mother hen, I sigh. “I’m fine. I fell behind and lost y’all. Then... I guessed it would be better to just… return here.”

I try not to frown at my last words, since I didn’t fully intend to say them. You will not tell anybody about what you saw here. 

“Jude knows how to take care of herself.” My father adds. I could hug him, but we’re not exactly the affectionate type. So I just flash him a smile.

Vivi does not look convinced but still stands down. “I guess so. The weather did a mess with your hair though.” A flash of Cardan’s fingers pulling from it to gain access to my neck sends a shiver through my body. Had that really happened just minutes before?

Before I can answer, Marrow calls for us. We turn to find her standing next to a big set of paintings that apparently were covered with a curtain. “You cannot leave without meeting the royal family.”

The canvases are ordered to mimic a family tree. A man with a severe expression rests at the very top. Eldred, I assume. Just by looking at it I feel judged. I can’t imagine what was like to actually live with him. The pictures of his wives look all so different but under them, their sons do have resemblance to one another. A weird sensation tickles my fingers as my gaze continues travelling over the paintings. Finally, I get to the last one. Once more, I cover my mouth to avoid  an undesired sound.

Staring back at me I see Cardan. 

I don’t care if it’s a painting, there is no way I could not recognize those features. Those lips.

“A big family, I see.” Madoc’s words seem so far away.

Marrow hums in agreement. “The Greenbriars always felt proud of their vast offspring. Such attractive sons and daughters. It’s a shame the curse took most of their lives all those centuries ago.” 

“Did he…” I start, without knowing how to continue.

She approaches me to look at the canvas. “Ah, young master Cardan. He was the last one of Eldred’s children.” Then a frown appears on her face. “There was a lot of controversy regarding his death. Some say he died because of the curse, some others say he was the curse. The books all have different versions.”

“That sounds creepy as fuck.” Vivi says. 

“Creepy as fuck.” My brother mimics her, the thoughtful expression on his face makes him look ridiculous. We cackle as Vivi shouts Oak he’s not supposed to say bad words.

By the time we get out of the castle the rain has decreased to a drizzle. 

Madoc carries Oak on his shoulders, listening to his non-stop squeals of excitement after visiting what he calls ‘a real vampire hideout’. This time, I don’t find the words to contradict him. Vivi is the first one to get to the car, shouting back some nonsense about the Greenbriars needing a protection hex. 

The moment I step down from the bridge something shifts in my head and I feel as if I had just woken up. 

Perhaps it is me who needs a protection spell after all. 

Before closing the car’s door, I turn to the castle one more time. Marrow and her husband wave at us from the front gate. 

A dull ache throbs on the base of my neck and my hand flies to the spot. I retrieve it and see blood staining my fingers. 

My heart misses a beat when I lift my gaze to the upper windows, where a tall figure with white shirt and dark hair is looking right back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[curls-cat]

the house creaks a lullaby

For @grimmtober day 2: haunted house. Also on AO3 and ff.net under the same name, as per usual. Not linking so people can, y’know, see it. Sabrina/Red established relationship.

When Baba Yaga leaves the chicken house to Red in her will, everyone is surprised. Surprised, first off, that the crone has disappeared (not died, Daphne assures them. Just gone off somewhere). And surprised, again, that she had a will at all, that she didn’t just take all her stuff with her. And surprised, lastly, that she’d leave the place to Red, of all people.

Even Red was surprised.

“I didn’t know you two even knew each other,” Sabrina says. She tries hard not to make it sound accusatory. Just because they’re A Thing doesn’t mean they need to tell each other everything.

“She’s been trying to help me deal with the Wolf,” Red says.

And that makes sense. It makes sense that Red wouldn’t tell Sabrina, too. They don’t talk about the Wolf a lot. Red doesn’t like it, any more than Sabrina likes talking about the way her parents lied to her for a decade. They both have people that have hurt them. They’re both learning how to live with those people. And it’s still hard, even though they’re adults now.

Sabrina doesn’t ask how that went. If Red wants her to know, she’ll tell her. If she doesn’t want her to know, Sabrina can live with the worry. What she does say is, “So are you going to move in?”

Red shrugs. “I might as well. It’s weird, now that Granny’s gone. The house doesn’t feel right.”

“Yeah,” Sabrina says. She gets it. When she comes home from college, she tries not to stay overnight. Red comes to her more often than not.

“Do you want to help me move in?” Red asks, and she sounds kind of hesitant. “I thought maybe…” She doesn’t finish the thought.

Sabrina thinks she knows where it’s going, though. They’ve been seeing each other for nearly five years, now. Red has a drawer of stuff in Sabrina’s dorm, and a toothbrush. Her hair product is in a little caddy. Sabrina’s roommate has Red’s phone number. If Red has her own place…

Well.

Sabrina and Red are, in a lot of ways, a package deal these days.

*

“I swear this place is haunted,” Sabrina says. She’s brandishing a mop like a club, having just jumped nearly a foot in the air when a bookshelf full of jars of slimy Somethings fell over.

They’ve been trying to clean out the chicken house for about a week now, and it’s as bad as Sabrina had anticipated. Baba Yaga lived in freaking filth. The bathroom is buried in so much grime Sabrina can barely see where the sink ends and the wall starts, and the food in the fridge probably predates refrigeration in general.

“I don’t think ghosts are real,” Red says, but she doesn’t sound as sure as she did a week ago.

“Oh, they definitely are,” Sabrina says. “I’ve been possessed. It sucked.”

“You’ve been what?” Red demands, whipping around to stare her girlfriend in the face. She slips and falls into the slimy things, and hisses. She’s cut herself on one of the broken jars.

Sabrina heads for the first aid kit. It’s not the first time they’ve needed it. “It wasn’t that big a deal,” she says as she rips open an alcohol swap and reaches for Red’s arm. “When we went to the city, back the first year I lived in town? When Puck needed healing.”

Red nods. “Daphne told me about it,” she says. They can talk about Puck without it being weird for either of them, now. It probably helps that he’s not around a lot.

“Well, Oberon got murdered while we were there, and we were following all these stupid leads to find out who killed him.” As Sabrina talks, she wipes off Red’s cut. She needs to use more than one. Red’s arm has some sort of green jelly on it. “One of ‘em was Scrooge, and he did some sort of spiritual conduit, and it turns out I’m sort of a natural medium or something. Ghosts can possess me easier than other people.”

“Great,” Red says, and she sounds grumpy. “One more thing to watch out for.” Red has made it her personal mission to protect Sabrina from all the things in the world that want to take advantage of her. It makes Sabrina’s heart melt every time she does it, even though she’s tried to point out that she can take care of herself. There’s only so many times you can hear ‘but you shouldn’t have to’ in response to that before it makes you want to cry, it turns out.

“I think we should be a little more concerned about you getting some weird disease from this gunk,” Sabrina says. “I’ve been possessed a grand total of once in twenty-one years. Which is probably less time than whatever this stuff is has been fermenting.”

“I’ll be fine,” Red says dismissively. She swipes up some of the gunk and gives it a sniff. “I think it’s calendula, actually.”

“What?”

“For bruising. An old cure. My mother used to use it.” Red’s voice only barely breaks on the word ‘mother.’

Sabrina squeezes Red’s forearm, a sign of solidarity. She covers the cut in gauze, then wraps it with tape a few times. “Come on,” she says at last. “Get out of this mess so I can clean it up.”

*

Cleaning out the house takes a long time. They can’t do it all themselves, either, because Sabrina can’t touch the magic items. They still sing to her, even all these years later, a dangerous call for a power she doesn’t even want, really, much as it draws her in. And Red is always afraid of what’s going to interact with the already dangerous concoction of Wolf-and-girl-and-witchcraft inside her. So anything that calls Sabrina’s name is picked up with a very long stick and thrown into a bag for Daphne to pick over. She’ll be ecstatic, when they finally hand it to her.

In the meantime, they clean, and things keep falling over. It’s kind of helpful, actually. Nothing falls over that they wanted to keep, and aside from the times they trip and fall into the mess, there are no injuries.

“I think it might be a helpful ghost,” Red says, when a pile of rotting newspapers just happens to topple out the window. She leans against her broom thoughtfully.

“Maybe it’s the house itself,” Sabrina suggests. It weirds her out, but she’s getting better about that sort of thing. Magic isn’t the problem, she keeps reminding herself. It’s people, and how they use it. Look at Red. Someone this kind can’t be wrong, just because she’s got something powerful inside her.

“Would make sense,” Red agrees. “It is alive, after all.”

They’re keeping the house in the front yard of the house that used to be Granny’s, for now. At the end of the night, they’ll walk it as close to the nearby dump as they can get it without being seen, to lug out the day’s trash.

“Whatever it is,” Sabrina says, looking around askance, “I hope it can’t actually, y’know, see us.”

“Why?” Red asks.

“Because,” Sabrina says, and she reaches out and grabs Red by the waist, reels her in. “I’d like to know I can have some time alone with you.”

“Hm,” Red says, turning a smile on Sabrina, leaning in for a kiss. “I think I’d like that.”

*

Nothing falls over, and when they emerge from the bedroom much later, both streaked with way more dust than when they started and clothes askew, the house seems no different.

“So we can get alone time,” Red says brightly, looking around . “That’s great.”

“Yeah,” Sabrina agrees.

“It’s especially great,” Red says, winding her fingers through Sabrina’s, “because I was wondering if you’d like to move in with me. Once you graduate.”

Sabrina knew this was coming. The question still melts her. She looks around the living room, the room they’ve been cleaning out together. The room they picked a paint color for together, too. The room whose floors Sabrina scrubbed and whose furniture Red has discussed picking up from goodwill. A place they’re rebuilding together. It already feels like it’s not just Red’s home, it’s theirs.

“Yeah,” she says, leaning in to give Red another kiss. “Yes. I’d love to live with you.”

[starsfic]

The Ghosts of Fiery Cloud Manor- Chapter 2: The Scholar's Manor

Summary: Xiaotian meets Tang and his partner.

AO3

-_-

"QI XIAOTIAN!"

The moment he stepped foot in the village, Xiaotian found himself freezing. The yelling was too close. Too close to the bark of his father. He slapped himself out of those thoughts, turning.

A man in a white and brown robe was hurrying up, red scarf fluttering after him. He came to a stop, leaning on his knees to pant. "Xiaotian, correct?" he said as he straightened, brushing dirt off his robe.

Xiaotian nodded, holding out his hand. "You must be Mr. Tang, right?"

The scholar gave his hand a firm shake. "Indeed, I am!" Tang said, using his other hand to fix his glasses. They turned at footsteps, watching another man, dressed in a yellow sweater, hurry up. "And this is my partner Sun Wukong."

"Like the Monkey King?" He couldn't help it. He had been obsessed with the stories since he was a kid.

For some reason, panic flashed across Tang's face. "Yes! Like the Monkey King! Not exactly like the Monkey King but close..."

Wukong took over at the scholar nervously laughed. "He's a big fan." He stage-whispered. "Anyway, kid, he saw your text and freaked out, thinking someone was still there and you were hurt or something."

"Actually…"

He explained about the lack of footprints in the dust and the paintings. Tang visibly calmed when he heard that there hadn’t been an actual intruder. “You’re right, the paintings still being there are a good sign.” He rubbed his chin in thought, not seeming to notice as Wukong wrapped an arm around his shoulder and start leading him down to the village, gesturing for Xiaotian to follow. “It’s possible that the stories kept any wannabe thieves away…”

“The stories?”

Tang glanced at him with a smile, his next words bearing a sharp contrast.

“Oh, the ghost stories.”

-_-

Sunlight drew Xiaotian from slumber. He didn’t get out of bed immediately, mulling over dinner last night.

In the inn’s dining room, over a meal of vegetarian noodles, Tang had laid down the history of Fiery Cloud Manor. Yes, the manor was built right where Red Boy, one of the most famous villains of Journey to the West, was claimed to live, giving the manor its name. One of Tang’s ancestors had built the manor centuries ago after he came back from studying in Britain. A few weeks after his sudden death, the manor had suddenly been abandoned and locked up and none of Tang’s family allowed to go in.

Which led to the rumors of ghosts.

But what kept playing Xiaotian’s minds was what Wukong had said, clearly not intending to be heard.

“Hopefully, ghosts are the only thing that’s in there…”

He finally pulled himself out of bed, stretching. He got dressed and packed a bag, a plan outlining in his mind. Tang didn’t have any maps of the manor, so Xiaotian would figure out the layout of the manor and get a feel for what was there and what needed to be done. He needed cleaning product and a unit more specific than ‘a lot’ would be helpful.

When he opened his door, the monkey waiting outside wasted no time in clinging to his front. “Seriously?” Xiaotian voiced, staring at the monkey. It gave a happy chirp. “This has to stop, you can’t get attached.” He continued on this vein as he walked downstairs, not even noticing the innkeeper, Mr. Syntax, watching until he chuckled.

“Good company?”

“He’s persistent,” Xiaotian said, plopping the monkey back onto the counter. “I’ll give him that. Hey, do you know if there’s anywhere I can get a packed lunch?” The monkey reached for his loose hair and he batted its hands away. “I want to get a full day out in the manor.”

“Oh, I’ll whip something up while you’re eating breakfast.”

Xiaotian thanked him and headed into the pub, ordering some dumplings. He couldn’t resist snapping a picture and texting it to Pigsy. Pretty good, but not as good as yours! A few minutes later, there was a response of Good. Miss you. Xiaotian sent back a miss you! before the innkeeper handed him a brown paper bag. He headed out and soon found the trail again.

The soft mist of morning lingered around him as he started his hike. Now that Xiaotian was slightly more awake, he noticed more details on his walk. Bull and monkey statues, worn away by weather and time, lined the path. Scattered here and there were wild peach trees, soft breezes scattering pink and white petals. With the sunrise, it was beautiful.

By the time Fiery Cloud Manor came into view, he was smiling. His smile stopped when he saw the closed gate…

And no headband.

Some critter must've gotten curious. At least he had a spare...which he had forgotten. Xiaotian pushed that aside and headed through the gate and to the door, making sure to wedge two large rocks he found to prop open the doors. When that was done, he studied the floor.

The entrance hall floor was made of red marble, gold veins cracking through it. The wallpaper was a similar shade of red- clearly, Tang’s ancestor hadn’t cared about how red on red would look- and when he wiped some dust away, he found a pattern of bulls. Above, a crystal chandelier would’ve offered light, but it was more spiderweb than crystal. Xiaotian shivered at the thought of spiders. “You probably have a lot of them,” he said out loud. His voice bounced off the walls, echoing into the depths. “You probably hate that- believe me, I would.”

Weirdly, he felt less weird talking to the house than the monkey.

“Let’s get to know each other.”

He set down the hallway, pulling out his phone to start his playlist. He hummed along to the music as he found more paintings, as well as vases and decorative armor and weapons. Which was weird. Wouldn’t someone take something like that when the house was abandoned? Xiaotian found himself pushing those thoughts away when he came to a traditional paper push door, a pair of large flames decorating it.

He pushed them open, sending dust scattering. The marble floor in this room had been replaced with wood with a reddish tint to it. Xiaotian moved his gaze up and yelped when he looked back.

"Okay." He said when his heart stopped racing. His several reflections repeated the motions of his mouth. "Mirrors. Didn't expect mirrors." Xiaotian headed in. There had to be windows somewhere, right?

Nope. All Xiaotian found in what he was recognizing as a ballroom were mirrors, occasionally broken by the white wall underneath. This room probably looked less creepy when the golden chandeliers above were lit. But for now, Xiaotian was glad to get out.

The rest of the manor was less creepy, thankfully. Four floors and an attic were open for examination. He found a door that must've led to a basement, but the door held firm when Xiaotian had tried to open it. He brushed it off, happy to wait to deal with that, and continued his exploration. Most of all, he found Tang wasn't kidding when he had said that the manor had been abandoned suddenly.

None of the furniture looked missing. The decor was still decorating. Some of the rooms still had clothes in their closets. Then Xiaotian entered the library. "Are you kidding?!" he yelled to nobody. "Who just leaves their books?!"

There wasn't a single gap in the bookshelves that filled the room. There was a marble fireplace, any fire having long since died out, and dusty furniture. There was a desk that, under further examination, looked like whoever had been writing had simply gone up to get a snack and had never come back. A portrait of a familiar woman- the same woman from the painting downstairs, that horn hairstyle was hard to miss- looked down at the desk with a look of distaste.

"I feel you." he told her.

He continued his examination, humming along to the next song to come on. He froze when a kid screamed for more candy. "Mei!" Xiaotian grabbed his phone, turning it on to show it had gone to his Don't Even Think About It playlist. In retrospective, he probably shouldn't have a playlist titled this. Or use Xiaojiao's birthday as his passcode.

He switched it to a different playlist and then turned to texting his best friend. You're five hours away, how are you still driving me crazy?

A minute later, his phone lit up with a call from Xiaojiao. He answered it and her giggle filled the library. "Sounds like someone found the new song!"

"Yeah, that horrible Disney remix. Thank you for that."

Xiaojiao let out a snort, soon calming. "So, how is it? Epic disaster or nice fixer-upper?"

Xiaotian looked around. "More like epic fixer-upper. Mr. Tang was right- this is the perfect place for a museum."

"How bad is it?"

That was another weird thing. For a house that had been abandoned for at least a century, there was surprisingly no damage. "Just some dust, cobwebs, and grime here and there. But seriously, this place is amazing."

"I see you found your soulmate."

He couldn't help his own snort of laughter. "Yes, I predict a spring wedding. I wish you were here to see it-" Something hit his back and he screamed. For a moment, there was nothing but panic.

Finally, the creature hopped off…

And the inn monkey blinked innocently up at him.

"MK?! Is everything okay?!"

"Fine!" Xiaotian said, feeling his heart race from the scare. "It's just the monkey."

"...the monkey?"

Said monkey let out a chirp before hopping up onto his shirt, reaching for the paper bag. "No," he told it, holding the bag as far as he could. "I will not feed you! Sorry, Xiaojiao, this monkey apparently likes to hop from the local nature reserve."

There was a coo from the other end before someone else spoke. "Okay, I have to go!" Xiaojiao said. Xiaotian froze at her planning voice. "Love you, bye!" And just like that, she was gone.

He was broken out of his confusion by paws batting at his hair and he gave in. "Fine." Xiaotian said, sitting down on one of those comfy-looking armchairs. "Let's see what we have that won't make you sick."

The bag was opened and he pulled out some noodles, Peking duck, white rice, and some spring rolls. Finally, Xiaotian found a bag of dried peach slices, marketed as peach chips. He popped open the bag and handed it over to the monkey.

They ate in companionable music-filled silence. The monkey occasionally paused to cock it's head. Then, when Xiaotian had finished his lunch and was placing the trash in the bag, it let out a series of chirps and squeaks, mimicking the tune. "You're a talented little guy, aren't you?" Xiaotian asked, reaching over to give it a head scratch. Realization struck a moment later.

Oh boy. He had gotten attached, to both house and monkey.

He could deal with that later, he mused as he leaned back, feeling sleepy. His stomach was full, the armchair was comfy, and the library was surprisingly warm, which all pushed him deeper into the abyss of slumber. It wasn't an issue. He could take a quick nap...

He didn't notice a figure watching him as his eyes fell shut.

[themurphyzone]

PatB/BatB AU: Imprisoned

Summary: Pinky tries to rescue his father from a spooky, mysterious castle, only to wind up the prisoner of a terrifying monster. Also the terrifying monster has no fucking idea what he's doing, but Pinky doesn't know that.

AN: Because I desperately want to write a BatB/PatB fic but I don’t want to tackle the entire movie cause this movie is more slow burn than most other Disney Princess stories. I decided to try the scene where Belle first meets the Beast just for curiosity’s sake.  

AO3 Link

Pharfignewton’s hooves nervously stirred up dead leaves and twigs as she halted in front of an eerie black gate, its bars crisscrossing over each other as if to prevent anyone from entering…or leaving.

An unfamiliar sense of dread swept over Pinky. The enormous castle beyond the gate loomed, the highest towers piercing the thick, gray clouds above. Still, Pharfignewton’s instincts were never wrong. If she said Papa was somewhere in that large, gloomy castle, then he was going to be in that large, gloomy castle.

Pinky gently flicked the reins, but Pharfignewton didn’t move. A tremble ran down her back.

“It’s okay, Fig,” Pinky whispered. He stroked her mane, and Pharfignewton whinnied softly. “Just think of your favorite things. Like apples, carrots, grassy meadows…”

A gust of wind blew the gate open. It crashed against the unforgiving stone wall.

Pharfignewton leapt back, the sudden move nearly pitching Pinky to the ground, but he clung to several strands of her mane and quickly scrambled into his usual position at the base of her neck.

She trotted across the stone bridge, ears swiveling in every direction.

“P-poit. They oughta change the lock on that thing,” Pinky murmured as the gate slammed shut.

Pharfignewton stumbled against a crack in the stone pathway leading up to the castle’s front door. She couldn’t go any further. The stone would damage her hooves, and they’d need to be in tip-top shape for the ride home.

“Fig, you’ll have to wait here.” Pinky climbed up her mane and onto her long muzzle, petting the soft fur between her eyes. Her head rose indignantly, stamping a hoof against the stone. “You shouldn’t go onto the stone without horseshoes. It’ll ruin your lovely hooves. And don’t worry, Papa and I will be back before you can say sugarcube!”

They couldn’t afford horseshoes for Pharfignewton, which prevented Pinky from riding her as often as he would’ve liked. Pinky’s chest ached from the reminder. Pharfignewton deserved pretty shoes.

She let out a gentle puff of air as she lowered him to the ground, giving him an encouraging nudge.

Pinky slowly approached the heavy doors, a brass gargoyle with bulging eyes serving as a doorknob. But the knob was at human height, not mouse height, so even with a running start and flying leap, he couldn’t reach it.

Then he remembered his manners. Breaking into a haunted, abandoned castle was awfully rude. What if he disturbed some ghosts in whatever ghostly things they did?

“Hello?” Pinky called, pressing an ear to the door as he knocked. “Anyone home?”

Nobody answered, but the door creaked slightly, allowing Pinky enough room to squeeze inside. Pinky bundled Mama’s well-worn traveling cloak around himself, trying not to think of the scolding he might’ve received as a young mouse about breaking and entering into strange places.

But he wasn’t stealing anything. He was just going to find Papa and bring him home. If Mama were alive, she’d understand.  

Somehow the castle interior was even colder and draftier than outside. Gargoyles lined the walls, crouching with their wings outstretched, and each one seemed to have their eyes trained on him. The inside was mostly stone, with a wine-red carpet leading from the doorway and splitting into two paths along an enormous staircase.

Torches and lanterns hung along the walls, but they were dim and barely provided light to see by.

Whoever built the castle must’ve had a great love for the Gothic style. Pinky could appreciate dedication to the theme, but he shied away from an eagle-like gargoyle all the same. There were eyes boring into him. He just knew it.

“Hello?” Pinky shouted.

“Hello!”

Pinky grinned. The echo made up for the dreary décor.

“Narf!”

“Narf!”

This time, he cupped his hands to his mouth, took a deep breath, and yelled from the top of his lungs.

“FJORD!”

“FJORD!”

Feeling slightly bolder, Pinky played a quick game of eenie-meenie-miney-mo for the path he’d take, since there were so many of them and he couldn’t choose just one. There were so many rooms. It would take a while to go through them all, so he’d have to chance it.

On the last count of ‘mo’, Pinky’s finger pointed at the rightmost staircase, so he climbed the long flight, his bare feet sinking into the carpet. He hoped the ghosts would forgive him for tracking dirt inside.

Clink clink clink.

Funny. Feet didn’t usually make that kind of noise on carpet.

Probably just the creaking of old metal. This castle had definitely seen better days, judging from the cobwebs that spanned entire corners far above his head.

He reached the top of the staircase. More doors and rooms awaited him down the dark hallway.

Pinky knocked on the nearest door. He heard a splash of water and the sweep of a mop coming from within. A maid, maybe?

They could point him in the right direction!

“Hello? Are you a castle maid? I’m sorry for interrupting your work, but I’m looking for my Papa!” Pinky shouted, pressing an ear against the door. Someone whispered urgently, the exact words too muffled to make out, and the splashing and sweeping noises stopped. “His name is Jack, he’s a little shorter than me, and…oh, he has a big bushy mustache too! He tends to get vegetable bits stuck in it when he eats. Have you seen him?”

No reply.

Pinky’s tail twitched nervously. Maybe the maids really didn’t like having their work interrupted.

“I’m sorry, I’ll…I’ll let you get back to work,” Pinky said. He backed away from the door, the hood of his cloak falling into his eyes.

Clink clink clink.

That noise again. Pinky lifted the hood away from his eyes, and he came face-to-face with a teacup, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen any teacups yet. Mostly gargoyles and spooky stuff, really.

The teacup was about his height, with a polished white surface and golden trim around its rim and base. Its handle was a shining red, and its pink base looked almost skirt-like, with a single yellow flower painted on the front.

“Aww, what a cute teacup!” Pinky exclaimed. He’d never seen any teacup like this before. Not even Snowball had something this ornate and pretty. “Wonder who painted you? Whoever it was, they’ve really got a great eye for color!”

He could’ve sworn the teacup’s handle lifted out of pride, but maybe the dim lighting was just playing tricks on him.

“Well, I don’t know how you got here, but I can’t just leave you alone either. What if somebody stepped on you?” Pinky lifted the teacup by the handle and carried it further down the hall. The teacup’s base seemed to twitch every few seconds.

He didn’t know where the kitchen was, but surely there had to be a cabinet or cupboard somewhere around here. He turned left when the path split again, and counted his lucky stars once he spotted a small table up ahead. The higher surface was several feet above his head, but the lower platform was at his shoulder level.  

Odd. There was a candelabra and a mantle clock here too. Strange place to store one’s knickknacks, but then again, Pinky kept his rock collection in a tea kettle, so he couldn’t be too judgy.  

Pinky set the teacup on the lower platform, sliding it over until it touched the candelabra and clock. The two objects were oddly painted, with black and white markings running throughout their brass bodies. The candelabra’s lower half was painted brown, and the clock’s topmost carvings looked almost like a cap.

Though none of them were similar objects, Pinky thought they fit together quite well.

Curiously, Pinky ran his finger over the decorative carvings on the legs. “Egad, this must be real mahogany!” he said. His fingertips were covered in a thick layer of dust when he pulled away, and he shook it off, sneezing at the small cloud that formed. “Whew, really dusty though.”

“Gesundheit!” a Scouse-accented voice said.

“Narf! Thanks a bunch!” Pinky wiped the remaining dust against the inside lining of his apron. It was going in the wash later, so it didn’t bother him too much.

Only as he climbed another flight of stairs did he realize he hadn’t seen any living being yet. Maybe the castle was just full of polite ghosts.

The carpet beneath his feet was ragged with little holes revealing cold stone underneath, the ceiling arching far above him. The pillars had rough seals over their creeping, winding cracks. There were no gargoyles, no furniture, no rooms at all.

Nothing but dust, cracks, and cobwebs.

It seemed that not even the ghosts used this area much.

“Papa?” Pinky shouted. His echoes answered back, yet there was no sign of Papa.

Wind battered the stone walls, and Pinky’s heart leapt from his chest. He wrapped his cloak around himself, willing his heart to stay where it belonged. For goodness sake, he’d grown up in Paris. If streets full of reeking garbage didn’t scare him, then this shouldn’t either.

Pinky reached a dead end, the path blocked by a barren mass of stone. With a sigh, he turned around. There wasn’t anything here. Maybe he should try the second floor again? There were a lot of rooms he hadn’t checked.

A light flickered around the corner, a bright circle of hope illuminating the unfeeling stone. Pinky hadn’t gone in that direction yet. He hadn’t planned to, but the light skipped and waved, beckoning him closer. And if there was light, that meant somebody was in the castle after all!

“Narf! Excuse me!” Pinky cried, rushing over to the ray of light. “I don’t mean to interrupt your work, but if you could please tell me-“

The light vanished. Pinky pressed his hand to the wall. It was dark and scary in here. That light had been the first sign of life he’d seen in this castle.

A shrill creak startled a ‘troz’ out of him. But it meant someone was moving around, so he followed it until he came to a doorway in the middle of the corridor.

The door was open, so Pinky peered inside.

A winding, narrow staircase led upwards. There was no carpet, only coarse and rough stone. Then the light returned, a shining beacon in the dark.

“There you are,” Pinky whispered, hauling himself onto the first step. These stairs weren’t as smooth as the rest of the castle’s, but years of routine chores had given him enough upper body strength to manage just fine.

Cold seeped into his fur. His teeth chattered, but he pushed forward. Papa needed him.

A candelabra rested on a nearby platform, its three candles burning brightly. It had the same brown base and markings as the candelabra he’d seen downstairs. Funny. He never knew candelabras came in matching sets. But once again, he was alone.

Not even a ghost in sight.

“I could’ve sworn I heard someone…” Pinky sighed. The room in front of him only contained a dimly lit torch and a row of heavy, barred doors. Fire provided the only colors, and it wasn’t enough to chase the cold, damp shadows away. Neither was the thin, colorless light that peeked from the cracks of the foundation above. “Is anyone here?”  

A hacking cough came from behind the door nearest to the torch.

“Pinky?” a weak voice murmured.

Pinky’s ears perked as he rushed over to the door. There was a barred window close to the ground, Papa’s face peeking out from between the thick steel pieces. His fur was dirty and wet, eyes wide open with fright. He stared straight through Pinky, gripping the hood of Pinky’s cloak with desperate, clammy hands.

Papa was in a cell.

Pinky bit his lip. How? Papa wasn’t a criminal. Sure, his machines blew up a lot, but that was hardly cause for jail!  

“Papa! Are you okay? Did you see any ghosts?” Pinky gently took Papa’s hands in his own, quickly rubbing the pale pink skin to bring some warmth back. “Poit. I guess they weren’t as polite as I thought…”

Papa stammered as Pinky drew him close. The bars were wide enough that Papa could slip through them easily, but as much as Pinky tugged on his arm, Papa refused to budge, heels digging into the cracks underfoot. “He’s…he’s no g-g-ghost, Pinky. Y-you have to go. Save yourself.”

“He? You mean whoever put you in here?” Pinky repeated. Papa’s bushy mustache quivered, the tiny hairs unkempt and matted. He couldn’t speak, his hands freezing in Pinky’s own. They had to get out of here. The sooner Papa warmed up in front of the cottage’s fireplace, the better.

“Food pellets. There are no food pellets here…” Papa murmured. “Your mother made the best food pellets in the world.”

Pinky’s heart clenched at the reminder. “I know. She made the best. We should go now. Please, Papa?”

Later, when they got back to the cottage, he was going to ask exactly why Papa wasn’t at the fair. Why Pharfignewton was unhitched from the wagon and terrified out of her mind. How he’d gotten locked up in the first place.

Papa’s shivers were fiercer than before.

“It’s safe and warm at home. Let’s go…” Pinky whimpered, but Papa’s arms remained glued to the cold, unfeeling bars.

Papa’s mouth opened…

“Run, Pinky!”

A thundering roar shook the entire prison. The floor, walls, and ceiling trembled with a frightened rattle. Pinky clamped his hands against his ears, and Papa tried to do the same, though he was shaking too violently to do it right.

The only light came from above now.

A massive clawed hand clamped painfully around Pinky’s shoulder and yanked him around, the prison briefly becoming nothing more than a dark blur with a swirl of purple.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

Pinky blinked the stars out of his vision, pressing his back against Papa, wordlessly urging him to dart to the back corner of the cell for his safety. But Papa tightly gripped Pinky’s shoulders, and Pinky winced as Papa’s fingers dug into a sore spot.

An enormous shadow loomed above them, its shape melting into the darkness. The only features Pinky could see were a pair of sharp, white fangs and the trailing end of a purple cape.

Pinky’s ears flattened, his heart pounding out of his chest. “Who are you?” he called out, trying to keep his voice steady. He had to be brave for Papa.

“The master of this castle.”

Every word was accompanied by a low, animalistic snarl. Pinky caught the gleam of long, twisted horns atop the shadow’s head.

“Please, let Papa out,” Pinky begged. Another growl cut him off, and Pinky’s throat tightened in panic, but he continued to plead his case. His words were useless. He was use-no, not now. He couldn’t afford self-doubt. “It’s cold here. Can’t you see he’s sick?”

“THEN HE SHOULDN’T HAVE TRESPASSED ON MY PROPERTY!”

More cruel white fangs were exposed.

“But he could die!” Pinky pleaded. “Please, I’ll do anything!”

“There’s nothing you can do. He’s my prisoner.”

The shadow moved again, always skirting the edge of the light.  

“There must be something…” Pinky murmured. But he had no money or valuables to offer, and trading Pharfignewton when she was a valued member of the family was out of the question. He looked down at his hands…and he had his answer. “Wait!”

Pinky reached for the shadow’s cape, but a bloodshot glare made him stop and think better of it.  

Pinky closed his eyes. And he sealed his fate.

“Take me instead.”

The shadow turned away with a scoff.

“YOU!”

Pinky tried not to flinch. He didn’t have much value. He could keep house, but that was hardly a unique skill in the village. But he had no other material besides his clothes and fur.  

“You would…take his place?” The harsh tone and growl vanished. The shadow’s deep, guttural voice sounded more confused than furious, as if he hadn’t expected such a trade.

And why should he?

Even so, Pinky had to push forward. There was no turning back now. “If I did,” Pinky said, just wanting to make sure before he agreed to anything. “Would you let him go?”

“Pinky, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Papa hissed.

I’m saving you. That’s what I’m doing.

Complete silence. Pinky bit his lip. Finally, the shadow spoke. “Yes,” the shadow drawled the word softly. “But…you must promise to remain here for the rest of your life.”  

Pinky gripped the folds of his dress.

Rest of my life?

Would he ever see Papa again? Pharfignewton? The little cottage in the countryside?

Trade everything to be trapped with this shadow?

A shadow had to belong to somebody…

“I’d like to know who I’m speaking with,” Pinky said. “Would you come into the light, please?”

For a moment, there was nothing but an anxious growl. Then a pink, hairless foot slid into the colorless light.

A human?

Couldn’t be. The feet were tipped with sharp claws, and the heels lifted off the ground. Nor did they look like they belonged to any sort of rodent Pinky had ever met.

A pair of ragged black trousers. A long, crooked tail with many sharp bends. Grayish-brown fur over a large chest and pudgy stomach halfway covered by the purple cape. Arms that were far too thick, long, and coarse for even the largest rat.

The shadow slowly raised his head, curved black horns adding to his already intimidating height. Large, rounded ears. A broad, wide face with sagging cheeks and thick, furrowed brows.

But what struck Pinky the most was the creature’s unreadable expression. Though he was obviously angry, it was impossible to tell if those narrowed pink eyes were glaring at him with disgust or hatred. Despite the light, the eyes were partially hidden by dark patches of fur. He was silent, but a pair of fangs were still exposed.

Placing the species was impossible. He seemed to be many animals at once.

“Narf,” Pinky whispered.

The monster’s brows lifted in surprise, and if Papa weren’t locked away right now, it might’ve been comical.

Pinky turned away, unable to brave through the staredown, but he felt the monster’s gaze boring into his back.

“I won’t let you do this!” Papa cried out.

But he had to. For Papa’s freedom.

Pinky lifted his head. He stood up, gently sliding Papa’s hand off his shoulder. He let the touch linger for as long as possible and gave his Papa one last smile before turning around.

The monster was hunched over, one clawed hand resting on the ground. It wasn’t a bow of courtesy, but he seemed to have trouble with his balance. He growled in warning, as if challenging Pinky to say something about his position.

Pinky approached slowly, each step echoing in his ear. The monster didn’t move. When their faces were just inches apart, Pinky closed his eyes.

“I promise,” Pinky said. He stuck out his hand to shake on it, because that’s what people did when they wanted to set their deals in stone.

“DONE!”

The monster snarled and shoved past Pinky. Unable to keep standing much longer, Pinky dropped to his knees and wept, unable to hold back his tears anymore.

He wouldn’t see the light of day again. Trapped forever with a monster in this lonely, dark place.

There was a squeak and the sound of frantic scampering behind him, and Pinky opened his eyes to see Papa’s desperate face, pleading with him to reconsider. “Pinky, listen to me! I’m old, but you have so much to-“ Papa’s words cut off as the monster dragged him off Pinky, lumbering towards the stairs on all fours with a hand clenched around Papa’s cloak.

“Wait!” Pinky shouted.

But the monster didn’t care. He and Papa disappeared down the stairs, their pleas for mercy falling on deaf ears.

He never got to say goodbye.

o-o-o-o-o

Papa was thrown into a carriage that moved on spindly, wooden legs and carried across the stone bridge. The carriage disappeared into the forest, Papa’s cries fading away.

Pinky clung to the barred window that was several feet off the ground and several stories high. It didn’t allow him a wide view, and he wasn’t sure where Pharfignewton was. Still looking for grass to eat, he hoped.

He slid to the floor of the cell, huddling underneath the window in a tight ball. His tail was always a source of comfort for him, and he twisted and wrung it in his hands. The sun started to go down, and he imagined how beautiful it would’ve looked from the sweeping grassy hills just outside the cottage.

Beautiful rolling clouds. His cozy bed in the upstairs loft. The sound of Papa tinkering on a machine as a vegetable broth brewed over the stove.

The door slammed against the wall, and the crash startled Pinky out of his fantasies.

It was the monster.

Something inside Pinky snapped. Now he was angry, and angry was a feeling he didn’t like, but this…this cruel excuse of a…whatever he was stole his freedom and his Papa.

“You didn’t let me say goodbye!” Pinky screamed. “Now I’ll never see him…I-I’ll never see him again.”  

He expected the monster to roar in defiance or deny the truth, but he did neither. He only leaned heavily against the doorframe in complete silence. His ears dropped, and something akin to remorse flashed across his face.

But that new emotion quickly disappeared. “Come,” the monster said, dropping to all fours. “I’ll show you to your room.”

New room? It was such a sudden offer that Pinky forgot his anger completely. So he wouldn��t have to live among old chains and damp stone?

“I thought-“

The monster arched an eyebrow, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice. “Unless you’d prefer these accommodations?”

Pinky shook his head.

“Then follow.”

His captor crossed the room without pausing, and Pinky realized he’d never asked for a name. If he was going to live here for the rest of his life, he wanted to at least have a name.

“Hold on,” Pinky said. “I never got your name.”

The monster’s hand hit the floor with a resounding thud. “Call me the Beast,” he growled. Pinky stepped back in surprise, but the mon—the Beast didn’t turn around. “And don’t ever ask again.”

There was a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as if he hated his requested name. But that didn’t make sense. Why call himself a name he hated?

“Poit. Well, my name’s Pinky so-“

The Beast was halfway down the stairs already. Pinky folded his arms. Well, that was very rude. His captor didn’t have manners at all!

Pinky hurried after him. The Beast didn’t turn around. He was a very poor conversationalist.

Another candelabra stood just outside the door to the spooky hallway. It hadn’t been there earlier. “You really shouldn’t put your nice decorations on floors. What if someone stepped on them?” Pinky said.

“So we’ve got an interior designer for a long-term guest?” the candelabra asked. “Now we can finally replace the doom and gloom with something different! Maybe an indoor jungle with monkeys!”

The candelabra could talk! That was pretty cool!

His waxy face was eye level with Pinky. His grin was a little lopsided, his candleholders folding against his gold and brown body with an easy, light confidence.

“Yakko, this castle can’t possibly tolerate more monkeys, nor does it require the aesthetic of a jungle to be one,” the Beast huffed. He still sounded irritated, but less so. “And while we’re on that topic, Wakko and Dot need a reminder to not engage with outsiders. Where are they?”

“A real spoilsport, isn’t he?” Yakko whispered to Pinky.

Pinky giggled, and Yakko’s grin became wider. Alright, so not everybody in this big scary castle was a mean ol’ grump. It was good to know.  

“Oh, they’re just telling Scratchy the news,” Yakko shrugged. “He’s a real couch potato these days. Anyway, maybe you oughta tie a string around your finger, cause you’re clearly forgetting something.”

He waved a flame like one would wave a finger to scold.

“But I patched the leaking roof,” the Beast said. “My work was thorough.”  

Yakko coughed and pointed a flame at Pinky.

The Beast only stared. Then his pink eyes widened as whatever he’d forgotten finally dawned on him.

“Mouse.”

“Where?” Pinky whirled around.

Oh, right. He was a mouse. Silly him.

The Beast growled, like he didn’t know what to think of Pinky. Well, neither did Pinky know what to think of him. So there.

“You owe Yakko for your new room. Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

With that, the Beast stalked off.

“So…thanks for the room, I think. Poit. Is he always like this?” Pinky asked. He kicked at a speck of dust.

Yakko gave Pinky an encouraging nudge with his candlestick holders. “The Master of the Castle he may be, the Master of First Impressions he is not. If his rawwwwr-fear-me shtick gets to be too much, say the word and I’ll set his cape on fire for ya.”

“Is that a good idea?” Pinky asked. Despite his worries, he couldn’t help but laugh at Yakko’s attempt at roaring.

Yakko nodded, or as much as one could nod when one’s head was a wax candle. “It’s amazing what you can get away with in this place.”

o-o-o-o-o

Pinky was led down to the second floor, into a corridor with the most frightening gargoyles he’d ever seen. But he had to be a good guest, right? Good guests knew the names of every gargoyle, as Yakko was trying to teach him.

He tried so hard to pay attention, but he wouldn’t be able to remember which one was Hugo or Goliath or Laverne or Brooklyn. Yakko didn’t seem like the type to hold it against him though. He talked a lot and knew a lot of things Pinky didn’t know, explaining things like he was used to explaining things.

He seemed awfully young though.

Ahead of them, the Beast lumbered with a heavy gait. His strides were long and lacked the lightness of a rodent’s steps. Though he’d locked Papa up, he seemed more awkward than scary now.

Papa.

Was he home now? Would he be alright? There were chickens to feed and cows to milk. He hoped Papa wouldn’t put his noisy milking machine on Moo-Moo. She didn’t like that.

A tear ran down his cheek, then another. Pinky clutched his tail, staring down at the floor to avoid all the glaring stone eyes on him.

Yakko’s hopping sped up, the brass sounds muffled by the carpet.

There was the smell of slightly singed fur, followed by an irritated grunt. Pinky realized the Beast was watching him from the corner of his eye. A tiny cloud of smoke trailed from his right elbow.

“You can…make yourself at home,” the Beast said, brushing off the tiny fire. “As your new residence, you have free reign of the castle and the surrounding property. You may go anywhere but the West Wing.”

The West Wing?

“What’s in the-“

“IT’S FORBIDDEN!” the Beast bellowed, his massive hand slamming into the carpet and leaving long clawmarks behind. Pinky flinched.

The Beast kept walking. Yakko filled in the silence with chatter.

To Pinky’s relief, his room wasn’t far.

The Beast opened the enormous door, which led to a bedroom that was twice as large as the cottage.

The cottage was home. Not here.  Yakko meant well, but this would never truly be Pinky’s room.

“My servants will attend to your needs,” the Beast said. There was nothing harsh about his words this time, but servants? Pinky didn’t know if he could get used to that. Nor had he seen any servants around. Was Yakko a servant? He never asked for his job title.

“Don’t worry! The toilet’s not alive. None of them are,” Yakko added.

It was probably meant to be helpful, so Pinky did his best to smile at him, but he could only manage a weak nod.  

Then Pinky noticed the giant bed, with thick comforters and a dozen pillows and velvet curtains around the edges. Though fancy and straight out of a fairy tale, it wasn’t his tiny bed tucked in a cozy corner. Meekly, he stepped inside.

“Psst! Invite him to dinner, Romeo!” Yakko hissed. 

“I order you to…join me for dinner,” the Beast demanded. “THAT’S NOT A REQUEST!”

The door slammed, and Pinky was once again left in darkness.

This wasn’t home. It was dark and cold. Homes were cozy and happy and loving. No walls, no prisons, no locks and keys to be thrown away.  

Home was elsewhere. His heart was elsewhere.

Pinky curled up on an unfamiliar pillow. His heart was broken, his chest ached, and there was a deep longing within him. For Mama’s laughter. For Papa’s joy. For the hills and the meadows and the open blue skies.    

His tears flowed. They were many and endless. He felt they would never stop. He’d cry for the rest of his life, for as long as this exile from the world beyond took.

Outside his window, the first snowflakes began to fall. They marked the start of a very long, very cold winter.

AN: Let it be known that this AU is the only place, besides maybe anything involving Brain Meets Brawn, where Brain’s size can be described as intimidating. I want him to be, you know, like an actual monster and not just a big mouse with horns. Don’t get me wrong, tiny beast!Brain is cute, but that would just be more comical than dramatic if I tried to play it as such a serious moment.

For my personal Beast!Brain, I combined elements from @deez-art and @sleepy-hooves art. Deez for the overall look, and the way he glares at Pinky during the “come into the light” part comes from sleepy-hooves.

In this AU, rather than appearance, Brain fears the loss of control the most. He knows his mind is dwindling away unless he can break the curse. Unlike Disney’s Beast, he’s a bit more proactive with trying to break the curse and tries to keep busy instead of brooding in the West Wing all the time, though some tasks can be very difficult for him.

Yakko is the candelabra, Wakko is the mantle clock, and Dot is the teacup. You’ll have to excuse them for following Pinky around. They’re curious kiddos.

Yakko calling Scratchy a couch potato is literal. Scratchy was turned into a p-sychiatrist’s couch.

No matter what happens, Brain always has a soft spot for the Warners. The Warners aren’t scared of him and will snap back.

Poor Pinky gets put through the wringer. But y’all know the story. Eventually they fall in love and get their happily ever after.

[nicolewrites]

this house is full of ghosts (and they all look like you)

just some thoughts from last night...

Rating: T+ Genre: Angst  Characters: [Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Sylvain Jose Gautier], the Blue Lions Words: 2,532

Ingrid returns home after the war.

AO3

The ride from Enbarr back to Galatea territory is long and lonely. Ingrid doesn’t want to stretch it out any longer than it already is, so she pushes herself and her pegasus to the brink of exhaustion every day that she rides until the rich soil turns to rocky dust beneath her and she flies lower to the ground, breathing in the familiar, cold Faerghus air.

She touches down at the edge of the property that belongs to her family and she stares at the Galatea manor: big and empty at the top of the hill.

Ingrid pulls out the hunting dagger she was gifted when she was twelve and slashes the reins and bridle and tack on her pegasus until it falls free into strips of leather on the ground. The child in her is angry with both her treatment of expensive material and tack that carries so many memories for her. The Ingrid she is today wants to burn all of it.

She pushes away her pegasus by the nose and then the flank, urging him to fly away. He whinnies at her, but Ingrid doesn’t let up, shooing him away until he flaps his wings and jumps, moving away from her with a sad noise.

There is no more war so there is no more need for her to ride.

-

The manor is closed and locked up tightly and Ingrid doesn’t have a key. She smashes a window on the front door and picks her way through the broken glass she leaves in the entryway. She unlocks the door, to ease her comings and goings later, and then looks around her childhood home.

Dust clings to every surface and there are cobwebs strung between bannisters and rails on the chandelier above the front hall. The floors are scratched as they have always been and the rugs that cover them are matted and tattered. From the front entrance, she can just barely glimpse the portrait gallery at the top of the stairs of her entire family. She leans Luín against the wall by the door and moves closer to the stairs, staring up at the paintings.

Morbid curiosity drives her to climb the stairs slowly, her boots clicking on the wooded stairs as they creak beneath her. She stops in front of the first portrait: her father. He died defending Galatea from Empire excursions on the Alliance side four months ago. Her mother’s portrait, smiling and radiant, is gathering dust on her father’s right. Her mother has been gone for a long time.

On her father’s left is a patch of barren wall and Ingrid’s stomach twisted. Six years ago, there had been a portrait of her that had hung there. She’s not surprised that he took it down.

Her brothers are memorialized here as well, staring straight with small smiles or flat expressions. Their paintings are as lifeless as her brothers are now.

Ingrid walks back downstairs.

-

There are two broken windows in the parlour and half of the decorations in the room are knocked over and smashed or missing, leaving the empty shelves and tables to gather dust. There had never been much in the way of decoration anyway, thanks to the barren lands of Galatea, but they had still been nobles.

Ingrid approaches the mantle slowly, staring at the chipped and dusty bricks. Whatever was in the fireplace had long since burned to ashes, leaving a fine grey layer of soot along the base of the pit. She knows what used to sit on top of the mantle and she’s a little upset to see it gone.

The ceremonial sword had been a gift from House Fraldarius to House Galatea as a symbol of Glenn and Ingrid’s engagement. It had been the centrepiece on the mantle for as long as Ingrid can remember, but she also knows that the sword is worth a fair bit of money and that of all the things that have been stolen from her house in the last five years, the sword is something that she should have expected to be gone.

She traces the Crest of Fraldarius into the dust pattern atop the mantle and thinks of Felix.

She didn’t kill him herself, but she might as well have. She knows that he had been watching her when the Empire stormed Arianrhod. He had watched her to see if she would really cut down Kingdom soldiers, some of whom originated in Galatea.

Ingrid had made a request to Edelgard that Felix be buried with his father in the grounds outside the Silver Maiden. He had deserved an honourable burial for having died an honourable death in service to his King and country.

Nobody will be around to bury Ingrid. She doesn’t deserve their grief anyway. Maybe no one will even know when she dies. That seems like the easiest situation to pursue.

She writes Felix and Glenn’s names in the dust on either side of the Crest of Fraldarius. They can stay here with her, she supposes.

-

The kitchen is probably one of the dustier places in the manor. It’s too large for what was actually used by her family since it was built to accommodate a staff that her family had not been able to afford to employ.

There’s an abandoned rolling pin wedged halfway under the counter that’s filled with splinters. Ingrid picks it up and places it atop the counter, flicking it with her finger and watching it roll, lop-sided, across the top of the counter.

The Galatea manor kitchen had once been a beautiful kitchen, but the hardships of her house combined with the utter lack of care that has gone into this place since Ingrid left, have put it in quite the sorry state.

She pulls down the tattered, moth-eaten drapes and throws them in a pile. She wipes off the table and opens a window to let some air into the place. The next step would be to find a few simple wildflowers from her garden to set in the middle of the table and then she would feel almost like it was the kind of place she might have shared a meal with Dedue.

If he hadn’t been holding a grudge against her for both her treatment of him and then her siding with the Empire over her own King.

She hasn’t really been able to taste her food since the war began and she had raised arms against the Kingdom. She figures that’s only fair.

-

Mercedes is everywhere in her mother’s old study. She’s in the pianoforte at one end of the room and in the shattered china that litters the floor. Ingrid digs up a towel from the linen cabinet and wipes away the dust from the keys of the piano.

She sits on the rickety bench as it creaks beneath her weight and rests her fingers on yellowed keys. The piano doesn’t play properly since half the strings are broken or worn, but the D closest to the middle C makes a light chiming noise that reminds Ingrid of Mercedes’s laugh.

Mercedes had thought it funny that Ingrid could play the piano of all things, but Ingrid knows that she has never been any good at it. It had been purely for the noble appearance of it all.

She manages to find a broom back in the kitchen and she quickly sweeps up the remains of shattered china and trampled tea leaves. A few of the pieces of the tea set, ones that were in the cabinet for safekeeping, have survived over the years, but they just remind Ingrid of her mother as well so she leaves the study as abruptly as she had entered it.

-

Next to her mother’s study, is her father’s office. The room that, at times, doubled as a war room when Galatea still held an advantageous position in the war. Ingrid can only ever remember standing in the doorway of the room as a child, waiting to be granted permission to enter, despite never having received it.

Her father’s study is where she had been told that she would marry Glenn and it’s where she had been told that Glenn was dead. Her father’s study is where she had taken Luín and told her father that she would not serve the Kingdom, that she had made her choice.

She dusts the edges of the bookshelves in this room. It’s mostly battle tactics and farming techniques that have never born fruit, but there are the occasional magic tomes tucked in between as well. One of her brothers had had an aptitude for magic, even without a Crest, but Ingrid has never shared that blessing.

Annette had tried to teach her a simple Reason spell once, but Ingrid had only succeeded in giving herself frostbite on her fingertips before the spell fizzled and Annette had laughed, warming her hands up with a perfectly controlled fire spell.

Annette probably would have liked her father’s study with its leather armchair that is perfect for sitting with a good book and his sturdy oak desk that’s both a statement piece of furniture and also the perfect size and height for getting a lot of work done.

Ingrid writes Annette’s name in the dust atop her father’s desk before she searches the drawers. Surprisingly, she finds a spare key to the manor in the bottom right drawer hidden under a bunch of paper records and letters.

She hesitantly takes out one of the letters and stares at the familiar, curling script on the page. It’s Annette’s handwriting and it’s dated four years ago as her friend asks her father about Ingrid’s whereabouts and the situation in Galatea on behalf of House Dominic.

She leaves the letter on the top of the desk when she leaves the study.

-

Ingrid’s own bedroom is the next place she dares to venture. The stairs and floorboards creak under her feet and she feels weary from days of heavy travel and fighting and horrible sleep, but she can’t stop now.

At least the manor is empty.

Her room is exactly how she left it years ago: a bed tucked on the right side with sheets pulled up neatly, like a soldier. There’s a vanity across from the bed, next to a dresser, and then there are three bookshelves, all packed full of books that Ingrid had collected as a child.

The large window in her room isn’t broken, but the latch is stuck when she tries to open it, so she doesn’t force it.

Ingrid studies the titles on her bookshelves. Most of them are knight’s tales and fairytales with knightly and chivalrous characters who would die and lay down their lives for their loves and for their rulers. There are a few Faerghan history books as well.

Ingrid had always meant to bring Ashe home just to see her collection. She had wanted to share with him a new story that he hadn’t heard yet, since he managed to find her the Moon Knight, that wonderful story about the female knight.

She has a few books that she can pick out, even after all this time that she knows Ashe would have been incredibly interested in reading. She picks books off her shelves until her arms are so full that she can’t carry any more and she dumps them into her fireplace. She doesn’t have a match on her right now, but she’ll light them up later.

She’s got no use for books on knighthood and chivalry now.

She brushes her hands off and moves to sit on her bed. Like everything else, there is a fine coat of dust over her sheets, but she doesn’t acknowledge it, sitting on the mattress that was always just a little too firm for her taste as a child. It hasn’t aged well and it sags beneath her weight.

Ingrid leans back, falling onto her back on the bed, ignoring the puff of dust that flares in the air around her. She rolls onto her side, towards the far wall that her bed is pressed against and she presses her fingers into the wooden wall. She doesn’t have to search hard for what she’s looking for.

Her fingers clear the dust from the carved crevices and then she’s staring at the carved letters: D, A, and B.

It had been a silly childhood fantasy of hers to serve Dimitri as both a knight and also something more. Her crush had faded quickly once she had become engaged to Glenn.

For the first time since she had set foot in her old home, Ingrid’s eyes grow warm and wet.

Dimitri had fallen in the rain on the Tailtean Plains and Edelgard had taken his head clean off with one swipe of her axe and Ingrid remembers that she had screamed. She hadn’t cried on the battlefield when Felix had died, but she had fallen asleep clutching the old Fraldarius Crest ring that Glenn had given her, dreaming of his brother.

Felix’s death, at least, had been quick. Dimitri had watched his army crumble and his close ally, Dedue, mutate himself into one of the monstrous Crest-beasts.

And then he had lost his head.

Ingrid rolls onto her back and stares up blankly at the ceiling. The last time she had come to Galatea, before she had delivered her ultimatum, she hadn’t been alone in this room.

She had told him to leave, but the only person she had ever known who was stubborn enough to ignore her stayed instead. They had lain side-by-side on her too-small bed, Ingrid’s head resting against his shoulder while his arm wrapped around her. It had been nice.

She wishes that that had been her last memory of Sylvain.

She wishes she could just think of how warm he had been next to her on the bed and how it had felt when he had asked that night in the candlelight if he could kiss her. She wishes she could say that it had been enough for her to hold Sylvain for one night, that she returned to Fhirdiad or to Fraldarius or to Gautier with him to fight on behalf of the Kingdom.

Instead, she lives with the memory of driving Luín through the plates of his armour as she cried on the battlefield at the Tailtean Plains.

Do it yourself, he had said to her. Make it worth it.

She had grounded herself after that, keeping her feet anchored in the sucking mud of the field as she had screamed and cut down anyone, friend or foe, who had tried to get close to her.

Ingrid had buried Sylvain herself and stuck the Lance of Ruin into the earth like a cursed gravemarker.

Lying on her bed, alone, Ingrid imagines Sylvain’s lips on hers and how cold he had felt when she had kissed him then, rain and blood-soaked. Her tears roll down her cheeks and she closes her eyes, listening for the wind as it blows into her home through the windows she had opened on the main floor.

Galatea manor is full of ghosts. Ingrid feels like becoming one of them.

[frostythefelix]

Haunted: Chapter 1

Summary: Where a girl and her family unknowingly move into the house of a seiral killer from the 80’s and are left with the ghost of his victims

SPOOKTOBER 1ST

••

It’d been 10 years since anyone had stepped through the worn-down threshold of the Stray Kids house; nobody would dare. They knew the stories and they had watched people move in and out faster each time over the years. What had happened there left scars on the entire town and its people. They said they could hear the deafening screams of the spirits of The Stray Kids Killer’s victims, and sometimes, if you were unfortunate enough, you could see one of the young boys in the window begging for help, so you could imagine it was a shock to everyone when a blue minivan pulled into the driveway on a sunny afternoon in July.

The boys grinned, laughing mischievously together in the dusty living room. They’d been bored, and were ecstatic to have some people to play with again. Jeongin watched from the neighboring window, not as excited as the rest; he felt remorse.

“I bet they’ll be gone in a week.” Minho said joyfully, clapping his hands together. An argument erupted between the boys about who would prank them first, and how bad the antics would get. Jeongin sighed. He wanted to welcome the new family, but he knew that wouldn’t go well. He held his breath when your gaze seemingly fell on him.

You let your gaze fall on the old farmhouse you were now supposed to call home. It was a fixer upper that was for sure. The yellow paint was peeling from every angle, the shutters holding on by a thread. The second step onto the porch had a gaping hole where someone had seemingly stepped through, and the screen door had multiple tears and rips. But your parents loved that about the place; they saw potential. Where, though, you didn’t know. Movement in one of the downstairs windows grabbed your attention. For a moment, it seemed as though someone was standing to the side of it, but they were gone in a second. Shaking your head at the growing feeling of eyes on you, you let the thought leave your mind, and grabbed your suitcases. Thankfully, the moving guys had come the week before and everything was already set up for you. You decided not to wait for your family, taking the initiative and dragging your things through the threshold, teddy bear in one arm, two suitcases in the other.

The house was old, that you knew, but you hadn’t expected dust to float in the air with one step on to the area rug. Cleaning would be needed, for sure, you thought, continuing your examination of the place. To your right was very beige; the walls, the carpet, the furniture. You could tell your parents bought thrifted items for the living room, saving their money for the big changes they planned to make in the future. To your right, a yellow kitchen and connected dining room, sat atop old, creaky wood panels. The walls were an outdated yellow, an off-white refrigerator hummed in the corner across from a door to the outside. The stairs in front of you were clad in one of the least flattering, green and yellow patterned carpet, leading off to the stop where the same wood panels from the kitchen continued off into the hallway, a banister following the staircase, and breaking off to the left to give a six foot sneak peek of the upstairs. Your room was the last door to the left, just as your mother had told you a million times on the three hour ride to your new house.

Each step creaked eerily under your feet, giving off a different sound for each individual step. The door to your room was adorned with a childish, colorful wooden carving of your name that you’d had since your 6th birthday. At least some things never change, you thought with a smile on your face. Pushing the door open with your teddy bear clad hand, you sighed. You took notice of the disgusting beige walls, and equally beige carpet. Your white wood desk sat vertically on the wall as you walked in, a box of your things on top. The white framed twin bed you’d had since you were a child sat against the wall across from the door, tucked into the top left corner of the rectangular room, your bedding neatly folded in the middle. The door leading to a small closet carried your eye across the room where shelves were situated on the wall, jutting out to make room for your books and other decor pieces you owned, a dresser that matched the desk sitting beneath. It was simple, white and clean just how you liked it. The accessories you owned to spice up the place were mostly a pale pink, some grey and black things to add something more minimalistic to the theme.

You smiled, tossing your phone onto the naked bed, and setting your suitcases and teddy bear on the ground. You tried to ignore the incessant feeling of being watched as you began to unpack, listening to the clanking of pots and pans as your parents unpacked the kitchen. It seemed like hours later when you were done, and, coincidentally, your mother was calling you down to dinner. You made to grab your phone, slightly panicking when it wasn’t where you’d last seen it. Hoping it fell, you checked all around the bed, under, even tearing apart the bedding trying to find it. You frowned deeply, running down the stairs so fast they barely had time to creak.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Your mother asked, noticing your frantic state.

“I can’t find my phone,” you huffed, picking up everything it could be under. “I swear I threw it on my bed, but I can’t find it!” Your brother watched you, amused, from the kitchen table, forking broccoli onto his plate.

“You mean this phone?” he asked, chuckling as he picked it up off the floor. Your eyes widened in anger.

“You took my phone?” you nearly yelled. “Why would you do that?” You didn’t think about the fact that there was no way he could have; he was never in your room. But how else would your phone teleport from your bed upstairs down to the kitchen?

“Um, I didn’t. It was right here.” He states, pointing to the spot where he found your phone. Not believing him, you ripped the phone out of his hand, plopped yourself down in the chair across from him, refusing to look at him.

Jisung is laughing hysterically on the couch, watching you pout angrily at your brother. It had been his idea to move your phone, taking it while you were organizing things on your desk. He’d decided instead of putting it somewhere you could find it easily, he wanted to confuse you. Did you drop it on the floor on your way to your room, or did you actually drop it on your bed? You didn’t know for sure, and it showed. Jisung was living for the laughs emitting from most of the boys, ignoring Jeongin’s somber expression. Minho took the lead next, poking your brother lightly on the back as he swiftly walked passed you after dinner. It’d started an argument just as he’d wanted. Your brother, shoving passed you, mumbling an irritated “just don’t touch me again.”

The next few days went by with small meaningless things happening like that, driving a wedge between you and your older brother. You’d begun to hear laughter at all hours of the night, blaming your brother being on his stupid games with his friends from back home. One night you’d had enough, ripping the warm quilt off your body, and marching across the hall to his room. You slammed your palm against the wood until he opened his door, looking like you’d woken him up. He was angry, explaining that he was sleeping when you inquired why he was still awake at 4 o’clock in the morning. You gazed, dumbfounded, at your brother.

Then who was laughing, you thought.

1| next 

masterlist

[readiceprincess]

Chapter Five

It was stupid. How could she get away with breaking into their house? What if they found her and really were criminals? Sibyl shuddered as she crouched in the shrubs of their backyard.

No. I'm not backing down. I want answers. She licked her lips, observing her surroundings. The grass was tall and weeds flourished while vines climbed the walls.

Her plan was to sneak in through the back window. Inside was a dining room, but the furniture was old. The home was gray and gloomy. Dust collected in every corner and old portraits hung slanted on the walls. Some of the furniture had dirty blankets over them and holes dotted the wooden floor.

Sibyl straightened, crouched down as much as possible while she tried to open the window wide enough to squeeze through. It creaked, echoing into the house. Cowering, she waited.

Footsteps descended moaning stairs, stopped, then went back up. She peeked through the window. There was no one present, but now she knew it wasn't empty. If she tried to open it any more they'd be suspicious. The window wasn't far from the ground so she could climb up and squeeze through.

She clutched a chair inside and straightened her back before she could tumble to the ground. The chair rocked, threatening to fall. Sibyl's hands reached for the ground and she pulled herself forward. Mindful of her legs, she brought one knee down first, waited, then brought down the next. Success. Sibyl stood and covered her nose from the dust.

A soft sad melody echoed around the home, the ghost of a heartbroken musician lingering. Mold grew on the corners like a virus. Termite holes threatened to collapse the house.

She walked to the living room where untouched Victorian furniture sat. Steps descended the stairs, and she hid behind the couch. They stopped at the foot of the stairs and the entrance to the living room and dining room, then turned behind the stairs, opened a door, and went down more stairs.

Sibyl tiptoed to the stairs. She sucked in her cheeks, holding her breath as she braved the stairs. They creaked at every step. Stopping, she listened. No one came.

Along the wall were more portraits covered in dust. They might have been useful to the historical center yet they hung lifeless and unnoticed in this sad excuse of a home. It took everything in her to resist the urge to wipe a hand over one portrait of a couple as she continued up the stairs. Beside the staircase was a chandelier. It must have been beautiful in its prime, but cobwebs adorned it now.

There were whispers. The hairs on the back of her neck stood and her eyes widened as she froze. They didn't make sense, as if they were too far away to make out. Her eyes turned to the chandelier, a spider watching with its eight red eyes.

At the top the whispers faded and relief flooded her. Must have been her imagination. A door opened in the upstairs hallway. Jumping into action, Sibyl slipped into the first room and hid behind the door.

Though she didn't see them, the smell of sweet perfume confirmed it was Josephine.

“Luther where are you?”

Her eyebrows furrowed. Luther?

“In the basement,” a deep male voice replied. His voice was like liquid, beautiful and soft.

“We need to talk,” Josephine said, her voice fading as she descended the stairs then closed a door. Sibyl stepped away from the door.

Who's Luther? Their father? Older brother? Maybe he was a convict on the run they were hiding in their basement because Josephine was in love with him.

No, Josephine didn't come off as the kind to date a convict.

Sibyl turned to the room. It was a bedroom, barren and desolate. The bed was neat and tidy, cowboy boots sitting in front of it. On the bed sat a white cowboy hat. There was a dresser left open with clothes hanging out.

Something caught her attention. Sibyl walked closer. There were scratch marks all over the walls. Five marks, like an animal. Her fingers traced the marks. Whatever did this was desperate, frightened, and depressed. She turned away, her hands throbbing so she rubbed them together and examined the rest of the room.

In one corner was an old piano forte, one of the oldest she'd ever seen. Her boss would die if he saw it, and in such good condition. There wasn't a spec of dust on it. Someone played it.

The scent and feeling to this room was familiar. It was Reeve's room. Huh, she imagined he'd have band posters and pictures of half naked women all over. This was barren and empty. It was so lacking.

Her fingers traced the edges of the white hat. It was warm. So he liked cowboys and played piano. That wasn't what she expected of Reeve at all. Sibyl stared at the scratches lining the walls. They were fresh. Did Reeve do that?

The front door opened. Sibyl hurried into the closet and shut it. The clothes smelled like a spring day. He was a fan of plaid button ups and spring colors.

“Josephine?” Reeve called.

She marched up a set of stairs and opened a door. “Reeve? Is she okay?”

“She... I'm sorry Jo,” Reeve replied. His voice was low. Sibyl bit her lip. Crap.

Josephine sighed. “It's okay. I thought maybe you could get through to her. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Alright. I'm gonna change.” He dragged his feet to his room.

Dammit! What would he do when he found her? What would he say? What would she say?

There had to be some sort of escape. Reeve slammed the door shut to his room and she peered up. There was a small passage above her. It lead to the attic. There was one in her parent's room too.

Quietly, Sibyl opened it, stepping on a shelf to help herself up. Through a little sliver, she could see him as he stared at the hat, a little laugh escaping him. He reached down and observed it with a light in his eyes. Then he threw it on his bed and fell on it with a groan.

Reeve sat up with a start. Green eyes turned to the closet. She froze, the blood draining from her face. His attention drifted to his dresser and he stood, pulling off his shirt. Her ears burned as she looked away.

Pulling on a gray v-neck, he turned to the piano forte. Silence was not Sibyl's friend, her muscles cramping with discomfort. For a split second she thought of Jane Austen books and how they played beautiful songs on the piano forte. Reeve sat at the piano.

“I like big butts and I cannot lie,” Reeve sang in his out-of-tune voice as he played.

Sibyl licked her lips, trying not to laugh. Perfect.

The music coated her movements as she climbed up the attic. Her boot was loose. Curling her toes didn't help. That was bad timing. Sibyl pulled herself up with her arms. Sitting on the edge, she lifted her legs nice and slow. Right when she was about to reach for her foot her boot fell. Thud!

The music stopped.

Panicking, she closed it shut. She was too tall to stand up straight so she crouched down while searching for a place to hide. Below Reeve opened the closet. There were all sorts of old dusty objects lying around. A large torn up sofa caught her attention and she scurried behind it.

He opened the little square hole. Silence. Sibyl didn't dare breathe. How many laws was she breaking? Would they throw her in jail for this? Or would the Aislins kill her?

Reeve climbed into the attic, his shoes making the ground creak as he walked around. “Hello? I know you're here,” he said into the darkness. He pulled on something, a light coming on. Then He spoke in a strange language. It was smooth and soft, similar to French in sound but with a slight Celtic lilt.

“Reeve? Is something wrong?” Josephine asked from below. “What are you doing in the attic?”

“I think something's up here.”

“What?” Josephine's voice rose a few octaves as she climbed up. “But the gate-”

“Shh!” He took a step forward. “Come out. We won't hurt you.” Again he spoke in that other language.

Sibyl sank. What were they afraid of? She sucked in her cheeks. Now was the time to find out. They had to be criminals with something to hide.

“Hello?” Josephine called.

Sibyl stepped forward. She was ready for whatever they'd shoot at her. Reeve and Josephine's eyes widened, fear blanketing them. Sibyl opened her mouth but something behind them caught her attention.

It was hard to see in the small light, but she couldn't mistaken the familiarity. It was so large it filled up half the wall on the other end of the attic. She froze. It was a painting of a woman with long glistening silver hair, dark eyes staring back at her with a sweet smile she could never forget.

Celia.

The painting begged for her attention. Without a second thought Sibyl ran to it. Her hands tingled. The painting was of her mom. If she touched it and freed her-

“Don't!” Reeve warned, grabbing her sleeve.

“No,” Sibyl screamed, pushing him off.

A jolt of energy sent Josephine and Reeve flying across the attic covered in frost. Before she could question what happened, Sibyl touched the painting. Just for a moment. Just to feel the brush strokes as if it was Celia in person.

“No!” they cried.

The painting lit up. Sibyl stepped back. She tried to pull away but her hand was stuck. Strange words echoed into the air, winds breaking out. She shielded her face from the lights and fierce winds. The light became stronger, brighter, and there was a scream.

An explosion set off, sending her flying back and slamming to the ground. The lights faded, the winds died off and the words were gone. With the wind knocked out of her Sibyl gasped for air. She tried to moved but something weighed her down. No not something, someone.

“What the?” She gasped for air. “Get off me!”

The figure shifted, as if waking from a long sleep. Their head rose, thick eyebrows furrowed. His brown hair was a mess, but his good looks made her hold back a curse. Alarmed, he stood and hit his head on the ceiling. His cheeks were pink and his gold eyes widened.

Lying on the ground and staring up at him, Sibyl couldn't think straight. All she saw was him. And my was he a sight for sore eyes. He rubbed his head, staring at her with confusion and looking her up and down. When he saw her skirt and tights he gawked and covered his eyes, turning away.

“Is this a dream? A nightmare? Who are you?” he demanded with a thick accent. English maybe? Reeve and Josephine grabbed her arms before she could speak, forcing her up with ease. Reeve held her up while Josephine came to her aid, checking her temperature and pulse. Frost melted on their warm skin.

“Are you okay? Look at me. Do you feel queasy?” Josephine asked as Reeve turned his attention to the young man in front of them. He dropped Sibyl with a loud thud.

“Ow,” she hissed.

Reeve didn't pay attention, giving a swift bow.

“Your highness, I'm so sorry. It was an accident I swear,” Reeve said, down on his knees. Alarmed, Josephine did the same.

“Your highness,” she gasped.

Sibyl turned to the young man in front of them, dressed in Victorian era clothing. She stood and banged her head on the ceiling then crouched down and and shot a glare at the twins. “What's going on here?”

The Victorian man crossed his arms. “I beg your pardon? Who are you?”

Reeve's head rose. “Forgive her. It was an accident. We'll send you home right away.”

The young man stepped back, taking in his surroundings with a wrinkled nose.  “What Court and Clan do you belong to?”

“Court? Clan?” Sibyl asked, arching a brow.

Reeve put his fist on his heart. “I'm a knight of the Seelie Court under Clan Rose,” he answered, bowing. “Reeve Jesper Aislin at your service your highness. You've been taken to Earth. Please, let me escort you back.”

“Is this some lame role playing game or something?” Sibyl piped up.

“We're on Earth?” The Victorian asked.

“Yes sir. The gate has been opened and took you to Earth. We can take you back-”

“Don't,” he replied.

Reeve raised his head, jaw dropping. “But you can't. You-”

“Hey,” Sibyl shouted as she came between them. “Don't ignore me. I demand some answers here! What the hell is going on?”

The twins exchanged a glance. Josephine was the first to speak. “Sibyl... This isn't easy.”

Sibyl crossed her arms, tapping her foot. “Try me.”

They exchanged glances again, the Victorian clearing his throat as he leaned to the side, peering over Sibyl. “Am I being ignored?”

Sibyl groaned, turning to him. “What are you, the prince of Neverland? Is this some dumb role playing game? We get it, you're a great actor.”

“Actor?” he gawked, narrowing his eyes.

“He's a prince of Faerie,” Reeve countered. “And you brought him to our world.”

Sibyl snorted. “What?”

“Sibyl we've been trying to tell you, or at least planning to tell you. But uh... You're... Not like other people,” Josephine said. She bit her lip. “You're part of the Grimm Order. You're a Key Master.”

Sibyl stared at them without saying a word. She looked over all three of them, stopping on the so called 'Prince of Faerie.'

“I'm sorry what?”

[mogdaze-blog]

Motherly Secrets - Short Story

I can’t exactly remember where I was when I got the news that mother had fallen ill. At work, probably, because I can remember it derailing the flow of my day.

The drive back to Tucson to see her was harder than expected. She’d suffered, the doctor told me, from a series of small strokes in rapid succession - like being shot by a machine-gun, he said. She was able to talk and move a little, but she wasn’t going to walk again, and the most optimistic estimates for her life expectancy still gave her only just South of six months. I was going to have to drop everything and go home, to take care of her in her last, bedridden days.

Anyone who’d think of me as heartless for saying that has clearly never met my mother. In terms of love, care, and affection during my childhood, she ranked somewhere between an old pinecone and an inanimate slab of polished granite. She never beat me or called me names, sure, but her heart was never in the whole “motherhood” thing. As the years went by, I started to feel less like a kid and more like a tumour - this big, unsightly lump of flesh that kept her from living life to the fullest.

It’s hard, making someone your main priority, when you know you were never theirs. But if childhood had taught me anything, it was coping with that exact feeling.

I breathed a long, pained sigh, like a premature death rattle, as I pulled in past the city limits. The second I was of age, I got the hell out of this place, leaving my mother as a fading ghost in the rear-view mirror. Hadn’t been back in the twelve years since, hadn’t ever planned on coming back. Until now.

The house was almost exactly as I’d rembered it, apart from a few changes to the garden. A modest, detached home in the suburbs of Green Valley, with a front fence painted blue and overstuffed hanging baskets dangling on either side of the front window like garish, oversized earrings. The only light on inside was in the top-left window: the room where my mother was staying, and would stay until the end of her days.

It was like stepping back into a photo album full of my worst memories. There was no love here, no joy. Only cold, brutal indifference.

Most of the furniture in the living room and the hallway were all wrapped in plastic, ready to be removed. Mother wouldn’t be using them again, after all. It gave the grim impression that the whole house was just waiting for her to finally buy the farm, and then they could all move on with their lives too. Or maybe that was just projection on my part. Who knows?

“You must be Tania,” said a tired-looking woman in a nurse’s uniform, standing on the stairs, “your mother’s in bed upstairs, I left all her medicine in a cabinet nearby. You should have everything you need.”

This was Mary: mother’s carer, until I arrived to take up the mantel, Dr. Hartmann had mentioned her in his call. I gave her a curt nod and she filed past me, leaving out of the front door, and leaving me alone with the beast. In the silence of the stairway, you could hear her mechanically-assisted breathing echoing out from the open door of the bedroom.

Mom had been suffering from a number of problems for a while, the strokes were just the final nail in the coffin.

“Is that you, little missy?” She hissed, before evening hearing me. That frail, spiteful voice still made me wince. A decade away, and she still had this power over me. It made me more angry than afraid.

“I’m a grown woman, mother,” I said, finally plucking up the courage to ascend the staircase, “you know I don’t like being called that. I always did tell you.”

I stared at her through the bedroom door and found myself shuddering. She looked like the personification of the word “wretched”: this thin, decrepit bag of bones, hooked up to more wires and tubes than an old television set, looking child-sized in the bed she was confined to. Her mouth was covered up by an oxygen mask, but her eyes were still visible.

Those wet, hateful little eyes. A pig’s eyes,

“So you came back,” mother said with a long, wheezing laugh, “honestly, Tania, I didn’t expect I’d get to see you again. I thought you’d already washed your hands of me.”

She coughed and spluttered intermittently. It always sounded like it hurt.

“Of course I came back, mother,” I said, “I want to move on with my life, but to do that, I’m gonna need to tie all this off first. A clean break.”

I didn’t owe her any niceties, not after the way she’s treated me. I’d done a lot of research into the concept of childhood emotional neglect since I’d left the freezer-box mother called home, and I could say with total confidence that she was practically the textbook definition. Why should she get special treatment? A miserable life had earned her a miserable end, and if anyone deserved a sense of closure, it was me. Not her.

“You were always ungrateful, Tania,” she said, averting her eyes from my presence, “my momma, she beat the living crap out of me, did you know that? And my daddy, well he just stood around and watched. Said it was women’s issues, said he didn’t ought to get involved. When I left those sons of bitches and never looked back, I had a damn good reason to. What the hell was your reason for abandoning your mother, Tania?”

Shaking my head, I walked over to mother’s medicine cabinet and began rearranging the bottles of pills and ointments into their proper places. There was no winning with her.

“Can’t abandon someone who was never there, mother,” I said, “I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone.”

Mother made a spiteful little noise and turned her shrivelled head back towards me.

“I did more for you than you’ll ever know, Tania. Seeing you be so god damn disrespectful to me like this, it makes me sick.” She said.

I finally snapped, and turned to meet her gaze.

“Why did you even want me back here, huh? Why? Ever since I got here, all you’ve done is bitch and moan about me,” I said, feeling the skin on my cheeks turning crimson, “what do you want me to do?”

She paused, before taking a long, deep inhale from her oxygen mask. The way it distorted her voice made her sound almost monstrous. Again, maybe that was just projection on my part.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you can make yourself useful and clean out the attic. Keep what you want, throw the rest in the garbage. You can sleep in your old room until then, I’m too tired to keep arguing with you. You’re impossible, Tania.”

The vitriol was new. What I’d always been used to from my mother was a cold, consistent apathy - never any questions to ask me, and always flat, one-word answers for mine. Maybe I was impossible, because I didn’t have the energy to talk to her any longer. I let my dying mother go to sleep, while I retired to my old bedroom - the walls still plastered with photos of early-2000s boybands and pop singers who were big at the time.

In a way, that was appropriate. If there was one thing my mother was always good at, without fail, it was making me feel small.

***

The next morning, I woke up early to get started on the attic, while mother still snored loudly into the miniature echo-chamber of her oxygen mask. Every slow, robotic noise she made set my teeth on edge. The sooner I could be done with all this donkey-work, the sooner I could rest a little easier while waiting for my mother to finally die.

It was junk, mostly. Disused furniture, broken lights, Christmas decorations that felt ancient to me. I heaved it all into garbage bags and left it in the hallway downstairs, extracting it bag by bag, the attic looking marginally less awful each time. I vacuumed up some of the dust and refuse, worrying that the longer I stayed up there, the more likely it’d be that I’d contract some form of bronchitis.

I’d given up all hope of finding anything interesting somewhere after the third cracked fibreglass Santa model, but found my curiosity piqued again when I discovered a little wooden chest peeking out from underneath a garbage bag full of shattered baubles. It was only a little bigger than a shoebox, I guessed, with a little padlock on the front. Feeling tired from lugging all the bags, I decided to take a break and take the mystery box downstairs with me.

A quick visit from a pair of bolt-cutters under the kitchen sink, and all of the box’s mysteries has been laid bare before me: a stack of old photos in a brown envelope, a cassette player with four matching tapes, and a little cloth bag - no bigger than an apple - tied up with string.

I admit, it was exciting, feeling like I’d stumbled on a real mystery in the midst of this graveyard. I hadn’t expected to have any kind of fun here, so what little I could glean from a box of old artefacts, I’d hold onto tightly and never let go. This was my mystery now.

First, the photos - all polaroids, probably taken in the seventies or the eighties. The first few were just of my mother, when she was much younger, before I ever came into the picture. There was something different about her, something…lighter. Like it was taken before some great weight was lowered onto her shoulders.

Figures, I thought with a grim eye-roll, and continued flipping through.

When I got to the bottom of the stack, the final photo made me pause. It was mother, still, when she was young and happy and beautiful, but she had a little boy with her. They stood together, holding hands, smiling for the photo. I’d never seen her look so cheerful in the flesh - it was like staring into The Twilight Zone.

I flipped the photo, and saw “Me & Jack” scrawled across the back in soft-tip marker. My curiosity was intense and harrowing - it occurred to me, upon looking at this photo, that really I knew almost nothing about my mother. It’d always been just the two of us - no dad, no grandparents. Just me and blank, distant mom.

So it begged the question: who the hell is Jack?

For a second I considered just asking my mother, but I dismissed the notion just as quickly. The second she sensed she could hurt me by withholding information, she’d just clam up and watch with relish as I squirmed. Every little act was a power play now, so I had to do it myself.

The audio tapes, I figured, might have some clues. Each was numbered, so I decided to push them into the recorder and listen. All of them were the voice of my mother from a different time, so much calmer, so much sweeter. The following is the contents of those tapes.

—

Tape 1:

Little Jack is six today, I can’t believe how fast he’s growing. Such a big boy, so tall and broad for his age. I’m not sure why I’m recording this, suppose it’s because I’ve never really felt like this before, and I wanted to remember that this was all real. We can both listen to it when he’s grown, and we’ll laugh that I was ever worried about all this. I feel new, somehow, like I’ve been reborn. He still holds my hand when I take him to school - those lovely little hands of his. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop holding his hand, even when he’s grown. What did I do to be blessed with a little boy like this?

Maybe it doesn’t all have to be bad. Guess mom was wrong, there’s hope for me after all.

Tape 2:

God, fuck. Just fucking…fuck. He’s got a heart condition, it’s defective. It’s fucking defective. The doctor says he can just deteriorate at any time, like a bomb where nobody knows how long the god damn fuse is. My perfect little boy, and his life might end before it even begins. Is it because I was happy for once? Is that it? Did I anger the fucking gods or something? I just don’t…understand. Why did it have to be me?

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I just don’t know anymore. And there’s nobody left who can help me.

Tape 3:

I’ve been thinking about Jack lately. I’ve come to terms with the whole heart thing - really, the not knowing is worse than the end. We all have to die some time, of course, it’s just nicer to have a reasonable expectation for when that’s going to be. But, I think I’ve solved that problem now. No more waiting, no more worrying, no more uncertainly for my beautiful little boy. Such a big boy for his age. He’s crossing my mind more and more, like an itch I just can’t seem to scratch, but I know how I can scratch it.

No more false expectations. I think I can solve this. It’s all gonna be back on track again.

Tape 4:

Tonight’s the night. —

By the time I’d popped out the fourth cassette, I was shaking, with tears in my eyes. So she’d had a son before she’d had me, little Jack, and she never once mentioned it. She never mentioned any of it. To hear her like that, so happy, so alive, it was to me as unnatural as watching rain fall up and time go backwards. The most prescient question before was who the hell Jack was, but now I knew, and a new question had risen to the forefront.

What the hell had she done to him?

I knew my mother was a master of non-contact torture, but part of me still couldn’t bring myself to believe that she was a murderer. Another thing I knew is that I couldn’t possibly just ask her about it, because if she had even an inch to wriggle out of it, who could blame her for taking it? All that was left was the little cloth bag, tied up with a single piece of string.

When I pulled away that string, I did so with the precision of a bomb disposal expert cutting a wire. The sides of the cloth fell outwards like a flower in bloom, revealing what had been sitting inside for all these years. It took me a moment to realise exactly what it was - the small, gnarled little thing - but the second I got it, I shrieked at the top of my lungs and scrambled backwards.

It was a tiny, mummified hand. The hand she never wanted to give up holding.

“What the hell are you screaming about?” My mother, the child-killer, called down from above, “you damn near gave me a heart attack.”

A heart attack would have been too good for her. I wanted to call the police, have them apprehend her, let her eke out the last few months of her miserable life rotting in a jail cell, or at least the secure wing of a hospital, her thin, veiny wrists handcuffed to the sides of the bed. But I was selfish - I knew that even if they arrested her, they’d never find out why she did what she did. She’d wrench that vicious little mouth of her’s shut, and never speak another word, just to spite them. There was nothing they could threaten her with, she was - for all intents and purposes - already dead.

No, if I wanted answers - and I did - I’d need to yank them out of the old bat’s mouth myself.

With a shaking hand, I grabbed a chef’s knife from the kitchen, and hid it behind my back. Mother was ranting as I mounted the stairs, asking why I was being so rude as to ignore her. She was, after all, just asking me simple questions. Was I too ignorant to even comprehend that?

She still looked the same. Logically, of course I knew that’d be the case. But, after knowing that somehow, for some reason, she’d killed a little boy, I felt like on some level I should have been able to read it on her. I wanted to believe that an act like that would have to change a person, make them less human - mentally and physically. But no, it was that same little broken doll, wrapped in blankets.

“And finally, Queen Tania arrives,” mother said, her voice laden with venom, “such an honour for you to finally grace me with your presence. Have you even cleaned out there–”

“I know, mother. I know what you did.” I said.

I hadn’t expected it to come out like that, but there it was, just hanging in the air between us.

“What are you talking about?” She asked, indignant.

“Jack, mother. I know about Jack.”

When I said that name, something changed. Something in those small, shiny eyes.

“I still don’t know what you’re…”

“Give it up, mom,” I cut her off, “I found the box. I saw the pictures, I heard the tapes. I saw the…I saw the hand, mother. I’ve seen everything now.”

Silence. Total and overwhelming, like being locked in a pressure chamber. Mother just stared at me with an expression I couldn’t quite place, partially hidden underneath her oxygen mask. I was on the verge of tears.

“Jack…” She said, sounding almost, almost mournful, “that was meant to be private, Tania. Nobody was ever meant to know, it was going to be our little secret - mine, and his. Though I suppose that doesn’t matter much anymore, does it?”

I walked to her bedside, knowing I was on the precipice of doing something I regretted. The chef’s knife felt heavy in my hand when I first picked it up, but the longer I looked at my mother, the lighter it seemed to feel.

“Tell me what happened, mother,” I said, trying to hold back the sob that I felt was priming itself at the base of my throat, “I want to know everything that happened to Jack.”

“Do you really, though?” She asked, “because once you know, you can’t go back. It’ll stay with you long after I’m worm-food, Tania.”

“Just. Fucking. Tell me.”

Mother sighed again and turned her head away from me on the pillow, just like she’d done when she called me ungrateful the day before. It was almost funny, knowing she couldn’t take my judgement now, after all this.

“I ate him, Tania.”

My left leg turned to putty below the knee and I almost fell backwards. Of all the thousand scenarios I’d run over in my head since seeing the hand, somehow this wasn’t one of them. Even in the end, my expectations of her were just too high. She was more loathsome than I’d ever been able to imagine.

“You what?” I asked, voice pregnant with burgeoning sobs.

“Not alive, girl, I’m not an animal,” she said; there was no pleasure or anger in her voice now, just that same indifference I was always used to, “it was humane. I drugged his food with sleeping pills one evening, and once he was out I bent him over the tub and slit his throat. He was dead in about two minutes, didn’t even feel anything. He went out a lot better than I’m going to. The rest, I butchered and cooked.”

I was going to say something, but instead, I just vomited into a waste paper basket near the portable medicine cabinet. I couldn’t help but picture that sweet-looking little boy from the photos, little Jack, my brother from long, long ago, lying grey and lifeless over the edge of a porcelain bathtub - his neck split upon by a wide, red smile. She was a killer, she was a cannibal. She was my mother.

“I don’t understand,” I said through tears, “I thought you loved him.”

“I do love him,” she said, “I never stopped loving him. Not even for a second, not even when I was watching him bleed down the drain. I always loved my little boy.”

The knife was itching to taste my mother’s blood, but I tried to maintain control. I knew what she’s done now - an image I’d never clear from my head until the day I die - but I still had to know why. I needed to know why.

“When you get a little older, Tania, you’ll realise that all of life runs in cycles,” she said, “and if anything seems like it doesn’t, well, that’s only because you’ve not looked at it for long enough. Everyone’s in the loop, and the loop has to close eventually.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“My parents, Tania, I told you they abused me. They took away my power, made me feel like nothing - that’s why I escaped, and I swore nobody would ever take power away from me again,” she said, “I never wanted a husband, I wanted to stay independent. Jack came out of a one night stand, and I had him myself a few months later. I’ve never loved anything as much, before or since.”

I’d always known that my mother had never loved me, but somehow, that still hurt to hear.

“Those first six years before his diagnosis, Tania, that was the happiest I’d ever been. I felt like life had finally turned around - but when I realised that little Jack could die at any time, I woke up from the fantasy. I’d been lying to myself the whole damn time. You see, little missy…”

“Don’t fucking call me that.” I said, venting some of my confusion and fury.

“You see, Tania,” she corrected herself, each word oozing with spite, “there are two ways a person can take your power away from you. They can abuse you, and attack you, and physically dominate you - like my mother did to me. The other way is in making someone love you, like Jack did. And I did love him, I really did, but it made me weak. It took my power away, and that’s why he had to die.”

“Then why the fuck did you eat him?” I asked, thinking the rest of her insanity wasn’t even worth questioning.

“Because I loved him, Tania, I don’t expect you to understand, you’re a loveless little creature. Jack had to die so I could keep my promise to myself, but I ate him so he’d never have to leave me. We could be together forever - one body, one mind, one soul.”

By this point, I’d collapsed onto my knees and just started crying into my hands. Mother kept talking.

“I did you a great kindness, one that I suppose at least now you could fully appreciate,” she said, “I had you when I got lonely, but I knew that I was still the same person I was when I ate Jack. If I wanted you to be safe - and believe me, Tania, I did - I knew the only way to do that was to not love you. I’d keep my power, and you’d keep your life. Fair trade. Seems almost funny now, doesn’t it?”

“Funny?” I asked through gritted teeth, “what it seems is evil, mother, evil and fucking insane.”

She turned back to me, our eyes meeting again.

“Cycles, Tania. It was all pointless in the end - because here I am, weak, defenceless, and there you are, holding that knife, ready to kill me. Ball’s in your court, you’ve got all the power,” she said, her voice betraying a sick sense of gallows humour, “the loop closes. I became my mother, and you become me. It’ll keep going, until the end of time. Cycles, always cycles.”

It made me sick to my stomach, but she was right. It’d all panned out exactly like she said - but I would refuse her being right one last time. I didn’t have the strength to let go of the knife, but I poured everything I had into keeping the blade away from her. I wouldn’t close the loop, I refused to, I wouldn’t complete the cycle.

“No,” I said to her, “don’t you dare try to put this on anyone else but you. Your mother was a shit to you, and I’m sorry about that, but you’re twice the monster she was. You killed a little boy, your own little boy! You murdered him and then you ate him. You alone fucking did that, not anyone else.”

Even below the oxygen mask, I saw mother’s lips curl back over yellow, coffee-stained teeth. Not quite a smile, just the animalistic baring of fangs. For a split second, it felt like the facade matched the interior.

“Not quite,” she said, “I was bearing child at the time, Tania. You ate him too. You could even say Jack is gonna be with both of us for…”

Mother never got to finish that sentence. Before I’d even had the foresight to stop myself, I’d plunged the chef’s knife into the centre of her chest. Red bloomed from the wound, soaking into the sheets around her, as she coughed a little storm of blood into the oxygen mask. Mother’s shiny little pig eyes seemed to go flat and glassy, and she slumped back into her pillow, stone dead.

I let out a long, loud scream. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to stop.

***

But it did stop, in the end. I still believe mother was wrong: all things stop in the end. Life isn’t made of loops and cycles, it’s made of threads - it’s messy, it’s disorganised, it’s chaotic, but you always have choice. Mother, for a person so obsessed with gaining and keeping power at all costs, was so quick to assume that none of us have any. When I’d gotten my mind back, I called the local police precinct and turned myself in, told them every last detail and gave them all the evidence they needed to piece together what’d happened.

The trial was short, and the jury was sympathetic. It’s hard to not look at someone who murdered a child-eating killer as a dragon slayer rather than a cold-blooded murderer herself. The judge figured my time was better spent in a psychiatric ward than prison, where I could try to undo some of what my mother had done to me, and scrape every little piece of her black, cancerous memory from my brain. Once I’ve done that, I can go back to life again, and try to pick up where I left off.

I don’t think about her as often as I used to now, thankfully, though occasionally she’ll wander across my mind. The last thoughts I had of her was wondering what she must have been thinking when I stabbed her. In the narrative I imagine her head was putting together in her final few seconds, she probably pictured me running off into the night, screaming and covered in blood, wanting desperately to keep the power I’d gained, and destined to repeat all of her mistakes.

Mother was wrong about that too. I plan on making my own.

[galacticjonah]

floating

a one shot taagnus fic I wrote today. not really aiming anywhere with it, just...exploring ideas and thoughts. for @spacetaako

Ashes fell from a pale sky. Like a cruel mockery of early snow the gray flocks were slowly sinking down onto the scorched and blackened remains of what not so long ago had been an extraordinary, flourishing town. Rubble, stones and piles of still smoking wood were lining up row after row like miserable mountains and only specks of former life remained amongst them. Smoldering books, faint shapes of furniture.

Splintered porcelain cracked beneath his boots as he wandered through the desolated corpse of his home like a ghost. Was it the smoke that was burning his eyes or was it tears? Was the poisoned air setting his throat on fire or had he screamed himself raw? He did not know. Why was he back in this hell, in this gray, godforsaken place? He did not know.

But he knew what would happen. Because nothing ever changed in this limbo, every detail, yet so perfectly and cruelly preserved in the amber of his own mind, was absolutely unredeemable. The tragedy was set in stone and all he could do was look on and be the audience of his own pain.

His feet carried him along the way like running on rails. The path was already laid out in front of him, but it did not take the edge of the ache that filled his whole body when he once more laid his eyes upon what had once been…once been a house that he had built with his own two hands. He only recognized it because of the intricate carvings in one of the burned, fallen beams that was laying in front of mounds of debris.

Her name rang from his lips right then and there, vanishing into the roaring silence of the open sky above him. Again and again he cried out, but he was answered by nothing. Life had left this place and had taken every last one of them along, leaving nothing behind except him. Blinded by tears he stumbled ahead, climbing over rocks and collapsed walls, leaving his hands and arms pitch black with soot, but he did not care. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing at all.

Finally, standing in the midst of what had once been his house, every last speck of numbness fell off of him and replaced itself with an all consuming maelstrom of torment. All was gone. All of them. And it would always be there, repeat itself, inside of his own mind, inside of his soul. All was gone.

His knees gave in beneath his body, clouds of dust and ash rose into the air from where he hit the ground. He started to dig his hands into the burning grounds, crushing his knuckles into the still living embers, pulling, ripping at the wood. He had to, he had to find…

Pain started eating away at his skin, more and more, burning, burning, burning…

Magnus woke with a violent jolt. He was covered in cold sweat and his left hand was on fire, something seemed to be digging itself into his flesh and following the most feral instinct he reached out and pulled in panic. A metallic clinking noise followed and then the flames seemed to die down as he clutched his own hand against his heaving chest.

Tangled in his blanket and disoriented in the dark, he gasped for air, propped up into a hunched, sitting position. Unmoving. Blackness pressed itself against his eyes, the thundering noise of his own heart was the only thing he could hear in this moment. His whole body was shaking.

Why. Why again and again. Ten years more and it is still…

The minutes he spent sitting there felt like hours to the fighter, he was frozen in time, outside of any kind of existence…but eventually, very slowly, he stretched an arm and reached for his nightstand to the left. His clammy fingers needed a few tries but then he found the familiar surface of a crystalline lump reality and the mineral reacted to his touch instantly, lighting up with a soft, warm glow, chasing the darkness from the room. Magnus, numb and shaken, left his hand on the crystal for a while, staring at the iridescent surface with wide, empty eyes. It had been a present from Merle for his last birthday. After a while he started to unfold his body and then slowly pushed himself out of his tangled sheets, putting both his feet on the hard wood floor. Grounding.

It was probably around four in the morning, still pitch black outside and completely silent. He was used to having nightmares but it had been a while since the last one and this one had been… unusually vivid. Slowly, he rubbed his face and then groaned, realizing what he had done just before. With a slight sting of panic, the fighter got up, scanning the floor next to his bed and eventually found what he was looking for, just in front of his big wardrobe.

It was a ring, big and golden but otherwise plain. It sat on the dark floor, shining softly in the crystal light. Magnus stared at it for a while and then slowly picked it up, almost afraid to burn himself, but the metal was cold to the touch. With trouble deeply engraved on his face, the fighter turned the golden band between his fingers, rubbing its surface, feeling the smallest little scratches in it.

He had worn it for so long.

Magnus' dearest memento had used to be a source of solace in trying times, a beacon of fond memories and a reminder of duty. A task right at his most literal hand, pushing him on and on, but ever since they had returned from this cursed place things were different. There was a blind spot in his mind. A fire had been extinguished. A voice had fallen silent.

Magnus sensed more and more that something was not the same anymore. The ring seemed to weight heavy on him, the metal digging into his skin like a noose around his neck. And it was scary. He didn't want that, he didn't want any of this. He didn't want those emotions inside of himself, those ideas and new views. Feelings were so terribly hard for him. Working with wood had taught him patience and precision, working on complex detail for hour upon hour was something he loved. But for all he tried, he failed to use any of these talents on himself. Picking at his own mind felt like getting tangled up in an intricately woven net of mystery and painful thoughts and he deemed it to be ultimately useless - and exactly that kept him from realizing many things about himself. His feelings about his past, about her had not changed, but there was something new in his life, a blossoming whisper of an idea and while it was exciting, it was also scary.

He closed his hand, tight, clenching it to a fist, trying to focus on the feeling of the golden shape digging into his skin. But he felt something else instead, clear as day and vibrant right down to his bones. Gentle, warm fingers grabbing his palm, grabbing his arm, pulling at him with all their might, pulling at him with a force that wiped out anything that had been before.

And with those fingers he had felt something like deep waters, an endless ocean opening up before him, a system of a million flickering lights, thoughts trailing after one another, wild and unsorted and bright. Thoughts that were not his own. They were foreign, like a different plane of reality and yet they felt familiar in the most curious way. He had felt so much…and had been dragged back into the light, into the warmth, away from the dark nothingness and the cold void at his feet. Back to life. The sensation was still there, right beyond his fingertips even though it had been two weeks since then. Just thinking of it made him feel dizzy. When he focused on it, he could recall the sensation, it was like a silver thread pulling him to an unknown destination. But he could not let go of the things he had been clinging to so long, could he? He could not throw himself into the arms of the unknown, not in this context. He could not betray her like that. And so Magnus' mind slipped into the only pattern that seemed to be right in this situation: Self-punishment.

Slowly he opened his fist again. The ring had left a mark in his flesh, imprinting itself in his body. He had not felt anything.

He hadn't left his room too often since they had returned from Wonderland, needing time for himself, to think and recollect his thoughts about his altered existence and new mindset, but the all too familiar space made him feel constricted after his dream, so he changed into a dry shirt and was already about the leave the room before he hesitated. No one would be out there. It was the middle of the night. He turned around and gently placed the ring onto the nightstand, then he left.

The hallway leading towards their living room and kitchen was short and covered in a soft carpet, muffling his slow steps. Holding the glowing crystal clutched tightly in his hand to light his way, he stopped at Merle's room for a second, listening to the dwarf's snoring behind the closed door, then he moved on. The living room was painted in dim silver, lit only by the soft light of the real moon and Magnus was already halfway across it on the way to the open kitchen, when he noticed the silhouette of someone standing in front of the windows, looking outside. His heart almost jumped out of his chest for two seconds before he realized that he was looking at Taako.

The elf seemed to have sensed him somehow, at least his ears twitched ever so slightly and then he turned around to Magnus. His big dark eyes reflected the light from the crystal, shining silver and gold like a cat's for only a moment until the elf turned his head to another angle and the eerie, surreal light disappeared again. They hadn't seen each other in a few days, both shaken from the events, both retreating to lick their wounds, only ghosts passing each other in the hallway every now and then. But this here was different. The room between them was open and wide and silent.

Taako's hair was up in a messy bun, he was wearing shorts and a shirt so big that it touched his thighs in the back and had been tied in the front to fit better. Magnus knew that it was one of his, but he didn't say anything. The wizard looked tired somehow.

"Up late, huh?", Magnus finally asked, feeling a little clumsy.

Taako huffed and shrugged, leaning against the window frame in his back as if to seek for support.

"Yup. And you, hombre? Having some late night munchies? I'll have send you to the slammer if you raid my kitchen again, you know that, right?"

Magnus snorted a little and then slowly walked around the couch, setting down the glowing crystal on the coffee table at its side before sitting down on one of the arm rests, stretching his feet out on the rug.

"I just woke up and didn't feel like going to sleep again. Don't worry, your precious ingredients are safe. For now."

He yawned a little and rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling strangely insecure in front of the elf - which was ridiculous. They knew each other very well by now.

Taako nodded at that, fiddling around with his shirt, sticking to the spot he was standing on, then he lifted his shoulder in something like an attempted shrug and he made a few steps to the right, hesitantly.

"Well, my man, it's like super late, like you said. I think I'm gonna bounce. This elf right here needs some beauty sleep. I mean at least one of us needs to keep up the standards, right? So I'm just gonna-" Taako moved to walk away and before Magnus really knew why and how he had already opened his mouth.

"It's been a while, Taako."

The other stopped dead in his tracks. His ears did that thing that made Magnus stomach tie into the tightest knot, they twitched so hard that his earrings made faint little sounds.

There was something in the air, it felt like high voltage, an impossible tension, crackling almost. It made the hair on the back of Magnus' neck stand up. It pulled at his bones, a gentle tug, familiar and warm. His left hand started to tingle. He wanted to say more. Anything. He wanted to ask about what had happened on the aethereal plane, what had happened between them. But no words would wrap themselves around the topic right…

After what felt like a small forever, Taako reclaimed his spot by the window and stared at Magnus, his eyes again flickering like polished metal for a heartbeat. Cat eyes. Nervous, waiting.

"You totally missed me, you big softie. That's so cheesy."

Taako aimed for snarky but he missed big time and Magnus was able to tell. There was a insecure little shake in his voice, the slightest hint of bitterness. Another shiver traveled through his muscles, a breeze of this inexplicable energy.

"Yeah…", he added then, softer all of the sudden. Softer in his voice and his face and…

"It's…been a while."

Retreating into their rooms had been the only solution upon returning to the moon, parting ways, prying their emotions apart, but it had only served as a fleeting comfort. Magnus had thought that he'd be able to shake off the effects of their connection with just enough time. Some sleep, some work, some runs. Distance to the other to air out his mind and bury those things in the yard of mysterious and unwelcomed feelings. But. But nothing of the strange energy had worn off, it hadn't lost any of its former edge. It was always there, like a faint ringing in his ear - he was able to tune it out but as soon as silence and peace fell over him it was present, almost tangible around him. And now, standing face to face with him again…

Did Taako feel the same? Was it easier on him because magic came natural to him, like breathing to any other creature? Magnus had asked Merle about the moment he had pulled the two of them back to reality and the dwarf hadn't seemed to be affected in any way, hadn't had any answers.

It was only Magnus and Taako…

They looked at each other now, warmth and cold flickering between them.

Nervously, Magnus slid his feet over the floor, pushing the rug in the process, exposing a small part of the big, round, glass window that had been hidden beneath. Right, Taako had covered that thing up right upon moving in here.

"Hah…", he mumbled, more to himself than to the wizard. "Totally forgot about that…"

"What, this glassy hell hole abomination that is sin to any kind of constructional logic and…Maggs, what are you doing? No, don't-"

Magnus had gotten up and started to pull the rug off of the circular opening in the parquet. The view through the thick glass was absolutely overwhelming. The air was clear tonight, not a single cloud was disturbing the truly surreal landscape beneath them. It looked like a painting. A flow of blue and black, hills and woods, and amongst the velvet plains there were lights upon lights. In some places they were only little specks, but in others they crowded together, balls of flickering gold like someone had sprinkled a hand full of stars on earth, forming new galaxies. Stepping closer to the edge of wood to glass, Magnus stared down at the marvelous display.

"Taako, you gotta to see this."

"Yeah, no. Imma pass."

Magnus looked up and saw the elf, pressing himself against the windows at his back, trying to act casual but the wave of glistening, ice crystal fear that swept over Magnus and pooled into his own stomach was a dead giveaway. The surprise showed clearly on his face. "You…you walk on different planes of existence, transmutate yourself and face off against all kinds of deadly nonsense but you're afraid of heights?"

The fighter was not trying to ridicule the wizard, in fact, his voice sounded soft and careful in the silence of the room - but that seemed to set off the elf even more than any mockery would have managed to do. The dark, beautiful eyes sparked with fury and Taako let go of the windowsill just long enough to point his finger at Magnus. Someone did not like to be read like that.

"Well, so what, Mr. 'I-rush-into-every-bullshit-I-see'! I bet you are also afraid of stuff!"

Oh, he was. Oh, how afraid he was of so many things.

"I am.", he stated simply and then held out a hand. His arm stretched quite a bit over the window in the floor but did not reach the other side. It was the same hand, his left hand. A hand bare of a ring.

Taako stared at Magnus, his wide eyes flickering back and forth between his face and his outstretched arm, expression changing between anger and confusion.

"You walked over this rug a million times, Taako."

The gears were clearly turning in this beautiful head, there was no magical connection needed to realize that, but eventually, he made a small step forward, putting his naked foot carefully onto the firm floor.

"This is ridiculous, just for the record!"

Carefully, inch after inch, the elf worked his way towards the glass covered opening in the floor and then slowly lifted a hand, holding it out for Magnus. He was too short to reach the fighter's palm without leaving the safety of the parquet behind and he realized that very quickly. His courage seemed to falter and his lips parted in a nervous huff, something that didn't even pass as a laugh with all the fantasy in the world.

"This is bullshit. Cheesy, ass bullshit."

Magnus didn't say anything, just looked on and kept his position, unmoving. If he opened his mouth now he'd falter. The courage would escape from his lips like hot air. Because his heart was racing and the hand by his side was clenched into a fist. And he could feel the arcane power between their bodies like the pulse of a big, third heart connection both their systems. Their souls.

Taako, while clearly terribly unnerved by the situation and still muttering profanities under his breath, also seemed to be moved by some strange force, determined for a reason that was a mystery to Magnus. His brows were tightly knit together, his eyes alight with troubled emotions and the moonlight turned the curls that had broken loose from his bun into a surreal, lavender halo. It was one of the most wonderful things the fighter had ever seen.

And then many things happened at once.

Taako set a foot onto the glass, careful as if walking on paper.

His eyes turned wide and his mouth opened into a silent 'oh.'

Their hands connected.

He had forgotten how warm Taako's hands were. It always seemed like there was a fire burning right beneath his skin, fueling him in the most curious way, leaving every inch of him radiant and glowing with heat and brilliance. It felt as if he was touching a star. Things seemed to shift back into place, slipped into their fated position. The ringing in Magnus' head was silenced.

"Shit. Shit.", he heard the elf mutter and he felt fingers close around his palm, so hard that it hurt, but he didn't mind, no. It was just the way it was supposed to be. He didn't know if the reaction was due to panic or because of the strong effect of their touch.

"I hate you, Magnus Burnsides. You hear that? This is crap. I hate you, I-"

"Look down."

Taako fell silent. His ears pointed up in shocked alert and he did not take his eyes off of the man in front of him. Magnus slowly stepped closer, now standing on the glass with both of his feet.

"I got you. Look down."

Two heartbeats that lasted forever and Magnus could feel all of it on his skin. The trust, earned by so much hardship, by pain and work. Slowly, the wizard lowered his head, strands of lavender hair falling over his forehead in the process and he looked down. His inhale filled the room.

"Fuck."

They were standing above a world that was miles away, ages away. The blinking lights were stars, other worlds, not touching them in the slightest. And somehow…it was soothing to Magnus. Somewhere down there were the remains of Raven's Roost. Somewhere down there were the old worries, the old ache. But they were afloat so high and far away. Everything was so small compared to them. They stood there, together and stared down on the world, breathing, floating. The energy was flowing freely now, traveling through their palms, their muscles, nerves.

It was peaceful, more peaceful than anything any of them had had in a long time.

"Have you ever thought about what you'll do after all of this?", he asked after a while. Taako was still staring down frightened but also fascinated, but as Magnus spoke he looked up to meet his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…this here…is not a deal forever, is it. The missions, the bureau."

"Well, old man, I got a brand to revive. Gotta make that sweet sweet fantasy cash and get filthy rich, so I never ever have to see any of this fucked up nonsense we have been dealing with again.", Taako said slowly, shrugging a little, but still clinging to Magnus' hand for dear life.

"Sounds like an exciting plan."

Magnus looked down on the thousands and thousands of lights beneath their feet and he felt that Taako's hand slowly relaxed around his own, his grip turning more and more gentle, the fear draining out of him like water. Their fingers tangling together, softly shifting, fitting into each other so perfectly. It was an idea, blossoming, peeking out beneath rubble and ashes. Taako peeked at the human next to himself, studying his face, his eyes that reflected the lights on earth. Then looked down on their conjoined hands. There was no ring on Magnus' finger.

There was so much ahead. So much waiting. Lurking. It was very likely that they would never find their rest, never able to lay down their duty, always running, always struggling to keep those lights down there bright and living. It was very likely that not much time was left on either of their clocks. But it didn't matter now, in the dead of night. Nothing mattered.

All was down there, far off.

"I could always use a hardworking, trusty assistant, you know? Can't do all of it by myself. I mean I'm amazing, but an elf only got twenty-four hours in a day."

The fighter looked up and they stared at each other for a while. Taako's eyes shimmered silver, light living behind the dark of his pupils, like little stars trapped inside of him.

"I think, I'd like that.", Magnus said.

Taako nodded. They stood there for much longer. At one point the elf's head slowly sunk against the fighter's chest. They did not speak another word.

  Thanks for reading. Maybe I’ll put this thing on AO3, i dunno.

[sending-the-message]

Sometimes the worst kind of monsters are men by AMillerWI

There’s a part of my childhood I’d all but blocked out. I intentionally never learned exactly what happened, and have avoided the subject for the last 16 years. Recent events have made me revisit the time I’ve going to write about here. This isn’t a ghost story, there are no demons or spirits, but I suppose one could say there are monsters. I’ve chosen to post this here, amongst stories of haunted houses and angry entities, because honestly, I don’t really know where else to put it. I don’t have a blog, and I’m very active on social media. Perhaps selfishly, I’m hoping I’ll get some kind of closure by sharing it with people. I’ve also, as a reader of r/nosleep, always noted the outpouring of advice that people offer the posters of the stories. I guess I’m hoping someone might offer me some advice. For what, I don’t know exactly. Sorry. I’ll get to it.

Please excuse the length, although I suppose fitting in 6-8 years of shit in such a short space is impressive enough I suppose.

I was born in Wisconsin, and was adopted when I was a few days old. Unfortunately, there were complications during birth and my biological mother passed away. My biological father wasn’t at the hospital for my birth, and there has never been any attempt by whoever he is to make contact. I figure if he wanted to know me, he would. Anyways, the people who adopted me were a couple in their late 20’s. My adoptive mother’s name was Leah. She was a pretty woman, with dirty blonde hair, average height. Her husband was Chris, and he was a tall, thin man with brown hair that was already receding.

Chris was a salesman for a computer software company while Leah was a homemaker. I never learned why they adopted in lieu of having their own children, but it was alluded to in a few conversations in my childhood that Leah was unable to carry a child to term herself. Nonetheless, for the first part of my life, they treated me like I was their own. We lived as a family, and I never really felt like I had been adopted. It just felt like I belonged.

When I was four years old, Chris and Leah became foster parents. They sat me down and had a conversation with me, saying that instead of them giving me one brother or sister, that they were going to give me all different kinds of brothers and sisters, and that just because there were going to be more kids around the house, they didn’t love me any less. The thought of the attention not being on me as much hadn’t even occurred to me, really. I was just excited about having other kids to play with.

We lived in a big house. The basement was remodeled before I was born so as to include three bedrooms and a common area, the main floor had a large living room, an equally large dining room, a full bathroom and a massive kitchen. The top floor had another full bathroom and four bedrooms. It was an ideal house for fostering children. Over the years, a number of kids would cycle through the house, some staying for upwards of a year, others leaving within a month.

The first foster child arrived, and I was ecstatic. He was a six-year old named Brian, and was, by all accounts, a rambunctious kid. He never settled down, and had a hard time taking any kind of direction. Before long, I began not seeing Brian for extended periods of time. When I would ask Chris and Leah where he’d gone, I was told that he’d been sent to a school that taught kids how to behave. I was four, and that prospect didn’t seem entirely implausible to me, so I didn’t press any further. They also told me not to ask Brian about it, because he was “embarrassed that he needed to be sent away.”. They made it seem like I would be doing a good deed by not questioning him regarding his whereabouts.

More kids showed up in the following months, and before long, there were six of us; four boys and two girls. Chris seemed to take to the boys better, and in turn Leah seemed to just “get” girls more. I’m pretty sure that it was that first group of six that lasted the longest. It was shortly before my foster sister Amelia got adopted (or so I thought) that I first felt like something was off. Towards the end of 2001, Chris began further renovations on the basement. Until then, we’d all had our own rooms, but when the basement construction started, we each had to share a room with another kid, something none of us really minded. I ended up bunking with my foster brother Danny, who was actually born one year to the day after me.

The work Chris was doing on the basement lasted until the end of January 2002, and when he was done, he made a big deal about showing all of us. He led us down into the dark basement, and I remember actually being afraid at the time. Nothing these people had done had ever suggested I was in danger around them, but I distinctly remember the feeling of unease I had as I walked down the creaky wooden steps. We got the the bottom of the steps, and to our left was one of the bedrooms, and it had an accordion style partition as a door. To our right was the rest of the basement.

My eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness when the lights flickered on. What I saw confused me. I looked next to me, at Danny, and he shared that feeling. Before the “renovations” had started, the basement was carpeted and there were a number of pieces of furniture in the common area that were all positioned relative to an entertainment center that housed a TV we would play Super Nintendo on. The entire area had been drywalled, and a hollow wall had been constructed so as to make two more bedrooms.

Now, all that was down there was the original, chipped, dirty, drab gray concrete floor. The drywall had all been taken out, leaving only the original cinderblock-style walls that had been there first. The wall that made the bedrooms was still there, but it was shortened on one side, making the bedroom closest to the stairs a sort of extension of the common area. In that room, there was a large door that led to what was supposed to be a storage area, one that could have certainly been made into another bedroom if need be, but instead always just sat dark and filled with spiderwebs and dust. For as long as I’d lived in that house, there was always one piece of furniture or another blocking it.

The room with the door to the storage space was like night and day in comparison to the newly...downgraded common area. It was colorfully painted, with all kinds of toys, games, dolls, and stuffed animals all over the place. To the left was a small sort of stage thing. Even then, I was certain that he had just torn the whole basement apart and then focused on only that one area. Chris went on to show us all the new TV he’d bought for the new “playroom”, and showed us the other various things that now occupied the space. While he did this, I for whatever reason looked at Leah, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs with what I now recall as being a particularly sinister grin.

Chris first iterated to us in no uncertain terms that we were not to go in the storage area alone, and to absolutely never go into the room next to the new one, then went on and on about all the things we could do with this new room, and eventually he said “but you guys haven’t seen the biggest surprise yet…”, and his voice trailed off. Suddenly, the door to the storage area flew open, and I remember legitimately peeing my pants a bit when a man emerged from the darkness. This man was large, both in height and weight (I’d put him around 6’4”, 300 lbs if my memory serves me right), and was dressed...oddly. First off, he had a set of bunny ears on. They looked like they have been taken off of an Easter Bunny costume, because the bottoms of the ears were torn and frayed. They were really dirty, too. He had pink circles painted on his cheeks, and what looked like blue lipstick. I distinctly remember the stubble that covered his chin and cheeks. He was dressed in what I can only describe as a heavily-altered wedding dress. This too looked like it had been dragged through a pile of dry dirt before it was put on.

“Hi kids!” he said. He spoke in a goofy voice, like he was trying to imitate a cartoon. I remember being put off by his appearance, but after the initial shock of his entrance, the other kids seemed to be interested in him, so I put my reservations aside and joined in the enthusiasm. I don’t remember what he said verbatim, but here’s the details.

His name was Happy Pappy the Fun Bunny He was a close friend of Chris and Leah’s He was so happy to finally meet all of us, and that Chris and Leah had told him all about us He came from a hidden place where the sun was always shining, and there was an unlimited amount of carrots. Even though he loved his home, he was even more happy to get to spend time with us now The Easter Bunny was his cousin He was going to be there to play with us all the time from now on

Chris told everyone to have a good time getting to know Happy Pappy, but .then pulled me aside and told me to join he and Leah upstairs. There, they told me that they’d gotten in touch with Happy Pappy because the other kids, my foster brothers and sisters, didn’t have a real mommy or daddy, and that they knew some of the kids were sad about that, and some even jealous that I had them (Chris and Leah). So, they told me that they had Happy Pappy come over, and that he was going to be their daddy from now on. They said I could play with Happy Pappy sometimes, when the other kids were, but that I had to let them have their new daddy to themselves. They said if I could do that, it would show great maturity, and I wanted to prove that I was mature, so I bought right into it.

I went back downstairs and joined my foster siblings as they got to know the oddly dressed Happy Pappy. He was going by the kids, one by one, and asking them questions, like what their name was, their age, what their favorite subject in school was, what they wanted to be when they grew up, etc. Just basic questions you’d ask a kid. Since I’d shown up late, I was the last one Happy Pappy addressed, only he didn’t ask me any questions. Through a slight hint of body odor and a smell on his breath that I know now was some sort of alcohol, he whispered something in my ear that has stuck with me my entire life, but I didn’t understand its significance until this entire thing was brought back into my life.

“Fare thee well, and if forever, still forever, fare thee well.”

After he said that, he focused all of his attention back on the other kids while I sat around playing with the ones he wasn’t directly interacting with at any given time. During my time down there that first day, they played all sorts of games, watched TV shows, listened to stories read by Happy Pappy, as well as listened to stories of his own. Chris and Leah brought down pizza for everyone at some point, and some time after that, Happy Pappy said it was going to be our bedtime in a little while. I looked at the clock that was on the wall of the play room and it was around 7:30. Because we were all roughly the same age, our bedtime was 8:30. Happy Pappy informed us that he’d spoken to Chris and Leah and they’d agreed to let one of the kids stay with him all night. He said this in a tone that elicited wonder and hopefulness, nothing about it seemed strange at the time. He said that to pick who would stay downstairs all night, we were going to play a game.

Even though it wasn’t a requirement, I recalled my earlier conversation with my adoptive parents and decided I’d stay out of the game and let one of the other kids enjoy the night with the Easter Bunny’s cousin in his room, which was located in the storage area of the basement. When I said I didn’t want to play, Happy Pappy winked at me before getting the game started. Brian, my foster brother that would go away for days at a time for misbehavior also opted out of playing. When I asked him why, he just said “I don’t like it in there”, referring to the storage space. Happy Pappy went into the storage area and came out with a sort of game board, one that stood vertically and had a number of doors on it.

Each kid was to pick a door and open it. Whoever got the highest number would get to spend the night with Pappy, and the order for sleepovers when Pappy was around would be dictated by the numbers each kid chose. The kids all opened a door on the board, and Amelia, my six year old foster sister ended up getting the highest number. I still remember how excited she was. She jumped up and down and gave Pappy a big hug. Pappy assured the other kids they had nothing to be sad about, and that he would be back soon to have sleepovers with everybody. I remember he looked at Brian and simply said “even you”.

The next day I asked Amelia if she had fun, and she just stared off into space. I never talked to Amelia again, actually. A few days later, she was gone. They said she was adopted, but looking back, I really don’t think that’s what happened. In fact, there’s a few kids I often wonder about in regards to their departure from the house. Over the next few years, Happy Pappy would come back a handful of times annually, between which times we weren’t allowed downstairs except for when Chris would take a kid or two down there; I was never one of them. Naturally, the house being a foster home, kids cycled in and out, and whenever there was a new kid there, he or she would get to open a door on Happy Pappy’s game board. And each time, a kid would stay in the basement with him, and each time, even as a child, I could tell that a piece of them would be left down there when they came back up.

During that time, though, Leah started exhibiting some odd behaviors. She would walk around in the peak hours of the morning completely naked, she would sing really odd songs, ones that sounded like they were from the 1920’s (that’s the only way I can really think to describe it) extremely loud, in the middle of the night, and she would dress us boys in girls clothing. But the thing that put me off the most, is she would do her makeup like the girl from The Evil Dead (1981), and do the same laugh that character did in the movie while chasing one of us around. It was really unsettling, and got to the point that I would stay in my room when she was getting into one of these moods.

Even with all of the strangeness, I never felt afraid for my safety, that is, until the night Happy Pappy came up from the basement. It was around 1 in the morning, and I was woken up by a crash downstairs. At first I was worried one of my foster siblings had gotten hurt or something, but as I was turning the knob on my door and opening it, I heard the shrieking laughter that accompanied one of Leah’s haunting moods. Not wanting to draw any attention, I closed my door quietly, but as I walked back to my bed, I tripped over a toy that had been left out by someone, maybe even myself. I stumbled for a moment before catching myself, but in doing so I’d made a considerable amount of noise. When that happened, the laughing stopped.

I stood perfectly still, and I remember having the feeling that all the sound in my world had been muted. It just felt weird, I can’t really explain it, but the bottom line is it was absolutely silent in the house for a few moments. Then, that silence was broken by heavy, slamming footsteps barrelling up the stairs. Even now, I can perfectly recall the feeling of my heartbeat racing as I jumped into bed and got under the covers to pretend to be asleep. Behind the loud footsteps were another, lighter set that was joined by Leah’s creepy laugh.

Happy Pappy and the make-upped Leah burst into our room, which I was sharing at the time with two boys named David and Billy (I think). Given that I was facing the wall with my eyes squeezed shut, I only heard what happened next. I heard Happy Pappy whispering, something along the lines of “remember me? We had lots of fun in Pappy’s Playhouse didn’t we? You saw and played in my room, I wanted to see and play in yours.” All the while, Leah giggled quietly. The bed across the room from mine (David’s) creaked for a short while, then I heard Pappy move across the room to the bed that was situated at the end of mine (we’d collectively opted to not have bunk beds in our room at the time), and the same sort of thing happened.

Then I felt Happy Pappy climb on top of me. Once again I smelled liquor on his breath, and this time I felt the stubble on his chin scratch the side of my face as he said to me “You’ve never seen Pappy’s special Playroom, and that makes Pappy very sad.” Just then, I heard Leah sternly say “NO. Not him. Never him.”. Pappy let out a sigh that felt wet against my cheek, then whispered something else that has stuck with me, just as the first thing he ever said to me has: “The flame of a fate you know cannot be is now just a cold loneliness.” And with that, he got off of me and the two left our room, but I’m pretty sure they went to our foster siblings rooms and continued their evening in like fashion. I tried asking David and Billy what Pappy had said to them, but they ignored me, and I fell asleep listening to them quietly sob.

When I was ten years old, in the middle of the night, Leah came to the room I was sharing with two other boys named Michael and Austin, and told me to pack a bag. When I asked why, I was sternly told to do as she said. I got some clothes together, and Leah drove me to the big city closest to us (about an hour drive), where we pulled in front of a house. Leah instructed me to ring the doorbell, inform the person who answered both who I was and who my adoptive mother was, and listen to whatever that person told me.

As soon as I reached the door of the house, I looked back and saw Leah drive away. That was the last time I saw either of my adoptive parents. A woman opened the door, and it turned out to be Leah’s sister, whom Leah hadn’t been in contact with since before I was born. That woman raised me until I was 18. A few weeks after I was brought to her, she told me why I had been.

The night Leah woke me up and dropped me off at her sister’s house, Chris committed suicide. His body was found when the social worker that handled his and Leah’s status as foster parents reported to police that she’d been unable to contact them for several weeks, and when attempting to do a home visit, the house appeared empty and abandoned. None of the other seven kids who lived there at the time were ever found, nor was Leah. When the police talked to me, I asked them about Happy Pappy, but they had no idea what I was talking about.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’d blocked out much of that time of my life, and clearly, I didn’t even have it bad compared to my foster siblings. Something happened the other day that prompted me to write this. It prompted me to try to get closure on everything that happened. I received a voicemail from someone that I believe to be Happy Pappy.

“They say that time heals all wounds but all it's done so far is give me more time to think about how much I miss you.” is all it said, and it was in Happy Pappy’s voice, the voice I only heard a handful of times but will remember until my last days.

As soon as I heard that, the memories came flooding back. I’ve chosen to stop avoiding the repressed memories I’ve buried and face them. I am the only person whose whereabouts are known that knows about the existence of Happy Pappy. They didn’t pay much attention to the notion when I was ten, so I’m hoping they’ll give it more of a thought now. I plan on going back to the house and asking whoever lives there now to allow me to do a walkthrough, and maybe conjure up some memories. Getting that voicemail raised a lot of questions.

What happened to Leah, Pappy, and all the kids?

Who was Pappy?

Why didn’t the police investigate further into Pappy?

In addition to those, I now wonder about the fates of a few specific children that came and went from the house. The reason I say this is because when a family was potentially interested in adopting, and found a child they liked, there would generally be a number of visits to the foster home (my house) before the adoption happened. There were a few kids, Amelia being one of them, that were simply there one day and gone the next. The answer to our inquiries about their whereabouts was always met with a cheery “they were adopted!”. I never had any reason to question it.

Here are a few photos (via Google Earth) of the house I used to live in. If I am able to enter the house, which all depends on the person/people who live there now (if any), I will take a few pictures of the basement itself. Also, I will upload a recording of the voicemail I received and update this post with it when that is done.

[handsingsweapon]

okay, so I am not at all tired of and in fact adore your Victuuri, but 17 seems so very Georgi.

i love this prompt! i ended up taking it in a different direction than the prompt itself but i really like what came to mind right away. (under the cut again in case of any anti-halloween sensibilities). 

also idk how to say this without being blunt so, in this fic, team russia (georgi, mila, yurio) have inherited a mystery manor from yakov. be advised accordingly.

The character makes a new friend who claims to be an actual witch. They end up proving it to them with an impressive display of magic (if the preferred character is actually a witch, feel free to change the POV)

Georgi puts the van into park as Mila leans forward in her seat and whistles. Netherseal Manor practically looms over the car. It’s an eight-bedroom estate on several acres outside of Edinburgh, where the sweeping Scottish plains roll on unhindered for what feels like miles. Tonight it’s a little overcast and crisp, leaving a muted night sky without stars.  “I get the room in the turret,” Yuri insists from the back seat, and when Georgi and Mila share a Look via the rear view mirror, he rubs his hands together and blows on them pointedly, as though either Georgi or Mila has forgotten Yuri’s elemental affinity. 

“Whatever,” Mila says pointedly, grabbing her lighter off of the dash before hopping out of the car. “Bet you it’s a closet and the window’s just decorative.”

They all know it’s not a closet, either: this was Yakov Feltsman’s house, until he passed, it’s been in the family, so to speak, for generations, handed down from coven to coven with only one specification, typically, in the contract, which Georgi knows is a contract that is both magically and legally binding: make no modifications to the pool, the gardens, or the manor itself, and keep the household collection together.

When Yakov designated Georgi as his heir he’d waved a hand over these details. “Think of it as living in someone else’s house,” he’d insisted. “You’ll figure it out.”

Together they unload the van. Mila and Georgi carry easily twice as much as Yuri can. Mila wins a best two-out-of-three Rock, Paper, Scissors game for the biggest bedroom, but in the morning she tells Georgi she doesn’t want it. “It’s drafty,” she complains, while they take sheets down off of the furniture in the library. The place has been packed up like this for a month; Yuri’s been going around throwing windows open and encouraging air in; Mila’s lit fires to ward off the chill, is already burning little pockets of sage. Georgi prefers earth magic, which is protective and solid if unremarkable.

They’re missing a water witch, and sometimes what they really need is a white one, but according to Yakov nobody’s seen either around these parts for decades. 

Mila uncovers a large portrait, hanging on the wall. It’s a painting of a man with silver hair and bright, crystal-blue eyes. He’s smiling, rare for this kind of old portraiture. Mila whistles again. “Hell-o, handsome,” she coos, and puts her hand to the frame, brow furrowed. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” says Mila, who isn’t about to admit that she thinks she just got winked at by a painting. “What do you want Yura to pick up when he runs into town tomorrow?”

“Lavender,” Georgi says off-hand, and then adds: “Yarrow.”

He tries and fails to pretend like he’s not thinking about Anya again. Mila mutters something impolite and dusts off a shelf. That night, Georgi moves into the big bedroom. He thinks drafty was Mila’s way of describing the way he feels a little bit like he’s being watched: it’s late and he’s writing another letter to Anya in a notebook full of notes he’s never going to send: I just don’t understand how you fell out of love with me so quickly, Georgi writes. We were happy, weren’t we?

The being-watched feeling never quite goes away, so Georgi sighs and lights a candle, finds a piece of chalk. In his Grimoire, there’s a spell meant to calm a restless mind, and so he works through it, holding up the jasper stone he wears on a pendant around his neck as a focus while he grinds anise seeds and murmurs a blessing on this new endeavor.

After what happened with Anya, everyone knows Georgi’s luck could use a change.

In the morning, the chalk circle is still there, but his notebook has been flipped to a new page, and on it, in a fresh hand, is the following writing:

I see Mr. Feltsman has neglected to inform Netherseal’s new charges of all of the manner of our arrangement. Please vacate my room at first opportunity. The room with the most Northerly view is located on the second floor and looks out over a grove; I daresay you’ll find it to your taste.

Yours,

VN

P.S. Would you mind terribly sweeping up the chalk? It’s rather inconvenient.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Yuri snarls after he’s read the letter. It’s decidedly at odds with the tablespoon sized lump of jam he’s just plunged into his tea. “He didn’t tell us the place was haunted.” At this, one of the kitchen cabinets opens and shuts, practically in offense, which has Mila nervously playing with her lighter and makes Yuri’s scowl deepen further. “You don’t scare me, you bastard!”

A bar of soap rises ominously from the sink and Georgi can’t help it: he’s laughing, now. It’s been a while since he laughed; not since Anya called to tell him they were over and then was seen at University a week later with a brand new beau. Georgi still has his mother’s ring in his messenger bag; he was ready to propose, just waiting for the right moment. Mila and Yuri are furious about the whole thing, of course. They feed off of each other sometimes, and not always in a good way.

Anyway, the laugh: it feels good and a little bit foreign. “I think our new friend is trying to tell you to watch your mouth,” he murmurs.

“Or what,” grumbles Yuri. “He’s a ghost. I bet there are spells …” This time, every cabinet slams, one at a time, open-shut, open-shut, open-shut. 

“Bit dramatic,” Mila murmurs thoughtfully. “I like you already,” she informs the air, and this time nothing happens: whatever presence was there is gone.

“I’m getting some air,” says Yuri Plisetsky, which is exactly the kind of thing that comes out of his mouth at least three times a day. He leaves his coat on the hooks by the door. That happens a lot, too.

“I’ll take him into town,” Mila murmurs, once they’re alone. “You gonna be okay here by yourself?”

“You know what,” Georgi replies, fingering the piece of jasper that hangs around his neck, “I think I will.”

In the afternoon he takes the notebook back into the bedroom, cleans it up as promised. Then he walks over into an adjacent sitting area, sits down at a desk, and writes:

Who are you?

For a moment, there’s nothing, and Georgi thinks he’s had all the excitement he’s going to have for the day. Then the pages flutter, almost as though trailed by a thoughtful hand. Inside the desk, he thinks he hears something click. “You really want me going through your personal effects?”

I already read your journal last night for entertainment, confesses a fresh line of ink on the page. In my defense, the bed was taken.

… 

It seems like a reasonable exchange.

Georgi’s not sure how to feel about this. For a moment something painful constricts in his chest and he takes a moment to center himself on his breath, to plant both of his feet very firmly on the ground. There’s no reason to think that he can feel the vibrations of the earth beneath his feet, but it always focuses him, and after a moment he sighs, heavily, before he starts to open drawers. “Anya,” he tells the thin air, by way of explanation, “is my ex-girlfriend.”

I gathered as much.

Georgi does not want to admit that he still has her photo in his wallet, but he still has her photo in his wallet. He takes it out and leaves it on the desk, not sure why he’s trying to convince a ghost that she was pretty, that she was worth it, that he wishes she’d change her mind. “I just thought we’d be together for the rest of our lives,” he admits quietly. “She thought otherwise.”

How old are you?

That, Georgi thinks, is a strange question to ask. “Twenty-eight.” When nothing else appears, he looks around, brow furrowed. “ … Why?”

… You will find out soon enough. Compartment’s in the back.

Sure enough, as Georgi reaches, a package of documents fall into his waiting hands, bulkier than he expects. He unravels a piece of red string tied around the contents and opens the envelope. What he finds first is a navy blue book, leatherbound, beautifully tooled on the front. It reminds Georgi of his Grimoire, but it’s inexplicably lovelier, and when he receives no words of protest on the page, he opens it, looks at the first page. There’s a whole list of names, and plenty of room for more. 

The last name, the last witch who possessed this book was a man named Victor Nikiforov.

“Well, Victor,” he says, trying to be polite. “I’m Georgi.”

When Mila and Yuri return from town they’re surprisingly well equipped. “Found the most darling store in Old Town,” Mila explains, as she sets down a bag that smells like sweet, fresh herbs, and offers a second one to Georgi so that he can take a look. Herbal teas, incense, and –

“Why is Yura holding a kitten?”

“Because the clerk at the store was an idiot,” the teenager grumbles.

“I thought he was plenty nice,” Mila observes. “Just shy.”

“Dog people,” Yuri mutters, to the tiny creature who now lives in his hoodie. The kitten is all black, with dazzling green eyes. It’s so stereotypical Georgi almost wants to laugh, and when the little beast gives out the most pathetic mew he’s ever heard, he nearly does.

“What’d you find out about … you know?”

“Well,” Georgi murmurs carefully, because this is a serious topic, “For one thing, Victor isn’t a ghost.”

And this is how they learn to live with Victor Nikiforov, the water witch trapped inside of the manor. There are strange foils between him and Victor: for the past few months, all Georgi wanted was to be engaged, to be planning his own wedding.

Victor is in this situation precisely because he refused to get married.

“I don’t get it,” says Yuri.

“He got into an argument with his Grandmother, evidently,” Georgi murmurs. They’ve gotten refrigerator magnets now; word poetry and letters to give Victor a fast outlet. “She wanted to see him wed before he turned thirty, and, well.”

“Well, what?”

The letters on the fridge rearrange themselves promptly. CANNOT appears in primary kinder-colors, red, yellow, blue. 

Georgi hesitates, and then sighs. Even if he is breaking a confidence, he’s never had secrets with this little coven. It’s not in his nature. “It was impossible. Then. Marrying someone he really loved.”

“Oh,” says Mila. “I get it.”

“I don’t,” retorts Yuri.

“Yura,” Mila says sweetly, like she’s explaining something to a very small child, “he’s gay.”

“What, so, he’s cursed because he’s gay?”

“Gay marriage was illegal. He wouldn’t have wanted to make vows he couldn’t keep …” Trust Mila to catch on; Georgi has been her Token Straight at at least three different pride parades while Mila sashayed around with the bisexual flag draped over her shoulders, hunting for handsome girls or pretty boys to kiss. Georgi wouldn’t dare call it easy for her; he knows there’s a certain amount of judgment that goes on. Still: Mila is beautiful and bright, and people come to her like moths to a flame. “Don’t worry, though, ducky,” she says, cheerfully. Ducky is her new nickname for Victor. “Now you can marry whoever you want. We just have to get you unhexed.”

The letters on the refrigerator scramble one more time, so fast that Georgi nearly detects hope. WHITE? they spell, this time, in anything but.

“Baba-yaga,” Yuri grouses, “For something that dark he’d have to have a really powerful white witch. Have you been keeping one in your back pocket this whole time, and not telling us?”

“Quit being so fucking insensitive, Yura,” Mila snaps, with gasoline-temper. Slowly the letters get pushed out of order again. “We’ll figure it out, Victor.” 

There’s no response. Georgi imagines him, invisible, bound to the house, an eternal bachelor. 

It’s heartbreaking, which is why he understands it so well.

Georgi waits until Yuri’s gone to whisper a hypothesis to Mila. Do you know how old Yakov was, when he married Lilia?

She doesn’t, but Georgi’s done the research. “Twenty-nine and nine months,” he says quietly. It’s the start of Autumn. He turns twenty-nine in December, and Anya is never going to marry him.

Victor was thirty when the curse hit. On Yuletide.

Weeks pass. They take to talking to the fourth presence in the house, to leaving a place for him at their circle. Slowly Victor becomes a known quantity, predictable, almost like a friend. There’s a piano in the conservatory that Georgi tinkers away on, and sometimes Victor comes alongside and presses down the nearby keys to play a duet. Yuri insists that he’s teaching their invisible witch about fashion, curse words, and how to dance.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve when a pounding comes at the front door, interrupting the game of cards they’ve all been playing in the library. “I’ll get it,” says Yuri, probably because he doesn’t have patience for the game and he’s been losing all night. Mila shrugs. Fine. 

Georgi listens to the predictable trudge of Yuri’s feet, to the brusque greeting at the door, and then sits up as he hears shouting. Now two pairs of shoes are making their way this direction, and he finds himself face-to-face with a mild-mannered looking young man wearing blue glasses. 

“Katsudon, what the fuck?”

Evidently he and Yuri know each other. The brunette frowns and looks pointedly at all three of them. “Stop. Hexing. People,” he grinds out. “I have seen Anya Vasilieva alone nine times in two months. Nine. Nine times. To break bad luck charms, and truthspeaker spells, and assorted other nastiness, and I’m here to tell you if you don’t stop and –”

“Nine?” Georgi is incredulous, but in the face of the outraged look this strange is sending him, he has to admit to a tiny, petty truth. “I did a small thing once,” he admits. “But I was very drunk. Mila was there.”

“Three times,” says Yuri Plisetsky with a scowl, apparently counting for himself. 

 “Five,” Mila hums, like an angel.

But the young man in the glasses isn’t looking at any of them, anymore. Victor’s portrait is up on the wall, and if Georgi were to look back at it, he might think it looks different, somehow.

Like a changed man.

“Who is that?” Katsudon wants to know, taking a hand out of the pocket of his coat. There are prayer beads twined around his wrist, of the clearest quartz, and already he’s ignoring the rest of them, patting down his pockets as he pulls up a chair and stands on it, looking a painting of Invisible Water Witch, Victor Nikiforov, eye-to-eye. “He’s smiling, but he looks …”

Sad. Georgi knows the word like he knows his own death sentence: he’s the next heir to this house; unless the enchantment over it is lifted, he can expect to join Victor in eternal invisibility, locked to this estate, sooner than any of them would like.

“His name is Victor Nikiforov,” Georgi says, with care. “I’m Georgi Popovich. You know Mila and Yuri?”

“Yuuri,” says the stranger, distantly, without looking back. He carefully touches the brushstroke that makes up Victor’s mouth, and behind him Georgi hears the sound of thirteen cards fluttering to the floor, because evidently real, invisible Victor has dropped his hand entirely. 

“… Yuuri Katsuki.”