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volcanicsands · 2 years ago

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no amount of windex is gonna clean up this mess i’m afraid

“Too bad “an evil magic mirror confirmed he’s been kidnapped by something” isn’t considered official evidence. Trust me, I’ve tried it.”

emmet needs leads. a new friend has a source. maybe it’s a little ill-advised, but it’s not like they have options at this point.

Warnings for psychological horror, mental anguish, grief, imagined body and eye horror

(Reuploaded here due to technical difficulties elsewhere.)

The candle is lit, the cloth is pulled away, and Emmet is left facing himself, two pairs of shining grey eyes held apart by glossy silver.

“Ten minutes, Emmet.”

They’ve gone through this routine enough that the “don’t make me drag you out ten minutes from now” is implied and understood. Spin is one of the nicest people Emmet’s ever met, nice in the way he needs someone to be nice right now, but xe does not play games where the things xe has been entrusted with guarding are involved. What Emmet is doing is dangerous, and stupid, and continuing to do it is the definition of insanity, but xe knows what desperation will lead someone to. Better the devil they both know, the devil one of them has on a leash.

That leash doesn’t do much to ease the knot in Emmet’s stomach as Spin takes xyr leave, xyr absence in the distorted reflection made accurate once more.

Emmet hasn’t forgotten how to smile, though the way people react when greeted by his friendly grin makes him think they expected him to. It’s ridiculous. He’s not dead (neither of them are dead), for Arceus’s sake. Still, when he smiles at the mirror, sitting up straighter and beaming like he’s receiving commendations, it feels like something he’s out of practice with. Another Emmet smiles back, uniform perfectly in place, hair neatly combed, plasticine grin splitting across freshly shaven cheeks. Emmet’s own smile drops a bit, moreso when he can see it happening.

Right. So it’s going to be stubborn with him. Fair enough.

It’s a game they’ve played since they were kids: they would park themselves in front of the wide mirror in the bathroom, and while one maintained his neutral expression, the other would do their absolute best to recreate it. Neither of them knew how it started. Neither really knew why they did it, but it was always entertaining when Elesa would step in to ask a question and start yelling once she realized the game was afoot yet again.

“Oh for-Ingo? If I’m not speaking to Ingo right now I’m leaving!”

“But you just got here-”

“AUGH!”

It’s a much harder game to play alone, but Emmet hasn’t forgotten how it feels to let his resting grin slip into a more neutral frown. It hasn’t been too long since he’d last done this, standing alone in a now much too big bedroom, leaning in close to try and commit every inch of the pale imitation to memory, but all it took was one instance of Chandelure wandering in, shaking and whimpering as their reflected eyes met, to retire the practice from within the apartment entirely.

To anyone else, the reflection in the mirror would be written off as a perfect imitation. To Emmet, who knows better? Who knows the difference? It’s too perfect. He’s not that good at wearing his brother’s face.

The reflection is not Emmet.

“I am Emmet. Thank you for joining me!”

The reflection’s smile lags behind his own, stretching out wider, tugging the skin until twin lines of crimson start to spill down its chin. “I never leave, child, you are the one joining me!”

Emmet allows himself to blink, and he’s proud of himself for not flinching this time when his eyes open to the reflection pressing tight against the glass, the now dark navy hat slipping to cover one of its wide, darkening eyes. The first time he’d seen that trick, Spin had needed to run in and drag him out screaming, still too raw and panicked to handle even a transparent mockery of his lost brother on the wrong side of mortality. He’ll likely still have nightmares tonight (as if that’s not the norm at this point), but it doesn’t matter. Progress is progress, and in this hunt? Progress is worth its weight in gold.

The reflection tilts its head, scattering deep red droplets across the floor between them. “Back so soon, Emmet? No luck with the Bloat of Great Slowpokes, then?”

Emmet exaggerates a grimace, though the shiver that tears through him at the memory is real. “He wasn’t in there. I was verrrrry relieved to learn that! But this does leave us without many leads.”

The candle flame flickers a bit, and the grin that couldn’t possibly get any wider does, resembling a wide gash slit into a smooth surface of clay more than a functioning mouth. The thing leans in, and Emmet allows himself the slightest twitch when he hears the low, warped chuckling right behind his ear.

“What a shame. And here I thought this was just a social call. Am I so abhorrent to only warrant a visit when you need something from me, Emmet?”

“In my defense, you are trying to throw me off by appearing as my brother. It is not a pleasant sight.”

The sight gets even more unpleasant with each blink, as the chamber behind the figure in the reflection degrades even more, scattered with debris and stains and rising piles of-

(solids liquids stinking gasses decaying twitching steaming moaning)

-something. Emmet will continue to spare his sanity and call the illusory set pieces “something”.

“I need to know that you understand what you’re up against, Mr. Emmet. That thing isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s not a Pokémon. It wasn’t ever human. I don’t think it even belongs here. We don’t know exactly what it’s capable of; hell, it might not even have any information we can use to find your brother. I can’t be sure that it’s worth the risk.”

Emmet couldn’t see his own face when he looked up at xem, but the faint softening of xyr expression spoke volumes. He hadn’t expected his whispering to be so hoarse; he almost couldn’t recognize his own voice.

“If you can not tell me for sure that it can’t help, then I am willing to figure it out for myself.”

The laughter continues, and Emmet nearly swears under his breath as he forces himself to ignore how the shape seems to drape itself over a faint whisper of his own presence in the mirror, to ignore the sudden faint pressure on his shoulders. It’s not really happening. This thing can not touch him. Not with the candle still lit, flickering and gently puffing little bursts of smoke, as if a steady stream of tiny suicidal insects are divebombing the blue flame.

“Isn’t that sad? I would expect you to welcome any visage of poor Ingo at this point. Isn’t that why you keep playing with mirrors? Isn’t that why you’re playing with one right now?”

He sighs, his practiced smile growing even wearier, his translucent copy mirroring (ha) the change without fail, even as the not-Ingo idly taps just under its eye with a too-long nail.

(His cheek itches. He will not scratch it. Spin has horror stories.)

“Such an odd young man you are. Your brother could be-”

(draped over his shoulder limp heavy blood gushing from its mouth the white stripes blurring into the red a big muddy mess on his clothes empty sockets exposed bones drip drip drip and what did you do to stop this, Emmet?)

“-and yet here you are, looking for absolution from a rock. Silly.”

It’s another trick of the mirror that his eyes in the reflection are so cold. Surely. His response is cool and steady. “Ingo is not dead.”

“Oh, but I thought I was the one with the answers.”

“Ingo is not dead. I would know.”

“Of course. You would know e v e r y t h i n g about Ingo, wouldn’t you?”

It pretends to stroke its chin, ignoring the fat clump of meat that does not dislodge, does not land with a filthy squish on Emmet’s knee. “But then, if he isn’t dead…”

It has eyes now, bright silver and piercing, and a wide but not too wide mouth, and clean unbroken skin and a face that looks far too much like

Emmet’s stomach lurches, and Ingo (not Ingo) smirks over his shoulder. “-then why hasn’t he returned to you, Emmet?”

The only person in the room clenches his fists, and for the first time, has to actively fight the rising panic in his chest. “I…I don’t get your point,” he murmurs around a sudden lump in his throat.

(Obstacle on the tracks, derailment imminent, brace for impact!)

“Of course you do, Emmet! Isn’t it always the same thing, whenever someone suggests he left on his own?”

The light of the candle shifts, dark strips lightening in the flickering, and Emmet’s staring in unease at a much clearer imitation of his own face, smile stretched wide, eyes dead like a magikarp in the sun. “You are asking a verrrrry stupid question. My brother would not change his route without alerting us! There has been an unforeseen diversion; please help us bring him back to the station!”

Emmet wants to look away. Emmet knows he shouldn’t look away. He knows he shouldn’t speak when his voice shakes so much. He shouldn’t let it have this.

He lets it have this.

“And I am right. He would not do that to us. He would not choose to leave us behind.”

The reflection tilts its head like a curious little growlithe, but with enough force to echo a crack around the walls, and the uniform blinks back to a darker scheme. “Then why is he not back? Wouldn’t he be here if he wanted to be? Don’t you believe that nothing would stop him from coming home? Nothing short of-”

“Don’t. Do not say it.”

The thing giggles, his ersatz brother’s face dripping off layers of itself like wax. “You are a grown man, Emmet. You are smart enough to know this. You understand logic, yet you cling to incompatible truths. Your brother would never choose to be gone, yet he is gone, and still yet not dead?”

Emmet’s breath quickens, and he winces at a burst of stabbing pain in his head. The thing is whispering, it isn’t loud at all, why do his ears hurt so bad? “Enough.”

“Oh, is it not fun when you’re the one being asked all these questions, Emmet? How unfortunate; I have something very important to ask of you, boy.”

The candle is still burning. The cloth is right behind him. He can’t see either in the reflection, the shining surface replaced with pockmarked, twitching, writhing somethings, and the jittery shape of something that is not (never has been never will be never could be never even looked like him so stupid how stupid of him how stupid could he be to ever think it could ever possibly resemble even the slightest bit IT IS NOT) Ingo, but he knows they are there, and he can end this now if he could

just

move.

“Emmet.”

It whispers in his ear. It shouts from ten miles away. It sounds like Ingo.

“Which would you prefer, really? Him alive and choosing to leave you? Or him dying in the attempt to get back?”

Emmet doesn’t see the tears leaving his wide eyes, rolling past his gaping mouth. He doesn’t see how badly he’s shaking. He can’t even feel himself breathe. The words are more mouthed than said, the faintest squeak from his throat merely suggesting syllables. “No, no, no, I, no-”

“Well? It’s no tougher a question than you’ve asked of anyone else. Go on, choose. A living brother who hates you? A dead brother who loved you? Don’t be bashful, Emmet.”

“Stop.��

“It’s okay to admit your selfishness, Emmet-”

“I said stop!”

“Where is Ingo, Emmet?”

“Stop it!”

“Where’s Ingo, Emmet? Where’s Ingo? Wh(stop)ere’s Ingo? Where’s In(please)go? Where’s Ingo? Where’s (shaking and rocking and crying and clutching his head murmuring please stop please stop) Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’(i’m sorry)s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s I(the candle sputters the room is dark light is not light the air is not air)ngo? Where’s Ingo? Wh(don’t)ere’s Ingo? Wher(the room smells like blood and bone and candle wax and dust and petrichor and electricity and)e’s Ingo? Where’s Ing(i’m so sorry)o? Where’s Ingo? Where’s (the world is ending it was already over but it’s been remade to break and he can’t hold on to the dirt of this earth slipping through his fingers like playbox sand like gold coins like a hand he hasn’t held in years) Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s Ingo? Where’s

(he wants to be sick. he is sick. he’s been sick and he’ll never be unsick again.)

Ingo?”

“Please stop!”

The cavern falls silent.

Something drips inside the mirror. Something drips outside the mirror. There’s nothing similar about them.

Emmet’s curled in on himself, his cap discarded alongside him like an unwanted funeral program, his fingers knotted in his hair like he thinks tearing every follicle out at the root would put an end to this. He’s gasping for breath, trying to keep his lungs and stomach on the right end of his mouth. He’s crying.

He’s shaking.

He’s shattered.

It doesn’t even have the decency to make a scene about its long-awaited victory, content to chuckle as the flame dwindes ever closer to the base of the candle. “Oh, Emmet. Silly Emmet. It has been fun. None of them have ever been as persistent as you have. Even the other Stolen’s mother never came back after the first time. I will miss this.”

It hums its satisfaction, and the shivering mess before it goes still.

The room is quieter than before. Quieter than it intends, but it doesn’t realize its mistake, even as Emmet uncurls, lifting his head to look at the mirror’s surface.

(Is it a mirror again? Had it meant to turn back into a mirror? What form is it taking right now? Why is it curled up like this? When did it start copying his form again?)

“The other what?”

It doesn’t understand, but when the grin starts spreading back across Emmet’s face (it doesn’t reciprocate), the recognition hits, and inside the chamber, a corner of the stone shatters.

“Don’t be bashful, old friend. What did you mean, the other Stolen?”

“You…” it sputters around a mouthful of dripping ichor, “You-!”

“I am Emmet! And I am sorry,” he states, sitting up and dusting off his cap before returning it to its rightful seat atop his still messy locks with only the faintest sniffle, “but you really need to work on your gloating. I appreciate the new lead, though!”

“YOU!”

Emmet doesn’t flinch when it slams against the surface of the mirror, smiling just as placidly before, though the grey in his bloodshot, watery eyes is less the flickering fluorescence of a station overhead light, and more the glint of moonlight off a polished steel blade. “Have you ever heard the term “loose lips sink ships”? My brother coined something similar once.”

He grins, tipping his hat courteously. “Loose brains derail trains.”

The candle erupts, popping and spitting red flame and roaring just as loudly as the indignant screams from within the mirror, but before the sight of the wick withering faster than he’s ever seen it has a chance to spark a whole new panic in Emmet-

Fwoosh.

A cloth covers the mirror, embroidered runes activating and emitting their own gentle blue glow, picking up the slack left by the candle as the last ember dwindles. A hand hooks in the back of Emmet’s collar, and as he’s tugged out of the cavern on his ass, he tilts his head back, grinning at how hard Spin is trying to cover xyr reluctant amusement with a stern glare.

“You are verrrrry stupid, little man.”

“Maybe. But! I am Emmet.”

Spin snorts, reaching down to knock his cap over his eyes. It at least saves his eyes from the rapid switch to daylight, at least.

~*~

“Right. A…”Stolen”. Whatever that means.”

Emmet hums, idly tracing shapes in the air with his half-eaten popsicle. “That is what it said. The “other Stolen”, specifically.”

Spin leans back against the cooler, tongue poking out of the corner of xyr mouth as xyr pencil scratches across the pad their little assembly of mystery solvers has been using to brainstorm their next moves. “Right. Still not sure what that is, but we do have a list of the people who’ve asked to meet the mirror, and it’s a short list. One of them has to be a mother. We find her, we find out what happened to her kid, we get one step closer to finding out what happened to Ingo.”

“And finding Ingo!”

“Damn right.”

The sun is dropping steadily across the horizon, casting the fields around the cave in a warm orange that feels so much kinder than the sharp, sickly indigo of the chamber. The space in front of Emmet is blessedly free of blighted stone and cursed silver and a thing trying too hard (and getting too close to success) to break his mind. Just a wide, tranquil expanse of soft grass, interrupted only by the sibling pair of a sneasel and a riolu from the farm chasing each other in play. It’s peaceful. Peace and ice cream are a nice reward for the massive risk he took.

Peace, ice cream, and another puzzle piece of the truth.

Emmet breathes in, tilting back to let the falling sun warm his still-chilled face. “Stolen.”

The word feels so strange on his tongue. A heaviness that drips down like syrup, then evaporates into a light mist.

Stolen. Not murdered. Not runaway. Not laying dead in a ditch somewhere nobody’s thought to check.

“Sto-len. Stooooolen.”

Something has taken his brother, and he doesn’t know who or what or for Arceus’s sake why, or where he’s being kept, unable to get home on his own, because Emmet knows that’s the reason why he’s still gone. That thing in the mirror tried to narrow it down to a binary, Love/Death and Hate/Life, but Emmet is not an idiot, though Spin might playfully call him one (when xe gets done rooting around in the cooler for xyr own popsicle, of course). Ingo can be alive and still want to get home, because that’s what’s happening and Emmet knows.

He just needs a little help. Emmet can be that help. Spin, and Elesa, and everyone who still believes that their beloved lost battle master will come home someday, can be that help.

Everyone who still believes.

Ha.

“Too bad “a magic mirror confirmed he’s been kidnapped by something” isn’t considered official evidence to warrant investigation. Trust me, I’ve tried it.”

Emmet snorts, nudging Spin’s leg playfully with his shoe. “I will take your word for it! I don’t plan on telling any authorities. They are as tired of my repetition as I am of theirs.”

His smile flattens a bit by the end of the sentence, and Spin winces as he hurriedly shoves the rest of his popsicle in his mouth. “They’re still pushing you to have him declared, huh.”

Emmet hums around the stick, and xe shakes xyr head, leaning back against the cooler and spitefully chomping down on xyr popsicle, as if xe hopes an officer somewhere can feel the bite.

Across the field, the sneasel is getting impatient, nipping at her little brother when he approaches, just another mundane sibling spat, but performed on the worst possible stage at the worst possible time. The sight makes the taste of sugar and salt (they used to eat these on the beach when they were young, crouched over tide pools with Elesa, didn't they? Was he the one to tell Spin they were his favorite, or had she?) turn cloying on Emmet’s heavy tongue, and suddenly he can’t bear it, and every inch of him is screaming, pleading with him to rush to them like a train with no brakes, to beg them to please don’t fight, please, please get along, don’t you realize the gift (time time is a gift, a train on the track, and a track can only stretch so far before it has to STOP THAT RIGHT NOW PLEASE-) you have right now, you don’t know how long it’ll last (tick tock tick tock keep it running on time you have a schedule to keep) and you’ll never know, you can never know (he hadn’t said goodbye he just waved it was just a routine check just a man walking away down a tunnel and a panicked lonely Chandelure flying back out in a frenzy and suddenly the quiet station was very verrrrry TOO LOUD-) if when if when if when-

The popsicle stick drops from his mouth, followed down to his lap by tears he hadn’t realized were forming. “Why do they insist on making me grieve?”

“Because it’s not your grief to them.”

He sniffs, turning to watch Spin, who tracks the Pokémon with soft eyes, xyr voice laced with a bitterness more resigned and weary than sharp and spiteful. “People love you guys, both of you, and they’re hurting, but…they lived without both of you before. They can go back to that, once this is over, but it’s not over until you say it is. They don’t want you to grieve for your own sake. They want you to grieve because that’ll give them permission to move on. They’ll get their closure when there’s a grave to visit every now and then, and they’ll stop telling themselves they’re obligated to look for answers, and go on with their own lives. Even if you’re still looking.”

(There’s a woven bracelet on xyr wrist, dotted with beads that match the colors on a never ending cycle of candles perpetually burning inside the ranch house, surrounded by old, blurry photos. He’s heard whispers and seen snippets of stories. Xe told him he could ask when he’s ready. He’s not ready yet.)

The riolu falls backwards during the tussle, and the first pitiful whine from his throat knocks his sister out of her frustration and into a fit, fussing over him and gathering him up into her claws comfortingly. Spin turns to place a hand on Emmet’s knee, and xyr eyes shine more than the defeated mirror. “They want you to give them permission to give up on him. Don’t let them have it.”

(The cave behind them yawns like the entrance to a great tunnel, and if he turns his head, will he see it again? The back of a coat that walked down into a dead end and never came back? A face that rested neutral but not for lack of joy, lack of an intense love for life and trains and Pokémon and his family, because he’d do anything for them, face down any odds for them, and that’s surely what he’s been doing since that last, lost moment, three years ago tomorrow?)

Emmet breathes in, letting his hat slip off when his head drops to the side, letting the exhaustion and his friend’s hand hold him down when he feels like drifting off towards the next ill-advised search for a face a mirror can’t replicate.

“Promise…promise you won’t give me permission,” he mutters behind a weak smile.

(Don’t let me let go, he wants to say, I don’t want them to make me let go, and he knows xe hears it all the same.)

A light squeeze, a solemn nod, dark curls swaying over kind eyes. He can hear a door slam off in the direction of the farm; no doubt Elesa’s arrived to pull him in close, call him an idiot, tell them both how stupid they are before scanning over every last detail addd to the notepad and racking her brain for the next favor to call in.

“I know you’ll never ask for it, Emmet.”

He is Emmet.

Ingo is alive.

They’ll figure out the rest as they go.

#pokémon legends arceus #submas #subway boss ingo #subway boss emmet #pokemon fanfiction #this is set before pla but during Ingo being gone #blankshippers dni

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trashcha · 2 years ago

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Woo, came here from the ao3 fic, happy to see… Azul. Oh god I pray for him.

Watching as he just… searches around, makes note of the odd disappearance, and now… fuck. Nooooooooo no, noooooooo goddamnit I don’t want to accept it…

NOOOO NOT THE BLOOD GODDAMNITT. GGRJAJJ

Okay so taking a moment to just distract myself from the horror Azul is currently witnessing, this is so amazingly written, the way dread sets in as he sees the scarlet pooling from underneath the door, wills himself to open the place that likely served as MC’s last horrifyingly bloody, hopeless moments, and just… knowing he had to go inside. I love it, as dreadful and tense as it makes me feel.

Nononononoooooo goddamnit is that Floyd or Jade, grhahahaghhh either just breaks my heart.

NOOOOOOOO FUCK NOOOO GODDAMNIT NOO. FLOYD. JADE. MC. AZUL. FUCKKKKK. GRHENHJHHHH

I’m fucking sobbing no goddamnit no no no no no no noooooo

FLOYD. FHCKCKCK. JADE. FGGAGGHHH. Floyd, just. AUGH. the way he grabs onto MC’s hand even in death, grhnn. AHHHHHGH SHES FUCKING DEAD. HE WAS RIGHT SHE DEAD IN A DITCH JUST. JUST MAYBE SAID IT A LITTLE TOO EARLY. BUT FUCK. NOOO GRHHHAHH

The way Jade’s repeated repents of sorts just continue as you read along, god it adds so much. I feel so bad for him,

FUCK. FUCK FUCK. FLIYD WHY. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SAY GOODBYE. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SQUEEZE MCS HAND, WHY. HGRHHAH GODDAMNIT. NONF MNM MMMMM

Azul I’m so sorry I am so, so sorry. Augh god I am. I’m sobbing. Azul. Azul. Azul. I am so sorry man. Goddamnit. God fucking damnit. I love this so much, just the turmoil it gives me, the window into their anguish, their loss, and their horrifying reality. It’s so beautifully written.

Oh. Oh. Oh no. Azul. Azul, why? Why try? Why, Azul? They’re not going to be able to make it out of that. They’re just too far gone, man. It’s too much. It’s too far.

FUCK. FUCKKKK. NOOO YOU CANT. AZULLL. FLOYYDD. JADEEE! GRHAHHHH. ITS NOT GONNA HAPPEN. ITS TOO FAR GONE. YOURE NOT GETTING OUT OF THIS. NOOOOOOOOOOOO

TLDR: mental anguish. I read and give comments, you can probably guess where I am. God I love this though, drowns me in a dreadful pity and honestly I am all for it. I really wanted. I really wanted some cook to come along after Jade went down, but… he locked up.

Ending notes: Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that, but I don’t know what I was. Azullll why… what are you going to dooo??? Also just. Jesus how hot was it in there?? I don’t know if I got some artificial ass meat but normally if the temperature is good you got some chance of salvaging the meat but christ MC rotted fasttt. An off handed comment here, if I may. They both need muzzles. Personally I have an affinity for muzzles but like… they NEED(ed) them around MC 😭

Also just imagine you’re a ghost just watching over your body as the tweels go insane in a dark room. Azul comes in and you just. You don’t know what to expect, but you just hope he would do something, just for him to close and lock the door behind him, trapping your already desecrated, rotting body with the very things that caused such destruction. Personally, I’d go follow Azul and just be. Very angry over the fact that he thought of my ROTTING BODY as another problem to get over, even though it’d make perfect sense for him to be in denial and desperately try to claw at any way to repair and shed some of the blame.

Probably, hopefully final note: I love this writing so much. It inspires and motivates me to just jump straight into writing something along this tone, or just surfing through all of your work, it’s amazing! It made me well up with some tears of frustration, pity, and dread, but it only served to bring more to it. The pain they felt, for the time I read, felt recognizable and, just amazing. I loved every second of this, titles, tags, and summaries. ❤️

BLOODLUST SECRET BONUS CHAPTER: The World’s Worst Hangover

Art by @ma10ba (correct me if I'm wrong)

***This chapter takes place the morning after the events of my smut horror story on AO3, Bloodlust, so if you haven't read that in it's entirety, CLICK HERE TO READ IT FIRST.

I mean… I can't force y'all to do anything. Read this first if you want, it just sorta spoils the story's ending.

WARNING: This chapter contains no smut, but lots of gore. Reader discretion is advised.

***Also, I just want to make clear that I intentionally left the ending of Bloodlust ambiguous because I want the reader to come up with their own ideas of what happens next on their own (a reader's mind conjures up horrors worse than the written word can ever hope to achieve yadda yadda yadda), so this special end scene isn't necessarily "canon" to my story, it's just a fun little extra bit of psychological horror for those who wanted to know how I imagined things would happen next.

Without further ado, I present to you...

The World's Worst Hangover

In hindsight, drinking that much celebratory champagne was probably a bad move, because when Azul’s alarm rang the next morning, it felt like a raging beast was screaming inside his head and jamming razor blades into his skull.

Azul desperately jabbed at the button on his phone to turn the agonizing beeping off. “Fucking dammit...” Azul tossed the phone onto his side table, rubbing at his face with a prolonged groan. Early morning sunlight rippled through the ocean outside his window and Azul covered his head with a pillow to escape it.

The housewarden contemplated sleeping in longer, but all the work he needed to get done before the Mostro Lounge’s official re-opening piled up in his mind and he knew there was no time to allow himself to properly recover from this hangover. So Azul begrudgingly tossed his pillow aside and got up to prepare himself for the torturous day ahead of him.

After popping some pain killers and getting dressed, the housewarden made his way through the dorm over to the Mostro Lounge to make final inspections before the staff came in to get ready for the lunch time opening. He expected Jade to be waiting for him in the dining room, but the vice housewarden was nowhere to be found.

“Hmmm...” Azul looked down at his phone to double check the time, and it was ten minutes past when they had agreed to meet. He had no new messages from the Leech brother, and Jade was not the type to accidentally sleep in or forget a meeting, so Azul was starting to feel nervous, albeit he wasn’t entirely sure why. The silver haired man looked around the room once more, “Where are you...?”

An unsettling feeling bubbled inside of Azul, and it wasn’t the nausea from his unyielding hangover. Azul found himself walking over to the dark, silent kitchen, his excuse being that maybe Jade would be in there checking ingredients like the teal haired man tended to do, but a part of him wondered if Jade was down below in the blocked off basement that only the two of them knew about.

Azul got his answer when he saw that the secret shelving unit door was cracked open slightly, and his already sick stomach twisted into a heavy knot. “Fuck.”

He ran to the shelving unit and pulled it open, the containers of ingredients on the shelves tumbling onto the floor as the housewarden rushed inside the closed off space and shut the door. Azul and Jade always made sure to lock the secret door regardless of whether they were inside or outside of the hidden space. Always. Jade wouldn’t have just left the door cracked open like he did. Unless...

“Floyd... Oh no...” The door to the basement was already wide open and the light was on. Azul slammed the door behind him as he rushed down the stairs in a panic, “FLOYD!” He screamed, making his way through the basement towards the uncovered door to the secret room. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck...”

Azul stopped just short of the door, spying something on the ground that made his whole body run cold. Just barely seeping out from under the door was a small pool of dark red, and for a moment Azul couldn’t bring himself to step any closer. He turned and stumbled against the dusty, empty shelves of the basement, shaking and heaving heavy breaths to keep down the bile that tried to escape his stomach. He just leaned there and focused on his breathing until the nausea subsided, knowing he needed to open that door no matter what was on the other side. So he pushed aside his panic and any other thoughts or feelings that conflicted with the task at hand. The housewarden straightened up and turned towards the door, taking in a quick breath as he gripped the handle and pushed it open.

Immediately Azul was hit by the overwhelming metallic stench of something putrid and rotten from inside the room, and it was all the already nauseous man needed to instantly turn around and vomit onto the floor. His body shook violently as he turned up the last of the contents within his stomach, tears flowing from his gray eyes as he just stared at the ground, dry heaving and hyperventilating uncontrollably.

He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see what was inside that room. He already had an idea and he’d give anything to not have to see it. But Azul knew he had no other choice, so he pulled out his handkerchief and took a moment to wipe up his mouth before turning the cloth over and pressing it firmly over his nose and mouth. He pulled out his pen, preparing for the worst when he forced his trembling body to turn and face whatever was waiting for him inside of that dark room.

There was a voice muttering from inside. It was quiet and uneven, and Azul only just now noticed it as he looked vacantly towards the inside of the room, not quite having the strength to look down just yet. His shaking hand gripped his pen as he felt around on the wall for the light switch. With a soft ‘click’, the room was illuminated by the two lights strung up on the ceiling. Azul stared up at those lights, struggling against every survival instinct in his body telling him not to look down as he forced his eyes towards the ground.

It was red. All he could see was red.

It completely covered the once grey cement floor in various sickening shades, splattered up along the walls and the furniture, dripping back down into dark crimson pools on the ground. And it covered a small, pathetic man tucked into the corner of the room between the outer plexiglass partition of makeshift bathroom and the cement wall, rocking back and forth and gripping his vaguely teal blood soaked hair as he muttered to himself on repeat, “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it...”

Azul thought there was nothing left in his stomach to vomit, but his body proved him wrong as he looked towards his feet and saw that he, himself, was standing in a puddle of rotten blood. He suddenly keeled over against the doorframe and dry heaved the last little bit of acid that was inside of his cramping gut, pulling his handkerchief up slightly so he could let it drip onto the ground before quickly covering up his mouth again.

“Hey Azul.” A voice spoke in a calm, monotone whisper from somewhere else in the room to Azul’s right.

Still gripping onto the doorframe, the housewarden slowly panned his eyes over in the direction of the voice. He found Floyd, sitting on the ground and leaning up against the wall, blood soaked clothes clinging to his skin, crimson covering most of his pale face and causing strands of his hair to stick to his skin. He just stared at the opposing wall, unblinking eyes dark and sunken as he just sat there, unmoving as though he, himself, were a corpse.

It was at this point that Azul realized that the pathetic creature rocking back and forth against the plexiglass wall at the opposite end of the room was Jade. The vice housewarden was nearly unrecognizable in this dazed, traumatized state, trapped in a constant loop of tugging at his hair with crimson stained hands and whispering, “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it...”

There was no need to ask what had happened. It was well past the point where it would have mattered. The housewarden slowly glanced back towards Floyd, who rolled his head over to look Azul in the eyes as he spoke again with that eerily calm, monotone voice, “What’s up?” Azul trembled as he saw now that Floyd was gripping your hand in his, the twin refusing to let go even when there was no longer any trace of life in your cold palm.

The one thing Azul couldn’t do was look at the rest of whatever that hand was connected to. Azul knew that whatever it was, it had been hours since it was a living, breathing person, and he didn’t need to know any more than that.

“I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it...”

His eyes caught a glimpse of something shiny on top of the bed at the far end of the room, and after taking a moment to organize the chaos in his head, Azul realized that these were the keys to the secret room. Needing a direction forward, the silver haired man carefully stepped through the room towards the keys. He’d have tried to avoid stepping in the blood, if it were possible to do so, but it was already too late for that. Jade continued rocking and whispering, and Floyd just rolled his head back to stare at the wall across from him, squeezing your hand in his as if to reassure you.

“I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it...”

Azul stared up at the ceiling, holding his breath and gritting his teeth to still his quivering jaw as he carefully stepped over the corpse in the center of the room. He reached over and quickly grabbed the keys on the bed, turning to repeat the process of keeping his eyes on the ceiling as he slowly made his way back towards the door.

He stopped at the threshold, taking a moment to clear his mind before carefully slipping out of his blood soaked shoes, making sure not to get a drop of blood anywhere else on him as he stepped his purple sock covered foot onto the clean cement ground outside in the main room of the basement. Having successfully made it out of the room with the keys and without the shoes, Azul reached his hand back in to turn off the light, making sure not to step into the crimson that had pooled around the doorway.

He turned and fell against the basement shelves, desperately wanting to allow himself to fall apart, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

“Goodbye Azul.” Floyd’s calm whisper spoke from the darkness of the room. Azul shook as he reached for the door handle and slowly closed the door to the room, shutting the twins inside. The trembling silver haired man struggled to hold the keys still enough to lock the entrance to the room, just barely managing to twist the key in the lock to ensure that, for now, the horrors inside that room would stay there.

The housewarden forced himself up the stairs and out of the basement, carefully locking the basement door before turning to hesitantly push open the secret door leading to the kitchen. He cracked it open just a bit at first, checking to see if the lights were still off outside to make sure no one else was around. He stood there for a bit, and when he didn’t hear any noises outside, he carefully pushed the door open the rest of the way, stepping out of the secret space into the kitchen. He swung the shelving unit door closed and quickly locked it, dropping the keys into his coat pocket as he lowered his head into the front corner of the unit, heaving heavy breaths as he was just about to drop to the ground and start sobbing.

The light in the kitchen flickered on, and a voice spoke from behind him, “Mr. Ashengrotto...?” Azul turned to find the head chef standing in the doorway, head cocked as he stared at the housewarden with a look of concern and confusion. “Are you okay, sir?”

Azul looked from the employee over to the shelving unit he was leaning against, various containers of spices and other dry ingredients knocked over on the shelves and on the ground around his feet. “Sorry... I guess I tripped and knocked everything over...”

The chef glanced down at the housewarden’s feet, “Where are your shoes...?”

The head chef raised his eyebrows, unsure of how to respond, “Oh... I’m so sorry to hear about that sir.” He scratched his head, “Should we hold off the Mostro’s opening then...?”

Azul took a deep breath in. “You know what... I don’t think I am okay.” He forced out a small chuckle, “I admit I had too much to drink last night... And I am having the world’s worst hangover.” He looked down and lifted his sock covered foot up slightly, “As a testament to my lack of cohesive brain power, I seem to have completely forgotten to put on my shoes as I was getting ready today...” Azul rubbed his head and nodded to himself, “Floyd and Jade are also worse for wear at the moment, we partied a bit too hard last night after the event... I regret to report that I don’t think any of us will be able to help out with the Mostro Lounge today.”

Azul shook his head and walked towards his employee, “Oh heavens no!” He pat the man’s arm, “This just means you’re going to have to spearhead the opening on your own! Don’t worry, I’ll pay you extra for your efforts...” He gripped the chef ’s shoulder and looked into his eyes, the silver haired man’s expression turning serious, “...As well as your discretion. I admit I’m a bit embarrassed by my self-inflicted poor bill of health, and would rather no one else know about my bad drinking habits.”

The man swallowed slightly and nodded, “O-of course sir! I’ll take care of things here. I won’t tell anyone what they don’t need to know!”

Azul smiled and pat the man’s shoulder, “Excellent. Thank you...” He stepped towards the door out of the kitchen, “I’ll let the rest of the staff know that the twins and I came down with a bug and won’t be able to attend the opening...”

The head chef turned and watched as Azul stumbled slightly into the dining room, “Are you going to be okay, Mr. Ashengrotto?”

Azul stood there for a moment and took a long, deep breath out, staring down at his purple patterned socks as he briefly lost himself to his thoughts. Eventually he nodded, “Yeah... We’re going to be okay.” He stepped forward through the lounge, away from the nervous employee standing in the kitchen. “We’ll figure this out. Just like we always do... We’ll be okay.”

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