Just awoke from a nightmare where things were not going well end of day at current job. Office was a lil dif. But that's dreams. Decide to grab a quick drink from a coffee shop, snag a ride with a co-worker and her husband. Husband decides he will only drop me off a full mile away from work.
I cry and panic. Yell at some passerby and start speed walking back.
Get to the building. It is not my office building. It is a nightmare version of my high-school (which I have dreamed about before, down to this really weird set of French exchange student girls who give me heebeejeebees. As well as some weird dioramas made by students. This dreams room sized diorama was like the target Bootanicals stuff. Anomatronic Audrey 2 and everything.) I do not initially realize this hellscape is not my office, because I recognize it.
I ask every person I can where the circulation department is. Or at least the press room or even advertising, I can find my way from there. Get sent to the admin office where I finally realize it's not my work. But!! I know where I am now because my mum works with me and in highschool I'd walk to her office after school on Fridays.
So I start walking. Get to office 3 hours later, see that someone was called in to "fix" the problem. They are not fixing it. My computer is missing.
I sob. I wake up. I tell my bf about ruining my job. He looks at me blankly and says, you didn't work yesterday, and your off today. Wake up.
Woke up again.
I am off today. Haven't worked since Friday. No one reached out to me from work so everything is fine lol.
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👻If they were a ghost, what methods would they use to haunt someone?
Horrific Headcanons.
Thanks for the ask, @bootanicals. @atomicdeke also asked me this one, and I’ll probably do one for Adi in response to that.
Behind the cut: ghosty stuff, some references to death, murder, possible suicide, and abuse.
Don't want your money for my silence
I don't care who knows your name
Don't tell your friends that I'm lying to convince them I'm insane
Over my dead body, oh
- Miya Folick, Deadbody
The first sign of trouble is something almost common: puddles of water, glinting in the candlelight, warping the smooth gleam of the polish wooden floor. Drips by the fireplace, footprints -- familiar to anyone in Ishgard, really. If you stay too long in the house with your snow-caked clothes on, of course it makes a mess.
Someone was here. It's quiet. And the owner of this manor is dead. Just like the owner of the manor next door, last sennight. And one the sennight before that.
They are found in their studies, slumped over a pile of damp pages. The water dripping has left the first page of their letters blurred, but always the same words: IN DEATH, I REPENT. I AM SORRY. HALONE FORGIVE ME.
The pages afterward describe their list of crimes. They start with, "I cannot speak for others. I have no voice of my own any longer. But I will try and describe my crimes..."
Each victim writes an eloquently-worded missive. They do not always take emotional responsibility for their crimes, there are usually a lot of excuses. But it is as if they are going to confession, pushed by an Inquisitor who will not accept anything but the full story. Each letter contains damning details that no one would describe unless under duress. Each letter contains only things the victim would be able to describe.
Many times, inquisitors and knights who investigate are forced to confront the crimes they themselves ignored. They are reminded of complaints overlooked, concerned parents, Brumefolk with bruises, corpses that went unclaimed. Investigators quietly obey the letter's request to redistribute the victim's wealth toward those the victims harmed in life. That is not usually how it is done, but it does seem to be the victim's dying request. Funny, how each family usually has a few vindicated members: a cowering youngest, an anemic spouse, a grandparent left to wither. Generations of denial collapse with this missive. That seems to be the aim.
Cause of death is difficult to determine. Usually, if someone dies of hypothermia (in their own home? With a raging fire?) one would expect some signs of paradoxical undressing. The blood pooling to the center of the body, however, suggests the victim could have frozen to death. The lungs often show signs of asphyxiation, though no water is present in the lungs. This suggests that perhaps the victim was frozen in ice long enough to kill them.
Returning to that statement, "I have no voice of my own any longer."
None of the victims were particularly shy people.
Clearly, the perpetrator is someone bent on exposing these crimes. It feels a little wrong to put any weight on those letters, then, but each time the claims have been investigated, they've been true.
There are no signs of forced entry, no hairs or errant threads. The trails of water seem to appear in random places before heading toward the study, but the only footprints that can be determined belong to the victim.
Heresy? Black magic? Voidsent? It is hard to imagine any of these things happening with such regularity in the Pillars. (At least, not without someone somewhere knowing a reason for it. Without someone greasing a palm. Without a priest or a knight looking the other way.)
There are, of course, rumors about ghosts. Ishgardians are, in equal measure: superstitious, dramatic, romantic, paranoid, and paralyzed by guilt. Of course there are rumors about ghosts.
Who but a ghost would dare undermine the nobility so without concrete proof?
~*~
It is said that Etienne Clairemont died alone, but with a plan.
The exact circumstances are irrelevant, perhaps. They died a bit on the young side, but that's not unusual for adventurers. Some might cite Etienne's struggles with what they called 'fits of melancholy' and imply they died by their own hand. People close to the prostitute-turned-mage-turned-counselor-turned-back-to-mage have little to say about it. They grieve the sudden loss in private. There is no reason to suspect foul play. That man accused of hurting them years ago was found innocent, after all.
(Though he is currently missing.)
It is said that Etienne left behind a book. An exhaustively researched and written volume of thousands of crimes. Not little things like stealing, but true crimes of violation, of manipulation and perversion, committed by untouchable men.
It is said that someone found the book and burned it, but they didn't bother to read the warning on the first page.
Do not try to silence me now. I'll come back.
~*~
Someone whispers to you, “Want to see Etienne?” If you want to, you must go to their grave. They're buried next to Claudinette Clairemont, their adoptive mother, and Margeaux Clairemont, their adoptive older sister, a crib death. The Clairemonts are a dead-end family now: resting on a hardscrabble hill beneath naked gray trees that haven't born leaves nor blossom since the Calamity.
Bring them flowers. Oldroses are the ones they like best - especially if they're near death, petals falling off.
Etienne's gravestone is pink cloud marble, engraved:
♥ I'm free. ♥
Leave the flowers, and an ice-cold wind will blast across that wretched, lonely hill.
Etienne Clairemont will appear to you, covered in a fine dusting of frost. Do you recall Etienne? Tall, solidly built for an elezen, broad in the shoulders, violet hair, opalescent eyes. Death has not given them a pallor, but every ilm of them glitters with that diamond-like dust. Their hair is tied up firmly into two buns. They wear gloves. Their neck bleeds and drips onto their pale pink gown. Rather than black lipstick, their lips are bloody red. It drips down, and smiles show bloody teeth. The blood is frozen too. Trails of ruby. Try not to stare.
Etienne will hold your hands in theirs, so icy it leaves your skin throbbing afterward. The air smells metallic. The wind whips your ears.
Etienne will listen to your woes and smile. They will point to your mouth.
Your throat stings like you've been running, the cold air a dagger into your hot lungs. And you will cough, once. Etienne will wave goodbye, the strange figure of them fading.
When you get home, you find you're unable to speak. No tea with honey, no potion, nothing remedies it. You are otherwise well, though perhaps after that encounter, you are filled with dread or anxiety. Or... did you expect this? Are you feeling confident and vindicated?
On the day your voice returns another powerful monster - another upstanding citizen - another manipulator, another abuser - is dead.
Your voice feels... more powerful than it did, upon returning. You stammer less. You speak up at parties.
~*~
Someone will probably try to stop Etienne at some point. A friend, a lover, a professional acquaintance. After all, in life Etienne expressed affection for Nald'thal's balance, and desires for the souls of all dead to be laid to peace. They would wish to be laid to rest, wouldn't they?
Wouldn't they?
Etienne floats instead of walks, the ruffles of their flowing pink dress whipped about in the icy wind that seems to follow them. They leave a trail of frost along the floors they walk. Crystalline. Beautiful. They always tried to make the world more beautiful.
Etienne speaks, but it is not their voice: it is a hundred others, all in chorus.
There is no tongue. There is a bloody hole.
"Darling, did you think I'd let death contain me?"
Your teeth are chattering. Etienne glides closer.
"I still have so much to say."
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