#hence why she couldn't pin point what was haunting her

[blondiexbiites]

The Ghost first appeared in the periphery of Maddie's vision one night-- just outside of one's focus like the bum on the street corner. Litter in the gutter. A bad feeling that made you cross the street.

But he always seemed to be there, just around the corner for her to bump into, only to realize it was just a coat hung upon a door, or a broom stood in the corner. First as a figment half-sensed in the dreams that come as the skies grow dark. Then, as the nights passed and grew into weeks, as something lurking, waiting for her.

A thin man in a rumpled suit, his throat torn open in some terrible act of mortal violence-- his life bled away and still wetting his ruined collar. A lingering scent of mildew, sour beer and cigarette smoke. An unwelcome brush in the darkness. A laugh half-heard. Leering.

Except tonight, he seems almost solid, sitting at the end of her bed smoking a goddamned cigarette. The audacity.

"Looks like some ol' pornos in here. All th' fuckin' pink an' lace an' fuckin' princess shit, aye?" He chuckles, and smoke wafts from the gored hole in his neck.

"You leeches an' yer aesthetics make me sick. Bet you do insta too, aye?"

Madison forced herself out of bed; her legs were heavy and uncooperative, and her stomach growled from lack of proper nourishment. She swayed, holding to the bed for support, her teeth chattering from a familiar bone-deep chill. That damnable chill she'd endured for weeks on end. She had never before been so cold, but she couldn't allow herself the luxury of huddling under the covers when she had a whole night of hunting ahead of her. Madison had to do something to ward off her hunger and the unsettling feeling of being watched. Laboriously, Madison smoothed out the pink satin sheets and pillows, then shuffled to the kitchen and grabbed a can of scented liquid she couldn't even bring herself to name. Returning to her bedroom, she sprayed the bed linens before tucking everything in tight and drawing the silk duvet in place. Madison then stacked her decorative frilly pillows on the bed in their usual order and sprayed the air deodorizer around the bedroom and bathroom.

Maybe Maddie was just imagining it, but she could have sworn she could smell the same strange, chilling presence she'd been smelling for weeks. The smell of rot, blood, gore, and something unwelcome in her home. Trembling, Madison wrapped her silken pink bathrobe tighter around her trembling frame, blonde curls whipping about as she looked around frantically. Why was she so damnably cold? The normally bubblegum-scented air in her room felt freezing, but she had already set the thermostat to a toasty 70 degrees! Snarling, Madison began to pace, eyes glowing red with frustration as she tried to wrap her head around the strange occurrences these past few days and the smell that had taken residence in her home!

And that was when she heard it.

The noise was slight, little more than a rustle. Madison paused, her blonde head tilting as she listened for a repeat of the slight, odd sound. There. A whisper, like fabric. And from a familiar location.

Someone was in her room.

Madison's scalp prickled, and a jolt of sheer shock made her undead heart almost freeze in her chest. Slowly, Maddie turned her head to face whatever or whoever was sitting on the edge of her bed. The very presence that was violating her sanctuary.

"Looks like some ol' pornos in here. All th' fuckin' pink an' lace an' fuckin' princess shit, aye?"

The chill grew even more potent, the smell staggering, but Madison didn't move, couldn't move. Her eyes swept from his horrendous rumpled clothing to his smarmy, unpleasant face before finally settling on the red hole that was his throat...or used to be his throat. 'Did I do that?' she thought distantly. Afraid. Why did she feel so scared?

"You leeches an' yer aesthetics make me sick. Bet you do insta too, aye?"

Madison's chest constricted, preventing her from doing more than draw in quick, shallow breaths. She couldn't move or even scream, but the moment he insulted her pink colors, morbid righteous fury roared and overwhelmed the bubble of unsureness. "DON'T INSULT MY COLORS!" she screeched, fangs bared, face twisted in a look of ugly rage. "And for your information, I use Tinder!" Only the best place to get proper food. Insta asked for too much exposure, but enough about that, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?! AND GET THE FUCK OFF OF MY BED! THOSE SHEETS ARE EGYPTIAN SILK, AND YOU'RE SPOILING THEM!"

@infamouscabal

[the-jnadf-man]

So I was going through my shit and uh

Found a thing I wrote a while ago.

It's kinda spooky so fucking uhhh

HERE IT IS I GUESS???

There's a lot of sentences I wouldn't write nowadays but here's how I wrote things... Whenever this was written. I don't actually know for sure.

Without further ado, here's "Two friends, then a third additional friend, which is me, who survives.", which... Is the actual name of the google doc I found it in.

Well.

You ever find yourself in one of those moments where your life should be flashing before your eyes, but you only have time to recap the last six hours?

I think that's what my friends have been telling me they experienced.

For some reason.

Sorry, let me introduce myself, in case I don't survive.

My name is Richard Pierce, and this is my diary. If you find it in a creepy old haunted mansion, that would mean that I am very much departed.

I went in with my friends Sadie Lockpin and Felix Castellan, both of whom are… Dead. Murdered by what lurks inside this abominable building. Sadie went to see what was in the kitchen, and had her head bitten off by a gross maggot man with a swollen head and deadly mandibles, whom Felix and I caught chewing through what was left of her neck. Felix died while we were trying to run away from the maggot man. I couldn't get a good look at what did it (And he won't tell me the details), but it seemed to be using many broken garden gnomes as an exoskeleton. You would think this would all be extremely traumatizing once it settled in, yes? Well, it was! For a few minutes! And then… Well, you probably figured it out already. My friends are now… Ghosts, hence why they've been telling me about how the last six hours of their lives flashed before them. It's really annoying, if I'm being honest. Running out of space on this page, so I'll keep writing tomorrow.

——————————————

Richard put the book down. Much to his chagrin, Felix had figured out some kind of weird ghost magic that stopped him from writing on more than one page per day.

"C'mon, Ricky! It's not that bad, is it?"

Speak of the devil…

"It kind of is, Felix."

Richard was a nervous wreck. In the two days since Felix and Sadie died, which he hadn't gotten to write anything about yet, he'd encountered two more maggot men trying to eat each other, only to chase him down when they noticed his presence, a living pincushion that fired the pins fast enough to crack a brick wall, and a three-headed snake that bit one of its own heads off so it could throw it at him. Thankfully, that last one didn't try to chase him after he ran off.

"Hey, you haven't gotten mutilated by the thing in the walls yet, so that's a plus!"

Felix willed his head to pop like a balloon, spraying bits of ectoplasm in a small circle around himself to emphasize his point. Richard, for whatever reason, genuinely believed Felix was trying to be helpful for once.

"...There's something in the walls?"

"Well… Yeah! It's been following you for the last hour or so!"

With shaking hands, Richard began pointing a broken and rusty water pipe, the only weapon he could find here, around frantically, as though it would save him from the coming ambush.

"G-get out of the walls, damn you!"

"...I mean, if you insist."

Whipping around, Richard found himself staring at Sadie, who was poking most of her spectral form through the wall behind him, grinning like she and Felix had played a particularly good joke just now.

"I- Tha- THAT'S NOT FUNNY!"

Both of them immediately started laughing smugly in disagreement. Sadie was the first to regather her wits.

"Pfahah… Ah… Seriously though, there is one of those gross maggot people coming here. I think it heard you scream when you saw that cerberu-snake in the side room."

Richard immediately began running in the opposite direction from the one Sadie had indicated while Felix gave her a mildly unimpressed look.

——————————————

"Do you ever go to sleep and just find out a block of cheese the length of your stomach inhaled your head while you slept when you wake up?"

Felix "What Is Humour" Castellan indicated to his conspicuous lack of a skull. Allegedly, he'd seen a cheese snake run off with it upon waking up, but neither Sadie (Who could confirm that ghosts don't need to sleep, nor had Felix chosen to do so that night) nor Richard (Who doubted a cheese snake would survive very long in here) were buying it.

"Felix…"

"I'M TELLING THE TRUTH, RICKY!"

Both his fellow ghost and the human survivor were clearly judging him.

"FINE! Geez! I'LL CATCH IT MYSELF!"

Huffing and puffing like he could somehow blow the supernatural torture dungeon they called a haunted mansion down, Felix flew through the wall.

"So he was just bullshitting, right?"

"Definitely. I've been through the entire mansion twice over while you were sleeping, and there's no living cheese here."

"Wh- I- YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE KEEPING GUARD?!"

Sadie looked to the side, as though astonished Richard remembered that.

"Oh, uh, look at the time. I gotta go."

In a supernatural poof, she was gone.

Half an hour of grumbling later, Richard fell out of his chair when Felix opened the door like a normal person and presented a living snake made of cheese, which spat his head out.

He wisely decided not to tell Sadie Felix wasn't making it up.

——————————————

Richard was trying to sneak past a truly horrid creature in the middle of what he presumed was a small child's former room. Consisting of the burnt, blackened spines of three or four humans wound into a snakelike shape, with a dozen arms serving as legs and a human skull for a head, with a yellow/orange eye in its jaws, along with an eye in each armpit, it was horrid to even look at. Felix and Sadie, however, were trying their best to play peek-a-boo with the sleeping monstrosity.

"Where's the monster?"

Thankfully, they were failing. The monstrosity did not stir even when Felix tried to see if sticking his arm through the closed mouth and shining his ghost-glow into the "main' eye would work. It DID, however, start shifting when Richard started opening the door he'd been moving towards, prompting Sadie to start miming mockery towards Felix, who was loudly complaining to Richard how unfair this was.

"I try for SEVERAL MINUTES, and YOU wake the cool bone snake up by OPENING A DOOR?!"

It continued shivering. Richard tried to stand still, not turning the obnoxiously loud door handle any further. It didn't work, as Richard realized when he heard its boney hands scratching across the floor.

Turning around, the disturbing approximation of a centipede crossed with a 7th degree burn victim was staring him right in the eyes. Awkward moments rolled past while Sadie was tossing a handful of pebbles into her mouth like it was popcorn, clearly adoring the realization that, as a ghost, she was now immune to indigestion. Felix was squee-ing at how cool the abomination seemed. Finally, it broke eye contact… And scurried away, tearing the door Richard entered through off its hinges. Not so far away, the horrific screech of one of the many maggot men was heard before a wet squelching noise cut it short.

Richard did not hear it, as he'd long since ran through the door he didn't enter the room through.

——————————————

"...What."

There was a garden. Indoors. In the basement. Richard ran his hand along a tree just to confirm it wasn't plastic, retracting it when he got the feeling he was about to get splinters stuck in his fingers.

"This- I- Wh- HOW?!"

Felix immediately ate one of the flowers, as Richard expected. Sadie, meanwhile, was inspecting a large mass of moss that seemed to be growing around something only slightly less large.

"...Guys? I think this thing's breathing?"

Felix poofed in and out of existence next to Sadie, inspecting the weird mass beneath with great enthusiasm.

"Real shit?"

Richard carefully approached it with the broken and rusty water pipe pointed towards it. Now that he was closer, it did indeed seem to have a slight bob. Once he got within striking distance, and acting under the assumption that it was faking being a rock and about to attack him, Richard struck it. The response he got was neither the feeling of successfully hitting something soft and organic, nor the dull sound that came from striking a rock. Rather, a sharp CRACK emanated, as he had barely enough time to note that it seemed brittle. And hollow. Like an egg. In the middle of attempting to back up, Richard was pushed back by a screech so loud it seemed to have physical mass. Falling onto his behind, Richard felt helpless as the creature within the egg broke out. It seemed composed of some sort of dark, slimy green goo, and emitting gas that instantly caused any plant in contact with it to wither and die. Most striking were its eyes, as they shone like flashlights, and, despite the lack of pupils, were obviously focused on Richard.

Sadie, responding to her ranidaphobia, jumped behind Felix.

"GAH! FROG!"

Felix, meanwhile, tried to hold a nearby rose in front of the monster's face. It immediately proceeded to decay into dust, leaving Felix with an empty hand. Richard did not know nor care why Felix did that. Acting on a fear response, the sole human of the trio jolted upright and back away. The creature that was… Imprisoned? Resting? Born? In the room began to approach. Despite it's clear intent to kill, it was quite slow. Richard managed to take advantage of this after putting a tree between it and him, somehow distracting it long enough for him to bolt past and to what he hoped was the exit door to the garden.

"Oh, what am I gonna name you?"

Felix, unlike Sadie who'd fled before even Richard, was inspecting the smoky ooze frog even as Richard closed the door behind him. As soon as Felix appeared beside him again, the beast started banging itself against the door, prompting the ghost to respond:

"Who's there?"

While Richard ran away.

——————————————

Finally.

They were finally back at the entrance. Only… Two, maybe three more rooms left, including the ones where Sadie and Felix… Died. They'd blown off the possibility of a post-traumatic panic attack when Richard asked. Both in their own ways. Sadie'd joked that she wouldn't even recognize her body, if it was still there at all, and Felix said he'd be too busy with, and I quote, "Shoving [his] spectral fist so far down that gnome-wearing bastard's throat it'd pop like a bug being stepped on" to notice.

In the first room, the hall that Felix was snatched in, they recovered what they assumed remained of his carcass.

Two ribs.

And by "they", I mean "Richard", since Felix was too grumpy to do it and Sadie… Wasn't there. Richard didn't know why, since she was right next to him before they'd entered the hallway.

"C'mon, Ricky. Grab the old me's ribs and let's get going. The bastard clearly isn't here…"

Hesitantly picking up the bone fragments (Through three layers of gloves), Richard placed them inside of an empty bag of chips, which was what he'd been eating for the last three days, and returned it to his backpack. He didn't know why Felix wanted him to carry these with him, but he hoped cooperating would make his friend more helpful.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A hissing, black fluid began coating the ground behind Richard. Raising his eyes and gazing around in a rush of panic, he once more spotted the entity that'd slaughtered Felix. Now, he could finally get a good look at it. Yes, it was wearing shattered garden gnomes, but that wasn't all. Pieces of wood, bone fragments, stones, kitchen plates… Anything solid it seemed capable of finding. The only visible piece of its actual body was the left shoulder, which looked torn open with a fresh wound, and leaking the hot, sizzling liquid that alerted Richard to its presence.

"IT'S THE FUCKING- THE- THE- Y'BACKSTA-!"

With these… Choice… Words, Felix flung himself at the monster, which ignored the ghost. Richard, frozen to the spot, stared the beast down. Had he been braver, he would've considered trying to jam something, such as one of Felix's ribs, into the open wound on its shoulder. However, Richard is not that brave of a brave person, and thus turned to flee.

With eye contact broken, the scavenger-beast roared, released its grip on the ceiling, and began sprinting after Richard on all fours while Felix was trying to fight it. Sadie was still gone.

"DAMMITDAMMITDAMMITDAMMIT-"

Richard had come to the depressing conclusion that the door he intended to flee through was locked. looking over his shoulder, he found that the entity had slowed down, stalking forwards with all the smugness of a child with a team of legendaries about to get destroyed in a Pokémon battle by someone who was actually good at the game.

A click in the lock. Something moving within. Something metallic. Sadie's voice finally announced her presence.

"Hold on, it's almost open…"

Reacting to the ghost girl using the ability to move small objects to try and pick the lock, the scavenger-beast hissed in pain(?), and began sprinting at full force again.

Richard was about halfway through the doorframe when his instincts told him he was too slow.

and he would've been disemboweled, had Felix not accidentally proven useful, and pushed his head, which he'd torn all skin from in an attempt to scare the entity, through said abomination's head. For once, it reacted. Reeling back in horror, the crime against nature with comically hypersensitive eyes paused its attack on Richard, who closed the door and sprinted through the empty room behind to put more distance between it and him. Sadie and Felix had then appeared out of thin air when he hesitated to go through the final door. The door to the kitchen, which connected to the entrance and exit. Sadie, initially, had been giving Felix a sheepish smile, as though embarrassed about something. Felix, however, was busy celebrating the "defeat" of the scavenger-beast to notice. Once it looked like it was done chasing them, Richard settled down for the night, needing some rest after that particular encounter.

——————————————

Dear diary.

It's me, again. Richard Pierce.

I almost died. Again. Felix is VERY UNHELPFUL, as I've documented several times. We ran into that thing wearing gnomes again, but there were more things on it. I'd rather not recall it in detail. Tomorrow, we'll either get out of here or I'll finally die.

As a side note, Felix was unusually insistent on me taking two of his ribs back home. Maybe he just wanted some kind of proper funeral? I guess it might be that he wouldn't be able to leave the house without them being outside? I don't know, and I don't really care, if I'm being honest. He's been a bit callous about my safety, yeah, but we're still friends. None of us would leave either of the other two behind.

I have to believe that.

I know Sadie wouldn't leave me behind.

——————————————

Waking up to a cold feeling in his shoes, Richard found them full of ice cubes, with a giggling Sadie and Felix floating next to him.

"...Where did you even find these…?"

Sadie gave a Shrug, and Felix mumbled something about a fridge. That'd require the two to go into the kitchen, though, so Richard didn't think that was true.

Whatever. Getting out of here was more important.

Opening the door to the kitchen after confirming with Felix that it didn't lead to the hallway with the scavenger-beast, Richard was met with two things. The first of which being Sadie's request.

"Oh, and, uh, could you, like, pick up a bone from my body if it's still there?"

The second was the sight of… Something.

It was just standing there, as though it had no mind or will to speak of. Visually, it looked somewhere between a ghost and a human. It was obviously solid and not see-through, but it still emitted a blue glow, and it's skin looked… Wrong. Purple and glacial ice-blue, depending on which part of the body you were looking at. Its fingers were extended, almost like claws, with none of the sharpness. Finally, its head seemed ablaze with a ghostly flame. Blue, but harmless, considering an open, wooden shelf was in direct contact and remained unscorched. It was clearly wearing clothes, but that did little to make it less unnerving. Both of the actual ghosts experienced several emotions at the sight of it, such as annoyance, or that sensation you find in the uncanny valley. After at least two, maybe three, seconds of nothing happening, they concluded that it was both harmless and interesting, and went to take a closer look. Richard, for his part, was staying clear from its line of sight as best he could. Then… Sadie's corpse entered his line of sight. Decomposed and partially eaten, but far more intact than Felix's. With great hesitation, he grabbed a tibia that'd been snapped in half, presumably by the roach man that'd been eating her, and put it with Felix's ribs. He was definitely washing his hands after this, even if he never directly touched a bone.

He really needed to clean himself, anyway.

Still, the cold-looking semi-ghost-ish person did nothing but stare ahead, dead silent, expressionless. This did not change when Felix made taunting faces at it, nor when Richard opened the kitchen door with a loud creek and cringed at the noise, waiting for it to turn. Richard hurried outside, and slammed the kitchen door shut behind him, and prepared to leave this horrid building as a whole when Felix and Sadie lost interest in the kitchen entity.

——————————————

Finally. Home. After hours of walking after leaving the probably-still-haunted mansion, Richard could see the town they lived in on the horizon. Felix then gave him something to think about.

"So… How're you gonna explain all this?"

Richard immediately froze. Assuming the other townsfolk could see Sadie and Felix, it'd go far smoother. If they couldn't, he could say they were attacked by a wild animal on the way to wherever it was they'd been going, and he got lost.

But then he'd still have to explain the bones in his backpack, and the rambling about ghosts and the supernatural in his diary, assuming his parents read it.

Oh god, their parents.

"Hey. Let's not overthink this."

Sadie was, once again, floating just above him.

"If nothing else, you won't have to buy snacks for us when we hang out anymore."

Chuckling to himself, Richard decided to simply go into town and do his best to explain himself.

Going to prison was probably better than spending forever in the wild, right?