ヾ(•ω•`)o Hiiii!!!! Don't worry about it! Don't be afraid. It's not real.
Excerpt from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Phone
"In 1978, a local serial child abductor and murderer only known as "The Grabber" prowls the streets of a suburb in North Denver. Finney Blake and his younger sister Gwen live in the area with their abusive, alcoholic father Terrence, whose wife committed suicide after having a series of disturbing psychic dreams. Finney is frequently bullied and harassed at school, but his friend and classmate Robin fends off the bullies.
Having inherited her mother's ability, Gwen dreams about the Grabber's abduction of Bruce, a boy Finney knew from Little League. Two police detectives, Wright and Miller, interview Gwen at school, believing that she may have knowledge about the Grabber. When Terrence learns about the questioning, he beats her with a belt. Soon afterward, the Grabber abducts first Robin and then Finney.
Finney awakens in a soundproofed basement with a disconnected black rotary dial telephone on one wall. It begins to ring on its own at times; Finney hears only static when he first answers it, but then hears Bruce's voice telling him about a floor tile he can remove in order to dig an escape tunnel. Finney starts to dig, but the foundations of the house are sunk too deeply for him to go beneath them.
The Grabber brings Finney a meal and leaves the basement door unlocked. As Finney is about to sneak out, he gets a call from Billy, another past victim. Billy warns Finney that the Grabber is waiting at the top of the basement stairs to punish him if he tries to leave, as part of a cruel game. At Billy's suggestion, Finney uses a hidden length of cable to climb up to the basement window; however, his weight pulls out the grate covering the pane, leaving him with no way to reach it again.
As Gwen confides to Terrence about her dreams of Finney's abduction, Wright and Miller question an eccentric man named Max who is staying in the area with his brother and who has shown great interest in the Grabber's crimes. It is revealed that Finney is being held in Max's basement, and that the Grabber is his brother.
Finney receives a call from Griffin, a third victim, who gives him the combination to the lock securing the house's front door and tells him that the Grabber has fallen asleep. He sneaks out and unlocks the door, but the Grabber quickly recaptures Finney after his dog Samson barks to wake him. A fourth victim, a juvenile delinquent named Vance, calls to tell Finney that he can break through a wall and into a freezer in the adjacent room. Finney does so, but finds the freezer door locked. As Finney despairs over his fate, he receives one last call from Robin, who urges him to stand up for himself and fight back by packing the phone receiver with dirt to use as a bludgeon.
After seeing the Grabber's house in a vision, Gwen calls Wright and Miller to give them the address. The police rush to the house and find the bodies of the Grabber's victims buried in the basement. Meanwhile, Max realizes Finney is being held in the basement and rushes to free him, but the Grabber kills him with an axe and attacks Finney, having decided to end his game. Finney uses the byproducts from his previous escape attempts to trap the Grabber in a pit he has dug, beats him with the receiver, and breaks his neck with the phone cord as his past victims taunt him. "
fucked up thing to send him btw
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Fish, 7 (For your prompts! ❤️)
Hi, anon!! Thank you for the prompt, you were the very first one to send one in! 7 was, again, the wildcard, so I randomly generated a different number to land on Yue Qingyuan (from Scum Villain)! I have no choice but to dedicate this to @bytedykes, because I told her about this prompt and she said “yqy pet fish mental health speedrun” and we went, uh, a little insane about it. Enjoy some yuefang, folks!!!!
“Mu-xiong,” Yue Qingyuan says. “I’m sorry to bother you. Are you available?”
“Yue-xiong is never a bother,” Mu Qingfang says warmly. “And I am, actually, yes. Is everything okay, Yue-xiong?”
“I think I need help.” A bit dramatic, perhaps, and Yue Qingyuan hates to trouble Mu Qingfang on a rare day off, but Yue Qingyuan and impulse have never been the best combination, and he would appreciate a second opinion.
Mu Qingfang’s voice turns hard. “Where are you? I'll come right away.”
“What—?” Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone like the blank call screen will tell him why Mu Qingfang suddenly sounds so serious. “I'm at home, but—”
“I'll be right there,” Mu Qingfang says, and hangs up.
Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone for another second, then lifts his gaze to his sparkling new aquarium. His new betta, white and black and resplendent of fin, stares back. Was his crisis of faith about his viability as a fish owner really so deserving of such urgency…?
—
“So,” Mu Qingfang says. “This was your emergency?” He looks about as unimpressed by the betta as it does by the two of them.
Yue Qingyuan feels obscurely like he’s being scolded. Mu Qingfang is one of the nicest men he knows, but that just means that his censure takes the form of a blunt instrument of mass disappointment.
“In my defense,” he points out meekly, “I didn’t say there was an emergency. Mu-xiong just assumed.”
“That’ll teach me,” Mu Qingfang huffs, but at least he looks amused. “Yue-xiong should get used to asking for help more so this gege doesn’t have to panic every time he does ask.”
Yue Qingyuan’s mouth almost drops open. He can only hope his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. “Er—well, I asked this time, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Mu Qingfang allows, looking something horribly close to fond. Yue Qingyuan swallows and tries to hurry on.
“So—not an emergency, but I do want your opinion,” he coughs out. “I’m having… doubts. About the fish.” Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows contract. Yue Qingyuan rushes it out. “Do you think I should keep it?”
“Yue-xiong…” Mu Qingfang looks politely incredulous. “Why does my opinion matter? The fish is already yours, isn’t it? If you don’t think maintaining its upkeep will be feasible, that’s one thing, but… Surely Yue-xiong did the research before getting it?”
He doesn’t sound judgemental, but Yue Qingyuan feels his cheeks warm. “I did, but I wasn’t planning on getting a fish; I was only admiring the tanks. There was a salesperson who was… very insistent.”
Mu Qingfang regards him doubtfully, which is fair. Yue Qingyuan towers over most people he meets, and his bulk only further adds to the impression of immovability. It’s only when he opens his mouth that it becomes clear how spineless he actually is.
Yue Qingyuan falters. “I had thought… I thought it might be nice.” The bettas had seemed so majestic in their tanks, iridiscent monarchs of false grass and plastic coves, and Yue Qingyuan had thought, wildly, that one might be rewarding to keep, might breathe a touch of life into his immaculately sleek living room. The whole affair hadn’t even been expensive by his shiny new standards, forget difficult to physically arrange. It was only when installation and set-up for his new aquarium had finished and he was left to watch that jewel-bright being swim disaffectedly through its new home that doubt had seized him, all-consuming and black. He had, admittedly, panicked a little after that.
(Yue Qingyuan’s apartment is very large, and very clean, and very empty. It holds the barest amount of decoration and muss to qualify as lived-in rather than a snapshot from a magazine ad. The fish may, in fact, be the only thing in the entire place which really qualifies as his. No wonder Yue Qingyuan wanted to jettison it from his life as soon as he got it.)
Mu Qingfang’s expression hovers between concern and simple confusion. “I’m sure Yue-xiong will be a more than adequate caretaker,” he says, more gently than Yue Qingyuan and all his neuroses probably deserve. “What’s this really about, Yue-xiong?”
Ah. There it is. Being the mildest person of Yue Qingyuan’s admittedly sharp-tongued social circle doesn’t preclude Mu Qingfang’s wit from being as keen as the scalpels he works with.
“I don’t…” Yue Qingyuan falters. How to express to Mu Qingfang how manifestly unfit Yue Qingyuan is to care for any living creature at all? He changes tack. “I think he hates me,” he admits dolefully.
Mu Qingfang stares at him for a long time, long enough to imply that he’s reevaluating certain opinions about Yue Qingyuan’s intelligence. “Yue-xiong, with all due respect to your new pet—it’s a fish.”
“Fish have emotions!” Yue Qingyuan argues. He flushes at the volume at which it comes out, and at the way Mu Qingfang’s eyes go wide-eyed in startlement. But the salesperson had been very insistent about that, as well. “Bettas are intelligent animals. They dislike certain colors, apparently, and they’re very sensitive—ah, to environmental disruptions, that is. And—”
Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows are still high, but his face has relaxed into a smile. “It sounds to me like you like it quite a bit already. Isn’t that reason enough to keep it?” His tone curls with sudden mischief. “Have heart, Yue-xiong—you’ve hardly known each other for a day! Give it time to adjust to you, and I’m sure you’ll win it over as surely as you do everyone else.” And he grins, sure and easy in his trust that Yue Qingyuan won’t fumble and shatter something so small and monumental as a life that he could cup in his palms.
While Yue Qingyuan is still dazed by that, Mu Qingfang’s eyes alight with interest. “Ah, Yue-xiong—what have you named it?”
“...”
Mu Qingfang’s face falls as devastatingly as it had lit up. “Yue-xiong…”
“Mu-xiong is aware that I was unsure of whether or not I’d keep him!” Yue Qingyuan is terribly aware that his ears are now heating up to match his cheeks. Mu Qingfang’s ensuing laughter does not help with that matter.
Yue Qingyuan is not very good at holding onto things. More often than not, he makes a mess of whatever he’s set his clumsy hands to, lets it fall right through his scarred fingers. But Mu Qingfang’s words ring through his head: Isn’t that reason enough to keep it? And, well, isn’t it? Surely Yue Qingyuan is adult enough to follow through on this. Maybe happiness can be look like his new betta swimming up to the tank to observe the new colorful form moving in front of it, can come as easy as Mu Qingfang quipping that his knowledge about fish is clearly lacking and vowing casually to read up on bettas to be a better fish uncle.
Yue Qingyuan buries a smile and walks over to let Mu Qingfang know that bettas can be trained to follow fingers around. The betta’s clear preference for Mu Qingfang over Yue Qingyuan is as good a marker of intelligence as any fun fact the pet shop worker could have given him. Yes, Yue Qingyuan thinks with a smile—he thinks he’ll be keeping this after all.
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