WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

Sometimes he did wonder what he was thinking. That he would sign up to give his time for things. That he didn’t mind it but why, he choose what he did sometimes he had wonder. Cleaning snow up wasn’t anything new to him. He was born in Russian and had deal with their winters and after moved to New York. So he was well used to cold winters that were full of mostly snow, rain and just the cold.  But it was nice that it wasn’t just him cleaning up and moving the  snow out of the way. It made it nicer, a little fun it being not just cleaning the steps of your own home.  He had made friends around the city of the years and was happy to be around who he was, even know they were more like the you nod that you know each other but not much else sort of know each other. “Thank goodness” he said as he clicked her glass. Him in winter pants, a nice jacket topped off with a beanie. “I was almost going to just say let’s give up and chip in for one ?” he teased only kidding. He did have times he hired people to clean up around his home, well his old home not his apartment now. When he had his home with his family he hired people since he worked a lot and wanted the best for them. But now that it was mostly just him he clean up when he had too.

.

     THERE WAS A special sort of camaraderie that came with shoveling snow off the sidewalks with fellow New Yorkers all morning. The kind you could feel right down to your core, because your core, back, and arms were all hurting. Aeq couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, but she had a sense of pride over what they’d done. Surely there was still a lot of snow left to shovel, but putting some elbow grease into the cleanup wasn’t that bad of a way to spend the morning, plus it was helping to let the show go on with Winterfest, and it made an easy avenue for making some new friends. Broadway tickets or not. “Honestly with how expensive those tickets are, I’m wondering if the city is gonna cheap out and give us back row tickets to the worst rated play,” she pondered, only half joking. “In this economy? There’s gotta be some catch to all this. No way my hard labor of four hours equals a balcony ticket to Hamilton. The math’s not mathin’.” She laughed, and then huffed another puff of vapor into the air. “What show are you hoping they give us tickets to? I’m thinking I might just up-sell mine on eBay or something.”

     THE WARMTH OF morning has begun peeking through the living room blinds, but outside it offers no reprieve from the storm that hit the night prior. Aeq is up at the ripe hour of 6AM, she’s got the fuzziest pajamas on that she could find, with matching ghost socks, and the Christmas music is already sifting throughout the apartment. She isn’t always this annoying, she swears (okay, maybe she is, just a little), but it’s the day after Christmas and they’re not ready to give up the spirit just yet. They’ve got breakfast chocolate chip cookies baking, and they’re lint rolling the couch, ridding it of cat fur for the special occasion of... post-Christmas roommate Christmas breakfast. It’s a special occasion indeed, and the house must smell like Mr. Clean and chocolate, or so help them god. She hears the sleepy creak of one of the roommates’ doors opening, and immediately breaks out into song and dance number, roping them into karaoke with a lint roller as a microphone. “Ohhhhhhhhh, the weather outside is frightful,” they harmonize, and tip the lint roller’s edge in Cassie’s direction, hardly giving the woman time to blink her eyes open properly to the day. 

open to: all  setting: some art house-esque party-slash-get-together

Not quite the extroverted life of the party, Evan typically chooses his favorite corner out of four and settles back with a blunt and a semi-circle of his favorite people. A plan that’s in theory easy to accomplish, except he’d forgotten his matches in his better pair of jeans. Dark wash, all stiff — not quite the ripped blue sky of this one, worn so passionately that the waist drops all on its own. 

He spots a stranger and approaches with a plea in his eyes — puppy-like, almost.  

“A lighter,” he starts, claiming the spot next to them on the couch with his exposed knee — and an accent tugging at the very last syllable. “My kingdom for a lighter.” A smile then, of someone who might still be blissfully unaware that he’s trouble. “…That’s Shakespeare.” Or, an already high Evan Slater.

     THEY FIND THEMSELVES wandering the streets of Brooklyn some two train-rides away from home with a cellphone lost somewhere back in Forest Hills, mid-afternoon, and now the moon has nestled into the night for its regularly scheduled encore before the day’s tide comes reigning it back in. Six hours until the dawn of said day, and they’re not ready to head home yet. In the city, the night feels like some sort of purgatory to Aequorea, as they feed off the liveliness of crowd and translate it into something they can harbor internally. That’s why they seek out refuge in this party with goers of whom they’ve only briefly met one before. They remembered a tweet a few days ago with an address and an open invitation, and figured some small party was enough of a pick-me-up as any, and there was a higher chance of scoring a free phone home. Though, certainly, neither of her roommates would take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night to come escort her back home. Only the foolish would attempt to ride the subway for an hour alone, with no phone and no weapon. 

     Suddenly it’s half an hour later and she’s sitting on some overly plush sofa, not awake enough to really fully converse with anyone, but not tired enough to call it a night. She’s sitting there enjoying the party’s ambiance, listening and content in that little bubble, but then someone encroaches on their space and their first instinct is to lean away in protest. A moment after the man speaks, she’s back to relaxing into the cushions, and now they’re metaphorically breaking bread. They give a lazy yawn, and a lazy gesture to hand over their only bic lighter. “I’ve never read Shakespeare, but I’d bet that’s not Shakespeare,” they quip, and then retract their lighter at the very last moment to give one condition. “Your weed for my lighter,” she negotiates, and then lifts a patient brow. 

madhixpillai​:

open starter || subway station in NYC

why yes, yes madhi was using a paper map to get around bustling megapolis of new york city. all because she had to be the most clumsy girl on the planet and break her phone a few days prior. life couldn’t ever be simple, now could it?

frustratedly, she readjusted the map again, loudly, as she examined what subway station she was at. her eyes squinted narrowly at the small text and she sighed heavily after about thirty seconds of struggling.

“why is this city so god-forsakenly big!” she groaned, throwing her head back in anguish. a moment passed, and she took it upon herself to ask a fellow human next to her. “you wouldn’t, by chance, know how to get to tribeca from here, would you?”

.

     THERE WERE CERTAIN nuisances you just had to get used to once you lived in New York. Like people break dancing on the subway on your 5am commute, the smell of hot garbage everywhere you went in the summer, and the mundane wait for the next subway train to dock, so you could hop on and disappear into the city even more. That’s what Aeq was doing today. Though, they preferred to spend their time more worthwhile, by stopping to listen to street performers while they drank their morning coffee. Not like they exactly had some place to get to to clock in, but a donut and chats with strangers were her morning routine. Having some sort of routine is what kept her tethered to this world, and not with her head fully up in the clouds. Routine is what enabled her to know exactly which train to catch at exactly what time, every day. Today that routine came with a stranger in need, apparently, and she was eager as any to help someone out who was new to the city. “It really is big—probably bigger than that piece of paper can show,” she joked, and then motioned at the paper, before taking a peek over the stranger’s shoulder. “Well... this one isn’t the most forward way there, but you could still make it if you’re willing to do some walking. I think.... yeah, the only other one close enough, you wouldn’t make it on time for the next stop.” Then she paused, hummed a little in debate, and shrugged. 

     “Ah, what the hell. I’ve got nothing to do. Want an escort there?” they offered, and then held up their paper bag. “I’ve got donuts.”

Starter for: Aequorea @ghosthxnter​

Location: Book Store

Grayson could always get down with a good book and he always tried to keep something going so that he could wind down from the day with atleast half an hour of reading. He was normally able to do this every night but there were some nights where he wasn’t feeling up to it or he had other plans that didn’t allow him to. He was walking through the fictional mystery and thriller section and he became puzzled. He walked up to someone and he decided to speak to them. “Excuse me, I’m trying to find a–” He realized that the other probably wasn’t a worker and he rubbed the back of his neck while chuckling nervously. “Sorry, I thought you worked here!”

.

     THEY DIDN’T PREFER to spend their time reading. If anything, their whole life, they’d always preferred to be the one doing the things that were written about. Truthfully, they found reading too boring of a hobby—not enough entertainment, and needed way too much patience. For someone that lived in the incessant go of life, Aequorea could only find herself in a bookshop out of obligation. Today’s obligation was that of research. Or, at least, she would call it research. 

     See, Aeq wasn’t unintelligent by any means. If anything, she was savvy, and one of her best resources for her totally legitimate and not fake whatsoever ghost hunting videos was this: obscure thrillers that certainly so few people have read, they wouldn’t spot the little bits of ideas she pulled from them. Fiction became fact, in her world—or, at least, the world of New York Ghouls. Much to the protest of her non-skeptic roommates, she was here to make the dream work at any cost. Even when that dream was actually completely fabricated. They were flipping through the pages of some small writer’s Twilight Zone knockoff when they were tugged out of the pages and back into reality. They perked up immediately with a, “Hmm?” but didn’t answer before the stranger had rescinded their hello. All the same, she gave a bright smile, and offered to help. “That’s okay. I look in this section often enough, they should hire me by now. If it’s dark and spooky you’re looking for, I’m your person. If not.... um... I can help you out on the hunt?”

     NOW THEY WERE no stranger to the snow, having lived in the Northeast all their life, but they’d be lying if they said they’d ever made any plans to actually venture outside the following morning and do anything. During sunrise, when splotches of warm orange began to bleed through the dulled night, the snow had been up to her knees. But as the afternoon trekked on, and everyone made a dent in the accumulation, it began to turn into more of heaps of slosh, piled up against street corners. Aequorea was proud of herself, and the entire thing was turning out to be more of an enjoyable experience than she anticipated. Really, she’d only come to get that free Broadway show, but now she was staying for the friends she made along the way. That included some dentist she hadn’t yet learned the name of. She was sure he had to be a dentist, or a model, because only dentists and models had as nice teeth as he did. She clinked her mug of hot chocolate against his, and gave a curt but playful nod. “Good work, boys. Let’s pack it up. Move out!” And then a big gulp of chocolate came down, and an exaggerated, “Ahhhh,” afterwards. “There’s nothing like shoveling the streets of New York so the city doesn’t have to pay a professional to do it, in the mornin’.”

Desislava glanced from her office toward the window about ten feet away. Snow was coming down hard in big fat flakes that stone white against the black night. It was just after 10 p.m. and she realized she had been in the office for more than 12 hours. It was time to go home but she wasn’t ready to met the drama in the real life, the drama that haunted her lately but she couldn’t spent the whole night working so she took her coat and she moved quickly to the elevators. She knew she had to call Alexander but she felt like she didn’t need a protection or ride or anything from him right now.

Outside Des was met by a blast of snow and wind pummeled her in the face. At least ten other people were standinf on the curb, trying without any luck to hail cabs driving by, all of them occupied. “Great, just great” she mumbled to herself buttoning her wool pea coat not wanting to admit she had to call her husband.

.

     HUNTING DOWN THE paranormal wasn’t always spooky noises in the middle of the night and EMF readings. Sometimes it was having a headache all day because a ghoul followed you home—and then ruined the weather in some cosmic damning for disturbing it. Or, at least, that’s what Aequorea would be telling their Youtube followers. In truth, they didn’t even believe in ghosts, not anymore, and their entire channel was based off of the lies they and their roommates fabricated to get more views. Convincing as they were, Aequorea had fallen into the rat trap of constantly trying to find things in ordinary life that could somehow be explained by ghosts. Today, that was this mysterious happening of every cab passing by this congregation of cold snow-stranded citizens. Very mysterious indeed. She was just scrolling through her Insta feed and about to post a reel of this, with the caption, “I think something might have followed me home from our last hunt... Bad luck all day long.” Then someone muttered something, and it pulled her out of the social media rabbit hole long enough to glance the other’s way.

     “Hmm?” they murmured in response, and then a second later when their brain deciphered the mumble: “Yeah. I’m pretty pissed about this too. Like 50 million people in this city and there’s not one cab that can stop for us?” They inhaled deeply, and let the exhale leave their open lips, where they haaaaa’d into the windchill, if only to amuse themselves with the vapor. “This sucks balllssssss.” Then, as if it were the most natural question in the world, they turned back to their new acquaintance, and gave a friendly smile. “Hey, you wanna take a selfie? I’m  kinda famous on the internet. Just wanna show how crappy New York actually can be.”

"Gotta be that time when we locked ourselves inside The Hotel Chelsea and the piano straight up started playing itself. Terrifying. What’s even scarier is that is was playing Nickelback. We were harmlessly showing the entities memes, and then they had to ruin the moment with the worst band in existence. That’s just inconsiderate.”

     BEING A YOUTUBER sometimes had its perks (who was Aeq kidding? it always has perks) and one of those was quite literally getting paid to dance in ghost costumes in Times Square. Probably not the most unusual thing for New York, and that’s exactly why Aequorea loved this city. Even when their luck was at its lowest, the city was so vibrant and full of life, she felt like a droplet in a powerful sea of beauty. Today, that beauty came from  breakdancing with her roommates for a new channel intro. Even though it was freezing out, the music was booming, and their ghost costumes—really just white sheets with sunglasses paired atop—were flowing very spookily in the wind chill if she did say so herself.

    Their dance number came to an end, and with a yell of “WHO YOU GONNA CALL? NEW YORK GHOULS!” they were back to fucking around off camera. Doing so wound Aeq up bumping into someone behind her, and they turned around just in time to catch the other person’s forearm, and stop them from falling. There was a moment of delay, as they squinted through the bed sheet, and then gasped and exclaimed. “Oh my god! Rain?!” There was a certain elated glee to the acknowledgment, and suddenly they were throwing their arms around the not-so-strange stranger. “It’s me! Aequorea! Oh my god, it’s been so long!” They gave a little scream of glee, and then ripped off their costume, and gave a wavy gesture of the arms. “How are you?! Are you still working at that place...? That, uh... what the heck was it called? We were cleaning. You remember?”

[ my feet are falling from the ground / had my head up in the clouds so long / down into the depths with fading light / can't hold my breath for another / can't hold my breath / this could be a dream / or a distant memory / this could be a dream ]

TELL ME SOMETHING. TRY, TELL ME SOMETHING. INTRODUCTION — THE RACONTEUR — AEQUOREA WILLIAMS

not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but aequorea williams, a twenty nine year-old non-binary transfemme person has lived in grymes hill, staten island for seven years. This is the city of dreams and she knows it, because they came to NYC to be a youtube ghost hunter! living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like michaela coel. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it!