Cinnamon Apple

Below are the listed outline of chapters I have planned for each story, it’ll likely change overtime.

As a heads up, a lot of my stories deal with themes of abandonment and rejection. If that’s not something you’re interested in, or have a difficult time with, I’d advice steering away from them.

Date Everything

Is it alive, wire?

Horror

Blood like Cherry Coke (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11 Blood Ending)

Palace of Dreams (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5)

And Then the World Exploded (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9)

KPDH

Shine the Light (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Good Ending Bad Ending)

In the Darkness (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Epilogue)

One Piece

On Butterfly Wings Introduction (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7)

Lost Signal (Strawhats Redhaired Kid Donquixote Whitebeard Big Mom Cross Guild Heart CP9 Beast Roger Rocks Vice Admirals God Knights Revolutionary Army)

Calm

Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom’s Black Swan (Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8)

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11

The wood pressed cooly against your damp shirt—damp from sweat and the blood that had splattered against you despite your best efforts. Occasionally, the sound of Randy pounding his fists against the door shook you from sinking further into yourself, a desperate rhythmic thumping that served as both a lifeline and a terrifying reminder of the outside world.

Leaning further against the base of the door, your knees pulled tight to your chest as you let out a ragged, shaking sob. The guilt tore through you like shrapnel, heavy and absolute, whispering that you should have seen it sooner, that you should have done something, anything, to prevent the carnage that had quietly unfolded while you were resting upstairs—god, you felt so stupid for even thinking that was a good idea.

But it was impossible to ignore now. One of your friends—someone you sat across from in class, shared lunch with, laughed with over bad horror films—was a monster wearing a plastic mask. It felt like a sick, twisted joke, a nightmare your fevered brain was fabricating. But then you remembered the empty look in Tatum’s wide, glassy eyes, and the cold reality settled in your bones with terrifying permanence. The idea of your classmates being hunted down like animals had felt entirely impossible just a few weeks ago. And now? Now, the impossible was the only thing left standing.

The silence was cut off by a sharp, metallic scrape and the heavy scuff of shuffling footsteps echoing from the hallway upstairs.

You froze, every muscle in your body locking up as your breath hitched in your throat. The house was supposed to be a tomb. The silence upstairs should have been absolute. The killer couldn’t be up there, right?

They were just outside a few minutes prior.

You slid your glasses back into place and tightened the grip you had on the gun while getting to your feet. Slowly approached the stairs and looked up at them to try and see what it was.

A moment later, a sharp gasp cut through the stillness, followed by a violent stumble. A body collided heavily with the top of the staircase, tumbling down the flight in a frantic, uncoordinated heap of limbs and groans. You scrambled backward on the hardwood floor, your heart leaping into your mouth as Billy crumpled at the base of the stairs, groaning in pain, his hands clutching desperately at his abdomen.

“Billy!”

Instinct overrode the paralyzing terror in your chest. You didn't think; you just moved, scuttling across the blood-smeared floor to his side. You dropped to your knees beside him, your hands hovering uncertainly over his shoulders as you tried to help him sit up. He was pale, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his breathing came in short, jagged gasps.

“Oh god, Billy, you’re—you’re bleeding,” you stammered, your voice trembling uncontrollably as you caught sight of the dark crimson staining his white shirt.

“I—I thought I was dead,” he wheezed, his voice weak, and full of nothing but vulnerability that immediately hooked into your desperate need for safety. “I...I thought you were dead…”

Even through the panic clouding your vision, a tiny, fleeting flicker of confusion brushed the edge of your mind. For someone who had just taken a knife to the gut only a short while ago, he seemed to be moving with an alarming, almost suspicious agility. He was already sitting up, his grip on your arm surprisingly firm.

But the thought dissolved almost as quickly as it formed, swallowed by your own ignorance of trauma medicine. You knew nothing about knife wounds; movies always made them look instantly debilitating, or just like paper cut in terms of walking it off. But maybe—just maybe—he had gotten lucky. Maybe it had missed anything vital. Relief washed away the doubt, desperate for anything to hold onto that wasn't drenched in death.

“You're okay,” you whispered, your fingers tightening around his arm, helping him to his feet. “You're going to be okay.”

He nodded, leaning his arm over your shoulder to brace himself as his voice came out clearer, “We gotta get help. Give me the gun.”

At your visible hesitation, his voice came hushed, “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

You nodded after a moment and handed the gun to him, he moved his weight off of you to unlock and open the door. Within the fraction of a second that the door had been opened, Randy pushed his way inside and stopped at the foot of the stairs, panting and nervously looking past you and Billy to catch a glimpse outside. Billy slammed the door shut and clicked the lock. 

“Please help me! Stu’s flipped out! He’s gone mad!” Randy’s voice was on edge still as he glanced around the house uneasily. He visibly swallowed and looked you in the eyes, “Are you okay? I—”

Billy laughed, head ducking down, so you couldn’t see his face. You and Randy exchanged a confused silence that you were about to break by asking Billy what was going on when he lifted the gun and pointed it at Randy. “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

“BILLY, NO! DON’T” You grabbed his other arm to attempt to push him, distract him, do anything to stop him.

There was an audible click before the entrance exploded from the noise of the shot firing. The bullet hit Randy in his abdomen and he collapsed backwards, causing the table full of glass ornaments and a vase full of flowers to break all at once. Rushing to his side, he groaned as you grabbed his hand, holding it loosely in your grip before looking up tearfully at the now smirking Billy.

The gun he held was drawn back to rub at his head, when you looked back, his eyes crinkled. “Anthony Perkins, Psycho. Like the homage? It’s my favorite.”

Getting to your feet, you started to back away from him without moving your eyes off of him. He leaned against the door, the previous injuries that affected him so much, now showed no signs of even causing him the slightest ounce of pain. Lifting his bloodstained fingers up, he popped one inside his mouth with the same casualness as one does with candy or chipdust. “Corn syrup. Same stuff they used for pig’s blood in Carrie.”

You tried ducking into the entrance of the kitchen only to be stopped by crashing into Stu—standing motionless in the entrance of the kitchen. Crinkling your fingers in the soft fabric of his sweater, you sobbed into his chest. “Stu… please, help me. Billy—he…”

Stu brought a plastic device up to his mouth, breathing into it. “Surprised?”

The voice that came out was one you knew all too well. That same one from the phone call. They were both the killers. It wasn’t just one—it had never been one, and you felt stupid for relying so heavily on those same familiar tropes.

Freezing in place, your heart stopped in your chest before you darted past him and tried to run to the living room on the other side of the kitchen. Billy jumped into the doorway of it and lunged, grabbing you and pulling you tightly towards his chest. Lightly, his fingers pushed your hair from your face as he spoke in a low tone. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

You struggled to break free from his grip before your voice cracked out. “Why… why are you doing this?”

His hold on you loosened considerably and you were finally, you broke free from his grip. You tried for the same entrance you had come through, but Stu blocked the path and caused you to back up against the island. Billy approached slowly and picked up a prescription bottle of medicine on the counter, shaking the empty container. Upon further inspection, the contents of it caused a sinking feeling to fill the entirety of you. Sleeping pills.

“Oh, trust me. You being awake for this was the last thing either of us wanted.” Billy set the bottle back down upon seeing your eyes widen and the clear disappointment on your face. “We wanted to try and skip over the whole final girl sequence and just get right to the ending. But somebody forgot to put the damn things in your coke.”

“Billy, I told you. I did.” Stu insisted, looking back at you for reassurance, but the only thing you could offer was the same frightened disappointment. He approached slowly and you tried not to look at the entry he was previously guarding so they wouldn’t notice it.

“Oh, really? That’s so interesting” Billy’s calm tone was sharply offset by him slamming the gun down on the island and yelling. “THEN WHY ARE THEY STILL AWAKE?”

Sprinting for the entryway, you made it halfway through before getting dragged back inside of the kitchen. You were unsure who it was until Billy’s voice cooed again in your ear, the knife in his hand now sharp and dangerously close to your neck. “Oh, that was really smart. Trying your escape while we were both distracted, but that’s not the point of this game.”

“Game?”

“It’s a fine game. See, we ask you a question and if you get it wrong, boo-kah, you die!” Stu waved the gun he had taken from the counter around excitedly, and Billy finished off the end of the explanation. “And if you get it right, you die.”

“I don't want to play this game.” You whispered, shaking your head no, the ground felt like it was coming closer. Stu’s excitement suddenly disappeared and he started to approach in concern, only for Billy to stop him. Looking up and telling him, “Go grab him.”

Once more, his enthusiasm did a disconcerting one-eighty as he waved the gun around. “Oh! Oh! This is the greatest part! You’re gonna love this. We’ve got a surprise.” He set the gun down on the table next to the fridge before standing in front of the pantry door. “Yeah, you’re gonna love this one. It’s a scream, baby! Hold on a sec, I’ll be right back!”

He raised his arms till they resembled Frankenstein’s Monster and let out a moan as he disappeared backwards into the kitchen pantry where muffled noises and crashing could be heard shortly after his entrance.

During that, Billy rubbed his face against the back of your head softly. “Don’t worry. You’re not the one who’s gonna be playing this game.” Stu entered, dragging a tied up and clearly injured Neil Prescott. “Attention! Oh, what do we have behind door number three?”

Billy lifted his knife from your neck and pointed it at the man. “He is.”

Stu picked up the voice changer he had left on the island and spoke into it. “Guess we won’t be needing this anymore, huh? And, oh, look at this.” He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and slipped it into Neil Prescott’s jacket, alongside the voice changer. “Ring, ring. Won’t need this.”

“Got the ending figured out yet?” Billy quizzed and Stu followed shortly after, almost in tandem. “Yeah, think about it. With him being the chief suspect, we cloned his cellular. The evidence is all right there.”

“What if poor Mr. Prescott snapped? His wife’s anniversary set him off and he went on a murder spree, killing everyone.” 

“Except for the three of us. You were assumed dead, and the two of us—left for dead.” Stu gestured to you, himself, and lastly Billy—who wobbled the knife back and forth while still pointing it at Neil Prescott. “After the grief of finally realizing he killed his daughter, he shoots himself in the head. Perfect ending.”

“You’re crazy. Both of you.”

Stu approached till his breath fanned across your face. “We prefer the term “psychotic,” but I’m not picky. You can call me anything.”

“You’ll never get away with this.”

Billy laughed, ducking his head down into your neck before lifting it to speak. “Tell that to Cotton Weary. You wouldn’t believe how easy he was to frame.”

“Watch a few movies, take a few notes. It was fun!” Stu piped in. Fun—how could he say that? How could either of them say that? They killed Maureen Prescott just last year, framed a man, and had apparently not even been considered suspects the whole time. It made you feel sick and gross for even liking those same movies. But it wasn’t the same thing. You had never wanted or even considered killing anyone. They made you feel sick.

Neil Prescott screamed against the duct tape across his mouth, struggling on the ground against the ropes, not that the two paid any attention to him.

“Why would you do this? To Sidney? To her mother—”

Billy grabbed your chin and turned your face towards his, eyes burning with nothing but hate and disgust—that you panicked for a moment thinking it to be directed at you. At the sight of your fear, it disappeared just as quickly as it came and he chortled, telling Stu. “Aww, did you hear that, Stu? I think they want a motive.”

He pulled away from you, but two of their attention made you feel like you couldn’t even move an inch. “See, I don’t really believe in motives. I mean, you know just as well as anybody. Did Norman Bates have a motive?”

“No.” You started to step back, one inch at a time as he approached just as slowly.

“Did they ever really decide why Hannibal Lecter liked to eat people? Don’t think so!” Billy feigned lunging at you, and you jolted back in fear, hitting Stu’s chest. Billy was nonplussed and continued. “See, it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive, isn’t it? We did her mom a favor. That woman was a slut-bag whore who flashed her shit all over town like she was Sharon Stone or something.”

“Yeah, we put her out of her misery, ‘cause let’s face it, Maureen Prescott was no Sharon Stone.” Stu took the gun he was holding and pointed it towards the incapacitated and still squirming Neil Prescott. “And soon we’ll do him that same favor. I mean, dead wife, dead daughter. Real two for one, right?”

“Is that motive enough for you?” Billy closed in, his voice quieted into a murmur. “How ‘bout this? After that slut fucked my father, my mom moved out and abandoned me. And I realized this whole town is full of nothing but bottom-feeding parasites, with nothing better to do than chase after the shiniest toy.”

He glanced at Stu, who was watched with wide eyes before looking back at you with a grin. “Once tonight is over, there will only be three survivors of the Woodsboro massacre. And everyone else… they’ll just be white noise—too scared to approach, and too fucking stupid to read between the lines. How beautiful is that?”

Stu circled around you to stand in front of Billy, but stopped to pull your face upwards to look at his. In one sudden motion that left you little room to think, his mouth slotted over yours. Tasting still of the same beer he had drank not even an hour prior, he pulled off with little haste and winked. “Watch this.”

The two stood opposite of each other, Billy let the knife dance in his hand as he asked. “Ready?”

“Yeah. Yeah!” Stu pulled his hands over his head, his voice escalating steadily in volume. “I’m ready, baby! Hit it! Get up! YEAH, BABE, GET UP! HIT IT!”

His voice was cut off by the very audible sound of the knife cutting through the sweater and into his stomach. He hunched over, curling into himself, but not falling to the floor or crouching down. He was still standing. You shrieked, bringing your hands over your mouth, unable to look away. Stu stood straight, visibly in pain, his voice a whimper compared to its previous volume. “Good one, man. Jesus. Oh, shit.” He hunched back over, but stood up just as fast and stared Billy down. “My turn.”

Billy hesitated, but did eventually concede in handing over the now bloody knife. Stu took it, but Billy’s grip tightened for a moment as he spoke. “Don’t forget. Stay to the side and don’t go too deep.”

Stu gritted his teeth and mumbled out. “Okay, I’ll remember.”

Billy let go of the knife and tugged you close to him, rubbing his blood and corn syrup soaked hand across your jaw. “After this is done, you’re gonna be finishing your part of this and going under till we reach that hospital.”

The knife plunged into his side and he cursed out loudly, “OW! Fuck! Fuck!”

He pushed himself away from you and pushed some of the items on the island off it, causing them to crack and shatter on the floor below. “FUCK! God damn it, Stu!”

“Sorry, Billy. I guess I got a little too zealous, huh?”

Billy turned back and approached the other, “Give me the knife.”

“No.” Pulled the weapon close, paranoid and tearing up from the pain of his previous injury. Billy leaned against the counter, voice rising in anger. “Give me the knife! NOW!”

Stu jumped and started to hand over the knife just as Billy turned to face you again. Stu swallowed back and started to speak. “Don’t you get it? Everybody dies but us. Everybody dies but us. And we get to carry on and plan the sequel, ‘cause let’s face it, baby, these days, ya gotta have a sequel!”

“You both are sick… beyond help. And you’ve seen one too many movies.”

“Oh, I thought you knew better than to blame it on movies. If that were the case, you’d be much further off the deep end than both of us.” Billy’s voice trembled before it grew into a shout as he snatched the knife. “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”

The blood glinted off the blade of the knife as it cut back into Stu and he cried out. “Stop it, Billy, would you? All right? I can’t take anymore. I’m feeling a little woozy here.”

Stu’s face was both pale and flushed at the same time, he looked close to passing out as he started to duck his head down against his chest. Billy used the blood-soaked blade of the knife to lift up his face and tell him. “All right. All right, you get the gun. I’ll untie Pops, okay?” Stu looked down at his hand—which he had pulled away from his injured abdomen—coated in a thick layer of the dripping substance.

“NOW!”

“Okay.” Stu’s voice was passive, but distinctly tired and becoming more drained, he panted as he approached the table next to the fridge where he set the gun. Billy placed the flat side of the blade cooly against your cheek. “It won’t be very painful, head injuries weren’t exactly the route I wanted to go, but you’ll barely even realize what’s happening.”

Tapping his fingers nervously against the table, Stu called back towards Billy. “Houston, we… we have a problem here”

The latter turned, his voice dropping dangerously. “What?”

“The gun, man. The gun.” Stu leaned against the cabinets, moving to clasp his hand back over his bleeding wound. “I put it right there, and it’s not there.”

Billy sped over, flipping over the phonebook on the table and moving the items around. “Where the fuck is it?”

“Right here, asshole.” Gale shakily held the gun up to Billy, though he looked unphased.

“Man, I thought she was dead.”

“She looked dead, man. Still does.” Stu backed up momentarily, but upon sharing a glance with the other, calmed down.

Gale cleared her throat to get the two’s attention and started speaking. “I’ve got an ending for you. The reporter left for dead in the news van… comes to, stumbles on you two dipshits, finds the gun, foils your plan and saves the day.”

A hopeful, happy feeling was felt for the first time that night. She could do this. She really could! The sound of Billy’s chuckle broke the feeling and once again you felt so unbelievably naive. As much as you hated to admit it at this moment, he was smart. Smart enough to plan this whole thing and smart from the experience from having committed a murder and gotten away with it just last year. “I know something you don’t.”

Billy started to approach, looming over Gale, she shakily backed up—out of the kitchen entrance, into the entrance of the house, and near the front door of the house. He pushed her hand carrying the gun to the side and lifted his foot to kick her outside. Her head thudded against one of the pillars of the porch and she collapsed in a heap right next to Dewey. He crouched down next to her still form, taking the gun and leveling the end of it against her head. “It works better without the safety on.”

Swallowing back the fear that still clouded over you, you quietly stepped closer to Neil Prescott—his eyes watched you wide and confused as you pulled the phone from his pocket and stood to your feet. Stu glanced back just as you did so, and at the sight of you still inside the kitchen, he turned back. Looking back and forth, you sped out of the kitchen and as noiselessly as you could manage, closed yourself inside the door to the closet.

He cracked his neck as he stood to his feet and moved to hover near the front door entrance, gun still pointed at her. Stu had moved to stand just outside the door to the kitchen to watch. “This is Gale Weathers, signing off.”

Stu clapped his hands and looked back excitedly at you. “Babe, you’re gonna love this! Shit.”

Billy rubbed his hand over his eyes in exasperation. “What.”

Instead of answering, Stu ran into the kitchen, followed closely by Billy. The two looked around the room as Billy muttered under his breath. “Where are they? Where are they?”

Coughing, Stu leaned against the fridge. “I don’t know, but I’m hurtin’, man.” He moved to lean against the counter of the island as the other leaned out to peer around from the other door to the kitchen. The phone rang, the loud sound caused him to immediately curse out.

“Should I let the machine get it?” Stu asked, Billy didn’t answer and instead moved to pick up the device himself.

“Where are you?” He purred into the receiver immediately while leaning back to peer through both entrances of the kitchen. Voice dropping as he hissed out. “You better not have called the police. I know you don’t want me to add your parents to another list of tragedies in this sorry ass town.”

After a moment, you spoke, feigning as much confusion as you could muster. “I thought we were playing a game.” 

“We are.” He assured, posture relaxing, but still clearly on edge. Stu collapsed into the chair that was right next to the table. “Ask them what game it is.”

Billy rolled his eyes, but asked the question nonetheless. “What’s the game?”

“It’s called “Guess who just called the police and reported your sorry motherfucking ass.”

“Fuck! Shit!” Billy turned to yell at Stu. “Find her, you dipshit. Get up.”

Stu coughed, leaning against the now red-stained table. “I can’t, Billy. You cut me too deep. I think I’m dying here, man.” His breaths started to come out ragged and weeping.

“Talk to them. Talk to them.” Billy laid the phone and its cord over Stu, who sat up slightly to take it and talk into it. The blood from his fingers stained the white casing of it. “Hello?”

“Oh, Stu, Stu, Stu. What’s your motive? Billy’s got one. The police are one their way. What are you gonna tell them?”

“Peer pressure. I’m far too sensitive. I just wanted to make you happy.” He mumbled the last part and just as he finished Billy returned after having thoroughly torn up and trashed the living room—both in search of you, and in anger. “I’m gonna hang your parents by their intestines, just like I did with Casey. If you don’t come out, right now!”

“You’re gonna have to find me first!”

Billy growled and threw the phone back at Stu, returning to his search of the house. Stu cried out when the phone hit him. “Ow. You fuckin’ hit me with the phone, dick!” He picked up the phone and leaned it on his shoulder, speaking into it. “Did you really call the police?”

“You bet your sorry ass, I did.”

His voice collapsed into sobs. “My mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me.” Whimpers consumed him before he finally managed to speak. “… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.”

“You killed six people, Stu.” You hissed, trying to keep your voice quiet, but still very much angry at this point. “Of course, I’m fucking mad at you.”

Stu dissolved into a weeping mess, as Billy rounded the corner of the living room and paused in front of a closet. One where faint noises could be heard, he moved to open it, but the door crashed open and the sharp end of an umbrella pierced his chest.

Standing over him, you threw the phone you had at him and were about to grab the gun he had dropped on the floor next to him, but Stu noisily crashed through the kitchen door and stopped you in your tracks. You barely had time to think before he barrelled into you, and pushed you to the ground right next to the couch in the living room. Struggling, you tried to push him off to little avail—he was very heavy and unfortunately succeeded in pinning your limbs down so you could do little but squirm.

The sound of a shot firing caused him to fall off of you as he cried out in pain. Gale stood near the base of the stairs, holding the gun. “Guess who has the safety off now, you bastard.”

Getting to your feet, you panted out as you approached her. “Thank you.”

She nodded, letting the gun collapse in her grip. “You're welcome.”

The faint noise of police sirens and the flashing red and blue lights brought nothing but comfort, that was cut off when you looked past Gale and onto the floor of the hallway. Where Billy should’ve been was nothing but a puddle of red on the wood of the floor. “Where is he?”

“What?” Gale turned and cursed when she realized the same thing. “Where is that rat?”

Randy coughed, you felt nothing but guilt as you helped him to his feet, he stared at the same puddle of blood and turned to look at where Stu should’ve been. That spot as well was just a stain of blood on the floor and he was gone. Both of them were gone. “Looks like those two fled before they could give the last minute jumpscare… which means we’re probably gonna be getting a sequel.”

Gale groaned and started to head outside as he mumbled to you as you helped him onto the steps of the porch. “I probably should be dead, I’ve never been so happy to be a virgin.”

“Uh yeah, I’m happy for you man.”

Pinterest for header

@kodaswrld for the divider!!

Looks like this is the last of it :(

Just kidding lol, I’m already sketching up plans for the second and third movie! :D

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11 Blood Ending

Behind your closed eyes a bright light could be seen. Bright, so very bright and painful in the sheer illuminating volume of it, burning against the delicate architecture of your eyelids like an unfiltered sun.

To your right, you could make out a faint rhythmic beeping—beep... beep... beep—a mechanical pulse that felt entirely foreign and like something ripped straight from a fever dream, an artificial heartbeat keeping time.

The numbness sank over your body like a heavy blanket dissipated the more and more you forced yourself out of the suffocating, dense sleep you weren’t even aware you had fallen under. It was the kind of sleep that felt less like rest and more like drowning—dragging you up through layers of dark, muddy water toward a surface you weren't sure you wanted to reach.

And when you finally forced your eyes open, squinting against the harsh fluorescent lights glaring down from the ceiling above, what greeted you made your stomach drop.

A hospital.

You were in a hospital room. The walls were painted that distinct, institutional shade of pale, sickly green-white, smelling distinctly of cleaning products, rubbing alcohol, and old paper. Lying on one of the exact same narrow hospital beds you’d only ever seen in medical dramas on television or during emergency room visits for broken bones—was this real? Was any of this real, or were you still trapped in some grotesque fever dream born from staying up too late and watching Halloween II in a fit of paranoia?

The faint voice of your mother could be heard, though it was hard to give all your attention when it sounded like she was talking from underwater, “You’re awake!”

A sudden flurry of motion beside the mattress broke through the haze. She scrambled up from her plastic bedside chair, her chair clattering slightly against the linoleum. “Oh, thank goodness! You’re finally awake!”

She sniffled loudly, her hands rushing to cover her mouth as a fresh wave of tears spilled over her lashes. Your father stood up slowly next to her, his movements heavy and exhausted, placing a large, trembling hand on her shoulder to steady her. He looked older—years older than he had when he watched you walk out the front door to Dewey's cruiser just hours, or days, ago. His voice was cracked and gravelly when he looked down at your mother, speaking softly, “…maybe you should go get Sheriff Burke and Deputy Riley.”

Nodding frantically, her eyes wide and bloodshot, she didn't waste a second. She turned and practically ran out of the room, the sharp, frantic click of her heeled shoes against the tiled corridors echoing loudly before growing fainter and disappearing into the hum of the ward.

Looking down at your wrist, which felt particularly numb and stinging the same pain as if having fallen asleep—you noticed thick white gauze bandages wrapped tightly around your skin. Thin, clear plastic cords were taped down, connecting you to the IV pole and the blinking, multi-colored monitor to your right. A heart monitor and other complex medical machinery flashed numbers and undulating green lines whose meanings you weren’t even sure how to decipher, but they looked intimidating, sterile, and entirely too permanent nonetheless.

The chair your father had been sitting in seemed to sink beneath the renewed weight of his despair as he dropped back down, staring down blankly at the floor between his scuffed shoes. Was… was he okay? The question felt too heavy to voice, but the terrifying fragility in the set of his shoulders screamed the answer.

“Dad?”

Your throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper, rough and agonizingly parched, and when you tried to swallow, it did little to dissipate the stinging dryness.

He looked up slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion, and his mouth was thinned into a hard, rigid line in a desperate attempt not to let what he was feeling show through.

“What happened? Why am I—”

“Good to see you’re awake.”

Sheriff Burke’s authoritative, gravelly voice entered the room before he did, cutting off your frantic questioning. Dewey followed shortly behind him—clearly injured, walking with a stiff, heavy limp, and visibly tearful, his uniform rumpled and stained as though he’d been dragged through hell. He was still dressed in his deputy gear despite everything and attempting to maintain a forced professional air. Your mother hadn’t yet returned, but your rising panic and desperate need for answers forced your concern to the back burner as Burke approached the foot of your bed, his hat held tightly in both hands like a shield.

“I really hate to do this so soon after… but, we’ve been scrambling for witness testimonies for what happened the night of the party.”

“…witness testimonies?” The words came out scratchy, fractured, and painful, but you forced yourself to keep pushing past the razor blades in your throat, needing to pierce the fog of incomprehension. “The night of the party… what happened—why am I here? Please—I—where’s Tatum?”

Dewey turned away sharply, his broad back facing the bed in an agonizing, desperate attempt to shield your view and the view of the others from his completely crumbling visage and his sudden, utter inability to keep himself together. A slight, choked wheezing sound escaped his chest that he quickly muffled with his trembling hand, his head dropping as he fought a silent war against absolute devastation.

You sat up quickly in sudden, overriding concern, your heart rate spiking on the monitor with a frantic, accelerated series of beeps, but the stinging pain and the taut pull of the IV cords bandaged close to your wrist prevented you from going far, yanking you back against the pillows.

The Sheriff’s expression was nothing short of profound, gut-wrenching regret. He scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck in a clear, painful loss for words, his eyes unable to meet yours.

The heavy door to the hospital room creaked open slowly as a nurse entered, stepping in with a clipboard and a solemn, practiced expression of professional sympathy, followed closely by your mother—who was back now, anxiously and absentmindedly rambling in a high, trembling pitch as she huddled close to your father's side like she was trying to absorb what was left of his warmth.

Sheriff Burke immediately sped over to the nurse, intercepting her before she could reach the bed, and started speaking to her in low, urgent, hushed voices that you couldn’t make out nor decipher from the fractured, terrifying scraps of sound drifting across the room.

The murmured conversation between the Sheriff and the nurse ended abruptly. Dewey cleared his throat, his boots scraping against the linoleum as he stepped forward, closing the distance to the side of your bed. His hands were clasped tightly in front of him, fingers digging into his wrists as if he were trying to anchor himself to the physical world.

Your mother moved with him, her hand coming up to gently, almost desperately, grip your bandage-free arm.

“You’ve been out for a few days,” Dewey began, his voice flat, stripped of its usual nervous stutter. He looked everywhere except at your eyes—at the metal railing of the bed, the IV pole, the monitor. “You slipped into a coma. The doctors... they had to pump your stomach.”

A cold prickle of confusion traced down your spine. “A coma? What are you talking about? I—I just remember getting out of the car, going inside the Macher house and then...” Your voice hitched, panic clawing at your throat. “Where’s Tatum? Where’s Randy? What happened?”

Dewey closed his eyes tightly for a second, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “I’m sorry... I—nobody could wake you up. When we got the call... when we finally managed to clear the house after everything went down... you were unresponsive on the couch in the living room. Your system was flooded with an immense amount of sleeping pills.”

Your breath caught. It couldn’t be possible. It just couldn’t… but everything past the front door of the Macher House was just the same black sinking fog.

It felt like the worst possible assumption, but maybe you did…

“We thought... with all the stress, the curfew, everything going on...” Your father choked out the words from the chair, his face buried in his hands. “They thought you tried to hurt yourself. They thought it was a suicide attempt.”

“No,” you gasped, shaking your head so violently the monitor beside you blipped with an accelerated, angry rhythm. “No, I couldn’t have! I wouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay. No one here is upset at you, we’re just glad you’re safe,” Sheriff Burke interrupted, stepping in with a heavy, sympathetic sigh that felt entirely too practiced. “The killer... he must have assumed you were already dead. Given, you were unresponsive on the couch, he probably didn't bother to check twice. That’s the only reason you made it out. But the rest of them, I’m... I’m so sorry.”

The room seemed to tilt on its axis. The sterile smell of the hospital turned suddenly suffocating. Everyone…

Were all of your friends dead? Randy, Sidney, Tatum, Billy, Stu…

And you—alive by some sort of fluke?

It felt wrong. Like a mistake. Like it couldn’t be real, but it had to be—dreams don’t last this long or make this much sense.

It wasn’t until hours later—after your parents had stepped out to speak with the doctor and the nurses had finally dimmed the lights—that the oppressive quiet of the room became too much to bear. Every shadow cast by the hallway lights through the frosted glass panel of the door felt heavy, menacing. Your head felt like a beehive, full of thoughts and questions you weren’t sure you’d ever get a satisfying answer to.

Needing air, needing anything that made sense, you carefully pushed the blanket off and slipped your legs over the edge of the mattress. Ignoring the protesting ache in your muscles, you padded silently out into the quiet ward. Leaning against the walls for support as you made your way toward the common lounge area, following the faint sound of a tv .

It was too quiet in the hospital room. And the one thing you wanted more than anything in that moment was just to have a clear answer.

The television mounted in the corner of the room was playing a late-night news recap, the volume muted low, but the bold graphic splashed across the bottom of the screen arrested you in your tracks: WOODSBORO MASSACRE: THE FINAL TOLL.

Your breath caught in your throat. It was just like the morning, not even three—was it three?—days ago. You stumbled closer, your eyes glued to the scrolling images and the frantic reporter speaking in hushed, somber tones.

“…confirming the deaths of multiple local teenagers following a horrific bloodbath at the Macher residence late Friday night. Among the victims are Tatum Riley, Randy Meeks, and Sidney Prescott—who was found to have died just hours before the events that took place…”

The room spun. The floor beneath your feet felt like it was coming closer and closer, you braced yourself against a nearby chair to stop the rushing motion of it.

“...authorities have identified the primary suspect behind the entire string of Woodsboro murders as Neil Prescott, father of victim Sidney Prescott. Police sources indicate Prescott acted alone in a psychotic break as a result of his wife’s death a year prior, orchestrating a series of brutal attacks before culminating in the massacre at the Macher home, where he was found to have shot himself—”

“No,” you whispered, your hands flying to your mouth as a wave of hot, blinding panic seized your chest. The air vanished from the room. Your vision tunneled, the edges bleeding into pitch black as the horrifying, staggering weight of it crashed down upon you. They’re dead. All of them. Tatum, Randy, Sidney…

You backed away from the television, gasping for breath, your knees buckling beneath you as you slid down the wall into a heap on the floor, your chest heaving, tears streaming blindly down your face.

“Hey. Hey, look at me. Breathe.”

A firm, steady hand gripped your shoulder. Looking up through a blur of tears, you saw Gale Weathers. She looked exhausted, her hair slightly disheveled and a white bandage taped neatly to the side of her forehead, but her sharp eyes were entirely focused on you.

“Should really turn this off…” She mumbled to herself, getting up for a second, grabbing the remote to the device and clicking the off button. The newswoman on screen vanished into a momentary white static line that was too consumed by the black reflective screen. Gale turned back towards you and slowly started to help you up and onto the chair, seating herself opposite and next to you.

You leaned your head against your palms, the wetness of tears mixing with the sweat that had started to precipitate on them from nerves.

“You okay?” She asked, voice hushed. It caused you to glance over at her, but you didn’t even attempt to answer—knowing that your words would die in your throat before they even escaped. Gale pursed her lips, and nodded, commenting to herself. “Yeah… stupid question…”

It was quiet, but not the discomforting quiet that had entered the room before, rather it was like finally being able to catch your breath. Finally being able to settle your thoughts and rest with them, despite the fact that you didn’t want to. “…my friends are dead. All of them. And it’s just one huge blank spot, and I can’t remember anything. They’re all—”

Your voice failed you as your throat felt like it closed in on itself and prevented anything else from escaping. Eyes burning with the sensation of tears starting to form. Gale quickly put her hands out to calm you, though she didn’t touch you or come too close. “Hey, it’ll be okay. Not right now, but it’ll—fuck, what’s the word? Scab over?”

You stared at her for a moment. The choking feeling in your throat and the tears dried in that moment. “That’s a terrible analogy.”

“I know, I know.” She rubbed in between her eyebrows in shame and annoyance at herself. “I couldn’t think of any other way to say it, but don’t beat yourself up too badly for not remembering anything. I don’t either.”

“You don’t?”

Gale sighed, moving to cross her arms overtop the table and examined the plant sitting at the center. “Yeah, blunt force trauma. Hit my head just when things were getting interesting and completely missed out on everything. They killed my cameraman.” She crumbled the leaf she was holding in her fingers in her grip and turned to look you dead in the eyes. “I… I know with Neil Prescott being the killer, it just makes sense. It’s easy. It’s digestible. But, it’s just not sitting right.”

She dropped the leaf bits back on the table before pushing her hair out of her face. “It’s the same exact feeling I got with Cotton Weary. It’s like everything fits so perfectly into place from a distance, but the closer I get, the more out of place certain details are. I just…”

The room fell into the same quiet again, and despite knowing the kind of person you’d always assumed Gale to be from Sidney and Tatum’s testimonies, it felt nice to get what you were feeling off your chest. “I wish I could’ve stopped it. Could’ve helped them. Even if I could just remember what happened…”

Her fingernails tapped against the surface of the table in thought, “…remember, memory… Kenny… Oh my god!” Gale stood up abruptly, pacing around the room gaily. “I had a camera set up in the living room!”

“A camera? Like… live?”

“No—well, kind of. It was a recording!” Gale grabbed your shoulders and shook you a little bit, smiling like she won the lottery. “As soon as I find a copy of it, we can watch it. And if we’re lucky, we’ll even catch a glimpse behind the mask and find out for sure if Neil Prescott really committed those murders.”

It was hopeful. And definitely a little naive, but it felt exactly like what you had been looking for. An answer—maybe not a good one. But a conclusion that would put all the questions you had to rest. “That—that’s great! How long will it take?”

“I don’t know. My van got taken into police custody for investigation, but that’s just a temporary roadblock.” Gale started to head towards the door, but paused to look back at you in clear hesitation, her jaw tightening. “Before you start thinking you’re completely alone... you should know. You’re not the only survivor from that house. Billy and Stu made it out too. Severe injuries, sure, but they survived.”

Hearing their names sparked a sudden, desperate craving for safety. In a world that felt completely uprooted and upside down, Billy and Stu were familiar anchors. They were your friends. Your only friends now…

And right now, they meant everything.

When you finally made your way to Billy’s room—after having returned to your room momentarily and asked your parents and the doctor with them where the two were. The door creaked open to reveal Billy sitting upright on his hospital bed—quiet, pale, and subdued. Wrapped in enough white gauze to be considered mummified, but when he looked at you, his eyes held a deep, comforting relief that you were alive. It made you feel safe.

Seating yourself next to him, your voice came faint, as did your smile, “…hey.”

“Hey. I’m glad you're okay… I got really worried when you just weren’t waking up.” The tight grip on his hand on yours felt reassuring and assuring.

You went and saw Stu a few hours after, his room was next door. And when you entered, he stopped his pacing—despite numerous stitches and gauze, it seemed like he was moving more than before. Cracking dark, manic jokes with a nurse who looked to be a few steps away from dishonoring her oath. When you entered, his face lit up, bright and clear of the prior uncertainty that lingered in his eyes.

“Look who decided to wake up from beauty sleep!” Stu laughed, throwing his arms wide before wincing at his bandaged ribs. “I really was worried that we may have lost you. That I screwed up. But, you’re okay! And, wow—who would’ve thought old man Prescott would just go full psycho movie-buff?”

You managed a weak smile, sitting down in the vinyl chair beside his bed. “Yeah, from what I heard it was... crazy. But I’m glad you’re okay, too.”

“Crazy doesn’t even cover it,” Stu babbled, shifting restlessly. “I mean, can you believe it? Out of everyone in that house, me and Billy were standing right by the stairway when the old man came busting through the garage with a knife. Total luck we made it out.”

A cold prickle of unease rippled down your spine. You stared at him, your brow furrowing.

“What?” Stu asked, his manic grin faltering just a fraction, his eyes darting away.

“You said... you were standing by the stairway when he came through the garage?”

“Yeah. Colonel Mustard in the garage with a knife. Is this Clue or something?”

“Stu,” you said slowly, a knot tightening in your stomach. “Earlier, Dewey told me the police found you and Billy unconscious in the kitchen. Not by the stairway.”

Stu froze for a microsecond—just long enough for the air in the room to go completely dead. Then, his easy, chaotic smile snapped right back into place, laugh lines crinkling around his eyes. “Ah, right, right! The kitchen, babe, my brain is pure mush from the painkillers. Kitchen, stairs, who keeps track?”

He laughed it off, clapping his hands together, but the casual contradiction hung in the air like a foul odor. You tried to shake it off, telling yourself you were just paranoid from trauma, but the tiny, discordant note refused to leave your head. It was as unforgettable and hard to get rid of as an earworm. If Gale was right about Neil Prescott not being the killer… then who else could it have been?

By the time you were released from the hospital a few days later, the town of Woodsboro was a ghost town of whispers and locked doors. School was set to resume the following week, and as part of some unspoken mutual effort to return to normalcy, Billy and Stu had started the routine of walking you to and from school.

The dynamic between the three of you felt effortless on the surface, but underneath, a strange claustrophobia was building. Familiar conversations felt distinctly empty in places. You missed Sidney, Randy, and Tatum…

Reflecting on your three missing friends out loud only seemed to bring conversations to an empty halt, the two staring with blank wide eyes. At least before Stu would collapse into a sobbing mess in your arms, and Billy would approach slowly and pull you into a hug. It was weird—chorographed in its purity of emotion, but undeniably off in the glances they would share with each other. A silent communication you had no hope of understanding, but the part of you that did… It scares you.

Walking up to approach the two, you occasionally dropped a few paces behind, catching the tail end of their murmurs.

“...drop it, man, they’re looking..”

“—cleanup is done, just relax—”

The moment you stepped closer, their conversation abruptly ceased, replaced by bright, casual banter about homework or movies. Gale’s words echoed in a way that felt increasingly impossible to ignore. Everything fits so perfectly into place from a distance, but the closer you get, the more out of place certain details are.

The breaking point came three days later.

It was the same familiar walk home from school with them. Waving goodbye, you entered, half expecting your parents to be in the kitchen, but the house was dead silent. Stepping into the living room, you gasped, nearly dropping your backpack.

Gale Weathers was crouched by your television set with the comfort of someone familiar with sneaking into places she wasn’t supposed to be. Slipping a VHS cassette into the VCR, she held up a finger to her lips, and glanced nervously toward the front windows. “Be quiet about this. I had to sneak in. Didn’t want the cops or your parents, or those two noticing me poke around. ”

“Gale? What are you—how did you get this?”

“I told you I’d get the camera footage,” she whispered urgently, clicking play on the remote. “Now, we just watch.”

The grainy, wide-angle footage flickered to life on the screen. It showed the crowded living room from the night of the party. You watched yourself on the couch, your head lolling against the cushions, sinking deeper and deeper into unconsciousness after the drink in your hands fell loosely. Randy took it and set it on the coffee table before resuming watching the movie he had presumably set-up. Tatum got up and headed towards the kitchen, Randy standing up to argue about horror movie rules—that was what you guessed based off the waving arm gestures, Stu leaving heading to the kitchen.

The tape fast-forwarded through the blur of partygoers scattering, and then paused on a horrifying sequence. Randy trying to no avail shake you awake after catching sight of the killer, once he realized you weren’t waking up, he shielded you only to be pushed onto the floor. Kicking, yelling, throwing the bottles on the table—anything to fight desperately against a figure in a Ghostface mask. But as the camera angle shifted to capture the kitchen threshold, your blood ran cold.

There wasn't one killer.

Two figures in identical costumes stepped into the frame, moving in tandem, coordinating their strikes with terrifying, practiced precision.

Gale’s breath caught. “Look at that. Two of them. It wasn't just Neil Prescott. He had an accomplice.” Her journalistic mind clicked the pieces together in real-time, her voice rising in frantic realization. “And if the killings were a manic, unhinged rampage by a lone psycho... how the hell could he collaborate with anyone? It’s a setup. The whole thing is a fucking setup! We need to get this to the—”

Before the words had even fully left Gale’s mouth, a floorboard creaked directly behind her.

A heavy arm wrapped around Gale’s throat with brutal, choking force, dragging her backward out of the chair. The gleaming blade of a hunting knife flashed in the amber living room light, the tip resting right against her jugular.

You shrieked, stumbling backward into the couch. Out from the shadows of the hallway stepped Stu, his face split into a wide, unhinged, blood-chilling grin that felt so out of place on him. No. Why was he doing this? 

“You really just don’t know when to quit snooping, do you, newswoman?” Stu laughed, his voice dripping with sadistic glee as Gale gagged, her hands clawing desperately at his forearm.

“Stu—no!” You screamed, your legs moving on pure adrenaline as you lunged for the landline telephone on the side table.

You grabbed the receiver, your trembling fingers frantically punching the numbers, but before you could even hit the third digit, a heavy hand snatched the phone from your grip.

You whipped your head around. Billy stood right beside you.

His eyes weren't warm anymore. They were dark, flat, and dead—stripped of every trace of the gentle, injured boy who had held you in the hospital.

“Why did you have to ruin it?” Billy asked, his voice chillingly calm, speaking down to you as if you were a child throwing a tantrum. “Were you really that unhappy? Why did you have to keep questioning things when everything had turned out so... perfectly?”

Tears streamed down your face, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. “Billy... please... why are you doing this?”

He leaned in close, his breath warm against your face. “We can touch on that later. Right now, I need you to make a choice.”

“A choice?” You tried to back away, but his arms circled—trapping you in a hug that locked your arms close to your side. The smile that formed on his face felt almost mockingly sincere.

“It’s as easy as picking what your favorite scary movie is. Do you want Gale to be the one who ends up dead? Or your parents when they walk through that front door in ten minutes?”

Gale choked out a desperate, tear-streaked plea, her eyes locking onto yours with terrifying clarity and defiance in spite of the danger she was in. “No... don’t say anything. Don’t give these assholes anything—”

“Shut up!” Stu snarled.

With a sudden, brutal twist of his wrist, Stu drove the knife deep into Gale’s chest. A sharp, wet gasp cut off her words. Her eyes went wide, locking onto yours one last time before her body went completely limp, sliding out of Stu’s grip and collapsing onto your living room floor in a rapidly expanding pool of dark red.

You opened your mouth, but no sound came out—only a silent, suffocating scream. Billy shushed you in a soothing manner that made you feel like you were gonna throw up. You couldn’t look away from her lying there, dead on the ground. Eyes wide, but empty, and mouth open in a silent unheard scream. Stu hopped over her body and approached you, turning your face away from her. The sticky red substance from his hands stained the sides of your face that he touched. It was still warm.

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Dividers by @strangergraphics and @kodaswrld <3 <3

Thank you so much for following along, I really do appreciate all the love and support and this story has meant a lot to me. I’m kind of sad to be done with it, but it certainly won’t be the last Scream story I work on! If anything, it’s just the first of many!! <3

I know the ending isn’t exactly positive, but unfortunately for all of us, those two put the word “toxic,” to shame.

Yandere Heathers x Carrie!reader

Ch.1

The heavy wooden door of the principal's office did very little to stifle the storm raging behind it. Through the frosted glass, you could make out the blurry, agitated outline of Ms. Desjardin pacing the floor, her hands slicing through the air with violent, jagged gestures. Every few seconds, her voice would break through the solid oak barrier—not as a distinct set of words. Rather as a sharp, vibrating pitch that pierced through and set your nerves on a peculiar buzzing edge that you could only attribute to nerves.

“...uncivilized!... like animals in a cage, Principal Gowan!... I will not have my class turned into a circus of cruelty!”

“I understand that, but… 17? Isn’t she a little old to be getting…”

Her voice quieted into a whisper, though it was still audible from your seat next to the door, “… I know, but you know what that mother of hers is like. The way she was panicking, it was like she hadn’t the slightest clue what it was, and in all likelihood, she probably didn’t.”

You pull your knees closer to your chest, your wet canvas sneakers squeaking softly against the metal rung of the waiting room chair. The sound makes the secretary, Mrs. Cochran, glance up from her typewriter with a look of mild, exhausted annoyance before she returns to her rhythmic, clinical tapping.

Your hair is a damp, heavy curtain hanging over your face, smelling intensely of the harsh chlorine you had escaped from not even 30 minutes prior. Throat still burning from the dry, screaming hysteria that had gripped you in the showers, when you had been so utterly convinced your body was rotting from the inside out. Now, knowing the truth—knowing the shameful, bleeding reality of what had actually happened—only made the weight in your chest heavier. It wasn't a disease. It was just a curse. No, this was something you should’ve known about, should’ve been told about, and now felt profoundly embarrassed by.

And now it just served as more ammunition.

The administrative office smells of old ink, floor wax, and the stale, minty scent of Mrs. Cochran's Listerine. It is a sterile, quiet place, but to you, it felt like a holding cell. You are waiting for the ax to fall. You are waiting for Principal Hopkins to call Mama. The very thought of Mama’s face—the righteous, terrifying fury that will distort her features when she hears about the blood, about the locker room, about the boys—makes your stomach twist into a hard, cold knot. You weren’t sure if you were ready to face her yet.

From the counter across the room, the low, monotone murmur of an administrator’s voice breaks through your panic.

“Alright, Jason. We have you down for AP English, Trigonometry, and US History. The only thing left is your physical education waiver…”

You don't want to look. Looking at people invites them to look back. But out of the corner of your eye, through the stands of damp hair, you catch a glimpse of him. He is tall, leaning against the counter with an easy, fluid grace that seems completely foreign to the stiff, anxious atmosphere of Westerburg High. He is wearing a dark, oversized trench coat that looks like it has seen its fair share of rain, and his dark hair is slightly messy, falling across his forehead in a way that suggests he doesn't care enough to brush it.

He is the new boy. You heard the girls whispering about him in the hall before gym—the transfer from Texas, the one whose father moves them around every six months.

“Just sign here, and we'll have your schedule finalized,” the administrator says, sliding a yellow slip of paper across the laminate counter.

The boy takes the pen, but he doesn't sign immediately. Instead, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes drift away from the paperwork, scanning the quiet office until they land directly on you.

Instantly, you freeze, pulling your head down so fast your chin digs into your collarbone. You squeeze your eyes shut, praying to be invisible, praying that he will just sign his paper and leave. But god has never been kind to your prayers.

You hear the soft, deliberate scuff of his leather boots against the linoleum. He is moving away from the counter.

“Hey,” a voice says.

It is a low, quiet voice, carrying a dry trace of something that feels entirely out of place in the flat, nasal atmosphere of Ohio. It doesn't have the sharp, mocking edge of Heath Chandler's rasp, nor does it have the clinical, dismissive coldness of Duke's tone. It's just... a voice.

You don't look up. Instead, pulling the scratchy material of your cardigan tighter around your shoulders, burying your hands so deep into the oversized sleeves that your fingers disappear entirely. You want to shrink until you are nothing but a pile of damp clothes on the plastic chair.

“Tough crowd in there,” the boy continues, gesturing vaguely toward the principal's office, where Ms. Desjardin’s muffled shouting has just reached a fresh, indignant peak. “Sounds like someone's getting a real old-fashioned dressing down. What'd you do? Blow up the chemistry lab? Poison the soup of the day?”

A sudden, terrifying spike of panic flares in your chest. Is this a trick? It had to be some kind of prank. It felt like you were seconds away from having a heart attack—or at the very least, something very close to it—as all you could do was frantically try to find the angle. He is the new boy. He is being nice to you? He is talking to you when you feel like you have reached your lowest point of shame.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Did Chandler send him? Did Duke tell him to come over here and pretend to be nice so they could laugh at your reaction later? “Look at her,” they would say. “She actually thought the new guy liked her.”  Then the laughter would follow. High pitched and so very cruel in the way it burrowed under your skin. The thought makes your throat tighten with a dry, choking sob that you barely manage to swallow.

Squeezing your eyes shut, the lights buzzed louder at the volume of a swarm of mosquitoes, and flickered on and off for a brief second.

"I'm JD," he says, taking a half-step closer. He doesn't seem deterred by your absolute silence. He seats himself on the chair right next to yours, eyeing the lights for a few seconds before turning his attention to trying to catch your eye through the hair with a strange, analytical curiosity. “I'm new, if you couldn’t already tell. Still trying to figure out if this place is a regular high school or some kind of minimum-security prison.”

You press your back hard against the plastic chair, digging your nails tightly into the palms of your hands, knuckles aching inside your sleeves. Go away. Please, just go away. 

“You know,” JD says, his voice dropping a fraction lower, losing a bit of its casual drawl. He tilts his head, still trying to peer beneath the wet curtain of hair. “Normally when I’m moved to new towns, new schools. It’s all the same. Cutouts of the same familiar faces—just, y’know, in different places. The popular and everyone else, but somehow… you fall a bit outside of both. I can tell.”

What did he mean, he could tell? Were they right? That it was so obvious just how… different—how much of a freak you were compared to everyone else. That same burning wetness stung the corners of your eyes as you strained to not let it show. To cry or show how much it was affecting you. The acrid taste of blood filled your mouth from the force of biting your lip.

But he was looking at you. Really looking. Not with the disgust you are used to, but like he’s trying to read the fine print on a dusty, forgotten map. It is a suffocating, heavy kind of attention, and it makes the air in your lungs feel thick as syrup. What was this? Why was he looking at you?

"Hey," he said after a few minutes, softer this time. "I didn't mean to—"

Before he can finish, the heavy wooden door to the principal's office swings open with a violent, dramatic clatter, cutting him off. You leapt to your feet, practically running past Ms. Desjardin and inside the principal’s office. Shutting your eyes tightly in an attempt to block out the scuffling footsteps of JD moving to lean against the armrest of the chair, eyes trained on your back.

Ms. Desjardin was about to start closing the door, but found it already beginning to swing and slam shut loudly. The wooden frame cracked from the force of it and she and the principal jolted backwards from the sound.

In sharp contrast, the boy on the direct opposite side of the door was unaffected by it and instead hummed to himself in thought. Eyes—which had previously been locked on you, were now on the door. The door which slammed shut with enough force to break the frame despite no one having moved it… You really did fall a bit outside of everything else, didn’t you?

A giddy feeling filled the inside of his chest—the same feeling he would usually get from watching his Dad set off explosions. You were beautiful. So very beautiful and chaotic.

The administrator called sharply, patience thinner than the paper she was tapping her pen against, “Mr. Dean. Would you please fill this out?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” JD got up from the chair and approached, a bright smile starting to form. Her expression switched from annoyance to something entirely different with fear entering her eyes. He paid no mind to it, hastily scrawling his name across the line on the paper. Snatching the late slip piece of paper for history class.

He wasn’t sure what you were, but he’d be damned if he knew you weren’t one of the best things he’d had the luck of glimpsing.

“Feel free to sit down, Miss White.” The Principal said—his words were kind, but the tone he used wasn’t even an attempt at carrying the same sentiment. Nails digging further into the creases in your palms, you ducked into the chair, hunched over. Ms. Desjardin followed shortly behind you to stand behind your chair, almost protectively. The stringy wet strands of hair blocking your view of the principal and his view of your red, teary face.

Ms. Desjardin rubbed your shoulder in comfort as Principal Gowan cleared his throat to continue speaking, “Now Miss White, I was informed of your… situation and you’ve been cleared to go home for today.” He straightened some papers on his desk. “Do you want Mrs. Cochran to phone your mother, or—”

“NO.” The glass ash tray on his desk fell off in a clean sweep, hitting the wall opposite of it and shattering onto the ground in a clatter that startled you back to your feet. You started to back up, wet sneakers squeaking from the skidding, abrupt shortsteps.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong—with you.

And you needed to leave now.

“I’ll—um.” You fumbled for the door handle behind you. “I’ll just walk home.”

Once the door was open, you ran out of the administrative office. The double doors at the entrance of the school flew upon your approach, and once you exited through them, you stopped to eye them nervously. What was happening to you? Why was it happening?

Your hand flew to your mouth to stop a gasp from escaping—was it because of earlier? The blood…

But it couldn’t be normal—you couldn’t be normal. Fear nestled itself deep inside of you at the thought of Mama knowing.

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@andromeda-graphics for the beautiful divider <3

Sorry this is coming a bit later than planned, I got kind of drained from work. But, I should still be good to finish the Blood like Cherry Coke ending chapters.

I’ve been trying to put more of my stories on other platforms, but I think I’ll probably just try doing finished works only in the future for the sake of simplicity.

Yandere Laughing Jack x American McGee’s Alice!Reader

Ch.1

The door to the rooftop creaked open, almost falling off the hinges that held it. You paid no mind to it, stepping further onto the roof and taking a glance around. Smoke drifted upwards from the sea of chimneys creating an ashen film over the sky. Though once you rounded towards the other side of the building, the horizon was dotted with the faint traces of the setting sun and pinkish grey clouds.

On both corners of that side of the roof were well-maintained bird houses with pigeons flitting to and fro from them. Nurse Witless hunched over the doors of one of them, depositing a handful of seed inside.

Clearing your throat, you began to speak. “Nurse Witless, do you mean to harm me? To send me back to the asylum?”

She grabbed another handful of seed, chancing a glance over her shoulder at you through the rims of her spectacles, speaking with the slyness of a grandmother that hides cookies. “I won’t say… though, I’ve a thirst you could photograph.”

Dusting her palms off, she closed the door on the bird house. A pigeon that had perched above the door made a soft cooing noise and she smiled, petting its head with one of her fingers. “You’re still a mess dear, though it’s no surprise considering you saw your own kin roast before your eyes like chestnuts. And those ten years in the asylum did you no good, just wasted everyone’s time. Dr. Bumby won’t do any better. Still hauling out your questions: the fire, your memory—”

Your nails dug crescents in your palms, as you cut her off, speaking sharply. “Nurse Witless. Where is my music box?”

Her soft smile turned into a crinkled scowl, her voice filling with venom. “Don’t you think I deserve consideration? Who found you new clothes? Who got you a place at Bumby’s? Where do you think you would be without me?” She scoffed, starting to approach. “On the street. Selling your backside.”

Nurse Witless started abruptly towards the fence of the rooftop. “I know you’ve doled out the odd pound or two in the past, dearie. But, you have to know it’s worth more to keep your secret. And I have, haven’t I?” She heightened the pitch of her, mocking. “Heard you say with mine own ears, “…all died on my account, I couldn’t save you!” You know as well as I that my silence is for sale, cheap!”

She turned back towards you, hands clasped. “I’m a good sort, really. Not like that nanny, the uppity whore! Or that lawyer fellow, Radcliffe. But I need money. And I won’t hesitate to tell the coppers if you don’t make a donation to my upkeep.”

The bones in her back became especially prominent as she hunched over, hiding her face in the palms of her hands. Fingers almost skeletal, and leathery wings ripping out from the thin skin of her back. They flexed, pink and red veins pulsing as her voice came out in a growling hiss. “More than my whistle needs whetting.”

Her hands fell loosely away from her face, revealing the bulbous snout of something that resembled an angler fish and a plucked pigeon. Eyes yellow with no pupil in sight, her hands clenched to her sides as she lunged forward towards you, letting out a snarling growl.

You backed away, the heels of your boots skidding across it as your back met the stone wall of the roof. Before you tipped over the edge of it, tumbling downwards.

Downwards, and downwards.

The world faded into something that should’ve felt familiar, but now wasn’t. It was no rabbit hole, but you had clearly fallen back into the Wonderland you hadn’t glimpsed in the same capacity since before the fire.

Steam rose from the porcelain cups that were the color of robin’s eggs, rimmed with a thin, chipped line of real gold leaf that Lizzie had once warned you never to scrape with your fingernail against. On the nursery floor, the afternoon sun fell in long, amber blocks through the diamond-paned glass, highlighting the slow dance of dust motes above the small wicker table.

It was a proper tea party. Lizzie was away with mother at the milliner’s, leaving the nursery quiet, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock and the rhythmic, metallic whir-click of the brass clover key turning against the side of the lacquered tin box.

When the lid popped open, Jack emerged into the warm, golden light of the bedroom, his rainbow sleeves a brilliant, spinning wheel of reds, purples, and yellows. His feathery shoulders rustling against the wicker backrest of the small chair you had set out for him. He was large—too large for the miniature furniture—but his cloth limbs possessed a strange, accommodating elasticity. He folded his long, striped legs beneath himself with a joyful, fluid grace, his shaggy red hair catching the sunlight until he looked like a bonfire made of yarn.

"Could I trouble you for two lumps of sugar?" his voice chimed within your mind, light and bubbling, perfectly matching the cheerful, high-pitched piping of the calliope waltz emanating from the box.

"You can have three," you replied aloud, your seven-year-old voice small but authoritative as you tilted the empty ceramic teapot over his cup. There was no actual tea, of course—only the imagination of hot, amber liquid smelling of orange peels—but Jack treated the empty cup with the absolute seriousness of a subject before a queen. He lifted the tiny handle with two long, striped fingers, his chevron smile stretched so wide his painted cheeks seemed to wrinkle with genuine delight.

He loved this game because it meant your eyes were fixed entirely on him. The cotton-candy barkers and the paper-mâché bestiary had been banished to the periphery of the nursery walls; today, he was the sole recipient of your attention. He would mimic the manners of the adults he had observed, lifting his pinky finger with a comical, exaggerated flourish, tilting his swirly rainbow cone nose toward the ceiling as he pretended to sip the dry air.

But the harmony of the afternoon broke when a small, uninvited guest crossed the border of the wicker rug.

A garden mouse, tiny and sleek, had slipped out from beneath the baseboards. It was a common thing, drawn by the real crumbs of dundee cake you had sneaked up from the kitchen. It scurried near the leg of Jack’s chair, its whiskers twitching with a frantic, miniature panic.

You, with the natural, soft-hearted pity of a child, gasped and leaned forward. "Oh, look, Jack! A little gentleman has come to join us. We must give him a cake crumb. He looks so cold."

Jack’s hollow, painted eyes—then bright and wide with naive blue pigment—dropped down to follow your gaze. He did not look at the mouse with the disgust of a servant or the caution of a nurse. He looked at it with the intense, vacant curiosity of a predatory bird. To Jack, the mouse was not a living creature with a beating heart or a capacity for pain; it was a prop. It was an object that had entered the play space, and because you had expressed interest in it, it was now an element of the game.

Before you could reach for a crumb, Jack’s hand snapped downward.

The movement was too fast for a toy, executed with the terrifying, silent velocity of a steel spring releasing. His long, cloth-wrapped fingers pinched the mouse by its small tail, hoisting it into the air between your faces. The creature writhed frantically, its tiny paws clawing at the empty space, emitting a series of high, needle-thin shrieks of absolute terror.

You flinched back, her hands flying to her mouth. "Jack, no! Put him down! You're hurting him!"

Jack tilted his head to the side, his yarn hair shifting with a soft rustle. His bright smile did not falter; it remained perfectly static, a fixed crescent of painted joy. He looked from the screaming mouse to your wide, horrified eyes with pride and fascination.

"But he is part of the circus now," Jack’s voice returned to your skull, completely devoid of care, instead filled with only the bright, flat enthusiasm of a child showing off a broken shell. "See how high he can jump? See how loud he sings for us? If we pull the little strings in his legs, he'll dance on the teacups."

With a casual, inquisitive twist of his fingers, he began to turn the mouse in the air, his grip tightening until a small drop of dark fluid appeared at the base of the creature's tail. He wasn't doing it to be cruel; he had no concept of what cruelty meant. He didn't know that the mouse was separate from the paper-mâché lions or the tin soldiers. To him, everything outside of you was a toy to be dismantled, modified, or forced to perform for your amusement. He was completely, monstrously naive—a mechanism attempting to please its owner by breaking the world to see how it worked.

"Stop it! It's bad, Jack! It's bad!" you cried out, reaching forward to slap at his hand.

The moment your palm struck his cloth fingers, Jack froze. His blue painted eyes fixed on yours, and for a fraction of a second, the cheerful ringmaster disappeared. A vast, empty silence filled the nursery, cold and heavy, as if the sun had suddenly gone behind a thick winter cloud. He didn't understand it—the word bad. He only understood that the reaction he had elicited from you was not the shriek of delight he was built for, but something sharp and rejecting.

Slowly, his fingers uncurled. The mouse dropped onto the wicker table, knocking over a robin's-egg cup before scrambling blindly off the edge and vanishing back into the shadows of the floorboards.

Jack didn't lash out. He didn't get angry. Instead, his long arms went limp, his head dropping forward until his rainbow cone nose nearly touched the spilled gold-rimmed porcelain. He looked small, deflated, like a puppet whose master had dropped the crossbar.

"I only wanted to make the tea party grander," his voice whispered small, hollow, and pathetic. "You like it when things dance for you. I thought I was your favorite. I can dance better than the mouse."

Before you could answer—could find the words to explain the difference between a toy and a life—the nursery door clicked open. Lizzie’s voice called out from the hallway, bright and real, and with a sudden, metallic snap, the lid shut on its own and he was gone. Sometimes you forgot that he wasn’t real the same way you were.

Further and further you fell.

The roof became a distant star until finally blinking out of existence like everything else. As opposed to the typical rabbit holes that you had become all too familiar with, this experience bore more resemblance to falling through the sky.

Clouds drifted by, furniture held aloft in the air, even a piano that could be heard playing as you neared it. Until the grounds of the circus came into view. Rows of tents, games, and food stalls were empty. Empty in that same manner that you had seen in your waking nightmares, in the visions of Wonderland that you had glimpsed only occasionally. Empty and colorless.

Mumbling to yourself, “Very upsetting journey. But I’m glad to be rid of Pris… or whatever she’s become.”

The ground settled beneath your feet. Your dress, which had flown upwards from the movement of falling down, collapsed into something of the same shape. It had changed upon your entry, the color becoming more vibrant. You disregarded it, instead looking around at what was your wonderland, walking the familiar pathway. “At least the place I’ve landed is somewhat familiar.”

“It’s about time too. You ought to know as well as anyone how impatient he can be.” The cat’s voice was heard first before he appeared a few feet away, perched on one of the barrels sitting on the side of the oddities tent.

“Blasted cat! Don’t try to bully me! I’m very much on edge.” You hissed, folding your arms and glaring at it. Not that it seemed to bother it as it just purred.

“Purrrrfect. When you’re not on edge, you’re taking up too much space. That’s the worst thing you could do here.”

Starting to turn away from him, you grumbled “You’re no help at all.”

The cat laid down on the barrels, flexing its claws into the creaking wood of the barrels. “But, you know I can be…”

“I’ll frighten myself when necessary, thanks very much. I was hoping to escape all of that.” You stopped in your tracks and swiveled back to face the darned thing. The claws stopped their scratching and moved to settle back on top of the wood, resting.

“Abandon that hope! A new law reigns in this Wonderland. It’s very rough justice all round. We’re at risk here. Be on your guard!”

The tent entrance flapped open and inside the only visible thing was the nothing of darkness inside, until the light of a candle drew near and the face of the Hatter became visible. Anxiously, he looked around, before grabbing ahold of your arm tightly and dragging you inside. “Quick! With haste! And hate! Come inside, before—”

A creaking sound shook the ground, causing settled items to fall and break—glass shattered, metal clanked, and wood splintered. But above all the noise started the familiar sound—now echoing through the very earth like a tremor. Pop goes the weasel.

Pinterest for the Header

@cozy-menagerie and @cursed-carmine for the dividers <3 <3

I’m so sorry for the mouse. It was originally supposed to be a spider, but I wasn’t sure if that would really hammer home what I was trying to show.

I’m not entirely sure if my interpretation of Jack is entirely accurate, so I’m sorry for any disappointment that has caused.

Yandere Heathers x Carrie!reader

Ch.2

The faint squeaking sound of your own worn canvas sneakers against the linoleum is the only thing anchoring you to the empty hallway. Shuffle. Squeak. Pause. You drag your feet, praying that the universe will bend just enough so that by the time you reach the end, Miss Desjardin will have already twisted the heavy key in the locker room lock, shutting you out. Shutting them out.

Gym is a weekly crucifixion, but today is the worst iteration of it. The administration's brilliant idea to combine the boys' and girls' classes once a week—some grand experiment in "social solidarity" championed by Miss Fleming—has felt less like solidarity and more like being thrown into a Roman colosseum. Mama had known it would be a sin. She had spent a week marching into the front office with her hand-inked petitions, her voice rising in a sharp, trembling vibrato about the proximity of flesh and the temptations of the wicked. But the world didn't listen to Mama. The world just looked at her, then looked at you, and laughed. Her crusade didn't save you; it just painted a giant, glowing target on your back.

It was a naive thought—a deeply stupid, fragile hope—that if you just missed the roll call, they would simply mark an 'F' next to your name and let you fade into the background. A zero is quiet. A zero doesn't have eyes. A zero doesn't whisper. But naivety is a sin, and like every other transgression your body seems to commit just by existing, it catches up to you the second your palm pushes against the heavy steel doors of the gymnasium.

The sharp, medicinal stench of bleach and old sweat hits me first, a violent wave that makes my throat tighten, followed immediately by the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of feet hitting the polished hardwood. Your heart drops directly into your stomach, heavy as a stone. They haven't even started the actual class. They’re just finishing the warm-up laps.

Miss Desjardin is standing like a sentinel right at the threshold of the wooden court. The tip of her pen makes a sharp, metallic tapping sound against her clipboard, counting down the agonizingly slow seconds of your approach.

“Anytime, Miss White. Looks like the only thing you managed to skip today were the warmups. Aren’t you lucky?”

Her voice doesn't have malice, just a tired, clipped impatience, but when she turns to the rest of the gym, her shout echoes off the high rafters, commanding total authority. “Everyone get dressed! We’re doing swim today.”

A terrible, suffocating silence hangs in the air for one long heartbeat. Swim. The word almost causes a feeling of sickness to rise in the back of your throat. Swim means taking off the layers of oversized, heavy fabrics you use to hide yourself from the world. Changing in the locker room was already unbearable, but swim class made the feeling of eyes and judgement suffocating and inescapable till the whistle blew.

The chaotic shuffle towards the locker rooms started—students shoving each other to the two separate doors while Miss Desjardin supervised to make sure no one went to the wrong one.

You tried to melt into the wall as the crowd moved, keeping to the back with your eyes pinned strictly to the floor, tracking the scuffed margins of the basketball court. But you can feel the shifts in the air as they approach.

The air grew heavy, making it feel like there was a physical weight pushing down on your back. 

To your left, a heavy, athletic stride slows down. You don't have to look up to know the exact shade of the red-and-gold letterman jacket stopping a few feet away. It's Heath Chandler. 

"Watch where you're drifting, freak," Heath muttered, his voice dropping into that strange, angry rasp he always used when you got too close. He looked furious that you had even come to school today—it wasn’t as though you wanted to be here either. His jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his cheek jumped, you can hear the sharp, agitated hitch in his breath. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you see his knuckles whiten as he shoves his hands deep into his pockets. He’s staring at you with that familiar, burning intensity that always looks like he wants to tear you apart, or maybe like he's furious that you're breathing the same air. You brace yourself for the shove, the laugh, the loud insult that will set the rest of them off, but it doesn't come. He just turns on his heel with a harsh, aggressive swear and storms toward the boys' changing area, leaving a wake of tense, confusing energy behind him.

There is momentary ease at his departure, but not enough for you to relax when Heath Duke and McNamara pass by shortly after him. Duke’s eyes flitted right past you—like passing over air or even a ghost, he pretended not to see you. You couldn’t tell if that was better or worse, but it always created a heavy sinking feeling in your stomach. Disposable and forgettable.

McNamara followed the lead of the other two and pretended not to see you. Though when his eyes did catch on you before passing, first there was a visible confusion that was quickly replaced by that same disdain that Chandler had—but much distilled from the same hatred and coupled with genuine a lack of understanding.

Inside the locker room, the tile was freezing. The air was thick with the suffocating cloud of cheap vanilla body spray and Aqua Net. You hid in the furthest stall to change into the standard-issue, one piece, hands shaking so badly you could barely get your legs through the holes. 

It’s just forty-five minutes, you told myself, slowly approaching the doors to the pool, trailing behind classmates. Just forty-five minutes, and then you can go to English.

A hard surface caused you to stop and stumble back a few steps. Looking up, you realized too late that in your attempts to keep your eyes glued to the tiled floor, you had bumped into Veronica Sawyer. She made a noise of surprise, and turned around confused, at the sight of you, she gave a tightlipped smile before rushing the rest of the way inside.

You had frozen in your panic and after about a minute, started to enter the pool room. In the deep end floated the monsters. Shadowed under the bright lights, you could make out the whispering, snide comments and insults. Accidentally making eye contact with the watching gaze of Duke—though, the moment you met his eye, he looked away, nose crinkling. 

Quickly, you turned your attention back downwards. Stepping into the cool pool water and waded out till your chest was a little beneath the water and near the cement walls. Cupping your hands into the water, you brought some to the surface and looked at the reflective surface of it.

The water doesn’t hide you. It never hides you. It just holds you in place like an insect trapped in resin, waiting for someone to notice how easily you can be broken.

The acoustics of the indoor pool turn every whisper into an accusation. You keep your chin submerged, the chlorinated water lapping against your lower lip, bitter and chemical. The occasional sharp whistle sound echoes through, piercing and shrill in volume. Miss Desjardin scans the room before leaving through the door to head to the restroom.

The moment she steps out the water shifts.

It isn't a gentle wave; it’s a heavy, deliberate displacement that travels across the pool and hits your chest like a physical blow. You feel the current before you see them. The laughter from the center of the pool dies down, replaced by a sudden, expectant silence that makes the hair on your arms stand up beneath the water.

You look up, your eyes stinging from the chlorine, and your heart stops.

They are coming toward you. Heath Chandler leads them, he isn't swimming, instead wading through the chest-high water, his broad shoulders breaking the surface like a prow, his wet blonde hair slicked back from his forehead. His face is set in that familiar, terrifying mask of absolute disgust, but his eyes are fixed on you with a strange, frantic intensity. To his left is Duke, his jaw set, his eyes fixed stubbornly on a point just above your head as if looking directly at you might stain him. To his right is McNamara, looking slightly smaller, his eyes darting toward Chandler for cues on how to breathe, how to look, how to hate you. And trailing just a step behind them, her expression an unreadable mask of discomfort, is Veronica Sawyer.

You press your spine harder into the abrasive concrete wall, wishing the rough stone would open up and swallow you whole. Please, you think, a frantic, silent prayer directed at a God who has never once answered you in a public place. Please, let them just be swimming past. Let me be invisible.

But Chandler stops five feet away. The water sloshes up around his ribs, and the sheer heat radiating from his anger seems to warm the cool pool around you. He doesn't look at the others. He looks down at you, his chest heaving with that same sharp, agitated hitch you heard in the hallway.

"Look at it," Chandler says, his voice dropping into that low, rasping growl that always makes your skin prickle. He doesn't raise his voice, but the acoustic tiles overhead carry it perfectly, echoing his disgust back down upon you. "Sitting in the corner like a drowned rat. Don't you know you're contaminating the water for everyone else, White?"

You don't answer. You never answer. You pull your arms tightly to your chest beneath the surface, trying to make yourself as small as humanly possible.

Duke shifts his weight in the water, his nose crinkling in that familiar, clinical disdain. He looks at you for a fraction of a second—actually looks at you—and for a heartbeat, you think you see a flicker of something ancient in his eyes. A memory of a porch swing, of library books, of a time before he learned how to look through you. But the look vanishes as quickly as it came, replaced by a cold, performative sneer. "Seriously, Heath, it’s creepy," Duke murmurs, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of the childhood warmth you used to rely on. "She looks like she’s waiting to drag someone under."

The words cut deeper than Chandler’s insults ever could. Disposable. Forgettable. A ghost who used to be a friend.

"I—I'm just staying out of the way," you whisper, the words slipping out before you can stop them. Your voice sounds pathetic, a wet, trembling thing that bounces off the concrete walls and makes McNamara let out a sharp, mocking laugh.

"Oh, it speaks," McNamara says, though his eyes are wide, darting from Chandler to you with a bizarre, tense confusion. He’s mimicking Chandler's posture, trying to force his face into an expression of pure disgust, but there’s a strange, erratic energy in the way he watches you. It’s the same look he had in the hallway—as if he’s trying to solve a puzzle he hates. "Maybe we should help it sink. See if it knows how to swim or if it just floats like garbage."

Veronica doesn't say anything. She stands a half-step behind McNamara, her fingers twisting together beneath the water. When you look at her, her eyes drop instantly to the surface, her lips pressing into a thin, tight line. She won't help you. No one ever helps you.

"Shut up, Heath," Chandler snaps suddenly, his head whipping around to glare at his friend with an intensity that seems entirely disproportionate. McNamara blinks, startled, stepping back a half-inch into the deeper water.

Chandler turns his burning, furious gaze back to you. His knuckles are white, his hands clenched into fists beneath the surface. He looks terrified of you—or terrified of the fact that he’s standing this close to you. His jaw is clenched so hard a small muscle in his cheek jumps rhythmically. "You think hiding makes it better?" he rasps, stepping a single inch closer. His eyes darted back towards the others, the anger combined with a mocking smirk. “I wonder, did your mother bless the water before you came in? But if that was the case, wouldn’t it have burned you by now?”

You force your eyes up to meet his, your whole body trembling. His eyes are a violent, stormy blue, and they are tracking the line of your collarbone, the wet hair plastered to your forehead, with a predatory, suffocating focus. It’s a look that feels like a physical hand gripping your throat, squeezing the breath right out of you. He hates you. He wants to destroy you. You can feel the sheer, rolling waves of his animosity washing over you in the water.

And then, a sharp, white-hot needle of pain strikes deep within your abdomen.

The pain is sudden and agonizing, a violent cramping sensation that twists your insides into a tight, agonizing knot. It feels like something is tearing loose inside you, something heavy and violating in its intensity.

"What’s the matter, White?" Duke asks, his voice sharp, a sudden edge of genuine alertness cutting through his cold facade as he notices you flinch. "You gonna throw up?"

"No," you choke out, the pain taking a second, deeper bite upward into your ribs. Your breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps. You try to push yourself further up against the concrete wall, but your legs feel weak, like water themselves.

"Get away from her, Heath," Veronica’s voice cuts through the tension, sudden and sharp. She takes a step forward, her hand reaching out as if to pull Chandler back by the shoulder, her eyes wide with a sudden, dawning horror. "Something’s wrong."

But Chandler doesn't move. He’s staring down at the water between you.

The pain in your stomach eases for one fraction of a second, replaced by a strange, heavy warmth that begins to bloom between your thighs. It feels thick. It feels wrong.

You look down through the clear, chlorinated water, tracking the sudden, dark shadow that is beginning to curl outward from beneath the hem of your navy-blue swimsuit.

It isn't a shadow.

It’s a bright, horrific plume of deep crimson. It blossoms in the pristine blue water like an exotic, terrifying flower, unfurling in slow-motion tendrils that rise toward the surface. It catches the harsh, vibrating glare of the stadium lights, turning the clear pool into a swirling, smoky cloud of blood. Your blood.

The color hits Chandler’s skin first, a dark trail of red washing over his pale ribs as the current carries it outward.

A terrible, breathless silence falls over the small circle. McNamara makes a choking sound in the back of his throat, his eyes bulging as he takes a violent step backward, splashing water into the air. Duke freezes, his face draining of all color, his eyes locked onto the expanding red cloud with a look of absolute, paralyzed revulsion.

Chandler is still frozen in place, looking down at his own chest, where a thin film of your blood is lazily drifting across his skin, before his eyes snap back up to yours. The rage in his face is suddenly replaced by something feral, something frantic and violently unhinged. His breath hitches, a sharp, whistling sound in the quiet of the room.

"You're bleeding," Veronica whispers, her voice cracking as she finally breaks through the circle, her face twisted in immediate, agonizing confusion. "Oh my god, you're bleeding—"

The first distant note of a laugh echoes from the deep end of the pool before it descends just as piercingly as the whistle.

The water below was red. Bloody ink blotches that stretched out from your legs and faded into the artificially blue water. Digging your nails into your arms tightly, your face felt cold with a sick sweat. You screamed, and clawed your way out of the water and onto the tiled floor, collapsing in a heap, before clumsily getting to your feet and running towards the entrance.

Streaks of red stained a river down your legs, looking like veins, and mixing with the poolwater that still clung to you. Everything behind you, the taunting calls, and insults fell like static over your ears—muffled, but still audible no matter how far you got. Miss Desjardin, who had just come back from her break in the bathroom, yelled out as you were passing her. “Miss White. Where do you think you’re going? MISS WHITE!”

You ignored her, running to the showers. You needed to get it off, whatever this was. Blood. Were you dying? That had to be it.

Not bothering to change, you ducked into the one at the further end, and turned on both taps. Watching the blots of red disappear down the drain, but more came. Why was this happening? Did you do something wrong? Face scrunching, you closed your eyes tightly to try and stop the salt of tears from spilling over. Though your attempts were futile.

The water suddenly stopped. Gasping, your eyes flew open and saw Veronica standing close, slightly wet from having had the spray of the shower hit her while she had turned it off. Her face was flushed with guilt, eyes downcast as she hesitantly started to ask, “Hey… are you okay?”

The door to the showers opened and Miss Desjardin entered, not out of breath, but definitively out of the specific energy required to deal with wild packs of high schoolers. “I hope you have a good explanation for storming out like that—”

“I think she got her period,” Veronica interrupted, moving to shield you from view.

“Well, that’s hardly something to cry wolf about.” The teacher said, not unsympathetically, but confused and tired.

“Her first.”

Miss Desjardin blinked, peering behind Veronica’s form at you—soggy, crying, and visibly very confused. “Is that true?”

Looking up, eyes bloodshot and snot starting to dribble down, words caught in your throat when you opened your mouth. Swallowing back, you tried again, “I think I’m dying.”

A fresh wave of tears started. You didn’t want to die. Not like this. Miss Desjardin grabbed one of the nearby clean towels and rushed forward, past Veronica. She wrapped the soft fabric of it around your shoulders, slightly overtop your head. Taking the corner of it, she wiped your face and said, much softer. “You’re not dying. It’s—hasn’t your mother ever told you about periods?”

You didn’t answer, instead pulling the towel closer to you. Her lips thinned, nodding her head in thought, she started to move you slowly towards a brace bench to sit down. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before starting to speak, “It’s um—” Looking over at Veronica—who had backed up against one of the lockers, eyes wide and frozen with that same guilty expression. “Sawyer, go get some supplies from the dispensary.”

Veronica’s expression turned hesitant, eyes glued to you—shivering, downcast and trying your hardest to become invisible in the towel. “But I—is she gonna be okay?”

“I have this handled. Now unless you want me to think of something worse for you and your little buddies to do to make up for this, I would suggest you go.”

Veronica started to head towards the dispensary, but paused in the doorway, “I—I’m sorry.”

She disappeared behind the swinging door and Miss Desjardin rubbed a crease between her eyes before starting to speak again, voice hushed. “Periods are completely normal. They happen to every girl—in fact, I’m more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. But, I can assure you that you’re not dying.”

She pulled the towel down from your face slightly, looking you in the eyes. “I have some books on it in my office if you want to look at them, okay?”

A small smile formed, reassuring and it caused you to relax a little, the towel falling looser around your shoulders. The door opened with a wide swinging that caused you to turn, frozen in fear. Veronica panted, out of breath and holding what looked like a small package or a piece of mail. Miss Desjardin stood and walked towards her, taking it from her grip and started speaking in a low-toned voice that was inaudible to your ears.

“What the hell was that, Sawyer?”

“I’m so sorry, is she okay?” Veronica looked back at you, you ducked your head down.

“No thanks to you and your friends.” The teacher scoffed and called back to you while holding the packaged period product up a little, “Get dried off and start getting dressed. I’ll be there in a moment to help you with this.”

You got up wordlessly, walking stiffly and slowly towards your locker. It clicked open, the door swinging open precariously, the corner of it almost hitting you square in the nose. Despite the lack of injury, you rubbed your nose and started to pull your clothes out.

Miss Desjardin turned back towards Veronica, “I’ll be talking to the principal about deciding a reasonable punishment for this. And don’t think I haven’t heard about all your other antics. I don’t know what your issue is with her, but if you or your friends even breathe near her…”

She didn’t continue instead turning away sharply and approaching you with slowness, but somehow that made the threat of her words hit Veronica more. Veronica’s eyes felt stuck on you, catching sight of the top of your head from behind the lockers. She didn’t want to do that? Why did she do that? What was wrong with her to make her think in that second that it was fine?

She didn’t hate you. In fact, she didn’t hate most of her classmates. But somewhere along the line of becoming friends with Chandler, Duke, and McNamara, something inside of her rotted. It was like she had lost touch with reality.

Pulling her arms close to her chest, she nodded to try and reassure herself. She would find some way to make it up to you. She just needed some time to think about it.

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@andromeda-graphics for the divider <3

I think I’m pretty happy with how this chapter turned out for the most part. There are some clunky parts in the dialogue that I’m hoping I’ll have time to sort out soon, but I’m pretty excited for this!

I’ve never wrote genderbent before, so I’m sorry if it’s not the best.

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.10 Blood Ending

“Oh god, Billy.” You couldn’t breathe. You could barely even think clearly with him lying dead, a steady pool of blood leaking out onto and staining the pristine, floral-patterned mattress of the bed. The scent was nauseating—a sickly sweet, metallic tang that hit your senses like a physical wall, thick and suffocating, mingling with the expensive, artificial gardenia perfume of the Macher master bedroom in a way that made bile rise in the back of your throat.

Vision swam, the edges of your perception darkening into pinpricks of black as your brain desperately tried to reject the reality unfolding in front of you. This wasn’t a scene from a movie. This wasn’t at all like the slasher flicks you and Randy used to obsess over. You felt so stupid. So ridiculously, dangerously naive. The way Billy’s body had crumpled—so heavy, so final, so devoid of everything that had been there only seconds ago—was a silent, crushing testament to the absolute, irreversible nature of violence. He was dead. Just like that.

The killer didn’t rush. They moved with a predatory, agonizing patience, the heavy soles of their boots echoing against the hardwood with the deliberate cadence of a funeral march. Each footfall felt like a countdown toward your own expiration. You backed away, your heels hit the edge of the mahogany bedside table; the sharp corner bit into your spine, grounding you in the nightmare.

“Please,” you whispered, the sound barely clearing your constricted throat. It felt pathetic, a hollow, fragile plea against the void of the mask. The killer’s head tilted, just a fraction, mimicking the curious, playful demeanor of a dog. But the eyes behind the eyeholes were unreadable—black, featureless voids reflecting nothing but the dim, amber glow of the bedside lamp. It felt deeply, obscenely mocking—this feigned confusion and curiosity at the sight of the terror it created..

Black fabric swept the floor and carpet below as the killer neared—tauntingly slow. The tip of the serrated knife scraped against the wood of the bedframe, a jagged, screeching sound that set your teeth on edge, vibrating through your skull. They were rounding the corner of the bed now, only a handful of steps away. Think. You have to think. The exit was blocked; the killer occupied the only path that led to the door. Your hands flailed behind you, desperate, searching for a weapon, a shield, anything. Your fingers brushed the cold, faceted edge of a heavy crystal perfume bottle. Your knuckles went white as you gripped it. It was a flimsy, ridiculous defense against a knife, but it was all you had.

You hurled the bottle with every ounce of your remaining strength. It shattered against the wall near the killer’s head—a missed strike, but the explosion of glass and violet-scented liquid provided a split-second of chaos. Frantically, you scrambled onto the cushioned surface of the bed, crawling over the duvet. Being agonizingly careful not to touch Billy’s still warm body, though the blood still created a stain of crimson on your clothes and hands. The killer flinched away from the gardenia scented spray, distracted by the shards, and by the time they turned, you had vaulted over the other side, feet landing clumsily on the floor with a dull thud. The floorboards were slick, coated in the spreading crimson that had leaked from the mattress.

A strained, jagged wheeze escaped your lips as you scrambled toward the entrance, your eyes glued to your dead friend. Billy didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to die like this at all.

The heavy thud of boots hitting the floor behind you snapped you back to the present. You didn't look back; you lunged for the bedroom door, slammed it shut, and flipped the lock just as a weight crashed against the other side. You turned and sprinted down the hallway toward the stairs. Make it to the stairs. Get to the crowd. Call the police. You were a foot from the landing when the door right next to the stairs burst open, revealing the same ghost-faced figure. Your heart felt like it was seconds away from pounding outside of your chest. This house was a trap, a sprawling, impossible maze like the Overlook that seemed to grow larger and more confusing the more you tried to escape.

With the killer fast approaching, you ran towards a door at the opposite end of the hall, opening it just in time to hit them in the face and causing them to fall to the ground for a brief enough moment to allow you to slam it shut. Grabbing the nearest item, a sun-bleached surfboard propped up against the wall, you leaned it against the handle of the door to prevent it from turning. 

Taking a glance around the room revealed it to be an attic based on the slanted ceiling, numerous boxes stacked on top of each other and leaning against walls. At the far end were windows. Without thinking, you crossed the length of the attic and made it just in time to the window. Outside, across the lawn was the News Van. Hitting the hard glass, you tried to draw the attention of whoever was in there, “HELP! PLEASE HELP ME!” 

But nobody noticed—in fact, you weren’t even sure if they could hear you—you started to double back when a heavy pounding started at the door. The surfboard provided a flimsy barrier as very quickly, the killer created a large enough gap to peer inside with their white mask and stretch a hand inside—palming against the wall and pushing the gap further.

Inhaling a jagged, sharp breath, you abandoned the door and window and scrambled toward a secondary, smaller window hidden behind a pile of old furniture. You shoved the boxes aside and scrambled out onto the slanted roof, the night air freezing against your sweat-soaked skin. You turned to pull the window shut, but your foot caught on a loose shingle causing you to slip, sliding down the incline toward the edge, the world tilting.

A hand shot out from the window, catching your wrist with a grip like a vice. You looked up, gasping, into that hollow, expressionless mask. You kicked and squirmed, the motion loosening their hold as they braced their other hand against the sill to try and yank you back up. You broke free, gravity claiming you, and plummeted, bouncing hard off the edge of the roof and onto the thick, heavy tarp covering the boat below.

Rolling off of the boat, a sharp, hot pain shot up your left leg upon trying to stand up, and for a moment the world around faded into a silent darkness. You weren’t entirely sure how long, but when you came to, gasping, everything came back into focus. When you tried to stand up again, that same darkness almost entirely flooded your vision again, only fading briefly after you leaned more weight on the other leg by bracing yourself against the boat to try to see if the killer was still there. 

The killer was leaning out of the attic window, their upper body silhouetted against the light inside, their hands tightly gripping the windowsill. At the sight of you struggling to your feet, the grip noticeably loosened, they slipped back inside and disappeared.

Closing your eyes, your breath coming in ragged, broken sobs, you fought to push the image away, but the horror was burned into your retinas. When you finally dared to open them again, the sight remained—unyielding and cruel. You froze. The air left your lungs, replaced by a scream that died in your throat, choking you from the inside out.

Tatum hung from the open garage door, her body twisted at an unnatural, broken angle, a grotesque marionette abandoned by its puppeteer. The mess of her blonde hair caught the light from the garage, turning the strands into a sickly, gold. Her eyes, wide and glassy, stared back at you with a terrifying, silent emptiness that seemed to demand an answer to a question you couldn't possibly provide. Your voice came out frail, a jagged whisper barely audible even to yourself, “No, no, no. Tatum, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

The sound of engines revving and tires crunching against the gravel driveway diverted your attention, acting as a frantic wake-up call to the adrenaline still surging through your veins. You realized you were standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse, exposed and vulnerable. You started running, your legs burning with every stride, pushing through the agonizing throb in your injured left limb. You stumbled, your knee hitting the pavement, but you didn't stop; you crawled, scrambled, and hauled yourself up, desperate to reach the road. If there were cars, there were people. If there were people, there was a chance to end this nightmare.

You made it to the side of the road, your chest heaving, just as the last of the partygoers began to peel down the street in a cloud of exhaust and recklessness. You waved your arms, your blood-streaked hands frantic against the dark backdrop of the night. “HELP!! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

Your screams were met with nothing but the high-pitched, intoxicated laughter and rowdy shouting of teenagers who assumed you were just another girl playing a dramatic prank. They didn't see the blood on your shirt; they didn't see the terror etched into your face. They sped by in a blur of headlights and indifference. As the final car roared past, a passenger leaned out the window, tossing an empty beer bottle toward you. It shattered on the asphalt near your feet, the sound mimicking the gunfire you had prayed wouldn't happen.

Flinching, you ducked away from the lethal spray of shards, the jagged glass stinging your skin. The realization hit you with more force than the physical impact: you were entirely alone. The isolation settled into the pit of your stomach, heavy and suffocating like lead. The world you lived in—the safe, boring, small-town world of Woodsboro—had fundamentally shattered, leaving you stranded in a reality where your pain was nothing more than a punchline for strangers.

“Assholes,” you hissed, the word trembling with a mix of fury and despair. You wiped your damp eyes, smearing dust and grime across your forehead. Turning away from the receding taillights, you pivoted toward the newsvan. It was still parked a bit in front of the house, with the wooden fence surrounding the yard acting as a barrier. You pulled it aside, breaking some of the old wood just to create a large enough gap that you could get through. There was a man leaning against the window, lights inside making him all the more visible. You made it to the back door and pounded on it. “LET ME IN.”

He jumped a bit, letting out a scream at the sight of you, before calming down once he realized you weren’t there to hurt him. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Rushing inside, you slid the door shut behind you as fast as you could manage. “They’re dead.” You crouched down on the floor, peering out the non-sliding door’s window. “My friends… they’re—”

“I have a camera set up in the house.” He said, face frozen in a dawning realization, managing to raise his finger to point at the small television screen in front of him. Displaying a live camera feed of the living room, Randy, and the killer walking slowly to stand behind him and starting to raise the knife. “RANDY! Oh god, I need to go help him—”

The camera man put a hand on your shoulder to stop you and placed his hand overtop the door handle. “Stay right here. I’ll be right back.”

The door slid open with a shudder, and he stepped outside to start running towards the house. He stopped suddenly, grasping at his neck. You tentatively drew closer, “Are—are you okay?”

He turned, eyes bloodshot and neck even bloodier. A thin, but deep gash leaked out the substance onto the front of his shirt. He coughed up blood, trying to speak, but failing. “30… 30 second delay.” 

Clawing at the door, he hunched over, before looking back up and pointing towards the back of the van. The killer appeared behind him, having hidden behind one of the doors, shoved him onto the ground and started to enter. Grabbing the handle of the sliding door, you shut it on their hand and they let out a muffled noise of pain. Looking around in a panic, you found a hole under the desk area that was concealed by some fabric. The killer could be heard trying to open the door by grasping at the handle with their trapped hand. Crouching down you crawled through the hole and were greeted by the damp night air hitting your face.

The sliding door opened loudly, and the heavy footsteps closed in just as you were about to crawl the rest of the way through, grabbing at your legs and trying to pull you back inside the van. Kicking, you kneed them in the face before falling out the rest of the way onto the paved road below.

Getting to your feet, you looked around anxiously, trying to find something, anyplace that you could hide. Dewey’s cruiser was still parked in front of the entrance, the noise of the van rocking from the movement of the killer having jumped out of it startled you into running towards the cruiser expecting to find Dewey but he was nowhere in sight.

Looking back the killer was nowhere in sight, which did nothing to put you at ease. “Dewey? Dewey, where are you?”

From the entrance of the house, movement caught your immediate attention and at the sight of Dewey clearly injured and struggling to walk outside of the house, bracing himself against the doorway, you started to run towards him. “Dewey! Are you okay?” The familiar shadow of the costume appeared behind him, your voice steadily raised in volume. “Dewey! Look behind you! LOOK—”

 You let out a gasping scream when he turned to have the knife stabbed into his chest and he collapsed to the floor in front of the door. Without thinking, you turned and started to run towards the car.

Making it to the driver's side door and opening it, shutting yourself inside just in time to dodge the killer. They were about to open it, but you pressed down on the lock—preventing the door from opening. Frustrated they went to the passenger side, hurriedly, you leaned over and clicked the lock down on that door as well. Once they gave up trying to open that door, and feeling safer, you frantically started sifting through and searching for the key to drive.

A knock on the window immediately drew your attention away from searching for the killer standing hunched over to look inside the driver’s side window. In their hand was the key, they jostled it tauntingly, tilting their head in that same mocking curiosity. Biting your lip, you looked around the car for something, anything that could help—a gun, or—

They disappeared under the car, and you were about to pull your legs close to you when the sound of the lock on the passenger side clicking back open alerted you. Stretching over and half sitting in the passenger seat now, you pressed it back down and right when you did that, the lock on the driver’s side opened as well. Pressing that one back down, you checked to make sure there weren’t any more locks when a staticky voice of a woman from the police radio Dewey had left in the car started to speak, “7825, suspect at 105 north avenue 52.”

The trunk of the car opened silently, and in your panicked attempt to grab the police radio, you didn’t even notice or realize. “Hello? Help me, please. I’m at Stu Macher’s house on Turner Lane. It’s 261 Turner Lane. Please, he’s going to try and kill me.”

The seat you were sitting in suddenly collapsed back and above was the ghostfaced killer looming over you—having pressed down on the seat lever. They pushed your arms down onto the seat. You screamed at the sight of the masked killer, but managed to wrench one of your arms free to open up the back door and fall out of the seat and onto the ground. 

Getting to your feet, you started to head back towards the entrance of the house. Crouching down near Dewey, you checked to make sure he was fine, and though you knew nothing about first aid, you could tell he was still breathing, just unconscious. With only a little bit of hesitation leftover, you took the gun that he had on his belt from him and looked over it. It looked like any other gun you’d seen in movies, but somehow the weight of it still threw you off.

“You’re okay! Jesus, we’ve got to get the fuck out of here!” Randy’s voice startled you, and you stepped over Dewey to start backing up inside. You didn’t want to think that he could be the killer, but the truth was, you didn’t know. It created a sinking feeling of guilt, but you were so scared. What if he was? 

You raised the gun, “Don’t come any closer.”

“Don’t shoot. Please, you have to believe me. I found Tatum. She’s dead. I think Stu did it.” Randy pointed back towards Stu, who had run from the back area of the house. The both of them walked closer, the gun shook in your grip.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s lying. Billy was right, you really did lose touch with reality.” Stu broke down into sobs, before continuing to draw closer.

Taking a step back, you tightened your hold on the weapon, leveling it at them. “Stay back!”

“Stu did it.” Randy kept his eyes trained on Stu, paranoid and completely ignoring the gun in your hands in his attempt to maintain distance.

Randy started up the stairs, getting to the landing, with Stu still at the bottom step, but closing in. Stu’s face was scrunched with grief, and anger, “He killed Billy. He killed Tatum.”

“You did it.” Randy yelled, looking between you, the gun, and Stu.

“You liar! How could you do this? I thought you were my friend.” Stu’s voice was barely audible through the sobs that once again broke. 

Randy stopped to exclaim, “No, I didn’t! Get away from me!”

Stu grabbed hold of Randy and pulled him down the stairs, he landed on the rock pavement below harshly, but got to his feet as fast as he could despite the pain. Stu, having gotten to the landing, approached with hands outstretched. “Baby, please, give me the gun!”

Randy started to climb back up the stairs with some difficulty, and Stu’s insistence increased when he glanced back and saw the other was getting up the stairs, “Give me that gun!”

“Christ, man! No, I didn’t. Why would I lie about this? He’s the one that did it!” Randy got to the landing and the both of them started to just point at each other and yell accusations. “Please, I didn’t do it.” Randy pleaded, voice breaking and eyes growing teary. “He did it. Please, you have to believe me.”

You couldn’t do this anymore. One of them could be the killer, but you didn’t want to be the one to realize who that was. Backing further into the house, you slammed the door shut and locked it. For a moment it was quiet, but it was quickly broken by the sounds of both of them yelling again and banging on the door. Stu’s voice faded, but Randy stayed, becoming panicked and banging his hands against the door, “Help, please! He’s going crazy!”

Taking off your glasses, you sunk to the floor. The gun fell loosely in your grip as you buried your face in your knees, trying desperately to muffle or block out the noise. Though it did little to help. You felt terrible. How could you do this? Assume one of your friends was the killer. Even just locking both of them outside out of indecision made your chest tighten.

Tears stained your pants, your breath coming out in choked gasps. You couldn’t do this. One of them had to be the killer, otherwise how could Billy, Tatum and that man have been killed. It couldn’t be anyone else outside of one of your friends.

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@kodaswrld for the super sweet divider!!

The ending chapters are probably gonna take a while to get done, and I’m really sorry about that. In the meantime, I should be releasing the first chapter for my Heathers story really soon though! I’ve only ever watched the movie, so I don’t know if the musical is that different or not.

Strawhats Redhaired Kid Donquixote Whitebeard Big Mom Cross Guild Heart

The Enies Lobby fortress stood starkly against the horizon, its stone spires piercing the turbulent clouds like jagged teeth, but the halls within the Judgement Tower were suffocatingly still. It wasn't the silence of strategic planning or the calm of a mission on hold; it was a vacuum, a hollowed-out stillness that seemed to vibrate within the very marrow of the CP9 agents’ bones. Every member was accounted for, lingering in the shadows, their presence a testament to lethal efficiency, yet there was a fraying, dissonant edge to their unity. They were all there, but they weren't complete. 

Something in the air had undeniably changed and what made it worse was that the exact reason for the change couldn’t be placed. Something—no, someone—was absent. 

But what made that absence worse was the fact that no piece of them—not smell, not sound, or even appearance could be remembered by any of the agents. Agents specialized in intelligence, now missing what felt like an absolutely fundamental piece of information.

The heavy doors to the strategy room burst open with an undignified crash. Spandam stormed in, his face twisted into a mask of petulant, sweating rage, his fingers drumming nervously against the hilt of Funkfreed.

"What is this?!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "Why is everyone just standing around like statues? Lucci! Kaku! We have reports to file! Missions to execute! Why is the atmosphere in here so... so depressing? It’s giving me a migraine!"

He paused, his beady eyes darting around the room, his gaze snagging on the empty chair at the head of the table—the seat that always seemed to have a faint, lingering warmth. "And where is... where is—"

He stopped. His mouth hung open, his tongue working soundlessly. He gripped his hair, pulling at it in frustration. "Where is... that annoying person who always fixes my paperwork? The one who tells me where I left my sword? Why can’t I remember their name?"

The silence that followed Spandam’s outburst was deadlier than any blade.

Rob Lucci stood with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on a patch of empty space beside him. His stillness was not the controlled predator’s posture he was known for; it was rigid, strained, as if he were fighting the urge to turn and address someone who wasn’t there. He felt the absence like a phantom limb, an infuriating, illogical gap in his awareness. He had checked his mental logs—the mission parameters, the tactical layout, the personnel count—and the numbers always reconciled. But the space beside him remained hauntingly, maddeningly empty. It was a tactical error he couldn't quantify, a breach in his own psyche that defied his training. Hattori cooed, feathers ruffling discomfortingly. The bird's beady black eyes looked around the room, searching, before settingly downwards to the floor. 

Kaku, usually quick-witted and composed, stared at a set of files on his desk. He found himself pausing mid-sentence during briefings, waiting for a specific, insightful remark that usually balanced his own analytical observations—a voice that would offer a dry, understated piece of feedback that cut through the noise of the others. The feedback never came. The silence stretched, long and thin, until the other agents began to look at him with wary, unvoiced questions that mimicked the same confusion that was starting to settle uncomfortably inside. He felt a sharp, intellectual itch—a missing cog in a machine that was supposed to be flawless and was now breaking.

Kalifa stood near the window, her cloth wiping down her spectacles with unnecessary force. She, who prided herself on cleanliness and order, found the emptiness of the common room an unforgivable filth. It wasn't dust or debris; it was the absence of a person who had provided a weird, grounding counterbalance and peace. Everything felt so uncoordinated now, she felt uncoordinated, and she wasn’t sure how or why. She remembered, or rather, felt the echo of, a presence that would quietly acknowledge her efficiency without the usual posturing. The memory was like a word on the tip of her tongue—a ghost of an interaction that left her feeling uncharacteristically exposed.

Even Jabra, who was constantly looking for a fight, seemed to have had the wind taken out of his sails. He paced the perimeter of the room, his eyes darting toward corners that were vacant, his claws twitching with a frustration that had no target. He missed the way their presence had acted as a catalyst, something that triggered a protective, possessive instinct he didn’t even know he harbored. The void felt like a threat, and for a man who lived to hunt, the inability to identify this invisible thief was an agony.

Fukuro and Kumadori were uncharacteristically quiet. The former didn't feel the urge to blurt out secrets, and the latter felt no desire to recite his dramatic elegies. The loss had paralyzed their typical quirks, leaving them trapped in a tower of stone that felt increasingly like a prison.

Rob Lucci finally spoke, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that barely rose above the howling wind outside. "The sector is secure. The mission parameters remain unchanged. And yet..." He paused, his gaze drifting to the empty air beside him. "We are compromised."

He didn't mean by an enemy pirate crew or an assassin’s blade. He meant by the terrifying, impossible hole in their ranks. They were the world's most elite assassins, trained to be emotionless tools of the World Government, yet they were currently suffering from a collective, gnawing grief for a person none of them could name.

Spandam trembled, his eyes wide. "Who are we talking about? Why does my chest feel like it’s being crushed whenever I try to remember their face? I can’t even remember what color their hair was…"

Lucci didn't look at his superior. He looked at where you used to occupy—that phantom space where you belonged. "You were the anomaly," he murmured, more to the empty air than the room. "You were the witness who had seen past our masks, the one who had humanized the monsters. And now, you have been stolen from the very reality we fight to protect."

The silence in the Judgement Tower deepened, hardening from a mere vacuum into something ancient and suffocating. Spandam, his face a map of pale terror and mounting confusion, slammed his fist onto the mahogany table. The sound, usually a catalyst for compliance, felt brittle and pathetic in the heavy air.

"Check the archives!" Spandam shrieked, his voice climbing into a jagged, desperate register. "Access the highest-level restricted data! If they were part of CP9, there must be a file, a history, a recruitment badge, a blood sample! Go!"

"There is nothing," Lucci whispered, his voice devoid of its usual predatory confidence. "There is no record."

Kaku, his mind still attempting to reconcile the impossible. He had cross-referenced the payroll, the bunk assignments, the food supplies, and the laundry logs. He went back five years, ten years, twenty, to the very foundation. He found traces of every single person who had ever stepped foot on this island—every minor recruit who died in training, every traitor executed in the shadows, every servant who had been dismissed.

But for you? Nothing. No birth certificate. No training dossier. No record of an intake evaluation. Not even a single piece of requisition paperwork for a uniform that would have fit your frame.

"It is not just that they are missing," Kaku said, his voice cracking, his composure finally shattering. "It is as if they were never born. They never existed."

The room descended into a state of catatonic shock. Spandam, pale as a sheet, clutched his head, his fingernails digging into his scalp. "Don't be ridiculous! I—I remember assigning them tasks! I remember them telling me how to organize these damn files! I can feel the memory of them standing right there! If they didn't exist, who the hell have I been talking to for the last three years?!"

Jabra, driven by an uncontainable, feral rage, slammed his fist into the stone wall, the impact cracking the masonry. "Stop saying that! I can still smell them! I can smell the damn soap they used to use! I can remember the way they’d look at me whenever I started bickering with Kaku! You don’t get memories like that from a lie!"

Kalifa, usually the bastion of cold, clinical detachment, collapsed into her chair. She stared at her own hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. She had tried to recall a single shared conversation, a single moment of genuine connection, only to find that the memory was a fragile, shifting thing, like trying to hold onto water. The more she concentrated, the more the details blurred—the color of your eyes, the shape of your hands, the tone of your laugh—all dissolving into a featureless, gray mist.

"We are suffering from a shared hallucination," Kalifa whispered, her voice a hollow, terrified murmur. "An elite assassin squad... the most mentally fortified humans on the planet... have all developed the same, perfectly synchronized delusion. We’ve collectively invented a person to fill the silence in our lives."

Kumadori sat on the floor, his long hair fanning out around him like a dark shroud. "If they are a lie," he murmured, his voice sounding ancient and broken, "then we are the architects of our own madness."

Lucci looked at them—past the foundational confusion and grief. The most lethal instruments the world had ever produced, they were coming apart at the seams. He looked back at the empty space, the space he had been guarding for years, the space that had defined his quietest, most vulnerable moments. If you didn't exist, then the last several years of his life had been built on a foundation of absolute, existential emptiness. Hattori rubbed his soft, feathered head against the side of Lucci’s face. 

He turned to the empty window, the wind whipping his coat, his eyes burning with a dark, terrifying resolve. He didn't care what the records said. He didn't care what the logic of the world dictated. He knew the weight of your presence, he knew the echo of your voice in the silence, and he knew the warmth that had once balanced the cold, lethal steel of his own soul.

You were real.

"It doesn’t matter what those records say," Lucci said, his voice a low, lethal promise that filled the tower with the scent of impending blood, "They’re wrong. We will find them. Track them down like any other target, and drag them back from wherever they’ve gone and. Beyond the mist where the world thinks it can hide them."

The agents straightened, their eyes hardening. The truth—that you were a "missing person" who had never been born—only made the hunt more vital. You weren't just a friend or an ally; you were the only thing that had ever made their existence meaningful. And if the universe wanted to deny your existence, they would make the universe bleed until you were real again.

Water damage. Or at least that was the easiest explanation for what happened to your TV that you could immediately come up with. That was what you would tell all your friends, family, and coworkers—a neat, tidy, and boring little lie that kept them from looking at you like you’d lost your mind, or worse, like you were suffering from some kind of psychological break. The truth was a lot more embarrassing, a clumsy, slapstick catastrophe that you had determined was better left a secret between you and the now very dead tv.

You’d tripped over your cat in a late-night, caffeine-deprived rush for a snack.

In your flailing, desperate attempt to recover your balance, you’d effectively launched a full, unopened can of Dr. Pepper like a projectile. It had struck the screen with a sickening thud, landing precisely in the charging port and the open vents of the television.

The machine had reacted instantly, screaming—a high-pitched, ozone-heavy shriek that sounded less like frying circuitry and more like a dying, metallic animal—before the screen flickered into a violent, blinding shade of bruised violet and then went permanently, aggressively dark.

It was a pathetic, mundane way for a piece of technology to go out. It wasn’t a glitch in the matrix or a cosmic event; it was just plain, stupid human error. You sat on the couch for hours, scrolling through forums and repair guides, searching online to see if devices were recoverable from a sugar-based carbonated beverage infiltration. The results were universally grim. Dr Pepper should have his medical license revoked.

You closed your eyes, leaning your head back against the worn cushions, letting the silence of the apartment press in on you. The financial stress felt like a physical weight in your chest; rent was due in three days, tuition was looming on the horizon next month, and even without those massive expenses, getting a new TV wasn’t something you were mentally or emotionally prepared to budget for. You just wanted to zone out, to watch something familiar and mindless to quiet the anxiety, but your source of escape was gone, and now it was just you and the mounting stress.

Then, the sound filled the room.

It wasn't the erratic static of a dying TV, nor the dull hum of a shorted circuit. It was crisp, vibrant, and impossibly loud—the triumphant, unmistakable swelling notes of the One Piece intro.

Your eyes snapped open, your heart hammering against your ribs. You stared at the console, certain your eyes were playing tricks on you. The screen was still pitch black, reflecting nothing, yet the music continued to pour out of the speakers with a clarity that defied the laws of physics. The tempo seemed to pulse, matching the erratic, frantic rhythm of your own heartbeat.

You sat frozen, your hands gripped tightly around your knees. This isn't happening, you thought, the rational part of your brain trying to dismiss the sound as a hallucination brought on by stress and sleep deprivation. Maybe even some weird technology glitch.

But the music intensified, growing deeper, more atmospheric. You practically leapt to your feet and scrambled toward the TV, your breath coming in ragged gasps. You paused just a few inches away, your skin crawling, before tentatively pressing your fingers against the cool, dark glass.

It yielded.

What should have been hard, unyielding glass pressed inwards like a heavy, viscous liquid. Your heart stuttered. The black surface of the screen rippled like disturbed water under the pressure of your touch. Panicked, you tried to pull your fingers back, but the screen was not glass—it was an abyss. A dark, non-reflective substance began to leak out from the bottom corners of the bezel, pooling on your hardwood floor with a soundless, oily grace. Your fingers were not just touching the screen; they were being pulled into it, as if the surface were a living, grasping membrane.

You couldn't feel your fingertips anymore. The sensation was gone, replaced by a deep, hollow chill that seemed to radiate from within the television. As you braced your other hand against the plastic casing, desperation clawing at your throat, the membrane surged. Your other arm was swallowed up to the elbow, dragging you forward, deeper into the surface. The numbness spread rapidly, climbing past your wrists, your elbows, and your shoulders, a cold tide that turned your muscles to lead.

The numbness didn’t disappear from fading, but rather from what felt like a suddenness that was most comparable to coming to the surface after being underwater for a long time. 

The impact knocked the wind out of you, leaving you gasping on a floor that was perfectly, terrifyingly polished. The smell hit you first—not the stale, claustrophobic air of your apartment, but a sharp, clinical scent of ozone, polished marble, and something else, unfamiliar but familiar at the same time.

You pushed yourself up, your palms stinging against the frigid marble surface. You weren't in your room. You were in the center of a cavernous, circular hall. The architecture was dizzying—soaring spires of stone and glass that looked out onto a swirling, eternal storm.

Enies Lobby.

The realization didn't come from a logic jump; it came as a physical weight in your gut. Before you could even scramble to your feet, the silence of the room was shattered by a sharp, rhythmic click-clack of heels against marble.

You looked up, and your breath hitched.

Standing in a semicircle around you were figures that defied reality. Rob Lucci stood at the center, his posture relaxed but his eyes—those predatory, unblinking eyes—fixed on you with a focus that felt like being pinned to a board. Hattori made a soft contented coo. Beside Lucci, Kaku stood with his arms folded, his long nose casting a shadow over a face that looked torn between intellectual triumph and raw, trembling disbelief. Kalifa stood near the periphery, her hand twitching toward her glasses, while Jabra loomed in the shadows, his teeth bared in a snarl that wasn't directed at you, but at the empty space you had suddenly materialized into.

Then there was the sound of frantic, stumbling footsteps. Spandam skidded into view, his face flushed, his eyes bulging as he stared at you.

"It... it's them," Spandam stammered, his voice climbing an octave. "You're real! The ghost! Lucci, tell me I'm not hallucinating!"

Lucci didn't blink. He didn't answer Spandam. He took a slow, calculated step toward you, the shadows in the room seeming to coil around his ankles. He stopped just within your personal space, his presence making the air feel thick enough to drown in.

"The records said you didn't exist," Lucci said, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that rattled your teeth. He reached out, his gloved hand hovering inches from your shoulder, as if he were afraid that if he touched you, you might vanish back into the static. "The archive said you were a phantom. A collective delusion."

He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over you—the bruises from the truck, the terror in your eyes, the mundane clothes that looked so alien against the fortress’s cold, imperial stone.

"But you are breathing," Kaku murmured, his voice laced with a terrifying, scholarly hunger. He stepped closer, his analytical gaze stripping you down, measuring you, cataloging you as if you were the most complex puzzle in the world. "I knew you were too real to be a lie."

"Why did you leave?" Kalifa’s voice was uncharacteristically jagged. She didn't move, but her posture had shifted, her defensive barriers crumbling into something desperate. "We spent years together... then you disappeared, almost like you never existed in the first place. You can’t imagine how much time we spent looking for a name that didn't exist, for a person the world insisted was a lie. How did you escape? And why did you think you could just fade away?"

Jabra finally stepped fully into the light, his eyes dark, his posture radiating a predatory, frantic possessiveness. "They didn't escape, Kalifa. They were stolen. And look at them—they're weak. They're broken." He crouched down, his shadow engulfing you. "Do you have any idea how much we had to break to find you? Do you have any idea what it’s like to hunt for a heart that doesn't beat in the records?"

You tried to back away, your heels scraping against the stone, but you were surrounded. The air felt charged, the intensity of their collective attention creating a vacuum that left you gasping. They weren't just looking at you; they were claiming you.

"No more vanishing," Lucci said, his voice a final, ironclad decree. He finally reached out, his gloved hand closing firmly over your shoulder. His grip was steady, possessive, and inescapable. "You are our anomaly. You are our witness. And you are never, ever stepping out of our sight again."

@thecutestgrotto for the wondrous dividers!!

I think this one may be my favorite besides the cross guild one!!

Dr Pepper is my favorite soda, so I’m sorry if I brought dishonor on it lol.

Hope everyone has a great night and weekend!! I’m making sesame scones tomorrow :D

I’m sorry this is kind of spoiling the next story drop, but I’ve been honestly on the fence about this. I was kind of curious to see if genderbending some of the characters would be welcome or not.

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.11 Blood Ending

Randy sighed, rubbing his eyes with his hands to try and get himself to focus on the movie. That was what he needed to do right now. Just watch the movie and distract himself from what was happening upstairs. He took a quick sip of beer, it didn’t taste great if he was being honest. Some part of him had hoped that this would help him not think about you, but truthfully, it kind of just made him feel worse.

Tatum was getting you medicine right now. Once you took the medicine and rested a bit, you’d probably be fine to come back down and watch a different movie—maybe Prom Night, god knows he needed some levity. It wasn’t like the two of you hadn’t watched Halloween more than a dozen times.

“Look. Look! Here it comes!”

The living room filled with the sound of teens yelling out in shock from the sight of Michael Myers appearing from the shadows of the movie screen to pull the nurse from the car and take it. Music underscored his movements as one of the boys immediately next to Randy commented, “The blood’s not the right color. Why do they do that? It’s too red.”

“Wait! Wait! Here comes another!” Randy said and immediately following that jumpscare, another one came, provoking a whole new round of shocked exclamations.

“Predictable. I knew she was gonna bite it. How can you watch this shit over and over?” Another asked, trying to provoke an argument. Randy instead shushed him, eyes locked on the screen, watching as the Doctor yelled into the night that Michael had escaped. Stu sighed, body collapsing over the couch, slouching over Randy. “I wanna see Jamie Lee’s breasts. When do we see Jamie Lee’s breasts?”

Randy tried to push him off, but with one hand already holding the bottle, it was made more difficult. “Get off me man. That doesn’t happen until “Trading Places” in ‘83. Jamie Lee was always the virgin in horror movies. She never show her tits ‘til she went legits.”

“Or she couldn’t afford a decent pair.” A girl commented to her friend snidely.

“That’s why she always outsmarted the killer in the big chase scene at the end. Only virgins can do that. Don’t you know the rules?” Randy asked her, confused and even slightly offended as she looked at her friend, whispering something to them.

“What rules?”

“You don’t—” Randy set down his beer loudly, the glass clanking against the wood of the coffee table. Picking up the remote, he paused it and moved to stand up. “Jesus Christ. You don’t know the rules?”

He moved to stand next to the tv, now frozen on a still frame of Michael brandishing a knife. Stu leaned over the couch, grabbing popcorn from the bowl on the table, “Have an aneurysm, why don’t ya?”

“There are certain rules one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie.” Randy picked up his beer from the table and put up one of his fingers, “For instance, Number One: You can never have sex.”

This prompted immediate booing, Stu and some of the others threw popcorn at Randy who made efforts to swat it away with little success. “BIG NO-NO! BIG NO-NO!”

Stu laughed, eating the bit of popcorn he had left. “I’d be a dead man.”

“Sex equals death.” Randy exclaimed, grabbing the teens attention again, he put up two fingers. “Number Two: You can never drink or do drugs.”

More yelling ensued, this time accompanied by them clinking their beer bottles together. Randy clinked his against the boy sitting closest before continuing, “No, the sin factor. It’s a sin. It’s an extension of number one.” He raised his bottle a little higher and put up three fingers. “And Number Three: Never, ever, ever under any circumstances, say “I’ll be right back,” ‘cause you won’t be back.”

Stu peeled himself off the couch and started to head towards the kitchen, but stopped to ask Randy, “I’m getting another beer. You want one?”

“Huh? Yeah, sure.” Randy said without thinking, about to continue where he left off.

“I’ll be right back!” Stu raised his arms like a zombie and moved backwards into the kitchen, mouth opened in an exaggerated groaning noise. This created the biggest chorus of yells and bottle-clinking so far. Randy scoffed in amusement, though he did look a bit concerned before he pushed the feeling down. “You push the laws and you end up dead. I’ll see you in the kitchen with a knife.”

Randy sat back down on the couch, unpausing the movie. The flash of the knife disappeared and was replaced by Jamie about to head to school. He liked horror movies—no, loved them—but was beginning to grow uncertain on whether he liked it when real life started to look like them. Some things were really best kept on the screen.

Tatum made easy work of finding the garage and the door leading to it. Opening the door to reveal the dimmed interior, she instinctively swept her hand over the left side wall of the door, searching for the lights. She succeeded in finding it, the buzzing of the old lightbulb hanging emitting a yellowish glow that lit up the entirety of the garage, but also emitting a slight humming sound similar to a particularly annoying mosquito.

The Macher garage was cluttered, every wall was stacked high with old unused bikes, cardboard boxes, boxes full of holiday decorations, and spiderweb city. On the right side were some cabinets that stored a half-empty first-aid kit and a variety of other medical supplies. Sitting beside the cabinets was a fridge, Tatum almost walked to, but she snapped her fingers real quick to get her own attention. The beer could wait.

Turning swiftly towards the cabinet, she started to sift through the contents—antacid, hydrogen peroxide, some bandages, ibuprofen, peptobismol—pepto might work, but this wasn’t really a stomach issue, this seemed more headache related.

Maybe ibuprofen? That usually covered most areas…

The sound of the door creaking shut caused her to glance towards it, but from what she could tell, it was just sliding back into its natural resting position. Shrugging she grabbed the ibuprofen and went to open the fridge door and started piling as many beers into her arms as she could manage.

Some of the gardening supplies propped up against the wall fell to the floor with a loud bang that caused her to hit her head a bit against the fridge from the shock. She could feel her heart racing a bit, but when she chanced a look over, she just saw the Macher‘s cat yowling as it made a mad dash out the cat door connected to the garage door.

Tatum sighed, trying to even her breath out. “Tatum, it’s okay.” She was overreacting, overthinking, and a bit buzzed if she was being honest. None of those were a good combination. Moving away from the fridge, she shut it with her hip and started towards the door and tried to open it.

It wouldn’t budge. The beers and medicine certainly didn’t help, but she wasn’t gonna chance putting those down just to open it and find a bunch of assholes cackling behind the door.

Tatum kicked the door in frustration before pounding on it with her arm that she freed from holding all the stuff. “Hey, Shitheads!”

No one answered, not even the sound of feet scruffing against the floorboards. “Shit. Piss.”

Tatum grumbled under her breath, leaning over and pressing the garage door button with her elbow and moving towards the now rising door. It loudly shuddered to a stop and she sighed, done with this. Tatum leaned over, about ready to play limbo with the damn thing when the door started to close back down, preventing her from even attempting to exit.

Turning around to go turn back on the switch, what she saw was the shadowy costume of a ghost standing at the top of the stairs, blocking the door, fingers pressed against the garage door switch. Was this some kind of prank?

“Is that you Randy?”

The stretched ghost mask slowly shook its head back and forth “no.” Typical. Tatum smiled mockingly, she wouldn’t let some weirdos prank get to her. “Cute. What movie is this from? I spit on your garage?”

Tatum walked towards them so she could pass them and go through the door. “Lose the outfit. Wearing it isn’t gonna help you get a date.”

They shook their hooded mask again, refusing to budge from their spot. Tatum sighed, it was probably easier to play into this, it would get her out of here faster. “Oh, you wanna play psycho killer?”

They nodded.

“Can I be the helpless victim?”

They nodded more enthusiastically. Tatum feigned a deep moment of thought before starting in an airy high pitched voice, “Okay, let’s see—No, please don’t kill me, Mr. Ghostface. I want to be in the sequel!”

Tatum laughed under her breath and started to push to move past him with her forearm, but he moved to block her, gripping her arm tightly. Okay, this was getting seriously annoying. “Cut, Casper. That’s a wrap.”

Tatum struggled to get out of his grip, dropping the beer bottles with a smash on the ground. The plastic bottle of medicine fell with a dull plastic sound in the puddle of beer and glass. “Randy, what the hell are you doing?”

The blade of a knife reflected the overhanging yellow lightbulb. Her forearm was wrenched tightly into place as they drew the knife slowly across it. Blood leaked out of the open wound and Tatum’s eyes felt stuck in place on the aching cut, she backed away from the approaching killer.

Once the door clicked shut behind the both of you, the rest of the house felt silenced. The Macher parents' bedroom was neat, orderly, and felt almost like a hotel room. It struck you as really odd, but in the moment it felt like a welcome relief being able to fall on top of the freshly made bed.

Billy sat on the edge of the bed next to where you were lying. He turned on the lamp which was perched on the bedside table, the faint light of it illuminating the corner you were both in. Closing your eyes, you hummed. That bittersweet chalky taste was finally starting to go away, as was that overwhelming lightheadedness.

Sleep crawled through the corners of your vision, but was halted by Billy whispering, “Doing better?”

Cracking your eyes open a bit, you said back in a hushed tone, “Lots, I think I should be good to go back down in a few minutes.” Moving to sit up, you continued. “You can go back down if you want to. I don’t want to stay here since you probably came to pretend like everyone else.”

“Pretend?”

“Yeah… like all of this isn’t happening. You know, Tatum said they’ll probably find the killer tomorrow. I really hope she’s right...”

He wrapped his arm around your shoulder. The warm weight of it wasn’t crushing, but rather, something that drew away from the heaviness that was beginning to settle inside. “She is. When I was in holding, I think I heard that they had some other suspects they were looking into.”

“Really? But—who?”

“They haven’t been able to find Neil Prescott since the killings started.”

“I thought he was out of town, Sidney said—”

“She hasn’t heard from him since the night before he left. And the cops haven’t been able to get into contact with him or his hotel.”

You leaned down, placing the weight of your elbows on top of your knees and burying your face in your hands for a minute. “Oh my god. I—I can’t imagine that. No wonder she stayed home.”

Exhaling, you tried to calm the resurfacing anxiety that felt like a beehive buzzing inside your ribcage. “I was kind of wondering—in holding—who did you call?”

Billy moved to take his arm from where it had wrapped around your shoulders, clearly confused and hurt. “You don’t really think I’m the killer, do you?”

“No. No, of course not.” You quickly moved to place your hand on his arm in reassurance. “I was just thinking about it earlier and curious. Randy and I watched a Nightmare on Elm a few days ago and—”

“—Jsu Garcia got arrested for Tina’s murder.”

A small laugh escaped at the quick catch-on, the once tense air turning more relaxed once again, thank god. Not knowing how to continue the conversation forward, the thing that Tatum said earlier distracted you from any other topics. “I—um…” You nervously moved to hug your arms to your body, “Tatum said earlier, on the ride over, that—um… apparently Randy has a crush on me…”

Saying it out loud did no good at clearing away that weight, instead it just felt worse. And all you could do was question why you even thought this was a good topic of conversation. Billy didn’t say anything, in fact, he had turned to stare at the door for so long. But, it felt like the floodgates had just opened. It was confusing. Everything was confusing and you weren’t entirely sure how you even felt. “I don’t know what I’m even gonna do about it—I don’t even know for how long he’s felt like that.” Sighing, your gaze turned from the bedsheets below back to Billy. “Tatum made it sound like it was—”

He kissed you.

It was shock that froze you in place before you pushed him off, getting to your feet and moving to stand at the foot of the bed to create more distance. It was silent. This couldn’t happen. Especially not now. God, what would Sidney think? Should you tell her about this? Why were you debating this? Of course you would. But why did he? “Billy—What? I don’t—”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just thought—”

The door to the bedroom slammed open, that same costume you’d seen in the hallways was now at the entrance of the bedroom and stalking towards Billy with a knife in hand. For a naive moment you thought it was the same kind of sick, fucked prank you’d seen before. But the knife—there was blood on it. Actual blood. Not the kinds you’d seen in movies because this stuff wasn’t nearly as red. “BILLY WATCHOUT!”

The scream felt almost unrecognizable as your own voice, but Billy was too slow in reacting as the killer plunged the knife into his abdomen in a flurry of motion. Billy collapsed in a heap, still and unmoving. The killer stood up, turning to stare at you now. They took the sharp edge of the knife and cleaned the blood off with their gloved hands. The blade was now clean.

Pinterest for the header

Fantastical dividers by @strangergraphics and @kodaswrld <3 <3

Yandere Laughing Jack x American McGee’s Alice!Reader

Ch.2

What happened that night couldn’t have been coincidental. In fact, it hardly felt real. But the worst things often make the least amount of sense.

The clock ticked in time with the key swinging like a pendulum on a string in front of you. What surrounded it was beginning to darken until only the key remained visible in front of you. Still swinging despite your eyes coming to a close.

The brass key hummed—a rhythmic, dull vibration that clicked against the air like teeth on tin.

“Come now, it’s only a dream.” Bumby’s voice felt like it was echoing within your skull, flat and clinical, smelling faintly of the lavender water he used to scrub his cuffs. The darkness which had drowned out everything was starting to flicker with the movement of intangible shadows—movement you couldn’t make out no matter how much you focused. They were elongated, accordion-pleated outlines that rose and fell like long limbs draped over the furniture of your mind, expanding and contracting with every tick of the doctor's fob watch.

But then came the sound—faint, but oh so familiar.

Screams. And behind them, beneath the screaming, the same song that used to bring you so much comfort, but comfort was the furthest thing it brought now. But with the crackling of fire and splintering of wooden beams collapsing.

“It’s not a dream, it’s… a memory. And it makes me sick!”

“Now, focus. Wait… You’re floating, again. Weightless… a cipher… relax.” At the sound of the doctor's voice, the shadows sharpened, brightening into flashes of red and yellow—vibrant, primary stripes that scorched the back of your eyelids before turning instantly into smoke. Through the heat was still the faint outline of something—no, someone. A towering silhouette with a pointed, impossibly sharp face, standing perfectly still while the world turned to kindling. It was hard to breathe. The air in your throat tasted of sulfur and stale peppermint.

“Fire! I’m in hell!”

The doctor hurriedly cut in, his boots leather-creaking as he shifted on his desk. “Forget it! Abandon the memory. It’s unproductive. Go… to Wonderland.”

Darkness washed away the flames, but brought no peace with it. You could make it out—Wonderland. But it was like trying to capture a shadow. Ever elusive and more frustrating with each failed attempt. “I can’t. I’m trapped… in my past.”

The screams which had faded were suddenly deafening in your ears. Trapped in the burning home that used to be yours. You couldn’t make out the faces or distinct features of the people that had crowded around in front of you, but the voices were unforgettable. “Sergeant, this girl is badly burnt. Call for a doctor!”

You moved closer to the house, the flames burning brighter, hard to look at, but also hard to look away from. Through the roaring orange light, a small toy box sat on the floor of the nursery, its metal latch melting like wax, yet the lid remained stubbornly, violently closed. Until it too became a blackened smudge like something made from ink, running down the canvas of your thoughts in monochrome tears.

Bumby’s voice pulled you away from getting closer; the house disappeared under a wave of water and mist. “No! Discard that delusion. Forget it. Go to Wonderland.”

“Doctor, I can’t. My Wonderland’s shattered. It’s dead to me.”

His voice grew sharp and impatient, the patronizing warmth slipping into something cold and metallic. “Your preference doesn’t signify, girl. Now, where are you?”

The mist faded into the crevices of a maze of small shops and tents selling cotton candy, peanuts, and popcorn, but the water stayed. You stayed in the bobbing up and down motions of a small boat which floated down the narrow streets between the stalls. Yet the sugar-spun air of the carnival was wrong; the cotton candy hung from the wooden pegs like clumps of damp, unwashed wool, smelling faintly of rotted fruit. Sitting on the opposite side of the boat was a familiar face, the lopsided ears, large hat, and wide eyes. White Rabbit.

“I’m sailing. With a friend!”

But something was different about him, about this whole place from what you remembered. The colors that once flourished now looked washed out, bleached and empty in a deafening way that felt out of place. The blue banners above the tents were the color of bruised slate; the reds had been systematically scrubbed away, leaving only a stark, bone-white canvas.

“It’s different somehow. Things have changed.”

“Change is good.” The doctor assured from somewhere far above the water. “It’s the first link in the chain of forgetting.”

The rabbit quacked, shivering in a manner that looked painful. His fur was missing in patches, revealing skin that looked like wet papier-mâché, gray and water-logged. His eyes were unblinking, bloodshot and darting behind you—staring with absolute horror at the space right over your shoulder, at something large and striped that was crouched on the canopy of the boat. Something was wrong. Shadows which filled the spaces of nothing in-between the stalls widened, stretching past you until the boat started to rock unsteadily. You reached out to him, concerned. “What’s happening? Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad.” The doctor expressed in clear confusion, his professional distance fracturing, but you ignored him.

“Rabbit.”

He continued to shiver, his jaw falling open into a breathless noise that you tried but couldn’t make out. It was a repetitive, hollow clicking—the sound of a small brass crank being turned over and over in the dark. Drawing your hand back, you tried to steady yourself on the increasingly rocky boat.

“That’s not right. What’s he doing here?” the doctor demanded, his voice suddenly sounding distant, as if he were being drowned out by an oncoming tide.

The colors had truly started to disappear, but the red of blood that leaked from the crevices of Rabbit's shaking and opened jaw was hard to ignore. It was the only color left in the world, wet and sticky, reminding you of a dead bird you had once found in a garden long ago. It stained down his neck, pooling onto the boat floor below. “Is something wrong?”

The Rabbit’s breathlessness finally gave way to his faint voice, a dry rattle that sounded like paper being shredded. “Something’s wrong. Raaather…”

His head fell onto the boat floor with a dull, wooden thud, rolling next to your feet. You gasped and backed away, though there wasn’t much further you could go. The water below had turned from a faint turquoise to black—an oily, chemical black that smelled of soot. The red from Rabbit had too faded to that ugly black, losing its luster within seconds. So much of it—no longer dripping down, but spraying up into the air to come back down like some hellish rain from the empty hole of Rabbit’s neck.

“Oh no, not that!”

“Don’t struggle. Let the new Wonderland emerge.”

What emerged from the darkness was just the same, if not worse than what you had glimpsed earlier. That thing was behind Rabbit. The stretched outline you had glimpsed earlier in the fires of hell was taking shape even more; it was familiar, but not in a way that was comforting. A pair of long, striped sleeves extended from the dark, the fingers pointed like iron needles, hovering just inches above your head. From the depths below came hands—dozens of them, the featureless, gray-ash hands of side-show performers who had lost their faces—scratching, clawing, and pulling you down into the water.

You could hear your own voice faintly through the suffocating water, bubbling up into the monochrome dark. “Pollution! Corruption! It’s killing me. Wonderland is destroyed! My mind is in ruins!”

“Forget it. Block that dream! Wake at the sound.”

The hands continued to weigh you down further into the dark, but even through that, you could still make out that same shape above you now—a long, striped cone nose pointing down into the abyss, and two hollow, sunken sockets that watched you sink with a patient, terrible hunger.

You gasped awake, your head aching a familiar, but thoroughly unwelcome pulse. The lights from the windows of Dr. Bumby’s office didn’t ease the pain in any way, nor did the uncomfortable stiffness from having gone under while still sitting up. The scent of carbolic soap and lavender water rushed back into your nose, but beneath it, your tongue still tasted the faint, greasy residue of burnt sugar.

He, himself, was seated on the flat surface of his desk, adjusting his waistcoat. “There. Better now, aren’t we?”

The doctor's words, despite intended as being kind, felt more mocking than anything with the pain that chimed with the same persistence as a clock. “My head’s exploded and there’s a steam hammer in my chest.”

“Yes, but the cost of forgetting is high.”

“My memories make me vomit. What can I—”

“Remember other things.” He cut off sharply, standing from his sitting position on his desk to go look outside the window into the smog of London. His fingers tapped a rhythmic, four-beat count against the glass. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

“I want to forget!” You insisted, frustrated at the same words you had heard every appointment and meeting with him. “Who would choose to be alone, imprisoned with their broken memories?”

“I’ll set you free. Memory is a curse more often than a blessing.”

“So you’ve said. Many times. And—”

“And I will say it again.” The doctor seated himself on the chair across from you, his shadow falling long and heavy across your lap. “The past must be paid for. Now, before our next session, collect those pills from our High Street chemist.”

You restrained yourself from arguing further, moving to stand up, the velvet of the chair feeling strangely hot against your palms. “Very well, doctor.”

Walking towards the door, you could hear the faint noise of feet moving just outside of it, opening it just confirmed the sight of the next patient immediately after you. Issac was sweet, though impulsive in almost every way. He stood in the hall, his small fingers pulling frantically at the hem of his dirty smock.

“It’s my turn to forget,” he declared, his voice high and trembling. You were barely able to hold the door open as he ran past, his small boots scuffing the wood.

Dr. Bumby turned to Issac, his attention completely shifted onto the young boy now settled in the same seat you were minutes prior. He reached into his pocket, his hand brushing against something that made a faint, metallic clink like a key. “Now Issac. Your Pa was hung for killing your Ma, who beat you. Let’s forget that shall we? The past is dead, Issac.”

Hovering near the door, you hesitated—something felt off. The air in the room felt heavy, compressed, like the sky right before a thunderstorm, and for a terrifying second, you thought you saw a pair of long, black-and-white striped suspenders dangling from the coat rack behind the doctor’s chair. You blinked, and it was only a pair of old measuring tapes.

Shaking your head to clear the static, you closed the door and started down the hallway. The walls of Dr. Bumby’s office were thin as you could still hear his voice, though fainter, the further you went.

Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth was a much better accommodation compared to Rutledge. Though, truthfully, anything is a better accommodation compared to Rutledge. You had your own private room, and though barren, you had spruced up with some drawings, a photograph of your family, and a handful of keepsakes you’d managed to snag from your former place of living for those ten years.

The children you passed on the way to the door whispered, making no attempts to hide their contempt, their eyes tracking the ink stains on your fingers. But at least they were upfront about their dislike—you much preferred it to bitterness hidden under sugary sweetness.

Outside, the sky made everything look more muted despite the rain having long since stopped earlier that morning. The stone steps of the Home gave way to cobblestoned streets, with the only thing dividing the building from those same streets being a large heavy iron gate which barred the sign indicating its exact purpose. As you crossed through the open gates, you commented under your breath, “Another day. A different dream, perhaps.”

The path to the High Street chemist was familiar enough that you instinctively knew to go down the left path and keep following that same road. Past the same violin player that was always there and playing the same song—a repetitive, looping melody that sounded horribly like an old circus march played at half-speed—and past the many outdoor shops selling meat, leather, and a variety of other goods. Further, still, you had to go, but you stopped at the sight of the mangy thing sitting at the entrance of one of the alleys.

The cat's white fur was soot-stained, its body frail against its bony frame. It looked remarkably like the old family cat that had perished in the nursery, its coat ruined by gray ash.

It let out a loud, but wheezing meow upon your slow approach before scurrying off further into the alley as you called out after it, “Hello puss. Puss, puss, puss, puss! Don’t be afraid!”

The white of its fur stood out almost vibrantly against the muddy charcoals of the streets and buildings, making the cat easy to track through the many alleys and corners you darted through. Corners that opened and stretched into areas you knew were best not to dwell in for too long—prostitution wasn’t necessarily uncommon, but the people that lurked in those places were definitely better left staying far from on your part.

Quickly ducking into the next side street, you ran down it in pursuit of the cat, mumbling under your breath, “Seems following furry creatures into dark holes has become a habit. I hope it’s not a vice.”

Though, unfortunately, your pursuit yielded little reward, as the cat had vanished from your sight, leaving you in a small, enclosed courtyard between several towering brick warehouses. Sighing, you walked around the bricked center you had come to a stop in. Surrounding the area were buildings, but beneath the setting sun and encroaching night, it was beginning to look extremely isolated and deserted. The London fog was rolling in, thick and gray, carrying with it a sudden, inexplicable smell—the distinct, heavy scent of old peppermints left to rot in a damp drawer.

You were about ready to call it a day and head back to Bumby’s, but the sound of an all-too-familiar crackling wheeze drew your attention.

“I see you’ve managed to get yourself lost again.”

Turning, you faced it.

This wasn’t the same cat you had been following, that much was apparent. Its fur was a dense, smoky black that seemed to shift and drift like coal exhaust, and as it moved, you could see the faint, red-hot embers of an unquenchable fire dancing throughout the texture of its pelt, pulsing like a buried heartbeat. No, this was not the same cat as before, as was the unforgettable fact that normal cats don’t talk.

And most importantly, normal cats don’t grin.

It sat atop a pile of discarded shipping crates, its mouth split open into an ugly, wide grin made entirely of broken glass shards, yellowed to the exact, sickening shade of human teeth.

“I’m not lost, I was following a white—”

“Rabbit? I thought you were more creative than that.” The cat flicked its tail, a small shower of orange sparks drifting into the fog before dying on the wet cobblestones.

“Maybe I would be if you didn’t cut me off as often as you do.” Turning away from the cat, you glanced around the square. Unlike the other places you’d been, the isolation here was more off-putting instead of a welcome peace. The brick walls seemed to stretch up forever, blocking out the sky until the courtyard felt like the inside of a massive, closed box. “Why haven’t I been able to get to Wonderland? It’s been practically inaccessible outside of those dratted sessions with Dr. Bumby, almost like it’s been locked away.”

“Have you considered that maybe the reason why you haven’t been able to enter as effortlessly as you used to is a fault on your end?”

You crossed your arms, practically hugging them close to yourself. “Of course I have… it’s because of the music box, isn’t it? I left him… him and everyone else.”

“If the existence of everyone in Wonderland was dependent on the whims of a music box, we’d all be dead by now?” The cat's eyes crinkled, though his grin stayed unmoving as it always did—if you thought about it, you weren’t entirely sure if the cat could do anything outside of grin. His body started to disappear, almost like ash dispersing in the wind, the toothy smile remained for a few seconds after he disappeared which too faded almost by the blink of your eyes. He left with the parting words, “Though that remains to be seen.”

Sighing, you hissed under your breath, annoyed at his sudden disappearing act, though it wasn’t entirely unsurprising. He always did that. Explained things in a purposefully ominous and confusing manner and vanished the minute you started to question him further.

The sudden grip of a hand on your shoulder startled you, causing you to turn and be greeted by Nurse Witless, “My stars and garters, it’s you! Slumming again are we?”

“Nurse Witless! What luck. Twice in as many months.”

“Out on your own? You look frazzled, Dearie. Not doing well?”

“Not really.” You admitted, though the words felt stuck to the back of your throat.

She smiled, moved her wrinkled hand to adjust the wired glasses on her nose. “Come along home, then, and look at my pigeons. Pretty birds… like you.”

“I don’t think so.” You asserted, in no mood to go in circles with her. The last time you had tried to get information from her, it had proved even more futile than throwing coins in a fountain. “Our last visit cost me several pounds and got me nowhere.”

Nurse Witless’ smile turned taught before softening into that grandmotherliness that looked so out of place on her. “I might know where your burnt little music box is.”

The box was painted vividly with the lines of a circus and the many animals populating it—some stranger than others. There were giraffes with flowers in place of their spots and blue-paper lions whose manes were clipped into neat, geometric ruffs. But at the center was where you had seen him. It wasn’t the most detailed drawing since it was simplified due to the size, but he was bright. So much brighter than everything else with rainbow stripes, a conical nose, feathery shoulders, and red hair the same shade as cherries in the summer.

It had been your fifth birthday, a day when the windows of your bedroom had become battered by a sudden, violent summer tempest. The sky outside had turned the bruised purple of an old plum, and the thunder didn't just rumble—it cracked against the glass like iron plates breaking. At the time, the world outside the heavy mahogany frame of the Liddell manor had suddenly become an unpredictable, roaring monster. You had crawled beneath the heavy velvet dust ruffle of your bed, clutching your knees, your heart hammering a frantic, rhythmic panic against your ribs.

This wasn’t at all how the day was supposed to go. As selfish and hopeful as it may have been, you had really been wanting to go outside. Go to the park, and play in quaint gardens with Lizzie. But now that feels too far away for you to do anything but curl into yourself.

Then, your mother’s hand had reached through the dark, sliding the heavy tin box across the carpet.

The lacquered metal slid over the floorboards with a soft, scraping hiss that temporarily drowned out the howling wind against the eaves. Even in the dim, dust-mote shadows beneath the mattress, the colors on the tin seemed to hum with their own light. Your mother’s voice followed, soft and grounding, though her face remained obscured by the heavy drape of the bedskirt. "I’m sorry today didn’t go as you’d hoped. This is a special friend for a rainy afternoon. When the world outside gets too loud, you only have to turn the crank, and he'll make a space just for you."

Your small, trembling fingers reached out from the safety of your tucked knees, touching the cold, smooth metal. The key on the side was shaped like a brass clover, cool and solid against your thumb. As the house groaned under another heavy buffet of wind, you squeezed your eyes shut and turned it.

Click. Whir. Click.

The internal mechanism was stiff at first, complaining with the heavy, metallic sigh of a toy that had been waiting a very long time in a dark shop window. But as the brass gears caught, a melody began to bleed out from the perforations in the lid—a slow, sweet one of Pop Goes the Weasel that left the faint smell—rather inexplicably of spun strawberry sugar and fresh wood shavings. With every rotation, the frantic pounding of the storm outside seemed to recede, pushed back by the rhythmic, chime-like notes.

And then, with a cheerful, metallic pop, the lid flew open.

He didn't burst forth with the jarring, aggressive snap of the cheap jacks sold on the London street corners. He rose gracefully on a thick, canvas-covered coil that swayed with a gentle, hypnotic rhythm. Up close, he was magnificent. His shaggy tresses of red wool yarn fell over a face painted a soft, clean white, dominated by a wide, welcoming red-painted smile that lacked even a hint of malice. His nose was a perfect, swirly cone of primary reds and butter-yellows, pointing directly down at you with an inquisitive tilt.

"Hello," a voice seemed to chime within the space behind your eyes, perfectly matching the cadence of the calliope music. "Are we hiding from the growling clouds? How terribly boring. Let's build a proper tent instead."

In that exact moment, the cramped, dusty dark beneath your bed began to expand. The heavy mahogany legs of the bedframe stretched upward, melting into towering poles of red-and-white canvas. The smell of rain and old carpet dissolved, replaced by the crisp, sweet air of an infinite midway. The blue-paper lions on the box stepped off the tin, their geometric manes rustling like dried parchment as they shook themselves and sat down like giant, loyal hounds at the border of your blankets.

Jack too had grown, leaning down over you, though it was by no means intimidating. His feathery, rainbow-striped shoulders rustled as he tilted his head. He didn't have the rigid, unyielding structure of wood; he felt pliable, soft, and entirely dedicated to the child who had turned his key. When the next clap of thunder shook the foundation of the house, he didn't let you flinch. He reached out with his long, striped cloth arms, wrapping them completely around your small frame, pulling you close.

He was a shield made of color and cotton. Hiding your face in his bright feathers, you couldn't hear the rain anymore. You couldn't feel the cold draft of the storm. He had built a fortress out of a nursery game, and as long as his music box kept its winding, you were the safe, undisputed sovereign of his grand parade.

The memory fractured with a sharp, brittle sound, like ice cracking under a heavy boot.

The vibrant red hair and the smell of strawberry sugar vanished into a suffocating cloud of soot, pulling you back to the cold, deserted brick courtyard of the London side street. Your fingers twitched against the empty air, still feeling the phantom shape of a brass clover key that had long since rusted shut.

Swallowing back the painful tightness which had settled in the back of your throat, you dug your nails into the palms of your hands. It hurt, but it was grounding. A stinging needle-like pain, but drawing a fresh breath, it diminished. You needed the distraction of it right now. Maybe Bumby was right, memory truly was more of a curse than a blessing at some times.

Nurse Witless was already heading towards her home, you trailed a bit behind her. If she knew where your music box had ended up, you would find out.

Pinterest for the Header

@cozy-menagerie and @cursed-carmine for the wonderful dividers!!

Sorry if this one is a bit odd, I’ve gotten really into Creepypastas lately and really wanted to work on one!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Strawhats Redhaired Kid Donquixote Whitebeard Big Mom Cross Guild CP9

The Polar Tang cut through the churning, frigid currents of the Grand Line, its yellow hull a stark, vibrant anomaly against the deep, bruised indigo of the ocean. Inside, the usual clinical, humming efficiency of the submarine—the rhythmic thrum of the submarine’s engine, the muffled clatter of medical tools, the normal hushed discussions—felt hollow, vacant. It wasn’t a lack of noise that disturbed the air; it was a lack of presence.

The air inside had grown thick, not with the typical scent of saltwater and antiseptic, but with a lingering, hollow stagnation. It was the silence that sought fulfillment, but there was nothing present that could. Not anymore.

Every crew member was accounted for. Law had checked the manifest three times, his brow furrowed in a way that had nothing to do with surgical stress. He’d checked bunks, attendance, bounties, and even the purchase history of food to try and see if there was an additional amount. But each one came with the same answer that felt more offputting than comforting. On paper, everything and everyone was accounted for. But internally, something felt so far off, it was starting to feel impossible to breathe.

It was in the mess hall where it hit hardest. There was a seat near one of the window panels that everyone instinctively skirted around. It wasn't blocked off, but it felt occupied by an invisible gravity. A coffee mug had sat on that table for three days; no one had moved it, no one had cleaned it, because doing so felt like an act of desecration.

Law leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his eyes scanning the crew. He was looking for someone to break the tension with a joke, someone to offer a soft, unsolicited opinion on his latest research that didn't come from a place of subservience or fear.

"Bepo," Law said, his voice unusually raspy.

"Yes, Captain?" the bear-mink replied, pausing his work. He looked at Law with an expression of profound, soul-deep confusion that mirrored the Captain’s own. He, too, was lost.

"Who usually sits there?" Law pointed to the empty chair.

Bepo looked at the seat, then at the wall, then back at Law. He didn't answer. He couldn't. He looked as if he were trying to grasp smoke with his claws.

The void was terrifying. It wasn't just a memory lapse; it was a sensory deprivation. They remembered the feeling of a presence—the way the tension in the room would dip whenever this person entered, the quiet, non-judgmental hum of companionship that had anchored them through the harshness of the New World. They remembered that this person was the only one who didn't look at Law’s tattoos with apprehension, but with a gentle, grounding familiarity.

"I... I don't know, Captain," Bepo whispered, his voice trembling. "But it hurts, doesn't it?"

Penguin and Shachi drifted closer, their usual banter dead in their throats. They looked at the empty seat, and the lack of a name made their chests ache with a physical, crushing pressure. It was like trying to remember a color that had been erased from the spectrum.

Law walked over to the table and hovered a hand over the cold ceramic of the abandoned mug. He felt a desperate, irrational need to find the owner, to anchor them back to the ship before the emptiness swallowed them whole. The Polar Tang was moving, but it felt like they were drifting in a void, disconnected from reality and so lacking in light.

"They were here," Law murmured, his voice cold and terrifyingly certain. "They were the one who kept us grounded, who understood and supported us. And now they’re gone."

He didn't just feel an absence; he felt a theft. Something—or someone—had reached into the very fabric of his crew and pulled out the piece that kept them human. The surgeon in him demanded a diagnosis, but his heart only registered the terrifying, gaping wound where a person should have been. Where you should’ve been.

The silence on the Polar Tang was no longer merely atmospheric; it had become an active, suffocating entity. Law’s hand remained suspended over the ceramic mug, his fingertips inches from the rim, but he lacked the courage to touch it. He feared that if he made physical contact, the last lingering evidence of your existence would shatter into dust, leaving him with nothing but the cold, clinical reality of an empty mess hall.

"Captain?" Penguin’s voice was uncharacteristically thin, slicing through the heavy, stagnant air. He and Shachi stood a few paces behind, their hands hovering near their weapons as if they expected an enemy to materialize from the shadows of the corridor. "If they aren't on the ship—if they aren't on the manifest—then where are they? It’s like the ship is haunted by someone who never walked its decks, but my skin... it recognizes their ghost. It feels like a limb I didn't know I had has been amputated."

Law’s gaze snapped up, his silver-grey eyes burning with a mixture of analytical fury and profound, uncharacteristic grief. "It’s not a haunting, Penguin. A haunting implies a lingering spirit. This," he gestured to the empty chair, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low rumble, "is a surgical removal. Someone—or something—has taken a scalpel to our shared memory and excised a vital organ. The fact that we can feel the scar tissue itching is the only proof that they were once as essential to our survival as a heart."

He paced the length of the mess hall, his boots clicking with rhythmic finality against the metal deck. The crew, drawn by the gravity of his distress, began to filter into the room. Usually, they would have been bustling with their assigned duties, but the ship’s rhythm had been broken. Even Bepo had ceased his maintenance, standing near the bulkhead, his massive frame hunched as if shielding the room from an encroaching chill.

"We aren't just looking for a missing crewmate," Law continued, his voice hardening into the tone he used for high-stakes pre-op briefings. "We are looking for the missing piece of our moral compass. Whoever they were, they didn't just 'keep us grounded.' They were the witness to our humanity. When we’re forced to make choices that would turn lesser men into monsters, there was a specific, quiet validation I relied on. I don't remember their face, but I remember their lack of judgment. And that is a commodity far too rare in the New World to simply vanish."

The crew members exchanged glances. They were pirates, yes—men who had seen the worst of the Grand Line—but this wasn't the camaraderie of a drunken revelry. This was an existential crisis. Shachi moved forward, his usual bravado replaced by a raw, searching look. "Captain, what happened to them? All of us remember them, so they were here without a doubt. But, then… why did they go? Why did we let them go if they were this important?"

Penguin placed his hand on Shachi’s shoulder to stop the other from further spiraling, “He’s right. If they were as important as a heart like you say, Captain… How are we still here? If they’re essential to our survival—to our existence… where are they?”

Law stopped his pacing, his hands tightening into fists at his sides. His devil fruit hummed beneath his skin, a thrumming reminder of his power to rearrange reality, yet he felt profoundly, agonizingly helpless. He could restructure the world within his Room, but he couldn't reach into the void that had consumed you.

"If they were truly dead, we would be as well," Law stated, his eyes narrowing, "They are not dead. People who are dead leave bodies, they leave graves, they leave traces. This... this is a theft."

He turned back to the window, staring out into the indigo darkness of the sea, his expression hardening into a mask of cold, surgical determination. “But, in order for us to truly survive, they need to be here. Wherever they are… it’s a place that we can’t touch, so we just need to get them back here. Only then will we truly live."

The crew didn't cheer, but a palatable feeling of relief was felt. It was an answer—not an easy one, but one that provided enough levity to clear the path for them. The path back to you.

Getting hit by a truck wasn’t at all like the manga had led you to believe. You didn't get transported into a fantastical land from an anime or visual novel. Instead, you were treated to a reality of sterile, fluorescent-lit misery: deep, throbbing bruises blooming across your skin in shades of violet and sickly yellow you hadn't realized human flesh could manifest, and a jagged, white-hot agony in your chest where your ribs had been snapped and dislocated like dry kindling.

The nurses were kind, but their pity was a heavy, suffocating blanket, and the morphine drip was the only thing sufficiently stopping you from being in more pain than you were currently in. You were lucky, they insisted. You were "miraculously stable." But so far, the most fantastical thing you’d encountered in this recovery process was that the vending machine situated directly outside your hospital room sold oversized candy bars a dollar cheaper than the one in the lobby.

Luxurious, you really felt like royalty.

The television mounted to the wall of your room was suffering from a severe, inexplicable malfunction. It did work—technically—but the moment you grabbed the remote, your desire for a mindless rerun show to drown out the silence was met with a bizarre, systemic glitch. You clicked through the first few channels, expecting the static of a dead signal or the predictable episodes of shows you’ve seen a few too many times, but every single frequency, every single channel number, was occupied by a singular, obsessive loop.

Channel 4? A scene from the Grand Line.

Channel 7? A dramatic flashback scene.

Channel 12? A fight sequence.

The titles and episodes spanned the entire breadth of One Piece, cycling with a rhythmic, mechanical precision that made your head spin. There wasn’t even any news, no commercials, no weather reports—just the vast, sprawling, and unending saga of pirates and sea kings, displayed in high definition on a screen that refused to show anything else.

You stared at the display, your thumb hovering over the remote as if it were a live grenade. In the darkness, the light from the screen cast strange, shifting shadows across your hospital bed, making the liquid of your IV fluid look like the deep, bruised indigo of a distant ocean. There was a weird, distorted hum coming from the TV speakers—a sound that felt less like audio and more like a vibration in your own skull.

Your fingers, still tender and sore from the accident, felt a strange, phantom prickling sensation every time the screen transitioned to a shot of the vast, open sea. You tried to turn it off, but the remote yielded no response, the power button failing to cut the signal.

As the screen flickered to show the iconic yellow hull of a submarine cresting a wave, your heart skipped a beat, a cold, icy dread washing over you. You stood up from the bed and walked close enough to it that your nose touched the hot screen. You couldn’t blink. You couldn’t even look away from the screen. The corners of your vision fuzzed into darkness until everything in front of you was nothing.

The darkness did not end; it merely shifted. The clinical white of the hospital room was swallowed whole, replaced by a crushing, silent depth. When your vision cleared, you weren’t looking at a TV screen anymore. You were staring through thick, reinforced panes of glass at a vast, terrifying abyss. Massive, vibrant-scaled shapes—sea kings the size of island cliffs—drifted through water the exact, bruising shade of the indigo IV fluid that had dripped into your veins only seconds ago.

The floor beneath you was cool, industrial metal, and the ambient hum of the room vibrated through the soles of your feet. You had scarcely registered the texture of the tiles, your brain still trying to reconcile the impact of the truck with this impossible, pressurized silence, before the world surged forward.

Before you could even find your balance, you were hauled up by a pair of massive, fur-covered arms. The strength was immense, yet the hold was frantic, bordering on desperate. You were crushed into a soft, voluminous embrace that smelled of engine oil, antiseptic, and something deeply, inexplicably familiar.

A wet, jagged sound tore through the silence—a sob. "You're back... you're actually back!"

The voice was deep, muffled by fur, and trembled with such raw, unadulterated relief that it made your breath hitch. You felt the rhythmic thrum of a heavy heart beating against your own chest, a sound that seemed to sync with the steady pulse of the submarine itself.

"Captain! Captain, come quickly!" the voice bellowed, the vibration shaking your entire body. It was Bepo. You knew that instinctively, even if your memory felt like a shattered mirror.

"Bepo? What are you—"

You couldn't finish the sentence. You were pulled back slightly, only to be met with Bepo’s large, tear-filled eyes, his paws gripping your shoulders as if he were afraid that if he let go, you would dissolve back into the static of a television screen.

"I thought... I thought maybe you were gone for good," he wept, his fur matted with fresh tears.

Behind him, the heavy metallic door at the end of the corridor hissed open. The air pressure in the room shifted instantly. Standing in the threshold was Law.

The heavy metallic door hissed open, and the air pressure in the room shifted instantly. Standing in the threshold was Law.

He wasn't moving. He wasn't even breathing, it seemed. His eyes, usually sharp and calculating enough to dissect a man’s soul, were fixed on you with a harrowing intensity. The dark circles under his eyes seemed more pronounced against his pale skin, and for a fleeting second, the cold, composed "Surgeon of Death" vanished, replaced by a man who looked like he had been staring into a black hole for a thousand years.

Behind him, the corridor flooded with motion. Penguin and Shachi, who had been lingering just out of sight, stumbled into the room, their faces etched with a desperate, frantic disbelief.

"Is that—is that really them?" Shachi gasped, his voice cracking. He reached out as if to touch your arm, but hesitated, his hand hovering in the air as if he feared you were a mirage that would shatter under the weight of his fingers. The other didn’t express as much hesitation.

"They're warm," Penguin whispered, his voice thick with emotion, his eyes darting from your face to the bruises that still mottled your skin. "Look at them... they’re really here."

Law finally stepped forward. His movements were slow, almost agonizingly deliberate, as if he were walking across thin ice. He didn't rush like Bepo, but the way he looked at you—the way his gaze traced the line of your jaw, your shoulders, the frantic rise and fall of your chest—was far more intense than any embrace. It was the look of a man who had finally found the piece of his own heart he hadn't realized was missing until the moment it was stolen.

"Bepo," Law said, his voice a low, gravelly command that carried an undercurrent of raw, trembling relief. "Let them go. You're crushing their ribs."

Bepo let out a muffled yelp of apology, his paws instantly releasing you, though he looked ready to grab you again at the slightest provocation. You stumbled, your balance still precarious, but before you could hit the metal grating, Law’s hand shot out. He caught your elbow, his grip firm, steady, and electric. His skin was cool, his fingers calloused and steady, and the moment he touched you, it started to settle in—this was real. This wasn’t some weird half-delusional fever dream from drugs.

This was real.

Law’s gaze dropped to your bruised skin, then to the faint, lingering trace of the black sand still clinging to your sleeve. His expression darkened with a protective, lethal sort of fury.

"You’re not going back," Law started, his voice dropping into a dangerous, clinical register. “I—no, we—won’t let you.”

The rest of the crew fell silent, the corridor behind them teeming with faces—Jean Bart, Ikkaku, Clione, and the others—all of them crowded into the doorway, staring at you with the same hungry, desperate recognition. They weren't looking at a stranger. They were looking at the heart having returned.

"Captain," Penguin muttered, nodding toward your injuries. "They look hurt. They've been through something."

Law didn't break eye contact with you. He shifted his grip, his hand moving to gently support your back, his eyes searching yours as if he could read the history of your disappearance directly from your pupils.

"I don't care what they've been through," Law said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that was somehow louder than the hum of the ship. "All that matters is that the error has been corrected. You aren't leaving this room, you aren't leaving this ship, and you are certainly not leaving my sight again."

He looked back at the crew, his eyes hard. "Get the med-bay ready. Now."

As the crew scrambled to obey, Bepo stayed close, his large paw resting tentatively on your back, while Law remained a steady, unyielding presence at your side. You were back on the Polar Tang, but the way they were looking at you—not just with love, but with a terrifying, absolute possessiveness—made it clear that you hadn't just returned to your crew. You had been reclaimed.

@thecutestgrotto for the beautiful divider!! <3

So sorry for the long wait, my brain has been elsewhere. The next one after this one is CP9!!

Since Black Swan is finished, and Blood like Cherry Coke is nearing its final parts, I’ve been working on planning out some new stories. They’ll like be shorter in chapters, but much longer in length. The first one is gonna be put out next week for Summerween!!

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7

The stage of Don Juan had been set. Ornate backgrounds were painted to display the distant hellfire that seemed to dance with the shadows of screaming featureless shadows. Purposefully ramshackle buildings were loosely constructed by opera staff with heavy chains, wooden beams, and almost invisible strips of fabric hung loosely between the different buildings like threads on a spiderweb.

A forest of contrasting shades of reds and blacks donned the dancers, singers, and cast members of the show. And tonight would be its opening.

Much to Delphine’s disappointment, the seats of the auditorium filled up so that every breathable space was occupied by anticipatory whispers. Excitement over this new opera that was so quickly assembled and with the Prima Donna of the season at the helm. Christine was quite possibly in the worst state Delphine had seen. And as much as she wished she could provide some reassurance, the Phantom’s presence could be felt practically breathing down every single opera member's necks.

It was hushed on stage, and especially in the back even before the lights darkened throughout the entirety of the operahouse. The loud whispers of the guests almost muffled the clicking of Monsieur Firmin and André walked to the center of the stage. The lights of the stage came on suddenly, momentarily making their faces look skeletal and ghostly—unsettling Delphine in the uncanny similarity to the opera ghost.

Monsieur André nervously cleared his throat a few times before shakily beginning to speak, “Ladies and gentlemen, the opera being shown tonight has been written, directed, and will be costarred by our…”

André tried to continue, but his voice faltered into an inaudible whisper. Luckily, Firmin continued with a feigned and well-practiced theatricality, “Our—as many of you have no doubt heard tell of—Opera Ghost!”

The whispers grew louder and Firmin had to wait a minute before finishing, “Please enjoy Don Juan Triumphant.”

The two rushed off stage as the red velvet curtains pulled back to reveal the set of dancing flames and feet. Delphine felt her mind fuzz over into the practiced movements that had felt consumptive the past few days, but now felt slightly tedious. It wasn’t from boredom, nor disinterest—the opera the Phantom had written was probably one of the best she had come across. But, her thoughts had seldom been allowed to stray elsewhere for longer than a minute or two, and now that they were, it felt impossible to get a grip on them. She would be perfect—not because she wanted to impress, but rather because she needed to prove him wrong and prove to herself that everything she had worked towards didn’t mean nothing.

The Phantom made his entrance, quickly joining into a duet with Christine—who looked faint. Though their movements were intended to come across as forceful, it did feel particularly ragdoll-like with Christine’s clear lack of energy. As the song was starting to reach its fine stage, something in her changed as Christine came closer to him—singing something that was very unfamiliar to Delphine, but clearly familiar to both her and the Phantom. He recoiled backwards, and Christine lunged forward—pulling his mask off.

The mask, made of fabric and the same porcelain material of dolls, fell off onto the floor, skidding a little ways from Delphine.

Delphine was familiar with the dead. The first she had ever sighted had been in the alleyways behind a shopping district, a man had passed. He had clearly been there for a few days as the skeletal features of his face had become accentuated by the skin closing in and molding to it.

The Phantom was of the dead, just like that man.

Skeletal in features, though so clearly not as his eyes danced across the screaming members of the audience and those on stage in what could only be described as pure anger. Almost expectation, like he knew this would happen and was still disappointed.

He pushed Christine away and—pulling a blade from his waist—slashed the rope closest. The rope connected directly to the chandelier, and though it was braced by several different lines, the collapse of just one caused it to shake and tilt before eventually falling with a thunderous roar onto the crowd below.

Without the light of the chandelier illuminating the opera, it dissolved into a darkness that was only broken by the now real flames starting to grow onto the chairs and trapped bodies it had unfortunately fallen on top of.

Cast members near her bumped and scurried off stage with a franticness that made the air feel claustrophobic. Delphine crouched down and picked up the mask. Dusting it off, she stood and could only let out a gasp as she saw him moving towards her with a speed and expression that felt paralyzing. He grabbed her arm and started tugging her towards a trapdoor that had opened on the stage. “Let go. What are you doing? Let me go—”

Christine used all of her weight to push the Phantom off and away from Delphine—into the trapdoor that was waiting below the stage, though this unfortunately also led to Christine falling into it as well.

Delphine—still clutching the mask, tightly—knelt beside the trapdoor, trying to look into the impassable darkness below, trying to find Christine in that same darkness she had willingly saved Delphine from falling into. “CHRISTINE. CHRISTINE. PLEASE, ARE YOU OKAY—”

Madame Giry rushed towards her with Raoul close behind the older woman, “Delphine. Where is Christine? Did he take her?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry, I don’t know why he—”

Madame Giry placed a firm hand on her shoulder to stop Delphine from spiraling further. The smoke was starting to make it incredibly hard to think clearly. “Dear girl, it’s fine. You need to leave before this fire takes more than just your breath.”

Delphine shook herself out of the other's grip, “No, no. I—she’s down there because of me. I need to go get her. I need to help her.”

The older woman stared at Delphine for a minute, something changing in her disposition, before she nodded and turned back to Raoul—who seemed uncertain about this, but too frantic to question it. He clenched and unclenched his fists nervously, before nodding and kneeling down to start entering the trapdoor and darkness below. Delphine started to follow behind him and was stopped by Madame. “My dear… be careful with him.”

Delphine froze, but quickly entered the darkness below after hearing Raoul shout that it was safe to enter.

Below the stage, the caverns were just as similar and dissimilar to what she had found behind Box Number five. Damp, stone walls were impossible to make out through anything but touch. The lack of lighting made the abandoned webs of spiders that wrapped loosely, but stickily around her fingertips impossible not to find. She scrambled to shake them off before being stopped by Raoul, emerging from one of the corners and tugging her towards a distant light.

This path was much different from the one she had taken prior. While she had been lucky to find more traversed hallways that remained away from water, this path went directly through a cavernous body of water that emitted the sharp tangy smell of decay. Impossible to ignore, Delphine gagged into the palm of her hand, but continued close behind Raoul. Looking down momentarily at the mask. It was cool to the touch and different from the one she had previously seen him wear—not the silken white one, nor the bone of the Red Death. No, this one was black and porcelain in material with faint red lines painted on, silk could be felt on the side that was worn closest to his face.

Water weighed down her skirt, and slimy muck encompassed the bottom of the pool alongside sharp crunching that Delphine hastily told herself were simply stones.

The same landing of stone caught her sight across the body of water. Candles lined the walls, perched on top of tables and the piano at the center of the landing. The Phantom stood near the steps of the landing, shaking Christine too and fro, his voice could be heard echoing through the chambers, “IGNORANT GIRL. You’ve no idea what you’ve done. What you’ve interfered with.”

Delphine and Raoul sloshed through the murky water to the base of the steps that circled the water and were submerged within the blackened depths. Raoul started to climb the steps of the stairs and drew the Phantom’s attention by exclaiming, “CHRISTINE.”

Raoul was kicked back into the water by the Phantom, landing with a splash that caused Christine to increase her efforts of escape to try and reach him. Delphine paused in her ascent onto the landing to look back, and upon seeing Raoul emerge gasping from the water, she continued to rise. “Let her go. She has nothing to do with this. Here, I have it.”

The waterlogged skirt felt particularly heavy upon getting to the landing, but she ignored that and moved to hand the mask to the Phantom—who still held the struggling girl. He paused and studied her for a moment, before something resembling a grin took over his features. “You really think this is about a stupid mask. That this is about Christine.”

He let out a sharp laugh and pushed Christine into the water to join Raoul. Her screams were halted by the splash of water, though she was quickly brought to the surface by Raoul. Raoul pulled her close in an embrace and she sobbed into his chest before quickly pulling away at the sight of the Phantom descending into the water to start tugging at a rope which connected to the rusted gate.

The gate started to creak down and the two tried to move past it, though were too late as the metal crashed into the water creating a wave of it that pushed the couple further back.

The Phantom climbed up the stairs with little effort and Delphine, frozen in place with the mask still tightly clutched, turned. What was he doing? Why was he doing this? It didn’t make any sense. She had assumed that he was angry about what had happened to his opera, angry and accusatory about her having his mask. He’d taken Christine, though that was something that felt almost expected, unwanted definitely, but expected given his nature. But this—none of this made any sense.

He grabbed the mask from her grip, examining it briefly before tossing it and pulling her close to him. She struggled against him, pushing against his chest to try and break free, “No. What are you doing? I don’t—”

His mouth crashed against her own, pressing harshly against hers in an almost bruising manner for a long, suffocating moment. When he pulled back, his fingers moved to caress the side of her face, thumb rubbing against her cheek in something that could only be described as fondness. “My swan. My Odile. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it. Didn’t see you. Forgive me.”

“What. Why—why would you do that?”

The Phantom paid no mind to her very apparent confusion, turning instead to snap at Christine and Raoul—who stood gaping and motionless at the gate. “GET OUT. BOTH OF YOU. GET OUT!”

Raoul whispered something to Christine, trying to tug her away from the gate. She hesitated, guiltily apologizing before looking back at the hallway, which was starting to illuminate with the carmines of the flames drawing closer. Delphine cleared her throat and though still put off by what happened, called out, “Go. You both need to leave before the fires swallow you too.”

“Are you gonna be okay?” Raoul asked, pausing and clearly uncertain.

“I’ll be fine—”

“LEAVE. NOW!” The Phantom had clearly reached his breaking point and started pulling Delphine to follow behind him into a curtain that concealed the rest of the landing. The rest of his dwelling and beyond that was a pathway out of the opera.

What laid behind them was steadily overtaken by the opera’s hellfire and when the remains of the basement were searched following the fire, nothing was found that hadn’t already been touched by the kindling. There were no bodies—neither of her nor the ghost. Despite that, the question of what happened to them or where they end up never got answered, as all authorities could do was write another death certificate for a lost ballerina and none for the opera ghost. Ghosts, and most of all Phantoms cannot live, no less, die.

@cursed-carmine for the wonderful divider!!

Sorry this is late coming and doesn’t really relate to anything I’ve written as of late. I wanted to wrap this story up before starting more! I have two fanfics I want to start soon, and I’m really excited to share them!!

I am happy with how this story panned out though, Delphine is a character that’s very different from what I normally write and I think that’s why I enjoy writing her so much!

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.10 Ch.11 Blood Ending

The cold, heavy glass of the bottle felt like an anchor in your hand, but the taste lingering on your tongue—dry, bitter, and unmistakably off beneath the artificial sweetness of the cherry syrup—made you lower it. You swallowed hard, trying to clear the chalky film from the roof of your mouth, your brow furrowing as you stared down at the dark liquid.

“Taste okay?” Stu asked. He was leaning against the counter now, his head tilted at that familiar, slightly lopsided angle. His eyes, usually dancing with chaotic energy, felt incredibly heavy as they tracked the movement of your hand.

“Yeah. Just... tasted a little flat, I guess,” you downplayed, not wanting to sound ungrateful. He nodded, eyes moving to focus on your face, a flicker of uncertainty appearing on his face before disappearing just as quickly.

The chatter from the living room increased especially as Tatum tugged you into the crowded space. Sitting on the couch next to Randy, you sat the bottle on the coffee table alongside a menagerie of different alcoholic drinks that littered the surface. “I thought we could make this a blockbuster night.”

He let you sift through them—The Fog, Terror Train, Prom Night, Halloween I & II, and several other titles. Snorting, you couldn’t help but comment. “All of these movies have Jamie Lee Curtis.”

Randy clasped his hands almost like in a prayer, “She’s the Scream Queen.”

Stu leaned against Tatum, . “With that set of lungs—she should be.”

Tatum rolled her eyes, exasperated, though made no attempts to stifle her smile, “Tits—see. He means tits. Don't let his pseudo-intellectual vocabulary fool either of you.”

“Hey! I can appreciate a good diaphragm performance!” Stu protested dramatically, placing a hand over his chest.

“Oh yeah, completely believable.” You tried to laugh, but a strange, sudden wave of lethargy washed over you, making your eyelids feel like they were sinking shut. The ambient noise of the party—the bass from the stereo, the clinking cups, the obnoxious laughter of high schoolers trying to out-drink a citywide curfew—suddenly felt muffled, as if someone had stuffed cotton balls into your ears.

“You okay?” Randy asked, his voice cutting through the growing fog. He had shifted closer, his hazel eyes scanning your face with that intense, perceptive focus Tatum had warned you about. Now that you knew about his feelings, the proximity made your chest tighten with a complex mix of guilt and panic.

“Yeah,” you murmured, blinking rapidly to clear a sudden, shifting blurriness in your vision. Forcing yourself to open your eyes and sit up instead of leaning into the cushions that had felt far easier than you’d prefer. “Just... really tired. Didn't sleep well.”

He looked unconvinced and was about to question further when a voice called out, “Meeks, where’s your blockbuster night?”

Randy looked peeved, but Tatum shooed at him to get him to stand up before leaning back into Stu’s side. “They’re not gonna combust while you put a movie in the player. I can take care of them.”

Randy sighed, a dramatic, huffing sound, but he grabbed the stack of tapes, setting them down with a plasticky clatter on the coffee table. “Fine, fine. But if anyone talks over the opening kill, I’m going to personally throw them out the window.”

As he stood, the room seemed to tilt on its axis. You leaned back, your head hitting the top of the sofa with a soft thud. The back of your throat felt dry and scratchy, and the air in the room, thick with the scent of cheap beer and artificial popcorn butter, suddenly seemed too thin to breathe. Why was it so hard to keep your eyes open? Was it sleep catching up on you?

 Randy had apparently made quick work of commandeering the Macher’s tv and after getting it to the familiar player-select screen, rose to his feet in front of the tv and started picking up the tapes from the coffee table.

Raising the familiar Evil Dead tape above his head so everyone in the crowded lines room could see it while calling out, “How many Evil Dead’s?”

A number of hands shot up and he took stock of them before picking up a different one from the pile. “How many Hellraisers?”

Stu, still leaning close to Tatum raised his hand a bit to point it at her, “Right here.”

She pushed against him, but didn’t deny it nor look upset. The door bell rang. Stu pulled away from her side and went to open the door, though not before his head popped back over the back of the couch, “Tate get me another beer, will you?”

He disappeared from view and she sighed leaning further into the couch, “What am I? The beer wench?”

Tatum looked over at you and concern immediately shadowed any annoyance, “Shit, honey. You don’t look so hot.”

The faint sound of the door opening could be heard and not long after Stu yelled out, “Hey, guess who’s here? It’s that chick from Inside Story!”

Voices grew louder as Dewey and Gale Weathers stepped into the entry of the living room. Tatum quickly got up from the couch and made a beeline for her brother as Gale started to walk around the room, chatting politely with the very drunk teenagers. Though it was hard to make it out, you could faintly make out Tatum whispering not so quietly to him, “—take them home. Do you really think this is a great setting for feeling under the weather?”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to keep an eye and make sure nothing happens.”

“Obviously something is happening—god.” Tatum pressed her hand against her forehead as Gale rounded back around from having made a circle around the living room—pausing momentarily near the tv to ask Stu to grab her a beer, which he had.

“Is everything alright?” Gale asked, sounding concerned, though something else was detected under that. Tatum scoffed, and hissed under her breath, “With you here. Always.”

Dewey placed a hand on her shoulder in both comfort and warning, “Tatum.” He turned back to Gale to continue speaking, “My sister’s friend isn’t feeling well and probably needs a ride home. Do you think you could, if it’s not too much trouble?”

“I—I don’t know. The news van isn’t really the comfiest and it can get pretty rough out there. I don’t know if that’s really the best for—”

Stu ran out of the kitchen with a beer in hand and swiftly gave it to Gale, she used it as a distraction to stop from continuing any further. Dewey sighed, taking his hat off, he combed his hair back before setting his hat back on. “I can—I can take them home. But, I’ll have to come right back here. Is that alright?”

“Home? But the party just started.” Stu started, sounding genuinely upset at the implication. Tatum looped her arm through Stu’s to stop him. “Don’t stress, they’re just not feeling well.”

“They could just rest upstairs.”

Billy’s voice could be heard as he stepped through the already open door stepping inside from the porch. He stared at Dewey and Gale, though didn’t say anything, leaning his shoulder right next to the door. It was silent. Long enough for the click of the VCR accepting a tape and the familiar score of Halloween to start.

Dewey met his sister's eyes, asking uncertainly, “Are we sure? I mean—”

“That works out great, thank you.” Gale interrupted cheerily, moving to pull Dewey outside. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment before departing. Tatum circled round the couch and pulled you up from it, your knees buckled slightly from the sudden movement, but she steadied you. She walked you slowly towards the stairway where Billy had moved to stand next to Stu. You could make out the backend of their whispered conversation as you neared. 

“I’m sorry man, I don’t know why it didn’t work—” Stu was stopped by Billy, and though his tone came across as sarcastic, something in the way Billy maintained a narrowed coldness in his eyes made it feel more serious.

“Subtlety, Stu. You should really look it up.”

As Tatum brought you forward, the iciness vanished just as soon as you glimpsed it, a worried smile replacing it so swiftly it made you somewhat doubtful you’d even seen it.

Tatum gripped your shoulder before letting you go, “I’m gonna go get some medicine from the cabinet in the garage, just hold on for a few minutes, okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry—I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight—”

“Don’t apologize. If it was a crime to feel like shit from time to time, we all would’ve been arrested by now. Speaking of which, here’s your knight in shining handcuffs.” Tatum winked playfully before disappearing around the corner of the living room. 

“Hey.” Was all you could manage upon turning back towards Billy. It was kind of strange how isolating being near him could be, the almost deafening loudness felt like a distant buzz. Any worry present on his features didn’t entirely vanish, rather it turned more relaxed and at ease as he looped your arm through his.

“Hey, keeping the vultures away again?”

“They’re not vultures, they’re just worried.” You argued back as the both of you started up the stairs. The thick wooden banister was a helpful brace that luckily didn’t lead to you putting too much weight or pressure on him. The screaming of Judith Meyers getting stabbed could be heard. About five stairs were climbed up before Stu called out, “I’m sorry. I—are you okay?”

“It’s not your fault. I think I just need to lie down for a bit.”

Guilt seemed to hang over Stu like a cloud as he stayed downstairs watching Billy take you upstairs. Sighing, he rubbed the nape of his neck, brushing through the hair that scratched it slightly. It was fine. Billy had this sorted. Though he’d probably be mad as hell since things weren’t exactly going as planned.

“Aw man, there goes my chance. Dammit” Randy’s voice startled Stu out of his thoughts, though the sound of the complaint brought only amusement. Scoffing, Stu mumbled under his breath loud enough for the other to hear, “As if. That’s all I’m saying. As if.”

Randy looked aghast, following shortly after Stu into the living room. “Oh, really Alicia?”

Pinterest for the header.

@kodaswrld for the wonderful divider!! <3

Sorry the dialogue got shuffled around a bit. I know what’s implied isn’t looking good for the mad lads, but I don’t want to give away their plans before that third act reveal.

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11 Blood Ending

The faint sound of gravel crackling and headlights shining through the curtained windows signaled Dewey and Tatum’s arrival, jolting you from the bleary sleep you’d managed to fall under. A mild needling of pain spread across the front of your temple from getting up too fast from the cushions of the couch, but it dissipated by the time you reached the front windows and peered through the curtains. It was beginning to get dark out, the faint outline of the sun setting behind the houses opposite of you, signaling the night approaching.

Turning the lock, it gave a familiar clicking sound as you pulled the door open and revealed Dewey—hand raised with the intention to knock on the door. He froze for a second, flashing a slightly flustered smile as he quickly lowered his hand and nervously fiddled with his belt. The orange of the porch light felt especially bright against the night sky and your fresh-from-sleep eyes. 

“Hey, we’re here to, oh—”

He cut himself off at the sight of your Dad—having emerged from the kitchen, squinting and visibly on-guard at the sight of the police officer. Dewey cleared his throat before continuing, 

“Hi, I’m—we’re here.” He gestured to Tatum, who could be seen smiling brightly from the passenger side of the care as she waved a bit. “—to um, pick you up for the party.”

“Party?” Your Dad asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question. Shit. Throat drying up, the realization all but crashed into you. You’d forgotten to tell him about it. “A slumber party—yeah.”

“What?” Dewey looked even more alarmed than your Dad at the news—who remained unconvinced, eyes narrowed with an unblinking focus on the deputy. Dewey swallowed and was about to start speaking again, when Tatum, thankfully had exited the car and ran up the steps to save the both of you from stumbling even further. She looped her arm with yours, whispering loudly, and clearly so your Dad could hear, “You excited? Sidney and I picked out some movies to watch for the—”

“You didn’t tell us about any sleepovers.” Concern was the only thing visible on your Dad’s face, eyes fixed on you with that same intensity as earlier—though different now that it was directed at you. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be out during all this?”

“I—” Hesitation took over for a brief moment before you forced yourself to continue, “Of course. I’ll be fine, Dad.”

He grasped the door handle, but didn’t make any move to close it. A small smile lighting up the wrinkles in his face into something warm. “Do you need a bag, or to pack anything?”

“I got it handled.” Tatum reassured, “It’s just one night, and I have some pajamas and other supplies that can be borrowed.”

Your Dad nodded, moving to close the door—it creaked from the slow movement as he said before it finally shut. “Stay safe, okay? I love you.”

Tatum let out a breath of relief as the three of you walked down the steps of the porch. “Wow. Your parents are really overprotective.”

A smile pulled at the corners of your lips, a huff of laughter escaping. “We’re not really having a sleepover, are we?”

“Of course not.” Tatum opened the side door of the police cruiser, gesturing for you to go in. You slid into the far seat and Tatum followed afterwards, shutting the door of the car behind her. It felt kind of strange to sit in the back of one, but the feeling was quickly abated by Dewey closing the driver door, turning the key of the emission and starting to drive down the street. “Not unless you count a few dozen drunk teenagers as fellow guests.”

Tatum leaned down to pick up some bags from the floor and shook them enough to make noise, “I have snacks.”

A sudden nervousness settled in your stomach. Peering round the corners of the front seat, you couldn’t catch any sight of Sidney. She was supposed to call earlier. Did you not catch it since you were asleep?

“Where’s Sidney?”

“Shit.” Tatum combed a hand through her hair. “I totally forgot to tell you, she said she wasn’t feeling well.”

“Wait, really? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. She called about an hour ago, right when we were leaving the house and said she was just gonna hunker down for the night after the attack in the bathroom. But…”

Tatum scooted closer, eyes flashing with an undeniable playfulness. “I thought maybe we could check in on her after this and maybe have an actual sleepover. Talk about guys—”

Your snorting laugh interrupted her and she shoved your shoulder a bit, “What’s there to talk about? Both of you guys are in relationships.”

“You know what I mean. Like celebrity crushes—Tom Cruise is my personal favorite. And you know, you and Randy.”

“What—What’s Randy got to do with this?”

She froze not from fear, but rather a dawning realization. “You don’t know? I always figured you did and we’re just messing with him a bit.”

It was impossible to feel anything but confusion at that moment. What? Randy has a crush? You didn’t realize you spoke those thoughts out loud until Tatum nodded, “Yeah, I mean it’s pretty obvious.”

It felt like your brain stopped working. Almost like the signals in it were firing, but nothing was actually connecting enough for a thought to form. Has it really been so obvious? Him having a crush on you? Has it always been like that? And for how long? The sound of the car stilling to a stop and the key turning was the only thing that broke you from whatever the hell was going on—and you really weren’t entirely sure what it was.

Tatum tentatively touched your arm, apologetic as she gently began to usher you out of the car. “Hey, I’m sorry… I really thought you knew—”

You shook your head, “No. No, it’s fine. I promise. I just never really thought about that, so it’s a bit of a—”

“Shock?”

“Yeah.”

Tatum laughed and opened the door, “Well, God knows Randy’s crush will still be there after the party, so you can worry about that tomorrow. Just focus on enjoying yourself. And, I’m betting by tomorrow the killer will be caught.”

Dewey cleared his throat just as you were about to slide out the car after Tatum—who had grabbed the bag of snacks on her way out. “You girls have fun, but not too much fun or I’ll have to come in and bust you. Just know I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

“You might as well be breathing down my neck, Deputy Doofus.” Tatum sighed, turning to head inside.

“Thanks Dewey.” The words were barely audible through the distant shouting coming from the Macher house, he smiled gratefully nonetheless as you closed the door and crossed through the white picket fence that circled the driveway.

The Macher house had always been intimidatingly larger than most of the other houses in Woodsboro. It felt almost like a mansion—though maybe that made sense given the parents frequent business trips out of town. The large converted farmhouse sat beyond the woods and treeline surrounding most of the neighborhoods of Woodsboro.

Falling right within the town line, it had become something of a hotspot for parties that you had first started to attend with Casey when she started dating Stu. Some part of you had almost assumed that after everything that happened, invitations would taper off, but had surprisingly started coming in ten-fold—though you couldn’t attend most of them due to work.

Now it felt like stepping right into some kind of fever dream as you entered through the already open front door. The loud vibrations of the music didn’t help with the nerves. Classmates scattered throughout the entryway which stretched into the living room where Randy was reclined on one of the couches surrounding the tv, sorting through numerous tapes he’d no doubt hidden in the back of the video store and smuggled here. He’d done that before, in fact it was the main reason why he kept getting fired from the video store, not that it had ever stopped him continuing to do it.

The sight of him caused a sharp pang of nervousness to flood your system, remembering Tatum’s words from not even five minutes earlier. He liked you—no, loved. It felt impossible. But looking at how his posture opened up, attention centered on you like you hung the moon or something. You weren’t sure how to feel about it. It wasn’t upsetting, but it also wasn’t a relief, it was just… unfamiliar.

“Hey,” your voice cracked a bit from straining to sound cheerful and nonchalant. “Was it busy there?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Most of the horror got cleared out, even Chopping Mall and New Year’s Evil.”

“Seriously?” Randy nodded in confirmation to your disbelief and patted the seat next to him. Circling round to the couch to his side, you sank into the cushions next to him. “Desperate times, I guess.”

“No kidding. But look, I managed to score most of the good ones.” Peering over his shoulder, he flipped through the tapes—pretty much all of them having Jamie Lee Curtis in them.

“Score—as in, hide them in the back and tell anyone that asks that they’ve already been rented out.” You quizzed, he was about to respond when Tatum called for you from the kitchen. Getting up from the couch, you moved into the kitchen.

Tatum stood in front of the island, pulling out the snacks from the bag she had brought in. Stu was standing near the kitchen with three other boys, a funnel of beer visible—all visibly distracted by Stu pouring a can into the nozzle of it.

“That’s mature.” Tatum commented, sifting through the empty bag for anything else. At the sound of her voice and the plastic rustling of chip and candy bags being set down, Stu turned, though he continued to pour the remaining contents of the can down the funnel. You waved a bit at him, his previously neutral expression opened up the minute he looked over.

“Where have you guys been? We had to start without you.” The boy at the end of the funnel finished, standing up, he wiped beer from his mouth as Stu clapped him on the back. They cleared out of the kitchen, likely in search of more alcohol. Stu wrapped his arm around your shoulder in a side hug that lasted a bit longer than you were used to—excitement, he was probably just excited you guys were finally here.

“Picking up the snacks. You said you had it covered for them, right?” Tatum gestured to you.

“Oh yeah, definitely.” Stu dropped his arm from your shoulder and moved to shuffle around the kitchen until he found what he was apparently looking for in the fridge. The door of the fridge shielded your view as a single popping sound followed by him kicking the door shut revealed a bottle of cherry coke in his grip. He loosely had another bottle of beer in his other hand, taking a sip from it carelessly while moving to hand you the coke.

“Milady,” he exaggeratedly did a flourish. A fleeting feeling of embarrassment was felt—not from him, but rather your own flustered inability to reciprocate. He didn’t seem to notice as a snort escaped, grinning, all you could manage was a quick, “Thank you.”

Taking the coke, you took a sip.

There was a slight chalky taste that stuck to the roof of your mouth.

Pinterest for the header.

@kodaswrld for the wonderful divider!

From here there are two different endings. The first one takes place immediately after the events of this chapter while the second ending still needs some more build-up in other chapters. Sorry if that’s not entirely clear. I had trouble deciding which one I wanted to go with, so I just figured I might as well do both!!

I love and appreciate the support this series has gotten, it’s been incredibly motivating!! <3 <3

Yandere Scream x reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.5.5 Ch.6 Ch.8 Cherry Coke Ending Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11 Blood Ending

Faded white paint chipped under Billy’s fingertips as he hauled himself up to Sidney’s bedroom window. The window didn’t have a lock on it. Something that clearly hadn’t changed considering how it seemed to almost breathe open when he pushed on it. It was something that felt like a glaringly obvious safety issue, especially seeing as this was the third day in a row that Billy had crawled through it and onto the floor of her bedroom.

But who was he to complain about something that made it that much easier.

The Prescott’s didn’t have any neighbors in the immediate vicinity. There was another house on the far corner of the dead-end street, but otherwise it was very private. Which was something he could especially enjoy since he wouldn’t have to worry about any nosey neighbors calling the police—though if he did, a pillow would’ve done the job.

He picked up Sidney’s bear from her bed and looked over it, boredly before moving to sit down on the mattress.

It was quaint in the way every girl’s bedroom was. Put together, but lifeless in a way that made it feel like nobody actually lived there. Bed freshly made like no one ever slept in it, no dust layering anything, or any dirty clothes. It was odd. The only sign of life was in the disorganized closet—clothes barely clinging to their hangers, and stuff messily shoved inside.

Maybe he was being too much of a hypocrite, but he’d never really understood how Sidney could be so put together in one aspect while also falling apart over classmates she barely knew choking on their own blood. 

Billy didn’t hate Sidney. In fact that might be the furthest thing from how he felt about her. Some part of him felt bad for her. But only because the things she was going through and experiencing were the very same things he had to go through too.

The only difference was that while she was provided sympathy and “justice,” he wasn’t allowed that same luxury.

No. He didn’t hate Sidney. 

He just hated how she propped up her mother like she was some kind of god damn saint. Saints don’t fuck other peoples fathers and husbands, and then pretend like they didn’t cause a whole family to cave in on itself.

Missing his mom had almost become secondary at this point. She loved him—or so she claimed—but not enough to stay or take him with her. 

He could hear the distant shuffling of the front door opening and things being moved around. Sidney was home, just like Stu had said she would be.

The steps of the staircase didn’t creak so much as they made a hollow thudding sound every time she took another step. The pace was almost leisurely, which was good. Her feeling safe just made the rest of this so much easier. The one trait he could never be credited with was being impatient.

It’d be a year as of tomorrow, and he was tired of pretending to care about her .

Sidney opened the door and jolted back at the sight of him, disbelief and surprise clouded over her. “Billy, what are you doing here? I thought—how did you get in?”

“Your window really needs a new lock on it Sid. Who knows how many strange people are out there?”

He lifted up the bear towards her, the little plush arms standing up like those zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.” Smiling, she took it out of his hands and moved to set it back in its place. While she was turned around, he quickly pulled the knife out from his pocket and hid it within the sleeve of his jacket. “I think the only strange person who’s crawled through my window has been you.”

“And the killer, apparently…”

Her hands settled nervously over her knees as she sat down on her bed, he sat down next to her. She started again, though hesitantly, “Billy, I—I’m sorry about accusing you of—”

“Don’t worry about it, Sid,” he interrupted, his voice dropping into that low, smooth cadence he used whenever he needed to anchor her panic. He reached out, his long fingers trailing up her arm to give it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Things are crazy right now. Everyone’s on edge. I get it.”

But even as he looked at her—at the red-rimmed eyes, the pale skin, the utter vulnerability of a girl whose world was actively dissolving—Billy felt an internal, icy detachment.

He didn’t hate Sidney, that was certain. But, he didn’t care about her, and hadn’t since last October.

His mind wasn’t really in this room. It hadn’t been for a long time.

It was hard to say when exactly things had changed.

His parents' marriage had always been something that was hard to explain. Perpetually on the rocks. Even before the affair got out, his dad had always been a distant, but always critical person who Billy only really saw at quiet dinners—if at all. Quick to anger if things didn’t go the way he wanted them to—which was pretty much all the time.

It’d never been something that he put much weight into. He barely knew the guy, so getting upset about their nonexistent relationship didn’t make much sense.

He had his Mom. She’d always been quick to brush off all his Dad’s “quirks” and assure Billy that he loved both of them. 

And he had Stu—who’s parents weren’t home long enough to care about Billy practically living there. The two of them had always been close. Stu was one of the few people he felt comfortable enough to trust.

When you first moved to this pathetic, suffocating town four years ago at the start of freshman year, you were just background noise to him. You were another face in the halls. One that instantly attached yourself to the local bleeding-hearts: Randy, Sidney, and Casey. 

It was easy. Billy’s life had a precise, predictable trajectory—he’d live a meaningless life, work at a boring ass job until he keeled over dead. He started dating Sidney at the beginning of their junior year, around August. It was a normal relationship then. She was someone who ran in the same circle and that he could get along with well enough. She didn’t seem to suffer so much under the influence of him not being how the rest the town perceived him to be.

Then came October. Then came the truth about Maureen Prescott and his dad. Then came the night his mom packed her bags, leaving behind a house that seemed to be perpetually holding its breath.

He hated it.

He’d always been grateful for the fact that his dad was pretty much never home. But now the house was empty, the worst part was that it had been like that long before his mom left and now he was only starting to notice.

When his mother walked out, the world split open. The anger that took up residence behind Billy’s ribs wasn't something he could just turn off. It was a feral, living thing that demanded satisfaction near constantly. Like an addiction. 

He and Stu had always been close, but after that night, their bond mutated into something more linked, sharp, and exclusive. They became a closed system. Stu provided the erratic, buzzing energy—the raw, chaotic willingness to do anything to stop the boredom and the pain—and Billy provided the structure. Outside of them, everything else felt volatile and cruel.

Then you changed everything.

The shift happened during September of that same year, right around the time Casey Becker decided to dismantle your life. When Casey started those grotesque, fabricated rumors about you coming onto Stu—all to shield her own sordid little tryst with Steve Orth—Billy had watched from the periphery. He had watched how the entire school turned its back on you. He watched how your "friends" shrank away, leaving only Randy and Sidney at your flanks.

And he watched Stu.

Stu had been completely unhinged during those weeks. The humiliation of being cheated on, combined with his natural volatility, had turned him into a ticking bomb. But when you confronted Casey in that hallway—when you chose to take the social execution rather than participate in a lie that would humiliate Stu further—everything in Billy’s internal calculus shifted.

You hadn't done it for Stu, not really. You had done it because you possessed an innate, stubborn decency. But to Stu, it was a revelation. Stu became instantly, fiercely obsessed with you, his manic interest translating into a constant, buzzing need to be near you, to give you crumpled dandelions, to make you laugh.

And he couldn’t blame Stu.

It was impossible to be jealous of Stu’s interest. He couldn’t. Stu was an extension of himself. Instead, Billy recognized you as the missing piece of their architecture.

Unlike Sidney, who spent her days weeping over a mother who was a fraud, and unlike the rest of the town's superficial vultures waiting for the next of their own to drop dead so they could circle overhead till it rotted. You were real. You had been broken by the town's gossip mill, yet you remained clean. You didn't belong to Woodsboro anymore. They had cast you out just like he had been, and Billy knew that he would never allow for you to go back.

He needed to isolate you. Pull you entirely out of the town’s corrupting reach and tuck you safely inside the social bubble that he and Stu controlled. Randy was a pest, a temporary distraction, but eventually, the noise would be cleared away. There would only be Billy, Stu, and you. A perfect, untouchable trinity built on the ashes of the people who had wronged them.

The three survivors of the tragic Woodsboro massacre.

“Billy?” Sidney’s voice pulled him back to the present. She was looking at him, her brow furrowed with that familiar, heavy anxiety. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, Sid. Of course I am,” Billy said softly. He reached into his inner jacket pocket, his movements deliberate, ignoring the knife still tucked away in his sleeve—that could wait a bit longer. He had plenty of time before the party. “I’m just thinking about your dad. About how worried you must be.”

Sidney froze. “My dad? What do you mean? He’s away on business, he’s—”

“He’s not on business, Sid.” Billy pulled his hand out, producing three Polaroid photographs and laid them face-up on the bedspread between them.

The images were dark, taken with a harsh flash inside the pantry of the Macher Kitchen. The dingy glow of the hanging lightbulb created harsh shadows. Neil Prescott was tied securely to a heavy wooden chair, a thick strip of gray duct tape sealed over his mouth, his eyes wide and bloodshot with absolute terror.

Sidney let out a choked, horrific sound, her hand flying to her mouth as she stared at the pictures. The air left her lungs in one sharp, rattling gasp. “Oh my god... Oh my god, Daddy... Billy, what is this? Why do you have these?!”

She rushed to get up, but was stopped from getting any further by Billy tightly grabbing her forearm and pulling her back to sit back on the bed. The blade of the knife reflected the bright orange of the setting sunlight from the window, the point of it resting almost gently against her cheek. His voice was entirely devoid of panic, perfectly leveled. He leaned in closer, his face inches from hers. “Call Tatum.”

“What, no. Let go—” Her dark eyes darted to the knife then met his, teary. 

His grip didn’t falter, rather it tightened. The tip of the knife, pushed further into the indent of her cheek, creating a small drop of red on it. She hissed, moving to jolt away, but froze when he started to speak.

“Pick up the phone. Call Tatum.”

“Why?” she whispered, tears finally spilling over her cheeks.

“Tell her you’re not feeling well. Tell her the stress from the bathroom incident earlier was too much, and you’re going to stay home tonight and try to sleep. Tell her she and Dewey shouldn’t come pick you up.”

Sidney stared at him, her chest heaving as she tried to process the demand through the fog of her terror. “You—You’re—”

“Don’t even think about calling the police.” He slid the phone off the nightstand and pressed it into her trembling hands. “Not unless you want him to meet the same fate your mother met.”

With shaking fingers, Sidney dialed the numbers. Billy could hear Tatum’s faint voice through the speaker of the phone.

“Tatum?” Sidney’s voice cracked, thick with unshed tears. “Hey... listen, I don’t think I can make it tonight. Yeah... no, I’m just feeling kind of dizzy—nauseous. Everything with the school... I think I just need to lock the doors and go to sleep. Tell Dewey not to come... No, really, don’t come over, I’m just going to take something and pass out. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.”

She clicked the receiver down, her shoulders slumping as a sob broke through her throat. She turned her wet eyes up to Billy, looking for the boy who used to hold her in the front seat of his car. “I did it. I did it, Billy. Now please, where is he? Why are you doing this?”

“He’s exactly where he needs to be, Sid. And now you are too.” Billy murmured.

Sidney let out a startled scream as he moved to push his weight on top of her, caging her against the mattress of her too-clean bed. He quickly muffled her from letting out anything besides panicked gasps, tears mixed with the blood from her cheek. 

“You know, movie characters always make the same mistake,” He started, a grin starting to pull at the corners of his lips. “They always think they’re safe in the second act. But the second act is just where weaker characters get cleared out to make way for the real final act. Marion Crane got killed halfway through Psycho. And after your father’s done with his little  “murder spree” he’s gonna shoot himself in the head and take everything to the grave. A much more reliable scapegoat than Cotton Weary. Say hi to your mother for me.”

He moved forward, and the shadows of the bedroom seemed to stretch out to meet him.

The door to his bedroom locked behind him

The adrenaline was still a faint, electric hum in his fingertips, but his mind was already moving with cold, mechanical efficiency. He stripped off the dark, heavy flannel shirt, revealing the dark smudges where the fabric had absorbed the thick splatter of blood. He tossed it directly into a heavy-duty trash bag he kept hidden at the bottom of his closet, alongside the costume he’d worn earlier.

Himbry wasn’t supposed to die. But if he was being honest, Billy just needed to do it to tie him over until the main event tonight.

After all of this was over, he was gonna burn most of the items and wait months before burying the rest of it in the woods nearby.

He walked over to the small mirror hanging above his dresser, checking his face. Clean. No scratches. No stray marks. He looked a little haggard, but nothing that couldn’t be attributed to his usual behavior—to the stress of the murders, being put in holding as a suspect, and to his on-the-rocks relationship with Sidney. 

He began to dress for the party, pulling on a clean, white knit shirt. Simple. Unassuming. The kind of clothes a boy wore when he was going to hang out with his friends.

As he smoothed down the fabric, his eyes drifted to the window, looking out toward the dark treeline that separated his property from the rest of the neighborhood. His dad used to take him hunting there before losing interest in him. The one thing he did get from him was a love for hunting.

Tonight was the climax. The party at Stu’s house was the stage, and every single player had been moved into their correct position. Casey was gone—a necessary piece of vengeance for Stu to feel vindicated in his part in this, and a clean break from your past. Sidney was handled; her mother’s sins were finally fully paid for. The town’s focus would be entirely fractured by the curfew and the chaos.

And you would be there.

Billy leaned his hands against the top of the dresser, staring at his reflection, a small, dark smile finally pulling at the corner of his lips. He thought about the way you had looked at lunch —scared, quiet, your eyes darting around like a trapped animal. You thought your own home was a death trap. You thought the world outside was unsafe.

You’re right, he thought, his mind settling into an absolute, serene calm as he grabbed his car keys off the desk. It is unsafe. But by tomorrow morning, nobody in this town will be left to hurt you. It’ll just be me and Stu.

Pinterest for the header.

@kodaswrld for the adorable divider!!

Billy is a hard character to write, I’m not even sure if I got his characterization right tbh. I read so many character analysis’ and watched a bunch of YouTube videos about him—due credit to Behind the Mask for inspiration for some parts of this story. But dear god, it’s hard.

Yandere Batfam x Neglected Rumi!reader

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8

All it took was a split second. Just one second for the once bright, glowing haze of the awards show to blink into an unfamiliar and suffocating darkness. Darkness which was only illuminated by the magenta lights hanging overhead. And any assurance you could hold onto was just as quickly stripped away just the same as your jacket, torn off by Mira and Zoey.

It felt like you couldn’t breathe. And with your nails digging into your arms, the warm trickles of blood didn’t look too different from the constricting and ugly patterns that felt like they were choking you.

Your voice was rough and weak.

"Don't."

The word came out, but no one was listening.

"Stop. Please."

Their eyes, shadowed by the dim lighting, didn't hold any of the mercy you had foolishly thought maybe they would. It felt so stupid. Especially in the face of their mocking smiles which seemed to widen at each passing second. Mira hissed out, “We see what you are.”

Zoey closed the distance, getting into your face, “You’re a demon.”

Jolting away from their touch, the patterns seemed to move of their own accord, tightening and coiling around your arms and wrists. Your heart pounded in your ears, the sound was deafening, and the world felt like it was spinning around you.

"No. Please stop!—"

"You’re a mistake. You have been since the moment you were born.” They continued, their voices sounding distorted and cruel.

It felt like something had ripped the air from your lungs, a painful and burning feeling that made your eyes water as the patterns burned tighter and tighter around you, snaking over your throat before reaching your face. The world around you spun and tilted as everything faded away into a grotesque swirl of colors and sounds.

The sound of your own voice yelling out felt unfamiliar until you registered it as your own. Piercing in sheer volume as the lights above the stage shattered into a shower of glass that veiled your rushed steps to disappear.

To escape from something that felt like your worst nightmare.

Your voice felt rough, strained, and your breath hitched. You had to keep running, despite the aching in your chest.

The sound of the stage behind you fell into a muffled and indecipherable hum as you kept moving forward, your eyes squeezed shut. The patterns on your arm seared, but the pain felt secondary to the panic and dread that flooded your veins.She was right. Celine was right. About everything. You were a mistake, and for as long as you could remember, the only clear path away from all of this pain and shame was the one she had shown you.

“You’re a hunter, just like your mother used to be before he came.” 

A hunter. That was the only path, the only atonement that could help you finally live a normal life.

The only path to turning the Honmoon gold and making the patterns disappear.

You just wanted to live a normal life.

Mira and Zoey had been your everything, the one constant you had had in a world that didn't seem to understand. But they did. They understood, and still you had lied and shut them out. It felt impossible to blame them when all you could do was blame yourself for something that felt so very justifiable.

Skidding to a stop at the foot of the stairs, you braced yourself on the railing to try and catch your breath. You only paused at the sight of Mira and Zoey standing a few feet away. What? But they were just out there on stage with you, how did they—“What? How are you here? You were just on stage. That wasn’t you? That’s good.”

They backed away the closer you walked towards them, the picture of fear and uncertainty. Why were they looking at you like that? Like you were—“How do you have patterns?”

Zoey whispered, eyes glued to the very same lines that were supposed to be gone. Why weren’t they gone? The gold was there. It was there. So why was everything you had been working to erase still there? Still on you.

“You were hiding this from us? This whole time?” Mira asked, the sound a whisper that echoed in the empty space the three of you filled.

"No, I have a plan to erase them. Jinu was supposed to—I—He was—”

“Jinu? You’re working with him? All this time?” Zoey’s voice broke, eyes finally breaking away from the lines but now meeting your gaze with a look of such deep betrayal. It felt like a physical blow.

“No! No! I was using him to fix all this! To fix me! So we could all keep fulfilling our duty! So we could all be strong! Together!”

“How could we be together if we can’t tell your lies from your truths? What else have you been hiding?” Zoey whispered.

“I knew it.” Mira’s voice cut in, quiet but laced with a brokenness that felt like a slap in the face. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

“Mira, no! Didn’t you see? The gold? We’re so close!” You moved to close the distance, but they backed away, eyes wide with terror. "No! Please! Don’t leave! I can still fix it!”

The last few words were like a knife against your throat, coming out louder and causing the Honmoon’s strings to pulse with the same horrifyingly familiar magenta as the patterns. For a moment the patterns burned like something else entirely, searing painfully around your arms and neck, like the chains you felt had been there since the day you were born.

Mira breathed in and when she released the air she was holding, her fingers tightened around the grip of her weapon. Raised and pointed at you.

Zoey stared at the ground, her eyes watery, the sight was a stab to the chest as she raised her shin-kal towards you as well.

It felt like the world was tilting, and the room was spinning.

No. Not them. Not when you were so close. They were never supposed to find out this way.

Backing away, your legs were shaking and unsteady as you turned and disappeared, the world blurred around you as tears welled up in your eyes.

Your job was supposed to be to protect and seal the Honmoon. You were supposed to be there. To be a voice for those who couldn't speak, and a shield for those who couldn’t protect themselves. Putting your own life was supposed to mean nothing when it was supposed to guarantee that others would be safe and free. Something you weren’t even sure you knew the feeling of anymore. Your patterns were supposed to be gone, almost like they were never there.

And as much as it hurt, you wanted to hate him for it. You wanted to hate Jinu for making you think that maybe he could be different. For letting him get close enough for this to even matter.

Because the truth was, even if he wasn’t there, the real reason for the pain and the fear and the guilt was all still the same.

The reason you felt this way was because you were a demon.

The patterns.

That was the real truth.

It felt like a slap in the face after everything you’d done to try and help him. To try and help yourself.

The hallways were labyrinthine and in that moment felt nothing short of endless. It was almost as if it was shifting and changing with each step, the lights flickering overhead and casting shadows that loomed and stretched. Until you saw him.

Jinu was standing still as a statue, his eyes trained on the ground and his shoulders hunched over. Beside him were the very same demons that had tricked you on the stage, still disguised as Mira and Zoey. "Say you didn’t do this.”

He snapped his fingers and their disguises misted away before they did as well.

“How could you do this? It was real! What we had was real. I know it was!”

His head snapped up and the expression on his face was cold, almost emotionless.

"Everything I said—I just needed you to trust me. It was a lie.”

He moved to turn around, and you grabbed his shoulder in desperation. “No! No, I know your story. You wanted to protect your family! You couldn’t have been lying. Because if that was all a lie, then it means that everything I believed about myself was too. Everything I was willing to fight and sacrifice for was all a lie. Tell me that wasn't a lie, Jinu."

Jinu turned so swiftly it caused you to retract your hand at the movement, and all you could do was stare in shock as he cried out. “I left them!”

Backing away, your feet felt almost stuck to the ground.

"What?"

"That’s right. I lied. I only ever made a deal with Gwi-Ma to get myself out of that miserable life. I left my sister, and my mother, alone while I slept on silk sheets in the palace and with my belly full every night! I left them!”

His voice softened into a strained and almost painful whisper as tears trailed down his cheeks. “I left them…”

“But I know that’s not all you are. I know you. And this—this is just your demon talking. You have to fight it!”

“That’s not how it works!” He yelled and caused a fresh wave of shame, and anger to burn in your chest.

"Yes it is!” The lines of the Honmoon pulsed again, the glow was blinding and looked angry as the light filled the hallway and made the shadows stretch and contort monstrously.

Your hands were shaking. Was that—no—that was you. And you hated it.

Jinu scoffed in disbelief. “Listen to yourself. Has fighting it really been working? Because in case this wasn’t the sign you were looking for. You’re a demon. Just like me. And all we get to do is live with our pain, and our misery. That’s all we deserve.”

A powdery mist shielded his exit, leaving you with only the suffocating darkness.

Everything you had worked towards, everything you’d ever wanted was to be free from the patterns.

It would mean you wouldn’t be… a monster anymore.

But… you were a demon.

Just like Gwi-ma.

Just like Jinu.

And just like your mother. 

It was the only thing that made sense.

But you didn’t want to hurt Mira or Zoey.

You never wanted to do that.

Even though the only thing you could feel was the shame, and guilt, and anger.

All the emotions that were bubbling up, felt like they were eating away at your skin.

Making the patterns on your arms and face glow brighter.

The faint smell of grass stung your nose as a soft wind brushed through it and the seonangdang tree. The pieces of paper tied to its large outstretching branches were jerked by the strong currents of wind. The faint sound of bells were drowned out by the overwhelming sound of the rustling leaves, and the wind that whistled and blew through the tree, the branches, and the strands of paper.

Celine stood at the base of the large tree, staring up into the branches which stretched across the early morning sky. It was still dark, and it would be for a long time.

You couldn't bring yourself to look up or even speak.

Not even when she froze for a split second before swiftly turning to face you with her weapon in-hand. Her movement halted at the sight of you.

"I thought I could fix everything. Fix myself. But I ran out of time and now it’s too late.”

Her weapon fell to the ground with a dull metallic thunk. Walking towards her, your saingeom materialized loosely in your grip. “They saw. They know. And there’s no denying it anymore. This is what I am.”

“No. That’s not—”

“You knew that I was a mistake from the very start.” Collapsing to your knees, you cradled the weight of your sword above you and towards her. wind whistled around you and the only other sound was the soft and broken gasps of air. “Do what you should’ve done from the very beginning. Before I destroy everything I’ve sworn to protect… please.”

Tears streaked down your face, the salty taste on your lips as you gasped out, a sob.

“Do it.”

The Honmoon pulsed violently and the branches of the tree shuddered with the force, the bells sounding like a chorus of screams.

Celine moved to stand in front of you, hands gently gripping yours, and pulling the saingeom towards her. She kneeled down and wrapped her arms around your shaking form.

You didn’t remember moving or letting go of the weapon, but it was now lying a small distance away..

“I can’t.” Celine moved to cup your face, the action was gentle, her thumbs brushing the tears off your face. "I can't. After losing your mother I always swore I would protect and take care of everything that was left of her. I can’t—I can’t do that again. I don’t think I’d be able to because you're all I have left."

It felt like your lungs were burning.

You couldn’t breathe, and choking the thought out felt like ripping a bandage off a fresh wound. “A—Again. What are you saying? What do you mean by again?"

"I’d hoped that things would turn out different this time. I—I wasn’t able to save her… but, I thought that there was still a chance to save you. And—and there still is—”

The tears were hot on your face, as the words sunk in.

"Save her? My mother turned into a demon. You told me so yourself—What aren’t you telling me? Tell me what happened! How could you—I don't understand—"

Celine looked up, the tears falling from her eyes and onto her face, her voice cracking.

"I know. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I didn't tell you the whole truth, because I was scared. That if I did, that you would leave too. That you would hate me just the same. And ask me to do the same thing that she did. I can’t do that again.” She gulped down air, her voice hoarse and breaking as she softly pulled you to your feet with her.

“I made a promise. So I did my best to accept you and help you.”

“Accept me? You told me to cover up, to hide.”

“Yes, just until we can fix everything. And we still can.” Pulling her sweater off, she loosely pulled it around your shoulders. “We can cover those up and put everything right again. I’ll tell Mira and Zoey that it was all a lie—an illusion by Gwi-Ma to break us apart.”

Pushing yourself away from her, the sweater fell off your shoulders, and onto the ground. You couldn’t do that again. Not if it meant it would cause the people you loved the same pain all over agin. Mira and Zoey didn’t deserve to be blindsided, not after all they had done to stay by you and help you. “No. I’m not doing that. No more hiding! And no more lies!”

Celine backed away, but raised her hands in attempted mediation. “Hold on. We can still fix this.”

“Don’t you get it?” You cried out, the tears running down your face and falling from your chin. "There is no fixing this! This is what I am!”

Her eyes were stuck on the ground, and she was silent.

For a split second, the wind picked up and the tree groaned as the leaves shook violently, the strings of bells chiming loudly.

“Why… Why did you do it? Why did you kill her?”

Celine closed her eyes, a tear traced its way down her face, and her voice was quiet and hoarse.

"I didn’t want to. I never wanted to hurt her. But by the time she told me… it was too late. If I could go back, I would’ve never gone through with what she asked me to do…”

Her words cut off as a sob escaped, before continuing.

"But I had no choice. She begged me. She asked me to make sure that she never hurt anyone. And that you would be safe. And I promised. But I never thought that it would end up this way. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this."

“Then how was it supposed to happen? Why…why can’t you love me?”

"I do—”

“All of me!”

The Honmoon glowed violently behind you, and the sound of the bells being blown by the wind was deafening. It had always looked and felt alive in every aspect, but now it looked volatile. Magenta and other shades of pink and purple appearing up and down the strings. The patterns on your arms matched the violent and unstable light, pulsing with each beat. But it didn’t hurt the same way it had, now it was just a burning ache that spread all the way down your body.

Celine didn't move, her gaze trained solely on the beating magenta lines. “This is why we have to hide it. Our faults and fears must never be seen. It’s the only way to protect the Honmoon.”

The air was still, and it felt hard to even breathe. But the panic was no longer a constant, rather it had been replaced by something much deeper, and more painful. A sense of clarity and understanding.

For all your life you had practiced those exact teachings and followed through with them, but now, they just felt wrong. Hiding your patterns was supposed to be the only way to turn the Honmoon gold and erase them, and the fear and shame.

But hiding those things had only made it worse.

Reaching for the same consistently out of reach perfection had only isolated you from those you really cared about.

Gold was supposed to be everything, but maybe it wasn’t.

Reaching down, you picked up the handle of the saingeom. “If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.”

The almost pitch black, and crowded entirety of Namsan Tower was only lit up by the almost all-consuming light of Gwi-Ma. It was impossible not to see him, a vibrant mixture of red, bright pinks, and hints of shadowed purples that quickly became consumed by the rest. Just like the large crowd of people walking in an almost dazed, zombie-like manner into the flickering fire before disappearing.

It was like watching a horror movie play out before you, as the demons seemed to take on a life of their own. The way the magenta lights cast dark shadows and illuminated them in that very same color, making them look like they were one with the shadows. The shadows were a part of them.

It was terrifying, but it also set a hot feeling of anger in your chest.

The Honmoon had failed.

Not just because of you, but because it had been built on an entire fault-line of lies and false promises.

And it would’ve failed with or without you. But it was undeniable that the strain it had undergone and all of this was your fault.

It was time to fix it.

The patterns were glowing and burning, and the weight of peoples stares was almost suffocating. Pulling your gaze off the floor and meeting anyone’s eye was an impossible feat that you didn’t even try. Instead, you kept your eyes trained on the ground until Gwi-Ma’s voice broke the silence.

"You show up like this? Thinking you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself.”

“I can’t.”

“And now everyone finally sees you for what you really are.”

“They do.”

“And the Honmoon is gone.”

“It is.” Finally, you look up into the fires. Stretched open like the mouth of a beast behind the stage, a gaping wound of magenta light. “So, we can make a new one.”

The light of the saingeom pierced through the thick fog of darkness, shining a brilliant white-gold that momentarily pushed back the magenta shadows. The new Honmoon would not be built on silence, but on the truth.

Large, shadowy demons emerged from the embers of him and lunged.

You didn't flinch. The pain of the patterns still burned, but the clarity you found at the seonangdang tree was a cold, hard anchor. Hiding had failed. Shame had broken you. Now, you fought with the truth: this is what you were, and this is what you would use to save the world.

Your saingeom whistled, leaving a searing trail of white light.

The first strike sliced through an oncoming demon with the familiar hiss of dissolving essence with three more taking its place. But without that heavy weight within your chest, your burden that you’d never realized you’d been carrying was gone.

The hoard was easy to break through, and when the dust cleared away, you could see  them. The weight of the weapon momentarily disappeared.

Emerging from their own flocks of demons and running towards you were Mira and Zoey. The warmth of their embrace settled any remaining uncertainty.

“I’m sorry—”

“No. Don’t say that. We should’ve, I should’ve—” Zoey stopped Mira from continuing, placing her hand lightly on her shoulder.

“We missed you.”

Replacing the dusted away hoard of demons came more, crawling out of the magenta flames which had started to develop a darker hue to them. The previous performance of the Saja Boys had stopped quite awhile ago as they lunged off the stage, teeth barred and claws outstretched. Jinu stood still on the platform, face shadowed by his hat, but what you could make out was a frown settled almost frozen.

Just as the three of you drew your weapons, the demons that were quickly approaching were dusted. Anxiety washed over you, freezing you and the others in anticipation as what emerged behind them wasn’t more demons or even Gwi-Ma.

No, it was them.

They were here, despite everything.

He moved forward with an awkwardness that was almost hidden by the costume—intimidating as he may be, it was impossible not to perceive it. His hand settled lightly on your shoulder, squeezing it just slightly, “I’m—I’m glad you’re okay. If we can help, please let us.”

Warmth filled you up from the inside, the words gushing out without much thought, “I’m glad you guys are here, I—thank you—”

Your focus drifted to the demons around you as Gwi-Ma forced them to pull back in puffs of vibrant violet smoke. The bright flames glowed brighter, looming larger over the horizon of the tower. The pink curled inwards, with silhouettes of eyes peering down from the inferno. Sweat cooled to an almost freezing degree that made you feel slightly nauseous.

A tidal wave of the formless and faceless demons came from both sides, but that wasn’t what distracted you. 

No.

In a split second, the platform was lit up and almost entirely engulfed by the same inferno, coming into the direct pathway of all of them.

The blue light of the saingeom blocked it, but the sudden appearance and weight of the weapon strained you.

Normal demons dusted away from simply slashed through, but Gwi-ma was like an immovable wall—one that’s unbearable heat and constricting force made it hard to think, no less breathe.

Your feet skidded back, the muscles in your hands and arms tensing uncomfortably in an effort to stay still and not falter for even a moment.

Then it stopped.

Your eyes, which had closed from the effort, opened and saw Jinu. Blocking the light of the fire, and though he refused to show it, you could make out the undeniable pain in his expression.

“No—I, don’t do this.” You whispered, trying to tug him away from the impact of it.

He didn’t move, the edges of his existence frayed into the familiar smoke, but the rest of him stayed. “I’m sorry for everything.”

“I wanted to set you free.”

“You did.” He assured. “You gave me my soul back… and now I want to give it to you.”

The rest of him disappeared as a circle of light drifted forward and moved to circle you. Wetness burned the corners of your eyes.

He was gone.

It felt like you failed him.

The light moved to rest in the palm of one of your hands, the warmth not burning, but rather being like a hug.

Maybe he wasn’t here anymore.

But he wasn’t gone, that much was certain.

The weight of the saingeom—which had previously been resting loosely in your hand—seemed to increase the more you moved to swing it forward. But being able to carry it wasn’t the issue, the issue was redirecting that weight of it towards Gwi-ma.

He screamed out in pain as the blade slashed right down the middle of the mountainous inferno, the sound of it almost shaking the tower.

The relief of having injured him was short lived though as the flames quickly merged back together, looming larger in his anger.

Running forward, Mira and Zoey quickly joined you while the rest focused on getting rid of the remainder of the demons. The weight of the ground seemed to disappear the closer the three of you got to him before delivering the final blow.

Iridescent light washed over the entirety of the tower, almost blinding you as the three of you met the floor of the platform. The darkness that had previously hung over like a thick smog, was now gone and in its place was one of the clearest days you’d ever seen.

The crowd of people felt like almost a new sight, even though you had seen similar crowds for years.

But this was different.

Your family was here.

Everyone you knew and loved. Everyone you knew that loved you, were here.

Not despite everything, but because they cared.

Header from Pinterest

Beautiful dividers by @saradika-graphics and @cursed-carmine

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything for this story in so long. I wish I had a great excuse, but to be honest, I’ve just been having a lot of trouble writing these past few months. This probably isn’t the best way to end this story, but I am probably gonna work on an epilogue scene with Rumi!reader meeting the rest of the batfam.

I hope everyone has a great week, and thank you so much for the endless amount of patience!!! <3 <3 <3