#wheeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

HIS GRAVE:

"That's not my grave, Six," Stan mumbled at his side. Stanford glanced at him, confusion written across his face. "But it's where you were buried-" "It's not where I woke up." Stan interrupted him, meeting his eyes. Stanford paused, then voiced his thoughts. "And… the place where you 'woke up', that's- was that our-?" Stan just nodded. "It's… where I go when I can't stay topside. 'S why I haven't skipped town yet- I can't really go too far from it." Stanford adjusted his glasses. "That… complicates the "move your coffin" plan, somewhat." "How? Your original plan was digging it up from the cemetery and dragging it out with those noodle-arms of yours." Stanford scowled. "An entire reconstructed sloop is a significant deviation from the previously-expected single-person-sized-coffin that I was anticipating."

I really wanted a scene where Ford and Stan talked about the lore I was building for Stan's flavor of vampire, but I realized that a good ambient spooky story needs AS LITTLE LORE AS POSSIBLE to make it work properly. It's the mystery that makes it spooky!! Also, like, Stan needed to be less forthcoming with his information. This is also a problem in the ficlet I wrote where Ford finally figures out Stan's a vampire, but I haven't gotten the chance to fix that yet. Stan kind of folds immediately, which works a little in that he IS meant to be acting differently from how he acted when he was alive, but also. It's Stan. He's a liar who lies. He's a vampire and he tried to convince Ford that he was just a very solid ghost.

HIS COFFIN:

There was something black staining the wooden boards within the hull. Stanford knew if he gave it even a moment's thought further than that he wouldn't be able to move. So he didn't. Instead, he considered the heighth of his brother and the size of the sloop. It wasn't seaworthy. Was never meant to be, not really. So taking it apart to build a more travel-appropriate vessel to house his brothers' body shouldn't make him feel anything. It shouldn't feel like mourning- he'd done enough of that at the funeral, and look where it got him. Fussing over nothing. Stanley himself was of no help- and for once, this was no fault of his own. Stanford had watched what crawling back into the hull did to his brother, and did not care for the way Stanley would flop limp and lifeless against the grain until the sun went down again. So it was him, down here in the hull, while his brother sat on the deck and watched the late afternoon sun drift lazily downward from under the safety of an umbrella pilfered from the rental stand.

Again, this was cut because it wasn't where I wanted to go with it; the two of them are already on the same page, working in tandem. Not spooky enough. Not full of enough dread. I mean, Ford is in fact under the impression he's in "Casper" while the rest of his family are aware that they're in "Carmilla: platonic edition", but. Come on.

I am sad that the paragraph about Ford watching Stan turn back unto a corpse at sun-up didn't end up getting used, I like the visual imagery it supplies. I liked it so much, actually, that I visited it a couple times in stuff that didn't end up getting used, like this passage here [context: it's still daytime, and for whatever reason I'd decided that if Stan got in his grave while the sun was still up that was an auto-out until the sun went away. I might still play with that but I didn't like how it turned out here]:

Stanley laid himself down into the makeshift coffin, settling his head on the sand-filled canvas "pillow" Ford had roughly sewn from the bits of sail not used to line the inside of the box. Then, as if he were a marionette with cut strings, his body went limp in the box. Stanford bit his lip hard, then, arms wrapping around his own shoulders as he sat in the sand and stared at his brother's unmoving face. Thirty minutes, that's all he had to wait. Thirty minutes for his brother to be dead to the world. To be dead, period. It was hard to tell from the outside, though. Stan's cheeks were as ruddy as they ever were, and he exhibited none of the frailness he'd had the day of the funeral in the casket Pa had decided on. But his chest didn't move with breath, and when Stanford let his fingers rest against Stanley's jugular vein, they found no pulse. It was silly to search for signs of life, he told himself. His brother wasn't alive anymore. It didn't make any sense.

And then I went and did it a-gosh-danged-gain in this one!!! What to heck!

The last sliver of visible sun finally sank beneath the waves of the bay. Its rays still shone over the beach, casting long shadows over the trash-filled dunes and fading further every moment as he sat there with his knees pulled up to his chest. The wooden box at his feet was dark on the inside, its sides high enough to guard against every speck of daylight still visible. He almost missed his brother's waking up, save for the glimmer of two red spots peering out at him from the shadows. Humans lacked tapetum lucidum normally, but who could tell with Stanley now? He froze in place, tongue dry. The question in his mouth refused to leave it. Without moving, without speaking, Stanford found all he could do was wait. "…Stanford?" his brother's gruff murmur rose, cutting whatever grim ties held him like a statue. "Stanley," he said with a whoosh of breath. "You're awake again. How-? I mean, is it acceptable? Your… grave?" His brother considered the question, shifting without yet sitting up. His hands roamed the rough canvas cloth that was stapled haphazardly to the sides of the box, fingers curling over the unsanded edges to pull himself slowly upright. "It's good," he said simply. "It feels… right." "Good,"

I was sooooooo disappointed that I couldn't find a way to make this sort of scene work. There was something about the quiet, uneasy intimacy of it that I wanted to explore but couldn't quite capture. It's something to return to in the future, I suppose! Maybe with the kids instead of Ford; it could be something that works better in a more humorous tone, maybe.