Hey.

So.

What up?

That's cool, that's cool...yeah, so I, like, decided to start a new series of OneShots. I'm calling them Midnight Coloured Fruit. Wanna know why? No, don't give me that look, I really don't care if you want to know, I'm going to tell you anyway. It's because the colour of midnight is generally known as black (unless you're like, in a place where the sun shines 24/7 like antarctica in the summer or something) and...would you just shut up and let me continue what I'm saying? Seriously, I just want to explain...anyway, so yeah, fruit. Black fruit. BlackBerry. Guess what kind of phone I've got? And guess what I typed this entire chappy on?

His body shook in her arms, quivering, terrified and yearning for her protection. A mother's protection. Protection that she wished she'd been able to give sooner.
She didn't know what he'd been through, had no idea the extent of his fear and pain, and yet she wished she could, wished that she knew, so she could take it away from him and carry the burden herself. He didn't deserve his pain. All he had done was help, sacrifice every little thing he had to protect everyone around him, while she had remained oblivious to the fact that her own son's life had flipped so drastically, and even worse, had made it even harder for him. She didn't even notice when her old friend, a man who sat in her own living room, the man she and her husband had attended school with, had been blatantly taunting him by doing just that. Sure, she'd noticed how he'd become such a creep, but she never fathomed how dark and twisted his mind worked.
That man...that man had the audacity to take her daughter's life as if she were a fly buzzing around his head, claiming that the girl was no use to anybody, anyway. Too smart for her own good, nosing into other people's business; keeping to herself, he'd said, probably would have saved her life. Probably.
She hadn't even known this, though, until after. She didn't know that Vlad was her daughter's murderer, didn't even see it when her son pounced on him, yelling and screaming for him to go back to whatever dirty little hole he'd come from and never come back. She'd chalked it up to grief, combined with the fact that he and Vlad had never really gotten along anyway. She'd even apologised for her son's behaviour...
It was Jazz's funeral the day that he struck again. Jack was making his speech, choking through tears, and she was doing her best not to sob too loud as she held her remaining child close to her heart. Danny had suddenly gone rigid-and two seconds later chaos reigned throughout the funeral home. Everyone was screaming, the pounding of people's footsteps rocked the floor as grieving friends and family tried to escape. They were lucky if they could actually see an escape route; clouds of brown dust with a trace of green impeded their vision to a point where one's own hand was a blur a foot in front of their face.
So caught up in the pandemonium, Maddie didn't even notice that her son had left her side until the dust cleared enough for her to see him, crouching next to what she vaguely recognised as her husband laying on the floor. She was by their side in an instant...
...fast enough to watch as the light that she had fallen so deeply in love with in her husband's eyes diminish as he took his last breath to say an 'I love you' that couldn't be heard over the continuing screams of the panicked people, still trying to escape, yet failing.
Her throat was dry, her body numb. No. This wasn't happening. It just wasn't...but why...how did... The questions swirled in her mind sluggishly, not even front and centre but in the back, as she just stared at the man who had been there for her forever, laughed with her, cried with her, gotten down on one knee with a small box in hand and asked her to marry him... He wasn't supposed to be gone, not so soon after Jazz had left, no, it was just...just cruel...how would Danny...?
Danny. She blinked, as she realized in horror the connection between her husband's and daughters untimely deaths. She looked around desperately; where had her son gone? He wasn't beside her anymore, he didn't look like he was tangled in the now smaller crowd trying to leave, he was nowhere in sight. Her breathing became more rapid as she stood up and frantically searched for her baby boy. No...If her family was being targeted, she would never let him out of her sight again.
She had found him, of course. He was on the roof; however, she hadn't recognised him at first, didn't know that it was her son hiding under that snow white hair and glowing eyes that she had hunted down for months. She had been tempted to just leave the scene and continue searching for her son, until his voice, the voice he had still thought of as innocent at the time, had commanded her to stay and...Chat.
She hadn't actually noticed he was there until he had spoken up, and when she did, it scared her. He had such a smile on his face...she had never seen something so malevolent. Thinking back to the moment, Maddie couldn't believe that she had still asked if he had seen her son after witnessing that smile. But she had been a desperate mother focused on keeping what remained of her family in the realm of the living. If she hadn't asked, she was sure she never would have found her son.
Oh, how she wished that her thoughts hadn't been so gruesomely true...
Vlad had laughed at her question, and her fear had risen considerably. He then pointed at the ghost in the room, the ghost she was willing to ignore in favour of the search for her son. Ironic.
"I actually have seen your son, my dear Madeleine...I still do, in fact. So do you."
And so Vlad showed her what she had missed for the past two years, having deemed it impossible. Theoretically, it was; the chemicals found within ectoplasmic energy would obliterate any human systems if it found its way inside the body. But what was in front of her very own eyes disproved the theory. She didn't know why-maybe his human cells had been altered to adapt, or it was a different type of ectoplasm, or the ectoplasm itself could actually be separate and intangible while near his human self-but she couldn't bring herself to care at the moment. She had found her baby, even if he was hiding a whole other person inside himself, and knew that he was safe for the time being. But Vlad blocked her way from rushing forward and holding her boy close and never letting go. He wasn't done yet, he'd said; and the most malicious, maniacal grin found its way onto his face as he explained to her exactly what she had missed for over two decades now.
And so came about the plotting, the hating, and the fear invoking that Vlad's tale told on repeat, with different fear struck into different people, and she was told how none of them had been so fun to scare or even kill as the man who had taken the life and what Maddie assumed was also his sanity for the past twenty two years.
She hadn't let him finish, before she grabbed her son and dashed out of the room so quickly that a race car driver would have been proud.
And so now here she was, holding her shaking boy, doing her best to comfort him against the horrific terror and trauma that he'd been through, while desperately needing someone to hold on to her as well. It wouldn't be long before they were found, she knew. It would never be enough time before Vlad caught up to them.

I will edit this later, and post it on DeviantArt. Soon as I figure out how...stupid thing won't let me upload stories. Anybody with experience know how (and if you're going to help, you're going to need a lot of patience with my incompetence with the internet.)?

And it only occured to me this morning how ironic it was to submit an angsty sotry on Valentine's Day. Well...I hope you enjoyed the holiday! :D