Every year. Every goddamned year.
Janna had a bit of a reputation as a teenager. A sort of skit she played out constantly, a theme, a running gag, a bit, and that was that she was the creepy girl. Not the best trait to have stapled to her metaphorical trading card bio, but damnit it was hers and she was going to go all out if it killed her.
Maybe she didn't really need to be so creepy to Marco all the time, maybe she was tired today and didn't feel like going out of her way to get detention, maybe this musty occult book was stinking up her room and she's already read all she can understand and its high time she got rid of it. But no, this was her thing, and the majority of the time doing that thing made her happy. Without her thing she was just…just Janna. A stereotypical highschool girl who liked pink and old poetry.
Gross.
There was nothing wrong with being herself. That's what everyone always says in those lectures about self-esteem. But what happens if someone else does yourself better then you can?
When Janna first saw Tom the Demon she only showed a little of the same awe as the other girls. To her he was just another monster, and Star had monsters show up at the school all the time. Big fat deal. The monster was sent away, probably defeated by Marco and Star in some showdown that taught them a lesson about friendship or something. Janna was much more interested in seeing how her zombie cabbage was doing.
The Tom kid didn't show up again after that until much later, when Marco got that thing growing on his neck. It was hilarious yeah, Janna had to remind herself to give the Demon props next time she saw him.
And so she did, once he started hanging out with them all more. He was a cool kid, and upon picking the lock to his spooky carriage Janna took some small pride in being badder then he was. Boyban-loving nerd.
But then Halloween rolled around. After the fiasco with Hungry their little friend group had decided to just hang out and watch obscure horror flicks. This was Janna's time to shine, time to pull out the most fucked up and amazing movies she had collected over the course of the year. The night was a complete success, everyone screaming and gagging and yelling "Really Janna?!" in utter disgust. She shrugged and laughed it off, smug as she waved everyone goodnight.
Tom was the last to leave, smiling politely as he got up to go. He made some jab at Marco for crying and Janna was about to argue that he had fared no better when she realized that he actually had. Thinking back he had kind of spent the whole movie looking a bit bored, if not surprised by how the scares were affecting the others.
That was the first time she realized the jerk might be out for her bit. Well. Not after it so much, he might not be able to help it. Even an adorakable demon who liked boy bands was still in his essence a demon and therefore more suited to the creepy skit then she was. Well. She'd scare the socks off him next time.
Next time came and went, Janna made sure to pick something even spookier this year. So spooky in fact Marco flat out refused to show up, saying something about "Not needing those pictures in my brain." The entire night Janna kept glancing back to Tom, infuriated by how completely unaffected he was.
Senior year Janna swore to pull out all the stops, assuming this was her last chance, but after everyone got a pair or dimensional scissors from Star for graduation presents she found that coming over to place to watch a horror film was a tradition. Janna was subjected to another two years of being humiliated by Tom.
But no. No, no, this year everything was going to be different. This year she was going to try specifically to find something that Tom would find terrifying.
Over the years Janna's schoolgirl collection had graduated into an all out grimoire of incantations and hexes specifically tailored to a human such as herself. Glossrick had been particularly supportive of this, knowing that she couldn't do real magic but at least providing her with the kind of information to find artifacts and spells that could be used by just about anyone.
Janna dug through her closet of the occult and produced a cursed magic 8 ball she got from quest buy. Its thing was that it answered all questions correctly, but worded them in a way to cause only misfortune. Since misfortune was all apart of the fun of Halloween, (and furthermore at Tom's expense, not hers,) it wouldn't be such a disaster to use it now.
"A movie that will scare Tom shitless," Janna said as she shook the arcane implement, "And where to find it."
The ball seemed to consider this for a moment, before slowly the pyramid floated to the surface to show the words "Amour." Followed by "Netflix."
Janna frowned. Really? A movie so scary that it could freak out a demon could be found on Netflix? That didn't seem right. She asked again, and again, until the ball began to give her some salt in its answers.
She sighed and dialed it up just to check and grimaced. Goddamn it, it was a chick flick. Why the hell would the 8 ball give her a chick flick? She shook her head and skimmed the stream. At least it wasn't any kind of teen drama. It looked to be some cute romance between two old people. That was kind of weird she guessed.
Everyone was gathered, pizza ordered and snacks laid out. It was really the same setup as every year, the only change being that Starfan didn't show up after Star and Jackie had hooked up. Janna didn't like to pay attention to the musical chairs of whose dating who, but she did notice that Marco was sitting in Tom's lap like he had the last three years.
Good. Janna thought smugly, You'll need someone to hold onto when you're screaming your head off.
Hitting play and sitting on the couch Janna felt a little more confident when the first scene was the police knocking down the door to a dead woman surrounded by flowers. Maybe the gramps romance thing was just a backdrop to the scares or something. She gets a bit more excited when the movie flashes back to the elderly couple coming home to a breaking to their apartment, but is confused when they just brush it off. Even more confused when the wife has a stroke in the next scene, and the movie never lets you forget it.
When the rest of the movie played out like romantic drama, Janna groaned internally. It wasn't like she was heartless. All the stuff happening was sad yeah, but Janna didn't want to cry she wanted to be scared. She wanted Tom to be scared.
Janna held out hope that there was some super scary supernatural force behind everything until the final scene. Up until then she told herself that the first shot of the dead wife wouldn't have happened if there wasn't something really terrifying coming up, but the climactic finale equaled out to the husband simply dressing the wife up after he had murdered her himself and surrounding her body with flowers. Sickeningly sweet, incredibly depressing, not at all what Janna had in mind.
The credits rolled and Janna was about to apologize for the lame movie and turn the lights on before she heard a road behind her. Janna turned to see a very pissed off Tom marching furiously from the room, Marco chasing after him.
"T-tom wait!"
The rest of their conversation was cut off by the roar of flames as both he and Tom were teleported from the room. Probably back to their place for a couple's squabble. Weird, Janna hadn't heard them fighting or even talking at all.
"What was that about?" Janna said with a frown, looking between those who had remained.
"I dunno," Pony Head said, "I fell asleep, was there drama going on during that boring movie that I missed?"
She did that ridiculous horse pout at the very prospect of missing out on seeing Marco miserable.
Janna looked to Star, unhelpful because she was too busy sobbing her eyes out, Jackie too busy consoling her. Janna shrugged and went about cleaning up, bidding everyone a good night.
Halloween was over, Janna had failed again. She sighed as she took down the green and purple fairy lights she had hung for the occasion. A small buzz came from her phone, Janna turned to look. Stooping down she picked it up and saw a message from Marco.
You're a real bitch, you know that? It read.
Janna blinked dumbfounded and tried to call him, only to have him hang up after three rings. Dumbfounded Janna shrugged and tried to go about her business, still unable to shake the disappointment of the night.
People acted weird around her after that. No one wanted to hang out besides Pony Head (who she never really hung out with anyway) and there was this passive aggressive vibe ever since her informal party.
Jackie was the one who finally talked to her, and only because Janna cornered her in a starbucks.
"Yeah…I don't really know what's going on either…" Jackie said, trying not to meet her eye, "…but apparently what you did to Tom was really shitty."
Janna blinked at this.
"What did I do?" she asked dumbfounded.
"I really don't know," Jackie said rubbing the back of her neck, "But…maybe you can go apologize to him anyway? Things are really weird now and I don't like it."
Hearing this made Janna consider. She had never been close to Tom, and it was kind of stupid everything had gotten so weird over a shitty Halloween movie. Still. Janna hadused the magic 8 ball, its whole thing was that it made things weird. That was at least one thing to apologize for, at least.
Janna searched her contacts to see if she still had him. Being in separate places it wasn't like they were still in touch, and when they were in touch it was usually more through Star and Marco. Upon finding his number she texted him a short concise message.
Hey. We cool?
A few hours passed before she received the following:
No.
Janna bit her lip. It wasn't like she wasn't used to people not being cool with her before, but somehow this felt so much more ominous.
Can we talk about it?
The response was almost instant.
No.
Welp. She tried. Janna stuffed her phone in her pocket before it buzzed again.
Actually Yeah. We probably should.
Looking at the message Janna almost felt worse. Now she actually had to try.
I don't really know what I did.
She sent the message and waited for an explanation. When it didn't come she sighed irritably and tried again.
Okay, maybe I did. But I don't know why you're so pissed about it.
After sending this she went on angrily.
You guys curse each other all the time I figured it was no big deal.
That got a response.
What are you talking about.
Janna released an aggravated sigh.
Yeah. So I cheated. I wanted to scare you so I asked a cursed 8 ball what movie would freak you out. But it wasn't even scary so I don't see why you're so pissed about it.
There was another pause.
So it doesn't happen then?
Janna was too confused to respond, Tom sent more messages.
The thing with forgetting.
Where she couldn't move anymore
Or talk
Or remember anything
That doesn't actually happen to humans does it?
?
Hello?
The messages came so quickly Janna could barely write a reply to any of them.
What? You mean the stroke?
She asked.
That's what you're so scared by?
She rolled her eyes and went to close her phone. If that idiot was just overly sentimental she didn't know why everyone was so pissed at her. The phone continued to buzz.
She died from it.
Nothing even killed her she just died from it.
There was nothing either of them could do.
He just had to watch.
Just had to watch her DIE
And he couldn't do ANYTHING about it.
Frustrated Janna typed a quick response to shut him up.
Well it happens to all of us so get over it.
It only took a minute for her to realize the mistake.
Fuck man.
Did you not know?
There was some pause.
I didn't know it was going to be that bad.
Janna bit her lip again, unsure of what to say. She sent some awkward messages of consolation, but he didn't respond to any of them after that.
"Shit." Janna said finally, sitting back and staring at the ceiling.
The next day she decided to get rid of the 8 ball. While it had achieved a adolescent-long dream of hers, the clerk wasn't kidding when he warned of the grave misfortune.
By the time Halloween rolled around again, they all agreed to get hammered like normal college kids.