Read a couple Naruto Thrillers (such as "A Thrilling Date" by GreenCyberWolf and "Thriller Uzumaki style" by Xarkun's Shadow), and I also watched the short Shrek Thriller Night - which is the basis for this new oneshot for NaruHina and SasuSaku. :D
I didn't even name WHICH zombie does which move of the dance, so use your imaginations and pick whoever you want.
I don't own Naruto, Shrek or even Michael Jackson's masterpiece. (RIP King of Pop, marking nine years now).
It was the night before Halloween in Konoha. Leaves blew in the breeze as the streetlights illuminated the roads which were lessening with drivers and hard partying types, just as it approached the witching hour which was said to be where all the terrors of the night would come out...
And this night was terror in itself for one man who got more than he bargained for when he agreed to SEE this piece of monstrosity with his fiancée and their two best friends the night before the scariest of the year. He burst through the theater doors as soon as the music rolled for the credits. He'd endured it all long and hard enough just for his friends' sakes, but he couldn't take it anymore.
The young man was college-age, dressed in a black leather jacket, dark jeans and a warm blue sweater. He tugged on his spiked raven hair and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"OH, FOR THE LOVE OF KAMI, MAKE IT STOP! I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Coming out behind him was another boy his age, this time with a whiskered face, a shockwave of blond hair and vibrant blue eyes, in an orange-and-black checkered shirt with black jeans; on his arm was a beauty with lavender-tinted ebony hair that fell down her back, in a gray top and torn jeans studded with rhinestones here and there, a leaf-shaped opal around her neck. Both were happily singing what they remembered from the movie, unlike himself: "Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo!"
You heard that right: they had gone to watch The Sound of Music of all things! And on Halloween - or night before, but what the hell difference did it make?! That wasn't what Sasuke Uchiha signed up for tonight. Halloween was about horror and fun in one, but no, his loser friend he'd known since childhood had to trick him into seeing a lighthearted family film they hadn't seen since they were kids and terrified of the thunderstorms, having spent the night in his big brother's embrace throughout the ordeal.
Sasuke was having a hard time breathing, having hunched himself over a canister to try and dry-heave his stress out - until a sweet, flowery voice spoke its concern. "Honey?"
The person who spoke had pink hair pixie-cut, bright green eyes that matched her fringed sweater dress, a pendant of black love swans and a red crystal heart around her neck. This was his fiancée, his sweetheart from high school whom he was going to marry by the summer coming up. "Are you okay?" Sakura Haruno asked, coming to place her hand on his shoulder.
That hand he saw with the ring he gave her last month: the luscious pink sapphire accented with two whites, on platinum which lasted forever. "I've never heard you scream like that before, Sasuke-kun."
"Yeah," Naruto Uzumaki agreed. "What kind of person screams when they see singing nuns?" Growling, Sasuke rounded on him.
"Because it's Halloween, for God's sake! It's not the kind of thing I wanted to see tonight! You could have just asked for my side before picking and surprising!"
Hinata Hyuuga looked between her boyfriend and the agitated Uchiha, the former who scoffed. "Okay, fine, Duck Butt. What did you want to see tonight?" Naruto spat.
What did Sasuke want to see tonight? This was it: mummies, man-eating plants, earth-grounded but otherworldly serial killers - even zombies. Naruto huffed in disbelief. "Zombies don't know how to Lay ee odl lay ee o -"
He was shut up by a half-empty popcorn bowl that wasn't one of theirs into his face, making both the girls laugh, and he was tempted to join them. "That is my point," Sasuke said in annoyance.
"Well," Hinata said, "why can't we have both as a good compromise? Like a...scary musical?"
Suddenly, something strange happened as if an unseen force answered her "prayer" - and maybe Sasuke's own.
What now?!
~o~
The lights came back on, and someplace was music playing, which happened to be an instrumental Hinata created herself on her mobile app. She had a dream of becoming a composer after college, and she was a damned fine one. The guitar playing was something akin to salsa.
And what a greater nightmare than to see Naruto sway his hips and body here and there, making Sasuke groan. "I'm calling a taxi." And he had no idea why he agreed that they all walked from their respectable flats when they didn't live that far away.
It's close to midnight
Something evil's lurkin' in the dark
Under the moonlight
You see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream
"Naruto," Sasuke growled, "I hate it when you do that." But it was like the loser to not stop singing, since that was something he loved even if he wasn't THAT good.
You close your eyes
And hope that this is just imagination
But all the while
You hear a creature creepin' up behind
You're outta time
Thriller at night
And no one's gonna save you
From the beast about to strike
And WHY was Sakura not making him stop? Sasuke gritted his teeth so hard he thought they would shatter. Hinata was behind them because she was playing the tune into the night, but then she started and nearly dropped her device; her grip maintained when his arm slipped around her waist and pulled her close. Sakura laughed at the sight and doubled over in the middle of their walk along the lonely sidewalk, with very few streetlights on this pathway.
There's demons closing in on every side
They will possess you
Unless you change that number on your dial
Now is the time
For you and I to cuddle close together, yeah
All through the night
I'll save you from the terror on the screen
I'll make you see
"Sasuke, show some excitement!" Sakura snapped at him, seeing his glower, and he grimaced at her whack to the back of his shoulders, but it didn't deter him.
"Naruto, come on! You know how I feel about spontaneous musical outbursts!"
~o~
The two couples continued to walk, going past the old cemetery which was illuminated not by manmade electricity, but the eerie phosphorescence of the full moon - and the distant howling of a wolf which called those beneath the earth to come to the surface.
A malevolent voice spoke in hushed voices as every tomb opened up, releasing a dead man or woman in every state of decay, dismemberment or affliction of malady. From the ground to the cement coffins that were made for show, to even the mausoleums for the oldest families. All releasing a rancid smell into the air, but it hadn't yet reached the unsuspecting group they would find.
Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize ya'lls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller
And when they all finally cornered the gang, each had their own reaction: Sakura raised both her fists as she was prepared to unleash her moves from the dojo, Hinata dropped her mobile for sure and destroyed all her hard work - but she had everything backed up - Naruto whimpered and crouched into his girl as well as the pinkette who didn't lecture him this time, but Sasuke was a different story altogether.
He didn't even catch that strong aroma of death until he, Naruto and the girls found themselves being circled. Although he wasn't scared, because how COULD all their friends and many others beforehand be living dead?
"Oh, man, me and my big mouth!" the blond moaned. "I KNEW I should have stayed home tonight...!"
However, the more he looked at the familiar faces of their friends, cold dread crept over the Uchiha's spine at the details of each zombie he had no idea had died and come back to life the night before Halloween, just when the clocks struck the witching hour.
Shikamaru with pure white eyes, devoid of the pupil and outer iris. Utterly soulless.
Black gore pouring out of the mouth of...INO. Poor Sakura, seeing her best friend like this! And holy shit, she's naked with the blood dripping down the front of her body!
Choji with a RAT in his mouth!
Lee: missing one arm and dragging himself on, devoid of "springtime youth".
Tenten - gods, her poor face with the flesh torn off the right to show bone and a black eye socket underneath.
Hinata shrieked when she saw her cousin Neji with his head off of his shoulders and in one arm, juggling it back and forth whenever he felt like it, and face devoid of any expression. He didn't seem to care if his long hair got entangled.
Next was of course Kiba and Akamaru. The white wolf-dog was nothing more than matted grayish fur and exposed bones in places, and his owner had a crooked jaw with his lips missing to show the teeth and all.
Finally was Shino who was the stuff nightmares were made off: the collar of his hood was torn to show his JAW missing, so that the tongue slid in and out with disgusting, squishing sounds.
Suddenly, it wasn't so fun anymore as the rotting scent got stronger to the point he realized they couldn't stay any longer. Even though his woman was capable of kicking down, she couldn't get all of them. "Sakura, time to go -" But when he turned around to her, the gruesome being he saw looked like her, yet wasn't.
Her skin was ashen, peeling off in places, and her eyes were dark, muddy green with the pupils dilated. Her breath, released through parted, chapped lips, was reeking of waste. He held his own and whirled to see - "Hinata?! NARUTO!" - their friends in similar states, no time to wonder how and why this happened. Hinata's glossy hair had dried out, some falling from her head to show her scalp, and Naruto's eyes were bloodshot with red while his hair was so thin it looked like a patchwork of needles.
Hinata had her shattered mobile in hand which had somehow lit up as she selected a song - and an upbeat tune began to play, resulting in the most ghastly thing to happen that poor Sasuke had to get dragged into it as all the fiends that had been his friends and loved ones began to assemble in the beat.
"Oh, no, not DANCING!"
He couldn't even bring himself to enjoy the rhythm as he was jerked and dragged around, feeling his bones throb with each swing of his head, arms and his legs bending as he bowed forward -
- all the while listening to Naruto's singing getting no better than it ever was. Or maybe it had, in a nightmarish way.
That this is thriller
Thriller at night
'Cause I can thrill you more
Than any ghoul would ever dare try
Thriller
Thriller at night
So let me hold you tight
And share a diller, chiller, killer
Thriller here tonight
Three times Sasuke tried to reach undead Hinata to destroy her phone, since it was clearly controlling them - under the influence of a REAL LIFE SUPERNATURAL FORCE! - and the third time was the charm when he threw it down and stomped on it. Groaning, he turned and bent over the collection of trash cans, feeling like he wanted to throw up and his body on fire. He was going to be sore in the morning.
Instantly, he regretted forgetting there was still the horde of the undead now closing in on him - including the woman he loved, his best friend as well as said friend's woman. Screaming their names as well as begging them to remember him wouldn't save his life - and Naruto's leering, red-eyed face as well as the horrid movie lines were the last he would see and hear as he would be torn apart and eaten alive.
"LAY EE ODL LAY EE HOO...!"
~o~
"PLEASE TELL ME IT'S OVER!"
He awoke screaming, and that was when he found that it had all been a dream. He was in the movie theater, surrounded by all his friends, and Sakura on his left who was smiling but also concerned. "Sasuke, are you okay?"
They're alive...and well.
Sasuke gulped, taking a few breaths to calm his racing heart, then reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow. "Y-yeah. I must have fallen asleep and missed the movie..." If it's that damned Sound of Music, I might actually murder someone.
However, it turned out to be the opposite, that he only slept through the previews, as the piano music told him that he got his wish that didn't involve corpses rising from the graves, turning his friends into them, or eating living flesh. "Next hour and a half, you're looking at nothing but babysitters, pumpkins and knives - and a man in a white mask!" Naruto declared after a mouthful of popcorn given to him by a pale and shivering Hinata.
Just what he needed: Halloween with all of them, hopefully nothing to go wrong - and he hoped he wasn't jinxing that.
Man this was hella fun. XD The original Thriller and the Shrek short combined (so, yes, nothing was in order of the lyrics of either version, but what the hell?). What makes it great is I get it out a month before Halloween.
Shino missing his jaw is a tribute, btw, to "The Grudge". :O
And of course, the movie seen at the end in real world is none other than John Carpenter's "Halloween" - one of my all-time favorites!
Review please! :D Do NOT flame, or find yourself facing the Thriller's undead wrath.
