Anache Funeral Home

by WhenCatsAttack

Accompanying his girlfriend Elizabeta to oversee the arrangements of her grandfather's wake, Gilbert finds himself face to face with their eccentric high school rival turned town funeral director, Vlad. While Elizabeta makes sure everything's in place, Vlad, who's been exhibiting stranger behaviour than usual, gives Gilbert a tour of his funeral home. Much creepiness abounds.

Disclaimer: Nope, still haven't turned into Hidekaz Himaruya. Sadly.

Elizabeta frowned as her boyfriend drove past the large white house on the right side of the motorway. "Wait, stop Gil, I think that's it."

In return, Gilbert shot the house a disconcerted look, eyebrows practically disappearing into his hairline. "Huh, you're right: Enache Funeral Home. And printed in gold-embossed script on the sign, too; classy," he joked. Red eyes narrowing, Gilbert turned in the drivers' seat to stare at her. "Wait a second: Enache? As in the last name of your ex-boyfriend? That vampire wannabe asshole runs this place?"

Sighing, Elizabeta swung open the passenger door of the car, adjusted her skirt, and stepped out into the chill drizzle. "One, Vlad and I kissed once during our freshman year of high school before we both decided that we still hated each other. Two, he's not a vampire wannabe, just…eccentric. And three, this isn't about your ego, it's about seeing to my grandfather's funeral, so buck up and quit acting so damn childish," she snapped as she unfurled her red umbrella.

Gilbert pulled the key out of the ignition before slamming the door shut. "Fine, but if Count Chocula tries any funny business I'm going to shove the coffin up his ass," he muttered as he locked the car's doors.

Elizabeta smiled despite herself. "Oh Gilbert, your threatening another man with implausible anal obstruction is so gallant!"

"I think the word you're looking for is 'awesome', actually. Everyone knows that's the only adjective to describe me."

"You keep telling yourself that," Elizabeta laughed as the two of them meandered up the limestone path leading to the funeral home. Upon catching sight of the dragon-shaped knocker attached to the door, she shook her head while Gilbert muttered something about melodramatic former goth kids.

"You're one to talk little Mr. Punk's-Not-Dead-It's-Supposed-to-Smell-This-Way," Elizabeta told him as she fumbled with the heavy wrought-iron knocker before managing to thump it against the door. The ensuing clang of metal against wood was like the crack of a gunshot, and both she and Gilbert winced, the latter whistling lowly through his teeth.

"Damn, I gotta get me one of those," Gilbert said appreciatively.

"I can give you the name of the metal-worker who made mine, but be warned that his prices are rather steep," a voice said, causing them to jump.

Hand over her rapidly thumping heart, Elizabeta glared at her past high school rival, who was now standing in the doorway. "Damn it Vlad, can't you ever do anything without scaring the hell out of people?" She demanded.

Vlad grinned, revealing his oddly prominent left canine. "Perhaps," he said, shrugging, "But it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. Speaking of hell, how is life with this she-devil?" He asked, addressing Gilbert, who burst into laughter at his description of Elizabeta.

"Not too bad. She's even reduced my pineapple sodomy to only twice a week, which is great. Might finally give that rectal prolapse some time to heal up, you know?" Gilbert smirked, and received a well-placed elbow to the abdomen for his troubles.

"Commiserating with the man whose anus you threatened to violate with a coffin," Elizabeta said dryly. "And men say that women are fickle." While Gilbert wheezed in the background, doubled over and clutching his middle, she swung her gaze onto Vlad, who merely smiled at the annoyed glare she affixed to him. "Just take me to the viewing room that my grandfather is going to be in, please," she sighed. "I only want to make sure that he's been properly accommodated, so trust me, it'll be quick. The less time that I have to spend around you, the better," she added.

Holding his hand up to his heart in mock-hurt, Vlad threw her an amused look. "Your words, they wound me. Truly."

Lip curling, Elizabeta glared at him. "It'll be my fists wounding you pretty soon if you don't let us in already," she threatened, cracking her knuckles for good measure.

Vlad shook his head and stepped aside to allow Gilbert and her passage, clucking his tongue all the while. "My, Lizzie, but you haven't changed at all."

"I could say the same for you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you're still a gristly dick pustule."

"Such a ladylike repertoire of insults. Are you sure that you never grew that penis like you thought you would in second grade?" Vlad queried. Elizabeta's response was a sharply delivered elbow directly to his groin.

"Touchy," Vlad wheezed, though he refused to showcase his agony by clutching his battered testes. "I think you might've destroyed my ability to procreate."

"Good, the last thing the world needs is your spawn," Elizabeta sniped as she marched down the carpeted hall.

Wincing, Vlad straightened his back from his hunched over position, groaning as he did so. "Still hits like a man," he muttered in a tone of intermingled contempt and what sounded suspiciously to Gilbert's ears like fondness. He turned to Gilbert, brow quirked at a jaunty angle. "Aren't you going to come in?"

Nearly falling off the porch when he took an involuntary step back, Gilbert flapped his arms in a desperate attempt to regain his footing, looking rather like a drunk pigeon as he did so. "Yeah, no, I'm fine. I'll just…Wait out here," he said quickly, leaning against one of the pillars supporting the porch's roof.

Vlad stared blankly at him. "In the rain?"

"…Yes."

"You do realise that this drizzle is predicted to turn into a thunderstorm later today, right?"

"The weatherman can suck my nuts. That fucker's wrong half the time anyw-As if on cue, a jagged lightning bolt cut across the sky, which was suddenly awash with churning black clouds, followed immediately by a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the ground.

Vlad smirked. "Well now, it would seem that the weatherman will not be savouring the flavour of your scrotum tonight. So, care to come inside, or are you willing to brave the elements? Just for the record, the porch roof leaks."

Gilbert raised up a finger as though he were about to make some sort of brilliant comeback before a second bolt of lightning struck less than fifteen feet away from him. There was a sharp, echoing crack, as though of the splitting of wood, and, before his eyes, the tree which he had parked his beloved BMW beside was split in half at its trunk and toppled onto its roof with a screech of twisting metal. Staring aghast at the smouldering remains of the oak crushing his car, Gilbert sank to his knees, an expression not unlike that of the subject of Edvard Munch's The Scream distorting his face. "My baby!"

"A pity," Vlad sighed. "That was my favourite tree."

Gilbert whirled on him. "Fuck your tree! Look at what it did to my car!"

Vlad brought his shoulders up in a shrug. "Call a towing company," he said.

Eyes widening in horrified realisation, Gilbert sank down onto the rocking chair situated beside the front door. "I left my mobile on the front seat."

"Oh. Well…Ginger biscuit?" Vlad offered, holding out a small tin that he seemed to have conjured out of nowhere.

"Go take your ginger biscuits and shove them up your dickhole," Gilbert grumbled, dropping his face into his hands, unable to bear the image of his mangled car.

Vlad grinned ruefully. "I doubt that would improve their flavour. Just as well though; this tin doesn't even have any biscuits in it."

Gilbert looked up, slightly curiosity despite himself. "Then what's in it?"

"A severed human thumb. I've been hoping to surprise a guest with it for ages."

"You're a freaky son of a bitch, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

Getting to his feet, Gilbert shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Can I borrow your mobile?" He asked.

A shit-eating grin spread across Vlad's face; it was unsettlingly wide, giving his face the appearance that his mouth had been split from ear to ear. "Terribly sorry; my mobile's currently having its battery charged. In my kitchen. Which is inside. Which you will have to venture into if you want to use a phone."

Gilbert scowled at the other man's obvious enjoyment of the situation. "Oh yeah?" Clearing his throat, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the top of his lungs "OI, LIZ!"

"WHAT?" Elizabeta called back. Her voice, while audible, had a bit of a strained, hollow quality to its tone, as though she were shouting from the opposite end of the house.

"I NEED YOUR MOBILE!"

"WHY?"

"A TREE FELL ON THE CAR AND I NEED TO CALL A TOWING SERVICE BUT I LEFT MY MOBILE ON THE FRONT SEAT AND VLAD'S MOBILE IS CHARGING SO YOURS IS THE ONLY ONE AVAILABLE SO I NEED IT!"

"SORRY, BUT MY BATTERY DIED!"

"OH FUCK ME WITH A CHAINSAW!"

"No need to keep shouting Gilbert, I'm right here," Elizabeta, who had reappeared beside Vlad in the doorway said, rubbing her ears and looking annoyed. "And why all of the brouhaha over not being able to use my mobile? Why can't you just use Vlad's landline?" She demanded.

Gilbert averted his eyes, suddenly very interested in Vlad's shiny black New Rocks boots. "So, uh, those are some badass kicks, bro," he said lamely.

Vlad quirked his eyebrows. "Not that I don't appreciate the ass-kissing, but what's with the hesitancy?" A gleeful expression stole across his face. "Gilbert, are you scared to come inside?" He asked, blood-hued eyes glinting.

"Tch, scared? Of your Halloween House? Fuck to the no," Gilbert declared, raising his head up to glare at him.

"Really?" The tone of Vlad's voice was more than vaguely contemptuous, and Gilbert felt his hackles raise, though he still made no move to step across the threshold.

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really," Gilbert snapped.

Vlad's eyebrows had shot up so far during their little spar that they'd disappeared behind his strawberry-blonde fringe. "All right. Come inside, then," he said, sweeping his right arm in a grandiloquent manner towards the darkness that lay just beyond him. He smiled again, and Gilbert found himself wondering whether both of his canines had always been quite so sharp. Last he remembered, it had only been Vlad's left, but now both of them seemed oddly elongated; they glinted like knives in the gloomy grey light of the stormy sky. "Please, come in," Vlad repeated silkily. "I insist."

Despite the blaring of sirens and the constant screams of "Danger! Warning! Achtung!" Gilbert stepped forward, and would've shoved Vlad aside if the mortician hadn't stepped aside.

"Well, well, well, look who's suddenly eager to step into my humble abode," Vlad noted with a smirk.

"Fuck off, Varney," Gilbert growled. "I'd tell you to go suck your mother's cock but we all know you'd rather have a mouthful of-Ack!" A hand clamped down around his throat, and Gilbert found himself being shoved into the wall so forcefully that he could've sworn that he heard the plaster crumble. Dimly aware of Elizabeta's screams and that his feet were dangling above the floor, he clawed at the fingers digging into his neck in an attempt to dislodge them, but they tightened further in response. Just when he thought that he was either going to pass out from the lack of oxygen or have his head pop off from the pressure being exerted around his neck, Gilbert found himself saved by the furious temper that he'd always teased Elizabeta for since childhood.

"Both of you stop it already!" Elizabeta snarled, and, in a fit of strength that would've surprised someone unfamiliar with her, seized a fistful of Vlad's shaggy hair and hurled him aside into the door. To Gilbert's surprise, however, it was not Vlad, who had recovered quickly, albeit looking sour, that she spun on, but rather himself. Yanking him to his feet from where he'd slid to the floor, Elizabeta jammed him roughly in the chest, eyes burning with unconcealed fury. "Quit baiting him!"

Angry, and though he would never admit it, hurt at the fact that she was chewing him out after he'd nearly been strangled to death, Gilbert flung her hand away. "Why the fuck are you defending him?" He croaked hoarsely, pointing towards Vlad, who was staring at his gloved hands as though checking to make sure that they hadn't been sullied by exposure to Gilbert's flesh. "That crazy asshole almost chokes me out and you're bitching at me?!"

"Because you started it! I know that Vlad's a prick, but you're no paragon of virtue either, Gilbert, and you're the one who brought up his mother! What, do you expect me to hand you a medal for beating him in your battle of unbridled dickery?" Elizabeta said angrily. Throwing both him and Vlad a disgusted glare, she stormed down the hall, not bothering to look back.

Once the sound of a door slamming shut ensured that she was out of earshot, Gilbert turned towards Vlad. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do?" He hissed.

"Pray tell, what is this nefarious plot of mine?" Vlad asked, still glancing boredly at his splayed fingers.

"You're trying to steal Liz from me." The words hung in the muggy air for a moment, which was broken by the slow, sardonic clapping of Vlad's hands.

"Oh, bravo," he said. "You must've been up all night coming up with that. Tell me Gilbert, while you're busy tilting at windmills, has it ever occurred to you that you're doing a fine job of alienating Elizabeta from yourself all on your own?" The smirk reappeared. "On a more cheerful look, your unwarranted paranoia has served a good purpose; you're standing inside of my house and no longer look as though you're going to piss yourself." And then, Vlad's expression changed as completely as though he'd put on a mask. Gone was the sneer and the glinting eyes; he might've been receiving Gilbert as an old friend rather than someone he'd very nearly strangled as he gestured towards the hall that Elizabeta had disappeared down. "Care for a tour?"

-X-

Sitting rigidly on a maroon velvet sofa in the middle of one of Vlad's 'private' rooms whilst the aforementioned man prattled on about something that he'd long since given up on listening to, Gilbert dug his fingers into the armrest in order to keep himself from bolting.

The walls were lined with shelves, and standing atop those shelves was all manner of old-fashioned dolls. They were, Gilbert admitted to himself, exquisite works of craftsmanship, with intricate clothing displaying a wide range of past fashions. However, despite their beauty, the dolls caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand at attention. Their overly perfect features made them seem uncanny, and their glassy, unblinking gazes and frozen expressions reminded Gilbert viscerally of corpses, which only fuelled his sense of disquiet as he remembered that this place was not only Vlad's home but a funeral home as well.

What sort of guy has a room full of fucking dolls? Oh yeah, the same sort of guy who sleeps in a funeral home, he thought dryly.

"This is my mother's collection, actually," Vlad said, interrupting Gilbert from his reverie. "She was a bit obsessive when it came to dolls. Always thought that they came with their own story, you know?" He levelled Gilbert with an expectant look and took several steps forward before coming to a halt.

"Yeah, sure," Gilbert muttered, clenching his fists in preparation.

Vlad nodded, smiling. "Oh, yes," he said dreamily, plucking one of the dolls from a nearby shelf. It was a lovely thing, with long, blue-black ringlets and odd, pearl-coloured eyes, clad in a rococo-inspired dress. "Carina, for instance, was the product of the torrid union of a Spaniard and a mestizo woman from the Caribbean." Vlad's smile faded slightly. "She was a very unhappy young lady, caught between her fractured heritages, never quite fitting into either one. Too white for the natives and too savage for the Europeans. Her father was a man of some honour though, and when word was brought back to him of his half-breed child, he arranged for Carina to be brought to Spain to live with him. Her mother had died birthing her, and her father was the only parent she ever knew, and by all accounts, they got along well enough. She never wanted for anything, at the least."

Gilbert pushed himself up from the couch. "Huh. A happy ending, what do you know?" He said mock-cheerfully as he made a show of stretching. "Well, I better get going. My ass is starting to get numb-

"Oh, but I'm not finished," Vlad said, and though his voice was laced with amusement, the look in his eyes clearly implied that he wanted Gilbert to sit. Normally, Gilbert would've told him where to shove it, but after their little tussle before, the normally boisterous Prussian had no desire to come to blows with him again.

"As I mentioned earlier," Vlad continued softly, "Carina was in fact very unhappy. Her father, you see, was a kind man, but not the most astute. He had an enemy in his own household in the form of his brother-in-law, yet was completely unaware. Needless to say, this angry young man with a grudge wound up using poor Carina as a proxy for his revenge. A grudge against her father, the young man's own unrequited affection for her-It was the perfect setting for the imp of the perverse to grab a foothold."

Vlad set the doll back down onto the shelf, the porcelain limbs clinking gently as he smoothed down the skirts of her voluminous dress. "Poor little thing, raped by a step-uncle just five years her senior and committed suicide from the shame, wrongfully believing all the while that her beloved father had orchestrated the whole thing in an attempt to pay off a debt owed to his brother-in-law." He turned once again to Gilbert. "It was the very man who defiled her who commissioned to have a doll made in Carina's likeness, actually," Vlad added conversationally, as though he were discussing the rain. "A bit obsessed, he was. Guilty as well, when the liquor wore off and he realised what he'd done. Came running to her father's house four days later, begging for her forgiveness, but she'd long since killed herself. Just as well; her father broke his nose in a coffin-side brawl but spared his life. He didn't want to desecrate his daughter's memory by committing a murder at her funeral, although he very nearly did anyway when the young man crawled atop her corpse and began to bawl like a baby. How touching."

"If you call that touching, I call that fucked up as hell," Gilbert said disgustedly. He got up and began to make his way towards the door.

"You obviously missed my sarcasm," Vlad murmured. "I hardly believe that he ought to go unpunished. And he didn't; Carina saw to that."

Despite himself, Gilbert looked over his shoulder. "What the hell are you going on about now? I thought you said she died."

Vlad brought his shoulders up in a shrug. "If the young man's contracting of the doll was fuelled by love, than what happened a year later was fuelled by a lingering hate. He'd gone a bit mad, you see, and had taken to bringing the doll that bore such an uncanny resemblance to his lost Carina everywhere he went. Friends and family said that he would speak to it and then wait for a response, ask others to join the conversation. He even set it atop his bed table facing him every night. Poor man thought that the doll was Carina, apparently. But, I can see that I'm boring you, so I'm going to make a long story short. A year to the night that he'd done that wicked thing, a massive fire broke throughout his home. By the time it was done, nothing but a wall and the crumbled remnants of a chimney were standing. Well, that and the doll; it was still perched atop the blackened bed table, peering down at the man's charred remains. Not a bit of soot was on the doll; it looked as fresh and new as the day it'd arrived in its packaging."

Vlad folded his arms behind his head. "They say that the doll was smiling, which struck many as odd. Carina had been a sombre girl in life, not prone to smiling, and the young man had ensured that the doll's expression would mirror hers exactly. Enough people had seen it to testify that the doll's mouth had until then been set in neither a smile nor a frown, and even the man who made it answered in the affirmative, but that morning it was discovered, the mouth was quirked up in a faint, satisfied smile." Vlad's own teeth flashed in a grin. "And that's not even getting into the fact that the doll had been situated next to the candle that was deemed the cause of the fire. That," he said with a flourish towards the Carina doll, "Is a story for another day."

Gilbert snorted as he turned the doorknob. "You say another day like I'll be coming back here," he sneered.

"Ah," Vlad said, waggling his finger at him as though he were an impertinent child. "But you will be, eventually. After all," he chuckled, "I do happen to own the only funeral home in town, and alas, everyone here must one day pay a visit, whether for a loved one or-He paused, closing his eyes and cupping his chin in his right hand- Themselves."

At the implication, Gilbert whirled around with his fist raised, ready to swing it into Vlad's face when his eyes fell on a doll standing on the utmost shelf and he froze. It was different from the other dolls, made of wax rather than porcelain, and its face blank and scarred, the melted ends hanging in thick globules on the collar of its military jacket.

Seeing where his gaze was, Vlad waves towards the faceless doll. "Oh, that's Govert," he said cheerfully. "Had a bit of an accident some years back; he got caught in a fire."

Shuddering when his eyes landed on a doll dressed in a ruffled pink tutu that was staring in his direction through a pair of black, empty sockets, Gilbert nearly tore the door off its hinges and ran out into the hallway. "LIZ! LIZ! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?! WE'RE LEAVING NOW!"

Elizabeta stepped out from the room across from the one he'd just fled from. "What is it now, Gilbert?" She said wearily.

"We're going now. Vlad's a fucking bipolar freak, he's got a roomful of ghost dolls, there's dead people in his cellar, and I am not spending another second that I don't have to in this shithole," Gilbert ground out, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her down the hallway.

Wincing at his grip, Elizabeta attempted to shake him off but to no avail. "Will you at least tell me what happened?" She demanded.

"I just fucking explained it, Liz!" Gilbert exploded, releasing her arm. He began to pull at his hair. "The guy strangles me for insulting his mum, then acts like we're friends and gives me a tour of his creeptastic funeral house, and shows me a roomful of Kubrickian murder dolls who apparently all come with a free tortured soul inside when you buy them on sale and whose hand-crafted glass eyes probably never look away from the direction that they're buried! And those are the ones that even have fucking eyes, or faces, for that matter! I guess Vlad the psycho thinks that five easy payments of £50 is a good investment for warning houseguests that he's going to hollow out their corpses and replace their organs with spiders!" When Elizabeta opened her mouth to respond, Gilbert shook his head. "No Liz," he said heavily, "I still don't think you get it. LOOK at this place!"

As if on cue, a flash of lightning lit up the dim hallway, highlighting what Gilbert's wildly gesticulating hand had only hinted at. Clowns. Ceramic clown statuettes lining the wall shelves, clown oil paintings hanging from the walls, even a little plush clown hanging in a golden bird cage, its tiny gloved hands wrapped around the bars and its wide red smile peeled back to reveal rows of shark-like teeth.

Stepping back in revulsion, Elizabeta bumped into a desk, sending something heavy crashing to the floor, where it promptly shattered. Spinning around, she saw lying on the carpet a life-sized ceramic clown head, a crack splitting its pale face down the centre and its mouth stretched open in a howl and stuffed with a crumpled sheet of paper. Hands trembling, Elizabeta crouched down and plucked the note from out of the statue's mouth, unfurling it. Her brow furrowed as she mouthed the words scrawled across it.

"Behind you?"

"Indeed."

Gilbert and Elizabeta spun about in tandem. Standing just inches away from them was Vlad. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket as he slouched against the wall, eyes closed. "Do you ever wonder why it is people are so afraid of clowns?" A strange smile twisted his lips. "Personally, I always believed that it was because no matter what they might do, they always seem to be smiling. Even Pagliacci's mouth always seemed to be drawn up in a smile, even as tears coursed down his cheeks. A clown could watch the world end and their mouth will still be painted into a smile. It's a similar thing with dolls," he continued, "An eternally frozen expression even if they're naked and limbless sprawled out in the bottom of a toy chest." He stepped towards them, smile widening when the two of them backpedalled away from him in order to keep the distance that he was seeking to close. "Wouldn't it be nice," Vlad wondered, "If everyone were able to so easily smile in the midst of pain?"

Before the 'I told you he was a fucking nutjob' Gilbert so sorely wanted to say could be uttered, Elizabeta snatched up the fallen clown head statuette. "You try it first," she deadpanned, and threw it at his head. Her aim was spot-on, and it struck him directly in the face with a muffled crunch. To both of their shock and dismay, however, the crunch was not that of Vlad's nose breaking, but of the clown head shattering from the impact with his skull.

Brushing bits of ceramic from his hair, Vlad frowned. "That was just impolite. I think we'll have you first." With that being said, he threw back his head, a sound that was part roar, part screech ripping from his throat. As the inhuman noise reverberated down the hall, it was followed by a similar sound in a nightmarish form of call and response, followed immediately by an almost inaudible swish, as though of a minor breeze, and suddenly the hall was teeming with pale, hollow-eyed wraiths clawing at Gilbert and Elizabeta while letting out more of the abnormal shrieks.

Despite being pinned to the ground by several people, one of whom he recognised with a start as Elizabeta's grandfather, whose blood-shot eyes and paper-white skin were a far cry from what he remembered the man as in life, Gilbert still struggled, renewing his efforts when he saw Vlad looming over a writhing and spitting Elizabeta, dagger-edged teeth bared in a hideous parody of a smile.

"Any last words?"

"Yeah. Fuck this," Elizabeta said, pushing herself into a sitting position.

Vlad drew back, looking frustrated as all hell. "Damn it, Elizabeta; that's not in the script!"

Elizabeta glowered at him and flipped him the bird. "You can take the script and shove it up your hairless, flaccid arsehole! My back needs a rest from the constant falling this damn prank calls for."

Gilbert looked back and forth from the two of them. "Script? What script?" He demanded. "You mean I'm not about to join the legions of the undead?"

"Uh…No," Vlad informed him, spitting out his false vampire teeth onto the floor. He rubbed his jaw, looking pained. "Finally. I cut the inside of my cheek open like ten times with those damn things," he muttered. "This was just a long, contrived prank to get you to stop acting like a dick about not being afraid of anything. Seriously, despite your posturing, everyone knows that you're scared shitless of dolls, ghosts, and clowns. Also of being seen naked in public."

Gilbert's left eye began to twitch. "You were gonna work me being stripped naked into this shit, too?!"

"That was going to be the next scene, actually," Elizabeta admitted carelessly. "Vlad suggested that you get your clothes ripped off garment by garment by a hook-handed maniac but it seemed too high-brow, you know?" She added.

"No, I don't know!" Gilbert shouted. "I mean, come on…You worked with your high school enemy just to freak me out? And got your grandpa to pretend to be dead for a week just so you could prank me?!"

"I just couldn't pass up an opportunity like this," Vlad said as he munched on a Snickers that he'd procured from his jacket pocket.

Grandpa Hedervary shrugged. "I needed a vacation. Been alternating between a LEGOLAND and a strip club."

Elizabeta wrinkled her nose. "Ew, grandpa."

"Oh, don't worry your head, Lizzie, I haven't been able to get it up in years and you know that I think Viagra is from the devil."

Gilbert palmed his forehead. "What the…I don't even…What the actual fuck is wrong with you guys?"

"Lots of things," Vlad said with a shrug.

Gilbert sighed. "Ugh…Just…Just let me get back to my car so that I can drive home, go to bed, and pretend that none of this weirdness went down today."

Elizabeta tapped her fingers together and directed her gaze over his head. "Yeah, about that…"

"…That lightning strike and tree falling wasn't special effects, was it?"

"No."

"So my car's really totalled?"

"Yes."

Gilbert crossed his arms across his chest. "Anything you two would like to say to me?"

Vlad and Elizabeta shared a brief glance before turning to Gilbert and giving him jazz hands. "Happy Halloween!" They yelled in sync.

Gilbert shook his head, wondering when it was that he'd become the sane one amongst the town's residence. "Oi, Vlad, are you at least gonna pay my hospital bills? I think you might've bruised my trachea."

Swallowing a mouthful of chocolate and looking thoughtful, Vlad swallowed and grinned at him. "Nope."

"…I hate all of you."

The End.

A/N: Yeah…I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote this. Not much, apparently.