2016

And the house was stirring just as it normally was, but the only difference, however, was that something eerie, dreadful, and inexplicable had occurred overnight. The young boy of twelve years old came down stairs in a white tank top and blue shorts, having the dreadful sensation that something had happened while he was asleep. The alarm clock had woken him up this time, instead of his mother, who was more or less the one person who would get him up before the beeping of his alarm clock.

The stairs freaked heavily with each step he took. One hand ran along the railing, while the other met with the wall, and he gulped fearfully. "H-hello?"

Nothing odd was featured in the living room, but that all changed the second Benny stepped foot into the narrow kitchen. A rotten smell gave him suspicions that there had been something wrong, but he didn't know what. Not only that, but he was silently praying, and with all the life he had, that he was dead wrong, and there was not a thing to fret over. "Mom?"

His stomach turned fiercely the moment his eyes caught sight of two dead bodies, both surrounded by a combined pool of dark blood. "M-MOM! DAD!"

The life in his eyes vastly eluded his peepers, along with the color of his skin draining to a pale whiter tone. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, alerted in horror. His mouth propped opened after a few long seconds of seeing the unbelievable. He did not move toward them, for he was truly scared to confirm for himself that they might've been truly dead.

"M-mom?" He whimpered questionably, extending a hand out to compensate for what he could by act upon. "H-hey..."

It didn't sink in that the fact that they were killed. At least, not until the thing showed up again.

Again, and right behind the young Benny when it did show up. Whatever it was.

He heard the running clanking of wood sound off behind him, closing in until Benny could identify the source of it stopping directly behind him. "Benny, my boy!"

The creepy ventriloquist dummy greeted him with enthusiasm, but that was just an act. Mr. Smiley was a completely wooden dummy, dressed in a tuxedo that happened to be stained with blood. His face, a pale face with huge green peepers, a crooked nose and uneven black hair, along with a huge unsettling grin that revealed perfectly-shaped teeth, made it all the more uncomfortable and dreadful to the young boy, especially that smile. But Benny was able to see that facade, as droplets of blood decorated the dummy's face. Which only mean that it was the culprit responsible for what happened to his parents.

"Y-you! What-?!" Benny stammered, trying to catch his words through the shaking, uncontrollable breath installed into him.

The dummy had that smile to stick with him, could not form another expression. "Cheer up, Benny! Your parents are taking a happy nappy!" And then, the dummy was cackling heavily, finding it nothing but amusing in general.

The next thing Benny knew and did was run. He had his body frozen stiff up until that very point, that very moment where it was obviously clear to him that the dummy had indeed been the killer of his parents. He was racing into his room, heart beating at incredible levels he himself could have never achived in physical education with Lynn Loud. Lynn Loud, the one girl who had physical superiority over many of their classmates, but something of an equal, friendly rival to her.

Funny. Of all the times, why would he be thinking of her right in this instance? Right as he locked the door shut? Right as he dug himself into the corner of his bedroom, not knowing what to do in such a situation? Right as the aggressive kicking began from the outside of the room? Why now? What was going to happen to him?

"Let me in, buddy boy!" The dummy had a squeaky high-pitched voice, a close hybrid fusion of Spongebob mixed with a croaky, raspy voice. "Come and play with the dummy!"

Benny panicked, now hyperventilating to the point the world became unfocused and shifted before his eyes. His phone happened to be untouched since last night, perfectly still on his desk next to his bed. He was too shaken, scared for his life to try and call the right authorities. The dummy was still kicking, and after twenty heart-stopping seconds, the banging had died down completely. Benny listened closely when he was barely able to bring himself to a calm. His trembling body was getting back under control, with him silencing his hard breaths.

Not a single sound was heard from outside. No footstep, no clanking of wood, or any sign that the dummy still lurked at the other end, ready to kill the boy.

Benny eyed his phone and grabbed it slowly and silently as to not alert the malevolent dummy of his actions. Benny then took a deep breath and walked through the room in tip-toe. He reached the door and leaned his head against it, trying to detect a sound that would give away the deception that the dummy was gone. There was nothing.

He felt he was safe, so he opened the door, and peeking his head out, he saw...

Nothing. No one was in the tiny hallway, awaiting his presence. He gulped, but heard just a faint, but a true faint sound of wood scraping against the floor. But what got him was that it didnt come from in front of him. Not from the staircase, or even the first floor either. No, it came from his room, behind the poor boy.

"Psssst, Benny!" The voice rasped again, this time going with a more sinister tone of voice. The bloodied dummy turned the boy around, which then caused him to scream loudly.

Now

The bell that signaled the end of the school day rang out. Another of Lupa Loud's long, hellish high school days had just ended, and now she was heading home, due to tend to her homework from five of her classes, which happened to be Algebra, World History, Environmental Science, English, and Art. As if it weren't enough, she had to write an essay on the American Revolution, and for th at, she needed to actually learn about that.

The upside is that she had Leia Prescott, the bitch who hailed from a wealthy but obnoxiously snobby family. She was a blonde who had those generic traits, but there was a whole lot more attached to her personal life than Lupa had believed. Leia was more or less just an object to her parents, groomed simply for their own selfish goals. Whether she had a personal life outside of that did not even remotely matter to them.

But Lupa, despite having been an enemy to her for some upteenth years, had broken past it and got to that point where she was closer, even closer than the late Gwen and Marsha were.

Currently, Lupa and Leia were lovers, a couple brought to light after numerous get-togethers that Leia was reluctant to participate in, but less and less as they went along.

It became clear that she swung for both teams, and Lupa was the second to be experimented on in the blonde's life. Who would have ever imagined such a thing could happen between long-time rivals since elementary school?

Lupa let her hands wander to her phone, aiming to land herself into a study session with her girlfriend. It has already been a year since her mother had "left" Lupa and her father, and even though the now-blonde easy-goer missed her, she was able to move forward for a bright future. A better one, and hopefully that accounted Leia being there with her every step of the way.

Lincoln, her dear old dad, had been made aware of Lupa's sexuality, and had been quickly kind to accept Leia. Really, he would welcome anything that would make his little Snowball a happy teenage girl, just as long as they did not contract anything. He said it out loud, which heavily embarrassed Lupa the first time he met Leia. But at least she knew he accepted. And that was more touching to her, something he didn't know until it was later acknowledged.

She clicked on Leia's contact, in which there was a pic of Lupa making a silly face while Leia kissed her cheek. She opened their text thread and began typing;

Can I come over? I have been procrastinating on our history chapters.

She quickly sent the text, and then focused back on her big, hardcover textbook. She opened up to the American Revolution section. Maybe her father could help her when he came back.

Leia was quick to reply back;

Oh, it would be fun to have you here, baby girl! Just so you know, Kimberly's here, helping me study for geometry. Come, say, at around six-ish? xo

"Geometry, heh," Lupa giggled to herself. "I suppose I better get reading-"

There was a strange chittering that rang in her ears, so close that she believed there were bugs flying around her head. She motioned both hands to swat them away, but her hands did not make contact with any living, tiny insects in the room. And yet, the weird sound kept playing.

"What the fuck?" Lupa glanced around, trying to pin-point the source of the odd noise. Sitting up, she then realized that it wasn't just sounding ominously close, but the sound happened to be coming from all directions at once. And before she realized it, Lupa was spinning, looking around her room like a crazy person, covering her ears from the hellish noise she could not bear to take. "Make it stop!"

It was then that the chittering, audibly identical to a pair of lips sucking the air in a timed rhythm, had stopped, as if an invisible button was pressed. Lupa slowly retracted and lowered her hands. "Huh?"

Could she have possibly imagined the noise? The blonde scoped her room, thinking it might have been some loose floorboard or her desk no longer able to support the weight of her monitor set-up, or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was her being overworked by the hard school studies. Quite possibly, it was only natural for her to be weary of it. And what of college? Was that going to be tougher than this?

Maybe she needed a nap, settled for no less than that in the end, and turned to her bed- and encountered a hideous, life-size creature that resembled a cockroach, drooling away some sort of secretion from its mouth, snarling in her presence. The creature was a foot taller than her, with tiny, beady, yellow eyes, adding to the frightful look of it. The antennas were dangly and pointy at the same time, twitching out of place as it kept chittering. The rest of its body, a sight for sore eyes, revealed eight limbs, six of those being "arms", actually pinchy claws, and the two legs were basically skinny sticks, and to top it all off, the entire body had a blanket of some brown slime that made her nearly want to throw up.

"Lupa Loud, helm of the Shadow Demon Mizkartye, I have come to warn you," the humanoid cockroach.

"Miz- Mizkartye-? I don't know who-" Lupa dared to step back, pointing right at the thing. "Who- What- What the fuck are you?"

Without warning, the humanoid cockroach ducked its head forward and placed its hand-claws where the neck should have been. The arms had expanded a bit, making a disgusting fleshy sound so that it could grab its head. The next thing Lupa knew, the creature snipped its head off from its body, letting it fall and roll onto the floor. The decapitated, slimy head then turned into tens of hundreds of tiny cockroaches and scattered all over her room, hiding under her bed, behind the desk and closet, and in many tiny crevices they could find and fit in.

"Oh, my God-" Lupa had fallen on her ass, trembling from nervousness that had yet to advance to fear. This monster had not come for the sake of selling her girl scout cookies, so why was it here? And what was this little bizarre spectacle about? What was it trying to do? And more importantly-

The body plopped down, with the gore of the creature being visible, dripping away its dark-brown blood on Lupa's floor. The puddle formed, but stopped before it could touch her. She remained on the floor, shook and surprised in horrendous size, unsure of what to do. Did it just kill itself in front of her? Lupa moved back, hitting herself against the door. It had stopped movint, so maybe it really did... And what was that with the cockroaches? None of the hundreds of them were visible in the corner of her eyes, so... This can't have been a demon-related affair... Could it have?

The brown puddle of the creature's blood moved to form a circle, halting Lupa's thoughts. This wasn't over yet. And it really wasn't.

The puddle became round, only for the entire liquid to come springing upwards and strike into her face. She shrieked with fear, muffled when the blood wrapped itself like a blanket around her entire head.

The setting changed, and Lupa was no longer at her home in Spokane, Washington. Not from the look of this place. The atmosphere was of an ash-covered sky, with the entire dirt ground broken up by a literal hell that was trying to burst free from within the earth. Lava was visible in all the cracks, and heat emulated with intensively dangerous rays that Lupa's skin was burning in contact the second she was there. Her pale tone changed to tan in seconds, only escalating further for it to get worse from there. It was like someone had put cooking oil on her and tossed her into a beach on a hot summer's day.

"F-fuck!" She had no choice but to resort to her special demon powers, which consisted of an accelerated healing factor, the ability to harden her skin as well as able to withstand the fiery inferno, and the forming of her claws, sharpened teeth, and demonic milky-white eyes that were shaped like the Rhombus trapezoid, with her eyelids being black and a little sideways. However, this was all just a ruse for her to reveal her inner Shadow Demon.

The burning scenery changed just as it had begun. The cracked lines all over the ground closed up, locking the lava and the radiating heat from the outer layer of earth, sparing not just herself but the many people she believed were still in danger, and that included her dear father and beautiful girlfriend as well. Everything had grown calm and cool, and the clouded air had a cleaning purge all of a sudden, and the spreads of ashes compiled into the same area in front of her, forming a tiny tornado. And out of that twister came the humanoid cockroach being, moving slowly as the twister died down.

"So the rumors-" The way its pincers moved as it spoke made it look like it was hungry for human flesh. Unfortunately for it, Lupa was no ordinary human. "-The word of a female Terrethian conjoined with the essence of a Shadow Demon is true!"

"T-Terrethian?" Lupa kept her distance, giving the creature her undivided attention. "What is that? And how are you intact? You- You've sliced your head off, and-" Her mind went blank when she wandered her her mind back in her room. That brown blood of this overgrown insect- did it transport her here? Here, wherever this was? "Take me back or I'll end you!"

But the strange creature did what she didn't expect in any way; it bowed to her royally, as if Lupa was a queen, a great figure worthy of respect. Just when it couldn't get more confusing by the second. "At long last, I've been liberated from my own prison! Terrethian, you have my utmost gratitude."

"What is even going on anymore? H-hey, ugly, start explaining what this is all about."

"Allow me to introduce myself," the creature chattered. "I am the Caucke Roatsche, one of the many Tiramakkuri beings in existence."

"Caw... Caw... Tiramuhhh..." Lupa knew that word; it being the name of the animalistic demons the entire Repirthom was founded on to resurrect. From everything she had known, the cult she had fought was just one such cult who was working to bring back the fallen Tiramakkuri known as Pigoschliem, and by the speak of it, Pigoschliem was the one strongest Tiramakkuri demon to unite the living world with that of the eternally damned, which would establish a literal hell on earth- and who knew how that would go down?

While Lupa had indeed stopped it, she was told that the cult she had fought was the last one in existence. Then... How was this one alive?

"I don't understand... How- Who resurrected you?" Lupa had lowered her guard enough to be left open, susceptible to attack, confused and lost at the moment. "All the cults are gone, and I stopped that Pigoschliem-"

"Nhuahhhh..." The Caucke Roatsche snarled, twitching its multiple limbs. "We are of an ancient demonic collective that has ever had the honor to roam the Realm of Terre since the fall of he whom you call the Devil."

"Y-yes, I know that much, but-"

"There are hundreds of Tiramakkuri, Terrethian. Hundreds, concealed away as fragments within their- Rrrraaaaahhhhhh... Their descendants."

"D-descendants?" Lupa looked down, seeing a layer of pebbles jumping out of place around her feet, followed by the shaking of the earth. The rumbling grew stronger and fiercer, like thunder and lightning coming her way, but through the ground. She looked behind the Caucke Roatsche, and then to her side's. Nothing was there-

"Upwards," the Tiramakkuri demon pointed, suddenly sprouting the wings it kept away until now. Thw wings fluttered at high speeds, making the same sound a fan would. The demon flew upwards, leaving Lupa baffled with even more confusion. "Now!"

Lupa looked behind, finally noticing the stampede of wild animals charging at top speed in her direction. "HOLY SHIT!" She kicked off from the ground and levitated ten feet above. "What's with the zoo show?"

"All Tiramakkuri demons back then are either dead or dormant within all their living descendants today. In the case of extinct animals, this destroys the essence of that corresponding Tiramakkuri demon."

Lupa had begun to make sense of it. "So... If all lions are killed off... Then, the lion Tiramakkuri dies completely?" She remembered that a hog was brought to her so that it could eat her, which would turn it into the demon the cult tried to bring back. It made a little more sense now. She flicked a finger and kept it pointed at him. "You're the king of cockroaches! Your name and form-"

"Was it- ggurghhhhhhh- Was it not obvious?" The comment made Lupa want to give herself an IQ test. "But how did you return? I still don't-"

"We are able to pop in and out at any given time... Or so we were able to, until Repirthom's pack of witch covens wished to force Pigoschliem back to normal. Terrethians are a most humorous race of abominable fleshy sacks, hoping to destroy the Realm of Terre like that."

"Force Pigo-? You mean..." Back then, the literal fate of the world was at stake, doomed if she failed to defeat the cult altogether. And she succeeded in beating them, keeping her life and saving the world. Only- "You're t-telling me all of that-?"

"Pigoschliem is indeed a dangerous Tiramakkuri, yes, but is not such a being with unlimited power."

"What?!"

It pointed at her face just as the animals beneath them had disappeared. "I took a look into your mind, and I am able to inform you what is true of the book you have come across. The human experience with us demons is too few, seeing as we do not affiliate with Terrethians all too much."

"Terrethians..." Lupa repeated. "That's us humans, isn't it? Another word for earthlings?"

"Very perceptive of you, Terrethian," the Caucke Roatsche confirmed. "There is so much that not even Shadow Demons have come to know. We Tiramakkuri think of Shadow Demons to be Terrethian waste, just as we do with any regular demon unless they are not Terrethian-based essence."

"Then... All that had happened before-" Lupa began floating down back to the ground, followed by the demon.

"A deluded crusade appointed by themselves, which had less of a reward than what they believed. By that logic-"

Lupa fell on her knees, then realizing what it mean all along. Her mother, Lumi, and the entire memory wipe that removed Lincoln's memories of his dead daughter, was all rendered meaningless in the end for the most part. All of it to "resurrect" actually assemble a being they had overestimated in terms of power, based on what was read in a book, had all been bullshit even up to now. The facts were either wrong or incomplete, and never questioned by her closely. She should have known that there might have been misinformation on it, but the demon, that damn Excetum, had never spoke up about it. Based on that, he, too, was unaware of the possibility of inaccuracy. "It was all for nothing..."

The Caucke Roatsche had grown silent, feeling nauseous when she conveyed her human emotion.

Lupa shoved her hands on the ground, taking uneasy breaths as she processed the entire revelation the Tiramakkuri demon had dropped. This, all of this, was all just a long-running joke devised by some unholy, ungodly power beyond her comprehension. It could have been the actual Devil at work here, making this happen for simple amusement, and yet, at the same time, it could have been God at work, pulling the strings all along. The deaths of Gwen and Marsha, which Leia tried to rationalize to have a grip on herself, had noe served as random losses with no value, disrespecting them in that way. There was not even a simple, easy way to explain it to Leia if she was able to. She knew how great a deal they meant to her, and Lupa would have to keep it away from her lover.

It all went down as it did because no one had the proper Tiramakkuri insight all this time. And for that, Lupa was crying uncontrollably, forgetting her surroundings.

"Forgive my stunning truth about us, but I've come to thank you for letting some of us run free now," Roatsche went on, pointing to its antennas. "Some of us had gone into hiding the second we sensed a disturbance. We are all able to communicate with each other, as we are all a hive mind."

"Y-you're connected to the rest of them?" Lupa dropped her demon form, finally seeing it was safe to revert to her human. "Okay, I understand most of it now, but... You said I was the helm of Miz- Miz something-"

"The Shadow Demon you call Excetum is not the real name, but rather Mizkartye."

Then, everything flashed a bright illuminating white, stunning her severely. "Ngh!"

She found herself laying in her bed, as if nothing had happened. In a way, nothing had, and Lupa looked over the floor, seeing that the mess the Caucke Roatsche had made with its own body was no longer visible, and neither was her face covered in the gooey substance. While she wiped her face, the creature came crawling out from under her bed, slithering out like a snake. "I realize that you may deem us to be carnivorous monsters, and you'd be right to be suspicious of us and our intent, but me and my brethren accept and hail you as a savior-"

"Savior? B-but that Pigoschliem- I stopped the witches from returning-"

"Which was against the will of that demon," Roatsche revealed further. "Not at all of its choosing, Terrethian."

Lupa leaned up, turning to face the entity directly head on, still broken up from the horrid reality around these supernatural events. She wiped her face with her sleeve, still under the illusion that she had actually cried. The place it had taken her proved to be elsewhere, maybe another bigger illusion at that. "You can stop calling me a Terrethian," Lupa growled with no fear in her voice, showing off her aggressive side.

"Very well, Lupa," the Caucke Roatsche agreed, looking around the room. "Listen, I have come here with not only gratitude to express, but a warning."

"A warning?" Lupa shook her head in disbelief. "I can't be in danger again."

"All demonic entities fear the Tiramakkuri, so what surprise should it be when word gets out that a girl with a Shadow Demon on her side has managed to vanquish one of the five strongest ones out there. It goes without saying, you will be coming into contact with supernatural beings left and right. You are greatly fortunate that I came bearing glad tidings. The next demon may not be so friendly."

Lupa broke away from starting at the humanoid cockroach. Again, she did the math mentally; she had activated a homing signal that could- No, was actually attracting many demonic beings to her, and this Caucke Roatsche being was the first one to pay Lupa a visit. Funny how this was, when some time had passed, and no one dared to have actually. "Are you sure that's the case? I've not seen any other demon since..."

She held up a hand and flicked it to pop out her claws again to show the roach demon.

"Thanks for the warning, I guess..." Lupa rolled back into her bed and stared up the ceiling. "So, demons have taken an interest in me in more ways than one, huh?"

"No doubt this is the case. To them, you are just as dangerous, running around with the powers of a Shadow Demon."

She was scared inside, freaking out while remaining physically calm. A whole new layer of peril had just arrived through nothing but words, a special verbal bulletin notice brought by a mailman from hell. She didn't need it at all, or at the very least, not around this time. It hadn't even been a year since being introduced to the supernatural world. Demons... Demons again, and Lupa was but a mere teenager with a full life ahead of her, having a great father and a pretty girlfriend. No way. No way she could jump into the supernatural war zone and fight all of her newfound enemies that came her way, even with her advantages. Then again, she wasn't planning on dying either, meaning she faced a forced ultimatum where she either had to avoid or partake- and neither one of those were the great options. Hiding into seclusion wasn't going to be effective either, so she ruled that out. "H-how many...? How many could I come across?"

The Caucke Roatsche saw fit to finally leave, crawling its way right under her bed, rattling it about. As it exited, it did leave with the answer to her question, and such an answer that amplified her fright tenfold. "All of them."

She flinched, doing her best not to express fear. Why did she bother to fake it, to lie to herself? Was it the idea that she needed it to be all well and good? For a short moment in her life, she'd have that decision whether she knew in her heart that she wanted to fight, or stay away from the waves of evil entities. One of them would soon be making it for her, and when that happened-

"So be it..." She whispered to herself, starting her impatient wait for the beginning of the end.

AN: There is a shortage of horror as I've seen some souls whisper within the D range. And I, a fan of the sci-fi and horror genre, have no shortage of ideas rattling around my head. If I inherited Flagg's super speed, I could possibly pump out fics on a daily basis. Also, no need to bash me for adding more fics to the fray while I've yet to wrap up others. Oddly, I find it easier to start something than end it. Not my fauly, don't hang me, please!

Lupa, the one OC who best fits into the horror genre with supernatural tropes, and that's my humble opinion. While she isn't owned by me, obviously, I gotta take all the credit for Excetum, and the Caucke Roatsche and these other minor details about these beings in general. And let's not forget the dummy in the beginning. More to tell around him. Thank you, Loud House fandom!

See you and goodnight!