Author's Note: Though edited for grammatical errors, this was something I started writing spur of the moment. Right now it doesn't really have an end, it's just a series of one-shots with a lot of continuity. Featuring all your favorite pastas plus my OC Melanie. Hope you enjoy! [This is the least edited something has ever been that I have posted online in the past five years] This story was written with the assumption that readers are familiar with Ben Drowned, Marble Hornets, Ticci Toby, and Slender Man to some degree. It is highly recommended that you read Laughing Jack's story if no other, as it is the most essential to understanding this fic. Kuchisake Onna and The Woman in White will be explained.

Sell Your Soul

Melanie

When Melanie came to her head felt sluggish and heavy as a brick. Moonlight pouring over her face told her that she had been unconscious long enough for day to turn to night. Unconscious? No... she should have been- dead? The last thing she remembered was climbing a tall tree on the east side of the mountain to find a suitable branch for hanging off of. She flipped herself upside down and, holding onto the limb with her knees, extended her arms to snap an adventurous selfie to send to her niece in the mail. Her three nieces were all under the age of eight and loved rushing out to the mail box first thing in the morning to check for a letter. Melanie still felt strange having nieces when she wasn't even an adult herself. Unfortunately the picky girls would only accept the best. So Melanie had gone out and rummaged until she came across a working Polaroid camera.

It was only when she leaned as far back as she could go and saw the distant ground reflected in the lens of the camera that she realized how truly deadly such a fall would be. She fumbled with the camera in an attempt to remember which side the button lay on, swaying dangerously. Her heart lurched as the camera fell from her hands and she just barely swung enough to catch it. Melanie's relief was short-lived, however, as the lurching motion had snapped the dry branch clean in half. Her scream rang out through the forest as she fell to the mossy floor below.

Presently, Melanie's spine was icy with terror as she took in the sight of herself. Her legs were twisted at impossible angles. A cracked bone protruded from a serrated gash in her shin. Dried blood caked a shirt so shredded it could not mask her warped rib cage. She fought back waves of nausea as she tried to understand how she could possibly be alive. Cautiously, Melanie ran a bloody hand over her face. Most of the left side was completely smashed in and... something... was leaking out the sides. What was most disturbing was that none of it hurt. She clearly recalled an intense pain upon landing, but it seemed to have faded.

For a long time she simply hugged her knees and cried, not understanding what had become of her. Eventually her stomach began to growl and she was relieved to find that she could still feel hunger. She was far enough into the woods that it was ridiculous to expect a signal with a carrier as shoddy as Sprint. Somehow she would have to walk.

On a whim she tried pushing one of her rib bones back into place before crying out from the sudden sharp pain. It was much duller than it should have been, but still there. Could the undead feel pain? Either way, she didn't have the stomach to move everything back into place. From what little she knew of anatomy, none of this should have been possible. How could she go home like this? Why had no one come looking for her? It wasn't as though the woods were far from the house. Come to think of it, it was awfully quiet. Melanie rubbed her hands together part from nervousness and part from cold. A few times she had heard twigs snapping softly. It wasn't a cause for alarm during the daytime. The woods were filled with deer and other prey animals. The local hunters kept the mountain lions well enough in check that they weren't at the top of her list of concerns at the moment.

As the footsteps continued, Melanie began to wonder if she was yet another prey animal in the eyes of whatever was circling her. Indeed, the sounds seemed to be coming from one direction and then the next. Making a sound in her mind but at once nothing her ears could detect. As whatever magic had been bestowed upon her slowly faded and her aching limbs burned with pain she groaned and looked around deliriously. In her sickened state she saw suddenly a shadow that was darker than the places around it: a shape that not even the moonlight dared touch. And resting atop it was a pale, featureless face gazing at her from within the woods.

Her mind told her to scream, to run, that this was a thing centuries old that would surely spirit her away to another realm from whence she could never return. But her body's energy was spent and she had no resistance in her. So it was that Melanie found herself sitting half-dead in the woods staring at the stranger who touched neither the ground nor the very atmosphere she breathed.