The funny thing is, I'm eating S'mores while I'm writing this. :P

S'MORES.

Hell.

Fucking.

Yes.

Dead bodies. So many dead bodies. The smell. Oh... fuck, you think you're going to be sick.

There's a pile of dead bodies that could resemble Dave's pile of naked puppets, except these men were once alive. It makes you sick to think that someone killed them, and then just dumped them in here like they were trash.

Some were missing limbs, as if they were chopped off in a clean cut.

"What the hell... happened here?" John whispers as he steps forward bravely, dodging the decaying bodies.

"It seems... they were..." You clear your throat, "Dismembered. And thrown into... that pot there." Oh shit. Realization starts to dawn over you. You see the look on John's face that tells you he has too.

"Oh... fuck..." He holds his head and rubs his face in despair, "so, we're dealing with some kind of sick cannibal? Oh, fuck, man." You grab his hand, trying to help calm him down. It doesn't seem to work.

"Wow, so this is some kind of sick game, huh?" John grits his teeth and storms off to the other side of the room, avoiding the bodies and plugging his nose to keep the smell out.

You sigh, and investigate the room, avoiding the pot on the stove with legs and arms in it. Deciding to investigate a shelf full of bloodied tools, you find a few tinderboxes next to them. That makes for a total of five tinderboxes. You move some boxes and search under them, but there's nothing of interest. Moving over to the counter, the last place you wanted to check, you move he pot with a single finger towards the edge of the counter and find a note in it place, for some reason. You decide to read it out loud, knowing that John can hear you.

"5/9/05... Father gave me a lecture that I was supposed to marry a lady of another household, and that I couldn't be with Callie, because she was poor. But I don't understand why we can't. I mean, why does fame and money have to separate us? I'm really confused.

On the bright side, two days ago was my birthday. Callie snuck a gift into my private mail, she's so sweet! It's a really cool stuffed teddy bear. I named her Callie."

John looks as if he's waiting for more, but you continue, "That's it. There's nothing else after it." He looks a little disappointed, but you give him a soft smile and shove the note in your pocket. "I... I apologize profusely for forcing you to come with me." You say, and give a small pout on your lips. God, why did you have to be such an idiot and drag him with you? It could have been only you stuck in this mess.

"Hey now," John approaches you, "I don't think I could forgive myself if I let you go in here alone. I mean, look what we've already run into!" He gives a soft laugh, and so do you, even though neither of you are in the laughing mood. Really, you're just trying to lift each other's spirits up.

You know John. He would never leave you to do something like this alone, because that's just the way he is. A friend-leader. But that's what you like about him.

"Come on, let's get out of here." John lightly grabs your wrist and leads you out of the room. Well, more like escorts you.

The outside room is still as creepy as it was before, only the fact that a person was wandering the place made it even more terrifying. You try your best to ignore that fact. You fail miserably.

You two travel down the hallway slowly, to the point where it's killing you and you want to break out in a run. For no reason whatsoever, except that you feel something's following you. Maybe because there might be?

As John pulls you, you stare at the walls that are starting to become scratched and pale. The carpet beneath you, stained with blood. John doesn't seem to notice. Maybe it's just you going insane? You close your eyes, trying to block it all out, but there's this sound that overcomes your inner mind. Yeah, you're definitely going insane.

Finally, he opens another door and you go inside first, happy to be out of the hallway. Instead, this one brings you down a flight of stairs, and it seems like you're going on forever. John is behind you, as if he wants to catch you if you fall. And you feel as if you just might.

When you reach the bottom, there's a second door at the end. You swing it open, and are brought into a much larger room, and a higher ceiling makes you feel less trapped. There's a fountain in the middle with cool water that makes you feel calm, and the pair of giant doors that you recognize from the start.

"I'm guessing this is the main hall?" John says as he steps forward to the railing. He proceeds down the left light of stairs. You proceed down the right flight of stairs.

"It can only be." You have to raise your voice so that John can hear you on the other end. He reaches the bottom first, and it instantly staring at the fountain. You take the time to gaze at the stone walls and marbled flooring.

"Whoever built this place has good taste in décor." Johns repeats you from earlier, and looks at the running water from the fountain. You're still searching the rest of the room. With a large scale like this, you have to search for the big picture. Like this door, over here.

"There's a door over here." You call to John, swinging it open. "And it's not locked. That's a surprise. Care to go down?" You say, realizing there's more stairs. Since you're both on the first level of the house, you can assume this leads down into the basement. A place you dread to go, but the two of you know you have to. John comes over and follows close behind as you both descend into the basement.

The first thing you note is that it's dark and damp. Extremely. It's at times like these you wish your aspect of Light allowed you to create a ball of light in the palm of your hand. Or that you still had your wands. Then again, the Thorns of Oglogoth weren't purposed for creating light. In fact, the opposite.

The both of you are now descending into the basement, through a flight of stairs that twist at the end, so that they're spiral. You feel the railing along the way, and actually come across a spider web. Yuck, why didn't they ever clean such a depressing place?

They being whoever owned this damn place, at least.

You can't see John's face in the darkness, but you can tell he's scared stiff. You don't blame him. He has every right to be scared right about now. You do too, but you try not to. There's a disturbing smell that overcomes your nose. You try to plug your nose in an attempt to seal out the fumes, but said fumes are strong enough to taste. You're forced to breathe it in.

"What the hell is that smell?" John asks. You don't want to answer.

You take a turn around the corner of an island, searching its counter for something, anything, useful. Speaking of which, you come across a lantern. Thank God.

"Yes!" You barely hear John whisper. It was probably only meant for himself to hear. He picks it up and tries to twist it on. "Uh," he says, dumbfounded, "Rose, it's not working. It's not fucking working." He seems to be getting frustrated as he tries twisting it harder.

"Let me observe." You say, lightly taking the lantern from his hand and opening the side lid. Well, what do you know, it's out of oil. That was just mean. A lantern with no oil.

You don't even have to say anything, because John's already seen what you opened. Empty canteen. He walks away in frustration, but you keep the lantern in case you ever come across oil. Who knows? This house has dead bodies, so why wouldn't it have oil?

John has already made his way into the next room, so you oblige yourself to follow him. It's not hard to see his frustration, and you wish there was something you could do to help him. But there isn't. All you can do is walk by his side and tell him everything is going to be okay. Even when it isn't. And you both know it's not.

"What the hell was this... this... cellar... even used for anyway?" John mumbles under his breath as he struggled to think of a word. "Dead bodies?" He continued, as if he were trying to get you to laugh. But you aren't exactly in the laughing mood, and neither is he. Many wine closets are stacked against the wall, as well as fermentation machines used to create them.

"The fermentation process takes years to fully complete." You say, your hand grazing over the rust of it. "Not only must they have their own grape garden, but this concludes the house is much older than we think. Especially since these bottles have laid untouched."

"Did you get that from your..." John stumbles over his last word. You know what he was going to say. He stopped himself before he could let you think about it, and blame yourself for it. For both of them. You see him scratch his head in embarrassment. "Ah... sorry. Nevermind." You give him a nod, as if you were giving him forgiveness. With your attention focused on him, you hardly even realized you've stepped into another room. Closets with open doors are filled with apples and bread, and other such foods. Most of them rotten; however, there are a few that look ripe for the picking.

"This must be the storage." You say, kicking a few empty wine bottles around. John picks up a few apples, throwing the rotten ones away to the side. He avoid the ones piled up in the closet, picking up the ones off the floor. "John, what are you doing?" You ask curiously as he turns to you, a ripe apple in his hand.

"Looking for something to eat." He takes a bite, apple juice dripping down his chin. "Phoure fwellingh fme fur mnot fhunghry?" He tries to say through a mouthful of apple. You chuckle, your hands at your hips.

"John, I'm highly skeptical about the purity of those apples. As well as the fact that it's not polite to talk with your mouth full." John gives you a toothy grin after he swallows and tries to hand you an apple, but you shake your head. "I'd prefer to eat something where I don't have a chance of contacting food poisoning." He shrugs, taking another bite into the apple he currently held.

A loud roar interrupted you.

John spat out his apple, nearly choking on it. He held his hand to his chest, trying to catch his breath. "What the fuck was that?"

You want to answer, but you hold your tongue. John does the same.

Footsteps.

A growl.

"Shit, he's coming this way!" You hiss at John, "Look for a place to hide!" John scrambles around, moving aside apples. You know that John desperately wants to say a joke, like, "Let's hide under the apples!" But the two of you are too scared for jokes.

You can hear it coming closer.

"Rose, what are we going to do?" He says after closing the door. It wont' stop him, but it'll buy you two time. Maybe just enough time to find a place to hide. But there's nothing in here. Nothing but apples, wine bottles, bread, and...

"John! The closet!" You tell him, pointing towards the overflowing pile of apples sticking out. The two of you work fast to remove the apples from their overflowing container. There's claw marks scratching against the door. He's trying to break in.

"Fuck!" John whispers as he moves faster, tossing apples aside to the point where they're hitting your arm. You don't say anything though. There's no point in complaining about an apple hitting your arm when there's a fucking monster outside your door.

"In, in, in!" John scrambled inside, catching your arm to pull you alongside. You shut one door while he shuts the other, and you both try to sit in the cramped space you have. It's quite... awkward. Being this close to John.

Silence.

"Is... he gone?" John whispers, not daring to open the closet doors. You shift against John, trying to make it more comfortable for both you and him. Except, it's impossible with the poor amount of space there is in the closet. Why the hell is it so small?

Then, you hear the door outside come crashing down. Powerful enough to tear down a door in ten seconds. Is it the same thing from before? The man upstairs?

No, you're starting to think that the thing outside is far from a man.

Whatever it is, it grumbles and moans. Searching for its prey. Prey that has escaped it, to live another day. The predator erupts in fury and smashes the bottles around it, desperate to find its meal. But its meal has escaped it once more. The dimwitted predator is too fucking stupid to look in the fucking closet and oh man this is going to end with death and... since when did you start to sound like John? Maybe being half an inch apart makes his derpy-ness rub off on you.

It grunts and growls continuously, and you start to feel your stomach churn each time. John is clamming up, his knuckles turning white from his grip on your hand. Heck, your hand is also turning white because of the lack of blood flow. You place your other hand on his to help calm him down, then wrap it around his arm. John's scared shitless, just like you, and you have to be strong to help him. Except, you're not sure that even you are strong enough for this.

You can tell it's still outside because of those disgusting sounds. But... it sounds like it's... sniffing now. Sniffing what?

John has a look of horror on his face. He looks to his hand, as do you, and you both make the discovery that John's apple is missing. Presumably outside. And that's what he's sniffing.

He knows his prey is here. And he won't leave until he finds it.